25
Mar/16

RELATION: A PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY BY VIJAY IYER

25
Mar/16
(photo by Paula Lobo)

Resident artist Vijay Iyer inaugurates the Met Breuer with “Relation” (photo by Paula Lobo)

The Met Breuer
Tony and Amie James Gallery, lobby
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 31, free with suggested museum admission of $12-$25
212-731-1675
www.metmuseum.org
vijay-iyer.com

Jazz musician and native New Yorker Vijay Iyer continues his stint as the Met Breuer’s inaugural resident artist with one more week of specially curated events, through March 31. Iyer, a pianist and composer who has released such albums as Tragicomic, Historicity, and Mutations, has put together a wide range of artists who will perform with him or present their own works all day in the lobby gallery. “Relation” also features the sound installation “Fit (The Battle of Jericho)” by Mendi + Keith Obadike, which is activated in between live performances. For the final week, Iyer will perform with Heems (Himanshu Suri), Rafiq Bhatia, and Kassa Overall (THUMS UP) on March 25 at 2:00 and 3:15 and Prasanna and Nitin Mitta (Tirtha) at 6:30, with Liberty Ellman and HPrizm on March 26 in the morning and Grégoire Maret and Okkyung Lee in the afternoon, with Marcus Gilmore and Matt Brewer (Trioing) on March 27 in the morning and Gilmore, Brewer, Elena Pinderhughes, and Adam O’Farrill in the afternoon, and with Craig Taborn (Radically Unfinished) on March 29. Other performers include Courtney Bryan, Brandee Younger, and Fieldwork with Tyshawn Sorey and Steve Lehman. In addition, Prashant Bhargava’s captivating thirty-five-minute film, Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, will be shown every day. Bhargava and Craig Marsden, armed with DSLR cameras, capture the Indian festival of spring known as Holi, celebrated with bonfires, dancing, and wild crowds dousing each other with vividly colored powdered dyes and water. The film was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts in honor of the centennial of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” so Iyer asked Bhargava to collaborate on a work about the Hindu ritual, built in twelve arcs that alternate between footage of the real Holi taking place in Mathura and a fictional imagining of the myth of Radha and Krishna, in which actress Anna George portrays an erotically charged version of Princess Radha, waiting to make love with Krishna. Divided into sections called “Adoration” and “Transcendence,” the film, which gets its title from a traditional Hindu greeting, is a visual and aural delight, with a beautiful score by Iyer. Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi screens daily at 12:45 and 4:00 in the gallery, which is arranged with two rows of chairs on three sides of a narrow horizontal space; the setup works well for the music, but some of the seats do not offer prime viewing for the film.