Paris at Midnight

Paris at Midnight: Jazz and Surrealism in the 1920s

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Guest Curator Harry Cooper, senior curator of modern art at the National Gallery of Art

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Paris in the 1920s was a place of great artistic conflict and excitement. While some like Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso embraced Neo-Classicism and a "return to order" in the aftermath of the Great War, others launched bold new experiments. Under the leadership of André Breton, Surrealism sought to shock the bourgeoisie, while a passion for African and African American art and culture, from jazz to art to dance, galvanized the city, personified above all by Josephine Baker. Join PCE for a screening of the classic Surrealist film Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924) with the original score by Erik Satie performed live. The program also includes film footage of Baker dancing and a tribute to jazz great Sidney Bechet. It culminates with Maurice Ravel's partly-jazz-inspired Piano Concerto in G featuring soloist Drew Petersen, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 American Pianists Award. Presented in collaboration with Harry Cooper, senior curator of modern art at the National Gallery of Art.

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“That is what is so astonishing about Drew...that he feels the music, he can make it come alive again, make you touched by it... That's what is unusual. That's what I like about him. He is not just a child prodigy but is a brilliant musician." 
— Lukas Foss, composer, conductor, pianist