Lincoln Center Announces White Light Festival 10/28-11/18

Jane Moss, Vice President for Programming at Lincoln Center, today announced the launch of the first White Light Festival, a new fall festival at Lincoln Center, which this year takes place from October 28 through November 18, 2010. Ms. Moss, who directs the festival, said, "The White Light Festival focuses on music's unique emotional capacity to move us beyond ourselves and illuminate our larger interior universe. In its debut season, the Festival will explore the overtly spiritual manifestations of music's transcendent power as revealed in different cultural traditions."
The festival will present ten U.S. and New York premieres and debuts by artists and companies from 15 countries, including Belgium, China, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, India, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.A.

The festival's kick-off will be a free event on October 28 (details to follow at a later date) in the new David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. The opening week is highlighted by a performance of Brahms' stirring Ein deutsches Requiem featuring the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Westminster Choir, and soloists Christiane Karg and Matthias Goerne led by Daniel Harding. Also highlighting week one, Sutra a modern dance work by acclaimed Belgian/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, will receive its U.S. premiere. Inspired by ancient Chinese martial arts and performed by 17 monks from the original Shaolin Temple complex in Henan Province, China. Sutra will have three performances November 2-4.

Another festival highlight is Croatian musicologist and vocalist Katarina Livljani?'s adaptation of 16th-century Croatian poet Marko Maruli?'s poem of the Biblical tale of Judith, set to a reconstruction of Dalmatian music of the era performed by Ensemble Dialogos on period instruments. Judith will receive its New York premiere November 3, 5 and 6. White Light closes (November 17-18) with the U.S. premiere of Roysten Abel's extraordinary music-theater work The Manganiyar Seduction, performed by Muslim musicians from North India in a dazzling multi-tiered set that juxtaposes the deeply spiritual with a modern, western mecca of sensuality.
Also highlighting the festival is the re-inauguration of the newly-restored organ in Alice Tully Hall by Paul Jacobs, one of today's foremost organists and chairman of the organ department at The Juilliard School since 2004. Jacobs will perform J.S. Bach's monumental Clavier-Übung III, which Bach wrote "for the recreation of the spirit and for connoisseurs of such work." Considered Bach's greatest organ work, the performance will include chorales sung a cappella by The Clarion Choir led by Steven Fox.

Three late night concerts, Late-Night Elegies, will be performed in the intimate, candle-lit setting of the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse: two are recitals by renowned Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov and a third is an a cappella program by the Latvian National Choir, led by Tõnu Kaljuste, in its U.S. debut.

Across the three weeks of the White Light Festival are works spanning centuries and continents: from compositions of western Renaissance, Classical, Romantic and 20th-century music by Palestrina, Tallis, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Schubert, Bruckner and John Cage to recent works by composers including Lera Auerbach, Giya Kancheli, Jan Garbarek, Szymon Brzóska, Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov, Veljo Tormis and Arvo Pärt (whose work is featured in several programs throughout the festival), to traditional Indian music.

Noted ensembles and artists who will participate in the Festival are: Philippe Herreweghe, leading the Collegium Vocale Gent Choir with Accademia Chigiana Siena and I Solisti del Vento (the latter two making their New York debuts), The Hilliard Ensemble with guest artist Jan Garbarek, saxophone, Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica, The Tallis Scholars with their founder/director Peter Phillips, and Latvian National Choir led by Tõnu Kaljuste with the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

More about the White Light Festival:

In further describing the scope and intention of the White Light Festival, Jane Moss said, "It is our hope and ambition that the festival offers musical experiences that give audiences a sense of shared emotional connection and wholeness in an increasingly fragmented and frenetic world. Throughout history music has been the language of the universal and transcendent within all of us."
AdditionAl White Light Festival Programming

Details about additionAl White Light programs and performances-including the free, opening event on October 28-will be announced at a later date.
Surrounding the music and dance performances are numerous pre- and post-concert lectures and discussions, featuring noted musical scholars and many of the Festival's participating artists. Details about these events will also follow at a future date.
Program descriptions follow and a chronological listing of events to date (including ticket prices) appears on pages 7-10 of this release.

Tickets

Tickets for the White Light Festival are available May 13 for Lincoln Center members and subscribers online at WhiteLightFestival.org, by calling CenterCharge, 212-721-6500 or at the Avery Fisher or Alice Tully Hall box offices, Broadway and 65th Street. Tickets are on sale to the general public starting May 19.

October 31, Avery Fisher Hall: Young, British conductor Daniel Harding leads The Combined forces of the esteemed Dresden Staatskapelle and the Westminster Choir in Brahms's choral masterpiece, Ein deutsches Requiem. The soloists are German soprano Christiane Karg and German baritone Matthias Goerne. The composer began the score in 1856, partly as a response to the death of his friend Robert Schumann, and completed it some ten years later, after his mother's death. "Blessed are they that mourn; For they shall be comforted," is how Brahms' choral masterpiece begins. The great Requiems of Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré are Latin masses praying for the eternal rest of the deceased. But Brahms chose to set Biblical texts focusing on the survivors who mourn, in German, the language of the everyday, and in doing so created one of the most profoundly universal music statements of the 19th century.

November 2, Alice Tully Hall: Anton Bruckner, most famous for his symphonies, was a devoutly religious man who struggled with deep insecurities, and composed much sacred music. Philippe Herreweghe's Collegium Vocale Gent Choir will be joined by the Accademia Chigiana Siena choir and I Solisti del Vento wind ensemble (both making their New York debuts) for a rare U.S. performance of Bruckner's early Mass in E minor in a program which also includes Brahms' great Warum ist das Licht gegeben ("Wherefore is light given") and Schubert's elegiac Andante from the String Quartet in D minor ("Death and the Maiden"), in a striking arrangement for winds.

November 2, 3 and 4, Rose Theater: The U.S. premiere of Belgian/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's dance work Sutra, performed by 17 monks from the original Shaolin Temple near Dengfeng City in China's Henan Province. The choreographer spent several months gathering ideas for Sutra at the Shaolin Temple, which was established in 495 A.D. by monks from India. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's resultant piece combines the graceful, gravity-defying athleticism of the monks with his signature blend of modern ballet, African dance, and hip-hop. British artist Antony Gormley (whose installation, Event Horizon, can be currently seen atop buildings surrounding Madison Square Park) created the striking set, and Polish composer Szymon Brzóska wrote the original score (performed live) for percussion, piano, and strings.

November 3, 5 and 6, Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse: Katarina Livljani? performs the New York premiere of her musical reconstruction of Dalmatian poet Marko Maruli?'s Judita, based on the Biblical story of a widow in the Jewish city of Bethulia who liberated her people by beheading their enemy, Holofernes. Scholar/musicologist Livljani? adapted the 16th-century poet's verses, which were written in the vernacular Croatian in the ancient Glagolitic alphabet (most likely for a female audience not familiar with Latin), to hauntingly simple melodies of 16th-century Croatia (from Gregorian, Beneventan, and Glagolitic sources). She is accompanied by Albrecht Maurer on fiddle and lirica (a Croatian traditional string instrument tuned in an archaic manner) and Norbert Rodenkirchen on period flutes.

November 7, Alice Tully Hall: "I could compare my music to white light which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener." -Arvo Pärt. The music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, in its almost mystical beauty, resonates deeply within. The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips, among the most celebrated choirs in the world, bring Pärt's unearthly hymns to Alice Tully Hall, in a performance which also includes Allegri's soaring Miserere and works by Palestrina, Byrd, Tallis, and Praetorius.

November 11, Alice Tully Hall: The incomparable Gidon Kremer and his adventurous ensemble Kremerata Baltica offer a program which includes Sogno di Stabat Mater (after Pergolesi) for violin, viola, vibraphone and string orchestra, commissioned by Kremer from Russian composer Lera Auerbach (New York premiere); Georgian composer's Giya Kancheli's Silent Prayer for violin and cello, written in 2007 in honor of Mstislav Rostropovich's 80th birthday and Gidon Kremer's 60th birthday (New York premiere) and an ensemble arrangement by Kremerata Baltica of Beethoven's monumental Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, which the great music scholar Joseph de Marliave called "the direct expression of Beethoven's most intimate spirit, the channel of inspiration flowing from another sphere." After hearing it, Schubert is said to have reacted, "after this, what is there for us to write?"

November 11 and November 13, Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse: Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov, who gave a stunning performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor in a March 2009 Great Performers concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, returns for two 10:30 p.m. Late-Night Elegies recitals by composers who have chosen the piano for their most personal expressions. The Messenger (November 11) encompasses music from 18th-century Germany to modern day Latvia, Estonia, and the Ukraine with works by C.P.E. Bach, Cage, Liszt, Chopin, Latvian Georgs Pelecis, Russian Galina Ustvolskaya, Estonian Arvo Pärt, and Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov. For Impromptus on November 13, Lubimov will perform all eight of Franz Schubert's intimate masterpieces.

November 12, Church of St. Ignatius Loyola: Norwegian Jazz saxophonist/composer Jan Garbarek and the celebrated early-music vocal ensemble The Hilliard Ensemble have collaborated since 1993 on recordings, the third of which, Officium Novum, will be released this fall and forms the basis of this concert. A central focus of their concert will be music of Armenia based on the adaptations of Komitas Vardapet-pieces which draw upon both medieval sacred music and the bardic tradition of the Caucasus. The U.S. premiere program will also draw from among the following works on the CD: Arvo Pärt's "Most Holy Mother of God" in an a cappella reading; Byzantine chant; two pieces by Jan Garbarek, including a new version of "We are the stars"; the Spanish "Tres morillas"; and a new account of Perotin's "Alleluia, Nativitas."

November 12, Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse: In the third of the Late-Night Elegies concerts at 10:30 p.m. in the Kaplan Penthouse, the Latvian National Choir, in its U.S. debut led by eminent Estonian conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, performs an a cappella program consisting of Frank Martin's Mass for double chorus, Arvo Pärt's Dopo la vittoria and Estonian Veljo Tormis' 1972 Curse upon Iron which invokes Shamanistic traditions to construct an allegory about the evils of war. This piece (along with many others of the composer) was banned by the Soviet government. Tormis is highly-regarded as one of the greatest living composers of choral music, and is one of Estonia's most celebrated composers.

November 13, Alice Tully Hall: The music of Bach transcends time, resonating as deeply now as it did three hundred years ago; Arvo Pärt's music is new, but feels as if is has always existed. The Latvian National Choir, part of the great choral tradition of the Balkan states, presents the music of both composers in this timeless program, which includes Arvo Pärt's achingly beautiful Stabat Mater in its U.S. premiere, Bach's motets Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225, and Komm, Jesu, Komm!, BWV 229, and the U.S. premiere of Pärt's 2009 Adam's Lament. Acclaimed Estonian conductor Tõnu Kaljuste leads the Latvian National Choir and New York's own Orchestra of St. Luke's in this performance.

November 16, Alice Tully Hall: Chairman of The Juilliard School's organ department Paul Jacobs will re-inaugurate the celebrated Alice Tully Hall organ, with a complete performance of J.S. Bach's Clavier-Übung III. The portions of Bach's keyboard piece based on chorales will also be performed a cappella by The Clarion Choir led by Steven Fox.

November 17 and 18, Rose Theater: Closing the White Light Festival is the U.S. premiere of The Manganiyar Seduction by young Indian director Roysten Abel. In this stunning work Abel creates a link between the sacred and the sensual. Forty-three musicians, led by Daevo Khan, perform in a mesmerizing set (that the director compares to a "magic box") that was inspired by both the women's quarters of Hawa Mahal, a royal palace in Jaipur, and the red light district of Amsterdam. The Manganiyars, a caste of Muslim musicians from Northern India who originally performed for The Kings Of Rajasthan, have uniquely incorporated the worship of Hindu deities into their Muslim faith. They perform a combination of folk and classical Indian music in a repertoire which ranges from ballads about the kings and Sufi songs by various mystics, to songs for occasions such as births and marriages. These performances mark the introduction of Abel's distinct artistic voice in America.

Support for Great Performers is provided by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, The Florence Gould Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc., The Shubert Foundation, The Winston Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Great Performers Circle, Chairman's Council, and Friends of Lincoln Center.

The White Light Festival is a presentation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. (LCPA), which serves three primary roles: presenter of superb artistic programming, national leader in arts and education, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. As a presenter of more than 400 events annually, LCPA's programs include American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Live From Lincoln Center. In addition, LCPA is leading a series of major capital projects on behalf of the resident organizations across the campus.

Lincoln Center is committed to providing and improving accessibility for people with disabilities. For information, call the Department of Programs and Services for People with Disabilities at (212) 875-5375.
Programs, artists and prices are subject to change.