NEW YORK (Lincoln Center/ www.lincolncenter.org) - For this summer's Mostly Mozart Festival, July 28 to August 27, 2005, Avery
Fisher Hall, through a new stage installation, will be reconfigured to enhance the audience's and musicians' experience during the Festival's concerts. The new stage installation is designed to create a closer musical relationship between the audience, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and
Music Director Louis Langree, as well as guest soloists and conductors. This Mostly Mozart special project was announced today by Jane Moss, Vice President for Programming, Lincoln Center, Inc.
Designed by Fisher Dachs Associates, the new installation extends the stage 30 feet into Avery Fisher Hall and includes new "courtside" seating sections at the sides and behind the orchestra. This "surround-concert" setting and the extension of the stage into the hall creates a more intimate musical environment for the 17 Mostly Mozart concerts in Avery Fisher Hall. The reconfiguration also includes a new acoustical and lighting canopy over the stage extension.
Commented Ms. Moss, "We feel certain that the special characteristics of Mozart's music and other chamber works, will be more fully communicated and appreciated in this setting. As important, this new setting will greatly enhance the musical experience of our audience by creating a more direct connection with the performers, and with the eloquence of Mozart's musical universe."
Noted Maestro Langree in working with the installation's designers, "As a conductor of Mozart, one is always seeking a musical environment that allows the audience to more fully experience the complexity, the emotional nuance, and the transcendence rooted in the human experience that lies at the heart of Mozart's genius. The more intimate physical circumstances of Avery Fisher Hall this summer will greatly assist us in our communication with each other as musicians and with the audience."
This summer's Mostly Mozart Festival focuses on Mozart's travels. Entitled "Arrivals and Departures," the Festival includes more than 40 different events, and features 11 concerts of seven different programs conducted by Music Director Louis Langree.
The Festival opens on July 28 in the reconfigured Avery Fisher Hall, and will be televised live on a national Live From Lincoln Center PBS broadcast, with Maestro Langree serving as host and guide of the concert.
Other Festival highlights include its expansion into the new Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle with director Peter Sellars' staged performances of Bach Cantatas, commissioned by Lincoln Center; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Emanuel Ax, and Gil Shaham in an expanded "Little Night Music" late-night concert series; the U.S. debuts of the period-instrument ensemble Concert d'Astree led by Emmanuelle Haim and the Russian Patriarchate Choir; and the Mark Morris Dance Group performing its masterpiece, Handel's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato.
The concept of extending the stage was tested in a New York Philharmonic rehearsal last summer and emerged in part as a result of continuing dialogue between Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic about the future of the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall.
The Mostly Mozart Festival is sponsored by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation and The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. The Festival's corporate sponsor is Bank of America.
