Announcing After the Fall, May 1–2 in the Crypt under the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Death of Classical returns to the Crypt under the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City on May 1-2, 2026, for a program entitled After the Fall that pairs chamber arrangements of Missy Mazzoli’s Dark with Excessive Bright with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, exploring the resilience of art in response to destruction.
Missy Mazzoli’s Dark with Excessive Bright, performed here in its arrangement for string quintet with violin soloist, takes its title from a line in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, in which a blind man attempts to describe his vision of God. In a similarly surreal and evocative manner, Mazzoli’s music twists, turns, and transforms, casting and chasing shadows across four centuries of musical expression from the Baroque era to the present day.
Written in the final days of World War II, Metamorphosen was a deeply personal lament from Richard Strauss, as he mourned the destruction of culture that he saw taking place around him. Heard here in its rarely performed string septet arrangement, the work unfolds as a single continuous meditation on grief and remembrance, widely regarded as an elegy for art lost to war.
The performances feature alumni artists from the Lake George Music Festival, widely regarded as one of the country’s most collaborative and artist-driven retreats. The festival has helped foster a generation of adventurous and genre-fluid performers, including members of the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Time For Three, among many others working at the forefront of today’s musical landscape. Performing this program are Barbora Kolarova, solo violin; Gregory Lewis and Giancarlo Latta, violin; Bethany Hargreaves and Jiawei Yan, viola; Sam DeCaprio and Laura Andrade, cello; and Charles Paul, bass.
These performances arrive during a defining year for Mazzoli. In October, her opera Lincoln in the Bardo will receive its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, making her the first woman to have an opera solely commissioned by the company and only the fifth woman in history to have her work presented on the Met stage. Her season also includes the world premieres of two operas, Lincoln in the Bardo at the Metropolitan Opera and The Galloping Cure at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as the New York Philharmonic’s U.S. premiere performances of her Piano Concerto for Leif Ove Andsnes, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. The year also marks the tenth anniversary of Luna Composition Lab, the mentorship program for female, non-binary, and gender non-conforming composers that Mazzoli co-founded with composer Ellen Reid.
The third collaboration between DoC and St. John the Divine, After the Fall follows two previous sold-out performance runs in the Crypt, which critics hailed as "revelatory," "emotional and spiritual," "exquisite," and "audacious." Each evening begins with a pre-concert reception featuring wine, food, and cocktails in the Cathedral’s main space, followed by a walk through the stone quarry and a descent into the Crypt for the performance.
After the Fall takes place May 1 and May 2, 2026, in the Crypt beneath the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Two performances will be presented each evening, with programs beginning at 6:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $100 and include the pre-concert reception.
Tickets are available HERE