Superstar harpist Bridget Kibbey and the Calidore String Quartet conjure a chilling musical rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre tale The Masque of the Red Death, narrated by Mervon Mehta. Experience the horror and suspense of Poe’s classic story along with works by Bach, Fauré, and more.

Called the "Yo-Yo Ma of the harp" (Vogue), Bridget Kibbey “makes it seems as though the instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the energetic figures and gorgeous colors she was getting from it” (The New York Times). With the harp as her muse, Kibbey is in demand for her virtuosic and soulful performances - excavating centuries of music as a soloist and alongside today’s top performing artists - from the French Belle Époque to the Baroque, to Persian Modes, to Latin jazz traditions, and beyond.

The New York City-based Calidore String Quartet are renowned for their “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” (The New York Times). The Calidore is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast repertory, from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw.

Executive Director of Performing Arts for The Royal Conservatory, Mervon Mehta’s career in the arts has seen him on both sides of the curtain. A student of the late Sanford Meisner, Mehta has performed as an actor in over 100 theatrical productions, including residencies at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, and two seasons at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He has performed as a narrator of orchestral works in Munich, Monte Carlo, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Chicago, Houston, Budapest, and Lisbon; and at the Festival de Radio France and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, under the batons of Christoph Eschenbach, Lawrence Foster, and Zubin Mehta.

Program:

Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (trans. Kibbey) 

Claude Debussy: Prélude from Suite Bergamasque, L. 75i

Gabriel Fauré: Une châtelaine en sa tour, op. 110

Jessie Montgomery: Strum

Sebastian Currier: Ongoingness, for harp quintet (world premiere)                           

Isaac Albéniz: Mallorca (trans. Kibbey)                                                                                   

Isaac Albéniz: Asturias-Leyenda (trans. Kibbey)                                                                  

Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death, for narrator                 

André Caplet: The Masque of the Red Death, for harp quintet

This concert is generously supported by the Royal Conservatory’s Board of Directors in celebration of Mervon Mehta’s first performance in Koerner Hall and his many years of exemplary leadership.

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