Anthony Roth Costanzo will be the New York Philharmonic’s artist-in-residence during the orchestra’s newly announced 2021–2022 season. His contributions will include the two-week exploration of identity, Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within, and the continuation of partnerships forged as part of the NY Phil Bandwagon.
As David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic’s usual home at Lincoln Center, undergoes renovations (on a fast-tracked timeline due to the coronavirus shutdown), virtually all programming in the 2021–2022 season will play alternate venues throughout the city (a first in the company’s modern history).
Authentic Selves, under the baton of Music Director Jaap van Zweden, will offer two programs: one at the Rose Theater and the other at Alice Tully Hall. Costanzo will be joined by Justin Vivian Bond for the former as they sing arias and standards arranged by Nico Muhly, and will sing in Joel Thompson’s settings of new texts by 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith. In the latter, Costanzo will sing Berlioz’s Les Nuit d’été song cycle and additional musicalizations of Smith’s work, this time from composer Gregory Spears.“I look very different from the way I sound when I sing,” Costanzo says. “How do we hear gender in pitch? How does this perception relate to my own queer identity? What is natural and what is artificial? The countertenor voice hints at questions of self and belies a wide spectrum of historical and cultural contexts surrounding falsetto singing. Authentic Selves is an opportunity to explore what stories my voice can tell, and what truths it can reflect.”
Costanzo will also curate co-presentations with organizations that participated in the Philharmonic’s Bandwagon program, which converted a 20-foot shipping container into a pop-up stage across the city. Details of the presentations, which will feature National Black Theatre, El Puente, Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, A Better Jamaica, and Flushing Town Hall, will be announced later.
Additional works on the roster include Joan Tower’s 1920/2019 and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward into Light, both as part of the Philharmonic’s woman composer commission initiative Project 19; two world-premiere programs (one by Gabriela Ortiz, the other to be announced) as part of The Schumann Connection, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel; the U.S. premiere of the Muhly double piano concerto In Certain Circles; and the U.S. premiere of Kanashibari by Hannah Kendall.For more information on the new season, visit NYPhil.org.
