Baruch PAC announces 2019-2020 season

Baruch Performing Arts Center announces its 2019-2020 season of chamber music and opera in the heart of Manhattan

Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College announces its 2019-20 Season of classical and contemporary music, a series of chamber music and vocal premieres experienced in an ideally intimate setting. It is part of a season of performing arts programming rich in its diversity of genres, cultures and ideas. 

 

Highlights include:

 

 

These are rounded out by a concert with pianist Michael Brown and cellist Nicholas Canellakis, a radical reinterpretation of Der Freischutz by Heartbeat Opera, a premiere by the Talea Ensemble, and more.  

Details are below.

 

Performances are at Baruch Performing Arts Center, on 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues (55 Lexington Avenue) in the heart of Manhattan. Praised for its superb acoustics and intimacy, the Rosalyn and Irwin Engelman Recital Hall has been called "a perfect hall for chamber music" by Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times. Tickets are priced affordably, with generous discounts for students.

 

Program details will be available at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/bpac/ in mid-summer. Tickets on sale beginning in August.

October 11, 7:30 pm | Sonnambula

"Sound Carving: Sacred and Profane Music of the Austrian Baroque"

 

Austrian and German composers at the end of the seventeenth century developed a highly original style, infused with mysticism - haunted by memories of the Thirty Years’ War and the Siege of Vienna. Sonnambula, ensemble-in-residence at The Met Museum, takes the audience on a journey through the intricate and mesmerizing sound world of extravagant harmonic experimentation and fanciful instrumental virtuosity.

October 22, 7:30 pm | Pianist Alon Goldstein

"Art of the Imagination"

 

Alon Goldstein (“An irresistible powerhouse performance.” – New York Times) plays music across three centuries, from Scarlatti to Bernstein, with his “gloriously precise pianism.” – Cleveland Classical Review. This concert is part of the Freda & Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

November 12, 7:30 pm | Daedalus Quartet

"Music from Exile"

 

Renowned Israeli pianist Renana Gutman joins the award-winning Daedalus Quartet in a sonic exploration of the human response to repression and exile. The program includes the defiantly joyful third string quartet of Viktor Ullman, written while he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp; a string quartet by Gabriel Bolanos, whose family fled Nicaragua in the 1970s; and Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s monumental piano quintet, composed in Moscow after his escape from the Nazi invasion of Poland, performed in celebration of the composer's centenary.

November 20, 7:30 pm | Alexander String Quartet

 

The New York Times gushed over the “visceral experience” of hearing the Alexander String Quartet play Shostakovich at Baruch PAC. This program pairs one of Shostakovich’s late quartets with Mozart’s forward-looking “Dissonant” Quartet, and the beautifully lyrical String Quartet Opus 13 by Felix Mendelssohn.

December 3-15 (select dates) | Heartbeat Opera

Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischutz

 

Heartbeat Opera, the “pioneering company” (New York Times) behind ground-breaking productions of Fidelio and Carmen, brings its trademark vision to a classic opera, making it a radical, immersive re-imagining of the twisted fairy tale about a deal with the devil and seven magic bullets that cannot miss their target. The production features a stellar cast of singers and Heartbeat’s distinctive “ingenious rearrangement” (Wall Street Journal) of Weber’s Romantic score arranged by Daniel Schlosberg.

January 9-18, 2020 (select dates) | PROTOTYPE

World Premiere of Blood Moon

 

World Premiere of Blood Moon, with music by Garrett Fisher and libretto by Ellen McLaughlin. An opera-theater collaboration co-presented by BPAC, PROTOTYPE Festival and Japan Society.

March 10, 7:30 pm | Michael Brown/Nicholas Canellakis Duo

"Distinct Souls"

 

The Canellakis-Brown Duo pairs pianist/composer Michael Brown, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” with cellist Nicholas Canellakis, whose "Impassioned…rich alluring tone” was praised by The New York Times. The duo's program travels from intimate vulnerability to unbridled excitement with Ginastera’s sizzling Pampeana No. 2, Grieg’s masterful Sonata, Sibelius’s heart-wrenching Malinconia, Canellakis’s virtuosic arrangements of Bulgarian folk tunes, and a premiere by Michael Brown.

March 17, 7:30 pm | Clarion Quartet

"Fate and Genius"

 

The all-female Clarion Quartet, whose members are long-time musicians in the Pittsburgh Symphony, takes us on a journey through the minds of three composers in the face of creative obstacles: Ludwig van Beethoven, deaf and sensing imminent death, writing his surprising last work the Opus 135; Dimitri Shostakovich, in mortal fear of the Stalinist hammer, creating his brief 7th Quartet; and Mieczyslaw Weinberg, exiled from Warsaw after losing his family, composing a study in perspectives with his 2nd Quartet. This concert is part of the Freda & Aaron Silberman Recital Series.

March 19-21 (select dates) | dwb (driving while black)

Chamber Opera by Susan Kander (music) and Roberta Gumbel (soprano/libretto) with New Morse Code (Hannah Collins, cello & Michael Compitello, percussion)

“Singers are storytellers,” says soprano/librettist Roberta Gumbel, “but rarely do we get the opportunity to help create the stories we are telling.” Collaborating with composer Susan Kander and the cutting-edge cello/percussion duo New Morse Code, this one act opera is constructed of two interwoven strands, one personal, one external.  An African-American mother raises her son in a story punctuated by short, highly charged scenes from the world around them – some familiar from headlines, some more individual. As her “beautiful brown boy” approaches driving age, what should be a joyous celebration of independence and maturity is fraught with the anxiety of driving while black: it’s not a question of if, but when. 

Trailer for dwb (driving while black)

March 24, 7:30 pm | Rayanne Dupuis (soprano) and Guy Livingston (piano)

"Tears at the Happy Hour" - US premiere by William Bolcom

 

Love. Lust. Longing. Loss. Libido. These are the themes running through the songs by Pulitzer and Grammy award-winning composer William Bolcom (1938- ). Bolcom blurs the lines between cabaret, classical, music theatre and even country music in his settings of texts by Auden, ee cummings, Shakespeare and his long-time collaborator Arnold Weinstein. This recital marks the New York debut of the internationally acclaimed soprano Rayanne Dupuis. Ms. Dupuis and pianist Guy Livingston ("An exceptionally agile and charismatic performer"— Los Angeles Times) perform the U.S. premiere of Bolcom’s “Poèmes libres de droits,” written expressly for them. The song cycle, on poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, is a wistful, surrealist tip of the hat to Bolcom’s formative years in Paris.

Spring 2020, dates TBA | Talea Ensemble

US Premiere - Love and Diversity by Manos Tsangaris

 

The ever-adventurous Talea Ensemble brings to the BPAC stage the premiere of a work that lies somewhere between music and theater by Manos Tsangaris - whose work has never been heard in the US. In Love and Diversity the audience begins the evening in a social setting having a drink. They enter the performance space in small groups, visiting one of seven tables, each with a musician/actor. The audience is immersed in the performance – first encountering each musician individually and finally, experiencing the piece as a whole. Tsangaris’ work exemplifies Talea's mission to champion musical creativity and cultivate curious listeners and is why they are hailed as “...a crucial part of the New York cultural ecosphere”- New York Times.

April 17, 8:00 pm | Vijay Iyer (piano) & Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet)

 

Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013, and called “Extravagantly gifted … brilliantly eclectic” by The New Yorker, jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer joins forces with an equally heralded musician and composer, Wadada Leo Smith “a magisterial instrumental voice…” (Downbeat). Their collaborations have been hailed as "both cultivated and passionate” by The New Yorker. This concert is part of the Milt Hinton Jazz Perspective Series.

April 22, 7:30 pm | Alexander String Quartet

Beethoven @ 250

 

The Alexander String Quartet’s recordings of Beethoven’s quartets are praised by Musical America for their “lively sense of colour and a deep unshakable poise." In honor of the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the Alexander String Quartet brings an all-Beethoven program to the stage at Baruch Performing Arts Center.

April 29, 7:30 pm | Israeli Chamber Project

"American Immigrants"

 

The award-winning Israeli Chamber Project returns to BPAC with a program devoted to music by American immigrants - Milhaud, Korngold, Schoenberg, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Shulamit Ran. Whether fleeing war-torn Europe in the 1930s and 40s or dreaming of possibilities in the New World, these composers became enmeshed in the cultural fabric of their adoptive country, enriching it in the process.

Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC) is an active presence in the heart of Manhattan. Located just east of the Chelsea neighborhood, BPAC presents world class Classical music, Jazz and Pop, in addition to theater, dance, literary and discussion programs. BPAC's 2019/20 music programs feature Met Museum ensemble-in-residence Sonnambula; Israeli Chamber Project; the Daedalus, Clarion, and Alexander String Quartets; Canadian soprano Rayanne Dupuis with pianist Guy Livingston; Grammy-nominated composer/pianist Vijay Iyer with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; and Blood Moon, a world premiere opera-theatre work presented with PROTOTYPE Festival and the Japan Society.