Author Adam Gopnik And Tenor William Ferguson Join INFLECTION Series At 92Y

January at 92Y brings three consecutive evenings devoted to the Inflection series, January 22 - 24. Inflection, which spotlights bold collaborations across multiple disciplines, is the creation of Hanna Arie-Gaifman, who celebrates her 20th anniversary this season as Director of 92Y's Tisch Center for the Arts.

The series opened in November with the Geneva Camerata's Dance of the Sun, which set the orchestra in motion as they played works by Lully and Mozart. January's events explore the sometimes porous boundary between speech and song, on a continuum ranging from heightened speech to chanting, Sprechstimme, and full-throated vocalizing.

On Wednesday, January 22 (7:30 pm), baritone Roderick Williams performs a rare Brahms vocal cycle, 15 Romances on L. Tieck's Die schöne Magelone, which includes singing and narration (read here by noted author Adam Gopnik), accompanied by specially-created films by award-winning animator Cristina Garcia Martin. The program also includes Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte.

Thursday, January 23 (8 pm) brings performer/scholar Benjamin Bagby's riveting and widely acclaimed rendition of the epic medieval poem known as Beowulf, sung and chanted to the accompaniment of a six-stringed harp. Bagby performs the poem in the original Anglo-Saxon, with projected translations.

And on Friday, January 24 (8 pm), soprano Lucy Shelton stars in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, accompanied by an ensemble of top New York Players led by pianist Benjamin Hochman. Also on the bill: Janáček's Diary of One Who Disappeared, sung by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and tenor William Ferguson, accompanied by Hochman.

Tickets for all performances are available at 92Y.org.