The major shift of emphasis that the Metropolitan Museum made in its concert series this season, the first programmed entirely by Limor Tomer, as general manager of concerts and lectures, will carry at least through another season and seemingly far into the future, Ms. Tomer announced on Tuesday. She has largely abandoned the traditional series of classical recitals and chamber concerts in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in favor of nontraditional events related to Met exhibitions and, in many cases next season, actually taking place in the galleries.
The “gallery-hopping,†as a news release calls it, begins on Sept. 17 and 18, with “The Grand Tour,†celebrating completion of the museum’s new European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800, with four early-music performances, successively featuring the ensembles Tenet, Dark Horse and Quicksilver and the harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, each in a different gallery. It continues on Sept. 28 with a day devoted to the composer and performer John Zorn (who will celebrate his 60th birthday on Sept. 2).
Mr. Zorn, an inveterate Metgoer since childhood, says he has drawn inspiration from a number of specific artworks there, and his day will consist of 11 performances in 11 different rooms, in some cases before the very objects that inspired him. This will allow attendees, Ms. Tomer said, “to see the Met through John Zorn’s eyes,†not to mention hearing it though his ears.
A cycle of Bartok’s six string quartets by the Calder Quartet in the Rogers Auditorium might at first glance seem a throwback to the old regime. But the works are presented in three concerts intended to show “Bartok’s debt to the human voice,†in Ms. Tomer’s words, variously including a work by the Hungarian composer Peter Eotvos and performances by David Longstreth, the founder of the rock band Dirty Projectors, and the innovative Czech vocalist, violinist and composer Iva Bittova.
The Met will also plunge into the world of chamber opera, and the artists in residence will be the new-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.
