Concerts from the Library of Congress (2019-2020)
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CONCERTS CONCERTS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SEASON 95 2019-2020 loc.gov/concerts VISION & LEGACY Concerts from the Library of Congress returns for a A May mini-fest salutes an original American voice, composer and spectacular 95th season, packedSEASON with an impressive pianist Billy Strayhorn, in concerts for big band 95and the Bill Charlap and richly diverse roster of more than 95 free events: Trio plus Jon Faddis and Cécile McLorin Salvant, complemented by concerts, lectures, films, panels, conversations with filmscreenings and a symposium. Other jazz luminaries—musicians, artists, and more. scholars and filmmakers—include composer-performers Chucho Valdés, Oliver Lake and drummer, bandleader and three-time GRAMMY winner Throughout this season, our concerts will celebrate Terri Lyne Carrington. extraordinary women: performers, composers and donors. The striking young woman on our cover, From October to July, we present an exceptional group of chamber Leonora Jackson McKim, was all three. Her bold, direct orchestras performing music both old and new, including Concerto Kö ln, gaze shows the confidence of a brilliant American the International Contemporary Ensemble, Asko | Sch nberg, the Sphinx violinist who won international acclaim making her Virtuosi and the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Unique programs in dance, debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at age 18. As artist pop and music theater offer the chance to engage with manuscripts, and philanthropist, her vision created a vibrant legacy musicians, artifacts and ideas. Designed to invigorate and intrigue, these at the Library, an endowment that has funded more are experiences that can only be found at the Library of Congress. than 80 commissions for violin and piano. Can you afford to miss them? Vision & Legacy is our season theme for a remarkable lineup of major soloists: Midori, Leila Josefowicz, Miranda Cuckson—and that’s just the violinists—violist Tabea Zimmermann, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, and many others. Composers Tamar Diesendruck and PLAYLIST Suzanne Farrin will introduce the world premieres of their new Library commissions. 2 SEASON 95 Two adventurous festivals offer 4 A LEGACY OF GIVING immersive encounters with 6 FALL CONCERTS EN AT 250 treasures from the Library’s music OV collections. Beethoven at 250 32 COUNTERPOINTS TH launches in February and runs E through 2020, opening with the E 42 BEETHOVEN AT 250 B Phaeton Trio and featuring the Takács Quartet and the stellar 44 SPRING CONCERTS Freiburg Baroque Orchestra with fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout 82 SEASON AT A GLANCE and violinist Isabelle Faust in a 83 TICKETING 2 special July concert. 3 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, our founding benefactor, built the Library’s superb concert hall and endowed the concert series, inaugurating a distinguished commissioning tradition and establishing the Library as a presenter on the international stage. Her prescient focus on sound and technology ensured the exceptional acoustics of the Coolidge Auditorium and initiated a decades-long broadcast series that created an audience for chamber music across America. A LEGACY Gertrude Clarke Whittall’s vision for the concert series also encompassed a number of rich gifts: the incomparable Stradivari instruments, the handsome Whittall Pavilion, Coolidge and a foundation that supported not only concerts but the purchase of a treasure trove of holograph manuscripts by J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and others. She also endowed the Library’s Poetry and OF GIVING Literature Foundation. In our 95-year Leonora Jackson McKim was acknowledged as a violin virtuoso in Europe and America while still in her history, the major teens. She achieved a degree of recognition rare for any American artist of her time. Her McKim Fund has donors to the commissioned more than 80 works for violin and piano Library’s concert from American composers. Whittall series have been Carolyn Royall Just practiced law in the District of Columbia for nearly fifty years. A violist and women. Each one GIVE enthusiastic amateur chamber musician, she enjoyed meeting new musical partners in her extensive travels. Her bequest has supported had a compelling st ONLINE classical music concerts from the Baroque to the 21 century. vision for the role loc.gov/ concerts/ Dina Koston, an accomplished pianist and composer, studied with of the Library supportus major figures like Mieczysław Horszowski, Nadia or contact Boulanger and Luciano Berio. She was a significant Jan Lauridsen, McKim of Congress in Assistant Chief, figure in the musical life of the nation’s capital, a Music Division forceful advocate for new music who co-founded and at 202-707-5503 | American cultural [email protected] co-directed the Theater Chamber Players with Leon Fleisher. life and gave Dynamic, creative and forward-thinking, these generously to benefactors established funds that helped to shape, make it a reality. sustain and support the Library’s concerts for more than nine decades. Their vision has become our legacy. Koston FORWARD-THINKING 4 CREATIVE DYNAMIC 5 SATURDAY SATURDAY OPENING NIGHT! OCT 12 8:00 PM CHUCHO VALDÉS: Coolidge Auditorium JAZZ BATÁ One of the most influential jazz figures of the past half century, the prodigious Cuban pianist, composer and bandleader Chucho Valdés opens our spectacular 2019-2020 season. Valdés summons the spirits of many musical cultures with Jazz Batá, an “incendiary, percussion-rich” (SF Jazz) mix melding Yoruban sacred music from West Africa, Cuban dance rhythms and jazz influences both vintage and avant-garde. Here the tall, hourglass- shaped batá drums used in Santería ceremonies evoke ancestors including Ravel, Miles Davis and Cecil Taylor. And from the golden age of Havana’s music in the 1950s, a danzón mambo recalls a tune played by Valdés’ father, Ramon “Bebo” Valdés. Winner of six GRAMMYs and three Latin GRAMMYs, Chucho Valdés is “a pianist of imperial command, possessed of a dazzling, deceptively casual virtuosity” (New York Times). Presented through the generous support of the Revada Foundation of the Logan Family REVADA ~ (I !I tl D A l I O 11 Valdés Friedman credit:Photo Carol 6 @librarycongress 7 WEDNESDAY OCT 16 FRETWORK 8:00 PM ASAKO MORIKAWA, JOANNA LEVINE, SAM STADLEN, Coolidge Auditorium EMILY ASHTON AND RICHARD BOOTHBY, VIOLS WITH IESTYN DAVIES COUNTERTENOR PROGRAM PRE-CONCERT These stars of the early music world dazzle in a striking range of Conversation with the repertoire spanning four centuries. You’ll hear English masters old BYRD Artists and new: pieces by Byrd, Purcell and Jenkins from the heyday of the “My mind to me” Whittall Pavilion, 6:30 PM Fantasia “Two parts in one” viol to songs by Michael Nyman. Arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare “Ye Sacred Muses” and a “vocal concerto” by Johann Christoph Bach offer a spotlight “In Nomine” for a singer of “rapturous virtuosity and uncanny beauty” (The VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Independent). Partnering with “the finest viol consort on the planet” “The Sky Above” (Evening Standard, London), Davies conjures breathtaking colors and “Silent Noon” timbres: a palette perfect for a moment in the sunlit stillness of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Silent Noon”. GIBBONS Fantasia in Four Parts J.C. BACH Lamento GESUALDO “Beltà poi che t’assenti” “Dolcissima mia vita” “Sparge la notte” LAWES Consort Set in A minor Fantazy, Fantazy, Aire NYMAN “If” “Why” JENKINS credit:Photo Chris Sorensen Fantasia in Five Parts Davies HANDEL “Già l’ebro mio ciglio” Passacaille “Pianger” 8 Fretwork 9 FRIDAY FRIDAY OCT 18 AROD QUARTET 8:00 PM JORDAN VICTORIA and ALEXANDRE VU, VIOLINS Coolidge Auditorium TANGUY PARISOT, VIOLA SAMY RACHID, CELLO The young Paris-based Arod Quartet has taken the world by storm since winning the first prize in the 2016 ARD International Competition in Munich. The group has appeared already at prestigious venues such as the Auditorium of the Louvre, the Verbier Festival and Carnegie Hall. The Arod Quartet takes its name from Legolas’ horse in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy; in Tolkien’s mythic Rohirric language, Arod means “swift.” Make sure you see them before they fly away! PROGRAM SCHUBERT Quartet no. 4 in C major, D. 46 WEBERN Langsamer Satz ZEMLINSKY String Quartet no. 2, op. 15 PRE-CONCERT Conversation with the Artists Arod Quartet Borggreve credit:Photo Marco Whittall Pavilion, 6:30 PM 10 @librarycongress 11 FRIDAY FRIDAY OCT 25 TANK AND THE BANGAS 8:00 PM Coolidge Auditorium Coming from New Orleans, Tank and The Bangas grew up surrounded by grand musical traditions. Steeped in a rich mix of styles, the group has a rare knack for combining fiery soul, deft hip hop, deep- groove R & B and subtle jazz into one dazzling cohesive whole, evoking the scope of their hometown music while retaining a distinctive feel all its own. Powerhouse singer and poet Tarriona “Tank” Ball is a “protean storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) and a two-time winner of the National Slam Poetry Championship. Her vivid charisma helped the band win NPR’s 2017 Tiny Desk Concert Contest by unanimous acclaim—beating out 6,000 competitors. Since then their reach has exploded: an ever-widening tour path recently took in a spot with Jimmy Fallon and concerts in 11 European cities. Rolling Stone writes, “Seeing a Tank and The Bangas show is an exercise in positivity.” And as one fan put it: “If you can’t dig this show, you should probably take up stamp collecting.” Photo credit:Photo Josh Cheuse Tank and The Bangas 12 @librarycongress 13 MONDAY MONDAY OCT 28 AS EVER, OSCAR: 8:00 PM Coolidge Auditorium LETTERS AND LYRICS OF OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II JON KALBFLEISCH, MUSIC DIRECTOR TRACY LYNN OLIVERA, SOPRANO AWA SAL SECKA, MEZZO SOPRANO BEN PATTISON, TENOR CHRISTOPHER M. RICHARDSON, BASS/BARITONE MARK HOROWITZ, NARRATOR AND HARRY WINTER AS OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II Oscar Hammerstein virtually invented the modern musical with his lyrics and librettos for Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Cinderella, and The Sound of Music.