Commissions by Whitney Live in collaboration with French Institute Alliance Française

Featuring composers Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, Tender Forever, and Du Yun

In conjunction with Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer, Whitney Live, the Museum’s performance program, initiated the Alice Guy Blaché Film Score Project in partnership with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF). Four vanguard women composers—duYun (Du Yun), Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, and Tender Forever (Mélanie Valera)—were commissioned to create scores for suites of Guy Blaché’s silent films. These scores were performed as live interactions with the films themselves on September 29 as part of the FIAF’s 2009 Crossing the Line festival. The scores were also recorded in a studio so that they could be presented in accompaniment with film screenings during the run of the exhibition at the Whitney. Read More 

Colin Gee returns to the Whitney as the founding Whitney Live artist-in-residence in an unprecedented performance-based residency project scheduled to unfold over the course of the next year. Read more 

The Whitney’s vibrant, long-standing history of performing arts can be traced to museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. She played a critical role in the experimental music circles of the 1920s, actively supporting such musical pioneers as Edgard Varèse, Carl Ruggles, and Carlos Salzedo, and their International Composers’ Guild. Her influence could still be felt when the Whitney first formally began presenting music in its galleries in the 1960s. Far from viewing these events as a departure from its fields of activity in the visual arts, the Museum embraced performance in its many iterations—including music, dance, theatre, multimedia, and other cross-genre work—as an integral part of its mandate to nurture and support American artists, and to commission and present new work. This pioneering approach was evident in the Museum’s initial series, which showcased experimental jazz composers and included performances by innovators such as Gil Evans, Jimmy Giuffre, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Read more