Spooky Nights at the Museum

DJ Spooky, new administration promise an innovative year at the MET.

It's the climate--or maybe the pants. Paul "DJ Spooky" Miller in Antarctica.
He's the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Artist-in-Residence.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the greatest arts exhibits in New York City. For next season, the museum is shaking off its staid image and rebranding its annual concerts and lectures offering as Met Museum Presents. 

The Museum has a new Director for its concerts and lectures: Limor Tomer, whose resume includes work at WQXR and the Whitney. To revitalize this program (which was under the aegis of the now-retired Hildje Limondjian for 41 years), Ms. Tomer has in turn enlisted Paul Miller, the decidedly "downtown" musician better known as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid. Mr. Miller is the museum's first-ever Artist-in-Residence.

The programming for next season has its share of exciting intiatives, designed to bring concerts and performances out of the cavernous Grace Rainey Rodgers Auditorium and into the museum's actual exhibit spaces. The program offerings include: 

The Peony Pavilion: The so-called "Ming Ring" (blame the Lincoln Center press department for that one) gets a new score from Chinese composer Tan Dun, and a new stage in the Museum's Astor Court Chinese Scholar Garden. Although only 50 people will be able to attend each performance, a live simulcast to the Rodgers Auditorium will expand the opera's on-site audience.

The Met Reframed:

DJ Spooky's initiative this year seeks to combine turntablism, chamber music, and mixed media (including iPads and GPS) for an exciting series of concerts. Works on the schedule include The Nauru Elegies (examining the plight of that much-harvested South Pacific Island), Of Water and Ice which draws inspiration from the rapidly shrinking ice-cap of Antarctica, and an iPad Mixing Project to take place in the Museum's Great Hall.

The Endellion String Quartet:

Another cycle of the Beethoven String Quartets (following the 2011 appearances by the Pacifica Quartet) does not necessarily qualify as "innovative", but this young European ensemble should make these immortal works interesting. Six concerts over two weekends will encompass the entire cycle of quartets.

The Salomé Chamber Orchestra

This exciting young orchestra will offer a series of performances featuring Bach's Brandenburg concertos, a concert pairing the Four Seasons by Vivaldi with similar concertos from Astor Piazzola. All of these concerts will feature instruments from the Sau Wing Lam collection, which will promptly return to their display cases.

Additionally, the Museum will continue its partnership with the New York Philharmonic hosting new music concerts in the CONTACT! series. Other concerts include an appearance by jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd, a Valentine's Day concert by Judy Collins, and a Mozart concert by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists.

Concert Review: The Golden Road to Samarkand

Leon Botstein explores Orientalism in France.

Your guide to the East: conductor Leon Botstein. Photo by Karl Rabe.

On Friday night, Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra and his Carnegie Hall audience in another journey of the deep corners of the catalogue. This concert delved into the sensual delights of 19th century French music, specificially works tinged with the smoky, opiate flavor of "Orientalism." (In this context, the "Orient" encompasses north Africa, the Muslim world, and India.) Incorporating musical influences from those lands was the height of fashion for composers like Franck, Saint-Saëns and Georges Bizet.

The program opened with Orient et Occident, a tripartite march by the clever Saint-Saëns that contrasted "Eastern" percussion and minor-key melodies with "Western" ideas derived from Bach. The highlight: a five-part fugue that firmly anchored the work in the Western milieu. (Saint-Saëns was a master contrapuntalist.) This work was a tease for next summer's Bard Festival, (also directed by Dr. Botstein) which will focus on his music.

Conductor and orchestra then shifted perspectives, moving forward to the fin de siècle for Ravel's little-heard Shéhérezhade Overture, an early (1898) example of the composer's ouevre which owes a strong debt to Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral technique. This work featured a vast sweep of tonal colors, knitted together by Ravel's mechanically precise musical

For the four Poémes Hindous by Maurice Delage (a Ravel pupil) the orchestra was pared down to a string quartet plus wind octet, accompanying Julia Bullock on these dreamy wanders through the landscape of the subcontinent. These were the most exotic works on the program, written by a composer who actually lived in India for a time. Ms. Bullock sang with warmth and power, the smooth French unwinding like a mysterious river through a shadowy land.

The full orchestra returned for Les Djinns a challenging one-movement tone poem for piano and orchestra. Soloist Julia Zilberquit created thrilling effect wth a smooth, singing tone and a legato that seemed to flow from her fingers. The sound of her instrument materialized  through richly woven orchestration like one of the manifestations of the Arabian Nights. 


The concert ended with a near-complete performance of Georges Bizet's Djamileh, a three-handed one-act opera about a wealthy slave-owner in Egypt who falls for one of his harem girls. This early Bizet opera was a favorite of Gustav Mahler in Vienna. It was originally given in repertory with La princesse jaune, another "Oriental" one-acter by Saint-Saëns. It would be fascinating to see them paired à la Cav/Pag.

Mezzo Eve Gugliotti (last seen in Dark Sisters) was affecting in the title role, which is like a nice version of Carmen. She brought sultry warmth and emotion to the part. Tenor Colin Ainsworth displayed a fine, precise instrument with fresh, youthful tone as the callow Haroun. Baritone Philip Cutlip was a good foil as Splendiano, the major-domo, although he indulged in a distracting ad lib in the middle of the work.