The Miller Theatre’s 2010–11 season offers a broad sampling of music through five intriguing series — Early Music; Bach & the Baroque; Jazz; Lunchtime Concerts; and the signature Composer Portraits. Miller commissioned Thomas Roma, director of photography at the School of the Arts, to make photographs of the featured composers; his portrait of the young German composer Matthias Pintscher is shown above. The series begins on October 21, when Pintscher conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble and vocalists in a program of his own music. Pintscher is admired both for his small-scale works and for his two operas inspired by famous poets who died young: Thomas Chatterton, about the 18th-century English poet who committed suicide at the age of 17, and, L’Espace dernier, based on the life and work of Arthur Rimbaud.
Composers Fred Lerdahl, Julia Wolfe, Mario Davidovsky, Chaya Czernowin, Joan Tower, and Pierre Boulez — who turns 85 this year — are all scheduled to be on hand at their featured Portraits.
At the popular Lunchtime Concerts in Philosophy Hall, the Voxare String Quartet will explore music of Ives, Copland, Thomson, and Barber — founding fathers of American music.
This year is the first to be programmed by director Melissa Smey. “I’m excited to introduce the fresh, young singers of Stile Antico and New York Polyphony to our early-music audiences,” she says, “and to push the boundaries of our jazz programming with composer-performers such as Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn.”
