Bassist Eleonore Oppenheim and sound artist Lesley Flanigan will perform as part of Music at First on Friday, October 8th, 2010 at 7:30pm. This new music series is held at First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, located at 124 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights. Tickets are $10 at the door. Contact [email protected] for more info. Directions are at www.fpcbrooklyn.org.

MUSIC AT FIRST, curated by Wil Smith (composer who also serves as organist at First Presbyterian), occurs monthly, featuring two performers or ensembles per evening. A diverse mix of New York City’s best ensembles and performers, accessible to a wide audience of both community members and seasoned listeners, Music at First has been described by Steve Smith in The New York Times as a “vibrant, eclectic new-music series.” The second season opened earlier this fall with performances by Kyle Bobby Dunn and electric guitar quartet Dither. Future performers in the fall series will include pianist Isabelle O’Connell and Flutronix on November 5th; and a double bill of Phithia and Slow/Fast on December 3rd.

A tireless champion of new music, bassist ELEONORE OPPENHEIM is quickly gaining a reputation as an engaging soloist who has built a rich repertoire of solo pieces commissioned from a wide array of talented up-and-coming young composers. This program features solo bass with electronics — most pieces (composed by Florent Ghys, David Lang, Jenny Olivia Johnson, and Wil Smith) are electroacoustic and are written specifically for her. Equally at home in a variety of disparate genres, she has performed with the Philip Glass Ensemble, bandsemble Victoire, Signal Ensemble, Meredith Monk, the pioneering indie rock band the Instruments, Dan Zanes and Friends, and others. She has appeared at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Spoleto Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Knitting Factory, the Barbican Centre, the Stone, and the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, to name a few. Eleonore was a Bang on a Can Fellow in 2006, and is an alumna of Juilliard and of the Yale School of Music.

Artist/vocalist LESLEY FLANIGAN sculpts electronic music by hand using the physicality of sound produced from her own handmade speaker feedback instruments and singing voice. Moving among a cluster of wires, speakers, and microphones, her music is a choreographed musical landscape of electric tones and rhythms resonating from noise, feedback, voice, and the actions of amplifying. In her first New York appearance after a European tour, she offers a special performance that highlights the reverberant architectural amplification of First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn. Performing works from her album “Amplifications” and improvised solo voice pieces, her intimate concert will showcase the exquisite beauty of her voice layered among the feedback tones of her wooden speaker instruments.  Actively working within the experimental electronics and music scene of NYC, she collaborates and tours with R. Luke DuBois in Bioluminescence (for voice and video), the Loud Objects (live circuit construction), and Tristan Perich (soprano voice for “Lit” and “Untitled by Bernadette Mayer”). Her performance work has been presented internationally at theaters, museums, festivals and art spaces including the Guggenheim, Issue Project Room, Sonar (Barcelona, Chicago), Transitio MX (Mexico), and Bent (LA and NYC).

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BROOKLYN (FPC) is committed to supporting the arts in the community, and has been noted by Lucid Culture blog as as “doing double duty as comfortable neighborhood hang and avant garde central for the budget conscious.”  FPC is an open and intentionally diverse congregation, by race, culture, age, theology, and sexual orientation. #

IKARUS CHAMBER PLAYERS: “L’HEURE BLEUE”

L’heure bleue, features the premiere of a fascinating, beautiful, and challenging duo for violin and cello by James Blachly that explores the foods, tastes, smells, and ambience of a summer evening as it fades into the late night and early morning, just as the summer fades into autumn.

Joining cellist Julia MacLaine for these concerts are pianist Ilya Kazantsev, her long-time duo partner, and Owen Dalby, a violinist whom she met while the two were members of Carnegie’s Ensemble ACJW and who plays with her in The Ikarus Chamber Players. Also on the program is Messiaen’s Theme and Variations for violin and piano, Debussy’s Sonate for cello and piano, and Ravel’s piano trio. The two performances, on Friday and Saturday September 17th and 18th and 8 PM, will be at the DUO Multicultural Arts Center, a charming, historic, and truly magical little theater on the Lower East Side. Tickets are $15 at www.smarttix.com. Wine and madeleines will be served!

(as listed in the New Yorker)

“The title of this concert by alumni of Carnegie Hall’s prestigious Ensemble ACJW refers to the “blue hour,” the time just before daybreak or nightfall. The venue, Duo Multicultural Art Center, has a tinge of blue as well: back in 1969, as the Fortune Theatre, it was used by Andy Warhol as a place to show gay porn films. (Joe Dallesandro was the projectionist.) Long since renovated and respectable, the Off Broadway spot hosts a concert featuring Francophone music by Messiaen, Debussy (the Sonata for Cello and Piano), Ravel (the Piano Trio), and James Blachly (the première of “La Fête de l’Été”).”


VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL explores the myriad power of the human voice in its solo and ensemble forms across a multitude of genres. This three day festival is in its 2nd annual appearance and will occur on November 11, 12, and 13 2010 at 8:30pm at the ISSUE Project Room at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd Street, in Brooklyn, NY. (F/G Subway to Carroll St or F/M/R to 9th St./4th Ave.) Tickets are $10 ($9 in advance) and can be purchased at www.issueprojectroom.org or by calling 718-330-0313. VITAL VOX celebrates composer-performers in the vocal arts who stretch and expand the voice in new and original ways, continuing a strong contemporary tradition developed in the United States.

With international influences springing from such countries and regions as Taiwan, East Timor, Slovakia, Africa, South India, and more; genres ranging from jazz, experimental, contemporary, free improvisation, “noise” music, and abstract solo opera; and themes ranging from “maintaining one’s composure”, to cinematographic music theater inspired by the life, films and death of the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, VITAL VOX has wide ranging scope and appeal.

VITAL VOX was premiered in May 2009 at Teatro IATI (International Theatre Arts Institute) in the East Village. The Festival brought together some of the most talented & creative young vocalists in NYC, and featured a total of 7 projects and 13 vocalists. Sasha Bogdanowitsch & Sabrina Lastman are Artistic Directors for the festival, which is produced by World in One & Issue Project Room.

The November 11, 2010 program includes Inner Chapters performed by Jen Shyu; Songs for Double Bass and Voice by Nat Baldwin; River of Painted Birds by Sabrina Lastman; and The Art of the Diff by Chris Mann.

The November12, 2010 program includesHold Yourself Together by Corey Dargel ; Inflections in a Vibratory Field by Samita Sinha; Improvisations 11-12-10 by C Spencer Yeh; and Gatekeeper by Joan La Barbara.

The November 13, 2010 program includes Takadimi duo (Lori Cotler with Glen Velez); Untitled for 2010 by Audrey Chen; Present, Past and Future Sees by Sasha Bogdanowitsch; and Gisburg’s The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Songs performed by Magic Names.

Continue reading “Joan La Barbara, Corey Dargel, and 10 other vocalists/ensembles featured in VITAL VOX Festival”

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The lineup has been finalized for the Union Square stage for the September Concert on September 11, 2010. These music events, which take place in designated performance spaces, including public parks and concert halls in cities around the world, have the sole purpose of joining people together worldwide to “celebrate peace and humanity through music.”

Performances are free, outdoors, and open to the public – join us at Union Square!

12-12:40 Threefifty Duo

1-1:40 Joseph Brent Quartet

2:00-2:40 Frank Viele & the Manhattan Project

3:00-3:40 Rob Mosher’s Storytime

4:00-4:40 Cassis B. Staudt with special guests Tamara Hey and Mary Beth Stone

5:00-5:40 Copal

Composer, pianist and percussionist John McDowell teams up with Canadian violinist Emmanuel Vukovich, cellist Julia MacLaine, and string bass player Evan Premo to create the musical ensemble Music For Farms which will perform a benefit concert for the Rockland Farm Alliance entitled “A Musical Harvest” at the Threefold Auditorium at 260 Hungry Hollow Road, Chestnut Ridge, NY on Friday, September 10, 2010 at 8pm. Tickets may be purchased at the door and are $20 ($15 for students, $10 for children). For more information, call 845-362-0207 or email [email protected].

John McDowell and Emmanuel Vukovich, who practice music and farming side by side (McDowell at Camp Hill Farm in Pomona, NY; and Vukovich in Quebec, Canada), have formed an international initiative, Music for Farms, which works to revive and sustain local organic agriculture and farming communities through the arts. Julia MacLaine and Evan Premo join them for this special concert. The program, described below, includes the music of Bach, several original works in contemporary and classical idioms, and the quartet’s own creative arrangements that incorporate African drum rhythms and reflect a weaving of Eastern and Western traditions. This concert will be a benefit for the Rockland Farm Alliance (RFA). The mission of the RFA is to facilitate local sustainable agriculture in Rockland County, New York.

Juilliard and McGill trained Emmanuel Vukovich is the recipient of Canada’s first Golden Violin Award, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts Orford String Quartet scholarship. His twin passions of farming and music are brought to expression in this artistic Musical Harvest. John McDowell is best known as composer of the score to Oscar winning Born into Brothels. He has toured with rock/world band Rusted Root as a pianist and percussionist and founded/led the internationally acclaimed band Mamma Tongue. Cellist Julia MacLaine has been consistently singled out by The New York Times for her rich tone, sweet vibrato and superb musicianship, and performs throughout North and South America and in Europe as a recitalist and chamber musician. Like Julia, an alumnus of Carnegie Hall’s resident Ensemble ACJW, Evan Premo performs chamber music regularly at Carnegie Hall and does outreach in public schools in NYC. An active chamber musician and soloist, Evan also practices farming, woodworking, and ‘homesteading’.

The program will be drawn from the following selections:

  • Bach, works for solo violin and solo cello
  • F Major, by John McDowell
  • Swara Kakali (transcription of a work by Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar)
  • Barn Dances, by Evan Premo
  • La Paloma, by Julia MacLaine
  • Tango, arr. Music For Farms
  • Kalo Kalo, by John McDowell