On Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 8:00 PM, in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, as part of their 45th Anniversary year, Pro Musicis presents pianist Inna Faliks, winner of the 2005 Pro Musicis International Award.

Following her acclaimed debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 15, Ms Faliks has performed on many of the world’s great stages under such noted conductors as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart. Recent appearances include the Poisson Rouge in New York City, the Embassy Series in Washington D.C., the Salle Cortot in Paris, broadcast recitals in Chicago, and LACMA’s music and art series in Los Angeles.

Her chamber music partnerships include work with Colin Carr, Nathaniel Rosen and Nina Beilina. She is a favorite at festivals in the U.S. and Europe, including Verbier, Taos, and Bargemusic. Her innovative and interdisciplinary series, Music/Words, links contemporary poetry and live piano performances.

A native of Odessa, Ukraine, Ms. Faliks is the recipient of numerous awards. She has a master’s degree from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, a doctorate from Stony Brook University, and an Artist Diploma from the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale in Imola, Italy. Her teachers include Leon Fleisher, Ann Schein, and Gilbert Kalish. She lives in New York City and is on the piano faculty of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. She performed her Pro Musicis debut recital in Weill Hall in 2006.

Program:

• Ludwig van Beethoven, Fantasy in G minor, Op. 77
• Franz Schubert, Sonata in A minor, Op. Posth. 143
• Franz Liszt, from Transcendental Etudes, No. 11 & 10
• Sofia Gubaidulina, Chaconne
• Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la Nuit, Poems for Piano

Tickets $25 (seniors/students $15) at the Box Office or online at www.CarnegieHall.org or CarnegieCharge 212-968-4288

For information, Pro Musicis, 212-787-0993 www.promusicis.org

An exciting selection of established and emerging poets and composers have been commissioned by the New York City based new music ensemble Lunatics at Large to write works on the theme of “sanctuary.” After its multi-disciplinary opening performance at Weill Recital Hall on March 21, 2011, where Lunatics at Large premiered the five commissioned chamber pieces and poets read their Sanctuary poems (which were also commissioned by Lunatics at Large), the program will be re-performed several times in actual sanctuaries (of a church and a synagogue) in New York City and at WMP Concert Hall.

“The Sanctuary Project” features composers André Brégégère, Mohammed Fairouz, Raphael Fusco, Laura Koplewitz, & Alex Shapiro; Their music is paired with poetry by Rob Buchert, Joanna Fuhrman, David Shapiro, Yerra Sugarman, & Ryan Vine.

Lunatics at Large group members include Katharine Dain (soprano), Jonathan Engle (flute), Ben Ringer (clarinet), Arthur Moeller (violin), Jen Herman (viola), Andrea Lee (cello) and Evi Jundt (piano).

Performances of The Sanctuary Project will happen in actual sanctuaries at Christ and Saint Stephen’s Church, 122 West 69th Street, New York City (April 8, 8pm) and at the Synagogue for the Arts, 49 White Street, New York City (April 10, 7pm), and at WMP Concert Hall , 31 East 28th Street, New York (April 21, 7:30pm). Tickets for all April performances are $20 for adults and $10 for students and seniors.

Works are:

Sanctuary by André Brégégère (b. 1975)
Poetry by Yerra Sugarman
>>This piece explores the vivid imagery of Sugarman’s poem and her vision of ‘Sanctuary’ as a repository for the past, embarking the listener on a musical journey through the intricate landscape of our collective memory.

Unwritten by Mohammed Fairouz (b. 1985)
Poetry by David Shapiro
>>Acclaimed composer for the voice Mohammed Fairouz’s latest cycle chronicles the last days and demise of Socrates “the greatest man who ever lived”.

Unsolicited Advice: Four Rules of Your Pal, Ward by Raphael Fusco (b. 1984)
Poetry by Ryan Vine
>>Fusco’s setting of Vine’s “Ward’s Rules” explores the therapeutic powers of laughter and advice whether it is solicited or not.

The Wondering Wayside by Laura Koplewitz (b. 1966)
Poetry by Joanna Fuhrman, David Shapiro, Yerra Sugarman & Ryan Vine
>>In “The Wondering Wayside,” a traveler asks questions of gods and angels, on a journey from desert, to mountains, temple, and across waves, in an impressionistic exploration of a 2lst century pilgrim’s progress.

Unabashedly More by Alex Shapiro (b. 1962)
Poetry by Rob Buchert
>>Each expressive note in Shapiro’s “Unabashedly More” creates a sanctuary for the listener; a safe place in which to experience an emotional journey from lyrically pensive to explosively joyous.

The poems will be read by the poets in between the performance of the chamber pieces. Three of the five commissioned chamber pieces (Fairouz, Fusco, and Koplewitz) include a vocal line – poetry from the participating poets set to music. Some of these poems are new (commissioned for this project), some older works. More information about poets and composers is available at www.lunaticsensemble.com.

ABOUT THE SANCTUARY PROJECT: COMMISSIONING AND ARTISTIC PROCESS

“The Sanctuary Project is an exploration of Sanctuary, which we all, creative artists, performing artists and public, connect to in very personal and different ways,” says Project Director Evi Jundt, also the pianist in the ensemble. “The creative insight gained through a collaborative process spanning over twelve months between poets, composers and performing musicians will represent a unique artistic investigation, inviting audiences to re-discover and expand their own conception of Sanctuary.”

Of the commissioning and artistic process, Jundt states: “we picked artists whose work we believed would be evocative of the theme ‘Sanctuary.’ First, the poets presented one new poem and some older works to the composers. The composers then chose which poet(s) they felt compelled to collaborate with. Each collaboration happened on its own terms: in one case, it resulted in a group of poems set to music in a song cycle; in another case, the poet helped find examples of folk music to be quoted in the composition. In the next stage, musical compositions served as inspiration for another new work by the poets. Finally, the poets – the initiators of the process – will join the musicians onstage while reading their work in between performances of the chamber pieces.”

ABOUT LUNATICS AT LARGE

Called “young, energetic and finely polished” by Allan Kozinn of the New York Times, Lunatics at Large is a large mixed ensemble combining voice, strings, winds and piano, and was formed in 2007 to explore the timbral possibilities of chamber music repertoire from the beginning of the 20th century until now. In thematic concerts, the group juxtaposes standard repertoire and chamber pieces from established composers of the 20th century with more recent works. Lunatics at Large thus encourages listeners to hear connections between works and appreciate very recent compositions in the perspective of the evolution of classical music over the last 110 years. Lunatics at Large is committed to working closely with living composers and to commissioning new pieces for its expanded Pierrot instrumentation. The group also embraces collaborative projects with artists from other art forms and is organizing several interdisciplinary performances involving poets, living composers and visual artists in upcoming seasons.

The Sanctuary Project is made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts, and from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Greenwich House Music School (GHMS) is pleased to present an evening devoted to vocalist/composer/improviser Joan La Barbara on Thursday, March 17 at 8 p.m., as part of the 25th anniversary of the North River Music series. “One of the great vocal virtuosas of our time” (San Francisco Examiner), Joan La Barbara has explored the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument, developing a unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques that have become her “signature sounds.” In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, she will join pianist Stephen Gosling to perform two John Cage works with text by James Joyce – “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” (1942) and its companion piece “Nowth Upon Nacht” (1984, in memoriam Cathy Berberian). The program also features Morton Feldman’s shortest composition, “Only” (1947), for voice alone with text by Rainer Maria Rilke, and “Gatekeeper” (2009-2010), for amplified voice and sonic atmosphere – an excerpt from La Barbara’s opera-in-progress inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf and dream fragments of Joseph Cornell. The evening will culminate in a solo improvisation, providing a unique and exciting insight into La Barbara’s vocal journey and creative process.

Founded by Frank Wigglesworth in 1985, GHMS’s North River Music is one of New York City’s first concert series devoted to new and experimental music. The concert will be followed by a reception.

WHEN: Thursday, March 17 at 8 p.m.

VENUE: Renee Weiler Concert Hall, Greenwich House Music School

46 Barrow Street (between Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC

TICKETS: $15 General Admission/$10 Students/Seniors

All tickets are payable at the door from 7:30pm

INFO: (212) 242-4770, www.greenwichhouse.org/programs/arts/music

John Cage’s “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” uses just three pitches to explore fragments from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, with rapping and tapping on the piano body and closed keyboard cover to hint at sounds of a strange forest. “Nowth Upon Nacht” also uses texts from “Finnegan’s Wake,” but, in sharp contract to the serenity of the preceding work, it is sung like a wild banshee shriek. Both works are included on Joan La Barbara singing through John Cage (New Albion NA035).

For several years, La Barbara has developed an opera on Virginia Woolf’s verbal constructs and the demons that plagued her. More recently, she has explored the fragments of dreams in Joseph Cornell’s journals and some of the dark recesses of Edgar Allan Poe’s mind. “Gatekeeper” draws on these and other sources to weave a solitary journey through the mysterious labyrinth of the mind, exploring the artistic process of bringing the essential internal struggle to fruition as a perceivable object. Ne(x)tworks, the collective of performing composers with whom La Barbara has worked since 2003, are the musicians whose sounds form part of the soundscape.

Morton Feldman’s elegy, “Only,” scored for solo voice, was composed in 1947, when the composer was just 21. Feldman had just been introduced to the works of the abstract expressionist painters – Pollock, Kline, Rothko and Guston – and their influence can already be felt in his use of silence as negative space. La Barbara first performed the work at the Holland Festival in 1988 from the roof of the State Opera House on the Leidseplein, at midnight, in the rain.

Composer/performer/sound artist Joan La Barbara has expanded the traditional boundaries of the voice, developing a unique vocabulary of techniques, including multiphonics, circular singing, ululation and glottal clicks. She has composed for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology and has produced eleven recordings of her own works. Her awards include an American Music Center Letter of Distinction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Meet The Composer/Creative Connections grants, and annual ASCAP Composer Awards. In 1977, La Barbara composed a multi-layered score for voice with electronics for a signing-alphabet animation for Children’s Television Workshop/Sesame Street, which has been broadcast worldwide. Her soundwork 73 POEMS, in collaboration with text-artist Kenneth Goldsmith, was included in The American Century Part II: Soundworks at The Whitney Museum of American Art. She was Artistic Director of the Carnegie Hall multi-year series When Morty met John, co-Artistic Director of New Music America festival in LA; and co-founded the performing composers collective ensemble Ne(x)tworks. Her multi-layered textural compositions have been performed at international festivals including Brisbane Biennial, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Warsaw Autumn, Frankfurt Feste, Lincoln Center, Metamusik-Berlin and Olympics Arts Festivals. La Barbara is a member of the Composition Faculty at New York University and maintains a private studio in New York.

25th ANNIVERSARY SEASON OF NORTH RIVER MUSIC

Schedule of Future Concerts:

>> Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 8 p.m.: JENNY LIN

One of today’s most respected young pianists, Jenny Lin will perform György Ligeti’s Études for piano, along with other works. Not to be missed! www.jennylin.net

>> Thursday, April 8, 2011 at 8 p.m.: MORTON SUBOTNICK

An evening with one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving interactive computer music systems. www.mortonsubotnick.com

About Greenwich House Music School:

Founded by Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch in 1902, Greenwich House is a nonprofit settlement house which offers cultural and educational programs, social and health services and opportunities for civic involvement to New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds – from any neighborhood. Greenwich House Music School, located in the historical West Village, provides a wide range of concerts and recitals as well as instructional classes and outreach in NYC’s public schools. With a faculty of about 50 instructors, its has 520 students ranging in ages from 3 years old to seniors — from beginner to advanced — in classes and private lessons, in piano, voice, violin and viola, cello, clarinet, flute, guitar, five-string banjo, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp and the Chinese qin, a seven-string plucked instrument. www.greenwichhouse.org

Funding for North River Music is provided, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Greenwich House Music School (GHMS) is pleased to present acclaimed multi-woodwind performer and master improviser J.D. Parran [Listen to audio tracks by Parran] on Friday, March 11 at 8 p.m., as part of the 25th anniversary season of North River Music. Parran will display his outstanding skills as a performer, improviser and composer in “Windows of Collaboration” – a solo concert for clarinet and low clarinets, featuring works written for Parran by composers with whom he has long associations. The evening will feature the world premiere of Leave to Remain (2010) by composer and Greenwich House Music School’s director, Menon Dwarka; the solo version of You Have a Right To Remain Silent by Anthony Davis; “…vikings, unless…” by Douglas Anderson; and selections from Parran’s latest CD release, Window Spirits (2010), including compositions by James Jabbo Ware and Parran.

Founded by Frank Wigglesworth in 1985, GHMS’s North River Music is one of New York City’s first concert series devoted to new and experimental music. The concert will be followed by a reception.

WHEN: Friday, March 11 at 8 p.m.

VENUE: Renee Weiler Concert Hall, Greenwich House Music Schoool

46 Barrow Street (between Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC

TICKETS: $15 General Admission/$10 Students/Seniors

All tickets are payable at the door from 7:30pm

INFO: (212) 242-4770, greenwichhouse.org/programs/arts/music

This concert features the world premiere of Leave to Remain by Menon Dwarka, for solo alto clarinet and electronics. This collaborative/improvisation bears the artistic fruit of Parran and Dwarka’s work at Harlem School of the Arts and Greenwich House Music School. Leave to Remain derives its name from a British legal term for a person who has not yet become a citizen. Menon Dwarka’s post-colonial approach to composition, combining spectral and serial elements in order to create a sound world that is neither eastern nor western, is, as the title suggest, written from a perspective of someone in between states.

Anthony Davis’ You Have A Right to Remain Silent was originally composed as a clarinet concerto for J.D. Parran – Davis’ clarinetist of choice. The work premiered at the Miller Theater in 2007, and will be presented in a solo version for the Greenwich House concert.

Further works on this program include “…vikings, unless…” by Douglas Anderson; Emotions by Ware/Parran; Parenthetically by Anthony Davis; and Breeze Binder and Solo for Alto Clarinet by J.D. Parran.

About the Artists:

J.D. Parran has mastered a wide variety of woodwind instruments, including alto clarinet, contrabass clarinet, and bass saxophone. He has recorded and performed with Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Don Byron, Andrew Hill, Adam Rudolph, Wadada Leo Smith and James Jabbo Ware, among many others. His most recent recordings include Window Spirits Solo (Mutable) and Kokopilau (Freedonia), and his releases as a leader include J.D. Parran & Spirit Stage, and Omegathorp: Living City (Y’All). Parran has premiered a concerto by Anthony Davis at Miller Theatre and Spoleto USA; performed the music of Julius Hemphill with Marty Ehrlich and Ursula Oppens at Tanglewood and the Gardner Museum; and travels regularly with cabaret vocalist Rosemary George.

Menon Dwarka, in addition to being the director of Greenhouse Music School, is also a composer and writer. The former music program director of the 92nd Street Y and Harlem School of the Arts, he has also been a staff composer at several New York City firms, creating music and sound design for television advertising. For Dwarka, a Canadian of South Asian heritage who was born in Georgetown, Guyana, music is a unique way to explore the various aspects of being between cultures, similar to the way many post-colonial writers approach their subject matter. His involvement with the commercial music industry has led Dwarka to integrate a greater use of computer-assisted composition into his most recent work. Menon Dwarka is also a regular contributor to Listen Magazine.

25th ANNIVERSARY SEASON OF NORTH RIVER MUSIC

Schedule of future concerts:

>> Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 8 p.m.: JOAN LA BARBARA
An evening devoted to Joan La Barbara, “one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time” (San Francisco Examiner). www.joanlabarbara.com

>> Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 8 p.m.: JENNY LIN
One of today’s most respected young pianists, Jenny Lin will perform György Ligeti’s Études for piano, along with other works. Not to be missed! www.jennylin.net

>> Thursday, April 8, 2011 at 8 p.m.: MORTON SUBOTNICK
An evening with one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving interactive computer music systems. www.mortonsubotnick.com

About Greenwich House Music School:

Founded by Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch in 1902, Greenwich House is a nonprofit settlement house which offers cultural and educational programs, social and health services and opportunities for civic involvement to New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds – from any neighborhood. Greenwich House Music School, located in the historical West Village, provides a wide range of concerts and recitals as well as instructional classes and outreach in NYC’s public schools. With a faculty of about 50 instructors, its has 520 students ranging in ages from 3 years old to seniors — from beginner to advanced — in classes and private lessons, in piano, voice, violin and viola, cello, clarinet, flute, guitar, five-string banjo, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp and the Chinese qin, a seven-string plucked instrument. www.greenwichhouse.org

Funding for North River Music is provided, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Chicago’s Chinese Fine Arts Society (CFAS) celebrates the Chinese New Year with colorful, traditional music, dance and martial arts performances at  Navy Pier’s Crystal Gardens, 600 E. Grand Ave., Chicago, on Sunday, February 13, 2011 from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Navy Pier’s Chinese New Year Celebration is a part of the Neighborhoods of the World series, Sundays, Feb. 6 – Apr. 3, 2011, in the Crystal Gardens.

These Free Public Performances will feature:

• Lion Dance and Martial Arts by the Chicago Chinese Cultural Center Lion Dance Troupe
• Chinese Fine Arts Society’s Chinese Instrument Ensemble featuring YuQi Deng (GuZheng), Erhu: Alexander Li (Erhu), Kerry Leung (Bamboo Flute) and Brent Roman on Yangqin. GuZheng, Erhu, and Yangqin are traditional Chinese instruments.
• Jin Qiu Yue Dance Studio featuring students of Northwestern University, members of Little Star Dance Troupe, Flying Fairies Dance Group, and Oak Park Daughter’s Dance Group
• Bei Dou Kung Fu All Stars
• Peking Opera excerpt
• Hakka Dance Troupe led by Rei Ling Chang
• CFAS Chorus, under the direction of Lori Ho
• Shadow Puppet Show led by Lori Ho
• The Magical Strings of Youth of the Betty Haag Academy of Music
• Fashion Show including traditional Chinese costumes from various dynasties

CFAS is dedicated to the presentation and promotion of Chinese Cultural Arts. By offering high quality professional performances of traditional and contemporary music compositions by Chinese and western composers, Chinese music on both traditional and western instruments, and Chinese dance and martial arts, CFAS seeks to reach a broad range of people and heighten their awareness of the richness of Chinese culture.