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  2010-2011 Season Brochure

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

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  Carter Brey & Christopher O’Riley

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Is sublime and unexpected your cup of tea? The renowned pianist Christopher O’Riley returns to Peak Performances in a duo program with Carter Brey, the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic. Together they will play Bach’s Sonata in G minor for viola da gamba and keyboard; Edvard Grieg’s Sonata in A minor, op. 36, for cello and piano; plus Justin Dello Joio’s Due per Due, composed for Mr. Brey, which will have its regional premiere.

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  My Coma Dreams

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Does one sleep FRED HERSCH perchance to dream? In a production shaped by simultaneous realities (hospital and coma), the dreamiest jazz composer of our time, Fred Hersch, will debut a full-length work for 11 instruments (trumpet, trombone, clarinet/alto sax/bass clarinet, tenor sax/flute, string quartet, piano, bass, drums/percussion) as well as a speaker/singer. Inspired by the dreams he remembers after two months in a coma in 2008, Fred Hersch (Leaves of Grass), in collaboration with Herschel Garfein (Elmer Gantry librettist) and Sarah Wickliffe, will reveal the dark matter of his own life—and ours, too.

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  Passport

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Have you ever wanted to be in Prune Flat, 1965 Sun, 2007 two places at once? For Robert Whitman such a feat is no sooner imagined than done. Take two sites (66 miles apart) and one artist directing simultaneous performances and you have Whitman on his game, expanding the possibilities of artists’ theater. In a co-performance with the Dia Art Foundation at Beacon, NY, Passport illustrates the “opening ourselves to the world in which we live” scripture handed down by the artists and engineers of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). The components of his novel alchemy—a horse, a forklift, fire (thank you, Prometheus), film, performers, and fiber optic networks pioneered at Bell Labs—make Whitman’s poetic vision serendipitous as well as seismic.

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  Prometheus-Landscape II

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Are you searching for a hero to transform the mundane intothe magical? Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus to liberate humanity and had his liver eaten daily for his trouble, might give our need for a hero new life. Jan Fabre has an international reputation for provocative theater. In Fabre’s universe, you find an artist who wears humankind’s rage on his sleeve. Stealing enlightenment from the gods to enhance daily life has, in the 21st century, consequences. How will Aeschylus’s classic be rendered once torn from Fabre’s active imagination? For certain, his Prometheus will be an everyman who seeks to liberate humanity but realizes that creative freedom in the hands of unscrupulous plutocrats leads to social dysfunction.

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  Shanghai Quartet, Mozart Quartet K. 465 Dissonance, Bartok Quartet no. 6

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  How does the forgotten become the familiar? A ll you need to do is hear the work of English composer Frank Bridge (1879–1941). Bridge wrote beguiling music— Novelletten great example is a —that suf fered a loss of public as a result of World War II but is now having a deserved resurgence. Bridge mentored many artists, most notably Benjamin Britten. This stellar program includes Mozart’s Quartet K. 465 “Dissonance” and Bartok’s Quartet no. 6.

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  The Matter of Origins

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Did you believe the world would implode on the day CERN’s Large Hadron Collider revved up? Liz Lerman’s new work explores the physics of beginnings and why afternoon tea and chocolate cake may be the reason we live in dread of the apocalypse. When J. Robert Oppenheimer (the American Prometheus) took a break from harnessing energy for mass destruction, he had tea and cake with Edith Warner, who lived near Los Alamos. Liz Lerman has made a distinguished career of bringing scientific elements together with the poetry of the mind (Ferocious Beauty: Genome). Act I travels from Marie Curie’s lab to CERN and then through the Hubble telescope. Act II is a 360-degree experience of dance, media, cake, and tea shared in real time with each member of the audience, as Lerman unpacks the origin of matter one bite of cake at a time

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  The Zafir Project

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  What do you consider barrier busting? In taking stock of chamber music in America, use the striking career of Imani Winds as your benchmark. Conventional chamber music was jolted out of its safe haven when this Grammy-nominated ensemble brought its eclectic style to the f ield. To illustrate Imani’s commitment to extending the European canon, the group invited Simon Shaheen, the acclaimed Palestinian óud and violin artist, to compose Zafir (“a gentle breath”).

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  Walking next to our shoes…

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Does Ladysmith Black Mambazo send chills up your spine? Paul Simon’s album Graceland brought South Africa’s musical roots to Western pop culture. And it was Athol Fugard who exposed its dramatic wisdom. Now comes another South African auteur taking the pulse of her country’s complex social reality. Robyn Orlin is known for work that can be subversive, outrageous, provocatively humorous, and visually arresting. From her early days as a choreographer during the Apartheid era, Orlin has made a career of confronting taboo subjects with a heightened, vaudevillian theatricality that aims to test and redefine ideas about South African performance.

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  Bringing Down the Stars and Moving Them Around

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Have you heard the old saying: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts? Not this time! Open your ears! The most inventive percussion ensemble in America performs one of the giant works of the 20th century. Pleiades by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis is a timeless, polyrhythmic composition considered to be a masterpiece and test of will for those who dare undertake it in performance. Joining So¯ Percussion to complete the tour-de-force experience will be Todd Meehan and Douglas Perkins. Bonus points awarded for concert ingenuity: also on the program is Proximity by Turkish composer Cenk Ergün, whose use of electronic tonalities is otherworldly

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  Dark Matters

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Do you wish you could be anonymous in our very public world? Crystal Pite covers the faces and hands of her dancers in an effort to find purity and grace in their anonymity, while noting that our most powerful universal force is noticeably invisible. Dark matter comprises approximately 96% of the observable universe, affecting the speed, structure, and evolution of galaxies, yet it is essentially unknown. Dark Matters invites its audience into a mysterious world bounded only by time, space, and object. Puppetry, new music, and dance commingle in original and evocative configurations, making Dark Matters a signature work by one of Canada’s (and probably the world’s) most ingenious choreographers. Pite says that “something unknowable, destabilizing, and strangely beautiful” compels her to create.

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  Double Vision

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Did you ever hope to see the world anew when looking through a crystal prism? Double Vision offers a similar experience, only the entire stage becomes the optical illusion. An interdisciplinary encounter created by an acclaimed choreographer and world-class architects, Double Vision animates the stage in paradoxical ways. The ephemeral nature of Carolyn Carlson’s dance is exposed by Electronic Shadow (architect Naziha Mestaoui and media artist Yacine Aït Kaci). Blurring the distinction between illusion and reality, Double Vision leaves a convincing argument for the existence of a parallel universe.

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  Everywhere Is the Best Seat: Disembodied Instruments

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  This 60-minute performance set within Christopher Janney’s 36-column sound and light installation Everywhere Is the Best Seat will be a unique experiment in live and MIDI-triggered sounds. Moving from environmental music to R&B and jazz, Janney and friends create an immersive musical experience, exploring the “hidden music” of sound as part of and detached from the instruments and performers who make them. Special guests include Dave Revels and Jimmy Hayes of The Persuasions, Stan Strickland, Wes Wirth, Jerry Leake, and Eddie Grenga.

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  Here There Be Dragons

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  What makes a “new classical” band stand out? C omposition chops and entrepreneurial hustle. Missy Mazzoli’s all-female quintet Victoire personifies a dreamy post-rock sensibility. William Brittelle’s Television Landscape embraces a big-band sonic eclecticism. And the aggressively creative NOW Ensemble, featuring compositions by Judd Greenstein, defines 21st-century chamber music. These bands have their act together!

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  Jet Lag

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  In 1998 Marianne Weems and The Builders Association, in collaboration with the architects/media artists Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, presented JET LAG, a cross-media project that was ahead of its time. JET LAG is based on two overlapping true stories about eccentric individuals who manipulated time and space, turning their travels into a new kind of escape. In 1969 an ambitious sailor set out on a round-the-world sailboat race only to discover that he could “win” by simply sending radio reports of his false travel times while sailing in circles off the coast of South America. Then, over the course of six months in 1970, a grandmother with her grandson in tow travelled back and forth 167 times between New York and Amsterdam to avoid the boy’s meddling father, without ever leaving the airports. Suspended in “non-space” and alternate realities achieved through technology, these time travelers never complete their journeys. JET LAG received OBIE awards for “Outstanding Production” and “Best Actor” in 1999-2000 and was hailed as “the future of theater” by the European press.

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  Shanghai Quartet with Guest Artist Wu Man

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Does Montclair State’s resident string quartet ever rest on its laurels? Banish the thought. The Shanghai Quartet and celebrated pipa virtuoso Wu Man perform the world premiere of Lei Liang’s Five Seasons, commissioned by the Quartet. The program also includes Beethoven’s Quartet op. 18, no. 3; Schumann’s Quartet op. 41, no.1; and Wang Huiran’s “Dance of the Yi People,” performed on the pipa.

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  Town and Country

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Did you know Baroque was the new music of the 17th century? In the 21st century, it is the fastest growing niche in the classical music business. The dynamically engaging ensemble REBEL returns to the Alexander Kasser Theater with a specially crafted program featuring works by both well-known and lesser-known composers. In this remarkable musical journey, REBEL presents works by composers of vastly different backgrounds–Handel from the royal city of London; Telemann from the urban center of Hamburg; and Scheiffelhut, Fischer, and Schmierer from the country courts of southern Germany–in an exciting and rare arrangement of compositions, all of which were sponsored by the royalty and aristocracy of these towns and cities.

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  Young Concert Artists

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Does discovering young talent trained in the classical canon give you a thrill? Join us to hear the best of the best. Young Concert Artists (YCA) is a seminal force in the performance field. Since 1961, YCA has been dedicated to launching the careers of exceptional, but unknown, young musicians from around the world. The performers in this special concert are all recipients of the Alexander Kasza-Kasser prize, awarded annually by YCA to its most promising discoveries. With YCA’s track record, one or all of these artists could be the next Lang Lang, Richard Stoltzman, or Renée Fleming! The concert includes works by Strauss, Mahler, Schubert, Kovacs, Poulenc, and Beethoven.