John Relyea Replaces Brindley Sherratt in MOSTLY MOZART Closing Concert This Weekend

Lincoln Center announces an artist update for this weekend's closing Mostly Mozart Festival program this weekend, August 21 and 22. John Relyea will replace Brindley Sherratt (who was to make his Festival debut, and has to cancel for personal reasons) in singing the bass part of Haydn's The Creation with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall.

Relyea last performed at Mostly Mozart in 2006, singing in Mozart's Coronation Mass. The rest of the program and artists remain the same: Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée leads the Festival Orchestra through Haydn's masterpiece, alongside soprano Sarah Tynan (Mostly Mozart Festival debut), tenor Andrew Staples (Mostly Mozart Festival debut), and the Concert Chorale of New York (director, James Bagwell). The August 21 performance additionally offers a free pre-concert lecture by Elaine Sisman at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

Tickets for the Mostly Mozart Festival can be purchased online at MostlyMozart.org, by phone via CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or by visiting the Avery Fisher Hall or Alice Tully Hall box offices at Broadway and 65th St.

Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival, its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. Now a New York institution, Mostly Mozart continues to broaden its focus to include works by Mozart's predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes concerts by the world's outstanding period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and acclaimed soloists, as well as opera productions, dance, film, late-night performances, and visual art installations. Contemporary music has become an essential part of the festival, embodied in annual artists-in-residence including Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Among the many artists and ensembles who have had long associations with the festival are Joshua Bell, Christian Tetzlaff, Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Stephen Hough, Osmo Vänskä, the Emerson String Quartet, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Mark Morris Dance Group.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and is the only chamber orchestra in the U.S. dedicated to the music of the Classical period. Since 2002 Louis Langrée has been the Orchestra's music director, and since 2005 the Orchestra's Avery Fisher Hall home has been transformed each summer into an appropriately intimate venue for its performances. Over the years, the Orchestra has toured to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Jérémie Rhorer, Edward Gardner, Lionel Bringuier, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Edo de Waart. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 series, festivals, and programs including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Artist Program, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, Martin E. Segal Awards, Meet the Artist, Mostly Mozart Festival, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and 11 resident organizations: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, School of American Ballet, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

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