National Gallery Of Art | Music

Program: Lessons of Darkness This program, featuring music by Ravel, Satie, Lili Boulanger, James Reese Europe, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, commemorated the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day and presented works of composers affected by the war. This concert was held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, November 11, 2018.

Program: Funeral Music for a Prince and a Queen This program featured funeral music by Heinrich Schütz, Henry Purcell, and Thomas Morley composed for princes and queens. This concert was held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

Piffaro, The Renaissance Band This performance celebrated the exhibition Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age at the National Gallery of Art and featured historic songs of the seas. This concert was held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, September 30, 2018.

Program: Music by Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. The Grammy Award–winning Parker Quartet performs Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet no. 1 in E-flat Major, op. 12, and Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet in F Major, op. 73, in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, March 26, 2017. Founded in Boston in 2002, the Parker Quartet includes Daniel Chong and Ken Hamao on violins, Jessica Bodner on viola, and Kee-Hyun Kim on cello. In addition to serving as the quartet-in-residence at Harvard University, the group has appeared throughout the world at prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Kennedy Center.

Program: Music by Bingen, Sanlikol, and Beethoven. A Far Cry performs Hildegard von Bingen's ignis spiritus paracliti, Mehmet Ali Sanlikol's Vecd, and the third movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet no. 15, op. 132, in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, November 20, 2016. Founded in 2007 by seventeen young professional musicians, A Far Cry has developed an innovative process where decisions are made collectively and leadership rotates among the “Criers.” For each piece, the members elect a group of principals, and these musicians guide the rehearsal process and shape the interpretation. Each program includes multiple works led by different musicians, adding tremendous musical variety to the concerts.

Program: Music by Bach, Takemitsu, and Tadić. The Cavatina Duo performs Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata for Flute and Basso Continuo in E Major, BWV 1035; Tōru Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea; and Miroslav Tadić’s Four Macedonian Pieces, in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, February 12, 2012. The artists are guitarist Denis Azabagic and flutist Eugenia Moliner. The duo has captivated audiences with performances in many venues, including Ravinia in Chicago, the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles, the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, and the National Concert Hall of Taipei.

Program: Music by Trumbore and Saint-Saëns. Inscape Chamber Orchestra performs Dale Trumbore's All the Folded Wings and Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, with new verses by poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, April 22, 2018. Inscape Chamber Orchestra was founded in 2004 by its artistic director Richard Scerbo and has established itself as one of the premier performing ensembles in the Washington, DC, region and beyond.

Program: Music by Josquin des Prez and his contemporaries. The National Gallery of Art presented the vocal ensemble Cappella Pratensis on Sunday, March 12, 2017, in a performance commemorating the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death. Cappella Pratensis is directed by Stratton Bull, who has championed the music of Josquin des Prez and the polyphonists of the 15th and 16th centuries. Based in the Dutch city of ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Duchy of Brabant, the group focuses on historically informed performance practice infused with artistic insight.

Program: Music by Brouwer and Ginastera. Cuarteto Latinoamericano performs Leo Brouwer’s Third String Quartet and Alberto Ginastera’s Second String Quartet in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, January 29, 2017. Founded in Mexico in 1982, Cuarteto Latinoamericano is one of the world’s renowned string quartets. A leading proponent of Latin American music, the quartet has a discography of more than 80 recordings, including the complete string quartet cycles of Alberto Ginastera and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan and pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera perform Johannes Brahms's Cello Sonata in F Major, op. 99, Sulkhan Fyodorovich Tsintsadze's Five Pieces on Folk Themes for Cello and Piano, and Niccolò Paganini's Variations on a Theme of Rossini, in this concert held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, February 25, 2018. Hakhnazaryan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, into a family of musicians and was mentored by the late Mstislav Rostropovich. Cassidy-Polera is one of the most highly regarded and diverse chamber artists performing today. Her career has taken her to major music centers in the United States, Europe, and Asia, with recent performances at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall in Boston, and the Kennedy Center.

Starting in the late 1950s, with my work on a sound/music score for a production of King Lear, I became infatuated with the notion of composing music as a studio art. I was convinced that an imminent technology explosion would offer, for the first time in history, an alternative to the centuries-old, three-person model of the solitary composer, alone at a desk writing music with pen and paper, the performer reading and performing the music on an instrument, and the audience listening to that music in an auditorium. This was the dream that prompted Ramon Sender and me to search for someone to create an electronic music easel; that someone became Don Buchla, resulting in the design and building of the first “Buchla Box,” the first analog synthesizer. I began my life’s work of creating a new music in a technologically impacted world; a world yet to come. The dream was realized in a series of works starting with Silver Apples of the Moon and ending with A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur; my version of a new “chamber mus

Jenny Lin, pianist, and Roger Reynolds, University Professor, University of California, San Diego. For this multimedia creation conceived for the National Gallery of Art on the occasion of the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC, Roger Reynolds discusses American poet John Cage as a composer, writer, philosopher, visual artist, and performer. Recorded on September 9, 2012, the presentation offers a personalized perspective on (and around) Cage and his work. Passages recorded from a 1985 conversation between Cage and Reynolds are included, as well as some of the signature one-minute Indeterminacy stories as recorded by Cage. The live and recorded readings interpenetrate each other and coexist with projected images and videos. Guest pianist Jenny Lin performs Cage's Seasons (excerpts), Quest, and ONE, which intermingle and overlap with other elements in the presentation.

Program: Music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. National Gallery of Art resident ensembles play the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a concert dedicated to the memory of Milton M. Gottesman. The string quartet performs Mozart's Quartet in C Major, K. 465 ("Dissonant"), the wind quintet plays Johann Sebastian Bach's Fugue in G Minor, BWV 593 ("Little"), and the piano trio presents two movements from Mozart's Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K. 502.

Program: Music by Steve Antosca and Judith Shatin. Music composed and arranged by Steve Antosca and Judith Shatin for performance in the West Building Rotunda on the occasion of the National Gallery of Art's 70th anniversary. Selections include the world premiere performances of Antosca's Echoic Landscape and Shatin's Sic transit, both composed in 2011, as well as Antosca's in every way I remember you, featuring saxophonist Noah Getz.

Program: Norwegian vocal music. Nordic Voices is a six-voice a capella ensemble from Norway, considered one of the leading international vocal ensembles of its type. The group specializes in vocal music of contemporary Norwegian composers, including settings of Latin texts, traditional Norwegian texts, and contemporary arrangements of folk songs. For its Gallery concert on October 10, 2010, Nordic Voices sang music by Kvaerno, Kverndokk, ÿdegaard, and Thoresen.

Program: Music by Gershwin, Milhaud, Porter, Stravinsky, and other composers. To honor From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, violinist Bruno Nasta and pianist Danielle Hahn called upon clarinetist David Neithamer, bassist Jonathan Nazdin, and pianist Ronald Chiles to join them for performances of works that music historians now recognize as belonging to the "modern" period in music. The ensemble played a suite for violin, clarinet, and piano by Darius Milhaud; Stravinsky's famous Soldier's Tale; and a medley of songs by Gershwin and other Broadway composers, noting that Gershwin and Chester Dale knew each other personally.

Program: Music by Laszlo Weiner and Ernst von Dohn·nyi. The dramatic story of Jewish life in the 20th century has given rise to a large body of music, including some outstanding chamber music. The Poulenc Trio, augmented by violinists Sally McClain and Anton Lande, violist Nicholas Citro, cellist Steven Honigberg, and clarinetist RiÈ Suszuki, play music by Jakoulov, Klein, Prokofiev, and Schulhoff that they performed in concert at the National Gallery on December 5, 2010.

Program: Music by Praetorius and arrangements of traditional carols. Founded in 1990, Ensemble Galilei has made a name for itself through innovative chamber music concerts that incorporate images and words as well as music. Taking a cue from programs that the ensemble presented with curators at the National Geographic Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery music department head Stephen Ackert combined the ensemble's holiday repertoire with images of paintings from the Gallery's permanent collection, which have in past years been featured on Christmas stamps issued by the Unites States Postal Service.

Program: St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Stanford University Chamber Chorale and Chatham Baroque. Picking up on a theme of the National Gallery exhibition The Sacred Made Real, which featured sculptures depicting the crucifixion of Jesus and the sufferings of Mary and the saints, the conductor of the Stanford University Chamber Chorale, Stephen Sano, led his group in singing selections from J. S. Bach's Saint John Passion for a concert at the Gallery in March 2010, while the exhibition was on view. Visitors reported being similarly moved by both the music and the art, though the art reflected religious life in 16th-century Spain and the music reflected religious life in 18th-century Germany.

Program: Music for solo piano by Brubeck, Chopin, Copland, Gershwin, and Previn. Pianist Dan Franklin Smith performs music from the great romantic tradition in the form of nine short pieces by FrÈdÈric Chopin, music inspired by Chopin by American composers Gershwin and Copland, and music inspired by jazz by Dave Brubeck and AndrÈ Previn. Based in New York City, Smith heads an international festival in Germany called "Elysium: Between Two Continents."