MUSIC

Da Camera of Houston presents Sarah Rothenberg’s The Blue Rider: Kandinsky and Music, Saturday, January 29, 2010; at 8:00 PM, in the Cullen Theater, Wortham Theater Center. Concept and direction: Sarah Rothenberg (pictured). Lighting and set design: Marcus Doshi. Projection and video design: Sven Ortel.

Featuring Susan Narucki, soprano; Sarah Rothenberg, piano. Scheduled program:  Works of Berg, Thomas de Hartmann, Arthur Lourié, Schoenberg, Scriabin and Webern.

“Spellbinding” said The Wall Street Journal. “Fascinating....incandescent” raved The New York Times. Sarah Rothenberg’s newest production, The Blue Rider, comes to Houston following its critically acclaimed, sold-out premiere performances in New York. The Blue Rider evokes a pivotal moment when artists and composers broke free from old ways of seeing and hearing, inventing new worlds in music and art. Rothenberg and her team of designers use lighting, projections and video to create stunning visual partners for ground-breaking music that changed the century.

“A spellbinding program of music [and] projected images…the performance and the effect of simple geometric shapes were altogether stunning.” -- Stuart Isacoff, The Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating multimedia project...exposed the live-wire connection between [Schoenberg and Kandinsky], both cutting loose from representational and tonal practices that had anchored the visual and musical arts.” – Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

"Pianist Sarah Rothenberg (who also wrote the insanely intriguing program notes) was the creative force behind the program...sparkling passages that gave way to intelligent and introspective readings. Her solos were evocative and impressionistic of each composer's line, and she exhibited a complete mastery of dynamic, precision, and shading." -- Operachic.com

The Blue Rider In Performance was co-commissioned by Works and Process at the Guggenheim and Columbia University’s Miller Theatre.