Culture Picks: May 12

Spring has sprung! Get outside and enjoy a walk through the PepsiCo Sculpture Gardens or a live jazz concert. And for those inevitable rainy spring days, we’ve got plenty of virtual dance and music events to choose from.

PepsiCo presents Donald M Kendall Sculpture Gardens
Open to the public on weekends through Sunday, October 30, 10am to 4pm
Donald M. Kendall, former chairman of the board and CEO, conceived the gardens which bear his name. He imagined an atmosphere of stability and creativity. The sculpture collection was started in 1965 and consists of works by major twentieth-century artists. Russell Page, the internationally famous garden designer, cultivated the corporate grounds into an arboretum transforming the gardens into a work of art. The sculptures and gardens exist in harmony on a carefully maintained landscape. PepsiCo is proud to share our corporate grounds with our neighbors and the community.
Learn more about the Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presents
Ailey All Access: Robert Battle’s The Hunt
Streaming now through Sunday, May 22
Perhaps Battle’s most popular work, The Hunt is a primal ritual with a distinctly urban feel fueled by a thundering percussion soundtrack by Les Tambours du Bronx , the acclaimed French industrial percussion band. The Seattle Times raved, “To see it unfold is to drift between a visceral attraction to the pounding, progressing movements and the awareness of a choreographic vision so inventive it becomes like a seventh onstage presence…”
Stream Full-Length Dance Performances | Ailey All Access (alvinailey.org)

NPR Music presents
Tiny Desk (Home) Concert: ARC Ensemble
Now streaming
The conflicts between Russia and Ukraine reach far and wide, even deep into this Tiny Desk (home) concert performed by the ARC Ensemble — artists from Canada’s Royal Conservatory in Toronto. They offer music by the neglected composer Dmitri Klebanov, a Ukrainian Jew whose career was sidelined by the Stalin regime when his First Symphony was denounced in 1949. Klebanov wrote his Fourth String Quartet — from which the ensemble plays excerpts — three years earlier. He dedicated it to his compatriot, the composer Mykola Leontovych who, as a Ukrainian separatist, was murdered by the Soviet secret police in 1921. The opening movement will sound familiar. Klebanov riffs on a Leontovych melody best known in the West as the Christmas chestnut “Carol of the Bells.” The sparkling second movement, played largely in pizzicato, again draws from a Leontovych tune, this time inspired by the Hungarian bagpipe. Listen for the wheezy drone in the viola. To introduce the final, folk music-inspired section, cellist Tom Wiebe recalls stories from his Ukrainian grandfather. As a musician, he formed an ensemble of string players who stuck together through the Russian Revolution and the following civil war. They even played, reluctantly, for Soviet Red Army soldiers who occupied their village. Wiebe’s parents left Ukraine in the 1920s and settled in Canada. The ARC Ensemble dedicates this performance to the people of Ukraine.
ARC Ensemble: Artists of the Royal Conservatory, Canada: Erika Raum: violin, Marie Bérard: violin, Steven Dann: viola, Tom Wiebe: cello
Dmitri Klebanov: String Quartet No. 4: I. Allegro Moderato, III. Scherzando, IV. Allegro
Watch and listen to the ARC Ensemble Tiny Desk Concert on YouTube

ALL ARTS presents
Inside the Pillow Lab: Brian Brooks Moving Company/A.I.M By Kyle Abraham
On-demand
In the series premiere, go inside the Pillow Lab residency of Brian Brooks and his group, The Moving Company, as they work on the piece “Closing Distance.”
Then, Kyle Abraham and his company A.I.M chart new works, including “An Untitled Love.”
In the episode, Kyle reunites with the company at the acclaimed dance center, Jacob’s Pillow, just months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brian Brooks Moving Company/A.I.M By Kyle Abraham | Inside the Pillow Lab | ALL ARTS

Jazz Forum Arts presents
Karrin Allyson Quartet feat. Ted Rosenthal, Ed Howard & Matt Wilson
Friday & Saturday, May 13 & 14 @ 7 & 9:30pm
1 Dixon Lane Tarrytown, NY | (914) 631-1000
One of the most gifted jazz singers of her generation, Karrin Allyson shines whether channeling a Coltrane ballad, a Joni Mitchell ode, interpreting the Great American Songbook, gently rocking a bossa nova, or presenting her own unique compositions. Her recordings have earned five Grammy nominations. Karrin Allyson is also a top-notch performer. As L.A. jazz critic Scott Yanow recently wrote, “Word to the wise: Always see Karrin Allyson when she comes to town. She is a delight.”
Tickets and info available on the Jazz Forum Arts website

The Metropolitan Opera presents
Hamlet, by Brett Dean/Libretto by Matthew Jocelyn
Free Live Audio Stream on Friday, May 13, 7:55pm
When Australian composer Brett Dean’s Hamlet had its world premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017, The Guardian declared, “New opera doesn’t often get to sound this good … Shakespeare offers a gauntlet to composers that shouldn’t always be picked up, but Dean’s Hamlet rises to the challenge.” Now, this riveting contemporary masterpiece arrives at the Met, with Neil Armfield, who directed the work’s premiere, bringing his acclaimed staging to New York. Many of the original cast members have followed, including tenor Allan Clayton in the title role. Nicholas Carter makes his Met debut conducting a remarkable ensemble, which also features soprano Brenda Rae as Ophelia, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly as Gertrude, baritone Rod Gilfry as Claudius, and bass-baritone John Relyea as the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
Metropolitan Opera | Free Live Audio Streams (metopera.org)

Greenwich Library presents
Peterson Concert: Vince Giordano
Sunday, May 15, 3:30pm
101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT
Greenwich Library’s Peterson Concert Series invites you to an afternoon of jazz featuring Grammy-winner, New York native, and multi-instrumentalist Vince Giordano.
Giordano has played in New York nightclubs, appeared in films such as The Cotton Club, The Aviator, Finding Forrester, Revolutionary Road, Cafe Society, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and for concerts at the Town Hall, Jazz At Lincoln Center, the Newport Jazz Festival, and the 92nd St Y for the past four decades. Recording projects include soundtracks for the award-winning Boardwalk Empire with vocalists like Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, St. Vincent, Regina Spektor, Neko Case, Leon Redbone, Liza Minnelli, Catherine Russell, Rufus Wainwright, and David Johansen.
For more information about the Peterson Concert: Vince Giordano visit the Greenwich Library website

The Aspen Music Festival and School presents
Aspen Armchair Concerts: Andrew Dahlke, saxophone
Live stream Tuesday, May 17, at 8pm
Then on demand for 3 days
AMFS alumnus saxophonist Andrew Dahlke is recognized across the U.S. and abroad for his versatility and the artistry he brings to diverse musical settings and genres. A frequent performer in Aspen, Dahlke is especially known for his abilities as an interpreter of Western European classical music and as a jazz improviser. For his Aspen Armchair Concert, coincidentally presented on his birthday, Dahlke shares a program entitled Bach, Poetry, and the Greater American Experience, pairing transcriptions of the Bach Cello Suites with selected poems on a split-screen.
Aspen Armchair Concerts: A Recital by Andrew Dahlke saxophone | Aspen Music Festival And School

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presents
Composers in Focus: Caroline Shaw
Live stream on Wednesday, May 18, 6:30pm
Calidore String Quartet
Shaw: Three Essays for String Quartet (2016-18)
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Partita for 8 Voices (Roomful of Teeth), and she works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist.
Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award,
the Calidore String Quartet has been praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.” The Los Angeles Times described the quartet as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching” and praised its balance of “intellect and expression.”
Register for Composers in Focus: Caroline Shaw on the CMS website

Culture Picks is a weekly feature celebrating the performing arts. The arts are back and there is so much to take in, both live and virtual. Cultural connoisseur and PAC staff member Coni Guhl is here to help you sort through it all. Each week we will post her curated selection of events featuring the artists you know and love from The PAC Center Series, work being done by Purchase alums, plus a sampling of arts experiences you just can’t miss. Enjoy!

All times are EDT unless otherwise noted.