MTA Music Under New York Celebrates Mozart Musicians

MTA Music will present a selection of Mozart’s repertoire through performances by West Village Quartet (strings), Leah Coloff (cello), Luellen Abdoo (violin), Emily Hopkins (harp), Jim Graseck (violin) and Susan Keser (violin) on Friday, July 22. These performances kick off five weeks of Lincoln Center’s renowned Mostly Mozart Festival, which is celebrating its 50th season.

Performances will take place concurrently from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Fulton Center, Times Sq-42 St and the new TurnStyle retail space at 59 St-Columbus Circle. All three locations are major transfer points within the New York City Transit subway system, providing several opportunities for MTA customers and visitors from around the world to intimately experience Mozart’s music across a variety of instruments and spaces.

“It is terrific that you can go into the subway and hear a beloved composer such as Mozart while you’re on your way to work or just enjoying this city,” said Sandra Bloodworth, director of MTA Arts & Design. “This reminds us of the wonderful place that New York is, that you can hear Mozart as you travel without buying a concert ticket or even taking a detour on your commute. We thank Lincoln Center for this opportunity to show our appreciation for Mozart and help us share it online for Mozart fans around the world who cannot come to see us in person.”

"We are very excited to collaborate with the MTA to bring the sublime and timeless music of Mozart to New Yorkers across our great city," said Jane Moss, Lincoln Center's Ehrenkranz artistic director. "As we embark on the 50th anniversary season of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, this collaboration is a wonderful celebration of Mozart’s artistic genius, and expansion of the festival's ethos of access and musical pleasure."

MTA Arts & Design, which provides riders of the nation’s largest public transportation system with visual and performing arts, presents musical performances in the subway system and commuter rail network through Music Under New York. MTA Music, now in its 29th year, has a longstanding tradition of collaboration with New York cultural institutions of note, the most recent being a series of musical performances with Jazz at Lincoln Center to honor the legacy of Billy Strayhorn, composer of the jazz standard “Take the A Train,” on the centennial anniversary of his birth last November.

For the day of Mozart performances, each MTA MUSIC performer will play a two-hour set for a total of six MTA MUSIC performances at the three subway stations. A free livestream at the Fulton Center location will be hosted on Lincoln Center’s Facebook page at facebook.com/LincolnCenterNYC. Fulton Center, NYC Transit’s newly open transit hub and among NYCT’s most technologically advanced stations, also hosts installations from MTA Arts & Design’s new digital arts program on its 52 digital screens, offers free Wi-Fi and houses the award-winning Arts & Design-commissioned artwork “Sky Reflector-Net.”