2012 – 2013 Season of High Drama (fit for an election year in Washington DC)
2012—2013 Season at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The 21st Century Consort, award-winning contemporary music ensemble-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution for three decades, embarks on its sixth season at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. Artistic Director Christopher Kendall presents a season of new music and high drama featuring artists Elisabeth Adkins, Rick Barber, Paul Cigan, Lisa Emenheiser, Abigail Evans, Laurel Ohlson, Sara Stern, Rachel Young with guest vocalists Lucy Shelton, William Sharp, Peter Becker, Deanne Meek and others.
Tickets, including a post-concert reception, are $20, and subscriptions to the five-concert season are $80. To purchase, Smithsonian Resident Associates or 202-633-3030.All concerts are at 5:00, preceded by a 4:00 discussion with composers and performers, and followed by a post-concert reception.
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Election Special: Music for Uncivil Discourse
In honor of the November elections, the Consort circles the American democratic process with Fred Rzewski’s paean to Latin liberty in The People United Will Never be Defeated, Jon Deak’s setting of Orwell in Greetings from 1984, and, to remind us of our own revolution, Peter Maxwell Davies’ over-the-top, semi-staged portrait of George III, Eight Songs for a Mad King. Read the printed program now for this concert.
- Frederick Rzewski
- Selections from The People United Will Never Be Defeated
- Jon Deak
- Greetings from 1984
- Peter Maxwell Davies
- Eight Songs for a Mad King
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Music for Civil War
Celebrating the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition The Civil War and American Art, the Consort traverses three distinct, multi-media treatments of beloved tunes from the American Civil War, by William Brehm, Charles Ives and Stephen Rush, along with Igor Stravinsky’s music theater masterpiece. Read the printed program now for this concert.
- William Brehm
- Civil War Images and Echoes(Premiere)
- Charles Ives
- The Alcotts from Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord"
- Stephen Rush
- U.S. Grant - a Fluxkit Opera
- Igor Stravinsky
- The Soldier’s Tale
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A Christmas Carol
Back by popular demand, Jon Deak’s marvelous and theatrical setting of Charles Dickens’ seasonal classic, The Passion of Scrooge or A Christmas Carol is joined by another English masterpiece, Benjamin Britten’s incomparable A Ceremony of Carols, to bring the holiday spirit to SAAM. Read the printed program now for this concert.
- Benjamin Britten
- A Ceremony of Carols
- Jon Deak
- The Passion of Scrooge or A Christmas Carol
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How it Begins
An epic pairing of two major 20th century works, both settings of surreal texts sung by soprano Lucy Shelton: Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal Pierrot Lunaire, with Mime Mark Jastor as Pierrot, and To Wake the Dead, Stephen Albert’s earthy and decidedly un-surreal music to passages from James Joyce’s Finnigan’s Wake, with Elegy, Bruce MacCombie’s moving tribute to Albert, and ours to MacCombie. Read the printed program now for this concert.
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Pierrot Lunaire
- Bruce MacCombie
- Elegy
- Stephen Albert
- To Wake the Dead
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Dance the Night Away
Music that takes us from the darkest hours of night to the dancing light of dawn, in a program calculated for challenge and choreographed to move. George Crumb’s staged, classic environmental manifesto (protesting human incursion into the moon’s ecosystem of myth) is companion to dance music from a variety of composers’ for the dance of our imaginations.
- Derek Bermel
- Mulatash Stomp
- Eugene O’Brien
- Algebra of Night
- David Froom
- Dance to the Whistling Wind
- Snorri Sigfus Birgisson
- Dance for Solo Cello
- George Crumb
- Night of the Four Moons
- Donald Crockett
- Dawn Dance (Premiere)
*Programs subject to change.
