White Light Festival

By Lawrence Chandler Smith

Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Jane Moss has announced the schedule for Lincoln Center’s sixth White Light Festival, running from October 14 through November 22.

The multidisciplinary Festival, which takes its name from a quotation by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, is focused on the remarkable power of art to reveal the many dimensions of our interior lives.

Spanning numerous musical traditions, genres, and disciplines, the Festival will offer 26 performances and events, featuring one world and five U.S. premieres and debuts by artists and companies from the United States, the U.K., Croatia, Belgium, France and Ireland. Other Festival components include pre- and post-performance artist discussions, a panel discussion, film and the popular post-performance White Light Lounges, where performers and audience members can gather.

Said Moss, “This year’s White Light Festival explores the myriad shades and light of the human condition, starting with language and the universal impulse to communicate through speech, story and song. From the important song cycles of Franz Schubert and new interpretations of prose works by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett to our first jazz presentation and cutting-edge choreographers and dancers, the Festival promises to challenge and inspire through music, words, and movement.”

The White Light Festival opens with a three-concert survey of the complete song cycles of Franz Schubert, sung by tenor Mark Padmore with pianist Paul Lewis, on October 14, 15, and 17 at Alice Tully Hall.

The Festival closes on November 22 with the final performance of Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music, an evening of four dance works set to the music of Thomas Adès, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, Karole Armitage, Alexander Whitley, and Crystal Pite, conducted and accompanied by Adès at the piano, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Calder Quartet, soprano Anna Dennis, and violinist Thomas Gould. Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music is a production of Sadler’s Wells London.

Tickets for the 2015 White Light Festival are available online at WhiteLightFestival.org, by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or at the Avery Fisher or Alice Tully Hall box offices (Broadway and 65th Street). Ticket packages will be available for purchase while single tickets will be available September 1.