Percussionist Lisa Pegher performs Kevin Puts’ Marimba Concerto with the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra as part of “Old and New Worlds” on Saturday, April 21, 2012 at the Palace Theatre, Greensburg, PA. Thomas Hong, guest conductor, will lead this performance of the WSO in a program that also includes Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 “Italian”.
Lisa Pegher is an American solo percussionist who has been described by the Boston Globe as “Forcefully Balletic” and by another critic as “a gifted passionate artist, with a rock-star aura.” She has been featured in Symphony Magazine as one of the top six performers of her generation and continues to carve a new path for percussion as a solo instrument. Prior to the launch of a full-time solo career, she performed as the Principal Timpanist of the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra and Section Percussionist with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.
The Flute on its Feet is a virtuoso tour de force that includes classics of the flute repertoire, new works by American composers, and pieces choreographed for flutist/dancer Zara Lawler by innovative choreographer C. Neil Parsons. The Flute on its Feet offers audiences a new and truly unique experience within the world of classical music: instrumental performance of the highest quality fully integrated with dance, theater and storytelling. The Flute on its Feet will be in residency in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, with public performances on April 17-24.
Zara Lawler has created a new genre of performance that defies definition, and never fails to engage and delight her audiences. Dance and story create new entry points into the music for the uninitiated; for the experienced concertgoer, they illuminate the music in a profound and moving way. At once groundbreaking and inviting to new audiences, Lawler offers a new performance standard for the 21st century.
SCHEDULE OF MIDWEST RESIDENCY:
April 17-19: Indiana University Arts Week Everywhere, Bloomington, IN
April 17-18: Reverse BUSking performances on IU Campus Buses, routes A & X at various times.
April 19, 8pm: The Flute on its Feet at Windfall Studio, Corner of 14th and Dunn; $10 general admission, $5 students, free with Reverse BUSking card (given out to the public as part of the Reverse BUSking performances) For more information visit the Arts Week web site.
April 22: Wisconsin Flute Festival, Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Appleton, WI; 3-3:50pm, The Flute on its Feet performance/workshop; Venue: Chapel Hall, Conservatory of Music, Shattuck Hall of Music, Lawrence University, 711 E. Boldt Way, Appleton, WI. Prices (Early Bird Rates): $20 Adult, $15 College Students and Seniors, $10 High/Middle School Students, $5 Non-flutists (parent, accompanist, etc)
April 23-24, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL
Founders of “Music for Farms” Emmanuel Vukovich (violin) and John McDowell (piano, percussion, composition), as well as special guest, young violinist Nicholas Frei, will perform a benefit concert at Green Meadow Waldorf School’s new auditorium, Rose Hall in Chestnut Ridge, NY. The program for this concert, to be held May 4th at 8pm, will include Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins in D featuring Nicholas Frei, and the Solo violin Partita No. 1 in b, BWV 1002; Sonata No. 3, Op. 27 – Ballade, by Eugene Ysaye; Chant by Ana Sokolovic; Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25, by Pablo de Sarasate; and an original work by John McDowell.
Rose Hall is located at 307 Hungry Hollow Rd., Chestnut Ridge, NY. Advance tickets are $20 for general admission; $15 for college Students & Seniors; and $10 for students Grade 1-12 Tickets will be available for purchase online or in person at the Hungry Hollow Co-op, 841 Chestnut Ridge Rd, Chestnut Ridge. Day of show tickets at the door will be $5 extra per ticket. This event is sponsored by Threefold Educational Foundation. Proceeds will go to the Green Meadow Waldorf School, the Rockland Farm Alliance, and the Pfeiffer Center.
The Green Meadow Waldorf School is an independent day school, nursery through grade 12, located 30 miles from New York City in Chestnut Ridge, NY. Founded in 1950, Green Meadow is one of America’s oldest and largest Waldorf schools. From the young child’s imaginative experiences of discovery and play in their Early Childhood program to the intellectual challenges presented in their High School, Green Meadow students approach their education with interest and joy. The school also opened an Early Childhood Center in Tarrytown, NY in July 2011.
Rockland Farm Alliance is a community coalition that was founded to facilitate local sustainable agriculture in Rockland County, NY, and to provide educational resources to the community to promote awareness of the need for local food resources. RFA has been called “cutting edge” by state farming authorities in its innovative approach to preserve and revive farming in the lower Hudson Valley and greater NY metro area. Through hands-on learning programs and new community-supported small farms, RFA is striving to raise awareness around local food issues while increasing access to organic, locally grown produce.
The mission of the Pfeiffer Center, located in Chestnut Ridge, NY, is to practice, teach and spread awareness of the biodynamic method of agriculture and land care. This work takes the form of educational programs for adults and children, agricultural production, work with draft horses, beekeeping, and research.
Canadian Violinist Emmanuel Vukovich has played for audiences around the globe with artists such as Ida Haendel, Anton Kuerti, and Matt Haimowitz. Recipient of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music Golden Violin Award and The Canada Council for the Arts Orford String Quartet Scholarship, he was a member of the Lloyd Carr-Harris String Quartet, winner at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition. Emmanuel began playing the violin with Danuta Ciring and left his native Calgary at sixteen to pursue studies with Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy Delay at the Juilliard School in New York City. He completed his undergraduate degree with Denise Lupien and André Roy at McGill University. During this time he also pursued studies in Environment, subsequently devoting four years to work in organic agriculture. Having returned to music in 2011, Emmanuel is currently completing a graduate performance degree and teaching at McGill University, and has founded an international chamber music collective called The Parcival Project. He plays a violin made in Montreal by Denis Cormier.
Musician and film composer John McDowell achieved worldwide recognition with his soundtrack to the Academy Award winning documentary Born Into Brothels. Winner of Best Musical Score at the Bend Film Festival, the score blends Western and Indian music in a mesmerizing mix. Known for much more than just his film scores, McDowell is also a highly gifted pianist, percussionist, producer, commissioned composer and conductor. His work over the past 25 years draws on classical, jazz, pop, and world music. McDowell served as founder, artistic director and leader of several musical projects including The Born Into Brothels Ensemble and the world music band Mamma Tongue. He has toured and recorded with Rusted Root and Krishna Das and has produced several albums including his solo CD Speaking the Mamma Tongue. McDowell’s formal education and subsequent informal global training has made him a largely self-taught ethnomusicologist of widely-ranging scale. John is co-founder of Music for Farms.
Nicholas Frei, a 2011 graduate of Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, NY, began his violin studies with Anna Teigen, then continued with Bernard Zeller and Laura Seaton. During high school, Nicholas played with the New York Youth Symphony, several string quartets and chamber groups, and studied with Ann Setzer of Mannes and Juilliard. His senior year, he attended Mannes-Prep and was a Rockland County Morning Music Club Scholarship Finalist. Nicholas has spent his last three summers at the Meadowmount School of Music, founded by Ivan Galamian and has played in chamber master classes for musicians such as: Joel Krosnick, Paul Neubauer and Kazuhido Isomura. He is currently in a string quartet coached by Matt Haimovitz and studies with Emmanuel Vukovich at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
Chicago’s Chinese Fine Arts Society (CFAS) in partnership with the Chicago Public Library is pleased to announce Melodies of Love and Loss, a free concert to be held on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 2:00 PM at the Harold Washington Library Center’s Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, 400 S. State Street.
Bringing together some of Chicago’s leading musicians, this special concert showcases music composed by both known and emerging Chinese composers. Curated by Yuan-Qing Yu, assistant concertmaster of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the program is inspired by and is an aural accompaniment to the wonderful stories of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li, the latest selection for Chicago’s citywide book club, One Book, One Chicago.
Throughout April, the Chicago Public Library and its program partners offer a variety of events celebrating the book and the people it portrays, including an appearance by author Yiyun Li on April 19th at the Harold Washington Library Center. One Book, One Chicago is presented by the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, Allstate and BMO Harris. For more information and a full list of programs visit www.onebookonechicago.org.
Featured performers include pipa virtuoso Yang Wei, as well as Jessica Warren, flute; Mabel Kwan on piano; Elizandro Garcia-Montoya, clarinet; Dominic Johnson, viola; Mabel Kwan, piano; Aurelien Pederzoli, Jaime Gorgojo, violin; Anna Steinhoff, cello.
The program will include:
Dragon Boat: Traditional Chou Wen Chung: Cursive for Flute and piano Huang Ruo: Being for Clarinet and Viola Tan Dun: C.A.G.E for piano Lei Liang: Five Seasons for pipa quintet Vivian Fung: Miniatures for Clarinet and String quartet
And, as part of our Migratory Journeys World Premiere series: Bin Li: My Hometown Far Away for Piano
About the Chinese Fine Arts Society: For 27 years, this professional, small, fully- independent arts organization has brought together people from diverse backgrounds over a common goal: to celebrate the beauty and majesty of traditional and contemporary Chinese music and art. CFAS is dedicated to promoting the appreciation of Chinese culture, enhancing cultural exchange and pursuing excellence in Chinese music, dance and visual arts.
Funding for these concerts are provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, City Arts Grants, and SMART Growth and the Arts Work Fund initiatives of the Chicago Community Trust and Affiliates.
About the book: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl includes nine expertly written short stories set in modern China. Through Yiyun Li’s unforgettable characters, we learn about a country and a people who are not so different from us. Li’s stories—whether about a young girl navigating life in the army or a group of widows who start a private investigation agency—offer a rich and varied portrait of China, and will resonate with Chicago’s readers. Discussions and events take place throughout April, including a conversation with Yiyun Li and Chicago author Achy Obejas at the Harold Washington Library Center on April 19. Visit your library and check out a copy of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, take part in a discussion or attend any number of programs or performances. To learn more, inquire at your local library or visit www.onebookonechicago.org.
Pianists Clarice Assad and Inna Faliks, with Soprano Samantha Malk, explore “The Sensuousness of Spring.”
Music/Words (www.musicwordsnyc.com), an interdisciplinary series founded and curated by NYC- based pianistInna Faliks (www.innafaliks.com), continues its fourth season on Sunday, April 22, 2012, at 6:00 pm with a performance at New York’s Cornelia Street Cafe featuring Faliks and guest Clarice Assad at the piano along with soprano Samantha Malk and poet Irina Mashinski. The program will explore the sensuousness of early Schoenberg (with the Stefan Georgy poetry used in the songs), along with the passion of Mashinski’s poetry and Assad’s Brazilian music. The program includes Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstucke, opus 11; his songs from Book of Hanging Gardens; and various improvisations by Ms. Assad based on Brazilian piano music. The Cornelia Street Café (www.corneliastreetcafe.com) is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling 212-989-9319.
The series MUSIC/WORDS was recently praised by Lucid Culture as being “surreal, impactful, and relevant” and was described as “a throwback to the Paris salons of the late 1800s.” It celebrates links between poetry and music by presenting collaborations between exciting solo performers and acclaimed contemporary poets in the form of a live recital/reading.
Inna Faliks created the series in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration.
According to Faliks, “I pair performers together based on their personalities and styles, and encourage them to choose the poems and music in varied ways that are strongly and intuitively connected.”
In this performance, Ms. Mashinski will tailor her readings to Ms. Assad’s and Ms. Faliks’ musical selections, finding poems from her own works that connect with the music. Music/Words will be featured in regular live broadcasts throughout the month of April on WFMT Radio in Chicago.
Pianist Clarice Assad
Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “serious triple threat,” and “an arranger and orchestrator of great imagination” (SF Classical Voice), Clarice Assad (www.clariceassad.com) is making her mark in the music world as a pianist, arranger, as a vocalist and as a composer. A versatile artist of musical depth and sophistication, her works have been published in France (Editions Lemoine), Germany (Trekel), and in the United States (Virtual Artists Collective Publishing), and have been performed in Europe, South America, the United States and Japan. Miss Assad’s music often have a thematic core, and explore the physical and psychological elements of the chosen story or concept. With a repertoire in continuous expansion, her works are sought out by musicians both in the classical and the jazz realms.
South African soprano Samantha Malk recently returned from a concert tour around China, Vietnam and Thailand. At the end of 2010, she was thrilled to make her Weill Hall debut recital at Carnegie Hall. During that summer, she finished her engagement as a young artist for the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago. In July 2010, the International Contemporary Ensemble invited Samantha as the guest soprano in a live broadcast on WQXR Classical Radio New York as well as a two-day music festival celebrating the music of Edgar Varèse at Alice Tully Hall. Earlier that year, during an alumni residency, Samantha performed songs of Debussy and Schumann lieder at the Britten Pears Music Festival. Her operatic roles include Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Nannetta in Falstaff, Belinda in Dido and Aeneas and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. After immigrating to the United States, Samantha came to study music, earning her Bachelor of Music at Indiana University and her Master of Music at Manhattan School of Music.
Bilingual poet and translator Irina Mashinski has authored seven books of poetry in Russian, and her most recent collections are Volk (Wolf) and Raznochinets pervyi sneg i drugie stikhotvoreniia (Raznochinets First Snow and Other Poems). Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Poetry International, Fulcrum, Zeek, The London Magazine, and An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky, as well as co-founder and co-editor of the Cardinal Points literary journal, published in the U.S. in English and Russian. She also serves on the editorial board for the NYC based translation project “Ars-Interpes.” Irina Mashinski is the winner of several literary awards, including the First Prizes at the Russian America (2001), Maximilian Voloshin (2003), and other poetry contests. Her poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Serbian.
Pianist Inna Faliks
Recently praised by Lucid Culture for “her signature blend of lithe grace and raw power,” Ukrainian-born, New York City based pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most passionately committed, exciting and poetic artists of her generation. After her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she has performed on many of the world’s great stages, with numerous orchestras, in solo appearances, and with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart. Critics praise her “courage to take risks, expressive intensity and technical perfection” (General Anzeiger, Bonn), “poetry and panoramic vision” (Washington Post), and “riveting passion, playfulness” (Baltimore Sun). Her CD on MSR Classics, “Sound of Verse”, was released in 2009.
Percussionist Lisa Pegher performs Kevin Puts’ Marimba Concerto with the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra as part of “Old and New Worlds” on Saturday, April 21, 2012 at the Palace Theatre, Greensburg, PA. Thomas Hong, guest conductor, will lead this performance of the WSO in a program that also includes Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 “Italian”.
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