“FRAGMENTS 4” Premiere
Known for her “stylistic sensitivity, verve and spontaneous delight in discovery” (The Guardian), Weilerstein introduced her major new multisensory performance series, “FRAGMENTS,” last season in Toronto, Southern California, Carnegie Hall, Cleveland, and Tanglewood. The series weaves together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique programs, each an hour long, for solo cello. Tracing a powerful and wholly original emotional arc, each program embraces a wide variety of compositional voices, the composers being diverse with respect to age, race, gender, geography, compositional approach, musical style and stage of career (see below for complete list). All six programs are performed without pauses, applause or program details in a multisensory production by director Elkhanah Pulitzer and artistic producer and advisor Hanako Yamaguchi, with responsive lighting and architectural elements by Seth Reiser and original costumes by Carlos J Soto. Click here to watch a preview of “FRAGMENTS.”
This spring, the series continues with the world premiere of FRAGMENTS 4 at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater in Washington, DC, along with a performance of FRAGMENTS 2 on the same day. Previewing last season’s Carnegie Hall performance, the New York Times observed: “It is hard to think of many soloists of a similar stature who would dare to bring anything like it to the stage.”
The performance of FRAGMENTS 4 is supported by the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial Fund.