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 pianist Inna 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 New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration.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.

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.

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.

The Flute on its Feet, 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 Denton, TX from March 27-30, with public performances on March 29 and 30.

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 DENTON RESIDENCY:

March 27-29: Zara Lawler and C. Neil Parsons will be guest artists at Texas Woman’s University Arts Triangle, Denton, TX, teaching workshops and leading master classes on interdisciplinary performance with drama, dance and music students, culminating in a performance they will co-create with students on March 29.

On Thursday, March 29 from 5-7pm as part of the Arts Triangle event, Lawler and flute students will lead the audience from station to station in processionals from Lawler’s E Pluribus Flutum. It is a walking tour, and the processionals are scheduled to lead people from the Pioneer Woman Statue (Texas Street and Oakland Avenue on the campus of TWU in Denton) to the Margo Jones Performance Hall for a final performance at approximately 6pm. The program will feature Lowell Liebermann’s 8 Pieces for flute, alto flute and piccolo, choreographed by Parsons; Fantasies (music by Telemann, choreographed by Parsons) and a mini-performance piece co-created by Lawler, Parsons and selected students (to be based on a haiku by Japanese poet and haiku master Matsuo Basho). All performances on this day, and a reception afterwards, are free and open to the public.

On Friday, March 30, Lawler and Parsons will conduct a performance/workshop from 1-3pm at the University of North Texas, Denton, TX. The event will take place at the Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theater on the UNT campus, on Avenue C between Highland and Chestnut Streets. This event combines performance with interactive activities designed to introduce music students to the world of interdisciplinary performance. Audience members will get an inside look at how Lawler and Parsons’ unique performance style is created. The duo will perform the same pieces as at the Arts Triangle (minus the student-created work), as well as This Floating World, a solo for flute by American composer Edie Hill. This event is free and open to the public.