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First Person: Seeing America                                                          

Ensemble Galilei, Photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
with actors Bill Pullman, Rob Nagle, Lily Knight, and with NPR host Neal Conan

October 2012 tour with actor Bill Pullman                     2012-2013 tours with actor Rob Nagle
                                                                          
From its inception in 1990, Ensemble Galilei has redefined the boundaries of chamber music, created new work, seized opportunities for collaborative relationships and consistently pushed the envelope in a series of innovative projects that explore combinations of images, words, and music.

After taking audiences into space through the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope (A Universe of Dreams) and on journeys of exploration and discovery with pictures from the National Geographic Image Collection (First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World), Ensemble Galilei now looks to home. With images by some of America’s finest photographers, and the poetry and prose of some of America’s greatest writers, the group’s ambitious new project is First Person: Seeing America.

Begin with the strength, diversity and depth of the photography collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art: photographs by Walker Evans, Edward Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Weegee and Thomas Eakins. Take those images and accompany them with the words of Langston Hughes, Carson McCullers, Damon Runyan, John Muir, Frederick Douglass, and others. The soundtrack is the evocative music of Ensemble Galilei – Bach, traditional music from Scotland and Ireland, and new compositions featuring fiddles, harp, viola da gamba, percussion, banjo, whistles and oboe.

Transcendent and soulful music winds around the text as high-resolution images are projected on a large screen in the center of the stage. Actor Bill Pullman and actress Lily Knight brilliantly bring people, events and places to life. During October 2012, screen and stage actor Bill Pullman will tour the show with Ensemble Galilei and Lily Knight.

What people! The haunted faces of rural Americans as they struggle to survive the Dust Bowl, indelible portraits of Native Americans. The events that shaped a nation - the Civil War, the Great Depression, the immigrant experience. And what places – from the sidewalks of New York to the majesty of Yosemite. Great photographers captured it all – hardship, war and despair, and the gritty determination of extraordinary people in a magnificent land. This is what  these extraordinary photographers saw – First Person: Seeing America.

, whose career includes the blockbuster movies, Independence Day and While You Were Sleeping, numerous independent films, the current tv hit Torchwood: Miracle Day and critically acclaimed work on Broadway, will join actress Lily Knight and Ensemble Galilei for the October 2012 tour of First Person: Seeing America. 

: Award-winning journalist Neal Conan is the host of Talk of the Nation, the national news-talk call-in show from NPR News, which reaches nearly 3 million listeners a week on more than 280 NPR member stations. A familiar voice on NPR for the past quarter century, Conan has served as NPR's Bureau Chief in both New York and London has served as executive producer of NPR's flagship evening newsmagazine, All Things Considered. He has toured with Ensemble Galilei giving the spoken word in collaborative programs since 2003.

A Universe of Dreams is music, poetry and stories with actress Lily Knight, or NPR's Andrea Seabrook and features projected images from the Hubble Space Telescope. With evocative music inspired by the Hubble images, the performers present the perfect backdrop for works by some of the finest poets in America. Audiences have been swept away by this extraordinary combination of the spoken word and what has been described by critics as "....music that speaks to the heart in ways that transcend mere language." Text from Stanley Kunitz, Jim Harrison, William Shakespeare, and a re-telling of a Navajo Creation Myth are all performed with images from the Hubble that have transformed our understanding of the universe.

"At times, the pairing of poetry and galactic photos was nearly overwhelming, as when a swirling cosmic cloud served as backdrop to Stanley Kunitz's "The Science of the Night": "My touch is on you, who are light-years gone/We are not souls but systems, and we move/In clouds of our unknowing/like great nebulae."

In its best moments, "A Universe of Dreams" made the problems of people -- indeed, our entire planet -- seem incomprehensibly insignificant and the mysteries of the universe unfathomably vast."
South Bend Tribune

Available in December as a winter solstice/holiday event. A Winter's Night features Ensemble Galilei with NPR's Neal Conan as host, narrator and reader. Including text by Ogden Nash, May Sarton, Jim Harrison and others, this seasonal offering presents humorous and heartfelt stories and poems set with music. This concert-length performance is perfect for the holiday season. Ensemble Galilei performs Irish, Scottish, Early and original music on a variety of ancient and modern instruments, including the Celtic harp, viola da gamba, fiddle, recorders, whistles and percussion.


 

Photo at top, right: Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975), Alabama Tenant Farmer, 1936. Gelatin silver print, 23.6 x 18.7 cm (9 5/16 x 7 3/8 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gift, 2000 (2000.329) © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.