"Tan Dun's music sculpts sound and transforms everything into a riveting experience that is hard to define but very easy to appreciate."
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
BAM and Brooklyn Philharmonic Present
THE GATE
- COMPOSED AND CONCEIVED BY TAN DUN
- BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC
- CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL CHRISTIE
DEC 5, 7 & 8 AT 7:30PM
BAM HOWARD GILMAN OPERA HOUSE
RUNNING TIME: 65MIN
TICKETS : $20, 45, 60
Tan Dun, composer of The First Emperor (The Metropolitan Opera) and the Academy Award-winning film score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, returns to BAM with The Gate—a riveting and poetic orchestral-theater work featuring live video, solo vocalists, puppetry, percussionist David Cossin, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, all under the baton of Brooklyn Philharmonic Music Director Michael Christie.
A transformative journey through the sacrifices made for true love, The Gate tells of the deaths and ultimate resurrections of three tragic heroines: Yu-Ji of Farewell My Concubine, Shakespeare's Juliet, and Koharu from The Love Suicides at Amijima Chikamatsu (brought to life by a master puppeteer). Each woman pleads her case for rebirth at the Gate of Judgment, while the conductor, orchestra, and even the audience take on the role of judge, creating an arresting amalgam of epochs, cultures, languages, and literature. Tan Dun's Water Music, a percussive work consisting solely of rhythms and melodies made with water, serves as a prelude to The Gate.
Lighting design by Matt Frey
Mulit-media design and direction by Michael Newman
Photo by Parnassus Productions