Lincoln Center Announces 2020 MOSTLY MOZART Festival

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts today announced its 2020 Mostly Mozart Festival, running from July 14 through August 8. Maintaining Mozart's innovative spirit as its inspiration, the festival magnifies its impact through groundbreaking immersive works, commissions, premieres, international multidisciplinary productions, and more. Animating Lincoln Center's iconic campus, the festival will invite audiences to actively participate-whether as audience members, as performers themselves, or in dialogue around specific works of art. American Express is the lead sponsor of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

"This summer, more than ever, we embrace the message of aspiration and the expansion of the human spirit that music and the performing arts uniquely provide," said Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director of Lincoln Center. "Mozart was deeply engaged by the social and political currents of his time, reflected in some of his most sublime and penetrating masterpieces. We, too, engage this summer with the local and global world around us for inspiration and are pleased to offer an ambitious schedule which promises to forge hope, connection, and community with the backing of long-time arts supporter American Express, who shares our passion for cultural preservation and arts advocacy."

The festival presents three premieres that encourage connection and community engagement. It begins with a special opening night presentation of Divine Connection, a Lincoln Center commission and world premiere interweaving Mozart's Requiem with ethereal music by Arvo Pärt, including his "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" and Te Deum. The ambitious staging is directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer and choreographed by Chanel DaSilva. Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée conducts the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, four soloists, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.

The New York City premiere of Blue, a new opera by Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson, traces the joys and tragedies of an African American couple in Harlem raising their son in 21st-century America, and explores race, violence, and reconciliation. A series of events will be presented in tandem with Blue, to engage a variety of communities around the topics that the opera addresses.

The festival culminates in an extraordinary closing day that includes the world premiere of Search for Spring, also part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors. For this Lincoln Center commission, the composer-librettist team Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton enlists a thousand voices of experienced and amateur singers from all across New York City for this massive choral work exploring loss and renewal, staged outdoors on Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza. The performance builds on three highly acclaimed outdoor world premieres commissioned previously for the Mostly Mozart Festival: John Luther Adams's In the Name of the Earth (2018) and Sila: The Breath of the World (2014), and David Lang's the public domain (2016).

Rounding out the final day is an epic Beethoven experience in celebration of the composer's 250th birth year: a recreation of his 1808 Akademie concert, previously performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2007. Based on the actual event organized and performed by Beethoven himself, the Akademie featured the world premieres of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and "Choral Fantasy," as well as the first public performance of his Fourth Piano Concerto. Balancing out the program was the concert aria "Ah! perfido," the "Gloria," "Sanctus," and "Benedictus" from the Mass in C, and improvisations at the piano by Beethoven himself. Louis Langrée leads the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra on this uplifting humanistic odyssey along with distinguished vocalists, and Kirill Gerstein playing the role of Beethoven the soloist.

International multidisciplinary productions have become a hallmark of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and this year is no exception. Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates the company's 40th anniversary this year, returning to the festival with Morris's beloved utopian vision of Handel's ode L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, based on Milton's well-known poem. Jane Glover conducts the MMDG Music Ensemble and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street with Downtown Voices. Japanese Butoh founder Kazuo Ohno and beloved Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen serve as inspiration for the New York premiere of Flowers for Kazuo Ohno (and Leonard Cohen), a spirited homage by Colombian contemporary dance-theater troupe Compañía Cuerpo de Indias.

At the core of the festival is the celebrated Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra led by Louis Langrée, offering the works of Mozart and his contemporaries, as well as Baroque repertoire and music of today. In addition to the ensemble's profound opening and closing night performances, programs this summer span from the First and Second Viennese Schools to the New York premiere of HK Gruber's Manhattan Broadcasts.

Special highlights this summer include: the culmination of Langrée's four-year cycle of the Brahms Symphonies; a free all-Mozart program in the David Rubenstein Atrium performed by a wind octet from the Festival Orchestra; and Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the all-star team of Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, and Jeremy Denk. The Orchestra also welcomes acclaimed soloists and guest conductors throughout the summer, including Beatrice Rana, Augustin Hadelich, Emanuel Ax, Andrew Manze, Richard Egarr, Joshua Weilerstein, and Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare in his New York debut. Each orchestral performance is preceded by a pre-concert recital or talk.

"We are so excited to open the 2020 Festival with a Lincoln Center commission, interspersing Mozart's Requiem with Arvo Pärt's Te Deum-two pieces that elevate us as we contemplate our existence," said Mostly Mozart Festival Music Director Louis Langrée. "We continue our journey by exploring masterpieces of the First and Second Viennese Schools-from Haydn and Mozart to Berg and Webern, as well as the New York premiere of Manhattan Broadcasts by the contemporary Viennese composer H.K. Gruber. Our four-summer Brahms pilgrimage concludes with his Fourth Symphony and Berg's Violin Concerto, both of which echo Bach, whose Cantata 150 opens the program. And, our epic finale is a recreation of Beethoven's Akademie concert of 1808, new works in his time that continue to deliver his humanistic message of fraternity, strength, and beauty. We welcome a spectacular array of artists-old friends and new faces-to join us for this extraordinary voyage."

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra perform a boisterous concert staging of Verdi's comic masterpiece, Falstaff, in a U.S. production premiere. Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout join the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an all-Beethoven program, and the Danish String Quartet brings its signature vitality to an extraordinary concert of Bach, Webern, Beethoven, and Mozart.

Complementing the Budapest Festival Orchestra's staged performance of Verdi's comedy, this summer's film screenings in the Walter Reade Theater lend fuller perspective to the lovable rogue Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's most enduring characters. The screenings include The Hollow Crown: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight.

The intrepid International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) celebrates its tenth year as festival artists-in-residence, and thirteenth consecutive summer at the festival, staging the North American premiere of a mesmerizing and immersive new chamber opera by the inventive Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Entitled UR_, it explores humanity's relationship to the earth, our origins, and our future. They also present a free concert, celebrating the multimodal musical language of Anthony Braxton, in honor of the composer's 75th birthday.

The popular "A Little Night Music" series of late-night performances in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse features established and emerging artists in intimate recitals, many with thematic links to concerts earlier in the evening, and across the festival, creating evening-long experiences that expand on a continuous musical thread. The New York Festival of Song, with Artistic Director Steven Blier and singers Lucia Bradford and Miles Mykkanen, will perform a bespoke evening of music by Tony Award®-winning composer Jeanine Tesori and composers who inspired her, as a prelude to performances of her new opera Blue the following evening. Beatrice Rana, Emanuel Ax, Stephen Hough, Jeremy Denk, and the Danish String Quartet will all perform late-night recitals following their performances on larger stages earlier in the evening. And the invigorating Junction Trio offers an otherworldly performance of Beethoven infused with John Zorn.

"American Express is delighted to support this summer's ambitious programming at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, which features groundbreaking and immersive works across art forms, and reflects the community spirit of New York," said Timothy J. McClimon, President, American Express Foundation. "This relationship is part of our continued commitment to both supporting and preserving the arts and live performance for generations to come."

Summer at Lincoln Center
Summer at Lincoln Center is more than a schedule of events. In these fractious times, when many find it easier to divide than unite, we have never been more resolute in our belief in the arts to help us build empathy, learn more about ourselves and others, reach new levels of understanding, and create community. This Summer at Lincoln Center, New Yorkers of all backgrounds and from all over the city will come together to dance under the stars, engage in illuminating conversations, and immerse themselves in artistic experiences as diverse as the city itself. With an emphasis on participatory events, community-conscious programming, and extending our reach, we will explore this essential role of the arts in our society and the many ways they connect us.

Tickets for Lincoln Center Members go on sale April 10, 2020 and to the general public beginning April 14, 2020. To become a Lincoln Center Member, visit support.lincolncenter.org Tickets can be purchased online at MostlyMozartFestival.org, by phone via CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or by visiting the David Geffen Hall or Alice Tully Hall Box Offices.