Titian and Workshop (Italian, ca. 1485/90?–1576). Venus and the Lute Player, ca. 1565–70. Oil on canvas; 65 x 82 1/2 in. (165.1 x 209.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Munsey Fund, 1936 (36.29).

NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced an exciting event on September 17 and 18. The Grand Tour, which takes place in the newly reinstalled European Paintings, 1250-1800, galleries, will feature live performances right alongside the art with leading early music ensembles. All after-hours, audiences rotate through four different galleries to hear concerts of the time period. 

This unprecedented evening, which celebrates the completion of the Museum’s New European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800, takes groups of audience members into four different galleries to experience, one after another, four different 20-minute programs by some of the world’s leading early music artists. Ensembles Tenet, Dark Horse Consort, and Quicksilver, and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour perform music that harmonizes with the content of the individual galleries: 

Quicksilver in Baroque Painting in Italy Gallery

A program of mannerist, experimental sonatas in the 17th-century "modern style" by Dario Castello, Biagio Marini, Massimiliano Neri, and others. Led by violinists Robert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski, Quicksilver brings together leading historically-informed performers in America today; they released a recording, Stile Moderno: New Music from the Seventeenth Century, in 2011. 

Jory Vinikour in History, Portraits, and Genre in Eighteenth-Century France Gallery

Harpsichordist Vinikour performs music of Rameau, whose work represents the apogee of French harpsichord music, bringing a unique harmonic sense and unparalleled virtuosity to repertoire for that instrument. Jory Vinikour is recognized as one of the outstanding harpsichordists of his generation. His 2012 recording of the complete harpsichord works of Rameau received a Grammy nomination for best classical instrumental solo recording. 

TENET in Venetian Sixteenth-Century Painting Gallery

A program of highlights from the extraordinarily rich repertoire of Italian madrigals published in 16th-century Venice. Music printing was born in Venice in 1501 and the city became home to the leading publishers of music. This program samples the brilliant repertoire of polyphonic vocal music to texts by Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and other Italian poets. One of New York’s preeminent vocal ensembles, TENET, under artistic director Jolle Greenleaf, is winning acclaim for its innovative programming, virtuosic singing, and command of repertoire that spans the Middle Ages to the present. 

Dark Horse Consort in the Evelyn Borchard Metzger Gallery featuring Dutch paintings from The Benjamin Altman Collection

Renaissance instrumental music from wind-band manuscripts by Heinrich Isaac, Tylman Susato, Clemens non Papa, and Orlande de Lassus. Much like their counterparts in the art world, the composers from the low countries were sought after by every court and cathedral in Europe. How better to appreciate the new techniques in brushwork than with its counterpart in counterpoint? The Dark Horse Consort is an ensemble dedicated to the brass music of the early 17th century.