March 5, 2018 — Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts today announced its 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival, which will run July 12 to August 12. This summer marks an expansion of the festival, as it significantly increases the size and scope of its multidisciplinary presentations, enhances its commitment to the music of our own time, and extends its geographical footprint to include Central Park and Brooklyn. While maintaining Mozart’s creative genius at its heart, the festival will magnify its artistic impact through landmark international productions in all disciplines and concerts by emerging creative voices, as well as commissions and world premieres. American Express is the lead sponsor of the Mostly Mozart Festival.
“What is most inspiring about Mozart is his unmatched capacity for invention and innovation,” saidJane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director. “Any festival that carries his name must exhibit an equally bold and adventurous commitment to ongoing growth and transformation. This summer we move into a new chapter of expansion. Mostly Mozart is certain to secure its place as a vibrant international arts festival, marked by its powerful artistic cross-pollination and ambitious, forward-thinking vision, plus a strong commitment to the unique energy and community that is New York City. Most important of all, it is a destination that reveals the most sublime expressions and dimensions of the human heart. I believe Mozart would approve.”
Opening the 2018 season is Available Light, a trailblazing collaboration between choreographerLucinda Childs, composer John Adams, and architect Frank Gehry, seen in New York for the first time in 33 years. The Catalonian theater collective La Fura dels Baus joins the esteemed period ensemble Insula Orchestra and accentus choir for the North American premiere of a wildly inventive staging of Haydn’s The Creation. The achingly beautiful NINAGAWA Macbeth , a revival of the original 1980 production from Japan—and the last production overseen by legendary director Yukio Ninagawa before his death in 2016—will be staged one last time before it is retired. Closing the season, the Mark Morris Dance Group returns to the festival with the world premiere of The Trout, set to Schubert’s eponymous quintet.
A chorus of some 800 experienced and amateur singers will premiere John Luther Adams’s In the Name of the Earth in Central Park’s Harlem Meer. The performance builds on two highly acclaimed outdoor world premieres commissioned previously for the Mostly Mozart Festival: 2014’s Sila: The Breath of the World, also by John Luther Adams, and David Lang’s the public domain, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2016. Simon Halsey, who led the performance of the public domain, returns to the festival to conduct In the Name of the Earth.
The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, led by Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée, continues to provide the backbone of the festival’s season with its command of the works of Mozart, as well as repertoire spanning the Baroque to the contemporary. It opens with a new staging of the Bernstein MASS, commemorating the composer’s centennial year. This ambitious presentation, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer (New York debut), brings together two choruses, the exciting bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and a cast of dancers, vocalists, and musicians to David Geffen Hall. The orchestra will also be joined by acclaimed soloists and conductors throughout the season, including Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Thomas Dausgaard, Rosa Feola (New York debut),Stephen Hough, Christian Zacharias, 16-year-old violin prodigy Daniel Lozakovich in his New York debut, and many more.
The intrepid International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), in its eighth year as festival artists-in-residence, will stage the New York premiere of Ashley Fure and Adam Fure’s immersive work The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects in the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center in Brooklyn. The work, which premiered to wide acclaim in fall 2017, activates a space through installation, the vibrations of 24 subwoofers, and virtuosic performances by ICE musicians. The ensemble will present two additional programs: a free, nature-inspired concert in the David Rubenstein Atrium and a performance in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater built around inventive works for piano by three living American composers: John Adams, Courtney Bryan, and George Lewis.
The festival will continue its tradition of presenting celebrated artists and rising stars at venues on the Lincoln Center campus. The esteemed Emerson String Quartet joins forces with guest violistNokuthula Ngwenyama for a program of Purcell, Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn at Alice Tully Hall. The popular A Little Night Music series of intimate late-night performances in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse continues with presentations by Emanuel Ax, Daniel Lozakovich and George Li, Pražák Quartet, Paul Lewis, and and Stephen Hough and Imani Winds, among others. Complementing the festival programming, a film series will screen documentaries about Leonard Bernstein and Yukio Ninagawa , various talks will delve further into the season’s themes, and pre-concert recitals will be presented prior to Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra programs.
“Under her visionary leadership, Jane Moss has grown the Mostly Mozart Festival into one of New York’s preeminent summer festivals—one that continually surprises, excites, and inspires both artists and audiences,” said Lincoln Center President Debora L. Spar. “In her first year overseeing all of Lincoln Center’s programming, she has assembled a breadth of world-class performances, while streamlining the organization’s artistic vision. The 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival sets a new standard for this beloved summer tradition and provides an auspicious groundwork for seasons ahead.”
“American Express is thrilled to support Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival and its ambitious programming, bringing world class performances from across the arts to audiences in New York,” said Timothy J. McClimon, president, American Express Foundation. “This partnership is emblematic of our long-term commitment to the arts and Lincoln Center in ensuring that both remain vital to the culture of our hometown, New York City.”
Now in its 52nd year, the Mostly Mozart Festival is one of several summer programs offered by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that annually activate the campus’s indoor and outdoor spaces. Midsummer Night Swing (June 25–July 14) brings top bands from around the world, dance instructors, and New York’s social dance community to Damrosch Park for three weeks of dancing under the stars. Lincoln Center Out of Doors (July 25–August 12) presents a wide array of free performances, including film, music, dance, spoken word, film, and more, reflecting the diversity of New York City. The David Rubenstein Atrium’s robust calendar of free events, including world-class performances, illuminating conversations, dance parties, kids’ programs, and more, also continues through the summer.
