2010/2011 Season:
| Jan 11, 2011 Hannah Tinti Joins Selected Shorts Radio Show |
| Sep 7, 2010 Sonidos: Symphony Space Gears Up for Its Season-Long Celebration of Latino Culture |
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The 2008/2009 season at Symphony Space expands upon last year’s extensive array of music programming. Beginning September 18 with the Joan Tower 70th birthday celebration, which is part of Inside the Masterpieces series, and continuing with performances by Anthony Braxton, Robyn Hitchcock and ETHEL, among others, the upcoming season of Music programming at Symphony Space explores classical, jazz, pop, new music in exciting ways.
The Inside the Masterpieces series finds Symphony Space celebrating the 100th birthday of composer Olivier Messiaen with performances of Visions de l’Amen by award-winning pianists Ursula Oppens and Jerome Lowenthaland Le Merle Noir(“The Blackbird”) and Quartet for the End of Time by the New Millennium Ensemble on November 6. Oppens also performs a program of Beethoven and Corigliano works as part of the series as it continues into 2009. Inside The Masterpieces will mark the 70 birthday of composer Joan Tower with three concerts by the Cassatt Quartet, each featuring a Tower quartet, a repertoire masterpiece that has inspired her and a world premiere by a contemporary composer. Additionally, on January 23, Inside The Masterpieces welcomes Grammy Award-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin in a new collaboration with six-time CMA Musician of the Year Mark O’Connor.
The Jazz Spectrum series starts October 24 and will include the Creative Music Studio Celebration featuring Anthony Braxton, Graham Haynes and Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra as well as Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. Picking up where last year’s popular program left off, Jazz Spectrum presents a broad selection of today’s jazz.
The Adventurers series, which begins November 22, sheds light on one-of-a-kind voices in music. English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, who got his start with legendary `80s punk/new wave band the Soft Boys, will perform a rare New York concert to open the series. The Adventurers also welcomes up-and-coming toy pianist Phyllis Chen on January 22 and acclaimed amplified string quartet ETHEL back for the third year with ETHEL Fair 2009 on April 30.
The 1939 Project, a multidisciplinary festival examining that crucial year in American arts, will include The Best Music of 1939 series in February. Featuring the best in piano masterpieces, film scores, chamber music and more, the series includes concerts like Great Film Scores of 1939—including Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz—and the Chamber Music of 1939—from Bartók to Barber.
This year Symphony Space’s annual free music marathon comes home with Wall to Wall Broadway: “The Street Where We Live” on March 16. The American Symphony Orchestra returns for the second year with ClassicsDeclassified on September 21, February 8, April 19 and April 21, while the World Music Institute brings a variety of traditional and modern music and dance programs from around the globe. During the holidays, the Symphony Space All-Stars, organized by flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and harpsichordist Bradley Brookshire, will continue the New York holiday tradition of presenting Brandenburg Concertos with Basically Brandenburg on December 19.
Symphony Space’s family series Just Kidding always brings the best and most sophisticated in the world of entertainment for children, each and every Saturday. This year is no exception with the kick-off concert by critically acclaimed Caribbean artist and Dan Zanes and Friends veteran Father Goose, whose high-energy brand of traditional songs-meets-dancehall is making waves in the kids’ rock scene. Also performing this year will be the ever-popular folk singer Elizabeth Mitchell and new buzz band, the punk rock pirates Captain Bogg and Salty, playing their New York debut. Well-known kids favorites Ralph’s World, Bubble and Friends Do The Beatles, Justin Roberts, and the Sippy Cups will appear as part of Just Kidding.
After a 2007/2008 season of packed houses and sold-out screenings, Symphony Space and Emerging Pictures are teaming up for a second season of their highly successful Opera On Film series beginning September 14 with Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and continuing through April 2009. The series brings high-definition digital cinema presentations of great Italian operas staged both in the current season and last season at a number of Europe’s famed opera houses including Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (La Scala), Venice’s Teatro la Fenice, Florence’s Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Salzburg Festspielhaus among others. Last season the series garnered critical notice from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Sun, among others. Symphony Space is the exclusive Manhattan location for Opera on Film screenings.
This season Symphony Space celebrates its 31st year of presenting an outstanding array of performing arts to New Yorkers. When Symphony Space opened its doors in 1978 with its first production, Wall To Wall Bach, it gathered together an eclectic group of musicians, professional and amateur, well-known and emerging. What began as a natural outgrowth of the cultural epicenter that is the Upper West Side, traditionally home to many of the great actors, writers, dancers and musicians of our time, remains a unique melding of world-class artistry with the informality and intimacy of a neighborhood salon.
