Gary Dunning, President and Executive Director
Presents
CIRCA, Opus with Quatuor Debussy
November 13-15, 2015 — Citi Shubert Theatre
(Boston) Celebrity Series of Boston will present CIRCA, Opus with Quatuor Debussy November 13-15, 2015 at Citi Shubert Theatre at 270 Tremont Street, Boston, MA. The performances will take place on Friday, November 15 at 7:30pm, Saturday, November 14 at 8pm, and Sunday, November 15 at 3pm.
Tickets start at $35, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling Citi Charge at 866-348-9738, or at the Citi Shubert Theatre Box Office, 270 Tremont Street, Boston.
Circa made their Celebrity Series debut in 2012. These performances will mark the Boston debut of Quatuor Debussy.
Circa is a performance troupe from Brisbane, Australia that currently consists of 19 members. Since 2004 Circa has been at the frontier of new circus – creating powerful works of circus art that challenge, thrill and delight. Featuring an ensemble of multi-skilled circus artists under the direction of Yaron Lifschitz, Circa’s award-winning works have been seen in 32 countries across six continents. With no elaborate sets or gymnastics contraptions, performers use their own bodies and mesmerizing skills to conjure classic circus showmanship with a touch of Vaudeville. Circa’s bold new vision of contemporary circus is characterized by a blending of bodies, light, sound and skills. CIRCA explores the modern circus: no clowns, no animals, no flames. Just raw human skill and acrobatic feats with ropes, aerial feats, hoops and trapeze acts.
In Opus, 14 acrobats and a string quartet celebrate the music of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich’s quartets are by turn intimate, passionate, lyrical, ironic, and deeply moving personal testimonies by one of the 20th century’s greatest composers. In Opus, three of his quartets form the musical and dramatic spine of a red-hot fusion of extreme acrobatics, lyrical movement and group choreography.
Opus begins with a solo performer suspended on a rope serenaded by musicians, then moves through rapidly alternating scenes of dislocated stillness and violent explosions into geometries of acrobats intersected by extreme physicality to arrive at exquisitely detailed and nuanced choreographies of acrobats flying, balancing and landing. Opus explores the complex relationships between the individual and the group, between the march of history and the dictates of the heart and between the tragic and the comic. This is groundbreaking work of intense power. A melding of music and bodies at the highest level.
Circa Artistic Director and CEO Yaron Lifschitz is a graduate of the University of New South Wales, University of Queensland and National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) where he was the youngest director ever accepted into its prestigious graduate director’s course. Since graduating, Yaron has directed over 60 productions including large-scale events, opera, theatre, physical theatre and circus. His work has been seen in 32 countries, across six continents by over 500,000 people. He was founding Artistic Director of the Australian Museum’s Theatre Unit, Head Tutor in Directing at Australian Theatre for Young People and has been a regular guest tutor in directing at NIDA since 1995.
Quatuor Debussy was formed in 1990 by a group of young musicians studying at the Conservatoire de Lyon, France. Winners of the Evian International String Quartet Competition, the Debussy Quartet performs about 80 concerts a year in Europe, Asia, and North America, and are well known for their devotion to the French repertoire. They are regular guests at distinguished concert halls and are also heard at many of Europe’s finest festivals. The Debussy Quartet’s extensive discography includes the Decca label release of the landmark Mozart Requiem recording, in the 1802 transcription by Peter Lichtenthal (about which a documentary film has also been made). The Arion label produced several volumes in the “French Music” collection (Bonnal, Ravel, Fauré, Witkowski, Lekeu) and the complete Shostakovich Quartets, among other works. The quartet’s mixed chamber music repertoire includes its CD of the Brahms and Weber clarinet quintets with clarinetist Jean Francois Verdier and a collaboration with the pianist François Chaplin in several Mozart piano concertos. In addition, their discography includes the complete works of Webern for string quartet (for Harmonia Mundi), which received the coveted Choc award of Le Monde de la Musique.
The Debussy Quartet is based in Lyon, France. Its members are the founders of “Les Cordes en Ballade” a chamber music festival and an academy of chamber music in the South of France, where they perform and teach each summer.
About Celebrity Series of Boston
Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. Over the course of its 77-year history, Celebrity Series has presented an array of the world’s greatest performing artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, Ignace Paderewski, Artur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Andrés Segovia, Kirsten Flagstad, Marian Anderson, Luciano Pavarotti, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the New York City Opera Company.
The Celebrity Series has been bringing the very best performers–from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more–to Boston’s major concert halls for 77 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience–on stages, in schools, at home– everywhere. For more information on Celebrity Series of Boston, call (617) 482-2595 or visit us online at www.celebrityseries.org.
The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Amy & Joshua Boger; Donna & Mike Egan; Gabor Garai & Susan Pravda; The Garbis & Arminè Barsoumian Charitable Foundation; Stephanie L. Brown; David & Harriet Griesinger; Paul L. King; Jann Leeming & Arthur Little; The Royal Little Family Foundation; Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation; Stewart Myers; Eleanor & Frank Pao; The John S. and Cynthia Reed Foundation; Stiffler Family Foundation; Sanjay & Sangeeta Verma; Nancy Richmond Winsten; Charlesbank Capital Partners LLC; EMC Corporation; Foley & Lardner; Massachusetts Cultural Council; National Endowment for the Arts; The Peabody Foundation; PTC; Tufts Health Plan; The D.L. Saunders Real Estate & Hotel Investment Group, AMO; Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
