2018 – 2019 Season
2018—2019 Season at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The 21st Century Consort, award-winning contemporary music ensemble-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution for over four decades, embarks on its thirteenth season at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. Artistic Director Christopher Kendall presents a season of new music and high drama featuring artists Paul Cigan, Lisa Emenheiser, Dan Foster, Lee Hinkle, Alexandra Osborne, Sara Stern, and Rachel Young.
ATTENDANCE IS FREE. Seating begins at 3:30, and all who attend the 4:00 pre-concert discussion are guaranteed seats. Past performances suggest that seats will likely be available for all until the performance itself, at 5:00 pm.
All concerts are at 5:00, preceded by a 4:00 discussion with composers and performers, and followed by a post-concert reception.
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“Sites Unheard”
A sly musical take on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition of artist Trevor Paglen, who makes the invisible world visible via photography and video, journalism, geo-politics, and astronautical engineering, documenting the infrastructures of American surveillance. The Consort surveils music by a select database of extant American composers.
- Annie Gosfield
- Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites
- Frederik Rzewski
- Winnsboro Cottonmill Blues
- Gemma Peacocke
- Lumen
- Robert Paterson
- Star Crossing
- Robert Gibson
- Night Music
- Jon Deak
- Greetings from 1984
- David Froom
- Hidden Motives
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“Between Worlds”
Bill Traylor is one of the most celebrated American self-taught artists, whose life spanned slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration and foreshadowed the era of Civil Rights, offering a rare perspective to the large story of America. The Consort’s music probes subjects and stories that inhabit Traylor’s remarkable work.
- David Baker
- Clarinet Sonata
- Very Young Composers
- New works
- Carlos Oliver Simon
- Likety Split
- Frederic Rzewski
- Down by the Riverside
- T.J. Anderson
- Gospels
- Evan Chambers
- Come Down Heavy!
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“All You Need is Love”
Well, maybe it’s not ALL you need; a little music is also good. For Valentine’s Day, the Consort digs deep to find contemporary classical music that explores the subject of romance viewed from multiple vantage points, in a program that ends with a Valentine surprise.
- Melinda Wagner
- Romanza with Faux Variations
- Jeffrey Mumford
- An Evolving Romance
- Maurice Wright
- Cantata
- Scott Wheeler
- Serenata
- Hilary Purrington
- Mean Reds
- Nicolas Maw
- La Vita Nuova
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“Black Angels”
A harrowing and formative period for many in America, 1965-1975 is the subject of SAAM’s exhibition “America and the Vietnam War.” The Consort mounts a musical corollary with works that speaks to the tenor of the times and the themes that still radiate from them.
- James Primosch
- Times Like These
- Susan Botti
- River Spirits
- Eugene O’Brien
- Elegy to the Spanish Republic
- George Crumb
- Black Angels
*Programs subject to change.