This unique program unites two of the most creative and widely admired performers in contemporary music, as jazz giant Brad Mehldau performs a newly composed song cycle in duet with opera tenor Ian Bostridge. Described as "the most influential jazz pianist" to emerge since the early '90s (The New York Times), Mehldau is famously omnivorous in his tastes, interpreting compositions by Johannes Brahms, Nirvana, Miles Davis, the Beach Boys, and Cole Porter. Lauded for the "quavering passion" and "scholarly elegance" of his performances (The New Yorker), Bostridge holds similarly broad-ranging impulses; over the course of a nearly 30-year career, he has interpreted works ranging from Monteverdi to Wagner and Noël Coward.
The Folly of Desire, explores the nature of love and human desire through texts by Blake, Yeats, Shakespeare, Brecht, Goethe, Auden, and E.E. Cummings.