The Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents Rothko Chapel by the American composer Morton Feldman, one of the most intense and conceptually significant works of the music of the second half of the twentieth century. Created in collaboration with the Fondazione Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Academy, the concert is organized on the occasion of the exhibition Rothko a Firenze, open at Palazzo Strozzi from March 14 to August 23, 2026.

Rothko Chapel

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre

We will present two of the most prominent composers of the 20th-century in New York, two friends – John Cage (1912–1992) and Morton Feldman (1926–1987). Their music will be discussed by their friend Petr Kotík at an extra special concert. Kotík will lead an expert discussion about their works as a long-time collaborator of both composers, in particular of John Cage (continuous collaboration in the years 1964–1992).

On 18 December 1950, John Cage wrote in a letter to Pierre Boulez: “Feldman’s music is extremely beautiful now. It changes with each piece, I find him my closest friend now among the composers here.”

Special Concert. Cage, Feldman, Kotík: A New Starting Point

Švanda Theatre, Smíchov

Could this be what eternity sounds like? A performance of Piano and String Quartet, a late work by the American composer Morton Feldman (1926–87), lasts some 80 minutes — yet in all that time we hear little more than delicate, endlessly resonating piano arpeggios and sustained string chords. This crystalline study in pianissimo seems to have no beginning and no end, no sense of direction — there is only surrender to the present moment of sound. Listening to it is a paradoxical experience: in its radical stillness, Feldman’s slow-motion music exerts a powerful pull. “The first 30 minutes feel a little bit slow because the piece is made of these surreal, beautiful, slow moving — or almost not moving — harmonies,” Víkingur remarks. “It’s just this way of being. The next 30 minutes go by so much faster. And the last 30 minutes, believe it or not, go by in a flash.” He was especially eager to return to this “one-of-a-kind” piece, which he last performed a decade ago. The setting will add to the magic, with the audience seated onstage, close to the five performers.

EPSG:4326

Danish String Quartet | Víkingur Ólafsson

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Trio di Parma - 35° Festival Milano Musica

Teatro alla Scala

DACAMERA celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of influential American composer Morton Feldman, whose music uniquely suspends time. Feldman broke new ground in musical expression in the 1970’s with his experimental works that strove for the stillness of paintings.

Morton Feldman at 100: “Schubert Leaving Me”

The Menil Collection

From first breath to final memories. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, composed to celebrate the birth of his son, glows with intimate joy and new life while a new piece by Laura Cetilia will see its first performance. Morton Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety is a hushed farewell to his dear piano teacher. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, restless and unresolved, stands outside time—at once youthful and haunted.

From the Cradle

Ithaca College

In its Carte Blanche series , the MUK regularly invites contemporary composers to develop a concert program together with students. 

Cartes blanche to Pierluigi Billone

Musikverein Wien

A program distinguished by its variety opens with Balanchine’s Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée,’ choreographed to a Stravinsky symphonic suite. Kyle Abraham’s When We Fell was originally filmed and streamed during the pandemic, and here makes its live debut. Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Chiaroscuro, a ballet for six dancers from 1994, evokes the artistic term of its title through the interaction of light and shadow as well as diverging tempos, while Alexei Ratmansky’s Odesa features three couples, their interplay infused with hints of drama, and a corps de ballet, and is set to incidental music from the Russian film Sketches to Sunset that alternates between the ruminative and the rambunctious.

Eclectic NYCB

Lincoln Center

Tyshawn Sorey’s major new piano work receives its world premiere. Tyshawn Sorey and Sarah Rothenberg’s deep musical relationship grew out of their work together on the DACAMERA-Rothko Chapel commission of Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), and it was during their performances at New York’s Park Avenue Armory that Sorey first conceived of this piece. The intensity and hyper-sensitivity of Sorey’s music corresponds to Rothenberg’s pianism, and this expansive new solo work probes emotional depths and upends our sense of time.

Monday Evening Concerts: Transforming Time

Colburn School

Colburn’s Tap, Modern Dance, Ballet, and Dance Academy students will dazzle in their December performance featuring new choreography and beloved masterworks. This year’s program includes choreography by Balanchine, Benjamin Millepied, Bella Lewitzky, and Colburn faculty members, with compositions by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Hampton Hawes, and more. The performance also includes live percussion played by Colburn accompanist and Grammy winner TJ Troy.

Colburn Winter Dance Celebration

The Academy Manson Ensemble and London Sinfonietta’s players perform SIDE-BY-SIDE at the Southbank Centre. Written shortly before Morton Feldman’s death, For Samuel Beckett is a meditatively shifting work, in which tiny differences between endless rhythmic and harmonic permutations suspend space and time. Feldman’s experiments with scale and entropy led him to an obsession with quietly powerful music: this evocative and mysterious work seems to appear from nowhere and float on elsewhere after its end.

Manson Ensemble Side-by-side With London Sinfonietta

Southbank Centre

Pianist and composer Conrad Tao made his SPCO debut in a program built around Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s monumental Piano Concerto No. 24. A Renaissance madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo, a sunny keyboard concerto by C.P.E. Bach, and a cryptic work for viola and piano by Morton Feldman were like a twisting labyrinth of darkness and light that anticipated the harmonic instability and searching quality of Mozart’s concerto. Ruth Crawford-Seeger’s Music for Small Orchestra framed this journey with a slow, pensive descent into the dark maze and a roguish finale that climbs towards a window of light.

Conrad Tao Plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24

Ted Mann Concert Hall

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

It is always a good day when Jon Deak shows up on your doorstep. This concert marks his triumphant return (indeed, his third visit!) to Newburyport and the first appearance at NCMF of his friend and collaborator, legendary Metropolitan opera soprano Lucy Shelton. The concert begins with Lucy performing Cathy Berberian’s tour-de-force for solo soprano with a score written not in musical notation but as a cartoon (the score will be projected so the audience can follow along). Also featured on the program is Haydn’s B Minor quartet. Papa Haydn was famous for his sunny disposition but this is an unusually dark and enigmatic work. As long as we are flipping traditional roles, Shostakovich, known a bit as the king of despair, has, with his first quartet in C Major, a work that is warm and even sunny at times.

Return of Jon Deak

Immaculate Conception Church, Newburyport

Known for bold, fearless programming, GBSR Duo is fast emerging as the leading interpreter of Morton Feldman’s music. Performances in London at the King’s Place, Barbican and Southbank Centre have received high praise from The Guardian: “the intense concentration of these performers and the delicately immersive sound world they created were utterly unforgettable”. Feldman’s rarely performed ‘Dance Suite’ features alongside a monumental new commission by Bryn Harrison, a leading British composer whose music has been described as “utterly compelling” (The Guardian).

Sounds of Now: Feldman and Harrison

Sheffield Theatres

Drift through a world where time softens and memory shifts in an intimate evening of Feldman’s hypnotic soundscapes that blur the line between what we hear and what we think we remember.

Morton Feldman: Unsettled Memory

LSO St Luke's

At John Gilhooly’s invitation, London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF) returns to Wigmore Hall with Apartment House in one of the holy grails of chamber music: Morton Feldman’s five-and-a-half-hour String Quartet No. 2. This monumental work was described by Feldman’s contemporary Christian Wolff as ‘an aggressive provocation without an aggressive sound; on the contrary, it is hauntingly beautiful.’ Its single-movement structure is a slow, watchful odyssey through a vast landscape, and this performance will surely be one of the highlights of the centenary celebrations for a towering American experimental composer.

Apartment House

Wigmore Hall

Pavel Kolesnikov is known for thoughtful, carefully shaped programmes that move between early and contemporary music, often revealing unexpected connections. His playing combines clarity with a finely controlled touch, drawing close attention to sound and detail.

Morton Feldman

Events

Upcoming events

Aug 13, 2026

Return of Jon Deak · Newburyport Chamber Music Festival

Sep 5, 2026

Sounds of Now: Feldman and Harrison · Sheffield Theatres

Sep 19, 2026

Morton Feldman: Unsettled Memory · Barbican Centre

Dec 22, 2026

Apartment House · Wigmore Hall

Jan 29, 2027

Pavel Kolesnikov: Feldman's Triadic Memories · Southbank Centre

Past events

Jun 13, 2026

Rothko Chapel · Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Jun 4, 2026

Special Concert. Cage, Feldman, Kotík: A New Starting Point · Prague Philharmonia

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