Symphony Space Announces New Music Season

Symphony Space’s new music season starting this fall will include concerts focused on the music of two of Poland’s greatest composers, one living and one dead.

Krzysztof Penderecki, 79, one of Poland’s most celebrated living composers, will lecture on his life and work on Oct. 25 during an intimate concert of his pieces in the Leonard Nimoy Thalia space. Among the highlights will be his “Quartet No. 3″ performed by the Penderecki String Quartet from Canada, and “Sextette,” rendered by Ensemble Pi.

Then on Dec. 13, Symphony Space promoters plan a tribute to the compositions of Witold Lutoslawski, the Polish composer and conductor who died in 1994, featuring the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, which is a Brooklyn group, and the composer Steven Stucky.

One other classical highlight of the 2013-2014 season is a performance on Oct. 18 of Benjamin Britten’s songs by the guitarist David Leisner and the tenor Rufus Müller.

On the pop side, American folk musicians have been given a prominent role. Dar Williams, the Weschester-born singer-songwriter who recently released “In the Time of Gods,” will return to the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Oct. 19. In January, the folksingers Tom Paxton, Christine Lavin, Pete Seeger and Tom Chapin will appear at a concert to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Woody’s Children radio show on WFUV.

In February and March, the Music of Now Marathon and Composers Now Series, now in its fifth year, will offer an eclectic lineup of events, including two composers who often blur the line between contemporary art music and various popular forms like jazz and the pop song. On Feb. 21, Errollyn Wallen, the British songwriter and composer, will join the violinist Anton Miller and the violist Rita Porfiris for the New York premiere of her work “Five Postcards,” as well as the Hart Quartet doing her piece “Hotel Terminus,” inspired by a David Grand novel. And on Feb. 27, Jovino Santos Neto, the jazz keyboardist and flutist, will perform with his trio.

A full schedule can be found on Symphony Space’s Web site.