Baryshnikov Arts And Orchestra Of St. Luke's Celebrate Anniversaries With Immersive Concert Experience
On May 8, Baryshnikov Arts and OSL come together to co-produce an evening-length immersive performance.
By: Stephi Wild Apr. 15, 2025
Baryshnikov Arts will continue the celebration of its milestone 20th anniversary this spring in collaboration with Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL), the organization that shares its building and which is marking its 50-year anniversary.
On May 8, Baryshnikov Arts and OSL come together to co-produce an evening-length immersive performance featuring the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, with repertoire to include Vivaldi’s iconic The Four Seasons, interspersed with recorded sounds of nature; Angélica Negrón’s Marejada; and Anna Clyne’s Woman Holding a Balance. Original lighting design created for this special collaboration is by Jennifer Tipton, a MacArthur “genius” fellow and renowned as a designer for dance, opera, and theater. Baryshnikov Arts has been a pioneer in theatrical presentations of classical music concerts, and Jennifer Tipton was not only its first artistic collaborator but has been one of the most frequent in the two decades since. Lighting design, as abstract as instrumental music, is its natural creative partner. As Tipton said in The New York Times about her evening-length light installation “Our Days and Night,” presented at Baryshnikov Arts in 2022: “Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the audience is not aware of the lighting, but 100 percent is affected by it.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Founder and Artistic Director of Baryshnikov Arts; Sonja Kostich, President and Executive Director of Baryshnikov Arts; and James Roe, President and Executive Director of Orchestra of St. Luke’s, issued the following joint statement about the performance:
“For 14 years, Baryshnikov Arts and the Orchestra of St. Luke's have shared 450 West 37th Street in Manhattan. This year, both companies will celebrate major anniversaries: Baryshnikov Arts' 20th and Orchestra of St. Luke’s 50th. We’re delighted to make art together on May 8 at our joint address to mark the moment with our community!”
Angélica Negrón’s Marejada, composed for string quartet, electronics and percussion played by the quartet, arises from and disappears back into an ambient soundscape of waves and birds recorded on the beaches of Puerto Rico. It was originally commissioned by Kronos Quartet with the intention that the players could rehearse and perform the piece from different locations during the pandemic lockdown. At the end of the piece, the players put down their instruments and pick up gamelan-style gongs and bowls. This meditative texture blends into the natural sounds, and the piece ends quietly.
Anna Clyne, the inaugural composer-mentor for OSL’s DeGaetano Composition Institute, has had her work Woman Holding a Balance featured by OSL in two contexts in recent seasons. Originally composed for the short film of the same name by sculptor Jyll Bradley, the work–which evokes light, space, and geometry through the medium of the string quartet–was first heard when the film itself debuted in a streaming concert in OSL’s 2021 “Sounds and Stories” series. It was also performed as a standalone work in a Visionary Sounds Series concert in The DiMenna Center’s Cary Hall the following year. Bradley’s film revolves around chains of creative influence, documenting a performance by British artist David Ward that was created inside Bradley’s sculpture Dutch/Light. Ward’s performance was in turn inspired by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, and Clyne’s music was inspired by Ward’s performance art. According to Clyne, “The piece reflects the meditative nature of the film and the cyclical passing of light through the sculpture over the course of a day. Shifting harmonic colors undulate in strange loops until they reach a melodic section, before returning to the stillness of the opening music.”
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