The Orchestra Now To Present Siena, Wagner & Parsifal At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will present two Manhattan performances in December, including the first of three concerts in its popular Sight & Sound series, Siena, Wagner & Parsifal, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, December 8 at 2 PM. The program will examine Wagner's remarkable innovations in opera via selections from his work Parsifal, set against the background of notable painterly invention during the Italian Renaissance in Siena.

TŌN's Sight & Sound series at the Met explores the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. Each performance includes an introduction by a Met curator, a discussion with conductor and music historian Leon Botstein accompanied by on-screen exhibition images and live musical excerpts, followed by a full performance of the works and an audience Q&A. Tickets include same-day museum admission.

The Orchestra's second December performance will offer a FREE holiday concert of audience favorites by Johann Strauss (ii), Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Holst, led by Leonardo Pineda and joined for some of the pieces by the All-City High School Orchestra at New York City's Talent Unlimited High School on December 15.

Siena, Wagner & Parsifal

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Sunday, December 8, 2024, at 2 PM

The Orchestra Now

Leon Botstein, conductor

Richard Wagner: Selections from Parsifal

Act I Prelude

Act III Prelude

Good Friday Music

Artwork by Duccio, Lorenzetti, Martini, and others.

At the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, Siena was the site of remarkable artistic innovation. Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—played a pivotal role in defining Western painting. Over 500 years later, Richard Wagner revolutionized opera composition in much the same way. Twelve years after he read Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, a poem from the Renaissance era, he began working on a libretto inspired by this tale of the quest for the Holy Grail. This eventually became his final composition, the opera Parsifal.

The exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350, will be on view at The Met Fifth Avenue until January 26, 2025.

Tickets, priced at $30–$50, include same-day museum admission. Tickets may be purchased online at metmuseum.org, by calling The Met at 212.570.3949, or at The Great Hall box office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Nutcracker & The Planets

Sunday, December 15, 2024, at 3 PM

Talent Unlimited High School, 300 E 68th Street, New York, NY

The Orchestra Now

Leonardo Pineda, conductor

Selections performed with the All-City High School Orchestra

David West, principal conductor

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a

Johann Strauss (ii): Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, Op. 214

Alexander Borodin: Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor)

Gustav Holst: “Mars” and “Jupiter” from The Planets, Op. 32

The Orchestra Now and Interim Assistant Conductor Leonardo Pineda present a free holiday season concert at the Talent Unlimited High School for the performing arts on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The program of high-spirited popular works includes Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Johann Strauss (ii)'s Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. TŌN is joined by NYC's All-City High School Orchestra for Borodin's Polovtsian Dances and two movements from Holst's The Planets.

Tickets: This concert is FREE, no tickets necessary, advance RSVP is suggested. 

The Orchestra Now

Founded in 2015 by conductor and educator Leon Botstein, The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a graduate program of Bard College that trains the next generation of music professionals to become creative ambassadors of classical music. It offers accomplished young musicians a full-tuition fellowship toward a master's degree in Curatorial, Critical, and Performance Studies or an advanced certificate in Orchestra Studies. TŌN's innovative curriculum combines rehearsal, performance, recording, and touring with seminars, masterclasses, professional development workshops, teaching, and more. The members of the Orchestra are graduates of the world's leading conservatories, and hail from countries across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Many have gone on to careers in the Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Vancouver, and National symphony orchestras; Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia; the United States military bands; and many others. In the 2024-25 season, the Orchestra welcomes 18 new members, for a total of 67 musicians from 14 countries around the globe.

TŌN performs dozens of concerts a year at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fisher Center at Bard. Specializing in both familiar and rarely heard repertoire, the Orchestra has given numerous New York, U.S., and world premieres, and performed the work of living composers including Joan Tower and Tania León. In 2023, TŌN appeared with Bradley Cooper in the Academy Award-nominated film Maestro, and was featured on the Grammy-nominated Deutsche Grammophon soundtrack, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Orchestra has performed with many other distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, Stephanie Blythe, Fabio Luisi, Vadim Repin, Peter Serkin, Tan Dun, and JoAnn Falletta.

TŌN has released several albums on the Hyperion, Sorel Classics, and AVIE labels. May 2024's The Lost Generation includes world-premiere recordings of works by Hugo Kauder, Hans Erich Apostel, and Adolf Busch. Other highlights include rare recordings of Othmar Schoeck's Lebendig begraben and Bristow's Arcadian Symphony, and the soundtrack to the motion picture Forte. Recordings of TŌN's live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard regularly on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and the Orchestra has appeared over 100 times on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide.

For more details, visit ton.bard.edu.