ERC has received wide critical acclaim: a New York Times Critics’ Pick for three years in a row, The Ensemble for the Romantic Century’s 2017 Pershing Square Signature Theater production of Van Gogh’s Ear was hailed by Ben Brantley in the New York Times for its “uncanny beauty and emotionalism.” ERC’s 2015 BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) production of Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon was hailed by The New York Times as “a dazzling musical and multimedia paean to human aspiration.” In 2016, The New York Times praised Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone (BAM – Brooklyn Academy of Music) as “engrossing…gorgeous,” and with “…rapturous accounts of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich….”
“Chamber Music has never been This sexy…” -TheaterMania
ERC’S PROGRAMS ARE DISTINGUISHED BY THEIR ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE, BREADTH OF REPERTOIRE, AND VARIETY OF SUBJECT MATTER.
Ensemble for the Romantic Century, now in its twenty-second season, was founded by pianist Eve Wolf in 2001, with the mission of creating an innovative concert format in which the emotions revealed in memoirs, letters, diaries, and literature are dramatically interwoven with music. ERC’s stellar team includes Eve Wolf, Executive Artistic Director; Donald T. Sanders, Director of Theatrical Production; Max Barros, Co-Artistic Director; James Melo, Musicologist; Vanessa James, Production Designer; Beverly Emmons, Lighting Designer; and David Bengali, Projection Designer, as well as a roster of some of the finest actors and musicians active today. ERC’s theatrical concerts reinforce music’s historical context through its connections with history, politics, philosophy, psychology, and the other arts to create a compelling new performance experience.
ERC has, to date, created over 40 original theatrical concerts. ERC has partnered with or performed at such institutions as BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music); The Pershing Square Signature Center; The Duke on 42ndStreet; Symphony Space (Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater);The Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona, Italy; Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA; The Jewish Museum of New York; 92-Y Tribeca; the Archivio Fano of Venice, Italy; the Festival de Musique de Chambre Montréal; the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts/MIFA; the French Institute-Alliance Française/FIAF, New York; the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University; the Italian Cultural Institute of New York; and the City University of New York (CUNY). Since 2007, ERC has been a musicological affiliate in residence at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the CUNY Graduate Center, where ERC has established an annual series of interdisciplinary seminars for each of the Ensemble’s concerts.
ERC’s artistic excellence has been recognized through professional performance grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as well as by important foundations such as the Augustine Foundation and the Loewe Foundation. These grants are a testimony to the growing recognition of the Ensemble as one of the most innovative chamber music groups in New York.