The popular series curated in partnership with composer Christopher Stark features 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.
(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 TU 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 concertsserve 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 concertscene, 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, _`ab 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 musiciansin 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 playerssummon 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 journeysthrough Sky Macklay’s angular reimagination of the familiar cadence and Molly Joyce’sreflection on perfection.
Michael Gordon and Leilehua Lanzilotti revel in the emotive beauty ofsolo 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 practicesfrom the Americas. The earth tones of Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon tell a future creation story, while Clarice Assad introducesthe vibrant folk melodies and dances of South America. Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov conjuresthe sounds of Brazil in memory of a close friend, and Molly Herron pondersthe evolution of the sarabande and its rootsin 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 bringsthese elementsto the Pulitzer thisfall. 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 wallsculpture, Blue Black, is on permanent view in the Pulitzer’s main gallery.
Crowner will present a seventy-five-foot-long painting,sewn together from cutsections of canvasin the main gallery of the museum. The scale of the painting respondsto the museum’s architecture, wrapping around two of the gallery’s walls, while the height isthe same asthe 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 formsin Kelly’s artworks asinspiration. 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 shedslight 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 tracesthe 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, Morelosis internationally recognized forsensuous and immersive installations comprised ofsoil, jute, and other earthen materials. Delcy Morelos: Interwoven contributesto a deeper understanding of the artist’s development by bringing to the fore several bodies of work from the 1990sto 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 asthe 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 assemblesfive artist meditations on the concept of land. Using film and video, the artistsin the exhibition capture the earth’s constantstate 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 asritual 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).
About the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Celebrated as one of today’s most exciting and enduring orchestras, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is the second-oldest orchestra in the country, marking its 144th year with the 2023/2024 season and its fifth with Stéphane Denève, The Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer Music Director. Widely considered one of the leading American orchestras, the Grammy® Award-winning SLSO maintainsits commitment to artistic excellence, educational impact, and community collaborations—all in service to its mission ofenriching lives through the power of music.
The transformational expansion and renovation of its historic home, Powell Hall,slated to be completed in 2025, builds on the institution’s momentum as a civic leader in convening individuals, creators, and ideas, while fostering a culture welcoming to all. Committed to building community through compelling and inclusive musical experiences, the SLSO continues its longstanding focus on equity, diversity, inclusion, and access, embracing itsstrengths as a responsive, nimble organization, while investing in partnerships locally and elevating its presence globally. For more information, visitslso.org.
About the Pulitzer
Located in the heart of St. Louis, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents art from around the world in its celebrated Tadao Ando-designed building and surrounding neighborhood. Exhibitions include both contemporary and historic art and are complemented by a wide range of free public programs, including music, literary arts, dance, wellness, and cultural discussions. Founded in 2001, the Pulitzer is a place where ideas are freely explored, new art exhibited, and historic work reimagined. Open and free to all, the Pulitzer is a cultural and civic asset to the St. Louis community and a popular destination for visitors from around the world.
In addition to the museum, the Pulitzer is home to several outdoorspaces, including Park-Like–a garden of native plants and pathways, the Spring Church–an open airstone pavilion and beloved landmark, and the Tree Grove–a shady picnic spot with oak and redbud trees. For more information, visit pulitzerarts.org or @pulitzerarts on social media.
