June 24, 2015

Sixth Season of White Light Festival: October 14 - November 22, 2015

White Light Festival

Contact: Eileen McMahon

212.875.5391
[email protected]

 

SIXTH SEASON OF WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL ANNOUNCED

 

October 14 - November 22, 2015

 

Festival opens with the complete Schubert Song Cycles performed by Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis

 

U.S. premiere of Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music, four dance works by choreographers Wayne McGregor, Karole Armitage, Alexander Whitley, and Crystal Pite, set to music by Thomas Adès, conducted and performed by Adès with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Calder Quartet, soprano Anna Dennis, and violinist Thomas Gould

 

U.S. premiere of Heretical Angels, with medieval vocal ensemble Dialogos, Katarina Livljanic, and vocal ensemble Kantaduri

 

U.S. premiere of Partita 2, choreographed and danced by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, with Boris Charmatz and Amandine Beyer

 

Focus on Samuel Beckett’s prose works, featuring acclaimed Beckett interpreters Gare St. Lazare Ireland and Lisa Dwan

 

U.S. premiere of Inked and Murmur danced by Aakash Odedra—a co-presentation with Baryshnikov Arts Center 

 

PLUS:  Irish ensemble The Gloaming; Les Arts Florissants performs Handel’s oratorio Theodora; rare voice and organ recital by Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs; pianist Paul Lewis plays Beethoven’s final three sonatas; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis makes its White Light Festival debut with Marsalis’s big-band arrangement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme

 

New York, NY, June 24, 2015 — Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Jane Moss today announced the schedule for Lincoln Center’s sixth White Light Festival, running from October 14 through November 22, 2015. The multidisciplinary Festival, which takes its name from a quotation by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, is focused on the remarkable power of art to reveal the many dimensions of our interior lives. Spanning numerous musical traditions, genres, and disciplines, the Festival will offer 26 performances and events, featuring one world and five U.S. premieres and debuts by artists and companies from the United States, the U.K., Croatia, Belgium, France, and Ireland. Other Festival components include pre- and post-performance artist discussions, a panel discussion, film, and the popular post-performance White Light Lounges, where performers and audience members can gather.

 

Said Moss, “This year’s White Light Festival explores the myriad shades and light of the human condition, starting with language and the universal impulse to communicate through speech, story, and song. From the important song cycles of Franz Schubert and new interpretations of prose works by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett to our first jazz presentation and cutting-edge choreographers and dancers, the Festival promises to challenge and inspire through music, words, and movement.”

 

The White Light Festival opens with a three-concert survey of the complete song cycles of Franz Schubert, sung by tenor Mark Padmore with pianist Paul Lewis, on October 14, 15, and 17 at Alice Tully Hall.

 

The Festival closes on November 22 with the final performance of Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music, an evening of four dance works set to the music of Thomas Adès, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, Karole Armitage, Alexander Whitley, and Crystal Pite, conducted and accompanied by Adès at the piano, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Calder Quartet, soprano Anna Dennis, and violinist Thomas Gould. Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music is a production of Sadler’s Wells London.

 

Tickets for the 2015 White Light Festival are available online at WhiteLightFestival.org, by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or at the Avery Fisher or Alice Tully Hall box offices (Broadway and 65th Street). Ticket packages will be available for purchase beginning July 24. Single tickets will be available September 1. 

 

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

 

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“I could compare my music to white light which contains all colors.  Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.” - Arvo Pärt

 

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White Light Festival 2015 Presentations

Artists and Programs listed in Chronological Order

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, October 17, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Alice Tully Hall, Broadway at 65th Street

White Light Lounge follows each performance

The Schubert Cycles

Mark Padmore, tenor

Paul Lewis, piano

Sung in German with English supertitles

 

These recitals are also part of Lincoln Center Great Performers “Art of the Song” series.

 

Tenor Mark Padmore returns to the White Light Festival with fellow Englishman, pianist Paul Lewis, to open the Festival with recitals of the three Schubert song cycles: Die schöne Müllerin (October 14); Schwanengesang, paired with Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte (October 15); and Winterreise (October 17). The two artists have delved deeply into these extraordinary achievements of the song literature with acclaimed recitals and a triptych of recordings over the past five years.

 

“The tenor Mark Padmore and the pianist Paul Lewis are an ideal partnership in this greatest of song cycles,” wrote The Sunday Telegraph about their performance of Winterreise. Padmore has referred to Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, respectively, as “the Hamlet and King Lear of the repertoire,” and called Schwanengesang—the collection of Schubert’s final songs published after the composer’s death—“music of the most incredible generosity, totally lacking in self-pity, written by a man who knew he was dying but that is completely free from irony and bitterness.”

 

Mark Padmore was heralded in the opening performances of White Light Festival 2014, singing the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in a stunning, semi-staged production directed by Peter Sellars, with the Berliner Philharmoniker led by Sir Simon Rattle. The New York Times wrote that “(Padmore) sang with penetrating sound and ethereal beauty.”

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 at 7:30 pm

The Lovely Mill Maiden

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin, D.795

 

Schubert’s early masterpiece based on poems by the 19th-century German poet Wilhelm Müller is one of the most celebrated cycles in the vocal repertoire. Its 20 songs tell the story of a young man’s longing, insecurity, and great love, which turns to heartbreak, despair, and disillusionment. Padmore and Lewis’s recording of Die schöne Müllerin was released on Harmonia Mundi in 2014.

 

Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Swan Song

Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98

Schubert: Schwanengesang, D.957

 

Translated as “Swan Song,” Schubert’s posthumously released final collection extends a bridge to another plane through complex music of unearthly beauty, ranging from lighthearted to bone-chilling. Tenor Mark Padmore lends a “bodiless, yearning quality” (Telegraph U.K.) to these texts, accompanied by master interpreter Paul Lewis. On this program, the Schubert songs follow Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte (“To the distant beloved”), the first example of a “ring of songs,” which foreshadowed Schubert’s later mastery of the song cycle.

 

Saturday, October 17, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Winter Journey

Schubert: Winterreise, D.911

 

In the bleak landscape of Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey), outstanding British tenor Mark Padmore and fellow interpreter Paul Lewis become “two deeply thoughtful artists pushing each other ever onwards” (Gramophone). Schubert’s song cycle for voice and piano is one of the landmark creations of the Western musical canon. Written in 1827, the cycle sets 24 poems by the German poet Wilhelm Müller. Deeply existential and brooding in content and mood, Winterreise is eerily modern in its subject matter and outlook and has inspired a broad range of 20th-century and contemporary interpretations.

Later in the Festival are several events that focus on Samuel Beckett, who was profoundly influenced by the music of Schubert, and Winterreise in particular.  Beckett once described listening to recordings of Winterreise as “shivering through the grim journey again.”

 

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Friday, October 16, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway

White Light Lounge follows the performance

The Gloaming

Iarla Ó Lionáird, vocalist

Martin Hayes, fiddle

Thomas “Doveman” Bartlett, piano

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Hardanger d’Amore

Dennis Cahill, guitar

 

The acclaimed Irish group The Gloaming, which has been recognized for extending Irish and Celtic music traditions by balancing traditional rigor with an energy that is entirely modern, creates sparse, ephemeral meditations on the spaces between cultures, generations, darkness, and the light. The band comprises master fiddler Martin Hayes, sean-nós vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (who also plays the Hardanger d’Amore), guitarist Dennis Cahill, and New York pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett.  The Gloaming, which performed at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in 2013, returns for a rare New York appearance.  

 

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Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 7:30 pm 

James Memorial Chapel, Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway

White Light Lounge follows each performance

Heretical Angels (U.S. Premiere)

Dialogos  

Katarina Livljanic, voice and director

Albrecht Maurer, vielle and rebec

Norbert Rodenkirchen, flutes

Kantaduri

Joško Caleta, voice and director

Jure Miloš, voice, gusle, and dvojnice

Nikola Damjanovic, voice

Srecko Damjanovic, voice

Milivoj Rilov, voice

With English supertitles

 

In the Middle Ages, the lands that would become Bosnia and Herzegovina (which presently border Serbia and Croatia) were a melting pot of religions: Roman and Orthodox Catholics, Christian sects such as the Bogomils and, later, Muslims and Sephardic Jews intersected with long-held pagan beliefs. Musician and scholar Katarina Livljanic has researched and uncovered a wealth of medieval texts and liturgies written in Latin, Cyrillic, and Glagolitic script, as well as oral traditions left by all of these religions, to create a haunting and powerful music-theater work, Heretical Angels, for Dialogos. The piece unites voices and instruments in an evening of benedictions and maledictions, invocations of angels, exorcism of evil spirits, and prayers for safe births and easy deaths shaped by ancient pagan rituals and punctuated by dissonant polyphonic chants. Heretical Angels premiered at the 2014 International Dance Festival Birmingham, U.K.

 

There will be a post-performance talk with Katarina Livljanic on October 20 at Union Theological Seminary.

 

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Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm

Friday, October 23, 2015 at 8:00 pm

Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 8:00 pm

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 West 37th Street

White Light Lounge follows each performance

Inked and Murmur (U.S. Premiere)

Aakash Odedra, performer

 

Inked

Damien Jalet, choreographer

Loscil, music

Fabiana Piccioli, lighting design

Jean-Paul Lespagnard, costume design

 

Murmur

Aakash Odedra and Lewis Major, choreographers

Ars Electronica Futurelab, video technology development

Nicki Wells, music

Andrew Ellis, lighting design

 

Co-presented by Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival and Baryshnikov Arts Center

 

British choreographer and dancer Aakash Odedra, a master of classical Indian and contemporary dance, performs two intensely personal solo pieces in their U.S. premieres. In Inked (2014) by French-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet (a frequent collaborator with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and les ballets C de la B), Odedra takes inspiration from the ritual tattoos that adorned his grandmother’s skin, literal signs of protection that offered her a sense of belonging. Murmur (2014), a collaboration with Australian choreographer Lewis Major and Ars Electronica Futurelab, delves into the idea of warped and exaggerated realities, inspired by Odedra’s own dyslexia. Misconceptions about dyslexia are explored through visual design, light, sound, and movement.

 

“Light forms a single flat plane that causes Odedra’s undulating body to catch fire and glow whenever he comes into contact with it … he spins quietly and raptly, at accelerating speeds. It’s like a prayer.”—The Guardian (U.K.)

 

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Thursday, October 29, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Friday, October 30, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Gerald W. Lynch Theater, 524 West 59th Street

White Light Lounge follows each performance

Partita 2 (U.S. Premiere)

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, choreography and dancer

Boris Charmatz, dancer

Amandine Beyer, violin

Michel François, scenic design

Anne-Catherine Kunz, costume design

Rosas, production

Bach: Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004

 

Famed contemporary choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and French choreographer and renowned dancer Boris Charmatz, known for his large-scale, intense, and provocative works, collaborated on Partita 2 (2013), a duet named for its Bach score. The work, which explores the relationship of dance and music, is structured in three parts: first, the violinist plays, then the dancers dance in silence, and finally all three artists perform together. De Keersmaeker departs from her usual meticulous construction of dance, embracing Charmatz’s improvisatory instincts and whimsical flair. Bach’s composition is performed by violinist Amandine Beyer, whose presence on stage lends the dance a sense of humility and intimacy.

 

Endowment support for the White Light Festival presentation of Partita 2 is provided by
Blavatnik Family Foundation Fun for Dance.

 

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Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 7:00 pm (please note curtain time)

Alice Tully Hall, Broadway at 65th Street

White Light Lounge follows the performance

Theodora (in concert)

Les Arts Florissants

William Christie, conductor

Katherine Watson, Theodora

Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Irene

Philippe Jaroussky, Didymus

Kresimir Spicer, Septimius

Callum Thorpe, Valens

Handel: Theodora, HWV 68

 

This performance is also part of Lincoln Center Great Performers series.

 

Theodora, Handel’s favorite (and penultimate) oratorio—set in third-century Antioch at the time of Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians—is based on Robert Boyle’s 17th-century novel, The Martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus. The central characters are Theodora, a Christian woman, and Roman soldier Didymus, secretly a Christian and in love with her. The lovers are put to death by Valens, the Roman governor. American Record Guide, reviewing the 2003 recording by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants (Erato), calls the oratorio “a hymn to loving devotion, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, and it may be the most humane of all of Handel’s works.”

 

There will be a pre-concert lecture by Benjamin Sosland at 6:00 pm in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

 

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Sunday, November 1 at 5:00 pm

Alice Tully Hall, Broadway at 65th Street

White Light Lounge follows the performance

Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs: Prayer

Christine Brewer, soprano

Paul Jacobs, organ

Bach: Sinfonia from Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir, Cantata BWV 29

Bach: Bist du bei mir, BWV 508

Handel: But Oh! What Art Can Teach, from Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, HWV 76

Franck: Panis angelicus

Nadia Boulanger: Three Pieces for organ solo

Lili Boulanger: Pie Jesu

Puccini: Salve del ciel regina

Reger: Toccata and Fugue, from 12 Pieces, Op. 59

Wolf (arr. Reger): Nun wandre, Maria, from Geistliche Lieder

Wolf (arr. Reger): Führ mich, Kind, nach Bethlehem, from Geistliche Lieder

Wolf (arr. Reger): Gebet, from Mörike-Lieder

Gounod: Ave Maria

Gounod: Repentir

Widor: Toccata, from Symphony No. 5, Op. 42

 

This performance is also part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series.

 

American soprano Christine Brewer joins one of America’s foremost organists, Paul Jacobs, in this unique recital pairing, a program of sacred works for voice and organ as well as solo organ by Bach, Handel, Franck, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Puccini, and Reger. The program includes excerpts from Handel’s Ode to St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music; Franck’s setting of a hymn by Thomas Aquinas; and Wolf’s beloved Gebet (“Prayer”). The recital also features works by Lili and Nadia Boulanger, including the 24-year-old Lili’s celestial “Pie Jesu,” which she dictated from her death bed to her sister Nadia.

 

Alice Tully Hall is the only major concert hall in New York City with a pipe organ.  Originally installed in 1974 as a gift from Miss Alice Tully, the organ was designed and built by the Kuhn Organ Builders Ltd. of Switzerland.  Removed for the renovation of Alice Tully Hall, the 4,192-pipe organ with 85 ranks distributed in 61 speaking stops was lovingly re-installed in 2010 and re-voiced for the improved acoustics of the hall. Paul Jacobs played the first concert on the newly restored organ, performing Bach's monumental Clavier-Übung III as part of the inaugural White Light Festival in 2010. 

 

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November 2 - 10, 2015

Beckett Shorts

 

With his singular ability to unshackle language from convention, Samuel Beckett revealed an entirely new universe of drama and fiction in which human existence became an absurd exercise, driven by an incessant search for meaning. In Beckett Shorts, a new generation of exceptional Beckett interpreters strikes at the core of his prose, yielding three stunning works of ingenuity that seek, and often find, deliverance in the void.

 

Monday, November 2, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 West 64th Street (West Side YMCA)

White Light Lounge follows each performance

The End 

 Gare St. Lazare Ireland

Conor Lovett, actor

Judy Hegarty Lovett, director

 

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” —Samuel Beckett

 

In this solo performance based on Beckett’s 1946 short story The End, Irish actor Conor Lovett—“one of the world’s leading interpreters of the work,” says The Sunday Independent (U.K.)—portrays a derelict journeying literally and figuratively toward his own mundane end. Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, co-founder of Gare St. Lazare Ireland, this theatrical rendering depicts a man easing into the uncertainty of the human condition, approaching oblivion with humor as he describes his own banal demise with the precise detail of a poet.

 

Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Friday, November 6, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, November 7, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 West 64th Street (West Side YMCA)

White Light Lounge follows each performance

Here All Night (U.S. Premiere)

Gare St. Lazare Ireland

Conor Lovett, actor

Melanie Pappenheim, singer

Christopher Allan, cello

John-Paul Gandy, piano

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, fiddle

Judy Hegarty Lovett, director

Paul Clark, composer and musical director

 

The unparalleled Beckett champions of Gare St. Lazare Ireland present the U.S. premiere of a stunning new theatrical work for soprano and actor. In this clever mix of folk and high art, the ensemble incorporates music from Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt, as well as Beckett poems and texts set to original music by Paul Clark, with room for improvised fiddling by The Gloaming’s Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.

 

Saturday, November 7, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, 165 West 65th Street (10th Floor)
White Light Conversation: Language and Human Consciousness
John Schaefer, moderator
Joan La Barbara, composer
Colum McCann, author
other panelists and performers to be announced

 

Monday, November 9, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 W. 64th Street (West Side YMCA)

White Light Lounge follows each performance

No’s Knife (World Premiere)

Excerpts from Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett

Lisa Dwan, performer

Nicholas Johnson, director

 

“Lisa Dwan … is an instrument of Beckett, in that way saints and martyrs are said to be instruments of God.” —The New York Times 

 

Written in French in the early 1950s and published in English in 1966, Beckett referred to his Texts for Nothing as the “afterbirth” of his novel The Unnameable, a representation of how he “went on” after it was no longer possible to go on. These selections from the thirteen prose texts bring to life an often neglected part of Beckett’s canon, staging the desparate logic, fierce wit, and piercingly black humor of a voice that is searching, in the dark, for who it is and why it speaks. Here, Irish actor and “Beckett prodigy” (The New York Times) Lisa Dwan brings her penetrating vision to several of Beckett’s imagery-rich texts, offering her own answer to the question posed in Text #4: “Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it’s me?”

 

This world premiere features Lisa Dwan in her first collaboration with director Nicholas Johnson, founder of the Samuel Beckett Laboratory in Dublin.

 

 

Friday, November 13, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Bruno Walter Auditorium, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza (Entrance at Amsterdam Avenue and W. 65th Street)

Film: Waiting for Beckett—A Portrait of Samuel Beckett
Directed and produced for Global Village by John L. Reilly, produced by Melissa Shaw-Smith.
1994.
86 minutes.

 

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Saturday, November 14 at 7:30 pm

Alice Tully Hall, Broadway at 65th Street

White Light Lounge follows the performance

Last Soliloquy

Paul Lewis, piano

All-Beethoven program

Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109

Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110

Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111

 

This performance is also part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series.

 

Beethoven considered his last three sonatas a unified whole, and within them he conveys the depth and grandeur of the shared human experience. The sonatas make otherworldly demands on the performer, requiring a spiritual perceptiveness beyond the skill set of most technical virtuosos. Here they are performed by pianist Paul Lewis, “surely the finest Beethoven pianist of his generation” (International Record Review).

 

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Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Alice Tully Hall, Broadway at 65th Street

White Light Lounge follows each performance

A Love Supreme

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

Coltrane (arr. Marsalis): A Love Supreme

Pre-concert lecture on Tuesday, November 17 by Larry Blumenfeld at 6:30 pm

Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, 165 W. 65th Street (10th Floor)

 

One of the most revered jazz albums of all time, A Love Supreme is John Coltrane’s spiritual testament to his art and a hypnotic hymn to God. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis celebrates the 50th anniversary of this immortal recording by presenting a big-band arrangement of the four-part suite, which, in Marsalis’s words, “begins in the universal church and ends in the church of Negro spirituals.”

 

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Friday, November 20, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, November 21, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Sunday, November 22, 2015 at 3:00 pm

New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street

A Sadler’s Wells London Production

Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music (U.S. Premiere)

 

Outlier

Music by Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths

Wayne McGregor, choreographer

Thomas Adès, conductor

Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Thomas Gould, violin

Wayne McGregor and Lucy Carter, set design

Moritz Junge, costume design

Lucy Carter, lighting design

Dancers: Travis Clausen-Knight, Alvaro Dule, Mbulelo Ndabeni, Louis McMiller, Daniela Neugebauer, Anna Nowak, James Pett, Fukiko Takase, and Jessica Wright

 

Life Story

Music by Thomas Adès: Life Story

Karole Armitage, choreographer

Thomas Adès, piano

Anna Dennis, soprano

David Salle, costume design

Dancers: Ruka Hatua-Saar and Emily Wagner

 

The Grit in the Oyster

Music by Thomas Adès: Piano Quintet

Alexander Whitley, choreographer

Thomas Adès, piano

Calder Quartet

Jean-Marc Puissant, costume design

Lee Curran, lighting design

Dancers to be announced

 

Polaris

Music by Thomas Adès: Polaris

Crystal Pite, choreographer

Thomas Adès, conductor

Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Jay Gower Taylor, set design

Linda Chow, costume design

Tom Visser, lighting design

Dancers: Shay Kuebler, David Raymond, Cindy Salgado, Jermaine Spivey, Spenser Theberge, and Tiffany Tregarthen

With students from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance, Seán Curran, Chair

 

Presented in association with New York City Center

 

Never before has a single contemporary composer been celebrated by the world of dance as White Light Festival 2015 closes with the groundbreaking U.S. premiere of Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music, which illuminates the work of composer Thomas Adès, the “Stravinsky of our time” (The Daily Telegraph U.K.), through the creative vision of four of today’s most innovative choreographers. Collaborating with Adès, who will appear as conductor and pianist, are the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Calder Quartet, soprano Anna Dennis and violinist Thomas Gould. Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music was originally produced by Sadler’s Wells London.

 

The evening opens with Wayne McGregor’s Outlier (2010), choreographed to Adès’s violin concerto Concentric Paths. The choreography for Outlier was originally created for the New York City Ballet, and is presented at the White Light Festival in a U.S. premiere production with nine dancers from Wayne McGregor¦Random Dance. Thomas Adès conducts the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with Thomas Gould on violin.

 

Karole Armitage’s beautiful Life Story (1999), set to the voice and piano piece composed by Adès in 1993, is based on the Tennessee Williams short story of the same name. Karole Armitage is renowned for pushing boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music, and art. Originally created for Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans of New York City Ballet, the piece will be performed by two dancers of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company, accompanied by soprano Anna Dennis and Thomas Adès on piano.

 

Alexander Whitley’s The Grit in the Oyster (2014) is a sensuous piece for three dancers set to Adès’s Piano Quintet, performed by the Calder Quartet and Thomas Adès on piano. Whitley seeks to explore new ground in bringing together his dance background with his studies in philosophy to make physically and intellectually rigorous work.

 

The evening ends with Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite’s epic Polaris (2014), a “Voyage for Orchestra” composed by Adès in 2010. Polaris—heralded in its world premiere as the next Rite of Spring—is a unique collaboration featuring six dancers from Pite’s Vancouver-based company, Kidd Pivot, and 60 dance students from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance, Seán Curran, chair. The score will be performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Thomas Adès.

 

 

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About the Artists (in chronological order by project)

 

The Schubert Cycles

October 14, 15, 17

 

Tenor Mark Padmore has long enjoyed a flourishing career on the world’s leading opera, concert, and recital stages and is acclaimed for his performances of the Baroque repertoire. He triumphed in the role of the Evangelist in the 2014 White Light Festival presentation of Peter Sellars’s St. Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Park Avenue Armory. Padmore’s first Great Performers appearance was in 1992 with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, and he has returned often to Lincoln Center, most recently in 2009 for a recital as part of the re-opening of Alice Tully Hall and for the U.S. premiere of One Evening, Katie Mitchell’s re-imagining of Schubert’s Winterreise with the texts of Samuel Beckett. Padmore and his frequent recital partner, pianist Paul Lewis, continued their exploration of the works for the next five years in a series of recitals and three recordings released on Harmonia Mundi. The pair’s Winterreise CD was the first release in the cycle (2009) and received numerous awards for vocal recording of the year, including the 2010 Gramophone Magazine Award.  markpadmore.com

 

Paul Lewis made his U.S. recital debut at Lincoln Center in 2002 on the Great Performers “Sunday Mornings” series, and has since appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival and on the Great Performers “Symphonic Masters” series as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra. He also electrified audiences with his performances of works by Schubert at the 2012 White Light Festival and at a 2013 Mostly Mozart Festival late-night concert. paullewispiano.co.uk

 

The Gloaming

October 16

 

Formed in Ireland in 2011, The Gloaming has played to sold-out houses across the U.K. and Europe and in some of the world’s most prestigious venues. The band comprises master fiddler Martin Hayes, sean-nós vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, multi-instrumentalist Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, guitarist Dennis Cahill, and New York pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett. The Gloaming appeared at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in 2013, collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. thegloaming.net

 

Heretical Angels

October 20, 21

 

Dialogos, founded and directed by Katarina Livljanic, has been heralded for projects that link new musicological research with an innovative approach to medieval music performance, a theatrical dimension, and an expressive musicality. The group has been acclaimed by critics across the globe and has performed on radio, television, and in prestigious concert halls and festivals worldwide. Dialogos was an ensemble-in-residence at the Royaumont Foundation from 2011-2014. ensemble-dialogos.org

 

Katarina Livljanic, singer and musicologist, is a specialist in medieval chant performance. Born on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, she became a medieval music performer at a very early age, training at the Zagreb Music Academy before moving to France to study voice (with Guillemette Laurens and Glenn Chambers) and musicology (with Marie-Noël Colette). She directs the vocal ensemble Dialogos, specializing in medieval chant and liturgical theater of the Glagolitic tradition. She was decorated for cultural achievement in 2002 by the president of Croatia and is currently Maître de conferences in medieval music at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where she co-directs a medieval music performance Master’s program. Her adaptation of 16th-century Croatian poet Marko Marulic’s poem of the biblical tale of Judith, set to a reconstruction of Dalmatian music of the era and performed by Dialogos on period instruments, was a highlight of the inaugural 2010 White Light Festival.  ensemble-dialogos.org

 

Kantaduri is an esmble of five traditional singers coming from different areas of Croatian Dalmatia. They are the witnesses of the richness of popular traditions in that region. Joško Caleta is an associate of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated from the University of Zagreb and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His main research interest is the musical anthropology of the Mediterranean and Dalmatian hinterland. Beside his research work, he is also an active singer, arranger, conductor, and composer in the traditional klapa style.

 

 Inked and Murmur

October 22, 23, 24

 

Aakash Odedra was born in Birmingham, U.K., and trained in the classical Indian dance styles of Kathak and Bharata Natyam. He was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age and turned to dance as a means of self-expression. He formed Aakash Odedra Company in 2011 as a vehicle for commissioning solos and to develop his own choreographic work. His debut, Rising, featured new short works created for him by Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Russell Maliphant. Odedra’s choreography credits include Get on the Good Foot, choreographed for James Brown at the Apollo Theater in New York, the opera God’s Little Soldier, Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, and the closing of the London Cultural Olympiad in 2012. He won a 2014 Bessie Award as Outstanding Performer for James Brown: Get on the Good Foot.

Inked and Murmur premiered at the 2014 International Dance Festival in Birmingham, U.K. aakashodedra.co.uk

 

Lewis Major is an Australian choreographer and dance artist based in the United Kingdom, France, and Australia. His work is invested in the potential of choreography and performance to inform cultural discourse and enable affective experiences. He co-founded the Amsterdam-based performance collective ARTED and worked with Stichting Fields of Wonder before joining Aakash Odedra Company as a founding member.  Lewis has since worked with some of the luminaries of European contemporary dance including Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Akram Khan. Lewis’s work is characterized by a unique approach to flow and energy and an ongoing exploration of the relationship between theater, movement, light, sound, and technology. He has built a relationship with Austrian-based technology arts atelier, Ars Electronica Futurelab, and has created two works with them alongside Aakash Odedra. lewismajor.info/about/.

Damien Jalet is a French and Belgian choreographer and performer. Jalet danced with choreographers Ted Stoffer and Christine De Smedt and in 2000 began an intense collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui as his artistic partner within the company les ballets C de la B. The many works they have created include Rien de rien (2000), Foi (2003), d’avant (2005), Babel (2010), and several pieces influenced by Japanese culture and its treatment of individuality. damienjalet.com

 

Partita 2

October 29, 30

 

Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s career was launched with two acclaimed premieres in 1982 and 1983: Fase (French), a duet in four movements to the music of Steve Reich, and Rosas danst Rosas, which inspired the name of her dance company Rosas. These first two productions were international breakthroughs for the choreographer and marked Belgium’s emergence as a force on the international dance scene. From 1992 to 2007, De Keersmaeker was resident choreographer at Brussels’s Théâtre de la Monnaie / Muntschouwburg. In 1995, Rosas and La Monnaie / De Munt jointly started the international educational project P.A.R.T.S., Performing Arts Research and Training Studios, directed by De Keersmaeker. Today, the dance school offers a four-year multi-disciplinary curriculum and hosts talented students from all over the world. rosas.be

 

The White Light Festival 2015 engagement marks a return to Lincoln Center for Rosas. Lincoln Center Festival 2014 featured a retrospective of De Keersmaeker’s early works. Rosas also appeared at the 2004 Mostly Mozart Festival.

 

Renowned French dancer, choreographer, and provocateur Boris Charmatz seeks to enlarge established perceptions of dance and performance. He is director of the National Choreographic Centre in Rennes, France, which he renamed Musée de la danse as a challenge to the definition of a museum. Since then, the institution has regularly invited contemporary artists and thinkers from many disciplines to work together on new forms and formats, providing a platform for expression and creativity on the international dance scene. His most recent work, manger, premiered at Sadler’s Wells in London in May 2015. His works have been seen internationally, and he has developed many improvisational formats and dance workshops with students and children. borischarmatz.org

 

It was in Aix­ en­ Provence that Amandine Beyer began studying music at the age of four: recorder followed by violin. After completing her studies of "modern violin" at the Paris Conservatory and having written a master's degree on K. Stockhausen, she found the path of early music, and studied in Basel with Chiara Banchini. She played several years in the medieval ensemble, Mala Punica. She currently divides her time between the groups in which she participates: les Cornets Noirs, duos with Pierre Hantai, Kristian Bezuidenhout or Laurance Beyer, and her own ensemble: Gli Incogniti, all the while while keeping a special place for teaching at the ESMAE in Portugal, as well as master classes all over the world. Since 2010, she has taught baroque violin at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel.

 

Her 2012 solo recording of Bach’s Sonatas & Partitas was awarded the Diapason D’Or de l’année, Choc de Classica de l’anne´´e, Prix de l’Acade´´mie Charles Cros, and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice. 

 

Theodora

October 31

 

Theodora was one of William Christie’s earliest forays into Handel’s music. He led the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the now-legendary 1996 performances of Peter Sellars’s controversial staging at the Glyndebourne Festival, with Dawn Upshaw, David Daniels, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Theodora’s friend Irene. The American-born Christie, a harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist, and teacher, founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979 to re-awaken interest in French Baroque music. Opera-ballets and operas by Charpentier, Lully, Rameau, and other 17th- and 18th-century French composers were the focus of his early triumphs.  After Glyndebourne, he led performances of Theodora with Les Arts Florissants and in 2003 released a much-praised recording with the ensemble. Christie’s acclaim now runs a wide-ranging repertoire from works of Monteverdi, Rossi, Scarlatti, and Landi to Purcell, Handel, Mozart, and Haydn. Since 2007 he has been artist-in-residence at Lincoln Center’s Juilliard School, where he gives master classes twice a year accompanied by the musicians of Les Arts Florissants.

 

Regular visitors to Lincoln Center, Les Arts Florissants made its Lincoln Center debut as part of 1983’s Great Performers series in the “Music on Original Instruments” series and was last seen in 2015’s Great Performers with William Christie leading the young musicians of Le Jardin des Voix in a program of rarely-performed 16th- to 18th-century Italian works. In January 2015, Les Arts Florissants took part in the inaugural concerts for the Philharmonie de Paris, the new concert hall designed by Jean Nouvel as the home of Orchestre de Paris, where Les Arts Florissants will be artists-in-residence. arts-florissants.com

 

Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs: Prayer

November 1

 

Christine Brewer made her New York recital debut on Lincoln Center’s 1985 Great Performers series. “One of the most impressive voices of our day,” is how the Los Angeles Times described her. The golden-toned American soprano is an acclaimed Wagnerian and dedicated recitalist.  She sang the role of Isolde in Lincoln Center’s 2007 Great Performers “New Visions” presentation of The Tristan Project, the Peter Sellars and Bill Viola staging of the Wagner work performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her last “Art of the Song” appearance, with pianist Craig Rutenberg, was a recital of American music in 2012. Opera News, writing about her opening song by Barber, called it “a thing of beauty…its combination of warmth and power unparalleled among contemporary sopranos.” christinebrewer.com

 

Organist Paul Jacobs’s performances of new works and core recital and symphonic repertoire have transfixed audiences and critics alike. The New Yorker called him “one of the major musicians of our time” and The Washington Post said he is “one of the great living virtuosos.”  Chairman of the organ department at The Juilliard School since 2004, Jacobs maintains a busy schedule of orchestra and recital appearances. His 2014-2015 season included a debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. Jacobs’s 2010 Naxos recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint-Sacrement received the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Solo Instrumental, the first ever for a solo organ performance.  In 2010, Jacobs gave the inaugural, sold-out concert with the refurbished Kuhn organ in the new Alice Tully Hall, performing Bach’s complete, monumental Clavier-Übung III, entirely from memory, as part of Lincoln Center’s first White Light Festival. pauljacobsorgan.com

 

Beckett Shorts

November 2 - 10

 

The Dublin-based Gare St. Lazare Ireland, founded in 1983, is run by director Judy Hegarty Lovett and actor Conor Lovett. The company has a repertory of 17 Beckett titles, a solo adaptation of Moby Dick and new plays by Michael Harding and Will Eno, and has represented Irish culture in more venues worldwide than any other Irish theater company. Its production of Will Eno’s Title and Deed (produced in association with the Signature Theatre) was one of The New York Times and The New Yorker’s top ten best shows of 2012. garestlazareireland.com

 

Irish actress Lisa Dwan starred on television and film before she rose to instant acclaim in Beckett’s Not I, one of the master’s most difficult plays. Dwan garnered ecstatic reviews for her performance as a woman reduced to a mere mouth, suspended in total darkness, who seeks comfort in her own broken speech.  She repeated her acclaimed performance in the U.K. at the Royal Court Theatre and in the West End and most recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

 

Conversation - John Schaefer
November 7

John Schaefer has hosted Soundcheck since the show’s inception in 2002. He has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 (“The No. 1 radio show for the Global Village” - Billboard) and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986.

 

Schaefer has written extensively about music, including the book New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music (Harper & Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); The Cambridge Companion to Singing: World Music (Cambridge University Press, U.K., 2000); and the TV program Bravo Profile: Bobby McFerrin (Bravo Television, 2003). He was contributing editor for Spin and Ear magazines, and his liner notes appear on more than 100 recordings, ranging from “The Music of Cambodia” to recordings by Yo-Yo Ma and Terry Riley. 

 

In 2003, Schaefer was honored with the American Music Center's prestigious Letter of Distinction for his "substantial contributions to advancing the field of contemporary American music in the United States and abroad." In May 2006, New York magazine cited Schaefer as one of "the people whose ideas, power, and sheer will are changing New York" in its Influentials issue. He began blogging for WNYC when accompanying the New York Philharmonic on its historic (and apparently very weird) trip to North Korea in 2008 and continues to blog at soundcheck.org.

 

He is a regular contributor to the World Science Festival and the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center; he has also written about horse racing (Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, Vintage NY 2006) and was a regular panelist on the BBC’s soccer-based program Sports World.

Paul Lewis

November 14

 

Paul Lewis made his U.S. recital debut in 2002 on the Great Performers “Sunday Mornings” series and was heard in solo recital in the 2012 White Light Festival. He and violinist Lisa Batiashvili performed works of Schubert, Bach, and Beethoven at Wigmore Hall, then toured Canada and the U.S., including a Great Performers concert in March at Alice Tully Hall. Lewis has also appeared with the Mostly Mozart Festival and on “Symphonic Masters” as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra. He electrified audiences with his performances of Schubert works at the 2012 White Light Festival and in a 2013 Mostly Mozart Festival late-night concert. paullewispiano.co.uk

A Love Supreme

November 17, 18

 

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, boasting 15 of today’s finest jazz soloists and ensemble players, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1987. Featured in all aspects of the organization’s programming, the remarkably versatile Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs and leads concert and educational events in New York, across the U.S., and around the world, with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, local students, and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists. Education is a major part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission, and its educational activities are coordinated with concerts and the orchestra’s tour programming.  Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, the Orchestra spends over half of the year on tour and performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works by guest artists and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members.  jalc.org

 

Wynton Marsalis is the Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.  He is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer, bandleader, and educator and a leading advocate of American culture.  Born in New Orleans, he made his recording debut as a leader in 1982 and his more than 70 jazz and classical recordings have won nine Grammy Awards. Marsalis became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields, which was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.  By creating and performing an expansive range of brilliant new music for a variety of quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, tap dance to ballet, Marsalis has expanded the vocabulary for jazz and created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.  He helped lead the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home—Frederick P. Rose Hall—the first performance, education, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, which opened in October 2004. Marsalis appeared at the 1994 Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival in Mass for the 21st Century, with Cissy Houston and 200 Voices, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performed at Midsummer Night Swing in 2013. wyntonmarsalis.org

 

Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music

November 20, 21, 22

 

Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano, composition, and percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at King's College, Cambridge. In 1993, he made his recital debut as pianist and composer at the Park Lane Group in London. His operas include Powder Her Face and The Tempest.  In September 2005, his violin concerto Concentric Paths, written for Anthony Marwood, premiered at the Berliner Festspiele and the BBC Proms, conducted by the composer with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. His second orchestral work for Simon Rattle, Tevot (2007), was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, which appointed Adès to the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair and featured him as composer, conductor, and pianist throughout Carnegie Hall’s 2007-2008 season. Adès is also a renowned interpreter of a range of music as conductor and pianist and has led major orchestras throughout the U.K. and worldwide.  Adès has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Grawemeyer Award (2000), becoming the prize’s youngest-ever recipient. He is the only composer to have won the Royal Philharmonic Prize for large-scale composition three times. thomasades.com

 

Thomas Gould performs as soloist with orchestras worldwide, collaborating with conductors such as John Adams, Thomas Adès, Nicholas Collon, Paul Daniel, and Edward Gardner. The Guardian (U.K.) called him “one of a new generation of classical musicians who refused to be defined by a single genre” and London’s Evening Standard said he was “one of the most talented and charismatic British violinists of the younger generation.”

 

The Calder Quartet, called “outstanding” and “superb” by The New York Times, performs a broad range of repertoire at an exceptional level. The group’s distinctive approach is exemplified by a musical curiosity brought to everything it performs, whether it’s Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, or sold-out rock shows with bands like The National and The Airborne Toxic Event. Winners of the 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet is known for the discovery, commissioning, recording, and mentoring of some of today’s outstanding emerging composers (with over 25 commissioned works to date). The group continues to work and collaborate with artists across a wide range of musical genres, as well as rock and visual arts, and in venues ranging from art galleries and rock clubs to Carnegie and Walt Disney concert halls. Inspired by innovative American artist Alexander Calder, the quartet’s desire to bring immediacy and context to the works it performs creates an artfully crafted musical experience. The quartet, which previously appeared at Lincoln Center in 2012 for Great Performers, performed works by Adès and Beethoven at Mostly Mozart Festival in 2013.  calderquartet.com

 

Soprano Anna Dennis studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Noelle Barker. Notable concert performances have included Britten’s War Requiem at the Berlin Philharmonie,  a program of Russian operatic arias with Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco, and Handel’s Joshua with Laurence Cummings at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, to name a few. Her BBC Proms appearances include performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

 

Dennis twice created title roles in new operas at the Almeida Theatre - The Girl of Sand and Ariadne, both composed by Elena Langer, and more recent opera roles include: Emira/Handel’s Siroe (with Laurence Cummings, Göttingen Händel Festspiele), Paride/Gluck’s Paride ed Elena (with Andreas Spering, Nuremberg Opera House) Katherine Dee/Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee (English National Opera), and Ilia/Mozart’s Idomeneo and l’Ingrata/Monteverdi’s Ballo delle Ingrate, both directed by Graham Vick (Birmingham Opera Company), to name a few.

 

Upcoming engagements include concerts with the Gabrieli Consort at Wigmore Hall in London, performances at the Göttingen International Handel Festival, a concert of with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a production of Andrea Chenier with Opera North, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in Lisbon with the Gulbenkian Orchestra.

 

Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) regularly collaborates with the world’s greatest artists and performs approximately 70 concerts each year, including its Carnegie Hall Orchestra Series, Chamber Music Series at the Morgan Library & Museum and Brooklyn Museum, and summer residency at Caramoor Music Festival. OSL has commissioned more than 50 new works; has given more than 170 world, U.S., and New York City premieres; and appears on more than 100 recordings, including four Grammy Award-winning albums and seven releases on its own label, St. Luke’s Collection. Pablo Heras-Casado, named 2014 Conductor of the Year by Musical America, is OSL’s principal conductor. OSL began as a chamber ensemble based at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village. Today, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble consists of 21 virtuoso artists who perform a diverse repertoire and make up OSL’s artistic core.

 

OSL owns and operates the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in midtown Manhattan. The Center has welcomed more than 50,000 visitors, including more than 300 ensembles and artists for rehearsal and recording. OSL hosts hundreds of neighbors, families, and school children at its home each year for free community events. Through its Community & Education programs, OSL has introduced audiences across New York City to live classical music. OSL brings free chamber concerts to the five boroughs; offers free, interactive events at the DiMenna Center; provides chamber music coaching for adult amateurs; and engages 10,000 public school students each year through its Free School Concerts. In 2013 OSL launched Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), an intensive instrumental coaching program emphasizing musical excellence and social development.

 

Wayne McGregor is a multi-award-winning British choreographer and director, internationally renowned for his physically challenging choreography and groundbreaking collaborations across dance, film, music, visual art, technology, and science. His AtaXia had its U.S. premiere at the 2005 Lincoln Center Festival. He founded Wayne McGregor | Random Dance in 1992. McGregor has created innovative new work with world-class artists and has collaborated with science and technology communities to create new works mined from radical cognitive research processes, inspired by the interface of science and art. In January 2011, he was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for Services to Dance. randomdance.org

 

Karole Armitage is the artistic director of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company, founded in 2004. The company made its Lincoln Center debut at 2008 Lincoln Center Out of Doors with the U.S. premiere of Summer of Love, a collaboration with Burkina Electric. Armitage was rigorously trained in classical ballet and began her professional career as a member of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, a company devoted exclusively to the repertory of George Balanchine. In 1976, she was invited to join Merce Cunningham's company, where she remained for five years, performing leading roles in Cunningham's landmark works. Through her unique and acute knowledge of the aesthetic values of Balanchine and Cunningham, Armitage has created her own voice in contemporary dance and is regarded by some critics as the true choreographic heir to those two masters of 20th century American dance. She has choreographed the Broadway musicals Passing Strange and Hair (Tony Award nomination), videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, several Merchant Ivory films, and Cirque du Soleil’s 2012 Amaluna. In 2009, she was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s most prestigious award.  armitagegonedance.org

 

London-based choreographer Alexander Whitley has created work for several of the U.K.’s leading companies including the Royal Ballet, Rambert, BalletBoyz, and Birmingham Royal Ballet.  Whitley is a New Wave associate artist at Sadler’s Wells Theatre and an associate artist at DanceEast. His company Alexander Whitley Dance Company is an associate of Rambert, Britain’s oldest dance company. Whitley danced in Enigma Variations with Birmingham Royal Ballet for the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival. alexanderwhitley.com

 

Born and raised on the Canadian west coast, choreographer and dancer Crystal Pite is a former company member of Ballet British Columbia and William Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt. In 2002, she formed Kidd Pivot in Vancouver. Integrating movement, original music, text, and rich visual design, Kidd Pivot’s performance work is assembled with recklessness and rigor, balancing formal movement with irreverence and risk.  Pite is associate choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater and was recently appointed as a Sadler’s Wells associate artist. kiddpivot.org.

 

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White Light Festival is a presentation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA), which serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 series, festivals, and programs including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Artist Program, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Books, Lincoln Center Dialogue, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Lincoln Center Vera List Art Project, Midsummer Night Swing, Martin E. Segal Awards, Meet the Artist, Mostly Mozart Festival, Target Free Thursdays, and White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and the 11 resident organizations. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed in October 2012.

 

Lincoln Center is committed to providing and improving accessibility for people with disabilities. For information, call the Department of Programs and Services for People with Disabilities at 212.875.5375.

 

Programs, artists, and prices are subject to change.

 

Endowment support is provided by the American Express Cultural Preservation Fund

 

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