SFU to play New York’s Lincoln Center concert in May
The band that has delivered performances at Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House will take the stage of another prestigious venue, this time Lincoln Center in Manhattan on May 4, 2012.
The show will be the biggest non-competition event in the band’s thirtieth anniversary year, and will be followed by a two-day piping, drumming, drum-majoring and Highland dancing “Highland Arts Festival” workshop in Queens, New York, May 5-6.
The six-time World Champions return to New York City for the first time since its landmark Carnegie Hall show in 1998, and plan to record their eleventh full-length recording at the Lincoln Center concert.
“In 1998, we performed to a full house in New York’s Carnegie Hall and recorded a CD there,” said SFU Pipe-Sergeant and Band Manager Jack Lee. “It has always been on our minds to try to get back to New York at some point. With this being our 30th year, we felt that this was the right time to return to New York City.”
SFU will perform at Lincoln Center’s 2,700-seat Avery Fisher Hall, the main venue at the world-renowned complex, which is home to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York City Ballet. The band is promoting the events on its own.
“The Eastern USA probably has more pipers and drummers than anywhere else in the world,” Lee added. Tickets, brochures and registration information are available at the band’s website.
Tickets to the concert on its own range in price from $39-69. A “weekend pass” to the concert, workshop and May 5th ceilidh is priced at $229.
The Vancouver-based SFU finished second at the 2011 World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow.
I’ve played pipes in concert there myself and this is certainly a great venue to perform in. The atmosphere during a full house is quintessentially New York! Well done SFU. Thinking big, as always. Who would have thought even 20 years ago that pipe bands (what are effectively amateur organisations) would get access to such venues, much less fill them…? Sterling stuff!