Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Baryshnikov Arts celebrate milestone anniversaries with immersive concert experience featuring music of Vivaldi, Angélica Negrón, and Anna Clyne (May 8)
(April 2025) — Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) – celebrated for its “exceptionally fine and committed music-making” (The New York Times) – continues the celebration of its milestone 50th anniversary this spring in collaboration with Baryshnikov Arts, the organization that shares its building and which is marking the 20-year anniversary of its own formation. On May 8, OSL and Baryshnikov Arts come together to co-produce an evening-length immersive performance featuring the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, with repertoire to include Vivaldi’s iconic The Four Seasons, interspersed with recorded sounds of nature; Angélica Negrón’s Marejada; and Anna Clyne’s Woman Holding a Balance. Original lighting design created for this special collaboration is by Jennifer Tipton, a MacArthur “genius” fellow and renowned as a designer for dance, opera, and theater. Baryshnikov Arts has been a pioneer in theatrical presentations of classical music concerts, and Jennifer Tipton was not only its first artistic collaborator but has been one of the most frequent in the two decades since. Lighting design, as abstract as instrumental music, is its natural creative partner. As Tipton said in The New York Timesabout her evening-length light installation “Our Days and Night,” presented at Baryshnikov Arts in 2022: “Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the audience is not aware of the lighting, but 100 percent is affected by it.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Founder and Artistic Director of Baryshnikov Arts; Sonja Kostich, President and Executive Director of Baryshnikov Arts; and James Roe, President and Executive Director of Orchestra of St. Luke’s, issued the following joint statement about the performance:
“For 14 years, Baryshnikov Arts and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s have shared 450 West 37th Street in Manhattan. This year, both companies will celebrate major anniversaries: Baryshnikov Arts’ 20th and Orchestra of St. Luke’s 50th. We’re delighted to make art together on May 8 at our joint address to mark the moment with our community!”
Angélica Negrón’s Marejada, composed for string quartet, electronics and percussion played by the quartet, arises from and disappears back into an ambient soundscape of waves and birds recorded on the beaches of Puerto Rico. It was originally commissioned by Kronos Quartet with the intention that the players could rehearse and perform the piece from different locations during the pandemic lockdown. At the end of the piece, the players put down their instruments and pick up gamelan-style gongs and bowls. This meditative texture blends into the natural sounds, and the piece ends quietly.
Anna Clyne, the inaugural composer-mentor for OSL’s DeGaetano Composition Institute, has had her work Woman Holding a Balance featured by OSL in two contexts in recent seasons. Originally composed for the short film of the same name by sculptor Jyll Bradley, the work – which evokes light, space, and geometry through the medium of the string quartet – was first heard when the film itself debuted in a streaming concert in OSL’s 2021 “Sounds and Stories” series. It was also performed as a standalone work in a Visionary Sounds Series concert in The DiMenna Center’s Cary Hall the following year. Bradley’s film revolves around chains of creative influence, documenting a performance by British artist David Ward that was created inside Bradley’s sculpture Dutch/Light. Ward’s performance was in turn inspired by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, and Clyne’s music was inspired by Ward’s performance art. According to Clyne, “The piece reflects the meditative nature of the film and the cyclical passing of light through the sculpture over the course of a day. Shifting harmonic colors undulate in strange loops until they reach a melodic section, before returning to the stillness of the opening music.”
About Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Celebrating 50 years during the 2024–2025 season, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) features New York City’s most talented concert musicians and makes its artistic home at Carnegie Hall, where it has performed more than any other orchestra since its premiere there in 1983. Bernard Labadie, an internationally renowned specialist in 18th-century music, was named Principal Conductor in 2018 and steps down in 2025, concluding an expansive and critically acclaimed tenure. OSL’s annual season features concert series in each of Carnegie Hall’s three venues as well as the Visionary Sounds and DeGaetano Composition Institute programs focused on contemporary composers at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the rehearsal, recording, and performance facility OSL built in 2011 and continues to operate in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. OSL proudly collaborates with Paul Taylor Dance Company for their Lincoln Center season each year and performs with a variety of artistic partners at venues throughout the city and beyond. Founded in 1974 when a group of virtuoso chamber musicians began performing together in Greenwich Village at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, the ensemble later expanded into an orchestra before catching fire on New York’s classical music scene. OSL has participated in 120 recordings, four of which have won Grammy Awards, has commissioned more than 75 new works, and has given more than 200 world, U.S., and New York City premieres. OSL champions composers from historically underrepresented groups in classical music. In recent seasons, it has presented works by Kinan Azmeh, Margaret Bonds, Valerie Coleman, Julius Eastman, Wynton Marsalis, Florence Price, Rita Dove, and Chen Yi, among others. Central to OSL’s mission, the Education and Community Engagement program presents free concerts for thousands of New York City public school students each year; offers the 120-student strong Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), the city’s only youth orchestra under the umbrella of a professional group; provides a mentorship program for pre-professional musicians; and brings accessible concerts to all five boroughs. To learn more, visit OSLmusic.org or follow @OSLmusic on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
About Baryshnikov Arts
Baryshnikov Arts, founded in 2005 by Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov, is rooted in the belief that artists hold irreplaceable roles in our world by shaping perspectives, offering new approaches, and initiating crucial conversations in complex social, political, and cultural environments. Baryshnikov Arts’ mission supports artistic freedom, providing multidisciplinary artists with opportunities for creative exploration and unique artistic expression, and allowing audiences to view the world in new ways. They offer performance and commissioning opportunities, artist residencies, rentals, and more.
Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Baryshnikov Arts Center
May 8
Jerome Robbins Theater/Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC)
(Co-production w/ BAC)
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
VIVALDI: The Four Seasons (Krista Bennion Feeney, violin)
Angélica NEGRÓN: Marejada
Anna CLYNE: Woman Holding a Balance