the new school's college of performing arts announces the fall 2022 season

The Mannes Orchestra performing at Alice Tully Hall

October 5, 2022, New York - The Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama, comprising the New School’s College of Performing Arts announced its fall 2022 season, featuring new works, premieres, partnerships, and cross-disciplinary performances by students, faculty, and guest artists. Across Mannes, Jazz, and Drama, the college continues to build on its reputation as a destination for cutting-edge work that challenges and inspires its students and audiences.

The season’s highlights include a rare staging of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts in partnership with the New York Choral Society, an exciting performance by the Mannes American Composers Ensemble led by David Fulmer, a production of La Calisto with rising star conductor Kamna Gupta presented by Mannes Opera at the Abrons Arts Center as part of the @Abrons Series, a special (Un)Silent Film screening of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror with the College of Performing Arts Theater Orchestra, important premieres by the Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall of works by Adolphus Hailstork, Zhou Tian, and Jennifer Higdon, featuring flute soloist Valerie Coleman, powerful contemporary theatrical works including Maria Irene Fornes’s Fefu and Her Friends and Caridad Svich’s Red Bike and a devised work by Contemporary Theatre and Performance students facilitated by Obie Award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith and Tony Award-winner Jim Nicola.

Along with its performance-based work, the college will present events featuring prominent thinkers and artists that ignite creative, thought-provoking dialogue. On October 6, Lynn Nottage, two-time Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, and Tony Gerber, PGA and Emmy Award-winning film director, take the stage at Tishman Auditorium to discuss their lives together: making a home, making art, and making history. This special event will be moderated by College of Performing Arts faculty member and Director of Equity Inclusion and Social Justice Dennis Hilton-Reid.

With the Office of the President, the college will present the Presidential Visiting Scholars series featuring The New School’s 2022-2023 Presidential Visiting Scholars Bill T. Jones and Lisa B. Thompson. This series will include creative conversations and events, including a reading of Lisa B. Thompson's Underground directed by Zishan Ugurlu at LaMama Experimental Theatre Company on October 12 and “Bill Chats”, the New York Live Arts series featuring Bill T. Jones engaging in public conversations, performances, and classes that explore urgent and intersectional questions including identity, artist/citizen, community, and climate justice. 

In addition to its student-led work, the College of Performing Arts is establishing itself as one of the city’s go-to presenting organizations for new and experimental work. From four shows a week at The Stone at The New School (http://www.thestonenyc.com/calendar.php) to performances by ensembles-in-residence, including The JACK Quartet and The Westerlies, Mannes, Jazz, and Drama’s season offers audiences many exciting - and mostly free - performances.

FEFU AND HER FRIENDS by María Irene Fornés
Directed by Ana Margineanu  
Thursday, October 13 at 7:30 PM
Friday, October 14 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, October 15 at 2:30 PM & 7:30 PM
Friday, October 21 on-demand

Bank Street Theater
151 Bank Street, NYC
Free, RSVP

Hailed as game-changing, provocative, and genius, Fefu and Her Friends is one of the most influential—and invisible—plays of the 20th century. Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés’s rapturous comedy-drama allows the audience to be a fly on many walls in this unconventional tale of eight women gathering at a New England country home in 1935.

(Un)Silent Film: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Friday, October 21 at 7:30 PM 
John L. Tishman Auditorium
Free, RSVP

The (Un)Silent Film series returns with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922). Under the baton of Mark Gould, The College of Performing Arts Theater Orchestra will perform a live score to this masterpiece of German expressionist cinema. Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Stoker’s Dracula, was nearly a “lost film” due to a century-old court order to destroy all film copies. However, the work lives on today, making Nosferatu widely regarded for its significant influence on the horror genre as the oldest surviving Vampire film.

The (Un)Silent Film series has been critical in advancing the resurgence of film screenings with live music. Previous editions have drawn capacity crowds to Tishman Auditorium and have been hosted by Matthew Broderick, Bill Irwin, and others. In addition, the (Un)Silent Film series has presented the world premieres of works composed for The Birds and The Immigrant, a New York premiere of a score by Hollywood composer Craig Marks for the film Sherlock, Jr., and Charlie Chaplin's original scores for Gold Rush and other Chaplin classics.

RED BIKE by Caridad Svich
Directed by Kathleen Capdesuñer
Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 PM
Friday, November 4 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, November 5 at  2:30 PM & 7:30 PM

Bank Street Theater
151 Bank Street, NYC
Free, RSVP

What kind of future will you have living in these here United States? Remember when you were eleven years old and you had a bike, one that made you dream about a world bigger than the one in which you live? This is that memory. Except it is now. This is the first play in the AMERICAN PSALM seven-play cycle.

LA CALISTO, presented by Mannes Opera, will be performed at the Abrons Arts Center as part of the @Abrons Series
Friday, November 18 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, November 19 at 3:00 PM
Saturday, November 19 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, November 20 at 2:30 PM

Tickets will go on sale on October 19.
$25 General Admission
$10 Seniors
Free with New School ID

Mannes Opera is thrilled that rising star conductor Kamna Gupta will make her NYC mainstage debut with us, working with Artistic Director Emma Griffin to create a vivid and contemporary take on this wild tale. This presentation of La Calisto is part of the @Abrons Series Program, a subsidized theater rental program that provides access to spaces and subsidized production services.

La Calisto, first performed in 1651 in Venice, is the best known of Pier Francesco Cavalli’s 40+ operas and is an astonishing example of early Baroque opera. Based on a libretto by Giovanni Faustini, it’s a wild, bawdy romp through the libidinous underbelly of mythology. The first story is the Ovidian myth of Calisto, in which the nymph is seduced by Jupiter disguised as Diana (a gorgeous reminder that people have been exploring gender on stage, and in life, for hundreds of years). The second story is the myth of Endymion, whose love for Diana is secretly reciprocated by the chaste goddess. Decidedly unchaste complications ensue as gods, satyrs, nymphs, and fools twist and turn within a raucous, unraveling plot. La Calisto’s synergy of sublime music and extravagant emotion feels modern and fresh today - undeniably one of the greatest music-dramatic pieces in the operatic repertoire.

Ellington's Sacred Concerts
Friday, November 18 at 7:30 PM 
Saturday, November 19 at 2:30 PM + Livestream
John L. Tishman Auditorium
Free, RSVP

We are thrilled to present a rare staging of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, presented in partnership with the New York Choral Society.

Combining elements of jazz, classical music, choral music, spirituals, gospel, blues, and dance, Ellington’s three Sacred Concerts in 1965 in 1968, and 1973. Ellington said it was the most important music he’d ever written. Because of the scale of the music and the number of artists needed to perform each work, Ellington’s Sacred Concerts have rarely been performed in their entirety since his death in 1974 and have not been performed in a concert hall setting in New York City in over 35 years.

The New School Studio Orchestra is joined by the New York Choral Society, Brianna Thomas, Milton Suggs, Daniel J. Watts, and James Little and conducted by David Hayes and Keller Coker.

MACE (Mannes American Composers Ensemble)
Monday, December 5 at 7:30 PM 
12th Street Auditorium, 66 W 12th Street
Free, RSVP 

Founded in 2012 by composer Lowell Liebermann, MACE is a flexible small to mid-sized ensemble that presents works by iconic American composers such as Phillip Glass and Steve Reich and works by young and up-and-coming composers such as David Hertzberg and Nina C. Young. The ensemble aims to embrace a broad view of the vital landscape of contemporary American Music and to bolster that landscape through premieres and commissions. This evening's program will be conducted by the conductor, composer, and violinist, David Fulmer.

"Fulmer is one of the most important conductors and musicians working with contemporary music...His piece was a gorgeous, abstractly lyrical set of dramatic gestures and juxtapositions." (Sky's Acetylene - New York Philharmonic) – New York Classical Review.

Program:
Toshio Hosokawa: Singing Garden - flute, oboe, harp, piano, violin, cello

Unsuk Chin: Fantaisie Mécanique - trumpet, trombone, percussion

Olga Neuwirth: “Torsion” - Solo Bassoon, oboe, clarinet, trumpet trombone, Wagner tuba, percussion, violin, viola, cello

PLAYING THE OTHER
Facilitated by Dael Orlandersmith and Jim Nicola

Monday, December 5 
Tuesday, December 6  
Wednesday, December 7  
Thursday, December 8  

The Wild Project
195 E. 3rd St, NYC

MFA Contemporary Theatre and Performance students will present PLAYING THE OTHER, an intimate devised theatrical piece facilitated by Obie Award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith and Tony Award-winner Jim Nicola. PLAYING THE OTHER requires us to journey to unfamiliar places; places around identity, race, gender, culture, and class. This reminds us that doing so can often lead us right back to our very own backyard.

Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall
Hailstork, Tian and Higdon

Thursday, December 12 at 7:30 PM
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at, W 65th St, New York
Tickets will go on sale on November 1

Led by David Hayes, the Mannes Orchestra returns to Alice Tully Hall in a concert featuring a symphonic world premiere by Adolphus Hailstork, a New York premiere of a Concerto for Orchestra by Zhou Tian and the New York premiere of a Concerto for Flute and Orchestra by Jennifer Higdon, featuring the Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership and Flute and Composition faculty member, Valerie Coleman. The program also includes the second-ever public performance of the long-lost and overlooked Black American composer and violinist John Thomas Douglass’s Pilgrim Overture, in a newly orchestrated score by musicologist and cellist Philip Ewell.

Program:
John Thomas Douglass - Pilgrim Overture (1867-1876) orchestrated by Philip Ewell (2022)

Adolphus Hailstork - Symphony No. 4 (World Premiere)

Zhou Tian - Concerto for Orchestra (NY Premiere)

Jennifer Higdon - Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Valerie Coleman - Soloist (NY Premiere)

Special Concerts:

Fine Arts Quartet presents the Early Music of George Enescu, a former Mannes faculty member, Wednesday, October 26 at 7:30 PM at The New School Auditorium at 66 West 12th St.

RSVP 

The Fine Arts Quartet, with guest pianists Fabio and Gisele Witkowski and guest bassist Alexander Bickard, presents a program of rare early chamber works by Romanian composer and former Mannes faculty member George Enescu (1881-1955). The Naxos label will release the Fine Arts Quartet's recording of these works in August 2023.

Program:
Prélude and Gavotte for two pianos, violin & cello (1898)  

Piano Quintet in D major (1896)

Aubade (Trio for violin, viola, cello) (1899)

Pastorale, Menuet Triste, and Noctune (for violin and piano, four hands) (1900)

Romanian Rhapsody No.1 (for piano quintet plus string bass) (1901)

The JACK Quartet will perform a recital of their current repertoire at Mannes’ Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall on November 10, which will be free and open to the public. 

The Stone at The New School
Through December, The Stone features Rebekka Heller, Wendy Eisenberg, Sean Ono Lennon, Esperanza Spalding, and William Winant, among others. To see the full lineup and RSVP, visit http://thestonenyc.com/calendar. 

The Stone at The New School, Glassbox Theater, 55 W. 13th Street, 1st Floor, New York, NY

Please visit the College of Performing Arts events calendar for the full calendar of events.

The College of Performing Arts at The New School (CoPA) was formed in 2015 and draws together the iconic Mannes School of Music, the legendary School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the ground-breaking School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for cross-disciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, innovative education, and world-class performances.

The over 1,100 students at CoPA are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts for all people. Students and faculty at CoPA collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more. 

The curriculum at CoPA is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.

Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for innovative artistry, dedicated to developing citizen artists who seek to make the world a better and more beautiful place. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. Distinguished Mannes alumni include the 20th-century songwriting legend Burt Bacharach, the great pianists Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, and Bill Evans, acclaimed conductors Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung, Joann Falleta, and Julius Rudel, beloved mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, as well as the great opera stars of today, Yonghoon Lee, Danielle de Niese, and Nadine Sierra.

The School of Drama is the creative home to a dynamic group of actors, directors, writers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary theater artists. With a focus on authenticity of expression, the school’s curriculum confronts today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media. The School of Drama’s faculty is made up of award-winning actors, playwrights, and directors who bring a currency of professional experience, artistic training, and project-based learning into the classroom. The multidisciplinary MFA and BFA degree programs bring together rigor, creativity, and collaborative learning to create work marked by professionalism, imagination, and civic awareness. The school takes inspiration from the greats who walked its halls in the past, including Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and Vinette Carrol, as well as more recent graduates, like Adrienne C. Moore, Jordan E. Cooper, and Jason Kim.

The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, founded in 1986, is one of the most influential institutions of its kind. The quality and uniqueness of the school lie in its artist-as-mentor approach to learning, its progressive curriculum, small ensemble-based performance, a stellar faculty composed of artist-practitioners, and access to unique musical opportunities throughout New York City. Notable faculty include Reggie Workman, bassist, bandleader, composer; Ben Allison, bassist, bandleader, composer; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Robert Hurwitz, President, Nonesuch Records; Yosvany Terry, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, composer; and Jimmy Owens, trumpet. Among the many remarkable artists who have given master classes or lecture presentations are Cassandra Wilson, Randy Weston, Geri Allen, George Lewis, Marc Ribot, Fred Wesley, Pat Metheny, Joshua Redman, Pauline Oliveros, Don Byron, Ben Sidran, Tommy LiPuma and George Wein.


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