Usually, it’s the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day that find Lincoln Center’s always bustling campus—crowded with visitors from around the world attending world-class music, theatre, and dance events—becoming even more festive by hosting dozens of delightful holiday performances.
And this year, the season gets off to an early start—the Big Apple Circus’ Hometown Playground touches down November 8 under the big tent in Damrosch Park, where variety acts from around the world, a company of local dancers, live musicians, and even rescued poodles from shelters across America (known as Abuhadba Poodles) will reside until January 5.
Much-loved perennials on the Lincoln Center campus include the Metropolitan Opera’s annual presentation of the abridged, English-language version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which returns in Julie Taymor’s sumptuous and lionized production (December 12–January 4). The opera’s 17 performances will be conducted alternately by Juilliard School alum Nimrod David Pfeffer and J. David Jackson, while another Juilliard alum, Will Liverman, will be featured as the opera’s hero, Papageno.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the Christmas season without New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, which has been part of the company’s repertoire for more than seven decades. Tchaikovsky’s marvelous music blends with Balanchine’s wondrous staging for an all-ages delight at the David H. Koch Theater from November 29 to January 5. City Ballet’s dazzling production features its entire roster of more than 150 dancers and musicians with alternating casts that include more than 100 children from Lincoln Center’s own School of American Ballet—there’s even an onstage snowstorm!
The home of the New York Philharmonic, David Geffen Hall hosts the usual enticing array of holiday programming. As always, there’s Handel’s glorious Messiah, Presented by Gary W. Parr (December 11–14). It’s led this year by Baroque specialist Ton Koopman; the vocal soloists will be soprano Maya Kherani, countertenor Maarten Engeltjes, tenor Kieran White, and bass-baritone Klaus Mertens; and the chorus Musica Sacra, under director Kent Tritle, will raise the roof. Also returning to Geffen Hall is another presentation in the Phil’s hugely popular The Art of the Score series: this time it’s the 2003 classic movie Elf, starring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, and Bob Newhart. Conductor Justin Freer leads the orchestra in John Debney’s score as the film is shown onscreen (December 19-22).
New this year at the Philharmonic is Sounds of the Season, two matinee concerts (December 14 and 15) in which the orchestra’s musicians will be led by American conductor and arranger Jeff Tyzik in a veritable feast for the ears that runs the gamut from beloved standards to enticing samplings from other holiday traditions.
Now in its 35th year, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual Big Band Holidays (Rose Theater, December 18-22) features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis putting the swing into the yuletide’s most memorable music, along with Juilliard alums Ekep Nkwelle and Robbie Lee as guest vocalists.
At Alice Tully Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center hosts its annual Baroque Festival, which opens with a concert of J.S. Bach concertos (December 6). This is followed by Baroque Organ (December 8 and 10), in which organist Paolo Bordignon and the hall’s powerful 4,200-pipe organ take center stage in music by Baroque masters including Bach, Handel, and Telemann. Then there’s Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos (December 13, 15, and 17), which are performed by 20 of the best chamber musicians around.
Rounding out this year’s seasonal programming is the New York premiere of poor hymnal, the latest work by composer David Lang, one of the masterminds of the Bang on a Can collective. Written for the award-winning chamber choir The Crossing and led by conductor Donald Nally, poor hymnal hearkens back to Lang’s earlier seasonal work, the Pulitzer prize-winning the little match girl passion (Alice Tully Hall, December 21).
