The American Symphony Orchestra opens its season with New York Avant-Garde, at Carnegie Hall on October 3, 2013. In partnership with the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution (opening on October 11), Leon Botstein and the ASO celebrate the centennial year by recreating the fall-out in music of the legendary 1913 Armory Show.
Considered as a turning point in the history of American art by introducing the European avant-garde to America, the 1913 show set off a shock wave in New York’s music scene as it did in the visual arts.But its full impact wasn’t heard in American music until the early 1920s, and it is that period, which spawned the first pioneers of thecountry’s own musical modernism, that the ASO will recreate at Carnegie Hall. A fascinating question will also no doubt be answered on October 3 – does this music still have the power to scandalize?