The REACH Coal + Ice
March 15 – April 22, 2022
Featuring an immersive 30,000 square foot documentary photography exhibition at the REACH visualizing the climate crisis with performances, workshops, panel discussions, and educational programs.
Concert Hall
Runtime
1 HOUR AND 55 MINUTES, INCLUDING A 25 MINUTE INTERMISSION
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, soprano
Patrons are requested to silence cell phones and other electronic devices during performances.
The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this venue.
All events and artists subject to change without prior notice.
March 15 – April 22, 2022
Featuring an immersive 30,000 square foot documentary photography exhibition at the REACH visualizing the climate crisis with performances, workshops, panel discussions, and educational programs.
Conductor
Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. Born in Los Angeles, he is the third generation of his family to pursue an artistic career. His grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America; his father, Ted Thomas, was a producer at the Mercury Theater Company in New York before moving to Los Angeles where he worked in film and television; and his mother, Roberta Thomas, was the head of research for Columbia Pictures.
soprano
Measha Brueggergosman-Lee
Motivated and hungry for new experiences, Measha Brueggergosman-Lee’s career effortlessly embraces the broadest array of performance platforms and musical styles and genres.
Brueggergosman-Lee began her career predominantly committed to the art of the song recital and has presented innovative programs at Carnegie Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, both the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Madrid’s Teatro Real, as well as at the Schwarzenberg, Edinburgh, Verbier, and Bergen Festivals with celebrated collaborative pianists Justus Zeyen, Roger Vignoles, Julius Drake, and Simon Lepper.
National Symphony Orchestra
The 2023–2024 season is the National Symphony Orchestra’s 93rd season, and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda’s seventh season. Noseda serves as the Orchestra’s seventh Music Director, joining the NSO’s legacy of distinguished leaders: Christoph Eschenbach, Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Antal Doráti, Howard Mitchell, and Hans Kindler. Its artistic leadership also includes Principal Pops Conductor Steven Reineke and Artistic Advisor Ben Folds.
Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director, The Sant Family Chair
Steven Reineke, Principal Pops Conductor
Ben Folds, Artistic Advisor
The National Symphony Orchestra uses a system of revolving strings. In each string section, untitled members are listed in order of length of service.
* Regularly Engaged Extra Musician
** Temporary Position
*** Leave of Absence
Notes (c) 2022 Thomas May
His life spanning close to a century, the New England-born Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) was an “enigmatic and granitic man,” according to Michael Tilson Thomas, a longstanding champion who first encountered his music while he was a teenager. “The movement of light on water, a whiff of a flower, a glimpse of his hand in the lantern light of the old schoolhouse in which he lived were all passages to the ecstatic,” remarks Tilson Thomas in his notes to the landmark recording of Ruggles’ entire output he released in 1980.
Michael Tilson Thomas’s double identity as a conductor and composer used to be a more familiar phenomenon. It was during their “day jobs” that Mendelssohn and Wagner laid the groundwork for the contrasting philosophies that still hold sway regarding the role of the conductor in interpreting a score. And during his lifetime, the power wielded by Gustav Mahler—a composer for whom Tilson Thomas has shown a special affinity—came primarily from his high-profile posts as a conductor; summer breaks were reserved for composing his epic symphonies.
Soon after the United States entered World War II, the Chicago-born arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned a ballet on American themes from Martha Graham’s (1894-1991) trailblazing dance company. Aaron Copland (1900-90) had already been honing a new style of greater simplicity and directness in his ballet scores for Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942), and both he and Graham had previously explored a potential collaboration. The Coolidge commission finally brought them together to create a work that Michael Tilson Thomas describes as tracing “a journey through struggle to resolution and triumph.”
The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees
The National Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors
Washington National Opera Board of Trustees
The Kennedy Center President’s Council
The Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts
President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts
National Committee for the Performing Arts
National Symphony Orchestra National Trustees
The Kennedy Center Circles Board
The Kennedy Center Community Advisory Board
The Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board
The Kennedy Center 50th Anniversary Committee
Individual and Foundation Donors