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 Osborn, Sara Stern, Rachel Young with guest vocalists Lucy Shelton, William Sharp, Alice Teyssier and Bora Yoon and others.
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.