New York Philharmonic CONTACT! Program Features World & U.S. Premieres,
Pacifica Quartet Continues Its Shostakovich Project,Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert Performs Beethoven, Berio, and Gideon Klein,Jazz Pianist Bill Charlap and Song Stylist Sandy Stewart – Mother & Son – Perform, and Christmas Concerts Feature Chanticleer, Anonymous 4, Inspirational Voices of the Abyssinian, Lionheart, and Burning River Brass
For tickets, call the Concerts & Lectures Department at 212-570-3949, or visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets, where updated schedules and programs are available. Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open
Tuesday-Saturday 10-5:00 and Sunday noon-5:00. Student and group discount tickets are available for some events; call 212-570-3949. Tickets include admission to the Museum on day of performance.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010, at 6:30 & 8:30 p.m. - "A Chanticleer Christmas"
The renowned vocal ensemble's annual holiday program celebrates the mystery and wonder of Christmas with traditional carols, medieval and Renaissance sacred works, and new holiday music. (This program also takes place Tuesday, November 30, at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m.)
Called "the world's reigning male chorus" by the New Yorker magazine, and named 2008 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, Chanticleer performed more than 100 concerts in 2009-2010, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble's 32nd season, including appearances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Vienna's Musikverein, and Prague's Rudolfinum. In 2009 Chanticleer made debut appearances in Ireland and the People's Republic of China and returned to the latter for Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The ensemble has begun a series of live concert downloads from its Web site,www.chanticleerrecords.com.
Chanticleer is known for its vivid interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz, and from gospel to venturesome new music. With its blend of 12 male voices, ranging from countertenor to bass, the ensemble has earned international renown as "an orchestra of voices." Chanticleer was founded in 1978 by tenor Louis Botto, who sang with the group until 1989 and served as Artistic Director until his death in 1997. Artistic Advisor Joseph Jennings joined the ensemble as a countertenor in 1983, and shortly thereafter assumed the title of Music Director, which he held until 2008. A prolific composer and arranger, Mr. Jennings has provided the group with some of its most popular repertoire, most notably spirituals, gospel music, and jazz standards. In 2008, tenor Matthew Oltman was named Music Director.
Collaborations between Chanticleer and the Metropolitan Museum include a PBS Great Performances program, "Christmas with Chanticleer," taped in the Metropolitan Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. And Chanticleer's 2002 recording of Sir John Tavener's Lamentations and Praises, a work co-commissioned by the Museum, won a Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance.
Medieval Sculpture Hall
Tickets: $70
Saturday, December 4, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. – Pacifica Quartet
In 2009-2010, the Pacifica Quartet, called "one of the fastest rising ensembles today" by The New York Times, became the Metropolitan Museum's second quartet-in-residence, succeeding the Guarneri String Quartet. After a first season of programs of diverse repertoire, the ensemble (Simin Ganatra, and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello) is devoting its second season to the complete string quartets of Shostakovich in four programs that progress from early to late works.
This second program features the String Quartets No. 4 in D Major, Op. 83; No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 92; No. 6 in G Major, Op. 101; No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110.
Wendy Lesser, author of the book Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets, to be published by Yale University Press in March 2011, will host pre-concert conversations before each of the concerts. From 6:15 to 6:45 p.m., Ms. Lesser will talk with a member of the Pacifica Quartet about the composer and the string quartets, and the quartet's experiences performing them.
The ensuing programs take place January 22 and February 19.
Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often daring repertory choices, the Pacifica Quartet has carved out a compelling and critically lauded musical path. In addition to the Musical America and Grammy wins, the Pacifica Quartet has swept top awards in the U.S. and abroad, including the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, making the Pacifica only the second chamber music ensemble ever to be selected. Formed in 1994, the ensemble quickly won top prizes in leading international competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award.
Having given highly acclaimed performances of the complete Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Carter string quartets in recent seasons, the quartet will present the monumental Shostakovich cycle in Chicago and New York during the 2010-2011 season. In the summer of 2011, the quartet will present the complete Beethoven cycle at Tokyo's famous Suntory Hall, in an unprecedented presentation of five concerts in three days. And in 2011-2012, the quartet will take the Shostakovich cycle to London's Wigmore Hall.
The members of the Pacifica Quartet live in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where they were appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2004 and serve as Faculty Quartet in Residence. They are also resident performing artists at the University of Chicago and the Longy School in Boston. Reflecting its dedication to musicians and music lovers of the next generation, the Pacifica Quartet was instrumental in creating the Music Integration Project, an innovative program that provides musical performances and teacher training to inner-city elementary schools. Originating on the West Coast, where it played its earliest concerts together, the quartet takes its name from the Pacific Ocean. Throughout their journey as a string quartet, its members continually strive to be Distinct as the billows/yet one as the sea (James Montgomery). www.pacificaquartet.com
Tickets: $45 (Series: $160)
Saturday, December 11, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. - Bill Charlap & Sandy Stewart - "Love Is Here
to Stay: Music from the Great American Songbook"
The duo of acclaimed jazz pianist Bill Charlap and veteran jazz/pop singer Sandy Stewart – who is Bill Charlap's mother – perform "Love Is Here to Stay," a program featuring songs by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, and Irving Berlin. The duo recorded a disc of the same name that was released by Blue Note Records in 2005.
Sandy Stewart is a popular song singer who performed with Benny Goodman, co-starred on TV's Perry Como Show, and scored a Grammy nomination for her hit single "My Coloring Book" by the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
Bill Charlap received the Jazz Pianist of the Year award in 2003 from the Jazz Journalists Association and was named outstanding jazz soloist by Manhattan's Night Life Awards in 2003 and 2004. In 2004, he and his mother received the Bistro Award for top jazz duo for their engagement at the Algonquin in New York. In 2004, Mr. Charlap and his trio opened the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at the organization's new performance center in the Time-Warner Building. He was also enlisted by J@LC to put together a series of concerts honoring great songwriters, including Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In July 2005, Charlap succeeded Dick Hyman as Artistic Director of Jazz In July at the 92nd Street Y's Tisch Center for the Arts. Bill's two most recent releases for Blue Note Records are Bill Charlap Plays George Gershwin – The American Soul and a disc of ballads in duo with his mother, Sandy Stewart, titled Love Is Here To Stay.
Mr. Charlap was fully thrust into the jazz world in the late 1980s when he joined baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan's quintet and in 1994 was enlisted by alto saxophonist Phil Woods for his band. In 1996, he began playing as a trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington. The group has recorded four CDs: 1997's All Through the Night on Criss Cross Records and three Blue Note Records albums: 2000's: Written in the Stars (a collection of Great American Songbook standards), 2002's Stardust (celebrating the songs of Hoagy Carmichael) and 2004's Somewhere: The Songs of Leonard Bernstein, for which he received a Grammy nomination.
Tickets: $45
Tuesday, December 14, 2010, at 6:30 & 8:30 p.m. - Anonymous 4 –
"Noel: Four Centuries of Christmas"
The acclaimed early music vocal quartet – Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, and Jacqueline Horner Kwiatek – performs a musical holiday feast featuring favorite chants, hymns, carols, and motets. The group has just released a recording of Christmas music, The Cherry Tree – Songs, Carols, and Ballads for Christmas, on the harmonia mundi label.
These concerts take place in the Medieval Sculpture Hall in front of the Metropolitan Museum's Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche. The exhibit of the crèche is made possible by gifts to The Christmas Tree Fund and the Loretta Hines Howard Fund.
Renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing, the four women of Anonymous 4 combine musical, literary, and historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition as they create ingeniously designed programs, interweaving music with poetry and narrative.
In addition to their unmatched medieval repertoire, Anonymous 4 has often reached out into the realm of contemporary music, and has premiered works by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Steve Reich, and Richard Einhorn. The group has most recently expanded their repertoire to include traditional music of the British Isles and America. www.anonymous4.com
Anonymous 4 has performed in major venues and festivals throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East. The ensemble has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, CBS Sunday Morning, A&E's Breakfast With the Arts,
and NPR's Weekend Edition. Anonymous 4's award-winning recordings have attained unprecedented popularity, rising to the top of Billboard's classical chart, and selling almost 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Medieval Sculpture Hall
Tickets: $60
Thursday, December 16, 2010, at 6:30 & 8:30 p.m. - Inspirational Voices of the Abyssinian
Baptist Church – Christmas Concert
This celebrated group from the famous Harlem church performs a holiday program of gospel music, spirituals, and Christmas carols.
These concerts take place in the Medieval Sculpture Hall in front of the Metropolitan Museum's Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche. The exhibit of the crèche is made possible by gifts to The Christmas Tree Fund and the Loretta Hines Howard Fund.
Medieval Sculpture Hall
Tickets: $60
Friday, December 17, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. – CONTACT! The New York Philharmonic's
New Music Series
Alan Gilbert, Conductor,
John Schaefer, Host
The New York Philharmonic's popular new music series, CONTACT!, returns after its debut year with a second season of two concerts featuring Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert conducting members of the orchestra. This second of the two programs features the U.S. premiere of Julian Anderson's Comedy of Change, and the world premieres of two New York Philharmonic commissions: James Matheson's True South and Jay Alan Yim's neverthesamerivertwice. WNYC's John Schaefer is the concert host.
Tickets: $20
Saturday, December 18, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. - Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert
"It's hard – very hard – to find better chamber-music playing than at the cellist Edward Arron's series at the Metropolitan Museum, which always mixes new and unusual works in unexpected ways," stated The New Yorker in December 2009 about the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert. Arron, the ensemble's artistic coordinator, has assembled three programs for 2010-2011, the acclaimed group's eighth season, featuring their usual lively mix of classic and contemporary repertoire; a work by Luciano Berio will be performed on each program.
This first program of the season features Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Edward Arron, cello; and Jeewon Park, piano, performing Beethoven's 14 Variations in E-flat Major for Piano Trio, Op. 44; Berio's Les mots sont allés..."Recitativo" for solo cello (1978); Gideon Klein's String Trio (1944); and Dvorák's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87.
Gideon Klein composed his String Trio while imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt. Nine days after he completed the work he was sent to Auschwitz; he died three months later. Rather than reflect the circumstances of its composition, the work recalls the folk music of Klein's Moravian roots.
The ensuing concerts by Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert are January 15 and April 16.
The 2010-2011 season marks Edward Arron's eighth season as the artistic coordinator of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Arron succeeded Charles Wadsworth as the artistic director, host, and resident performer of the Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut, as well as concert series in Beaufort and Columbia, South Carolina. He is also the artistic director of the Caramoor Virtuosi and of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Summit County, Colorado.
Tickets: $40 (Series: $105)
Tuesday, December 21, 2010, at 6:30 & 8:30 p.m. - Lionheart - "Tydings Trew: Feasts of
Christmas in Medieval England"
The acclaimed early music a cappella ensemble returns with its holiday program of carols, chants, and motets for the Christmas season as it was celebrated in the cloisters, palaces, and streets of England in the 15th and 16th centuries.
These concerts take place in the Medieval Sculpture Hall in front of the Metropolitan Museum's Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche. The exhibit of the crèche is made possible by gifts to The Christmas Tree Fund and the Loretta Hines Howard Fund.
Lionheart is one of America's leading ensembles in vocal chamber music. Acclaimed for its "smoothly blended and impeccably balanced sound" (Allan Kozinn, The New York Times), Lionheart (Jeffrey Johnson, Lawrence Lipnik, John Olund, Richard Porterfield, Kurt-Owen Richards, and Michael Ryan-Wenger) is best known for its interpretation of medieval and Renaissance a cappella music, with Gregorian chant as the keystone of its repertoire. The ensemble also collaborates with instrumental ensembles, dance companies, and contemporary composers. For its most recent recording on Koch International Classics, El Siglo de Oro, Lionheart was hailed by Early Music America for their "rich, true tones and flawlessly blended harmonies…their superb articulation and impeccable sense of rhythm." The
ensemble's Koch International Classics CDs, the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries and the disc Tydings Trew also garnered much critical praise. Lionheart also released two CDs on the Nimbus label: MyFayre Ladye: Tudor Songs and Chant (1997) and Paris 1200: Chant and Polyphony from 12th Century France (1998). www.chantboy.com/lionheart
Medieval Sculpture Hall
Tickets: $60
Thursday, December 23, 2010, at 3:00 p.m. - Burning River Brass –
"Family Christmas Concert"
This brass ensemble performs a "Family Christmas Concert" that ranges from time-honored carols to Big Band Nutcracker.
Burning River Brass made its debut in September of 1996 in Tremont, Ohio, under the auspices of Arts Renaissance Tremont, and by 1998 was touring nationally. In 1999 the ensemble was offered a recording contract by Dorian Recordings and shortly thereafter recorded its first CD, Of Knights and Castles. The disc was followed by the release of Russian Carnival in 2000 and the group's latest CD, Romanza Espana—Spanish Masterworks for Brass, released in the fall of 2004. In 2005, Burning River Brass recorded a Christmas CD titled Christmas around the World. All of the discs have been praised for their energy, sound, and style. Burning River Brass has been heard on NPR's Performance Today and Sunday Baroque as well as radio stations throughout the U.S. and abroad. www.burningriverbrass.com
(Note: This concert takes place in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.)
Tickets: $30
Also in December 2010 – The following music lecture:
Wednesday, December 8, 2010, at 2:30 p.m.: "Puccini's La Fanciulla del West"
with Fred Plotkin
Giacomo Puccini created several operas in settings exotic to Italian audiences, but he also wrote one opera for American audiences—and set it in California, a place he had never been. December 10, 2010, is the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of La Fanciulla del West at the Metropolitan Opera. This lecture will explore the origins of the opera and its impact. Fred Plotkin is the author of Opera 101, Classical Music 101, and seven books about Italy.
Tickets: $23
October 26, 2010
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