Artists Studio: Conrad Tao & Tyshawn Sorey

2016 ARTISTS STUDIO

IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

Friday, May 20 at 7:00pm & 9:00pm

CONRAD TAO, PIANO TYSHAWN SOREY, PERCUSSION Sascha von Oertzen, Sound Designer Piano provided by Steinway & Sons

Artist statement

Tonight’s program is about the liminal space between notated and improvised music, coloring inside, outside, and around the lines, and obliterating the lines.

Tonight’s program is about groove.

Repertoire in this performance includes: Ligeti: Hungarian Rock Boulez: une page d’éphémeride Schoenberg: Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 Morton Feldman: Piano Elliott Carter: Intermittences Elliott Carter: Caténaires

This performance is approximately one hour and ten minutes in length, performed without intermission.

SEASON SPONSORS

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and openhearted vision” by The New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by Time Out New York. During the 2015-2016 season, Tao performs with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Brazilian Symphony, and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He also performs recitals of works ranging from Bach to Frederic Rzewski, and from Rachmaninoff to Julia Wolfe. In 2016, Tao closes a twoyear artist residency with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with a new work, Alice, to be premiered in June. Most recently, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia commissioned a new work for piano, orchestra, and electronics, An Adjustment, which received its premiere in September 2015 with Tao at the piano. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared the piece abundant in “compositional magic,” a “most imaginative [integration of ] spiritual post-Romanticism and ‘90s club music.”

Tao’s most recent album, Pictures, which slots works by David Lang, Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, and Tao himself alongside Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, was released last October on Warner Classics.

Tyshawn Sorey is an active composer, performer, educator, and scholar, who works across an extensive range of musical idioms. As a percussionist, trombonist, and pianist, Sorey has performed and/or recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with artists such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Coleman, Butch Morris, Peter Evans, Misha Mengelberg, John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith, Dave Douglas, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lehman, and Tim Berne, among many others. Tyshawn’s work has been favorably reviewed be NPR, JazzTimes, The Village Voice, The Wire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Downbeat Magazine.

As a scholar, Sorey received his B.M. in Jazz Studies and Performance from William Paterson University in 2004, where he studied under John Riley, James Williams, and Kevin Norton, while concurrently studying composition with Anton Vishio and John Link. In 2009, he began his studies with composer-performers Anthony Braxton, Jay Hoggard, and Alvin Lucier, which culminated in earning his M.A. in Composition from Wesleyan University. He is currently a Faculty Fellow in Columbia University’s Doctor of Musical Arts program with a concentration in Composition, studying primarily under George Lewis. Sorey has composed over 160 works to date of all genres, receiving commissions from Van Lier Fellowship, Roulette, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. He is currently a private instructor in composition and improvisation for The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Improvisational Music.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO With its exquisite melding of styles and mediums evident in the creative collaboration of Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists in the new Aesthetic Movement style, the Veterans Room represents the exuberance and innovation of exceptional young artisans approaching the decorative arts with a new vision.

Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran, this new series features a diverse mix of contemporary classical, performative art, and an improvisational approach to jazz – all inspired by the exotic beauty of the newly-reopened space and the inventive spirit of the designers who conceived it. These cutting-edge interventions are created by dynamic artists and artistic pairings that harken back to the imagination present at the room’s inception, while testing the limits of the space and pushing their art forms in bold, new directions.

UPCOMING EVENTS: MILFORD GRAVES AND DEANTONI PARKS JUNE 13

TALES OF LOVE AND FEAR: LUCY RAVEN SEPTEMBER 29—30

CAMILLE NORMENT AND CRAIG TABORN OCTOBER 16

RYAN TRECARTIN AND LIZZIE FITCH NOVEMBER 21

ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM “...the Armory, a once-crumbling landmark, has transformed itself into one of the world’s most sought-after venues for performance, music, and supersized art projects. And in a sense, the Veterans Room, of all the Armory’s opulent reception rooms, has the deepest spiritual kinship with a work of contemporary art, the feel of an installation by a young collective whose members were reacting to one another and making it all up as they went along.”

– The New York Times The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design.

The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $210-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Heidi and Thomas McWilliams, Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Liz and Emanuel Stern, Olivia and Adam Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous.

Cover photo: James Ewing