PRISM Quartet Performs “Mending Wall” by Director Jorinde Keesmaat

Sat, Feb 12 - Mon, Feb 14  2022

PRISM Quartet announces the long-awaited world premiere in NY & PA of a fully staged evening of new music, poetry, and light: MENDING WALL by Dutch opera director Jorinde Keesmaat.

Originally scheduled for March 2020, then halted by COVID-19, the Dutch opera director Jorinde Keesmaat rethinks and restages
Mending Wall for our changed world and new walls.

Credits

Music for saxophone quartet, soprano Tony Arnold, pianist Arturo O’Farill

The Composers:
George Lewis | Arturo O’Farrill | Juri Seo | Martin Bresnick

Poems by:
Robert Frost | Keorapetse Kgositsile
Waly Salomão | Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Stage Director: Jorinde Keesmaat
Lighting Design: Aaron Copp

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CONCERT DETAILS

Greater Philadelphia:
February 12, 2022 at 3 PM and 8 PM
Co-presented by
Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series and PRISM Quartet, Inc.
Goodhart Hall, McPherson Auditorium
150 N. Merion Ave. | Bryn Mawr, PA
$20 General Admission; $18 Seniors;
$10 Students (outside of the Tri-Co); $5 Children

NYC:
February 14, 2022 at 8 PM
Co-presented by Roulette and PRISM Quartet, Inc.
509 Atlantic Ave. | Brooklyn, NY
General Admission Presale $20, Walkup $25; Student/Senior Walkup $20

The recording of Mending Wall will be released in December 2022, on XAS Records.

Director Jorinde Keesmaat. Photo by Marco Bakker

Jorinde Keesmaat

Jorinde Keesmaat is a Dutch director of opera and staged classical concerts who has worked extensively with Concertgebouw (Amsterdam). She is the 2016-19 Director-in-Residence at the Center for Contemporary Opera in NYC. In her immersive multidisciplinary work, Keesmaat plays with ideas which are foundational to Mending Wall: the relationship between spectator and actor/musician, and boundaries between classical concerts, opera, and theater. She directed semi-staged productions of Mozart Opera’s Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte and Le Nozze di Figaro for the The Hague Philharmonic. In 2016, she directed the double bill Odysseus’ Women & Anais Nin by Louis Andriessen for the Center of Contemporary Opera in New York with performances at National Sawdust in NYC and in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam. In 2017, she won the GALA! Rotterdam Operadays Award.

PRISM Quartet. Photo by Ara Howrani

PRISM Quartet

Intriguing programs of great beauty and breadth have distinguished the PRISM Quartet as one of America’s foremost chamber ensembles. “A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM has performed in Carnegie Hall on the Making Music Series, in Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and throughout Latin America, China, and Russia under the auspices of the United States Information Agency and USArtists International. PRISM has also been presented to critical acclaim as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory. Two-time recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, PRISM has commissioned nearly 300 works, many by internationally celebrated composers. The Fifth Century, PRISM’s ECM recording with The Crossing under Donald Nally, was awarded a 2018 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. In 2016, PRISM was named by its alma mater, the University of Michigan, as the first recipient of the Christopher Kendall Award in recognition of its work in “collaboration, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.” The PRISM Quartet performs exclusively on Selmer saxophones. PRISM Quartet members are Timothy McAllister (soprano), Zachary Shemon (alto), Matthew Levy (tenor), and Taimur Sullivan (baritone).