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Arts

SOF Digital Discussion: Media and the Arts: The Metropolitan Opera in the Digital Space

Join us for a discussion featuring General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Peter Gelb in conversation with world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader and composer, and a leading advocate of American culture Wynton Marsalis.

*If you are not currently a member of the Society of Fellows, and are interested in joining, please contact the SOF team at sof@aspeninstitute.org or 970-544-7980.

Presenters:

Since becoming the 16th general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, Peter Gelb has launched a number of initiatives to revitalize opera and connect it to a wider audience. Under his leadership the Met has recruited many of the world’s greatest theater, film, and opera directors, increased the number of new productions, and launched The Met: Live in HD, the award-winning series of live performance transmissions to movie theaters, which is seen in more than 70 countries. Other Met initiatives under Gelb include a commissioning program for new operas, free outdoor transmissions and recitals, a rush tickets program, a 24-hour Met radio channel on SiriusXM, and the online subscription streaming service Met Opera on Demand.

Gelb began his career at 17 as an office boy for the impresario Sol Hurok. He became an assistant manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was Vladimir Horowitz’s manager during the pianist’s career revival in the 1980s. Gelb served as President of CAMI Video until 1992 and was President of the Sony Classical record label before coming to the Met. His honors include multiple Emmy, Grammy, and Peabody Awards, the Sanford Prize from the Yale School of Music, and France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.

Wynton Marsalis is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader and composer, and a leading advocate of American culture. He presently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School. Marsalis made his recording debut in 1982 and has since recorded more than 80 jazz and classical recordings, which have won nine GRAMMY® awards and sold over 7 million copies worldwide. In 1997, Wynton became the first jazz artist to be awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields.

Marsalis has rekindled widespread interest in jazz throughout the world and inspired a renaissance that has attracted a new generation of talent to jazz. He is the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz. By creating and performing an expansive range of brilliant new music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras (including a violin concerto and four symphonies), tap dance to ballet, Wynton has expanded the vocabulary for jazz and classical music and has created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

Event information
Date
Thu Aug 6, 2020
3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Location
Digital Discussion