AMERICAN MODERN OPERA COMPANY RETURNS TO THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE FOR FREE AUGUST 25 PERFORMANCE

August 19, 2019
[Digital images available upon request]

(Williamstown, MA) – The Clark Art Institute hosts an afternoon of free performances by the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) on August 25, 2019 from noon until 4 pm. AMOC artists will perform in a variety of locations across the Clark’s grounds.

Performances feature AMOC’s Co-Artistic Directors Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, AMOC violinists Miranda Cuckson and Keir GoGwilt, cellist Coleman Itzkoff, percussionist Jonny Allen, dancer/choreographer Julia Eichten, and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. Guest double bassist Kyle Motl will also perform.

“We’re so happy to be returning to The Clark, with its unparalleled combination of natural beauty outdoors and artistic beauty within its walls. It is uniquely meaningful for AMOC’s artists to be able to showcase new and in-progress work just fifteen minutes from our summer home base in southern Vermont,” said Aucoin and Winokur. Aucoin, a composer and conductor, is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, whose next opera Eurydice has been co-commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera’s new works program and the Los Angeles Opera, where it will have its premiere in 2020. Winokur is a director, choreographer, and dancer, whose most recent work was the critically acclaimed presentation of The Black Clown at the 2019 Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York.

The event is planned as an outdoor/indoor series of engagements, beginning at noon with a strings concert atop Stone Hill at the site of Thomas Schütte: Crystal. At 1:20 pm, a performance on the Fernández Terrace features dance, music, and vocals. The afternoon concludes with a 3 pm group concert in the auditorium of the Manton Research Center. The afternoon’s program includes works by Johann Paul von Westhoff, Kyle Motl, Keir GoGwilt, Iannis Xenakis, Andy Akiho, Tom Johnson, Henry Purcell, Jörg Widmann, Brett Dean, Salvatore Sciarrino, Matthew Aucoin, Aperghis, and Claudio Monteverdi.

Visitors are encouraged to bring outdoor seating or a blanket. In the event of inclement weather, the entire performance series will move to the Clark’s auditorium, with first-come, first-served seating available.

This program is generously supported by Ron Walter and Michael Lynch & Susan Baker. For a full schedule of the day’s events, visit clarkart.edu.

ABOUT AMOC
Led by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, AMOC is an opera company on a new model. The company serves as the artistic home for seventeen of the most exciting singers, dancers, and instrumentalists of the rising generation. AMOC’s artists are committed to reimagining what it means to make opera in the twenty-first century. Unlike a typical opera company, which features a constantly-changing roster of artists in one particular theater, AMOC focuses on deep, long-term artistic relationships among its core members. The company’s goal is to create a body of new, discipline-colliding music-theater works, conceived, developed, and performed by its artists.

AMOC’s most recent season included the premiere of With Care, a new work co-commissioned by ODC Theater in San Francisco and AMOC, created by dancer Bobbi Jene Smith in collaboration with Keir GoGwilt; a second, expanded Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; performances of John Adams’s El Niño, arranged specially for AMOC, at the Cloisters in New York; and the company's first fully-staged chamber opera production, Hans Werner Henze’s El Cimarrón, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. AMOC has additionally been Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University and Park Avenue Armory.

ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Institute’s library, consisting of more than 270,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Noted for its distinctive architecture, including two buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Tadao Ando, the Clark is situated on a 140-acre campus offering five miles of walking trails and exceptional vistas of meadows and woodlands and has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide. Located at 225 South Street, Williamstown, Massachusetts, the Clark’s is open from 10 am to 5 pm, daily in July and August and from Tuesday through Sunday between September and June. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; EBT Card to Culture; and Blue Star Museums. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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