The Barbican in London has announced its Classical Music 2011–12 season, which includes a Kronos Quartet residency with a program of American music and a special mediation on the anniversary of 9/11; two concerts from the LSO celebrating Steve Reich's 75th birthday; and the UK premiere of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach in conjunction with the Cultural Olympiad's London 2012 Festival.
The Barbican in London has announced its Classical Music 2011–12 season, which will include a Kronos Quartet residency, a celebration of Steve Reich's 75th birthday, and the UK premiere of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach.
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The Kronos Quartet residency, titled Awakenings, is set to launch a year from now, on January 24, 2012, with a concert at the Hackney Empire entitled Made in America, featuring music by Bryce Dessner and Missy Mazzoli, and the London premiere performances of works by Terry Riley, Michael Gordon, and a staged version of George Crumb's haunting Black Angels.
On January 26 in Barbican Hall, Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Anniversary of 9/11, a special program marking the anniversary of the events of 9/11, is a musical meditation with works from several countries, including the title composition from longtime Kronos collaborator, Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky. Other composers featured on the program include Argentines Osvaldo Golijov and Oscar-winner Gustavo Santaolalla (from the film Darkness 9/11), Americans Michael Gordon and Terry Riley, Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, and Canadian composer John Oswald. Further program highlights are works from Iraq, India, and Sweden.
The third concert is called Early Music and will include arrangements of music by Hildegard von Bingen, Alfred Schnittke, Henry Purcell, and Rahul Dev Burman.
For more on the Awakenings residency, visit barbican.org.uk.
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The 2011–12 season also coincides with composer Steve Reich's 75th birthday in October, an occasion the London Symphony Orchestra will mark with two concerts for Steve Reich at 75: an October 12 performance at LSO St. Luke's by a chamber group of LSO players of his Music for Pieces of Wood, Different Trains, Nagoya Marimbas, Violin Phase, and Sextet; and an October 15 concert in which conductor Kristjan Järvi leads the LSO and Synergy Vocals in an all-Reich program at Barbican Hall: Three Movements, The Four Sections, Clapping Music, and The Desert Music.
As noted late last year in the Nonesuch Journal, the Barbican will celebrate the composer's music this coming spring with Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich, taking place in six sessions over two days, May 7 and 8, 2011, at the Barbican and LSO St Luke’s, including the European premiere of his new string quartet WTC 9/11, written for and performed by Kronos Quartet. For more information on that event, visit barbican.org.uk/reverberations.
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Toward the end of the season, the Barbican's Present Voice series, which presents UK premieres of operas, comes to a close with Robert Wilson's fully-stage production of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican Theatre. From May 4 through 13, 2012, the Barbican will present the first-ever UK performances of the work in conjunction with the Cultural Olympiad's London 2012 Festival. The performances are part of a tour of the first full production of the groundbreaking opera in two decades. You can read more about the tour in the Nonesuch Journal article from December.
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For more information on the Barbican's Classical Music 2011–12 season, visit barbican.org.uk/classical1112.
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