Metropolitan Museum Announces Concerts For January 2012

Music for the American Wing- a weekend of events- marks the completed renovation of the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture.

Decorative Arts: “Asphalt Orchestra Marches through the Met” with Choreography by Susan Marshall & Mark DeChiazza, “Glass at 75: A Birthday Sing,” and “Thomas Hampson: Song of America”

Kayhan Kalhor Performs a Solo Evening
Pacifica Quartet Continues Its Six-Concert Beethoven Quartet Cycle

For tickets, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets or call (212) 570-3949. Tickets are also available at the Great Hall Box Office, which is open Tuesday-Saturday 10-5:00 and Sunday noon-5:00. Student and group discount tickets are available for some events; call 212-570-3949.

Tickets include admission to the Museum on day of performance.

Music for the American Wing – Friday-Sunday, January 20-22, 2012
The final stage of the renovation of the Metropolitan Museum’s New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts opens January 16, 2012. Three distinctly American performance events in the wing’s Charles Engelhard Court, two of them free with Museum admission, celebrate the first weekend of the newly re-openEd Galleries: a march through the Met by the inventive “radical street band” Asphalt Orchestra (three performances); a Philip Glass birthday sing-in which the public is invited to join; and “Song of America,” a recital by American opera star Thomas Hampson.

Friday, January 20, 2012, at 4:00, 6:00, and 8:00 p.m. – Asphalt Orchestra Marches through the Met
Asphalt Orchestra, the “radical new street band that brings ambitious processional music to the mobile masses,” in the band’s own words, will stage a march through the Met Museum that invites all museum-goers to follow. They will begin in the Great Hall, march through the Egyptian Wing and The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing, and end up at the American Wing’s Charles Engelhard Court. The performance, choreographed specifically for the Engelhard Court by Mark DeChiazza and Susan Marshall, will feature music by Frank Zappa, Yoko Ono, and Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The band will also present a world premiere arrangement of hymns from the distinctly American shape note singing tradition, inspired by field recordings from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Asphalt Orchestra liberates innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs and jazz basements and takes it to the streets. With movement direction from internationally acclaimed choreographer Susan Marshall and dressed by designer Elizabeth Hope Clancy, the 12-member band brings together some of the most exciting rock, jazz and classical players in New York City: Jessica Schmitz (piccolo), Alex Hamlin, Peter Hess and Ken Thomson (saxophones), Shane Endsley and Stephanie Richards (trumpets), Jen Baker and Alan Ferber (trombones), Kenneth Bentley (sousaphone), and Sunny Jain, Nick Jenkins and Yuri Yamashita (percussion).
Begins in the Great Hall, concludes in The Charles Engelhard Court of The American Wing
Free with Museum admission

Saturday, January 21, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. – “Glass at 75: A Birthday Sing”
The public is invited to participate in a world premiere performance of The New Rule, a newly arranged work by Philip Glass, and then sing “Happy Birthday” to the iconic American composer, who will be in attendance, for his 75th birthday (January 31). This birthday sing-in is presented by NPR Music and The Metropolitan Museum of Art and will take place at 5:00 p.m. in the Museum’s Charles Engelhard Court. The New Rule is a new arrangement for choir of music from Glass’s 1997 “digital opera” Monsters of Grace.
For details on how to participate, go to www.nprmusic.org or follow @nprclassical and @metmuseum on Twitter.
Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.
The Charles Engelhard Court, The American Wing
Free with Museum admission

Sunday, January 22, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.- Thomas Hampson, Baritone – “Song of America”
Great American baritone Thomas Hampson and pianist Craig Rutenberg present “Song of America,” a panorama of American song, with music by Copland, Barber, Ives, Hopkinson, Griffes, Thomson, and others, in the Charles Engelhard Court of The American Wing. This is Hampson’s only New York recital of the season.
This concert is inspired by the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. This final stage of the renovation of the American Wing opens January 16, 2012.
Thomas Hampson enjoys a singular international career as a recitalist, opera singer, and recording artist, and maintains an active interest in teaching, research, and technology. Hampson has won worldwide recognition for his thoughtfully researched and creatively constructed programs that explore the rich repertoire of song in a wide range of styles, languages, and periods. He is one of the most important interpreters of German Romantic song, and through his celebrated “Song of America” project (www.songofamerica.net), a collaboration with the Library of Congress, has become an “ambassador” of American song. Through the Hampsong Foundation, founded in 2003, he employs the art of song to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding.
Hampson began his 2011-2012 season at San Francisco Opera, where he created the role of Rick Rescorla in the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’s Heart of a Soldier. The new opera, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, features a libretto by Donna Di Novelli and was directed by Francesca Zambello. Based on the 2002 book by James B. Stewart, the work is inspired by the true story of Rescorla and his tragic death in the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center following his heroic evacuation of all 2,700 employees of Morgan Stanley. Hampson’s other operatic engagements this season include Iago in Verdi’s Otello and the title role in Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, both at Zurich Opera, and Verdi’s Macbeth at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. www.hampsong.com
The Charles Engelhard Court, The American Wing
Tickets: $65

Saturday, January 7, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. - Pacifica Quartet
In 2009-2010, the Pacifica Quartet became the Metropolitan Museum’s second quartet-in-residence, succeeding the Guarneri String Quartet. After a first season of programs of diverse repertoire and a second season devoted to the complete string quartets of Shostakovich, the quartet will for its third season perform the complete string quartets of Beethoven in six programs, each of which features early and later works:
This fourth program features the Quartets No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18; and No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59. The succeeding concerts take place on February 25 and March 10.
This series is supported in part by the Grace Jarcho Ross and Daniel G. Ross Concert Fund.
Having performed the complete Shostakovich string quartets at the Metropolitan Museum last season, the Pacifica has embarked on a four-volume series of studio recordings. The Soviet Experience: String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries. Volume 1, just released, offers Shostakovich's Quartets Nos. 5-8, plus Nikolai Miaskovsky's String Quartet No. 13. Recognized for its virtuosity, exuberant performance style, and often daring repertory choices, the Pacifica Quartet has carved out a compelling and critically lauded musical path. In addition to the Musical America Ensemble of the Year 2009 Award, and a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, the Pacifica Quartet has swept top awards in the U.S. and abroad, including the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, making the Pacifica only the second chamber music ensemble ever to be selected. Formed in 1994, the ensemble quickly began to win top prizes in leading international competitions, including the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Award.
The members of the Pacifica Quartet live in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, where they were appointed to the faculty of the University of Illinois in 2004 and serve as Faculty Quartet in Residence. They are also resident performing artists at the University of Chicago and the Longy School in Boston. The Pacifica Quartet was instrumental in creating the Music Integration Project, an innovative program that provides musical performances and teacher training to inner-city elementary schools. The quartet originated on the West Coast, where it first performed together, and takes its name from the Pacific Ocean. Throughout their journey as a string quartet, its members continually strive to be “Distinct as the billows/yet one as the sea” (James Montgomery). www.pacificaquartet.com
Tickets: $45

Saturday, January 28, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.- Kayhan Kalhor, Kamancheh
The internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh (Persian bowed string instrument), known for his collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, is a three-time Grammy nominee. For his only solo New York performance of the season, he performs an evening of traditional Persian music.
This program is presented in conjunction with the recent opening of the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.
This concert is made possible by The Mossavar-Rahmani Fund for Iranian Art.
Three-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the West and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon.
He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations, and Masters of Persian Music. Kayhan Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. He has composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth in a score on which he collaborated with Osvaldo Golijov. In 2004, Kayhan was invited by American composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his “Perspectives” series and in the same year he appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem. Kayhan is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project and his compositions appear on all three of the Ensemble’s albums. www.kayhankalhor.net
Tickets: $35