Press release

Met Museum Presents – March 2013

Please note that events marked with “***” have just been announced.
* Jazz Saxophone Great Charles Lloyd on His 75th Birthday at The Temple of Dendur
* Seven Words, Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross in a Multimedia Performance
* DJ Spooky’s Of Water and Ice, and “The Art and Science Dating Game”
* Zaha Hadid in Conversation
* Giulio Cesare: “Met Meets “Met” Explores the World of Julius Caesar


Performances

***Saturday, March 9, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
This event will be live streamed on www.metmuseum.org/livestream
Naseer Shamma and Al-Oyoun Ensemble
Naseer Shamma is one of Iraq’s leading cultural icons. He is a leader of the famed Iraqi oud school, a virtuosic approach to the instrument (an Arab lute) that began in the early 20th century, combining Turkish techniques and aesthetics with the melodies and spirit of traditional Iraqi maqam music. Both a composer and performer, Shamma has created an innovative approach to the oud, expanding its technical capabilities and influencing players across the Arab region. In his first performance in the U.S. in more than a decade, Shamma will appear with his Al-Oyoun Ensemble, seven virtuoso musicians from Cairo performing in a contemporary style of Shamma’s own creation, which he calls “Arab chamber music.” “His technical prowess is bewitching… it transforms listening into a mystical experience,” says Cairo’s Al-Ahram Weekly. “All it takes him is a properly tuned oud to lead you far into the depths of metaphysics, then back onto the political plane.” www.naseershamma.com
This event is part of Iraq Now!, two events celebrating contemporary Iraqi culture presented in collaboration with Alwan for the Arts.
Tickets: $25

Friday, March 15, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. at The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing
This event will be live streamed on www.metmuseum.org/livestream
Charles Lloyd New Quartet and Friends at The Temple of Dendur
With special guest Maria Farantouri and friends (Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers, Eric Harland, Sokratis Sinopoulos, Alicia Hall Moran)

Tenor saxophone titan Charles Lloyd has been hailed as one of the most restlessly inventive musicians in jazz history. His current quartet—with Jason Moran, piano; Reuben Rogers, bass; and Eric Harland, drums—was honored as the 2011 “#1 Acoustic Group” by the Jazz Times critics poll. “Follow the career of Charles Lloyd,” said The New York Times, “and you see a map of great jazz across half a century.” www.charleslloyd.com
In celebration of his 75th birthday—on the actual day—Charles Lloyd performs a program that marshals the creativity of his quartet, special guest singer Maria Farantouri, Sokratis Sinopoulos on lyra, and singer Alicia Hall Moran in music that ranges from Byzantine hymns to 21st century jazz.
To coincide with the milestone birthday, ECM Records is releasing two recordings: Hagar’s Song, a new duo recording with Lloyd and Jason Moran (February 26), and Quartets, a five-disc reissue box set of Lloyd’s first five ECM albums (April 2).
Revered in her native Greece, Farantouri was the legendary voice of resistance during the Greek military junta of the late 1960s, giving hope to millions through the banned protest songs of Mikis Theodorakis and earning widespread praise as the “soul of Greece.”
A concert by Lloyd and Farantouri performed at the foot of the Acropolis in 2010 (with Moran, Rogers, Harland, Sinopoulos, and pianist Takis Farazis) was released as an ECM disc, Athens Concert, in 2011—suites of traditional Greek music, songs of Theodorakis and Eleni Karaindrou, and Lloyd originals. Lloyd writes in his liner notes about first hearing Farantouri: “From her first notes I felt such a power and depth of humanity; she is a modern wonder rising up from the ruins of civilization. She is Alethea, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter, Gaia, Phemonoe – Mother of the Universe. The resonance of her voice stirred the memory of my love for Lady Day.”
“For me,” says Farantouri, “it was an aesthetic pleasure to work with Charles, becoming a unique experience on stage, as jazz music blended with the musical tradition of Greece, and transformed it into a wholly new sound.”
Tickets: $50

***New program Friday, March 22, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
This event will be live streamed on www.metmuseum.org/livestream
Seven Words – World Premiere, MMA Commission
A music-video work featuring original live-mixed video installation by Ofri Cnaani

Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross
Performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists – New York Debut
Lavard Skou Larsen, Director
When Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross was first performed during the Good Friday service at the Spanish Cádiz Cathedral in 1786, the audience saw a multimedia performance that included special lighting, spoken words, and live music. Inspired by that original setting, the Met invited artist Ofri Cnaani to create a live video installation to encircle the performers and create a theatrical context for the music. Lavard Skou Larsen’s Salzburg Chamber Soloists will make their New York debut with a program featuring their adaptation of the piece, originally scored for string quartet, for a 15-member string orchestra.
Looking at the moment of crucifixion as a moment of extreme physicality, ecstasy, and final surrender, Cnaani worked with the Metropolitan’s prints and drawings collections as a source material for a nuanced, metaphorical, universal, and non-literal interpretation of Haydn’s work. The interaction between sound, word, and image underscores a dialogue that is both historical and contemporary.
In 1991, the violinist Lavard Skou-Larsen and a handful of colleagues decided to form an ensemble whose aim is performing orchestral chamber music with the freedom of soloists. Their inspiration was the great violinist and conductor Sándor Végh, whose charisma had influenced many members of the group. In its first year of existence, the orchestra toured the U.S. and Canada, and has performed with artists including Mischa Maisky, Michel Dalberto, Rodolfo Bonucci, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Giora Feidman, and Alexander Lonquich. From 1992 to 1995 Boris Belkin was Artistic Director of the ensemble; during his tenure, the orchestra released two CDs of music of Mozart. The orchestra has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro. www.salcsol.com
Ofri Cnaani (b. Israel, 1975) lives in New York and works in time-based media, and large-scale installations. Ofri Cnaani graduated from Hunter College’s MFA studio program in 2004. Recent projects include a large-scale commission to create 10 site-specific video installations relating to the architecture of 10 museums of contemporary art in Italy. http://ofricnaani.com
Tickets: $45

Saturday, March 23, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
This event will be live streamed on www.metmuseum.org/livestream
DJ Spooky – Of Water and Ice: A Concert of Compositions Based on Water and Arctic Rhythms – World Premiere, MMA Commission
Of Water and Ice is a composition commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum for string quartet and video that evolved from DJ Spooky’s large-scale multimedia work Sinfonia Antarctica. Of Water and Ice is a music/video exploration of the composition of ice and water, and our relationship to the vanishing environment of the arctic poles.
Sinfonia Antarctica transforms Miller’s first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape of that continent into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Miller’s field recordings from a portable studio, set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with historic, scientific, and geographical visual material, the work creates a unique and powerful moment around man’s relationship with nature.
There are two related talks following this event: Art and the Environment on March 24, and DJ Spooky and Bill McKibben in Conversation: Climate Change on May 9.
This event is part of The Met Reframed: DJ Spooky in Residence, a Metropolitan Museum artist residency that in the 2012-13 season features Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky.
The Met Reframed is made possible by Marianna Sackler.
Tickets: $30
Bring the Kids! $1 tickets available, see www.metmuseum.org/tickets

***Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Giulio Cesare: Met Meets Met – Appearance by David Daniels
Christopher Lightfoot, Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art
With David McVicar and Robert Jones

In anticipation of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Handel's Giulio Cesare, this second “Met Meets Met” collaboration explores the world of Julius Caesar. Metropolitan Museum curator Christopher Lightfoot discusses Caesar’s sojourn in Egypt and the impact of Egyptian art on Rome, setting the stage for a conversation with celebrated director David McVicar and set designer Robert Jones. The creative duo will talk about audience conceptions of this historical era versus the reality and their approach to this new staging. Countertenor David Daniels, who stars as Caesar in the Met’s new production, will perform an excerpt from the opera.
Tickets: $25

Friday, March 29, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert
For the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert’s 10th anniversary season, the ensemble’s artistic coordinator, cellist Edward Arron, has assembled three programs of the lively mix of repertoire that has elicited critical praise over the last decade. In this second program, Hyunah Yu, soprano; Jeewon Park, piano; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; and Edward Arron, cello, perform Schnittke’s Musica Nostalgica for Cello and Piano (1992); the world premiere of a Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert commission, a work for string trio by Dmitry Yanov-Yanovsky; Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok for Soprano and Piano Trio, Op. 127; and Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16.
These concerts are generously supported by the Brodsky Family Foundation.
In addition to leading the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, cellist Edward Arron is also the artistic director, host, and resident performer of the Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut (succeeding Charles Wadsworth), as well as concert series in Beaufort and Columbia, South Carolina. He is also the artistic director of the Caramoor Virtuosi, the resident chamber ensemble of the Caramoor International Music Festival.
Tickets: $35
Bring the Kids! $1 tickets available, see www.metmuseum.org/tickets

Talks

*** Friday, March 1, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Manet, Courbet, and Baudelaire: Art, the City and the Birth of Modern Life
From La Vie Moderne to La Belle Epoque: Art and Society in Paris from 1853-1914 – the first of two talks (see March 8)
Jerrilynn Dodds, Dean, Sarah Lawrence College
The period between the 1850s and World War I in Paris is known as a time when intellectuals, artists, writers, and performers transformed the city physically, artistically, and socially. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Marx, Marie Curie, Freud, Zola, and Baudelaire were all setting the stage for the modern world with new discoveries, new ideas, and new ways of looking at society and social relations. The resulting art and literature would scandalize, push against convention, humanize, and ultimately help to transform and shape the modern world.
Tickets: $30 (Series: $55)

***Wednesday, March 6, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Leonardo da Vinci: Singular and Plural
The first of two talks exploring the life and process of Leonardo da Vinci (see March 13)

Luke Syson, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Leonardo worked on a surprisingly small number of works—the Mona Lisa among them—refining and altering them over years. This method created a production bottleneck that could only be dealt with through delegating, leaving us with the problem of how we distinguish a fully autograph product from a painting made in the workshop. This lecture by Luke Syson (organizer of the blockbuster exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at London’s National Gallery) explores artistic production, collaboration and delegation, and will track Leonardo’s personal journey from a solitary artist to a collaborator working with pupils, assistants, and peers, and back.
This series is made possible by the Giorgio S. Sacerdote Fund.
Tickets: $25 (Series: $40)

***Friday, March 8, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
From Degas to Lautrec: The City and the Dark Side of Café Society
From La Vie Moderne to La Belle Epoque: Art and Society in Paris from 1853-1914 – the second of two talks (see March 1)

Jerrilynn Dodds, Dean, Sarah Lawrence College
The period between the 1850’s and World War I in Paris is known as time when intellectuals, artists, writers, and performers transformed the city physically, artistically and socially. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Marx, Marie Curie, Freud, Zola, and Baudelaire were all setting the stage for the modern world with new discoveries, new ideas, and new ways of looking at society and social relations. The resulting art and literature would scandalize, push against convention, humanize, and ultimately help to transform and shape the modern world.
Tickets: $30 (Series: $55)

***Wednesday, March 13, at 6:00 p.m. Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Rethinking Leonardo in his Old Age
The second of two talks exploring the life and process of Leonardo da Vinci (see March 6)

Carmen Bambach, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints
The late years of Leonardo da Vinci have often been minimized in comparison to his achievements in Florence and Milan. This may be because it’s sometimes fashionable to consider an artist’s production in old age past its prime or merely a replication of earlier, more successfully received work. In this talk, Carmen Bambach (who organized the Met’s seminal 2003 exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman) examines Leonardo’s later years and the riches of his interior life and his concrete, multi-faceted production as an artist-thinker. What lies at front and center in the work of Leonardo’s old age is the unfinished dimension of his thought and production.
This series is made possible by the Giorgio S. Sacerdote Fund.
Tickets: $25 (Series: $40)

***Thursday, March 14, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Zaha Hadid
In conversation with Sheila Canby, Patti Cadby Birch Curator in Charge of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art, and Joseph Giovannini, architect
One of the foremost Iraqis of her generation—and an internationally celebrated architect—Ms. Hadid speaks about culture, transition and architecture in the evolving global arena.
This event is part of Iraq Now!, two events celebrating contemporary Iraqi culture presented in collaboration with Alwan for the Arts, that also includes a concert by Naseer Shamma and Al-Oyoun Ensemble on Saturday, March 9.
Tickets: $35

***Tuesday, March 19, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde
Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University
Sarah Lewis, faculty, Yale University School of Art, and member, President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee
Introduced by Yaelle Biro, Assistant Curator for African Art

The exhibition African Art, New York and the Avant-Garde highlights the arrival of African Art in New York and how this meeting of forces shaped and was shaped by the dawn of Modernism in the United States. Nell Painter, author of The History of White People, in conversation with Sarah Lewis, examines the legacy of this first interaction of white collectors and taste-makers with African art and African-American artists one hundred years ago—and reveals how this hidden history is an essential backdrop for understanding key cultural, social, and political aspects of race in America yesterday and today.
This event is in conjunction with the exhibition African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde, on view through April 14, 2013.
This exhibition is made possible by the Friends of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Tickets: $25

Sunday, March 24, 2013, at 2:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
Art and the Environment
Join Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, as he shares his experiences from the North and South Poles in a conversation with Museum curators and visual artists about art and the environment as reflected in American culture. Presented in conjunction with the performance of Of Water and Ice on March 23, this program offers an opportunity to learn about the permanent collection through discussions and presentations.
This event is part of The Met Reframed: DJ Spooky in Residence, a Metropolitan Museum artist residency that in the 2012-13 season features Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky.
The Met Reframed is made possible by Marianna Sackler.
Free with Museum admission. Reservations and tickets are not required.

***Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall
The Art and Science Dating Game
How Artists and Scientists Find Each Other... and What Happens Next?

DJ Spooky, Artist in Residence
This event is part of the Met Salon Series, which offers opportunities to engage with Met curators, artists, and guests in an informal setting, over coffee and light refreshments.

The potency of collaborations between artists and scientists is undeniable. But how do these collaborations actually work? How do artists and scientists find each other outside of their labs and studios? How do they turn their mutual interests in environment and climate change into sustained relationships? Join artist, producer, and activist Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky for an informal conversation about partnerships between artists and scientists, and the new work, new research and new thinking that can emerge from innovative trans-disciplinary collaborations. Participants will include pairs of artists and scientists from the PositiveFeedback consortium of Columbia University, New York University, and the City University of New York. Audience members are encouraged to mingle with panelists following the presentation.
This presentation is co-produced by PositiveFeedback, an initiative of The Earth Institute, Columbia University; Center for Creative Research, NYU; and the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, designed specifically to support the research collaborations of artists and scientists focused on climate change.
This event is part of The Met Reframed: DJ Spooky in Residence, a Metropolitan Museum artist residency that in the 2012-13 season features Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky.
The Met Reframed is made possible by Marianna Sackler.
Tickets: $27

* For tickets, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets or call 212-570-3949.
* Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open Tuesday-Saturday 10-4:30 and Sunday noon-4:30.
* Tickets include admission to the Museum on day of performance.
* 30 & Under Rush: $15 tickets for ticket buyers 30 years and younger, with proof of age, the day of the event on select performances (subject to availability). For more information, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets call 212-570-3949, or visit the box office.
* Bring the Kids!: $1 tickets for children (ages 7-16) when accompanied by an adult with a full-price ticket (subject to availability). For more information, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets call 212-570-3949, or visit the box office.


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February 5, 2013

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