News

by on


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.

by on

New music collective Ensemble Pi is pleased to return to The Cooper Union’s Great Hall in  New York City, for its sixth annual Peace Project concert, Echosystem: Protecting our Water, on Saturday, March 19 at 8 p.m. The evening will bring together works inspired by the environment, especially the earth’s supply of water and the dangers this vital element is currently facing. The Cooper Union’s Great Hall is at 7 East 7th St. at Third Ave., NYC. Tickets are $15 ($10 for students and seniors). More information at (212) 362-4745 or www.ensemble-pi.org

Highlights include George Crumb’s masterpiece, Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for three Masked Players (1971), inspired from the singing of the humpback whale; the Premiere of Kristin Norderval’s Echo Systems (2011), composed in response to both the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 1989 sinking of the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska; Pete Seeger’s classic song, Rainbow Race, in a new arrangement by Karl Kramer (2011); and Christopher Kaufman’s Hudson Valley (2010), capturing the world of the Hudson River Valley through music and film footage, including the dangers of natural gas drilling.

Echosystem: Protecting Our Water is presented as part of the Ensemble Pi’s Peace Project, which was launched by the collective in 2005 with the goal of opening a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the world’s current and critical issues. Performers will include Kristin Norderval, voice and laptop; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Idith Meshulam, piano; Clair Bryant, cello; Karl Kramer, French horn; Barry Crawford, flute; and Nick Gallas, clarinet.

Composed in 1971 for the New York Camerata, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (The Voice of the Whale) was hailed as a “beautiful dream vision of the deep” (Andrew Porter, The New Yorker). The work was inspired by the singing of the humpback whale, a tape recording the composer heard two or three years previously, and is scored for flute, cello and piano. Each of the three performers is required to wear a black half-mask (or visor-mask). “By effacing the sense of human projection,” the composer writes, the masks “are intended to represent, symbolically, the powerful impersonal forces of nature (i.e. nature dehumanized).” Crumb also suggested that the work be performed under deep-blue stage lighting. The form of Vox Balaenae is a simple three-part design, consisting of a prologue, a set of variations named after the geological eras, and an epilogue.

Kristin Norderval’s Echo Systems, for voice, bass flute, and electronics (www.norderval.org), draws from the tales of Rosina Philippe from the Grand Bayou in Louisiana, and Faith Gemmill from the Arctic Village in northeast Alaska – two leaders of Native American communities who have faced the worst American environmental disasters to date: the explosion of the BP oil rig in Louisiana and the sinking of the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska. Playing with the concept of feedback, musical, environmental, and political, Echo Systems explores the fragility of our shared eco-system – or our common circulatory system on this planet.

After the traumatic political events of 1968 in the U.S. – iconic folk singer/activist Pete Seeger briefly flirted with giving up singing. Instead, he grew a beard and, adopting the “Think global, act local” philosophy, helped build the sloop Clearwater, which sailed the Hudson River, advocating the cleanup of that polluted waterway (which runs beside his home in Beacon, NY), and ecology in general. Rainbow Race was released in his 1971 Grammy-winning album, Pete, and the song has been arranged for voice, piano, cello, violin, flute, French horn, and clarinet by Karl Kramer for the Ensemble Pi’s concert.

Hudson Valley, by Chris Kaufman (www.chkaufman.com), originally commissioned by Quintet of the Americas, will be performed in an arrangement for flute, violin, horn, clarinet, cello and piano. The work combines live performance, sound design, speech, and a film composed from both natural images and the art of Ken-Cro-Ken and Alice Cotton. The composer gathered hundreds of natural sounds from the Hudson River Valley environment (ocean, whale, dolphin, wolf, coyote) to create backgrounds and musical textures against and with which these sounds are performed. The penultimate movement, which depicts the dangers of natural gas drilling, features metallic percussion and original instruments made of metal sounds as well as actual ambient pile-driver sounds.

Ensemble Pi is a socially conscious new music group dedicated to performing the music of living and undiscovered composers. Since its inception in 2001, under the artistic direction of pianist Idith Meshulam, Ensemble Pi has developed innovative, collaborative and educational programs that bridge the gap between new music and new audiences. Every year, since 2005, the ensemble presents an annual multi-media peace concert at The Cooper Union. The project aims to open a dialogue between ideas and music on the great issues of the day, through the commissioning of new works and collaborations with visual artists, writers, actors and journalists. Collaborators have included the South African artist William Kentridge, American journalist/writer Naomi Wolf, Iraqi actress Namaa Alward, and Israeli philosopher/activist Anat Biletzki. Ensemble Pi has also championed the work of contemporary composers by premiering and commissioning works by Frederic Rzewski, Philip Miller, Alice Shields, Kristin Norderval, Karim Al-Zand, and Peter Ablinger, among others. In the fall of 2010, Ensemble Pi released its first CD, Keep Going: The Music of Elias Tanenbaum (Parma Records). In 2011, the ensemble will celebrate the 85th birthday of composer Gunther Schuller at Symphony Space; and in 2012, it will tour the U.S. with Black Box – a program of composition set to the films and projections of William Kentridge – along with the Kentridge exhibition.

Christopher Kaufman has composed extensively in the classical and film genres. He is the recipient of awards and commissions from the M.J.F. Fund, The Saltonstall Foundation, CAP Individual Artists Award, UCC Council on the Arts, Sage Fellowship, SOS, Community Arts Partnership Grant, Meet the Composer Grant, and the MacDowell Arts Colony. Kaufman was a Featured Artist for Obama Music, Arts and Entertainment. His music has been performed at the United Nations, ACA Festival of American Music, the internationals Musikinstitut in Darmstadt, June in Buffalo, the American Composers Orchestra readings, the Ithaca Festival, the Northeastern Composers Conference, the Charles Ives Center for American Music, Encore Summer Music and Eastman’s Musica Nova.

Acclaimed as a composer, singer, and improviser, Kristin Norderval has premiered numerous new works for voice and presented original compositions at festivals and concert houses in Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. As a soloist she has performed with the Philip Glass Ensemble, the San Francisco Symphony, Oslo Sinfonietta, and the Netherlands Dance Theater, and has recorded with Aurora, CRI, Deep Listening, Eurydice, Koch International, and New World Records. In 2005 Norderval received the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in recognition of her innovative work as a composer. Commissions have included works for Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen, the Bucharest International Dance Festival in Romania, jill sigman/thinkdance in New York City, and the early music ensemble Parthenia. Norderval’s compositions can be heard on Deep Listening, Koch International, and Everglade.

This event is generously funded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Argosy Foundation, Meet the Composer, and Open Meadow Foundation.

by on

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.

by on

Hailed by the critics as the “female reincarnation of Liszt” and a “piano lioness”, Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled the audiences throughout the world. This concert, hosted by the Ukrainian Institute of America, will feature selections from Shelest’s newly released CD “Pictures at an Exhibition” including pieces by Mussorgsky, Glinka and Tchaikovsky.

The Ukrainian Institute of America is located on the Museum Mile on the corner of East 79th Street and 5th Avenue.

The recital will be followed by a wine and cheese reception and CD signing.

Please RSVP to info@dvsworldwide by Sunday, February 20th. For additional information, call 646-450-3879

by on

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.