The Menil Collection The Menil Collection

Presented in partnership with DACAMERA and conceived by pianist Sarah Rothenberg, The Departing Landscape features her performance of Morton Feldman’s last piano piece, Palais de Mari, 1986, filmed in the Menil Collection’s ancient art gallery.

Rothenberg performs Feldman’s work surrounded by treasures dating back to 2800 B.C.E. — talismans of a distant past that inspired the composer, and which have survived to today. Immediately following the performance, join Sarah Rothenberg and the Menil Collection’s Curator of Collections Paul Davis and Director of Publications Joseph Newland in a live zoom discussion.

DACAMERA Artistic Director and pianist Sarah Rothenberg, said: “I see the film as memorializing both this current moment and the idea of transitory time. The film has an elegiac mood, conceived and created during this unprecedented COVID pandemic. I think art is what can connect us during this time of isolation, it can reveal our common experience. Feldman’s music speaks to us in this moment of suspended time. It hovers between the ancient relics, our fragile present, and the unknowns that lie ahead. It takes us somewhere larger than ourselves.”

Visit DACAMERA’s website to register. Before the event, you will receive an email with the link to watch. Like all Menil programs, this performance is free and open to everyone.

DACAMERA Artistic Director Sarah Rothenberg has been creating interdisciplinary programs connecting music, art and literature throughout her career as a pianist. Her 2009 production, The Blue Rider in Performance, which premiered to sold out houses at Columbia University’s Miller Theater in partnership with the Guggenheim Museum’s Kandinsky retrospective, was described by The Wall Street Journal as “altogether stunning.” She has created and performed musical programs on such artists as Pablo Picasso, Eugene Delacroix, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, Kazimir Malevich; and her lectures and commentary have been presented by MoMA, The Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, in addition to her close collaborations with the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel.