Paul Simon, the Beastie Boys, the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart…and now Steamboat: See Sacred Dance & Sacred Music at Strings

“Remarkable…the music and dance invoke sacred ecstasy.” – The New York Times on the Drepung Loseling monks’ performance

Sacred Dance & Sacred Music at Strings Music Festival on Tuesday, Aug. 17

The internationally acclaimed multiphonic singers of Tibet’s Drepung Loseling Monastery, who have performed to sellout audiences in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, will perform a one-night show at Strings Music Festival at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 17, as a highlight of their week-long residency creating a Mandala Sand Painting at the Bud Werner Memorial Library.

Endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this live performance is intended to contribute to world peace and healing, generate a greater awareness of the endangered Tibetan civilization and raise support for the Tibetan refugee community in India. The Drepung Loseling monks are particularly renowned for this unique singing, and rich brocade costumes and masked dances add to the exotic splendor. The hour-long show features multiphonic singing, wherein the monks simultaneously intone three notes of a chord, accompanied by traditional instruments such as 10-foot long dung-chen horns, drums, bells, cymbals and gyaling trumpets.

Past collaborations with the Drepung Loseling monks have featured a wide variety of contemporary musicians, including Paul Simon, Philip Glass, Eddie Brickell, Natalie Merchant, Patti Smith, the Beastie Boys, and the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart. Two of the monks’ recordings hit the Top 10 on the New Age charts, and their most recent recording, Compassion, pairs them with the Abbey of Gethsemani Schola in an encounter of Gregorian chant with Tibetan multiphonic singing.

Their music was also featured on the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack for Seven Years in Tibet starring Brad Pitt and they performed with Philip Glass in the live presentation of his award-winning score to the Martin Scorsese film Kundun. The monks have twice been featured artists at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and in July 2003 they represented Tibet in the Cultural Olympiad of Greece, a pre-Olympic Games celebration.

Reserved seating tickets cost $28 for adults and $14 for juniors, and are available at Strings Music Festival (970-879-5056 x105, www.stringsmusicfestival.com or the box office).

~ by steamboatlibrary on August 11, 2010.