The Jewish Museum and Bang on a Can
Announce New Partnership
Musical Performances Throughout the Year Tied to Museum’s Exhibitions
New York, NY – The Jewish Museum and Bang on a Can are launching a new partnership to produce a series of dynamic musical performances at the Museum from June 2014 to May 2015. Inspired by the Jewish Museum’s diverse slate of exhibitions, the five programs will take place throughout the year across the Museum at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan. The partnership kicks off with Asphalt Orchestra performing during the Museum Mile Festival on June 10, followed by a July 10 concert featuring works by Minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Louis Andriessen in conjunction with Other Primary Structures, an exhibition of global sculpture from the 1960s.
“We are pleased to partner with Bang on a Can and bring these original and innovative productions to the Museum,” said Claudia Gould, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of the Jewish Museum. “Their experience merging music with art has resulted in an exciting lineup that perfectly complements our exhibitions.”
“From our very first Marathon concert in 1987 (at Exit Art Gallery in Soho), Bang on a Can has found inspiration in the natural interaction that takes place when innovative music and visual art meet,” said Kenny Savelson, Executive Director of Bang on a Can. “We’re really pleased to collaborate with the Jewish Museum on this new series presenting some terrific and adventurous musicians this year; each concert will showcase music that interacts with the art exhibitions on various levels. It’s going to be a lot of fun!”
The June 10 performance at the Museum Mile Festival is free. Tickets for the July 10, November 6, January 29, and May 14 programs are $18 general public; $12 students and senior citizens; and $12 for Jewish Museum members and Bang on a Can list members, and include exhibition admission prior to each performance. Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3200 or at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL
Asphalt Orchestra
Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 6pm-9pm
Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s exhilarating marching band, will perform outside the Jewish Museum during the Museum Mile Festival. Asphalt Orchestra’s shows are driven by its virtuosic and uniquely physical music performance. Making innovative use of the stage, hall, or surrounding landscape, and not chained to instruments and equipment that normally limit musicians’ mobility, the band’s choreographed performances know few boundaries. The band brings together some of the most exciting rock, jazz, and classical players in New York City who The New York Times called “12 top-notch brass and percussion players.” Since its debut, stretching 10 packed nights at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in New York over the summers of 2009 and 2010, Asphalt Orchestra has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, at London’s Barbican Centre, the TED Women conference in Washington D.C., New York’s Alice Tully Hall and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more. Asphalt Orchestra comes to the Jewish Museum fresh from collaborations with David Byrne and St. Vincent, Yoko Ono and Goran Bregovic, and from covering Björk, The Pixies, Zappa, Mingus, and Meshuggah.
Now celebrating its 36th year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place on Tuesday, June 10, 2014, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Festival attendees can walk the Mile on Fifth Avenue between 82nd Street and 105th Street while visiting nine of New York City’s finest cultural institutions, which are open free to the public throughout the evening.
BANG ON A CAN: OTHER PRIMARY STRUCTURES
Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars Vicky Chow and David Cossin with Dither Quartet’s Taylor Levine and James Moore
Thursday, July 10, 2014, 7:30pm
At the same time that visual artists were pioneering the style that became known as Minimalism their friends and counterparts in music were following a similar path. In New York, Philip Glass reduced the musical experience to a handful of notes and patterns. The young Dutch master Louis Andriessen experimented with removing notes, orchestration, and instrumental hierarchies from music, leaving only rhythm. Members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the guitar quartet Dither will play classic works by both composers, plus music by two New Yorkers that they influenced – Michael Gordon and John Zorn.
Exhibition: Other Primary Structures
March 14, 2014 – August 3, 2014
The Jewish Museum is presenting a major exhibition of sculpture from the 1960s featuring the work of artists from Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, much of which has rarely been seen in the United States. Other Primary Structures revisits the premise of and builds upon the Museum’s seminal 1966 exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors, the first American museum exhibition to survey the style now known as Minimalism. Primary Structures introduced the public to such artists as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Walter De Maria, Robert Morris, and others-figures unknown at the time but soon to become synonymous with a radically new approach to sculpture. Nearly 50 years later, Other Primary Structures revisits this formative moment in art history while also reexamining the period from today’s far more global perspective. The first part of the exhibition titled Others 1, on view from March 14 – May 18, 2014, examined work created between 1960 and 1967, while Others 2, on view from May 25 – August 3, presents work created between 1967 and 1970, some of which was directly influenced by the 1966 Primary Structures exhibition at the Jewish Museum.
BANG ON A CAN: FROM THE MARGINS
Featuring Steve Coleman & Friends
Thursday, November 6, 2014, 7:30pm
The collision between Abstract Expressionism and jazz began in the galleries and clubs of New York in the 1940s, as avant garde artists from each world learned more about each other. This connection pushed jazz in a more formal, intellectual direction. An heir to this great tradition is the Chicago composer, saxophone player and bandleader Steve Coleman, who will perform at the Jewish Museum.
Exhibition: From the Margins: Lee Krasner | Norman Lewis, 1945-1952
September 12, 2014 – February 1, 2015
Painters Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis were central to the development of the Abstract Expressionist artistic and social scene in New York but remained tangential to mainstream criticism during the formative period of the 1940s and early 1950s. They focused on smaller, repeated images with self-reflective cultural references. Krasner, better known at the time as the wife of Jackson Pollock, created innovative systems and iconographies within the overall painting style of Abstract Expressionism. Her Little Image paintings were, in part, developed from her study of Hebrew writing as a child. Lewis produced unique linear abstractions that shared much conceptually and aesthetically with the work of Abstract Expressionist painters such as Ad Reinhardt and Mark Tobey. His Little People paintings, with their highly abstracted formal schema, made reference to African-American cultural heritage – the urban experience, the structures of jazz, and African textiles.
BANG ON A CAN: BEAUTY IS POWER
Featuring Maya Beiser
Thursday, January 29, 2015, 7:30pm
The New Yorker magazine once referred to Maya Beiser as “the cello goddess” and the description stuck. The Israeli-American cellist is equal parts glamour, passion, and musical artistry of the highest level. She brings it all to everything she does – from her collaborations with Steve Reich, to her work with Brain Eno and Shirin Neshat, to her stage shows at BAM and other top venues around the world. Beiser captivates audiences with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. The Boston Globe declared, “With virtuoso chops, rock star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrucment to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello.” Raised in the Galilee Mountains in Israel, surrounded with the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, while studying classical cell repertoire, Maya Beiser has dedicated her work to reinventing solo cello performance in the mainstread classical area. In 2011, she was invited to present at the exlcusive TED conference, and her TEDtalkl has been watched by close to one million people and translated to 32 languages. Maya Beiser is a graduate of Yale University and a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
Exhibition: Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power
October 31, 2014 – March 22, 2015
Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power is the first museum exhibition to focus on the cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (1872 – 1965). Rubinstein—as businesswoman and arts patron—helped break down the status quo of taste by blurring the boundaries between commerce, art, fashion, beauty, and design. Her innovative business and style challenged conservative taste and helped usher in a modern notion of beauty, democratized and accessible to all. Beauty Is Power will reunite much of Rubinstein’s famed collection, including modern artworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, and Joan Miró, among others, as well as her iconic collection of African art, miniature period rooms, jewelry, and fashion.
BANG ON A CAN: REVOLUTION OF THE EYE
Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars
Thursday, May 14, 2015, 7:30pm
This concert by the Bang on a Can All-Stars highlights the relationship between music and image. The All-Stars will perform an acclaimed work by jazz giant Don Byron to accompany a screening of Eugene, an early television show by pioneering comedian Ernie Kovacs. In 2000, Bang on a Can commissioned Don Byron to write a score for the iconic show, which was a completely silent and broadcast on national TV in 1961. This concert will also include a music and video piece by visual artist Christian Marclay, whose 24 hour film The Clock was installed last year at the Museum of Modern Art.
Exhibition: Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television
May 1 – September 20, 2015
Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television is the first exhibition to comprehensively examine the influence of modern art on television, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. It explores a uniquely American story in which the revolutionary and uncharted new medium of television—which attracted a young, predominantly Jewish and culturally progressive network executives, writers, producers, directors, and art directors—joined forces with an avant-garde that was itself shaped by an increasingly Jewish presence. The exhibition examines this aesthetic, conceptual, cultural, and political synergy through compelling and important examples of fine art and graphic design as well as ephemera, television memorabilia, and brief and cogent clips from film and television.
Support
Public programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Major annual support in provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
The July 10 concert is made possible by a generous endowment from the William Petschek Family.
About Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can is dedicated to making music new. Founded by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, who curatored the first Marathon concert in 1987 and remain co-Artistic Directors to this day, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found. With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers; performs, presents, and records new work; develops new audiences; and educates the musicians of the future. “Bang on a Can plays “a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn’t concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come” (The New York Times). Current projects include the annual Bang on a Can Marathon; The People’s Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, a professional development program for young musicians; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s extreme street band; and Found Sound Nation, a musical outreach program partnering with the U.S. State Department to create OneBeat, a program that bridges the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries. For more information, visit www.bangonacan.org.
About the Jewish Museum
Located on Museum Mile at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, the Jewish Museum is one of the world’s preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, offering intellectually engaging, educational, and provocative exhibitions and programs for people of all ages and backgrounds. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of over 30,000 works of art, artifacts, and broadcast media reflecting global Jewish identity, and presents a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed temporary exhibitions.
The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City. Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $15.00 for adults, $12.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for visitors 18 and under and Jewish Museum members. Admission is Pay What You Wish on Thursdays from 5pm to 8pm and free on Saturdays. For information on the Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200 or visit the website at www.thejewishmuseum.org.
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