Institute for Advanced Study Announces 2013-14 Edward T. Cone Concert Series
PRESS CONTACT: Christine Ferrara, (609) 734-8239
Sebastian Currier, Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study, has announced the lineup for the 2013–14 Edward T. Cone Concert Series. The season, the first Currier is organizing as Artist-in-Residence, will present leading ensembles and soloists performing new works, several critically acclaimed compositions by Currier and other contemporary composers and classics of 19th- and 20th-century chamber music. “The 2013–14 season will continue the Edward T. Cone Concert Series’ tradition of bringing honored works of the past together with exciting new music being created today,” said Currier. “Through the artistry of some of the world’s most outstanding musicians, audiences will take an auditory journey through visceral emotion, curious new musical ideas and a great deal of beauty.”
The season will open on Friday and Saturday October 11 and 12 with Sight and Sound, featuring the celebrated Cassatt String Quartet. The program will include a new work by Bruce Adolphe based on the life and paintings of the American Impressionist painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt, the quartet’s namesake. It will also include Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, a masterpiece of musical Impressionism, and Quiet Time by Currier. Adolphe will also speak with Currier from the stage after Friday’s concert and before Saturday’s concert.
On November 22 and 23, acclaimed violinist Lara St. John and pianist Martin Kennedy will perform in Musical Geographies. Over the years, St. John has collected thousands of folk tunes from Eastern Europe and the Middle East and has commissioned composers to make arrangements of some of them. The concerts will feature a group of pieces from this project, as well as works by Béla Bartók and John Corigliano.
In 1982, György Ligeti wrote his Horn Trio, calling it an homage to Brahms. It was an important turning point in Ligeti’s musical style, when his modernist aesthetic shifted and he began to look back to the past. On February 7 and 8, 2014, the innovative Nunc Ensemble will perform The Brahms-Ligeti Connection, playing both the Ligeti and the Brahms horn trios side by side, as well as works by David Rakowski and Brian Ferneyhough.
The season will conclude March 28 and 29 with Mahler and Intergalactic Love, a performance by the Argento Ensemble, praised by Alex Ross as “an essential source of adventurous new music.” The program will feature Currier’s Deep-Sky Objects—a cycle of songs with text by Sarah Manguso that portray longing and desire on an intergalactic scale—as well as Mahler songs arranged by Arnold Schoenberg.
All concerts in the series will take place at 8:00 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall at the Institute. Concert talks, providing discussions of the music in the program and related topics, will be held each Friday following the performance and each Saturday preceding the performance at 6:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall.
The concerts are free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved online at www.ias.edu/air/music. Seating is limited. For further information about the Institute’s Artist-in-Residence program, visit www.ias.edu/air.
About Edward T. Cone
Noted composer, teacher, pianist and author Edward T. Cone, for whom the Institute’s concert series is named, earned his undergraduate and MFA degrees at Princeton University and was affiliated with its music department for more than 50 years. A Founding Friend of the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study, he was a tireless supporter of the arts and humanities at the Institute and elsewhere.
About the Artist-in-Residence Program
The Artist-in-Residence program was established at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994 to create a musical presence within the Institute community and to have in residence a person whose work could be experienced and appreciated by scholars from all disciplines. Pianist Robert Taub was the first Artist-in-Residence from 1994 to 2001, followed by composer Jon Magnussen, who served as Artist-in-Residence from 2000 to 2007. Paul Moravec served as Artist-in-Residence from 2007 to 2008 and Artistic Consultant from 2008 to 2009. Derek Bermel, a composer, clarinetist, conductor and jazz and rock musician, served as Artist-in-Residence from 2009 to June 2013.
Composer Sebastian Currier became Artist-in-Residence in July 2013. His complex and imaginative works have been performed by such eminent artists and ensembles as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Berlin Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet and the New York Philharmonic. A recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, Currier has received numerous honors including the Berlin Prize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.