Great Music at St. Bart's Announces 2018-19 Season

St. Bartholomew's Church, the historic Episcopal parish on Park Avenue in New York City, this fall celebrates the 100th anniversary of the first service in its current location. The magnificent 1918 Romanesque-style church features a portal designed by Stanford White and a grand Byzantine-style interior - and two of New York's unlikely but outstanding concert spaces: the 150-seat chapel, an intimate and acoustically brilliant space that is perfectly suited for contemporary chamber music, and the majestic 1,000-seat sanctuary, whose Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ is the largest in New York City and one of the finest examples of the American Classic Organ in the U.S.

Great Music at St. Bart's, the concert series produced by the Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation (MMPAF) marking its eighth season, is the most recent installment in the church's rich musical history (see below). The 10 events of the 2018-19 season of Great Music at St. Bart's continue the programmatic focus of embracing a wide range of music in programs that shine in St. Bart's spaces.

Events in St. Bart's Chapel launch with the season-opening event, "Storytime," a program featuring the ensemble Choral Chameleon journeying through five centuries of choral storytelling from Josquin to The Beatles and a world premiere by Dale Trumbore. The new music group Deviant Septet combines Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat with Histories, a collaborative work intended as a companion piece to L'Histoire, composed by the six-composer consortium Sleeping Giant. The Apple Hill String Quartet returns to the St. Bart's Chapel with a program of quartets by Schubert, Caroline Shaw, and Michael Kropf. Pianist Marilyn Nonken pays tribute to Scott Joplin, the master of ragtime, and the modernist Charles Ives with a program featuring Joplin's Bethena (1904) and Ives's Concord Sonata. And baritone Jeff Morrissey offers his annual holiday presentation of "Adoration of the Magi."

The season's events in the main sanctuary of St. Bart's include "Et in Terra Pax: A Concert for Hope," featuring performances of Haydn'sMissa in Angustiis (Mass for Troubled Times), Ola Gjeilo's Song of the Universal, Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and John Tavener's The Lamb by Seton Hall University Chorus and Mid-Atlantic Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Jason C. Tramm, conductor. The fourth annual silent film screening to live organ accompaniment by St. Bart's Associate Director of Music and Organist Jason Roberts features Harold Lloyd's A Sailor-Made Man. The Empire City Men's Chorus kicks off World Pride 2019 with a Silver Anniversary celebration concert of men's choral works ranging from Orlando di Lasso to George Gershwin, Ysaye Barnwell, and Elizabeth Alexander. And the church is the setting for such beloved holiday events as the annual "Joyous Christmas Concert" and "A Concert to Usher in the New Year."

All regular tickets to Great Music at St. Bart's are priced between $15 and $40, with discounted tickets for students and seniors available for all events. Admission to the "A Concert to Usher In the New Year" is free.

Rounding out the St. Bart's musical offerings is a free component: the ongoing Midtown Concerts, a series of free weekly early music programs that run from September through June.

Great Music at St. Bart's is produced by the Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation, an independent 501(c)(3) corporation established to cultivate, promote, sponsor and develop the understanding and love of the performing arts as presented at St. Bartholomew's Church. The corporation sponsors performances of music, dance, drama, and other performing arts as well as the exhibition of works in the film and fine arts genres. http://mmpaf.org

St. Bartholomew's Church was founded in January 1835. Its present building, a Byzantine style structure with an iconic dome, designed by Bertram Goodhue and completed in 1918, has had a vital presence in New York for a century. St. Bartholomew's also became a force in the musical life of the city and the wider church: Legendary musicians such as Leopold Stokowski, who went on to a career as one of the world's great conductors, Harold Friedell, and James Litton have served the church as Organist and Choirmaster. For many decades, a world famous weekly series of Evensongs featuring performances of the great oratorios by St. Bartholomew's Choir was offered free of charge, stressing the parish's commitment to inclusion by ministering to a wide community. Great Music at St. Bart's, an outgrowth of these Evensongs, still offers the greater New York City community top shelf concert performances at very reasonable ticket prices.

For more information on the centenary, visit http://stbarts.org/stbarts100/.

Tickets are available through the Box Office at St. Bartholomew's Church, 325 Park Avenue, New York, NY, and are available by phone, 212-378-0248, and online at www.mmpaf.org.

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