Da Camera Presents THE VEIL OF ORPHEUM: Cy Twombly And Music

Da Camera of Houston's 2018-19 season continues with "The Veil of Orpheus: Cy Twombly and Music," a unique musical event at The Menil Collection on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. The concert, which explores the powerful influences of mythology on visual art and music throughout history, coincides with a rare showing of Cy Twombly's Treatise on the Veil (1970) at the Menil.

The timeless Greek myth of Orpheus entering the underworld in search of his deceased beloved, Eurydice, has inspired artists for centuries. The program will feature Pierre Henry's 1953 avant-garde The Veil of Orpheus-a musical composition that Twombly referenced as an inspiration for his monumental painting-which evokes Orpheus' journey to the underworld; Matthias Pintscher's Study No. 1 for Treatise on the Veil (2004), a work for violin and violoncello inspired by Twombly's painting; Possente spirto from Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, which premiered in 1607; and modernist British composer Harrison Birtwistle's Orpheus Elegies (2004) for countertenor, oboe and harp.

The concert also introduces Houston audiences to Matthew Aucoin, a rising-star American composer and conductor and 2018 MacArthur Fellow. The program includes This Earth, a 2015 work for voice and piano that features a passage from Dante's Purgatorio, along with excerpts from his opera Eurydice, which tells the Orpheus story from his wife's perspective, prior to its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2019-20.

Performers include 2019 Musical America Vocalist of the Year Anthony Roth Costanzo, countertenor; Kelly Markgraf, baritone; Douglas DeVries, flute and piccolo; Sean Krissman, clarinet; Jonathan Fischer, oboe; Jacob Schafer, violin; Coleman Itzkoff, cello; Megan Levin, harp; Michael Lenahan, piano; and REMLABS, Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs, with director Kurt Stallmann.

Da Camera's chamber music series continues with "Ashberyana: A Musical Celebration of Poet John Ashbery" on Tuesday, April 30, 2019, and "Weinberg and Mendelssohn," a program featuring the Daedalus Quartet and Brentano Quartet with pianist and Da Camera Artistic Director Sarah Rothenberg, on Friday, May 10, 2019.

Tickets for "The Veil of Orpheus: Cy Twombly and Music" are $60. Tickets are available by contacting Da Camera, 1402 Sul Ross, at 713-524-5050 or online at www.dacamera.com. Tickets for students and senior citizens are always half-price. $5 student rush tickets are available 30 minutes before the concert begins.

Da Camera's mission is to produce and present concert experiences with a commitment to quality and innovation that broadens the audience for chamber music and jazz. From its founding, Da Camera's varied programming has consisted of chamber music in its broadest definition including both classical music and jazz, bringing highly acclaimed local, national and International Artists together in inspiring productions. Da Camera's programs were among the first in the nation to connect music to literature, theater and visual art, and to use video in multimedia concert productions. Among the first to incorporate jazz into a classical chamber music series, Da Camera is now recognized as the leading jazz presenter in the region.

Committed to the creation of new work, Da Camera has commissioned and premiered more than 30 new works in 30 years, many of which continue to be performed around the world by leading musicians. Da Camera has received numerous national awards for its creative programming concepts, and its original productions have been hailed in national press as "trendsetting" (Time Out New York), showing "unusual care and intelligence" (The New York Times) and an "ingenious thematic idea...brilliantly used" (The Washington Post). The Houston Chronicle describes Da Camera as "a Houston gem."

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