LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Great Performers - Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Matthew Halls - Conductor
Radovan Vlatković - Horn

Beethoven - Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus

Mozart - Horn Concerto No. 3

Mozart - Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter")

A program worthy of the gods: Beginning with Beethoven’s fiery Prometheus Overture, Austria’s beloved Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra—founded by the widow and sons of the composer himself—makes its 175th anniversary appearance in New York’s pristine Alice Tully Hall. The ensemble continues with its namesake’s rarely performed E-flat major Horn Concerto, followed by his soaring “Jupiter” Symphony.

Here is the artist several years ago playing the Mozart horn piece in this concert...

The soloist were perfection!  Judging much of his performance is subjective but I can objectively tell you he never craved or splattered a note during the concerto and two encores.  His attack was perfect throughout his performance.  Subjectively, I thought he was great.

THEATER

St. James Theater
Something's Rotten!

Visit the Renaissance in this hilarious musical about the Bottom Brothers, who are desperate to write a hit play in the shadow of "The Bard."

Set in the 1590s, brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom are desperate to write a hit play but are stuck in the shadow of that Renaissance rockstar known as “The Bard.” When a local soothsayer foretells that the future of theater involves singing, dancing and acting at the same time, Nick and Nigel set out to write the world’s very first musical. But amidst the scandalous excitement of opening night, the Bottom Brothers realize that reaching the top means being true to thine own self...and all that jazz.

Ingenious, outrageous and irresistible!

Review by Marilyn Stasio from Variety

Yep, this is a blockbuster! A deliriously entertaining new musical comedy that brings down the house!

Review by Joe Dziemianowicz from New York Post

THEATER

Theater for a New Audience
The Servant of Two Masters - Carlo Goldoni

“★★★★ Elegant… Energetic… Broadly colorful…
masks, songs and snatches of anachronistic improvisation.” – Adam Feldman, Time Out New York

“Mr. Epp’s frenetic, knockabout performance is IMPECCABLE.” – Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

“Christopher Bayes’s much-lauded ‘Servant,’ had its premiere in 2010 at Yale Repertory Theater and has played across the country since then. The critic Peter Marks, in The Washington Post,
described the show as ‘deliriously happy-making,’ taking pains to note that it is not the sort of ‘calcified frivolity’ that so often gives commedia a bad name.” – Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times

“The Servant of Two Masters is a wondrous thing, a campy, happy romp.” – Joel Benjamin, TheaterPizzazz

“Hilarious, rowdy…Raucous entertainment.” – Lore Croghan, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

“Delightful… Screamingly funny… A comic masterpiece! The Servant of Two Masters is thoroughly enjoyable and deliriously well-performed.” – The Brooklyn Paper


The Servant of Two Masters is a timeless 18th century Italian comic masterpiece by Carlo Goldoni about a servant so hungry he takes on two jobs to survive. In this contemporary American adaptation, no two performances are the same. The actors improvise along with the written text in the style of commedia dell’arte. Masks, playful costumes, and original music by Aaron Halva and Christopher Curtis create a fresh, bold, surprising event.

Theatre for a New Audience is thrilled to present the New York Premiere of this award-winning Servant, first produced in 2010 by Yale Repertory Theatre and toured nationally. Goldoni’s classic inspired the 2012 Broadway hit, One Man, Two Guvnors.

The heart of this Servant is its acting and staging. Steven Epp, who plays the title role, and director Christopher Bayes, have honed a “brilliant, new-vaudeville style” that is “smart” and “unhinged” (The New York Times). The entire cast displays fresh and vibrant comedic talents and includes TFANA veterans Liam Craig, (The Killer), Andy Grotelueschen (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew,Cymbeline), and Emily Young (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Cymbeline), as well as Allen Gilmore, Eugene Ma, Orlando Pabotoy, Adina Verson, and Liz Wisan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_of_Two_Masters

Servant of Two Masters

Servant of Two Masters

"I'd like to see how I'll manage to serve two masters." Illustration from The Complete Comedies of Carlo Goldoni (1830)
Written by Carlo Goldoni
Date premiered 1746
Original language Italian
Genre Commedia dell'Arte


Servant of Two Masters (Italian: Il servitore di due padroni) is a comedy by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni written in 1746. Goldoni originally wrote the play at the request of actor Antonio Sacco, one of the great Truffaldinos in history. His earliest drafts had large sections that were reserved for improvisation, but he revised it in 1753 in the version that exists today. The play draws on the tradition of the earlier Italian Commedia dell'arte.

Plot

The play opens with the introduction of Beatrice, a woman who has traveled to Venice disguised as her dead brother in search of the man who killed him, Florindo, who is also her lover. Her brother forbade her to marry Florindo, and died defending his sister's honor. Beatrice disguises herself as Federigo, (her dead brother), so that he can collect dowry money from Pantaloon (also spelled Pantalone), the father of Clarice, her brother's betrothed. She wants to use this money to help her lover escape, and to allow them to finally wed. But thinking that Beatrice's brother was dead, Clarice has fallen in love with another man, Silvio, and the two have become engaged. Interested in keeping up appearances, Pantalone tries to conceal the existence of each from the other.

Beatrice's servant, the exceptionally quirky and comical Truffaldino, is the central figure of this play. He is always complaining of an empty stomach, and always trying to satisfy his hunger by eating everything and anything in sight. When the opportunity presents itself to be servant to another master (Florindo, as it happens) he sees the opportunity for an extra dinner.

As Truffaldino runs around Venice trying to fill the orders of two masters, he is almost uncovered several times, especially because other characters repeatedly hand him letters, money, etc. and say simply "this is for your master" without specifying which one. To make matters worse, the stress causes him to develop a temporary stutter, which only arouses more problems and suspicion among his masters. To further complicate matters, Beatrice and Florindo are staying in the same hotel, and are searching for each other.

In the end, with the help of Clarice and Smeraldina (Pantalone's feisty servant, who is smitten with Truffaldino) Beatrice and Florindo finally find each other, and with Beatrice exposed as a woman, Clarice is allowed to marry Silvio. The last matter up for discussion is whether Truffaldino and Smeraldina can get married, which at last exposes Truffaldino's having played both sides all along. However, as everyone has just decided to get married, Truffaldino is forgiven. Truffaldino asks Smeraldina to marry him.

The most famous set-piece of the play is the scene in which the starving Truffaldino tries to serve a banquet to the entourages of both his masters without either group becoming aware of the other, while desperately trying to satisfy his own hunger at the same time.

Themes

One of the main themes of this play is found in the character development of Truffaldino. As mentioned above, he is always hungry. That is his action: it is what he wants in the play. Yet, the play does not end when he finally gets a meal and a full belly; it ends with a kiss shared between him and Smeraldina. Truffaldino, it is implied, was hungry for love. Themes of confrontation between young and old are presented through confrontations between Dr Lombardi and his son, Silvio, as well as Pantalone with his daughter, Clarice.

Characterization

The characters of the play are taken from the Italian Renaissance theatre style Commedia dell'arte. In classic commedia tradition, an actor learns a stock character (usually accentuated by a mask) and plays it to perfection throughout his career. The actors had a list of possible scenarios, each with a very basic plot, called a canovaccio, and throughout would perform physical-comedy acts known as lazzi (Italian lazzo, a joke or witticism) and the dialogue was improvised.

This was our artistic bonus as we rode the subway home from Brooklyn.  

RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
Behzod Abduraimov - Piano

Bach - "Siciliano" from Concerto in D Minor, BWV 596 (after Vivaldi, Op. 3, No. 11; arr. Cortot)
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (arr. Busoni)
Schubert - Moment musical in A-flat Major, D. 780, No. 2
Schubert - Moment musical in F Minor, D. 780, No. 3
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, "Appassionata"
Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No. 6 in A Major, Op. 82
Balakirev - Islamey

A video of the artist playing the Beethoven heard this evening...

An interview with the artist...

Striking arrangements of Baroque music, poetic miniatures, tempestuous sonatas, and an exotic showpiece are performed by an exciting young pianist who is taking the world’s stages by storm. Behzod Abduraimov has been praised by The New York Timesfor his “fluid finger work … dash and appealing impetuosity.” Cortot’s arrangement of Bach’s "Siciliano" from the Concerto in D Minor, BWV 596, has a stately beauty, while Schubert’s Moments musicaux are understated gems with gorgeous melodies. Beethoven’s “Appassionata” is famous for its stormy outer movements, but the theme and variations that comprise its central movement also fascinate. There are also exciting showpieces by two Russian composers, Balkakirev and Prokofiev.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/arts/music/review-no-blood-spilled-at-concert-though-it-seemed-so.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

Review: No Blood Spilled at This Concert (Though It Seemed So)

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM•NOV. 18, 2016

Behzod Abduraimov performing in his solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times 

Before he played the first encore to his brilliant solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall, Behzod Abduraimov pulled out a handkerchief and wiped down the keys.

It was just sweat, his publicist told me later. I’m glad I checked, though. Because at that point, after a finger-twisting, knuckle-shredding performance of bravura pieces, including Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6 and Balakirev’s “Islamey,” I feared that this 26-year-old whiz from Uzbekistan might have actually shed blood.

I don’t mean to give the wrong impression: There’s nothing gratuitously gladiatorial about Mr. Abduraimov’s playing. Yes, he dispatched “Islamey” faster than anyone I’ve heard, his forearms a hummingbird blur in the grueling passagework. But his swift rise on the concert scene — this appearance on the main Stern Auditorium stage here came less than two years after his recital debut at the intimate Weill Recital Hall — is due as much to his profound musicality as to his power and speed.

Mr. Abduraimov also knows how to build a good program. He opened with Bach, but in rarely heard arrangements: a dreamy Siciliano from the Concerto in D minor (arranged by Alfred Cortot) and Busoni’s transcription of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which, in its original organ version, has entered popular culture as a shorthand for Halloween horror. In his playing Mr. Abduraimov conjured some of the qualities of the organ’s sound, building up block-like dynamics and allowing notes to blur just a little.

The “Moment Musical” in A flat (D. 780) by Schubert, which followed, picked up the lilting dotted rhythm of the Siciliano, but with vulnerability and doubt in place of Bach’s soothing equanimity. Another “Moment Musical,” in F Minor, its momentum chirpy and steady like a windup toy, showed that Mr. Abduraimov knows how to get out of the way of the music, imposing his will in just one brief tease of the tempo.

Behzod Abduraimov - Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, "Appassionata"- Beethoven: Verbier Festival 2016 Video by medici.tv

His maturity was evident in his reading of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, which balanced dramatic thrust with a wonderful sense of flow. His sound has an appealing warmth even in the most testosterone-fueled outbursts. And stark dynamic contrasts still feel part of the same epic canvas. Prokofiev’s thorny Piano Sonata No. 6 — in many ways an “Appassionata” updated to reflect the horrors of the 20th century — also became a vehicle for Mr. Abduraimov’s purposeful storytelling and sense of space.

Two encores, Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne in C sharp minor and Liszt’s “La Campanella” étude, were gratefully received by the enthusiastic audience.

Watching Mr. Abduraimov play, I was struck by his undulating torso movements, which look a bit like the chaturanga push-ups in yoga, and seem to make visual his unshaking sense of pulse. His playing reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a musician who offered this definition of talent: open channels. Mr. Abduraimov’s music-making fits that description.

RECITAL

Merkin Hall
Young Concerts Artists Series

SooBeen Lee - Violin

A video of her playing...

Another video...

15-year-old Korean violinist SooBeen Lee has been called “Korea’s hottest violin prodigy” (Hancinema). She has already appeared as soloist with every major Korean orchestra, including the Seoul Philharmonic, the Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Gangneung Philharmonic Orchestra, Busan Philharmonic Orchestra, Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra, Gangnam Symphony Orchestra, and the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System). She also performed with the Wuhan Philharmonic in China, at the Seoul Arts Center, in the Prime Minister’s office for Ki-moon Ban, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the Blue House for the King and Queen of Malaysia, and for many state guests in Korea.

This season marks her first U.S. tour, which includes her Washington, DC debut and her New York recital debut on the Young Concert Artists Series, and performances at University of Florida Performing Arts, the Sunday Musicale Series, and Rockefeller University.

Ms. Lee has performed at Festivals including the Chopin Music Festival in Poland, the City of London Festival, the Busan International Music Festival, the Great Mountains International Music Festival, the Seoul Spring Festival, and in Japan at the Ishikawa Summer Music Academy, where she worked with Koichiro Harada.

She won First Prize at the 2013 Moscow International David Oistrakh Violin Competition and First Prize at the 2014 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, where she was also honored with YCA’s Slomovic Prize, which provides support for her Washington, DC debut, the Michaels Award, which provides support for her New York debut, and three performance prizes.

Ms. Lee began studying the violin at the age of four. At eight years old, she won the National Competition of the Korean Chamber Orchestra and the next year, she won First Prize at the Russia International Youth Violin Competition. She made her Seoul recital debut at the age of nine on the Kumho Prodigy Concert Series. Ms. Lee studies with Nam Yun Kim at the Korea National University of Arts.

LINCOLN CENTER

Jazz at Lincoln Center - Appel Room
Battle of the Big Bands

Tonight's big band battle is a feel-good, dance-up-a-storm, interactive jazz experience akin to those that originated in Harlem's Swing Era landmarks. This special event showcases two of New York's hottest young big bands – together on one stage – in a high-energy evening. Drummer/bandleaders Sammy Miller and Evan Sherman, known to pack the house at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Late Night Sessions, will deliver a full sensory experience through fast-paced music, friendly one-upmanship, and a bit of comedy. Both bands are intergenerational all-star groups, and they have repeatedly proven their ability to rouse up a crowd. Join them in The Appel Room for an entertaining night of great music and uplifting companionship.

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center - Mendelssohn's Berlin

Beethoven - Sonata in F major for Cello and Piano, Op. 5, No. 1 (1796)
Haydn - Quartet in F major for Strings, Op. 50, No. 5, "The Dream" (1787)
Bach - Selections from the Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747)
Mendelssohn - Quartet in C minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 1 (1822)

For centuries, the energy of Berlin has attracted the world’s most ambitious artists and intellectuals. Long the epicenter of German culture, Berlin’s magnetic influence unites the composers on this special program, dedicated to the musical legacy of Mendelssohn’s home city. From the mature masterwork of J.S. Bach to the youthful, ebullient sonata by Beethoven, CMS presents a vibrant portrait of an immortal capital of music.

LECTURE

The Morgan Library & Museum
Le Conversazioni: Films of My Life

Phil Jackson and Mary Karr

Celebrating the relationship between art, literature, and film, this program features Phil Jackson, former head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, president of the New York Knicks, and author of Eleven Rings, The Soul of Success and Mary Karr American poet, essayist and author of the bestselling memoir The Liars’ Club. They will be discussing some of the films that have inspired their lives and work. Moderated by Antonio Monda, Artistic Director of Le Conversazioni festival.

RECITAL

Marble Collegiate Church
Marble Organ Anniversary Concert

Mark Miller - Organ

LECTURE/RECITAL


Merkin Hall
What Makes It Great? - Rob Kapilow

Beethoven's 1st Symphony
Featuring the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia

The great composer, conductor and teacher Nadia Boulanger said, “A genius can only be original, therefore a genius need only try to imitate in order to be original.” Intended as an homage to his illustrious predecessors Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven’s First Symphony was, inescapably, original. Host Rob Kapilow explores how this symphony – which launched the symphonic career of the young Beethoven in Vienna in 1800 – honored the Viennese tradition in a voice that was unmistakably original and uniquely his own.

Here is a teaser of what we heard... Please, listen.

Rob Kapilow spends the first hour going through the piece telling what makes it great and the second hour the piece is performed without interruption.

It becomes a wonderfully interesting evening.

MUSEUM


Met Breuer
Kerry James Marshall: Mastry

As we so often do, we ride the M4 bus up Madison Avenue to get to our destination.

This major monographic exhibition is the largest museum retrospective to date of the work of American artist Kerry James Marshall (born 1955). Encompassing nearly 80 works—including 72 paintings—that span the artist's remarkable 35-year career, it reveals Marshall's practice to be one that synthesizes a wide range of pictorial traditions to counter stereotypical representations of black people in society and reassert the place of the black figure within the canon of Western painting.

Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts rebellion in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. He is known for his large-scale narrative history paintings featuring black figures—defiant assertions of blackness in a medium in which African Americans have long been invisible—and his exploration of art history covers a broad temporal swath stretching from the Renaissance to 20th-century American abstraction. Marshall critically examines and reworks the Western canon through its most archetypal forms: the historical tableau, landscape and genre painting, and portraiture. His work also touches upon vernacular forms such as the muralist tradition and the comic book in order to address and correct, in his words, the "vacuum in the image bank" and to make the invisible visible.

Great interview of the artist...

PRESENTATION

Public Summit for The Future of Penn Station
Cooper Union - Great Hall

The Great Hall is the very site where Lincoln gave his famous campaign speech in New York City.

Learn about the site and the speech here...

We live one block from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden which sits on top of Penn Station.

There are over 650,000 people a day that go through Penn Station.  That's more than all three airports for New York City combined and more than the populations of Atlanta, Boston, or Washington, individually.

The station is huge, busy, congested, confusing, dirty, and a bad experience for all.  It not only draws travelers but also serves as a place for the homeless to sleep.



http://untappedcities.com/2016/09/29/announcing-a-public-summit-for-the-future-of-penn-station-presented-by-untapped-cities-and-the-museum-of-the-city-of-new-york/

Announcing: A Public Summit for the Future of Penn Station Presented by Untapped Cities and The Museum of the City of New York

To much fanfare earlier this week, Governor Cuomo announced the latest iteration of his plans to overhaul Penn Station by 2021 – and that funding and approvals are already in place. Since the announcement of intentions to rebuild Penn Station in the early 2000s, there has been little opportunity for public dialogue on the pending future of the station.

On Wednesday, November 2nd, Untapped Cities and the Museum of the City of New York will present A Public Summit for the The Future of Penn Station at Cooper Union from 7pm to 9:30pm in The Great Hall. The panel discussion and public forum will go beyond the conceptual renderings and plans for a new Penn Station. Some of New York City’s leading urban visionaries, architects and planners will discuss how to move forward from the current challenging circumstances of Penn Station and then open the event up to an audience Q&A.

The speakers and panelists will be Susan Chin, President of the Design Trust for Public Space; Robert Eisenstat, Chief Architect at the Port Authority of NY & NJ; Gina Pollara, President of the Municipal Arts Society; John Schettino, Designer of The New York Penn Station Atlas; Tom Wright, President of Regional Plan Association.

Introductory remarks will be given by Michelle Young, Founder of Untapped Cities and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Whitney W. Donhauser, Ronay Menschel Director and President, Museum of the City of New York.

The event will be moderated by Jose Martinez, Transit Reporter for NY1.

The speakers will look at Penn in the context of the changing West Side, offer lessons learned from rebuilding World Trade Center infrastructure, and share perspectives on making Penn Station easier to use today. Looking to the transit hub’s future, panelists will address the question: What are the standards of success by which a rebuilt Penn Station should be measured? This conversation will seek to move beyond criticizing the current station and focus on identifying elements of a successful long-term vision.

LINCOLN CENTER

David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic

Manfred Honeck - Conductor
Anoushka Shankar - Sitar

R. Shankar - Rāgā-Mālā Concerto No. 2, for Sitar and Orchestra

Haydn - Symphony No. 93
Schubert - Symphony in B minor, Unfinished

"Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony is filled with beloved tunes, both soulful and cheerful, including one of the most treasured melodies in classical music. The magical symphony follows an evocative “garland of ragas” that will transport and captivate you with its mesmerizing rhythms: Ravi Shankar’s Rāgā-Mālā Sitar Concerto No. 2, with “star performer” (BBC Music Magazine) Anoushka Shankar as soloist."

A video of the sitar music...

Another video of the artist playing...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anoushka-shankar-new-york-philharmonic-debut-35-years-making-n678321

Anoushka Shankar and the New York Philharmonic Is a Debut 35 Years in the Making

by Kavita Das

News

Nov 4 2016, 11:22 pm ET

On April 23, 1981, Grammy-winning sitar player Ravi Shankar made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, performing his "Raga Mala Concerto Number Two for Sitar and Orchestra" at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. 

It was Shankar's second composition for sitar and orchestra, combining Hindustani classical music from northern India with Western music, but his concerto would not be the only debut of that year — just a few months later, his daughter Anoushka Shankar would be born. 

Now, thirty-five years later, Anoushka Shankar, who trained under her father until his death in December 2012 and has become an award-winning musician in her own right, marks her debut performance with the New York Philharmonic this week, playing the very same piece, under the direction of Zubin Mehta, who commissioned her father to write the concerto and conducted it in 1981. 

"It's like I have a relationship with the piece of music that is very special," Shankar told NBC News. "And playing it with Zubin Uncle of course has always been the most beautiful thing for the family closeness and for the history of this piece being commissioned under him. It felt like bringing it full-circle, getting to play it with the NY Philharmonic, which commissioned it. So, it has felt very special." 

"Now, I don't do 'what would my father have done' so much as feel confident that I know that, and ask how I can bring myself into it."

"Raga Mala" grew out of Ravi Shankar's desire to create a second, more musically intricate piece for sitar and orchestra following his first in 1971 with the London Symphony Orchestra as well as to collaborate with Zubin Mehta, whom he had known since the 1960s. 

In his autobiography, also titled "Raga Mala," Shankar discussed how he approached composing the concerto. "[Zubin] suggested I visit the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center on the mornings he rehearsed there with the orchestra, so that I could get to know all the musicians and their sound, their possibilities and limitations, and the range of what I could do with them," he wrote. "That was truly helpful for me in formulating my ideas for the composition … That was how my second sitar concerto came about." 

Shankar went on to note that Mehta's influence extended offstage when Mehta, a fan of spicy food, asked Shankar to make the piece musically complex like "hot chilli." Shankar named the piece "Raga Mala," which translates to garland of ragas — which can be compared to keys in Western classical music, but which Anoushka Shankar sees more as musical characters. True to its name, Ravi Shankar wove more than thirty ragas into his second concerto. 

"We played this concerto four or five times in New York, and then later in Europe - always to standing ovations," Mehta said in Shankar's autobiography. "It really filled my heart with joy to see this great, great musician, this Jascha Heifetz of India, being so honoured." 

Anoushka Shankar is not new to performing her father's compositions. But, because the piece includes several interludes of improvised sitar solo, there's opportunity to make it her own. 

"Having played it for a few years, in the beginning I really focused on improvising and 'what would my father have done' in order to try and be true to the piece," she said. "Now, I don't do 'what would my father have done' so much as feel confident that I know that, and ask how I can bring myself into it." 

"It's a beautiful thing, a lovely little dance that happens, that static nature of playing a fully composed piece of music then has to shift, and it keeps things kind of edge-of-the-seat for everyone," she continued. "It's just makes it really fun." 

Until Ravi Shankar, Western and Indian classical music had remained distinct. In 1967, his sitar-violin duet album with Western classical musician Yehudi Menuhin, "West Meets East," won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance. 

"It sounds very modern in the way it puts things together. It's very modern. So, I do think it was ahead of its time."

As a musician who has composed and collaborated across genres of music herself, Anoushka Shankar understands firsthand the challenges and importance of cross-cultural collaborations and regards her father's pioneering work as very current. 

"It sounds very modern in the way it puts things together," she said. "It's very modern. So, I do think it was ahead of its time." 

While Zubin Mehta had to pull out of conducting this week's performances due to illness and Ravi Shankar didn't live long enough to see his daughter repeat history, Anoushka Shankar knows that his musical legacy lives on in her, even as she is composing her own musical legacy. 

"He would have been very proud," she said. "It would have made him really happy."

RECITAL

Merkin Hall
Tuesday Matinée Series

Sara Daneshpour - Piano

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Suite in A minor
Maurice Ravel - Gaspard de la Nuit
Pierre Boulez - Incises
Frédéric Chopin - Barcarolle, Op. 60
Sergei Rachmaninov - Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor

Here she is competing in the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition several years ago...

"Pianist Sara Daneshpour is Top Prize Winner at the XII Concours International de Musique du Maroc, the William Kapell International Piano Competition and Astral Artists National Auditions. She has been heard on stages of such prestigious venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall and at the Great Hall of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. The New York Concert Review writes, “she lavished color on oft-neglected line, illuminated subtle beauties, and raged through the storms, always with stunning polish…she exhibits all the requisites for a high voltage career and more: blazing technique, power, expressivity, imagination, and a lovely stage presence.“