The New School’s College of Performing Arts, New York City presents three spring concerts.

Wednesday, April 09, 2025

The New School's College of Performing Arts presents three concerts in April and May 2025 featuring works by Carla Bley ( the US premiere of 'Escalator Over The Hill), John Zorn and more.

We have received the following press release;

US Premiere of Carla Bley’s epic jazz opera “Escalator Over the Hill” and more this spring from The New School

The New School’s College of Performing Arts
presents
3 SPRING CONCERTS
Trailblazing and under-recognized titans of experimental jazz and classical music bring our timeliest issues to the stage

Friday, April 11, 2025, 7:30PM
Mannes Orchestra gets radical with
MAVERICKS
John Zorn’s violin concerto, Contes de Fées, with Stefan Jackiw
Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al with Sandbox Percussion, ahead of Earth Day
Luciano Berio’s epic, rarely heard Sinfonia with 8 singers—the ultimate ‘60s orchestral happening
Featuring the Mannes Orchestra
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center
1941 Broadway, NYC
Tickets: $17.50

Friday, May 2, 2025, 7:30PM
An astonishing U.S. Premiere:
CARLA BLEY’S ESCALATOR OVER THE HILL
The uncompromisingly avant-garde composer/pianist’s landmark 1971 album, a cross-genre “jazz opera,” is performed in its entirety.
Featuring the New School Studio Orchestra conducted by Keller Coker and vocalists from the School of Jazz & Contemporary Music
Tishman Auditorium at The New School 63 5th Avenue, NYC
Tickets: free with registration (space is limited)

Thursday-Friday, May 8-9, 2025, 7:30PM
FANDANGO AT THE WALL
Performance, screening & discussion around the social movement that became a film & soundtrack phenomenon, recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Conga Patria Son Jarocho Collective
New School College of Performing Arts musicians
Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Octet
May 8 Screening: The Auditorium on 12th Street at The New School
May 9 Concert: Tishman Auditorium at The New School
Tickets: free with registration

From Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music:
“Our central vision is to present vital works across the entire performing arts field, and we are proud to offer them to our audiences in these three programs. It is almost unbelievable that Carla Bley’s 1971 quasi-operatic blockbuster, Escalator Over the Hill, has never been performed in the United States, but this May, our college will do just that, placing the composer-pianist’s masterpiece front and center at our Tishman Auditorium. A week later, we present a work most relevant to the politics of the moment: Fandango at the Wall, in this case the wall between San Diego and Tijuana, with the HBO film and the music, composed by Arturo O’Farrill. The music and film illuminate what words alone cannot. And in April, the Mannes Orchestra performs a remarkable trio of radical works: Luciano Berio’s orchestral collage Sinfonia, John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées featuring faculty member Stefan Jackiw, and Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al, performed by resident ensemble Sandbox Percussion.”

New York, NY — The New School’s College of Performing Arts presents three fascinating concerts in April and May, featuring trailblazing and under-recognized experimental musicians and music that speaks to the timeliest political issues. The events spotlight many esteemed personalities in the New School Performing Arts orbit, including: Stefan Jackiw, Mannes string faculty; Sandbox Percussion, College of Performing Arts Ensemble-in-Residence; Arturo O’Farrill, School of Jazz & Contemporary Music faculty; Steve Cardenas, School of Jazz & Contemporary Music faculty; and John Zorn, who runs his performance series, The Stone, at the New School.

Friday, April 11, 2025, 7:30PM
Mannes Orchestra: Mavericks
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center
1941 Broadway
New York, NY 10023
Mannes Orchestra returns to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall under the baton of David Hayes with a program entitled Mavericks, which celebrates pioneering, radical orchestral works by John Zorn, Viet Cuong, and Luciano Berio.
College of Performing Arts Ensemble-in-Residence Sandbox Percussion performs Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al, a piece that reflects Cuong’s deep interest in renewable energy initiatives and comprises three continuous movements, each inspired by the power of hydro, wind, and solar energies. Cuong says, “Re(new)al is a percussion quartet concerto devoted to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas. The quartet performs on several ‘found’ instruments, including crystal glasses and compressed air cans. While the piece also features more traditional instruments, such as snare drum and vibraphone, I looked for ways to alter their sounds or find new ways to play them.”
John Zorn’s Contes de Fées (composed in 1999) is a dramatic and structurally complex concerto, featuring a virtuoso soloist pitted against the color and dynamism of a larger ensemble. The work—a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music in 2000—is performed by violinist Stefan Jackiw, hailed as “brilliantly skillful and selflessly musical” (The Financial Times).
The program culminates with Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (composed in 1968-69), which includes eight amplified singers embedded in the orchestra. The vocalists represent a distorted history of culture in which they speak and shout excerpts from texts including Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Raw and the Cooked. The work’s third movement includes a cut-up of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Sinfonia was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 25th anniversary and, according to Leonard Bernstein in his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1973), was representative of the new direction classical music was taking after the pessimistic decade of the sixties. “If you haven’t listened to it yet, throw yourself into the labyrinth right now; and if you have, listen again—and again. You will always find something new, I promise.” (Tom Service, The Guardian).
Program:
Viet Cuong: Re(new)al (2019 rev. 2021) featuring Sandbox Percussion
John Zorn: Contes de Fées (1999) with soloist Stefan Jackiw
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (1968-69) with eight amplified singers
Artists:
Mannes Orchestra; David Hayes, conductor
Sandbox Percussion
Stefan Jackiw, violin

Friday, May 2, 2025, 7:30PM
Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill
Tishman Auditorium at The New School
63 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10003
“Carla Bley, the majestically eccentric pianist and composer, has conjured up a gargantuan, avant-cinematic, cross-genre venture called Escalator Over the Hill, in the face of record company indifference and no financial support.” — THE GUARDIAN
On May 2, the New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere performance of Carla Bley’s 1971 landmark album Escalator Over the Hill. Today, the work is considered one of the undersung masterpieces of the 1970s.
TIDAL Magazine describes the album, writing that it “announced itself as a ‘Chronotransduction’—an invented term meaning, roughly, ‘a transference of time’—but was otherwise thought of as a jazz opera, in the vein of rock operas like Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar. However, the music on Escalator Over the Hill goes well beyond the usual boundaries of genre. In addition to bracing bursts of free jazz, there are cabaret songs, snatches of country music, deep dives into jazz fusion, an excursion into Hindustani pop, elements of ambient music and nods to New York minimalism. Not to mention a fair amount of stuff that simply falls under the rubric ‘none of the above’…”
Arturo O’Farrill, who shares a special connection with Bley, says: “Carla is one of the most important American voices imaginable. Her artistry and compositional voice is historic. She is literally one of the most innovative artists of our time. That she is not mentioned in the same company of Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, and other iconic voices in American culture is positively criminal.”
Their friendship goes back to the 70’s, when Carla Bley discovered 19-year old Arturo playing in a bar in upstate NY. She immediately hired him to perform as part of her big band, where he remained a fixture from 1979-1983. O’Farrill ultimately commissioned the final work that Carla Bley wrote before her passing in 2023.
Program:
Escalator Over the Hill (1971), U.S. Premiere
Music by Carla Bley
Words by Paul Haines
Artists:
The New School Studio Orchestra; Keller Coker, conductor
Steve Cardenas, guitar
Vocal ensemble of students, alum, and faculty from the School of Jazz & Contemporary Music, led by Aubrey Johnson
    Denali Barrett — chorus
    Alicia Lindberg — chorus, Leader
    Bel Bastien — chorus, Ginger II
    Andrew Geher — chorus, Jack II
    Andrew Sweeney (alum) — Jack
    Laura Iniesta Mingot — Ginger
    Alfie Jackson — chorus, opera singer
    Lily James Roberts — chorus
    Donnie Smith (alum, faculty) — chorus, Doctor
    Dean Akbar — chorus, Cecil Clark
    Hila Brosh — chorus

Thursday and Friday, May 8-9, 2025, 7:30PM
Fandango At The Wall
A Concert and Film
The Conga Patria Son Jarocho Collective
New School College of Performing Arts musicians
Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Octet
May 8 Film Screening: The Auditorium on 12th Street at The New School
May 9 Concert: Tishman Auditorium at The New School
Led by The New School’s Arturo O’Farrill, with performances by The Afro Latin Jazz Octet, musicians from the New School College of Performing Arts, and The Conga Patria Son Jarocho Collective, this two-day event of Fandango at the Wall—a story of breaking down walls—presents a powerful and timely vision. The album was released to critical acclaim in 2018, praised by publications including Downbeat, NPR, The New York Times, and The Nation; today it takes on urgent new relevance in the current fractured political moment.
The album and 2020 HBO film follow O’Farrill and producer Kabir Sehgal to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they seek to record an album. The project brings together brilliant voices from a variety of cultural and musical traditions to tear down a variety of walls that isolate us—physical, musical, or cultural. The piece was inspired by Jorge Francisco Castillo, a retired librarian who has organized the Fandango Fronterizo Festival for the past decade. The annual event gathers son jarocho musicians on both sides of the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego for a celebratory jam session. In O’Farrill’s reimagination, his esteemed Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Castillo’s son jarocho musicians came together at the border, joined by a more than 60 gifted musicians representing both sides of that divide.
Program:
Arturo O’Farrill and Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra’s Fandango at the Wall (2018)
Artists:
The Conga Patria Son Jarocho Collective
Students from the New School College of Performing Arts
Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Octet
SCHEDULE:
Thursday, May 8 at 7:30pm
Film Screening, followed by a moderated panel assembled by Achilles Kallergis, Assistant Professor and Director of the Project on Cities and Migration
Location: The Auditorium on 12th Street / The New School
Friday, May 9 at 7:30pm
Live concert followed by a reception at 8:45pm
Location: Tishman Auditorium / The New School
Reception in the Event Cafe
The concert will be recorded and streamed.

The College of Performing Arts at The New School
http://www.newschool.edu/performing-arts

The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for is a hub for vigorous training, cross-disciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, innovative education, and world-class performances.

The 1,000 students at the College of Performing Arts are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts for all people. Students and faculty collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more.

The curriculum at the College of Performing Arts is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.

Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for radically progressive music education, dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. As part of The New School’s College of Performing Arts, together with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the School of Drama, Mannes makes its home on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus in a state-of-the-art facility at the newly renovated Arnhold Hall.

The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music is renowned across the globe as the most innovative school of its kind, offering students an artist-as-mentor approach to learning. The world’s leading contemporary and jazz musicians, like Arturo O’Farrill, Reggie Workman, Mary Halvorson, Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkens, Jane Ira Bloom, and more, work with students to hone their craft and create groundbreaking music. At the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, students are immersed in the creative epicenter of New York City and are supported by a faculty of renowned professionals who challenge them to expand the boundaries of their art form, experiment with sound, and use creative voice for change. The school’s approach is unique, allowing students to choose their own teachers and create their own ensembles. This education with agency provides students with the tools and experience needed to navigate and thrive as performing arts professionals.

Founded in 1919, The New School was established to advance academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. A century later, The New School remains at the forefront of innovation in higher education, inspiring more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students to challenge the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The university welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and public programs that encourage open discourse and social engagement. Through our online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence.