Fall Concerts at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Feature Music from Japan, Java, China and the Middle East

September 22, 2014

The fall season of concerts at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, feature a two-day festival of West Javanese music and dance, two concerts of new and traditional music for Japanese and Chinese instruments, jazz arrangements of classic Arab songs, and four performances in the Meyer Concert Series, an annual series at critically acclaimed chamber music ensembles that bridge Western and Asian traditions.

Highlights include a perennial audience favorite, the Musicians from Marlboro, new music by Grammy Award-winning composer Zhou Long and the Festival Pablo Casals musicians on their first-ever U.S. tour.

All performances are free of charge and take place in the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Tickets are required and can be obtained through ticketmaster.com beginning the second Monday before each concert and at the Meyer Auditorium one hour before showtime. For more information, visit asia.si.edu/events.

SCHEDULE

Festival
Performing Indonesia: Music, Dance and Theater from West Java
Oct. 4-5
More than a dozen artists from the Indonesian College of the Arts visit the Freer|Sackler for a two-day festival of performances, workshops, scholarly talks and family programs celebrating the unique culture of Sunda, West Java. Highlights include an evening of classical Sundanese dance, an afternoon puppet performance telling the story of the birth of the monkey king, a hands-on gamelan workshop, a symposium on recent scholarship on Sundanese arts and participatory family programs on dance and puppet painting. Free tickets are required only for the dance performance Saturday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. The festival is presented jointly with the Embassy of Indonesia.

Meyer Concert Series
Musicians from Marlboro I
Thursday, Oct. 16; 7:30 p.m.
Grammy Award-winning violist Kim Kashkashian and Marina Piccinini, the first flutist to receive a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, join young virtuosos from the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival to perform music by Beethoven, Debussy and Hungarian composers György Kurtág and Endre Szervánszky. Completing the ensemble are David McCarroll and Nikki Chooi, violins; Wenting Kang, viola; Karen Ouzounian, cello; and Sivan Magen, harp. The full program includes Beethoven's String Quintet in C Major, op. 29; Kurtág's Officium breve in memoriam Andreæ Szervánszky, op. 28; Szervánszky's Trio for Flute, Violin, and Viola; and Debussy's rarely heard Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, L. 137.

Meyer Concert Series
Festival Pablo Casals Prades Collective
Thursday, Oct. 23; 7:30 p.m.
On their first-ever tour of the United States, top musicians from the venerable Pablo Casals Festival--held since 1950 in the French village of Prades in Pyrenees Mountains--perform an Asian-French program. The concert features Debussy's Violin Sonata, Fauré's Quartet for Piano and Strings no. 1, Isang Yun's "Piri" for solo clarinet, Jaejoon Ryu's "Madrigal" for clarinet and strings, Toru Takamitsu's "A Bird Came Down the Walk" for viola and piano, and Tchaikovsky's piano solo "Autumn Song," arranged for clarinet and strings by Takemitsu. The ensemble includes violinist Kyoko Takezawa and violist Nobuko Imai from Japan, violinist Elina Vähälä and cellist Arto Noras from Finland, pianist Melvin Chen, and French clarinetist Michel Lethiec, the ensemble's artistic director.

Bamboo Brilliance: A Mujuan Shakuhachi Celebration
Kurahashi Yodo II, director
Saturday, Oct. 25; 7:30 p.m.
Japanese bamboo flute (shakuhachi) virtuoso Kurahashi Yodo II leads an ensemble celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Mujuan Shakuhachi Dojo, a school founded by his father in Kyoto. The group, comprising master students from across the United States, performs traditional solos, classical pieces for Shakuhachi and koto (honkyoku) from the Edo period (1615-1868), and new music for these venerable Japanese instruments.

Meyer Concert Series
Music From China Ensemble: 30th-Anniversary Concert
Saturday, Nov. 22; 3 p.m.
New York's outstanding Music From China ensemble returns to the Freer to celebrate its 30th anniversary with this performance of newly commissioned works for Chinese and Western instruments. Featured are pieces by Grammy Award-winner Zhou Long, Huang Ruo (whose latest work was premiered this year by the Santa Fe Opera), Wang Guowei, Chen Yi and Eric Moe. The ensemble features such Chinese instruments as the erhu (fiddle), pipa (lute), zheng (zither), sheng (mouth organ) and dizi (flute), along with cello and percussion. This Freer concert follows the ensemble's New York celebration at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.
 
The complete program includes the Washington, D.C. premiere for Chen Yi's Chinese Dancing Tunes, Huang Ruo's The Paths, Eric Moe's Panoramic Guide to Glacier Travel and Wang Guowei's Leaving Home, as well as Zhou Long's Mount A Long Wind (2004).

Meyer Concert Series
The Traveler's Ear: Scenes from Music
David Kadouch, piano
Friday, Dec. 5; 7:30 p.m.
Visitors can take an enchanting trip in the great outdoors guided by four of the greatest composers as the award-winning French pianist David Kadouch performs travel-inspired music by Bach, Schumann, Liszt, and Bartók. The pianist made his New York City debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after winning top prizes at the Beethoven Bonn Competition and Leeds International Piano Competition. He has performed under such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Charles Dutoit, David Zinman, Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim. His program at the Freer includes Schumann's Forest Scenes (Waldszenen), op. 82; Liszt's Three Petrarch Sonnets from Years of Pilgrimage (Années de Pelerinage) and his Variations on a Theme of Bach, "Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing"; Bartók's Out of Doors; and Bach's Capriccio on the absence of his most dear brother, BWV 992. This concert is presented in conjunction with the exhibition "The Traveler's Eye: Scenes from Asia."

A Jazz Take on Arab Songs: The Tarek Yamani Trio
Saturday, Dec. 6; 7:30 p.m.
Legendary music from the classic era of Arab song is reinvigorated in jazz arrangements by Lebanese-born pianist Tarek Yamani, whose CD of this music was released last summer in conjuction with his performances in Beirut, Alexandria (Egypt), Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and Kuwait. The United Nations selected Yamani to perform at its international celebration of jazz in 2012 with Wayne Shorter and Zakir Hussain. Yamani's Freer concert showcases his original treatments of music by the leading composers of the mid-20th century Arab world, including songs made famous by the great Umm Kulthum (whose funeral outdrew that of Egyptian president Abdul Nasser). Yamani adds his contemporary stamp to the work of such seminal composers as Mohammad al-Maslub, Sayyid Darwish, Kamil al-Khula'i, Darwish al-Hariri and Omar Zeeni.

Yamani's Freer concert follows the August release of his latest CD, Lisan Al Tarab: Jazz Conceptions in Classical Arab Music. Born and raised in Beirut, and now based in New York City, Yamani won first prize in the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition for his piece,"Sama'I Yamani." Yamani has also performed at the MuCEM museum (Marseille), the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria), the Ennejma Ezzahra (Tunis), the Blue Whale (Los Angeles) and the Detroit Institute of Arts, as well as such New York City clubs as Iridium, Lenox Lounge, Cornelia Street Cafe, The Stone, Cleopatra's Needle, Le Poisson Rouge and Somethin' Jazz Club. This concert is presented in conjunction with the exhibition "Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips."

About the Museum

The Freer Gallery of Art, located at 12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W., and the adjacent Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, located at 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., are on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day (closed Dec. 25), and admission is free. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information about the Freer and Sackler galleries and their exhibitions, programs and other public events, visit asia.si.edu or follow twitter.com/freersackler or facebook.com/freersackler. For general Smithsonian information, call (202) 633-1000.