DEC. 10, 2016        JAN. 23, 2017     MAR. 6, 2017          MAR. 27, 2017       APRIL 24, 2017

Alain Fleischer - 'Framed' (1984)

In his short story Funes the Memorious, Jorge-Luis Borges writes of a man whose memory is so prodigious that he is consistently unable to recognize himself in the mirror, since he has become, in effect, a completely new person since the last time he looked.  With this philosophical principle  in mind, Monday Evening Concerts presents its 78th season, devoted to the way that the passing of time reinvents both music itself and the people who listen to it. Framing contemporary music this way, we are able to recognize the past as radical and visionary, and the current avant-garde as traditional.  This season, Morton Feldman invites us to be flâneurs in the the musical labyrinth of his classic Crippled Symmetry. Julius Eastman summons the spirit of the 15th century martyr Joan of Arc as channeled by an ostracized gay, black man in the early 1980s. We discover both the apparent and underlying aesthetic connections between the 14th century poet/composer Guillaume de Machaut and present-day Los Angeles' own Michael Pisaro. Emerging composers such as Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and Trevor Bača will make their MEC debuts. The Formalist Quartet and the cellist Séverine Ballon return to MEC's stage to present works by Chaya Czernowin and Helmut Lachenmann. Finally, we close our season with the return of New York's critically acclaimed Talea Ensemble presenting Georges Aperghis' futuristic re-imagining of Charles Perrault's 17th century children's tale Little Thumb.  
                                                                             
 ~  Jonathan Hepfer, Artistic Director
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