Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College
Announces 2019/2020 Season

Baruch Performing Arts Center at Baruch College announces its 2019-20 Season of music, theatre, dance, opera and more, a season spanning genres and cultural influences, rich in imagination and ideas.

Season Highlights:
World Premieres by choreographers Abdul Latif and Amanda Selwyn, 
A collaboration by jazz greats Vijay Iyer (pianist) and Wadada Leo Smith (trumpeter),
The World Premiere of Barbara Hammond’s play Terra Firma, directed by Shana Cooper (TFANA) with Andrus Nichols, 
The World Premiere of Blood Moon, an opera-theatre work by Garrett Fisher (composer) and Ellen McLaughlin (librettist) and Rachel Dickstein (director), co-presented with PROTOTYPE and the Japan Society. 

2019/2020 Season:

Terra Firma *World Premiere*
September 27 – November 10, 2019
Co-presented with The COOP
In a not-so-distant Beckettian future, years after The Big War, a tiny kingdom wrestles with the problems of running a nation, sparring with the concepts of what makes a citizen, a country and a civilization. The play is inspired by real life events: In the 1960’s a retired army major in the United Kingdom claimed an abandoned aircraft platform in international waters off the coast of Essex as a sovereign nation, planted his flag, declared his wife Princess and their motto E Mare Libertas! ‘From the Sea, Freedom!” Written by award winning New Dramatist resident Barbara Hammond, and directed by Shana Cooper (Princess Grace Award), Terra Firma was originally commissioned by The Royal Court, Britain’s premier company for cultivating new plays. The COOP is a new company founded by established New York artists Andrus Nichols (Bedlam’s Saint Joan, Sense & Sensibility; “I’m beginning to think she can do anything.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times) and Kate Hamill (Playwright of the Year -2017 – The Wall Street Journal, author of Sense & Sensibility, Vanity Fair, Little Women).

Der Freischutz
By Carl Maria von Weber
Directed by Louisa Proske
Original musical arrangement by Daniel Schlosberg 
Co-presented with Heartbeat Opera
December 4-15, 2019
Heartbeat Opera the “pioneering company” (The New York Times) behind ground-breaking productions of  Fidelio and Carmen, brings its trademark vision to a classic opera, making it a radical, immersive re-imagining of the twisted fairy tale about a deal with the devil and seven magic bullets that cannot miss their target. The production features a stellar cast of singers and Heartbeat’s distinctive “ingenious rearrangement” (The Wall Street Journal) of Weber’s Romantic score arranged by Daniel Schlosberg.

Blood Moon -World Premiere opera-theater collaboration, presented by BPAC, PROTOTYPE Festival and Japan Society
January 9 – 18, 2020
Music: Garrett Fisher
Libretto: Ellen McLaughlin
Director: Rachel Dickstein

Amanda Selwyn
Hindsight: 20th Anniversary Program
March 5 – 7, 2019 at 7:30pm
Supported by CUNY Dance Initiative
Featuring an interactive lobby installation and a composite evening of performances.  With a focus on reflection and memory, the work will reference motifs and signature structures from two decades of richly layered repertory, by a choreographer known for “Distinctive, off-kilter elegance” – The New Yorker, as well as featuring a World Premiere exploring the growth possible from looking back at history.  Hindsight will feature eight Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre dancers, and long-time collaborators Anna-Alisa Belous (Costume/Scenery), Dan Ozminkowski (Lighting), Joel Wilhelmi (Sound), Zachary Ludescher (Projection).

dwb (driving while black) 
Chamber Opera by Susan Kander (music) and Roberta Gumbel (soprano/libretto) with New Morse Code (Hannah Collins, cello & Michael Compitello, percussion)
March 19-21, 2020
“Singers are storytellers,” says soprano/librettist Roberta Gumbel (“silver voiced…” – The New York Times), “but rarely do we get the opportunity to help create the stories we are telling.” Collaborating with Susan Kander (“A composer of vivid imagination and skill.” – Fanfare) and the cutting-edge cello/percussion duo New Morse Code (“Clarity of artistic vision and near-perfect synchronicity..” – icareifyoulisten.com), this brief, powerful music-drama documents the all-too-familiar story of an African-American parent whose “beautiful brown boy” approaches driving age as, what should be a celebration of independence and maturity is fraught with the anxiety of “driving while black.”

Abdul Latif
Foray
March 26 -28, 2020
Supported by CUNY Dance Initiative
Foray is an evening-length concert of dance performance choreographed by Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellow and Inaugural Lincoln Center Institute Artist-in-Residence Abdul Latif to an eclectic array of arranged instrumental music and self-composed rhythm percussion remixes. The program marks the premiere of D2D/T, Mr. Latif’s artist collective and will showcase the virtuosic range of his technical vocabulary and work by extraordinary collaborators including dancers Indiana Woodward (NYCB), Calvin Royal III (ABT), Glenn Allen and Línda Celeste Sims (Alvin Ailey), composer/conductor Ron Wasserman, fashion designer Peter Hidalgo.  It presents four original works: Eyespot (World Premiere), Feelin’ of a Flava (World Premiere), Sounds of Sense (2016) and NEither/NeIther (2017).  

Vijay Iyer (piano) & Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet)
Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives Concert
April 17, 2020 at 8pm
Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013, and called “Extravagantly gifted … brilliantly eclectic” – The New Yorker, Vijay Iyer joins forces with an equally heralded musician and composer whom he calls his hero, friend and teacher, Doris Duke Artist Wadada Leo Smith “a magisterial instrumental voice…” – Downbeat.  Their collaborations have been hailed as “both cultivated and passionate” by The New Yorker. 

Siachen
Play by Aditya Rawal
Directed by Gwynn MacDonald
April 30 – May 2, 2020 at 7:30pm
Stranded at a post between India and Pakistan, the Siachen Glacier, three Indian soldiers wait for a chopper extraction to rescue them that shows no sign of arriving.  This play by 27-year-old Aditya Rawal from Mumbai (winner New York Innovative Theatre Award for The Queen) is set on the highest battleground on earth.  The Siachen glacier, located in a disputed territory of Kashmir, has been the subject of a 35-year military conflict.  While setting out to write an anti-war play criticizing the governments for their inability to broker a truce, after spending two weeks at the base camp, Rawal found the truth more complicated. The resulting play-in-development, directed by Gwynn MacDonald (“Intelligent, absorbing… a quiet but forceful call for art to alert itself to the impact of politics.” – The New York Times) explores the mistrust that lies at the root of human conflict.  

In addition, Baruch Performing Arts Center offers a series of classical and contemporary chamber music in the intimate and acoustically superb Rosalyn and Irwin Engelman Recital Hall, called “a perfect hall for chamber music” by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times. The 2019-20 series will include the New York Premiere of a song cycle by Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom performed by soprano Rayanne Dupuis (NYC debut) and pianist Guy Livingston, the Met Museum ensemble-in-residence Sonnambula playings Baroque Austrian treasures, Israeli Chamber Project celebrating American immigrant composers from Korngold to Shulamit Ran, Daedalus and Clarion Quartets celebrating composer Miecyszlaw Weinberg’s centenary, and much more.

Program details will be available at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/bpac/ in mid-summer. Tickets on sale beginning in August.

Baruch Performing Arts Center is an acclaimed performing arts presence. Located in the heart of Manhattan just east of Chelsea and the famed flatiron building, BPAC presents renowned classical music, opera, jazz, theater, dance, discussion, film, and innovative cross-genre programming. BPAC has presented over 1,000 cultural programs in its 5 spaces since 2003. Its curated season of 30 programs annually emphasizes new work experienced in intimate settings, the diversity of American culture as exemplified by Baruch students (who come from 130 different countries) and work that lives at the confluence of art and social justice. 

Past presentations have included theatre companies such as the National Asian American Theatre Company, Folksbiene, Blessed Unrest, and The Acting Company.  Dance companies such as Caleb Teicher & Co, Dusan Tynek, Heidi Latsky Dance, José Limón, and Urban Bush Women.  BPAC is the New York home of the Alexander String Quartet and presents a rich chamber music season including artists such as the Israeli Chamber Project, Cantata Profana, violinist Tessa Lark, cellist Joshua Roman, and pianist Sara Davis Buechner.  BPAC offers a jazz series named for bassist and faculty member Milt Hinton, which has featured artists such as Grammy-Award winner Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, and the Aaron Diehl Trio. Discussion program have included writers Teju Cole, Colum McCann and Amitav Ghosh, actress Linda Lavin, and thought leaders such as Gloria Steinem and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.  Visit www.baruch.cuny.edu/bpac for complete and up-to-date information on the 2019-20 Season.