St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Pulitzer Arts Foundation announce programming for 20th anniversary season of Live at the Pulitzer, celebrating music of today

(October 12, 2023, St. Louis, MO) – The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, in partnership with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, announced the details for its 2023/2024 Live at the Pulitzer concerts—the 20th anniversary season since the series’ inception in 2004. A convergence of aural and visual storytelling, Live at the Pulitzer concerts present bold and adventurous chamber music by composers of today, performed at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation—a Grand Center art museum established by Emily Rauh Pulitzer, whose recent gift to the SLSO endowed the institution’s Music Directorship. The concerts add to the SLSO’s musical offerings for the season, the 144th of the orchestra and fifth with Stéphane Denève, The Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer Music Director.

Marie-Hélène Bernard, SLSO President and CEO, said, “For 20 years, our collaboration with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation has created a fertile ground for experimentation, shaping musical experiences that elevate the voices of contemporary and emerging composers, while encouraging dialogue between visual and aural media. We are grateful for the shared vision of the Pulitzer team for realizing this bold, long-standing partnership.”

Recognized for its exceptional programming, the 23/24 Live at the Pulitzer concerts were curated in collaboration with Christopher Stark—composer, recipient of the 2023 Rome Prize, and Associate Professor of Composition at Washington University in St. Louis. The concerts serve as a conversation between music and visual art, with music selected in response to exhibitions on display at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. The 23/24 concerts were planned in conjunction with a remarkable lineup of exhibitions: Sarah Crowner: Around Orange, Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis, Delcy Morelos: Interwoven, and On Earth. The series has become a highlight of the St. Louis concert scene, and enjoys deeply engaged, capacity audiences.

This season, the Live at the Pulitzer series marks the first SLSO performance of 14 works, including music by Andy Akiho, Clarice Assad, Raven Chacon, Laurence Crane, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gordon, Molly Herron, Molly Joyce, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Allison Loggins-Hull, Sky Macklay, Christopher Stark, Cassie Wieland, and Olly Wilson.

At the Live at the Pulitzer concerts, the Tadao Ando-designed building–one of the finest examples of contemporary architecture in the United States–provides an intimate setting for the innovative works, all played by small ensembles of SLSO musicians within the museum galleries.

Concerts take place at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd. Tickets for the series are on sale now.

In addition to these concerts, the SLSO performs a full season of orchestral programs under the leadership of Denève and renowned guest conductors alongside the world’s great visiting soloists. Programming includes orchestral performances featuring timeless masterpieces to exciting collaborations; a variety of holiday concerts, film concerts, and concerts with popular artists; Family and Education concerts, part of a portfolio of education programming that and serves more than 330,000 teachers and students annually; and a variety of community concerts. The new St. Louis Symphony Orchestra: Live at The Sheldon series, beginning October 25, features chamber music that spans the repertoire, curated and performed by SLSO musicians in the intimate setting of The Sheldon.

While the SLSO continues the community-centered expansion and renovation of its historic home at Powell Hall, the orchestra will expand its presence throughout the St. Louis region, with programming that showcases the magical sound of the SLSO and the vitality of St. Louis’ artists and cultural institutions. Primary concerts venues are Presenting Partner, the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and Stifel Theatre in downtown St. Louis.

2023/2024 LIVE AT THE PULITZER CONCERTS

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra: Live at the Pulitzer | Line and Light
Tuesday, November 14, 7:30pm CST
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri, 63108

Hannah Ji, violin
Angie Smart, violin
Chris Tantillo, viola
Jennifer Humphreys, cello
Kevin Ritenauer, percussion

Sky Macklay Many, Many Cadences (First SLSO performances)
Leilehua Lanzilotti ko’u inoa (First SLSO performances)
Molly Joyce Imperfection (First SLSO performances)
Michael Gordon Light is Calling (First SLSO performances)
Andy Akiho “LigNEouS” from LIgNEouS Suite in 5 Movements (First SLSO performances)

SLSO string players summon intense color and bold abstraction in the first Live at the Pulitzer concert of the 23/24 season. Principally inspired by the Sarah Crowner: Around Orange exhibition, quartets take audiences on kaleidoscopic journeys through Sky Macklay’s angular reimagination of the familiar cadence and Molly Joyce’s reflection on perfection.

Michael Gordon and Leilehua Lanzilotti revel in the emotive beauty of solo instruments, while a lone marimba breaks up the string party in Andy Akiho’s virtuosic and percussive banger.

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra: Live at the Pulitzer | Material and Memory
Tuesday, January 30, 7:30pm CST
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri, 63108

Laurence Crane Riis (First SLSO performances)
Olly Wilson Echoes (First SLSO performances)
Christopher Stark Maple (First SLSO performances)
Allison Loggins-Hull Homeland (First SLSO performances)
Cassie Wieland to live in static (First SLSO performances)

Artists announced later.

Inspired by our city’s past and present, the second Live at the Pulitzer concert responds to the Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis exhibit. Audiences are invited to celebrate, reflect, and relate to St. Louis urban landscape. The program engages with the spirit of the city echoed through the sonic worlds of St. Louis-born Olly Wilson and current resident Christopher Stark. Allison Loggins-Hull prompts a reflection on our homeland, while Laurence Crane and Cassie Wieland create gentle spaces for continued contemplation.

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra: Live at the Pulitzer | People and Place
Tuesday, April 9, 7:30pm CDT
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri, 63108

Raven Chacon The Journey of the Horizontal People (First SLSO performance)
Osvaldo Golijov Mariel (First SLSO performance)
Molly Herron Three Sarabandes (First SLSO performance)
Clarice Assad Canções da America (First SLSO performance)

Artists announced later.

Inspired by Delcy Morelos: Interwoven and On Earth, the final concert of the 23/24 Live at the Pulitzer series celebrates dynamic musical practices from the Americas. The earth tones of Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon tell a future creation story, while Clarice Assad introduces the vibrant folk melodies and dances of South America. Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov conjures the sounds of Brazil in memory of a close friend, and Molly Herron ponders the evolution of the sarabande and its roots in the new world.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS

Sarah Crowner: Around Orange—On display through February 4, 2024
Bold abstraction and intense color are signatures of the New York-based painter Sarah Crowner (b. 1974), who brings these elements to the Pulitzer this fall. In three new site-specific artworks, Crowner pays homage to the architecture of the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando building and the vision of Ellsworth Kelly, whose monumental wall sculpture, Blue Black, is on permanent view in the Pulitzer’s main gallery.

Crowner will present a seventy-five-foot-long painting, sewn together from cut sections of canvas in the main gallery of the museum. The scale of the painting responds to the museum’s architecture, wrapping around two of the gallery’s walls, while the height is the same as the six-foot width of the nearby Blue Black. The painting will be complemented by a red-orange glazed terracotta mural of the same height in the museum’s entrance courtyard.

In the museum’s entrance gallery, Crowner produced a birch wood platform alongside a focused selection of early works by Kelly. Museum visitors are invited to move upon the platform, which will curve through the space, taking rounded forms in Kelly’s artworks as inspiration. The installation will transform the physical character of the gallery while the platform acts as a stage for experiencing Kelly’s work.

Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis—On display through February 4, 2024
Drawn from the rich collection of the National Building Arts Center (NBAC), Urban Archaeology brings together salvaged architectural elements from landmark buildings, residential homes, and neighborhood institutions built in St. Louis between 1840 and 1950. The artifacts on display represent important histories of material innovation, labor, and the everyday lives of the people who inhabit the city. The exhibition sheds light on the city’s history, revealing complicated legacies of power, wealth, and neglect that shape our experience of the built environment and daily life. By studying St. Louis’s architectural past, Urban Archeology encourages us to imagine new ways of building, keeping, knowing, and inhabiting places.

Located in Sauget, Illinois, the National Building Arts Center emerged in response to the rapid economic decline and widespread demolition the city experienced beginning in the 1950s. NBAC has worked over four decades to salvage and preserve significant parts of condemned buildings that would otherwise be completely lost, amassing the largest and most diversified collection of building artifacts in the United States. Urban Archaeology is the most extensive public presentation of NBAC’s collection to date.

Delcy Morelos: Interwoven—On display March 8-August 4, 2024
This spring the Pulitzer traces the socio-cultural and spiritual connections woven over the last 30 years by the artist Delcy Morelos. Born in 1967 in Tierralta, Colombia, and based in Bogotá, Morelos is internationally recognized for sensuous and immersive installations comprised of soil, jute, and other earthen materials. Delcy Morelos: Interwoven contributes to a deeper understanding of the artist’s development by bringing to the fore several bodies of work from the 1990s to the present. Never before exhibited in the U.S., the group includes over 40 drawings, paintings, and sculptures.

The exhibition is organized around the idea of weaving, both as a technique and a conceptual throughline in the artist’s practice. Through saturated red color, repeated gesture, and natural materials, Morelos’s early abstractions reflect upon the prolonged history of violent land appropriation in her homeland as well as the process of healing. The exhibition’s centerpiece is a new, immersive installation conceived for the Pulitzer, which will be constructed of locally sourced soil. Morelos’s use of this material foregrounds Indigenous views of land stewardship, recognizing the interconnectivity and reciprocity between all living things.

On Earth—On display March 8-August 4, 2024
On Earth assembles five artist meditations on the concept of land. Using film and video, the artists in the exhibition capture the earth’s constant state of flux as a result of natural forces and human intervention. The artworks address parallels between our treatment of the natural environment and the people who inhabit it, identifying moments of conflict and exploitation as well as ritual and reverence. Represented are the artists Ali Cherri (born 1976, Beirut, Lebanon); Jeffrey Gibson (born 1972, Colorado Springs, CO); Sky Hopinka (born 1984, Ferndale, WA ); Ana Mendieta (born 1948, Havana, Cuba, died 1985); and Rivane Neuenschwander (born 1967, Belo Horizonte, Brazil).

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