A New Artwork by Wendy Red Star and the 2023 Concert Season
August 17, 2023
An Exhibition on the National Mall and a New Artwork Coming to Tippet Rise
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together, a powerful new exhibition co-curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab opens tomorrow, August 18, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Six leading contemporary artists were commissioned to create prototype monuments that respond to a central question: What stories remain untold on the National Mall?
We are honored to have recently acquired one of these works, The Soil You See…, by the artist Wendy Red Star. Born in Billings, Montana and raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation, Wendy Red Star’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Museum of Art, among others. Wendy Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Soil You See… is a monumental fingerprint with, curling inside its whorls, the names of the Apsáalooke nation chiefs who signed treaties with their thumbprint giving their land to the U.S. government. The glass thumbprint will be imprinted on the ground by the sun, and the ground is the core of the story. At the National Mall and as part of Pulling Together, the work is in dialogue with the nearby 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial. At Tippet Rise, which sits within the traditional sacred land of the Apsáalooke and of other Indigenous peoples, The Soil You See… will be in significant dialogue with the land itself.
Red Star’s work for Pulling Together was commissioned by Monument Lab and is part of the Trust for the National Mall’s initiative, Beyond Granite. The exhibition is inspired by the 1939 Easter Sunday performance by the legendary Black opera singer Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 75,000 people attended the concert. Anderson had been barred from Constitution Hall in the Capital.
You will be able to see this missing addition to the American story in Washington, D.C. until September 18, and at Tippet Rise beginning in Summer 2024.
The Olivier Music Barn is ready for the 2023 concert season. Photo by Kevin Kinzley.
2023 Concert Season
Our 2023 concert season also kicks off tomorrow evening with a piano recital by Sir Stephen Hough, his third performance at Tippet Rise. We are delighted to welcome back pianists Yulianna Avdeeva, Jenny Chen, Richard Goode, and Pedja Mužijević; cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir; flutist Brandon Patrick George; and Sandbox Percussion over the next five weeks.
Artists making their Tippet Rise debut include pianists Anna Geniushene and Clayton Stephenson; violinists Rebecca Anderson, Gidon Kremer, and Madara Pētersone; guitarist JIJI; clarinetist Mark Dover; Brentano String Quartet, Dior Quartet, Imani Winds, Merz Trio, and The Westerlies.
This season features six world premieres as part of the Tippet Rise commissions series, including four works by Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov. For our new Wander series, Sandbox Percussion performs the world premieres of holy sonnet and Proverb, commissioned respectively from composers Amy Beth Kristen and Douglas J. Cuomo in celebration of Mark di Suvero’s 90th birthday and in response to the artist’s sculptures at Tippet Rise. We cannot wait for audiences to experience music in this new format out on the land.
Tickets for this season’s performances were available through a randomized drawing. Any tickets returned to the box office are available on a first come, first served basis, and will be placed for sale on our website.
Sir Stephen Hough plays in the Olivier Music Barn at Tippet Rise. Photo by Erik Petersen.
A Tippet Rise Co-Commission Premiering in Maine
August 18 seems to be an auspicious day for Tippet Rise! In addition to the openings of our concert season in Montana and Beyond Granite in Washington, D.C., tomorrow at Bay Chamber Concerts, Maine, a work co-commissioned by Tippet Rise and Palaver Strings will have its world premiere. Protest Songs (2023) was written by Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen. She created a song cycle to be the centerpiece of the program called A Change is Gonna Come: Songs of Protest for tenor Nicholas Phan and Palaver Strings. Spanning genres, eras, and movements, this program provokes conversation, confronts the past and present, and celebrates the act of protest as a precious right.
We are honored for Tippet Rise to connect with so many incredible musicians, poets, artists, and cultural organizations across the country.