Apr. 30: Maurice Sendak At Portland Opera, Radiation City, Holly Andres, Snohetta, Portland Ballet

This week on State of Wonder, Maurice Sendak goes to the opera, retro-tinged indie pop with Radiation City, darkness and light with photographer Holly Andres, and Snohetta's big plans for Portland's James Beard Market and Willamette Falls, and the Portland Ballet. Mauric Sendak Goes to the Opera - 0:00 Maurice Sendak is beloved for his emotionally stormy and distinctive children’s books like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen," but the Portland Opera is giving us a chance to appreciate his lesser-known work — as a passionate fan of and set designer for opera. The Portland Opera's general director, Christopher Mattaliano, worked with Sendak on his first opera, "The Magic Flute," in 1981 and is restaging it May 6-14 for the first time in over a decade. Mattaliano tells us about his friendship with Sendak and how the great artist simply loved opera. Radiation City - 7:30 Local indie-pop band Radiation City's lineup was famous for featuring two couples...and infamous for its in-fighting. So when co-founders Lizzy Ellison and Cameron Spies finally split, it was an open question: could the show go on? Their new album, Synesthetica, charts calamity and a path out of it, adding a new level of polish and maturity to the band's signature take on retro-pop. Holly Andres - 15:08 Photographer Holly Andres — who has shot for "Vanity Fair," the "New York Times," and other A-list clients — captures scenes packed with emotion, intrigue, and mystery. She has a show on view at Charles Hartman Fine Art in Portland called “The Fallen Fawn” (through May 28) about two young girls who discover an unexpected treasure. We dive into it with Tricia Hoffman, executive director of The Newspace Gallery (which currently has a show up featuring photography shot inside prisons), for another review in our "What Are You Looking At?" series. Snøhetta - 21:00 Columnist-in-residence Randy Gragg takes us into the world of Snøhetta, an internationally-renowned architecture firm (think Times Square, the new SF Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Alexandria) about to embark on two projects in Oregon: the James Beard Public Market in Portland, and the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon City. The first ever U.S. retrospective of the firm's work, "Snøhetta: People, Process, Projects," is on-view at the AIA Center for Architecture through June 30. The Portland Ballet - 31:10 Oregon Art Beat recently profiled some big changes at the Portland Ballet, a ballet school in Hillsdale that seeks to bridge the gap between Balanchine and Queen (yes, as in "Bohemian Rhapsody") in their quest to train professional dancers. Their spring concert (May 6–7) features the Portland premiere of Trey McIntyre's Queen-fueled ballet, "Mercury Half-Life," alongside Balanchine and a world premiere from Portland's own Gregg Bielemeier.