Hill Auditorium
Renée Fleming, soprano
Inon Barnatan, piano
$12-20 student tickets available
In her much-anticipated UMS return, superstar soprano Renée Fleming presents the world premiere of Voice of Nature, an all-new multimedia performance.
Inspired by Renée’s 2023 Grammy Award-winning album, Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, this special performance spans the classical, romantic, and contemporary eras, with beloved songs and new commissions exploring nature as both inspiration and victim of humanity. The National Geographic Society is providing an original video to reflect the musical selections.
One of the most highly acclaimed singers of our time, Renée Fleming is a National Medal of Arts recipient who has sung for momentous occasions ranging from the memorial service at Ground Zero after 9/11 and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings and the Super Bowl, where she was the first classical artist ever to sing the National Anthem.
Outside of her singing career, she has become a leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience, launching a collaboration between the Kennedy Center and the National Institutes for Health and exploring the power of music as it relates to health and the brain. The day before this performance, Renée will be joined by local researchers and medical practitioners for Music and Mind, a public conversation exploring the powerful connections between the arts and health.
At the center of it all is her stunning voice, on display in Hill Auditorium for the first time since 2011 in a recital with pianist Inon Barnatan, who will also perform at UMS with the Jerusalem Quartet a week later. “Fleming has consistent mastery over the entire range, yet each part has its own distinctive color, like a river that gleams differently when the sun catches different parts of it.” (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Program
Caroline Shaw “Aurora Borealis”
Gabriel Fauré “Au Bord De L’eau”
Gabriel Fauré “Les Berceaux”
Maurice Ravel “Jeux d’eau”
Franz Liszt “S’il Est Un Charmant Gazon”
Franz Liszt “Über Allen Gipfeln Ist Ruh”
Edvard Grieg “Lauf Der Welt”
Edvard Grieg “Zur Rosenzeit”
Jerome Kern “All the Things You Are”
– Intermission –
Second half accompanied by National Geographic video:
Hazel Dickens “Pretty bird” (a capella)
George Frideric Handel “Care Selve” from Atalanta
Nico Muhly “Endless Space”
Joseph Canteloube “Baïléro”
Maria Schneider “Our Finch Feeder” from Winter Morning Walks
Bjork “All is Full of Love”
Sergei Rachmaninoff Moments Musicaux No. 4 (piano solo)
Howard Shore “Twilight and Shadow” from The Lord of the Rings
Kevin Puts “Evening”
Burt Bacharach and Hal David “What the World Needs Now”
Thank You to Our Sponsors
RESIDENCY SPONSOR
- Inon Barnatan’s residency is sponsored by Elaine and Peter Schweitzer.
TITLE SPONSOR
SUPPORTING SPONSOR
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- Sharon and Dallas Dort
- Anne and Paul Glendon
- Tom and Kathy Goldberg
- Norman and Debbie Herbert
- James and Nancy Stanley
- Jay and Christine Zelenock and the Zelenock Family
PATRON SPONSOR
- Rachel and Dan Feder
MEDIA PARTNERS
Renée Fleming is one of the most highly acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s great opera houses and concert halls. Honored with five Grammy® awards and the US National Medal of Arts, she has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the Super Bowl. In May, Renée was named a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health for the World Health Organization, and in June it was announced that she will become a Kennedy Center Honoree this fall.
A leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience, Renée launched the first ongoing collaboration between The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Institutes of Health. She has presented her program Music and Mind in more than 50 cities around the world. During the pandemic, she created Music and Mind LIVE, a weekly web show amassing nearly 700,000 views, from 70 countries. She is now a founding advisor for major initiatives including the Sound Health Network at the University of California San Francisco and the NeuroArts Blueprint, a project of Johns Hopkins University and the Aspen Institute.
Renée’s current concert calendar includes appearances in London, Paris, Vienna, and at Carnegie Hall. Recent opera performances include starring in the world premiere of The Hours at the Metropolitan Opera, and as Pat Nixon in a new production of Nixon in China at the Opéra de Paris.
Renée’s recording Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. In January, Decca released a special double-length album of live recordings from Renée’s iconic performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Renée Fleming: Greatest Moments at the Met.
Other awards include the 2023 Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, and honorary doctorates from eight leading universities.
“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Inon Barnatan has received universal acclaim for his “uncommon sensitivity” (The New Yorker), “impeccable musicality and phrasing” (Le Figaro), and his stature as “a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative” (The Evening Standard). A multifaceted musician, Barnatan is equally celebrated as soloist, curator and collaborator.
As a soloist, Barnatan is a regular performer with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conductors. He was the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic from 2014-17, and has played with the BBC Symphony for the BBC Proms, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and most major orchestras in the US, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra Symphony and the London, Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonics. He performed a complete Beethoven concerto cycle in Marseilles; Copland’s Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and at Carnegie Hall; and multiple U.S. tours with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, playing and conducting from the keyboard. With the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, Barnatan played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto on New Year’s Eve, followed by a Midwest tour that culminated in Chicago, and a return to the BBC Proms in summer 2018.
Equally at home as a curator and chamber musician, Barnatan is Music Director of La Jolla Music Society SummerFest in California, one of leading music festivals in the country. He regularly collaborates with world-class partners such as Renée Fleming and Alisa Weilerstein, and plays at major chamber music festivals including, Seattle, Santa Fe, and Spoleto USA. Barnatan was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) from 2006 to 2009, and continues to perform with CMS in New York and on tour. His passion for contemporary music has resulted in commissions and performances of many living composers, including premieres of new works by Thomas Adès, Sebastian Currier, Avner Dorman, Alan Fletcher, Joseph Hallman, Alasdair Nicolson, Andrew Norman and Matthias Pintscher, among others.