Tickets for Lincoln Center Festival 2016 Now on Sale

Single tickets to Lincoln Center Festival shows-highlights this year include legendary stars of Japan's all-female musical troupe, Takarazuka, in Takarazuka CHICAGO; Jonathan Pryce as Shylock in Shakespeare'sGlobe production of The Merchant of Venice; Balkan superstar Goran Bregovic and his raucous Wedding and Funeral Orchestra; and the National Ballet of Canada performances of Christopher Wheeldon's The Winter's Tale-will go on sale to Friends of Lincoln Center on April 1 and to the general public on April 11. The festival runs from Wednesday, July 13 through Sunday, July 31, 2016, with 49 performances by artists and ensembles from seven countries taking place in seven venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus.

Lincoln Center Festival tickets are available through CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, online at LincolnCenterFestival.org, and at the David Geffen Hall and Alice Tully Hall Box Offices.

1927, the multi-award winning London-based performance company, makes its festival debut with its acclaimed production that has toured the globe, Golem, a dark and fantastical work that explores the ways in which our digital world has created a monster. 1927 was also recently in the spotlight for its collaboration with Komische Opera, Berlin, on Mozart's The Magic Flute, which delighted critics and audiences in at LA Opera this winter. The company specializes in combining performance and live music with animation and film to create magical filmic performance. Golem is inspired by the shadowy figure from Jewish folklore as well as the early 20th-century literary work by Gustav Meyrink. There will be eight performances (July 26-31) at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

Lincoln Center Festival opens on July 13 with two elegantly ritualized productions with origins in Japan and China. One of Japan's oldest and most venerated Noh theater companies, Kanze Noh Theatre led by Kiyokazu Kanze, the 26th Grand Master of the Kanze School and a blood descendent of the founders of Noh, makes a rare New York appearance at the festival. Japan's approximately 700-year-old classical theater art of extreme refinement is known for its resplendent costumes and masks, hypnotic music, and intricately stylized performance on an austere set featuring a single pine tree. In a Noh play, the divide between the natural and supernatural is bridged as spirits and humans interact in a world rife with symbolism. Kanze Noh Theatre will give six performances, July 13-17 on an authentic Noh stage that is being specially built by Lincoln Center Festival at the Rose Theater in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall. The company will present five different Noh dramas selected from the repertoire of approximately 240, as well as two Kyogen, the customary comic interlude in a Noh program.

Sharing opening night on July 13 is the one-act opera, Paradise Interrupted, created by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo and Chinese visual artist Jennifer Wen Ma, known to global audiences for her work on the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The piece, a Lincoln Center Festival co-commission, fuses and reimagines the biblical story of Eve as she tries to reconcile the knowledge that she's been expelled from the Garden of Eden, with an episode from the Kun operaThe Peony Pavilion, which dates from 1598. Acclaimed Kun opera soprano Qian Yi, who so memorably made her New York debut in the marathon production of The Peony Pavilion at Lincoln Center Festival 99, stars. Joining her onstage is a vocal quartet consisting of tenor (Yi Li), countertenor (John Holiday), baritone (Joo Won Kang), and bass- baritone (Ao Li), who sing in a tonally based Western idiom. Wen-Pin Chien leads a chamber orchestra mixing Western and Chinese instruments in Huang Ruo's score that is a continuation of Kun opera tradition, yet, entirely new. There will be three performances, July 13, 15, and 16, at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

The legendary stars who thrilled audiences for years as part of Japan's famous musical theater troupe, the Takarazuka Revue, will celebrate the centennial of the troupe's founding with performances of Takarazuka CHICAGO, running concurrently with the Tony Award-winning show, with a legendary book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb, and now the number one longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Leading the cast are Saori Mine, Saki Asaji, Asato Shizuki, Yoka Wao, Wataru Kozuki, Hikaru Asami, Natsuki Mizu, and Yuga Yamato. As in all of its productions, Takarazuka CHICAGO will be cast with women in every role, and as a coda to the evening's entertainment, an over-the-top revue-replete with glittering costumes and dance-will be performed by the entire company, as is the tradition with all its shows, which attracts an audience of 2.5 million annually. Takarazuka CHICAGO will play at the David H. Koch Theater July 20-24 for six performances only.

Casting for the performances of Takarazuka CHICAGO has been announced.

Wednesday, July 20 at 8:00 pm: Saori Mine/Billy Flynn, Yoka Wao/Velma Kelly, Hikaru Asami/Roxie Hart, and Jun
Hatsukaze/Mama Morton.

Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 pm: Saori Mine/Billy Flynn, Yoka Wao/Velma Kelly, Hikaru Asami/Roxie Hart, and Keaki
Mori/Mama Morton.

Friday, July 22 at 7:30 pm; Saki Asaji/Billy Flynn, Natsuki Mizu/Velma Kelly, Yuga Yamato/Roxie Hart, and Jun
Hatsukaze/Mama Morton.

Saturday, July 23 at 2:00 pm: Saki Asaji/ Billy Flynn, Natsuki Mizu/Velma Kelly, Yuga Yamato/Roxie Hart and Keaki

Mori/Mama Morton.

Saturday, July 23 at 8:00 pm: Asato Shizuki/ Billy Flynn, Wataru Kozuki/Velma Kelly, Hikaru Asami/ Roxie Hart, and Jun

Hatsukaze/Mama Morton.

Sunday, July 24 at 2:00 pm: Asato Shizuki/Billy Flynn, Wataru Kozuki/Velma Kelly, Hikaru Asami/ Roxie Hart, and Keaki
Mori/Mama Morton.

Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor Jonathan Pryce, the slyly sinister High Sparrow of Game of Thrones, returns to the New York stage after an absence of ten years as Shylock in Shakespeare's Globe acclaimed production of The Merchant of Venice, directed by Jonathan Munby. Joining the star onstage in the esteemed Globe troupe is Phoebe Pryce, Jonathan's daughter, in the role of Jessica, the anguished moneylender's daughter. The Merchant of Venice will run for seven performances only (July 20-24) at the Rose Theater in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Another play by Shakespeare brings the National Ballet of Canada to the festival with renowned British choreographerChristopher Wheeldon's version of The Winter's Tale. The production is ravishingly designed by Bob Crowleywith music byJoby Talbot, who collaborated with the choreographer on his previous Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with lighting design by Natasha Katz, projection design by Daniel Brodie, and with stunning silk effects from recent MacArthur Grant winner, artistBasil Twist. In this ambitious work by the Tony Award-winning choreographer, elements of fairytale, comedy, tragedy, and fantasy are woven together into a complex and deeply touching meditation on loss, redemption, love, jealousy, and the nature of family. There will be five performances, July 28-31, at the David H. Koch Theater.

The iconic and pioneering American composer Steve Reich, who was the focus of a multi genre performance series at Lincoln Center Festival 99, returns for this summer's festival, with Reich/Reverberations, three concerts (July 16 in Alice Tully Hall; July 19 and 21 in The Appel Room in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall), that will highlight classic chamber music works from throughout his career. Some of New York's leading contemporary music ensembles-So Percussion, JACK Quartet, andEnsemble Signal conducted by Brad Lubman-will perform a selection of Reich's most famous chamber works includingDrumming, Different Trains (Grammy Award 1989), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet, and Music for 18 Musicians(Grammy Award 1998), widely considered a masterpiece of American minimalism and "a landmark of 20th-century music" (Guardian, U.K.).

Charismatic Balkan superstar Goran Bregovic and his raucous Wedding and Funeral Orchestra return for their third Lincoln Center Festival visit-two boisterous concerts in which he will serve as catalyst and ringmaster in a musical spectacle unlike any other. For two nights (July 15 and 16) David Geffen Hall will reverberate with the ecstatic energy of an Eastern European wedding, accented with soulful invocations and new world rhythms.

Paris's renowned Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, last seen at the festival in 2011 with its acclaimed A Magic Flute staged by Peter Brook, returns with its critically acclaimed production of Molière's masterpiece, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully, which gently satirizes the pretensions of a social climber whose affectations are absurd to everyone but himself. The director is the award-winning Denis Podalydès. The exquisite costumes are by Christian Lacroix. There will be five performances, July 20-24, at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

Over three nights in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (July 28-30), So Percussion, comprised of percussionists Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, with their "exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam" (The New Yorker), will guide listeners through the thrilling and sensuous sound world they've created with works by composers John Cage, Bryce Dessner, Cenk Ergun, David Lang, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, Steve Reich, Dan Trueman, and Iannis Xenakis.

The festival will present the first duo U.S. appearance of musicians Wang Li (kouxiang, or Jew's harp) and Wu Wei (sheng)-two Chinese artists who marry ancient and modern musical traditions in surprising and novel ways-in the intimate Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse for one night only, July 23.

Programs, artists, and ticket prices are subject to change.

Lincoln Center Festival lead support is provided by American Express

Lincoln Center Festival 2016 is also made possible by The Shubert Foundation, Nancy A. Marks, LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, The Katzenberger Foundation, Inc., Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc., Jennie and Richard DeScherer, The Grand Marnier Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, J.C.C. Fund of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New York, MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group), Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, Sharp Fund PLD at The New York Community Trust, Great Performers Circle, Chairman's Council, and Friends of Lincoln Center.

Public support for Lincoln Center Festival 2016 is provided the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts.