Performances & Events

Carnegie Hall co-presents Sanctuary with ACO, a concert that explores the places, company, and states of mind in which composers seek inviolable refuge. Lisa Bielawa’s Sanctuary, a concerto for violinist Jennifer Koh, is an extraordinary historical research project around this powerful word, documenting the rhetoric around founding American principles and every important struggle along the way to a more perfect union.  In Restless Oceans, Anna Clyne finds inspiration in a poem by Audra Lorde; the musicians raise their voices in song and use their feet to stand united in a defiant work that embraces the power of women.  Hannah Kendall’s alternately buoyant and serene Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes its title from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic collection of 16 diagrammatic block pieces. With a nod to the traditional African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water”, the work conjures both the majesty and elegance highlighted by the artist as well as her own reflective take on the history of globalization and multiculturalism ushered in by the famed Portuguese explorer.  Newly commissioned works by Dai Wei and Paula Matthusen complete this rich musical odyssey into the human soul that is both internal and external, local and international, abstract yet wholly tied to our everyday existence.