A one-time-only performance RiteNow: A Centennial Celebration of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring will take place at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street (corner of College & Grove), New Haven, CT on November 17 at 8pm. Admission is free. Complete info is at www.RiteNowProject.com

RiteNow will include works by composers Fay Kueen Wang, Justin Tierney, Matthew Welch, Benjamin Wallace, Daniel Schlosberg, Gleb Kanasevich, Polina Nazaykinskaya, and Paul Kerekes. Production designer Solomon Weisbard will create an immersive environmental design, and costumes will be created by Ksenia Zhuleva.

Complete composer bios are available at www.RiteNowProject.com. Here’s a summary:

Composer/performer Fay Wang’s music has been performed around Asia, Europe and USA, including the Berlin Concert House, the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Oper Graz, Yun Isang Memorial Hall, Beijing, Shanghai Concert Hall, Merkin Hall and Lincoln Center, with ensembles including the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Iuventus, RIAS Youth Orchestra, Dinosaur Annex, and a recent premiere by Bang On A Can All-Stars at NYC’s Ecstatic Music Festival.

The music of Matthew Tobin Welch (b.1976), Composer/Multi-instrumentalist, stems from a multi-faceted foundation. As a virtuoso of the Highland Bagpipe, he studied traditional music with Gold Medalist masters such as Colin MacLellan, Jack Lee, Angus MacLellan and Andrew Wright. Matthew also was a member of the four – time World Champion Simon Fraser University Pipe Band, winning with them in 1999 and 2001.

Justine Tierney‘s music was declared “superb, robust, and grand” by the Boston Globe who avowed that “Tierney’s dark-hued music had polished, ominous richness… and sound-worlds that were cogent and immediate.” A recent performance ofThe God’s Script was described as [one of] “two of the most compelling operas also draw on illustrious literary sources: … it sheathes in fierce, gorgeously orchestrated music a dramatization of Jorge Luis Borges’sLa Escritura del Dios.”

Ben Wallace, originally hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a New England based composer, pianist, percussionist, and conductor. His works have been performed at various venues in Cincinnati, New Haven, New York, Switzerland, and Albuquerque. He received his Bachelor of Music in 2011 from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where he studied with Joel Hoffman, Michael Fiday, Mara Helmuth, and Al Otte of Percussion Group Cincinnati.

Polina Nazaykinskaya was born in Togliatti, Russia in 1987 and has been studying music since the age of 4. After graduating with honors from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia with concentrations in violin and composition, Polina earned her Masters of Music Degree from the Yale School of Music. Her professors at Yale included Christopher Theofanidis and Ezra Laderman. Currently Polina is pursuing Artist Diploma in composition at the Yale School of Music.

Composer and pianist Daniel Schlosberg (b. 1987) just completed his master’s degree and is currently pursuing his doctorate at the Yale School of Music. His works have been played by the Buffalo Philharmonic, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, New Morse Code, Yale Baroque Ensemble, Center City Opera Theater, and counter)induction. In July, his orchestral piece My reflection ran away with my eyes was featured at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, CA.

Gleb Kanasevich, a 2013 YSM graduate with MM in clarinet, has taken part in IRCAM’s 2013 AcademieManifeste and this year has had premiere performances at Spoleto Festival,soundSCAPE Festival, Atlantic Music Festival and Fundacion Music AntiquaNova in Argentina. He currently performs largely as a soloist and in duet with pianist Michael Sheppard under Chesapeake Concert Artists.

Paul Kerekes was born in Huntington, New York. His music has been described as “striking…ecstatic…dramatic” (WQXR), “highly eloquent” (New Haven Advocate), and able to create “an almost tactile picture” (The New York Times).

In the words of Conductor Paolo Bortolameolli:

“How many times does the world stop to celebrate ONE single piece of art?

In the spring of 2013, a masterpiece and seminal work of music of the twentieth century, “Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring)”, turned 100 years old. May 29th, 1913, the day on which “The Rite of Spring ” was premiered at the Theatre Champs Elysee in Paris, is in retrospect a key date in the history of music, ballet and art in general and can be considered as the launching of a century. This gives us a good opportunity to look back and reflect.

The celebration this year was an event of global proportions. Many and varied approaches are possible but without doubt there is one that sparks my fascination: The artistic collaboration.

Once again we reaffirm Stravinsky’s genius and the transcendent legacy of his composition. The definitive emancipation of rhythm, the imaginative and provocative use of the orchestra and the harmonic boldness are some of the reasons why this is a fundamental score of the twentieth century. In addition, the name of Vaslav Nijinsky is confirmed as the great revolutionary in the genesis of contemporary dance. The contribution of painter, writer, archaeologist and philosopher Nicholas Roerich, materialized through the original sets and costumes joined the concept of primitivism and mysticism of an ancient rite. And the artistry and enterprise of Sergei Diaghilev is a legend in the history of twentieth century music.

The combination of a group of sensitive and brilliant minds who shared a specific time in history bore fruit in a masterpiece in every sense.

How do we look back today then, to its creation, 100 years ago?

Art is a living organism that does not stop, and that makes its way every day through its inevitable need to find new ways to communicate and express from the observance, the anticipation or reflection. Rarely can we, however, do so from these three angles simultaneously.

The validity, importance and strength of the current artistic creation led me to the concept to pay a particular tribute: joining forces again to obtain a collective result in a once of lifetime experience.

Based on the episodic structure of Stravinsky’s work, I commissioned to 8 highly gifted and talented composers of this generation, to write each an episode that would be eventually assembled to form an homage piece. The result is an eclectic work, where eight personal languages from ​​8 points of views have been captured in a single score.

Moreover, the aesthetic vision of our Production Designer will unify the contrasting elements, showing a common message based on the essential concept of the original work: The Rite. A rite for spring, but also for death and birth, the rite in ancient times, but also at a time where art experienced an unprecedented period of experimentation. It is the result of a society on the verge of the first global war that transformed humanity into the actual Chosen to be sacrificed, a rite to a reborn, a rite to celebrate the concrete manifestation of music in a concert hall that 100 years ago. This was one of the most controversial and booed premieres — which 100 years later makes us wonder where is the audience, THAT audience today?

A rite to man and its primary, essential language: Art.

A rite to THEN and NOW.”

—-

On Sunday November 17th at 8pm, conductor Paolo Bortolameolli will lead the Zephyrus Project Orchestra in a performance of RiteNow: A Centennial Celebration of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This one-time-only performance will take place at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street (corner of College & Grove), New Haven, CT. Admission is free. Complete info is at www.RiteNowProject.com