Leading up to the Roulette 2026 Gala honoring the Robert Ashley Band alongside Thomas and Kamala Buckner, Roulette presents a screening of Perfect Lives. At the center of this landmark work first completed for broadcast in 1983 is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley, whose continuous song narrates the events of the story, supported by “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s piano inventions and choral commentary by Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem. The opera follows two musicians who have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge, fall in with two locals, and hatch a plan to remove a sizable amount of money from The Bank. If they are caught, it will be a crime—but if they are not, it will be Art.

7:00pm – Introductions from members of the original production
7:30pm – Perfect Lives Screening (runtime 2 hours and 55 min)

Choose the ticket level that feels right for you. All proceeds from the evening support Roulette’s programs and mission to present and preserve extraordinary experimental music, movement, and media—and above all, support artists.

$25 — General Admission
$50 — General Admission + 2 drink tickets
$100 — General Admission + 2 drink tickets + Robert Ashley Perfect Lives Hardcover Book (Published by published by Burning Books in association with Archer Fields Press, 1991)

Food will be available for purchase.

This is a special benefit screening to support Roulette. Member and Patron benefits do not apply—thank you for your support!

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Ashley, Tyranny and Peter Gordon first performed three of the opera’s seven episodes at The Kitchen in January 1978, leading Carlota Schoolman and Mary Griffin to invite Ashley to make the work for television. John Sanborn came on board as Television Director. A year later, two more episodes had been added for performances at DTW. The first presentations of all seven episodes were in the fall of 1980 at the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, followed by the Festival d’Automne in Paris.

After three years of fund-raising and development and continual touring, the Kitchen obtained finishing funds from Great Britain’s Channel Four, and Perfect Lives was completed in the fall of 1983. Since then, the opera’s reputation has grown. Lovely Music made it available on CD and DVD, and there were numerous closed-circuit screenings and two major publications of the opera’s libretto (Burning Books in 1991 and the Dalkey Archive Press in 2011).

While Ashley and his cohort stopped performing the piece live in 1983, at least four performance ensembles (Varispeed, Matmos, Trystero, and Alex Waterman’s Spanish language Vidas Perfectas) created live versions of the opera, arrangements inspired by the Perfect Lives video. Lovely Music commissioned an HD upgrade of Perfect Lives from Dean Winkler, and Lovely’s new Blu-Ray package was released in May 2023.

Created by ROBERT ASHLEY

with

“BLUE” GENE TYRANNY
PETER GORDON
CARLOTA SCHOOLMAN
JOHN SANBORN
JILL KROESEN
DAVID VAN TIEGHEM
JACQUELINE HUMBERT
PAUL SHORR
MARY PERILLO
DEAN WINKLER

Estimated Run Time

4 hrs 50 mins

Act I 12:00

85 mins

Intermission 1:25

30 mins

Act II 1:55

65 mins

Intermission 3:00

30 mins

Act III 3:30

80 mins

Opera Ends 4:50

After years of anticipation, a truly unmissable event arrives as the electrifying Lise Davidsen tackles one of the ultimate roles for dramatic soprano: the Irish princess Isolde in Wagner’s transcendent meditation on love and death. Heroic tenor Stuart Skelton stars opposite Davidsen as the love-drunk Tristan. The momentous occasion also marks the advent of a new, Met-debut staging by Yuval Sharon—hailed by The New York Times as “the most visionary opera director of his generation” and the first American to direct an opera at the famed Wagner festival in Bayreuth—as well as Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first time leading Tristan und Isolde at the Met. Mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova reprises her signature portrayal of Brangäne, alongside bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny, who sings Kurwenal after celebrated Met appearances in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer and Ring cycle. Bass-baritone Stephen Milling performs as King Marke.

2026 marks the centenary of Hungarian composer György Kurtág, whose music is distinguished by precision, clarity, and deep emotional and cultural resonance. In partnership with Bard Conservatory of Music’s annual Kurtág Festival, BPL presents a program featuring Bard faculty, students, and international artists connected to Kurtág.

Arrive early for a 3:30 pre-concert lecture with musicologist Gergely Fazekas, associate professor at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, who will discuss the impact of György Kurtág’s compositions on contemporary music.

Béla Bartók

Falun (Village Scenes), Sz. 78, BB 87a

Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano

Kayo Iwama, piano

György Kurtág / J. S. Bach

Selections from Kurtág Játékok interwoven with movements of Bach Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826

Benjamin Hochman, piano

György Kurtág
Kurtág: Tre pezzi, op. 38

Béla Bartók
Bartók: Sonatina

David Keringer, clarinet

András Szalai, cimbalom

György Kurtág

Szálkák (Splinters) for cimbalom, Op. 6c

J. S. Bach

Largo and Allegro assai from Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005

András Szalai, cimbalom

Béla Bartók

Romanian Folk Dances

András Szalai, cimbalom

Benjamin Hochman, piano

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/programs/first-saturday-april-2026/04-04-2026

Saturday, April 4, 5–10 pm

Ring in National Poetry Month with a global lineup of artists who draw on influences from ancient Egypt to contemporary Brooklyn. Featuring music, readings, art-making, talks, and more, the April edition takes its theme from the many inkwells in our encyclopedic collection, including an ancient example in Unrolling Eternity: The Brooklyn Books of the Dead.

Free; registration is required and includes Museum general admission. Tickets will be released on a rolling basis starting March 13 for Members and March 16 for the public. Sign up for the Brooklyn Museum newsletter to be notified of the next release.

The lineup is subject to change; revisit this page for the latest details. For accessibility accommodations, including ASL interpretation, email access@brooklynmuseum.org.

Livestream: https://ondemand.metopera.org/radio/a7baf155-0df5-5c48-a287-41b89abd0fdd

Depicting the wide web of trauma left in the wake of a school shooting, the late, great Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s final opera is a raw and unflinching cri de coeur in response to the senseless violence of our modern age. Captivating with its eerie, darkly beautiful sound-world and diverse vocal styles, ranging from traditional opera to expressionistic speak-singing to Scandinavian folk music, Innocence, with libretto by prominent Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière, was greeted upon its 2021 premiere by awestruck reviews and hailed as “completely exhilarating” (The New York Times), “a modern masterpiece” (The Telegraph). For its Met premiere—in Simon Stone’s powerfully direct original production—the cast is anchored by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma Jää as a grieving mother and the daughter she lost in the shooting, as well as soprano Jacquelyn Stucker and tenor Miles Mykkanen as a young couple whose wedding, a decade after the tragedy, uncovers buried secrets and reopens old wounds. Maestro Susanna Mälkki, a close friend and collaborator of Saariaho’s, conducts what she calls “one of the most important works of our time.”
Content Advisory: Innocence contains haze effects and depictions of the aftermath of a school shooting. Read synopsis for more detail.
Music by Kaija Saariaho
Finnish libretto by Sofi Oksanen
Multilingual libretto and dramaturgy by Aleksi Barrière

Vicky Chow and  Mivos Quartet join forces to perform Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet in celebration of the composer’s 100th anniversary. Lasting approximately 90 minutes, this monumental work is one of Feldman’s most iconic late compositions, unfolding in an expansive, hushed sound world that invites deep, sustained listening. Piano and String Quartet was commissioned and premiered in 1985 in Los Angeles by Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet, and has since become a touchstone of late 20th-century experimental music.

Vicky Chow piano
Mivos Quartet
Olivia De Prato violin
William Overcash violin
Victor Lowrie viola
Nathan Watts cello

John Adams and Alice Goodman’s unbelievable first opera, Nixon in China, continues to make waves, with critics hailing Paris Opera’s 2023 production for what “might be [its] most stellar cast ever” (OperaWire). Reprising their roles as Pat and Richard Nixon in selections from the opera are “America’s soprano of choice” Renée Fleming (The New York Times), and bass-baritone Thomas Hampson, “one of the best American singers of all time” (BBC Music Magazine). Audiences are then treated to one of the most popular symphonic works of all time: Dvořák’s glorious “New World” Symphony.

Part of: United in Sound America at 250

Performers

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, Music Director and Conductor
Renée Fleming, Soprano
Thomas Hampson, Baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Lisa Wong, Guest Choral Conductor

Program

JOHN ADAMS Three Scenes from Nixon in China

DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"

This program’s four stars of Hungarian music, from the ultra-Romantic Franz Liszt to the ground-breaking György Ligeti, reveal the breadth, color, and infectious energy of their country’s music and folk culture. Closing the performance is Ernő Dohnányi’s first published work, composed around age 17, of which Brahms said that he “could not have done it better” himself.

Franz Liszt -Tristia (transcription of Vallée d’Obermann) for Piano, Violin, and Cello, S. 378c

Béla Bartók - Sonata for Violin, BB 124

György Ligeti - Sonata for Cello

Ernő Dohnányi - Quintet No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 1

Golda Schultz sings Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 — a haunting evocation of childhood memories — plus arias by Stravinsky and Carlisle Floyd. Alongside these, Kwamé Ryan conducts music by two quintessential American iconoclasts: Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question and a new concerto by George Lewis, featuring the piano-and-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire.

Two sets: 8p and 10p.

 Ben Monder - guitar;  Theo Bleckmann - voice

Livestream: https://ondemand.metopera.org/radio/a7baf155-0df5-5c48-a287-41b89abd0fdd

Depicting the wide web of trauma left in the wake of a school shooting, the late, great Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s final opera is a raw and unflinching cri de coeur in response to the senseless violence of our modern age. Captivating with its eerie, darkly beautiful sound-world and diverse vocal styles, ranging from traditional opera to expressionistic speak-singing to Scandinavian folk music, Innocence, with libretto by prominent Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière, was greeted upon its 2021 premiere by awestruck reviews and hailed as “completely exhilarating” (The New York Times), “a modern masterpiece” (The Telegraph). For its Met premiere—in Simon Stone’s powerfully direct original production—the cast is anchored by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma Jää as a grieving mother and the daughter she lost in the shooting, as well as soprano Jacquelyn Stucker and tenor Miles Mykkanen as a young couple whose wedding, a decade after the tragedy, uncovers buried secrets and reopens old wounds. Maestro Susanna Mälkki, a close friend and collaborator of Saariaho’s, conducts what she calls “one of the most important works of our time.”
Content Advisory: Innocence contains haze effects and depictions of the aftermath of a school shooting. Read synopsis for more detail.
Music by Kaija Saariaho
Finnish libretto by Sofi Oksanen
Multilingual libretto and dramaturgy by Aleksi Barrière

Danish String Quartet

- Frederik Øland, Violin
- Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Violin
- Asbjørn Nørgaard, Viola
- Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, Cello
Danish National Girls' Choir
Charlotte Rowan, Conductor

The GRAMMY-nominated Danish String Quartet (DSQ), known for their innovative programming and their affinity for both European classical works and the traditional folk tunes of their homeland, return to the U.S. this spring for a coast-to-coast tour with the Danish National Girls’ Choir, part of the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The DR Pigekoret (as they are known in Danish) is one of Denmark’s most revered musical institutions and considered one of the world’s best girls’ choirs. The two award-winning ensembles are longtime collaborators, having performed together in the U.S. and Europe; this tour represents their highest-profile collaboration to date and their first bicoastal U.S. tour. 

The tour features both the U.S. and New York Premieres of in wildness by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, as well as a transcendent blend of other contemporary works, reimagined classics, and traditional Nordic folk songs. 

On paper, a girls’ choir and a string quartet may seem refined, even traditional. But we have never been interested in refinement for its own sake. We have pursued a tangible and raw power, insisting on presenting the fragile and uncompromising side by side - as well as the intimate and the fierce. This concert has evolved from this shared curiosity, harnessing the power of a string quartet and a girls’ choir - and the collective force that emerges when multiple voices meet - creating movement and transformation.

Program

CAROLINE SHAW Allemande from Partita for 8 Voices

LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI "Vorüber, ach, vorüber!" from Pige (Girl)

SCHUBERT Theme from Andante con moto from String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810, "Death and the Maiden"

ANNA THORVALDSDOTTIR "Þann heilaga kross" ("On the holy cross") (arr. Thomas Bryla)

TRAD. "Kisti du kom" ("Kisti you came") (arr. Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen)

TRAD. "Dronning Dagmars død" ("The Death of Queen Dagmar") (arr. Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen)

RUNE TONSGAARD SØRENSEN "Once a Shoemaker" (NY Premiere; arr. for girls' choir and string quartet)

ASTRID SONNE "How Far"

CAROLINE SHAW "And So" from Is A Rose (arr. Charlotte Rowan)

O'CAROLAN "Captain O'Kane" (arr. Danish String Quartet)

NIELSEN "Tit er jeg glad og et brudestykke" ("Oft I am glad, and a wedding tune") (arr. Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen)

DAVID LANG in wildness (NY Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)

Rough Trade and Rockefeller Center are excited to present the fifth-annual iNDIEPLAZA festival on Record Store Day, an all day celebration at 30 Rockefeller Plaza on Saturday, April 18th.

Free and open to the public, iNDIEPLAZA will once again feature a curated lineup of exciting artists throughout the day. Featured food and beverage vendors include Ace's Pizza, FIELDTRIP, Lobel's, Madras Dosa Co., Lil Sweet Treat and more.

This year's lineup:
SUPERCHUNK
INCENDIARY
HOTLINE TNT
MOMMA (DUO)
WINTER
FRIKO
NUOVO TESTAMENTO
WEIRD NIGHTMARE
DJ Sets by Avalon Emerson, Soul In The Horn, Saint Virgil

Also: Live Broadcast on Radio

Depicting the wide web of trauma left in the wake of a school shooting, the late, great Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s final opera is a raw and unflinching cri de coeur in response to the senseless violence of our modern age. Captivating with its eerie, darkly beautiful sound-world and diverse vocal styles, ranging from traditional opera to expressionistic speak-singing to Scandinavian folk music, Innocence, with libretto by prominent Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière, was greeted upon its 2021 premiere by awestruck reviews and hailed as “completely exhilarating” (The New York Times), “a modern masterpiece” (The Telegraph). For its Met premiere—in Simon Stone’s powerfully direct original production—the cast is anchored by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma Jää as a grieving mother and the daughter she lost in the shooting, as well as soprano Jacquelyn Stucker and tenor Miles Mykkanen as a young couple whose wedding, a decade after the tragedy, uncovers buried secrets and reopens old wounds. Maestro Susanna Mälkki, a close friend and collaborator of Saariaho’s, conducts what she calls “one of the most important works of our time.”

Free live audio stream: https://ondemand.metopera.org/radio/a7baf155-0df5-5c48-a287-41b89abd0fdd

Following her acclaimed 2024 company debut in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, soprano Asmik Grigorian returns to the Met as Tatiana, the lovestruck young heroine in this ardent operatic adaptation of Pushkin. Baritone Iurii Samoilov makes his company role debut as the urbane Onegin, who realizes his affection for her all too late. The Met’s evocative production, directed by Tony Award–nominee Deborah Warner, “offers a beautifully detailed reading of … Tchaikovsky’s lyrical romance” (The Telegraph).