The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College Announces 2022-2023 Season Featuring David Sedaris, Rob Mathes & More

The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College will welcome audiences back into their theatres to experience live, world-class performing arts starting in October of 2022. True to their legacy of sharing new work alongside established virtuosity, the 2022-2023 Re-Opening Season will activate old artistic partnerships and build new friendships.

The season will begin on Saturday, October 8 with the wit, humor and insight of David Sedaris, and will run through the spring of 2023. Highlights include a series of concerts featuring the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center supported by an ArtsWestchester ReStart the Arts Grant, performances by Paul Taylor Dance Company, Angélique Kidjo, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, plus emerging artists, world-class musicians and vocalists, and an arts-in-education series that will include both virtual and live performances.

All performances will take place at The PAC, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577. Tickets are currently available online by visiting https://www.artscenter.org/events/

Interim General Manager of The Performing Arts Center, Ian Driver states, "We embark on the 2022-2023 season with a renewed commitment to engage audiences through live performance plus wrap-around activities that explore the creative process and spark collaborative thought, allowing us to build deeper relationships with both the artists and each other. In other words, we will enliven our lobby and campus spaces with talkbacks, masterclasses, open rehearsals, and educational residencies. We can't wait for you - supporters, students, friends, and artists - to join us, sharing our stages, lobbies, and backstage spaces to make a visit to The PAC as inspiring and invigorating as possible."

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An Evening with David Sedaris

Saturday, October 8, 8pm
$35 / $60 / $75
David Sedaris is one of America's pre-eminent humor writers, beloved for his personal essays and short stories. In his latest essay collection, "Happy-Go-Lucky," Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about recent upheavals, personal and public. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris. Join us as he brings his signature acerbic humor, social commentary, and outlandish stories to the Concert Hall stage. As always, the reading will be followed by a book signing.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center American Visitors*

Saturday, October 29, 5pm
$30 / $65
The United States has been greatly enriched from the influences of its many distinguished visitors. In a program celebrating America's musical diversity, we will enjoy the sublime music of Dvořák twice, once through his "American" voice in the Sonatina, composed in Spillville, Iowa, and his quintessentially Czech mode with his iconic Piano Quintet. In between, the stage is shared by the Belgians and English, as we hear the touching "Child's Dream" by Eugène Ysaÿe, and the stunning Piano Quintet by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Conversations with Friends*

Saturday, November 19, 5pm
$30 / $65
Born one year and 500 miles apart, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn met in Leipzig in 1835. It would be the beginning of a deep artistic and personal relationship, which extended to include Schumann's wife, Clara, a virtuosic pianist and composer herself. Mendelssohn produced his Piano Trio in D minor, Op 49 in 1839, which Schumann declared an immediate masterpiece, and went as far as to pay homage to it in his own Piano Trio in the same key 8 years later, written for Clara as a birthday present in 1847. Mendelssohn would pass away a few months after that composition, from a series of strokes, leaving the Schumanns devastated. This program combines the compositions of these amazing friends, performed by musicians conversing musically on stage to bring these works to life.

The Rob Mathes Holiday Concert

Friday December 16 & Saturday December 17
8pm both nights
$40 / $65 / $85

It just wouldn't feel like the holidays without our good friend and Greenwich, Connecticut, native Rob Mathes back on stage. Back after a three-year hiatus, this spectacular celebration will feature Mathes, his all-star band, and chorus of saints and friends. Be prepared for a high-energy evening of rock, jazz and blues - original tunes and new spins on your favorite holiday classics - that will put you in the spirit of the season.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Change the Frame

Renaud Capuçon, violin
Sunday, January 22, 3pm
$80 / $45
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra refreshes the memorable images of Pictures at an Exhibition with a new arrangement by Jannina Norpoth that uses incisive ensemble virtuosity to magnify the overlooked details in Mussorgsky's original piano score. A new piece by rising star Hanna Benn takes its own visual flight of fancy, responding to works by women of color in the MoMA collection. Rendering Prokofiev's unflinching violin sonata as a raw and vulnerable dialogue with strings and percussion, Renaud Capuçon plays "with a disarming sureness of touch, his silvery tonal purity combining with a tantalizing Gallic restraint." (The Strad)

Complexions Contemporary Ballet

Saturday, February 4, 8pm
$30 / $45 / $70
Led by dance icons Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has awakened audiences, reinventing dance and contemporary ballet through a groundbreaking mix of methods, styles and cultures. The program will include WOKE (2019), a bold and galvanizing ballet that examines our humanity in the context of current divisiveness, and Love Rocks (2020), set to the music of the iconic Lenny Kravitz.

The Queen's Cartoonists

Saturday, February 11, 7pm
$25 / $35 / $45
Currently hailing from Queens, New York, The Queen's Cartoonists bring iconic cartoons to life. Pulling from over 100 years of animation, their musical performances are perfectly synchronized to the films projected on stage. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a visual and aural treat," the band matches the energy of the animations, leading the audience through a world of virtuosic musicianship, multi-instrumental mayhem, and madcap comedy.

Paul Taylor Dance Company

Saturday, February 25, 8pm
$40 / $65 / $80
"One of the most exciting, innovative, and delightful dance companies in the entire world, " says the The New York Times. Dancemaker Paul Taylor (1930-2018) first presented his choreography with five other dancers in Manhattan on May 30, 1954. That modest performance marked the beginning of a profound, uninterrupted creative output that shaped the future of American modern dance and continues to this day.

Gibney Company

Saturday, March 11, 8pm
$30 / $45 / $70
Led by Gibney Founder, Artistic Director, and CEO Gina Gibney and Gibney Company Director Gilbert T Small II, Gibney Company is a creation-based repertory company that commissions work from internationally renowned and emerging choreographers committed to exploring connections between the rigorous physicality of contemporary dance and responsive, humanistic storytelling. Gibney Company has emerged in the touring world with an extraordinary company of dancers and a stunning roster of world-famous choreographers making new works for the company.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Delight & Drama*

Saturday, March 18, 5pm
$30 / $65
Quintessential Russian and Viennese styles abound in this pairing of composers deeply embedded in their singular cultures. The Slavic melancholy of Arensky gives way to the exuberant flair of Brahms as we juxtapose works in both popular and formal idioms: Arensky's miniatures for children and Brahms's Hungarian Dances show the composers at their crowd-pleasing best, while their two piano trios reveal the depth and mastery that earned each legendary status and lasting appeal. CMS co-artistic director Wu Han will take the stage as part of this delightful program.

Angélique Kidjo

Saturday, April 15, 8pm
$35 / $65 / $90
Four-time Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo is one of the greatest artists in international music today, a creative force with thirteen albums to her name. Her most recent album, Mother Nature, took home the Grammy for Best Global Music Album this past April. Met with career-best raves, it tackles major issues like the climate crisis and the struggle for freedom, but in Kidjo's hands, these themes are translated through music that is radiantly joyful. The album also reinforces her status as a true icon of African music.

*The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center series at The PAC is made possible with funds from ReStart the Arts, a regrant program of ArtsWestchester with support from the Office of the Governor, the New York State Legislature and the New York State Council on the Arts.

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TICKETS: https://www.artscenter.org/events/

ADDRESS: 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577

WEBSITE: www.ArtsCenter.org

ABOUT THE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PURCHASE COLLEGE:

THE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PURCHASE COLLEGE (The PAC), a four-theatre complex located on the campus of Purchase College, SUNY, is the major professional, non-profit arts presenter in the Southeastern New York-Southwestern Connecticut region.

The PAC has long been a hub for highly skilled artists, civic and academic leaders, community activists, and volunteers who recognize the power of investing in the performing arts to spark creativity and connection.

Through Education & Engagement programs, The PAC creates opportunities for over 20,000 local K -12 students and multi-generational learners to participate in the artistic process. The PAC has a collaborative relationship with the campus population, hosting performances for the Conservatories of Music, Dance, and Theatre Arts. Purchase College students can take advantage of master classes, on-site training, internships, job opportunities, and ticket discounts. An active facility rental business focuses on providing space and support to high-quality musical recordings and technical rehearsals. The PAC looks forward to a return to presenting live performances by professional world-class touring artists this fall, after an extended hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY, is located 28 miles northeast of New York City at the Connecticut border. The College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY), is an institution of public higher education encompassing the liberal arts and sciences, professional training in the performing and visual arts, continuing education, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and The Performing Arts Center.