Baryshnikov's 75th Birthday Concert Announced With Laurie Anderson, Regina Spektor, Diana Krall & More

Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) goes upstate to honor its Founder & Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov's 75th birthday.

Mikhail Baryshnikov at 75 will be a day of performances and celebration produced by BAC to take place at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (Tivoli, NY) on Sunday, June 25, 2023 at 2PM.

Co-presented by BAC and Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, the event will feature an afternoon concert on Kaatsbaan's idyllic 153-acre property by some of today's definitive voices in music.

The lineup will include influential musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries whose work has inspired Mr. Baryshnikov throughout his life in the U.S.: American avant-garde artist, composer, and musician Laurie Anderson, Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, Russian-born American singer, songwriter, and pianist Regina Spektor, and North America's leading practitioner of Japanese flutes and percussion Kaoru Watanabe.

The program will also feature a musical performance by choreographer Mark Morris and remarks by actress Anna Baryshnikov.

Born 1948 in Riga, Latvia, Mikhail Baryshnikov is considered one of the greatest dancers of our time. After commencing a spectacular career with the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he came to the West in 1974, settling in New York City as principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre (ABT).

In 1978 he joined New York City Ballet, where he worked with George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. A year later he was appointed artistic director of ABT where, for the next decade, he introduced a new generation of dancers and choreographers.

From 1990-2002, Mr. Baryshnikov was director and dancer of the White Oak Dance Project, which he and choreographer Mark Morris co-founded to expand the repertoire and visibility of American modern dance.

As an actor he has performed widely on- and off-Broadway, as well as in television and film, receiving a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Metamorphosis, and an Academy Award nomination for The Turning Point. Other theatrical productions include Forbidden Christmas or The Doctor and the Patient, Beckett Shorts, In Paris, Man in a Case, The Old Woman, Letter to a Man, and Brodsky/Baryshnikov.

Recent projects include NOT ONCE., a cinematic installation developed in collaboration with Jan Fabre and Phil Griffin, and a second theatrical production directed by Latvian director Alvis Hermanis entitled The White Helicopter, and director Igor Golyak and the Arlekin Players Theatre's new adaptation of Chekhov's masterpiece The Cherry Orchard.

In 2005, he launched Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) in New York City, a creative space designed to support multidisciplinary artists from around the globe. Among Mr. Baryshnikov's many awards are the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, the Commonwealth Award, the Chubb Fellowship, the Jerome Robbins Award, and the Vilcek Award.

In 2010, he was given the rank of Officer of the French Legion of Honor, and in 2017 he received Japan's prestigious Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award in Theatre/Film.

Photo: Mikhail Baryshnikov by Arthur Elgort