YIVO presents a concert on secular sacred music

Rothko Chapel, Little Match Girl Passion, and an Adam Roberts Premiere
 

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents for the first time a concert on secular sacred music featuring performances of two choral masterworks, Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel and David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion. This unique concert will take place on Sunday, May 19 at 7:00pm at YIVO.

Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational, broadly ecumenical center, was designed by Jewish abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko (born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz). Originally conceived of as a Catholic chapel, the deeply spiritual, but abstract work of Rothko was quickly felt to be more fitting for a place of holiness open to all religions, belonging to none.

Rothko’s work inspired Morton Feldman’s epic musical masterwork Rothko Chapel (1971). A work of great abstraction and spiritual depth, Rothko Chapel begins in what Feldman describes a "synagoguey type of way” and ends in a “quasi-Hebraic” melody in the Viola.

In 2007, David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, self-consciously attempted to secularize and universalize the Passion story, by setting a Hans Christian Anderson fable in the manner of a J. S. Bach Passion.

 In both works, abstraction and universalization are the responses of these Jewish musicians to being in dialogue with artistic representations of Christian spirituality.

These two musical masterworks will be performed by the young artists of the Os Ensemble, led by Raquel Acevedo-Klein. They will also perform book of doubt / book of faith, a new secular sacred work by composer Adam Roberts, commissioned for the occasion.

Following the performance there will be a panel discussion on the evening’s compositions and the topic of secular sacred art and music more broadly. The discussion will feature composers David Lang and Adam Roberts as well as Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, who are the children of Mark Rothko.

Program: Rothko Chapel, Little Match Girl Passion, and an Adam Roberts Premiere: Secular Sacred Music
When: Sunday, May 19, 2019, 7:00pm
Where: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in the Center for Jewish History Building (15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011)
Tickets: $15 for General Admission, $10 for YIVO Members and Students
Reservations: https://www.yivo.org/Secular-Sacred-Music

For any media inquiries please contact:

Alex Weiser
Director of Public Programs
(212) 294-6152

This event is part of the Smithsonian Year of Music. For more information, please visit music.si.edu.

This program is part of the Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series, made possible by a generous gift from the Estate of Sidney Krum.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Participants

Led by conductor Raquel Acevedo-Klein, Os Ensemble is a group of adventurous and committed young singers who interpret and transform new works for voice. With an inaugural commission by composer Eve O’Donnell, Os Ensemble made its performance debut at National Sawdust. Since its launch in September 2017, Os Ensemble has premiered works by composers including Guido López-Gavilán and David Lang, and performed with members of Sō Percussion and the Harlem Quartet among others.

Raquel Acevedo Klein has been a member and subsequent conductor for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. She has participated in the premieres of works by Philip Glass, John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Paola Prestini, Missy Mazzoli, Shara Nova, and Aleksandra Vrebalov, to name a few. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn! and elsewhere. She has recorded and performed with the likes of Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, The Knights, the NY Philharmonic, and the Marinsky Orchestra among others.

David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed current American composers. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls.

Lang’s score for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Other recent work includes man made, a concerto for So Percussion, and opera anatomy theater, written in collaboration with visual artist Mark Dion, at Los Angeles Opera.

Lang is a Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music and is Artist in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  He is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.

Adam Roberts writes music that takes listeners on compelling sonic journeys while drawing on a vivid array of sonic resources. Roberts’ music has been performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, andPlay, Earplay, and many more.

Roberts is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Foundation Commission, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition as well as many other prestigious awards.

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story