A message from our Executive & Artistic Director
I write to you this week knowing that we are filled with emotion over the events of recent days. It has been difficult to watch and experience as communities across our country react to the tragic killing of George Floyd and to the sight of thousands of people coming together in peaceful protest, even as we continue to struggle with the public health crisis of COVID-19.
As a center for the arts, we reaffirm our continued commitment to presenting artists of color on our stages, supporting artistic work that addresses the important issues of our time, and we join President Gutmann in pledging to work toward creating an environment that is inclusive and free from discrimination, for our patrons and supporters of diverse cultural backgrounds, our staff, board and all persons of color across the Penn campus.
While we grapple daily with anger, pain and sorrow, I hope it gives you solace to remember that the performing arts are a powerful influence in helping us work through the large issues that may be hard to process individually. The performing arts regularly bring us together in all of our diversities, in a shared experience of fellowship. During such troubled times, they play a greater role in our lives. Even experienced in the digital realm, the arts help us make sense of tragedy and challenge, bringing us meaning, comfort and spiritual affirmation, all of which are essential in our lives right now. Read more...
Join us tomorrow on YouTube Live for pianist Jenny Lin
Penn Live Arts Recommends New Music Virtual Stage
With our launch of Annenberg Center @ Home, this spring has been a season of new beginnings. Tomorrow evening at 7 PM, we take another new step into the world of livestreamed events.
In March, we presented pianist and Steinway artist Jenny Lin at the Penn Museum. Little did we know at the time that it would be our final performance for the season, not to mention the conclusion of Lin’s own spring concert schedule. With this in mind, we invited Lin back for our first-ever livestreamed event, a watch party and live discussion with Christopher Gruits, our Executive & Artistic Director. Read more...
Take in Penn's glorious Morris Arboretum from home
Family
While we wait for the day when we can again visit the glorious gardens of the Morris Arboretum we checked out some of the
free family-friendly activities they're offering. One of our cultural partners, Morris Arboretum is Penn’s historic public garden as well as the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Enjoy interactive jigsaw puzzles depicting the lush landscapes of the gardens; downloadable garden-inspired coloring book pages showing flowers currently in bloom, features of the Arboretum and items from their archives; and a variety of nature-based word search puzzles. Get to know Morris Arboretum now, from home, so you’ll be ready when it comes time to visit in person!
Spotlight on composer James Primosch, Professor of Music at Penn
Special Features
At the top of May, acclaimed composer and Penn Professor of Music James Primosch wrote on his
blog, “Sometimes not much is happening, but suddenly when things do happen they come in clumps. I’ve seen it with performances that cluster together, with empty weeks before and after. And now I have two CDs coming out a week apart.” How fortunate for music-lovers: proverbial May flowers in the form of magnificent music.
The album Descent/Return features piano and vocal works by Primosch and John Harbison, Primosch’s teacher, mentor and friend. Primosch studied composition with Harbison in the summer of 1984 during his Tanglewood Fellowship. Read more...
ListenUp: Zeitgeist Playlist
ListenUp New Music
In October 2019, joined by
Bowerbird and
Penn’s Department of Music, we presented Zeitgeist: George Crumb at 90, a three-concert festival that celebrated more than seventy years of music by Grammy® and Pulitzer Prize®-winning composer George Crumb. Crumb is one of the most frequently performed composers today. His music often juxtaposes contrasting musical styles, ranging from the western art-music tradition, to hymns and folk, to non-Western music. Many of his works include programmatic, symbolic, mystical and theatrical elements, which are often reflected in his beautiful and meticulously notated scores. Crumb retired from Penn in 1997 after more than 30 years of teaching. He was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from Penn in May 2009. This week’s playlist celebrates the music performed during Zeitgeist including
Apparition,
Metamorphoses,
Madrigals,
Book I-IV and the Vietnam War-haunted
Black Angels, in addition to a selection of Crumb’s early compositions. Listen in to this sweeping retrospective of the work of this essential American composer.
The Crossing's new album CARTHAGE features music by James Primosch
Penn Live Arts Recommends New Music
We were thrilled to partner with
The Crossing this season as our choir-in-residence, and deeply disappointed when their residency was cut short due to COVID-19. We presented The Crossing @ Christmas in December, followed by the unforgettable Knee Plays in February as part of our three-week
#GLASSFEST honoring
Philip Glass. We then closed our doors just days before the choir’s final residency performance of the season, the world premiere of
Michael Gordon’s
Travel Guide to Nicaragua with cellist
Maya Beiser. While we had hoped to reschedule the performance, we ultimately had to cancel it as the pandemic continued to unfold.
Nevertheless, The Crossing, like many performing ensembles, has carried on in the virtual landscape. Every morning since March 16, Rising with The Crossing has provided us with daily selections from the choir’s best performances and recordings. Read more...
ListenUp: New Music Playlist
New Music ListenUp
We ring in this week’s playlist with the sound of bells.
Sō Percussion, slated to make their Annenberg Center debut this past April, has been rescheduled for October, when they’ll perform the world premieres of works by graduate students in composition from
Penn’s Department of Music. Here, we feature the ensemble’s recordings of music by
Steve Reich,
Paul Lansky, and
Glenn Kotche. Next up on the playlist is a sampling of
The Crossing’s gorgeous recording of
Robert Convery’s
Voyages, which is set to Hart Crane’s early 20th-century poem of the same name. Although The Crossing’s residency at the Annenberg Center this year was cut short, we can’t wait to bring them back in future seasons. We round out our new music playlist by revisiting two solo piano works we heard at
Jenny Lin’s Glass Reflections recital at the
Penn Museum this past March:
Philip Glass’ hypnotic Etude No. 2 and György Ligeti’s intricate first étude,
Désordre.
Penn generations join forces in harmony as part of Israel's worldwide Independence Day celebration
Special Features
As a hub for the arts at the University of Pennsylvania, we are always on the lookout for current Penn students and alumni in the limelight. We found both in a streaming performance of the 2020 Worldwide Celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. Composer, songwriter, singer and 1995 Penn graduate
Gabriel Mann scored a new arrangement of “
Ahavat Olam” for the celebration, which was performed by the Platt brothers—who also have roots at Penn. If you missed the live stream, treat yourself to the three-minute performance above.
Read more...Dig into Penn Museum At Home with the whole family
Family
Our buildings might be empty right now but our University cultural partners join us in keeping the lights on virtually. This week we salute the
Penn Museum. While their entire website is a treasure trove of offerings for all visitors, here we focus on two family-friendly categories within the
Penn Museum At Home section.
At-Home Anthropology for Kids invites learners of all ages to create legendary creatures or Roman mosaics, design a personal museum or learn how to mummify fruits and vegetables. Each week the Museum adds new projects so children and their grown-ups can add some fun, new projects to their weekly mix. Older children and teenagers might want to check out the
Digital Daily Dig, a three-minute video posted on the Museum’s
Facebook page at 1 PM each weekday, with a substantial archive available on the Museum’s
website. Billed as “One artifact. Three minutes. Endless insights.” this quick and clever feature brings to life Etruscan sandals, Roman ketchup, Foo Lions and many other fascinating objects within the Museum’s collection.
Artists lead a national conversation in the Abbey Theatre's Dear Ireland video series
Penn Live Arts Recommends Theatre
Dublin’s historic
Abbey Theatre is an Annenberg Center favorite that we have welcomed to our stages on multiple occasions. Most recently we presented the sold-out Philadelphia premiere of the Abbey’s hilarious
Two Pints at our local pub, the Blarney Stone. Now, in spite of theatre closures and cancelled performances across the globe, the Abbey stands fast by its mission to tell the Irish story through art with its candid new video series,
Dear Ireland.
The Abbey is widely recognized for its transformative artistry, creating works that are provocative and reflect many different facets of Irish society. Dear Ireland was created with the Irish theatre arts community in mind, employing 50 Irish playwrights to each write a monologue and then nominate an actor to video-record it at home in social isolation. Read more...
