The 23rd season of Cutting Edge Concerts features Mrs. President, the opera

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, the 2020 CEC Festival presents theatrical works by three women composers: Dalit Warshaw, Marisa Michelson, and Victoria Bond

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, Cutting Edge Concerts presents Mrs. President in concert on April 27

April 13, 20, & 27, 2020 at Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in New York City

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage. What better way to celebrate women’s right to vote than with an opera about the first woman presidential candidate? The real-life Victoria Woodhull – a courageous as well as an outrageous suffragist – ran for president in 1872, and is the inspiration for Victoria Bond’s opera Mrs. President.

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 7:30 pm at Symphony Space, Victoria Bond's Cutting Edge Concerts presents a concert performance of her opera, Mrs. President. In Mrs. President, composer Victoria Bond and librettist Hilary Bell have crafted a seething drama of ambition and betrayal, which tells the story of Woodhull's visionary struggle to defy history and become the first female President of the United States in 1872, before women had been granted the right to vote. She was branded “Mrs. Satan” by the press because she posed a threat to society, and jailed on election night. In the final scene, Woodhull, in her prison cell, silenced but not defeated, looks ahead to a future generation of women who will realize her vision of equality.

Tickets are $25 in advance ($35 day of show) and are available at symphonyspace.org.

Also on the 2020 Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival:

• On April 13: New Music Theater, CEC in partnership with Quog Music Theater’s first Eric Salzman Award for New Music Theater presents Song of Song of Songs by Marisa Michelson. Also on the program is Dalit Warshaw's The Letters of Mademoiselle C. Details below and at Symphony Space.

• On April 20: 21st Century Trombone, trombonists John Romeo and Steve Norrell (MET Opera Orchestra), Colin Williams and George Curran (NY Philharmonic), and JoDee Davis (Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory) perform 21st Century works for trombone. Details below and at Symphony Space.

Inspired by Pierre Boulez's series, "Perspective Encounters", the composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts in 1998. With more than two decades of concerts, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented over 300 new works by nearly 200 composers. Each program highlights the music of living composers, all of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers. CEC has been called "a full-throttle commitment to contemporary music" by Chamber Music America.

Calendar Listing

Mrs. President, the opera

Victoria Bond, composer

Hillary Bell, librettist

Monday, April 27, 2020
7:30 pm

Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at
Peter Norton Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street
New York City

Tel: (212) 864-5400
Tickets are $25 in advance ($35 day of show) and are available at symphonyspace.org

Cast

Valerie Bernhardt, soprano (Victoria Woodhull)
Scott Ramsay, tenor (Henry Ward Beecher)
Michael Kelly, baritone (Col. James Blood)
Katie Hannigan, mezzo-soprano (Roxie)
Keely Futterer, soprano (Isabella Beecher)
David Charles Tay, tenor (Joseph Treat)
Addie Rose Forstman, soprano (Elizabeth Tilton)

Marc Peloquin, piano
Victoria Bond, conductor

April 13, 7:30 pm | Cutting Edge Concerts: Two Women by Two Women

Cutting Edge Concerts, in partnership with Quog Music Theater’s first Eric Salzman Award for New Music Theater Composition, presents Song of Song of Songs, with words and music by Marisa Michelson. Performed by Marisa Michelson with Constellation Choir and scored for twelve singers, bansuri flute, melodica, cello and percussion, the work defies category, encompassing live music video, oratorio, opera and ritual. Also on the program is The Letters of Mademoiselle C. by Dalit Warshaw.

April 20, 7:30 pm | Cutting Edge Concerts: The Art of the 21st Century Trombone

The Art of the 21st Century Trombone features trombonists and bass trombonists from the Metropolitan Opera (John Romeo and Steve Norrell), New York Philharmonic (Colin Williams and George Curran), and Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory (JoDee Davis) performing new compositions for solo trombone. Works by Harrison J. Collins, John Stevens, Anthony Barfield, Kenneth Fuchs, and Victoria Bond.

April 27, 7:30 pm | Cutting Edge Concerts: Mrs. President, the opera

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, Cutting Edge Concerts presents a concert performance of the opera, Mrs. President, about the first woman to run for President, by composer Victoria Bond, and librettist Hilary Bell. The cast includes: Valerie Bernhardt (Victoria Woodhull); Scott Ramsay (Henry Ward Beecher); Michael Kelly (Col. James Blood); Katie Hannigan (Roxie); Keely Futterer (Isabella Beecher); David Charles Tay (Joseph Treat); Addie Rose Forstman (Elizabeth Tilton). With pianist Marc Peloquin and conducted by Victoria Bond. 

New York Classical Review reviews Daedalus Quartet at Baruch PAC

Daedalus Quartet captures emotional depths of music by exiles

By Eric C. Simpson

It’s no secret that not all great performances happen in the biggest concert halls. This is especially true in the realm of chamber music, where a library or a small lecture hall is a more apposite setting than an auditorium built for thousands.

Just east of Madison Square Park, the Baruch Performing Arts Center hosts an impressive variety of musical programming in two small theaters underneath Baruch College’s main campus. On Tuesday evening, the talented Daedalus Quartet offered a program of works whose authors were all political exiles, forced by violence to leave their home countries.

As powerful as that idea is, it was the depth of the pieces themselves, rather than any thematic connection among them, that stood out in Tuesday’s concert. 

The evening began with the Third String Quartet of Viktor Ullmann. Ullmann, who was later killed at Auschwitz, wrote the quartet while a prisoner at Terezin, and the piece conveys deep emotions, even if they are not always obvious.

Open harmonies in the bars that begin the first movement feel bright but betray deep sadness, and Daedalus here brought a warm, full sound, breathing together from the start. The music proceeds with a waterfall-like flow, its apparent serenity interrupted by interludes of agitated arpeggios and nervous tremolos. In the scherzo, a waltz, at once playful and macabre, brings much harsher tonality and acid harmonies.

Long, slow, heavy breaths in the Largo are followed by a feeling of unease in the closing Rondo, where quiet tremolos create keen anticipation. Daedalus brilliantly captured the emotional ambiguity that makes the music at once so penetrating and uncomfortable.

Introducing his string quartet, Babel, Gabriel Bolaños explained that he had been born “in exile,” to use his phrase, his family having fled from Nicaragua to Colombia during the Sandinista Rebellion, just before his birth. Each of Babel’s five movements is a portrayal in music of particular features of languages to which Bolaños feels a personal connection. His musical language, though heavily gestural and reliant on extended technique, does feel expressive—though what exactly it expresses is a mystery. Overall, the piece is difficult to follow, even with program notes hinting at the ideas behind each movement.

“Spanish” presents little flashes of sound in short, disjointed phrases made up of glissandos, ricochets, and harmonics. In “English + Chinantecan,” the violins and the viola brush the strings while the cello traces a lonely melody. In “Nuxálk,” fierce pizzicato lines among the upper strings interlock in frantic conversation with each other while the cello scrapes a long, pitchless tone. The jumble of all these voices, each struggling to be heard in “Greenlandic,” gives way to a slow, chilly crawl towards resolution in “Vowel Harmony.”

The program’s second half consisted of the profound Piano Quintet by Mieczysław Weinberg, who fled Poland for the Soviet Union at the start of the Second World War. Joined by pianist Renana Gutman, Daedalus gave a gorgeous, rich reading of this emotionally complex piece.

After an abortive start when second violinist Matilda Kaul’s instrument slipped out of tune, Daedalus and Gutman began beautifully, with a warm pulse of strings supporting the piano’s haunting, discursive melody. There is a composed focus in the music of this first movement, conveying a sense that fraught emotions hide just below the surface. In spite of the hall’s dry acoustic, the musicians managed to achieve a full sound through rich dynamic definition.

The Allegretto brought just a hint of a springing dance step before ending in an astonishing hush, but a more exuberant romp came out in the boisterous waltz of the Presto, where there was a hint of comedy in the melodramatic melancholy of the dance. 

The most substantial movement of the five is the Largo, which unfolds in a deliberate but arresting development of ominously resonating chords. In it we hear the most emotional intensity and complexity of the quintet, as it passes through a number of musical ideas in succession. Out of the initial gloom emerges a wandering violin cadenza, in which Min-Young Kim channeled a folk spirit. Suddenly there appears a bright E-major chord in the piano that glides into an airy reverie in which longing, contentment, and sadness all mix together.

After the many subtle emotions of the Largo, it was a shock to hear the aggressive, gritty start of the Allegro agitato, which moves into something like an Irish reel. Daedalus and Gutman gave exuberant, heart-racing performance of the finale to finish off an impressive evening of challenging music.

Baruch Performing Arts Center’s next chamber event is 7:30 p.m. November 20, when the Alexander String Quartet performs works by Shostakovich, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. baruch.cuny.edu

Hours of Freedom at Ahavath Achim Synagogue

Hours of Freedom: The Story of the Terezín Composer

December 5, 2019

Ahavath Achim Synagogue

Produced by The Defiant Requiem Foundation as the 2019 Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture

Hours of Freedom combines live music, video, and narrative to highlight works by fifteen composers imprisoned in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) Concentration Camp during WWII

On December 5, 2019 at 7:00 pm The Defiant Requiem Foundation performs Hours of Freedom: The Story of the Terezín Composer. Hours of Freedom is a concert-drama that showcases music by fifteen composers imprisoned in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) during World War II. The performance is at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue (600 Peachtree Battle Ave NW, Atlanta). Admission is free; reservations are required by November 30 at this link. This performance is the featured 2019 Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture.

Hours of Freedom: The Story of the Terezín Composer combines video, music, and narrative to highlight compositions by Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Rudolf Karel, and about a dozen others. Much of this music was the last that was composed by these gifted artists - many of whom were in their 20s and 30s when they perished. Several were destined to be the next generation of significant Czech composers, following in the footsteps of Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček, Martinu, and Suk. Some of their compositions reflect the personal, eyewitness account of the agony and suffering of camp life, while others express the assurance of a return to life as it was before the war.

The music is performed by vocalists Arianna Zukerman, Leah Wool, and David Kravitz, concertmaster and solo violinist Herbert Greenberg, cellist Julian Schwarz, pianist Phillip Silver, with the Hours of Freedom Chamber Players. Program highlights include:

• Ullmann's 7th Piano Sonata, which contains hidden sociological and patriotic messages.

• The Etude for Strings by Pavel Haas, which will combine the live ensemble together with Terezín musicians captured on film in August 1944.

• A song cycle by Hans Krasa, which evokes heart-breaking longing.

• Karel Svenk's Everything is Possible, which represents the cabaret "voice" of Terezín from one of Europe's most imaginative artists.

Murry Sidlin, the founder of The Defiant Requiem Foundation, is the creator and writer of Hours of Freedom and conducts this performance. The performance is generously supported by The Molly Blank Fund of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

2019 marks the 31st year of The Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture. This prestigious event has featured Nobel Peace Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners, United States Presidents and Vice Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, and Israeli Prime Ministers, among other eminent national and international guests. Stuart Eizenstat, The Defiant Requiem Foundation board chair since 2011, established the series in 1987 to honor the memory of his family members.

Ahavath Achim Synagogue cultivates a Jewish community of purposeful belonging. We inspire and support spiritual journeys by deepening relationships with one another. We believe it is at the crossroads of our spiritual paths that life’s purpose and God might be found.

Murry Sidlin and The Defiant Requiem Foundation also produced an Emmy-nominated documentary film narrated by Bebe Neuwirth that has been praised as a "gripping documentary" (Examiner.com), with "a very powerful message" (CNN). More information is at DefiantRequiem.org.

CALENDAR LISTING

Hours of Freedom: The Story of the Terezín Composer

Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 7:00 pm

Ahavath Achim Synagogue

600 Peachtree Battle Ave NW, Atlanta

aasynagogue.org/hours-of-freedom

Produced by The Defiant Requiem Foundation

as the 2019 Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture

Murry Sidlin, creator & conductor

Callan White, narrator

Arianna Zukerman, soprano

Leah Wool, mezzo-soprano

Jonathan Blalock, tenor

David Kravitz, baritone

Herbert Greenberg, concertmaster and solo violin

Julian Schwarz, cello

Phillip Silver, piano

Hours of Freedom Chamber Players

Admission is free, registration is required.

Reserve by November 30th at aasynagogue.org/hours-of-freedom

2019/20 Performances

Defiant Requiem Foundation

November 4, 2019: Defiant Requiem | Budapest | Hungarian State Opera

50th worldwide performance of Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín

December 5, 2019: Hours of Freedom | Atlanta | Ahavath Achim Synagogue

Produced by The Defiant Requiem Foundation as the 2019 Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture.

March 28, 2020: Defiant Requiem | Valdosta Symphony Orchestra

Presented by the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra, Valdosta State University Department of Music, and The Defiant Requiem Foundation with funding from the Gretchen M. Brooks University Residency Project.

Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra announces its 2019/20 season

"MUSIC WE’VE CREATED, MUSIC THAT HAS SHAPED US, MUSIC WOVEN THROUGH WASHINGTON HEIGHTS’ TAPESTRY OF CULTURES"

Head uptown for the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra's 2019/20 season of symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and more. Highlights include:

Music from the Caribbean - opening with Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón’s What Keeps Me Awake, WHCO's season includes Valerie Coleman's Afro-Cuban Concerto, as well as music by Dominican composers José Dolores Cerón and Bienvenido Bustamante.

Guest artists - joining WHCO this season are acclaimed guest artists Nilko Andreas (guitar), Amos Fayette (violin), Abigail Fischer (soprano), and Patrick Bartley (alto saxophone).

Great works of the past - in addition to celebrating Beethoven's 250th anniversary with his 5th Symphony, this season includes landmarks of orchestral repertoire from Brahms' Symphony No. 4 to Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 .

Composers from Washington Heights - 'Buy Local'? How about 'Play Local'? Featuring works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Jessica Meyer, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Peter Gordon, and more, WHCO's 2019/20 season features many works by composers from Washington Heights.

Tickets to all shows: Adults $5 in advance / $7 at the door | Students ages 17 and under FREE | Young listeners welcome

Based in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra is a professional ensemble that presents affordable and accessible concerts to the community. 2019/20 marks the orchestra’s fifth season. Comprised of musicians from Upper Manhattan, the orchestra presents engaging concerts with a diverse repertoire; including favorite classical works, genre bending crossover pieces, and works by living composers. The WHCO was founded in 2015 by conductor and music director Chris Whittaker. The WHCO strives to engage the people of Washington Heights and neighboring communities through exemplary musical performances and innovative educational programming. The WHCO is a non-profit performing arts organization.

WHCO's 2019/20 Season

What Keeps Me Awake

October 18, 7:00 pm @ George Washington Educational Campus - (549 Audubon Ave.)

October 19, 3:00 pm @ Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.)

The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra kicks-off its fifth season with Angélica Negrón’s probing and wandering soundscape What Keeps Me Awake, Brahms’ simmering 4th symphony, and Villa-Lobos' Guitar Concerto with soloist Nilko Andreas. Friends of WHCO are invited after Saturday's concert for a post-concert reception featuring a neighborhood coffee tasting.

Program

Angélica Negrón: What Keeps Me Awake

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Guitar Concerto, featuring soloist Nilko Andreas

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98

Arroz con Schnitzel

November 15, 8:00 pm @ Our Savior’s Atonement Lutheran (178 Bennett Ave.)

November 16, 3:00 pm @ Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.)

Enjoy a distinctive musical dinner as tasty and diverse as schnitzel and rice! The concert features Washington Heights-native Valerie Coleman’s “Afro-Cuban Concerto,” Mozart’s timeless Clarinet Quintet, featuring WHCO principal strings and clarinetist John Hong, and Arnold Schoenberg’s revolutionary Chamber Symphony that launched his new expressionist style and sparked the creation of the 2nd Viennese school of composition. Friends of WHCO are invited after Saturday's concert for a post-concert reception featuring local food and a group salsa dance lesson.

Program

Valerie Coleman: Afro-Cuban Concerto

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581

Arnold Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9

Melodies Pour Out of Me

February 7, 2020 7:00 pm @ George Washington Educational Campus - (549 Audubon Ave.)

February 8, 3:00 pm @ Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.)

It’s the summer of 1889, and Antonín Dvořák is on fire. He’s just about to begin composing what would become his eighth symphony, and he writes to his friend with unabashed confidence: “It’s going unexpectedly easily… the melodies simply pour out of me!” This concert features melodically bold music from three centuries. Cerón’s A la caída de la tarde (At the End of the Afternoon) is a beautifully nostalgic and flowing soundscape from the Dominican classical tradition. Music Director Chris Whittaker presents his new violin concerto for former WHCO-concertmaster Amos Fayette. The concert concludes with Dvořák's sublime and melodious 8th Symphony. Friends of WHCO are invited after Saturday's concert for a post-concert reception featuring a local beer tasting.

Program

José Dolores Cerón: A la caída de la tarde

Chris Whittaker: Violin Concerto featuring Amos Fayette

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88

Above 155th Street

March 20, 8:00 pm @ Our Savior’s Atonement Lutheran (178 Bennett Ave.)

March 21, 3:00 pm @ Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.)

A musical snapshot of a time and place: the community of classical composers and performers living in Washington Heights. Featuring works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Jessica Meyer, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, Peter Gordon, and Joel Hoffman, the Strings of WHCO perform works by a collection of compelling Uptown voices for a concert you’ll only find above 155th street. Friends of WHCO are invited after Saturday's concert for a post-concert reception featuring tastings from neighborhood restaurants.

Program

Peter Gordon: Magic and Transformation

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė: Sort Sol

Aaron Jay Kernis: Sarabanda in Memoriam

Jessica Meyer: Through Which We Flow

Joel Hoffman: Crossing Points

Strings of the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra

Chris Whittaker, Music Director

Your Distant Destiny

May 15, 7:00 pm @ George Washington Educational Campus - (549 Audubon Ave.)

May 16, 3:00 pm @ Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.)

The final program of the season pairs a new chamber orchestra version of Paul Brantley's On the Pulse of the Morning featuring soprano Abigail Fischer with Dominican-composer Bienvenido Bustamante's rarely heard Concierto para Saxofón featuring Patrick Bartley on Alto Saxophone. The season closes with Beethoven's monumental Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth.

Program

Paul Brantley: On the Pulse of Morning featuring Abigail Fischer, Soprano (New chamber orchestra version, commissioned on the work’s 25th anniversary)

Bienvenido Bustamante: Concierto para Saxofón featuring Patrick Bartley, Alto Saxophone

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

Orli Shaham's Bach Yard – formerly Baby Got Bach – is proud to announce its Spring 2020 Season!

Orli Shaham’s Bach Yard performs

new interactive concerts in association

with Ensemble Connect

Performances on February 23 and

April 26 at Merkin Hall in New York City

and on March 14 at Princeton University

“I LOVED that you really taught the kids stuff. My child was TOTALLY ENTHRALLED. So smart. Well done!!” - parent testimonial

Orli Shaham’s interactive concert series for kids, Baby Got Bach has a new name - Orli Shaham's Bach Yard – and an expanded program. Bach Yard combines live ensemble performances with storytelling, costumed musicians, and a host of activities in which children can take part. The interactive concerts introduce musical concepts, instruments and the experience of concert-going to children age pre-Kindergarten to early elementary.

The concert pianist Orli Shaham performs with orchestras and in recitals around the world. As the interactive concert series for children that she founded developed and grew, it became clear that a new name was in order. “Since our live concert series is aimed toward pre-kindergarten through early elementary age children, we decided that the name “Bach Yard” was much more descriptive and appropriate,” said Ms. Shaham. Thus, Orli Shaham’s Bach Yard (“OSBY” for short) was born.

Orli Shaham's Bach Yard: Spring 2020 Season

Sunday, February 23, 2020, 10:30 am: Winter Winds at Merkin Hall - presented by Kaufman Music Center, in association with Ensemble Connect - New York, NY

Saturday, March 14, 1:00 pm: Welcome the Winds! At Princeton University Concerts, in association with Ensemble Connect - Princeton, NJ

Sunday, April 26, 10:30 pm: Spring Strings at Merkin Hall - presented by Kaufman Music Center, in association with Ensemble Connect - New York, NY

GUEST PERFORMERS: ENSEMBLE CONNECT

Orli Shaham’s Bach Yard is excited to present new interactive concerts in association with Ensemble Connect, the fellowship program created by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. This ensemble is made up of the finest young professional classical musicians who combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. Read more about Ensemble Connect at this link.

“We are beyond thrilled to be collaborating with Ensemble Connect,” said Orli Shaham. “I have worked with these fine musicians for a number of years in various capacities, and I have found them to be the most engaging and talented performing artists around.”

Dec. 15 at National Sawdust: Legendary Soprano Lucy Shelton performs works by Elliott Carter, Igor Stravinsky, Ruth Crawford Seeger and others

Ms. Shelton’s recital is part of the 2019-2020 Chris Grymes’ Open G Series, which begins with a George Crumb portrait concert on Oct. 28

“Shelton’s musicianship, technique, and intelligence are unfailing…” - The Boston Globe

Chris Grymes’ Open G Series at National Sawdust kicks off its second season with a portrait concert of George Crumb on October 28, with the composer in attendance. The season continues with legendary vocalist Lucy Shelton on December 15.

Lucy Shelton' performance features a mélange of short works by composers with whom she has worked extensively, including Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Miriam Gideon, Shulamit Ran, and George Rochberg; as well as composers whose works she provided the first major or complete recordings of — songs by John Cage, Ruth Crawford, and Igor Stravinsky. Now in her 75th year, Lucy is a direct link to many of the most important creative minds of the 20th century, and continues to be a proponent of musical and vocal experimentation through her performances and her extensive teaching and coaching in New York City and throughout the world.

The concert will be in a format of a five course meal, with Shelton spontaneously selecting the order of each ‘course’. Performing with Ms. Shelton are pianists Robert Fleitz, Jeremy Gill, Yoon Lee and Sophiko Simsive. Program and ticket details are below.

Chris Grymes founded Open G Records with a philosophy to produce music that is rooted in the classical tradition, but delivered in a way that will resonate with current and future generations of music fans. Having released a half dozen recordings, Open G has expanded to include a concert series hosted at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.

Chris Grymes’ Open G Series at National Sawdust continues in spring 2020:

• Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg performing works by Nordic composers, including Kaija Saariaho, Bent Sørensen and Per Nørgård on February 2, 2020

• Composer and soprano Nia Franklin (2019 Miss America) performs a showcase of works by women of African descent in May

• Fidelio Trio, a piano trio from Ireland, pairs music from the British Isles with American works in a program that includes Louis Karchin, Helen Grime and Ann Cleare on June 14

• Clarinetist Chris Grymes himself takes the stage in late spring, performing chamber works written for him.

Tickets for soprano Lucy Shelton's performance on December 15 are $29 for general admission and are available at nationalsawdust.org or (646) 779-8455. National Sawdust is located at 80 North 6th Street in Brooklyn.

Winner of two Walter W. Naumburg Awards - as chamber musician and solo recitalist - soprano Lucy Shelton continues to enjoy an international career bringing her dramatic vocalism and brilliant interpretive skills to repertoire of all periods. An esteemed exponent of 20th- and 21st- Century repertory, she has worked closely with today’s composers and premiered over 100 works. She has performed with chamber ensembles such as the Emerson, Brentano, and Guarneri string quartets, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, eighth blackbird, Klangform Wien, and Ensemble Intercontemporain; and with orchestras including Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Tokyo under leading conductors such as Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Alan Gilbert, Oliver Knussen, Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Mstislav Rostropovich, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Leonard Slatkin.

CALENDAR LISTING

December 15, 2019 at 7:00 pm

Chris Grymes' Open G Series at National Sawdust:

Soprano Lucy Shelton

'Mostly 20th-Century Song Recital'

National Sawdust

80 North 6th St in Brooklyn

Tickets are $29 for general admission, and are available at nationalsawdust.org or (646) 779-8455

Program:

Appetizers:

Igor Stravinsky: Pastorale (1907)

John Cage: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (Joyce) (1942)

George Rochberg: from Eleven Songs (Paul Rochberg) (1969)

"Black tulips"

"I am baffled by this wall"

Soups:

Stravinsky: from Two Songs on Poems of Gorodetsky, Op.6 (1907-1909)

"Spring (At the Cloister)"

Stravinsky: from Four Russian Songs (1918-1919)

"Counting Song"

"Tablemat Song"

Rochberg: from Eleven Songs (Paul Rochberg) (1969)

"Nightbird berates"

"Spectral Butterfly"

"All my life"

"Le Sacre du Printemps"

Salads:

Karl Kohn: from The Resplendent Air (Catalan poems) (1985)

Leisure

Pig

Stravinsky: The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (Edward Lear) (1966)

Elliott Carter: Voyage (Hart Crane) (1943)

Main Courses:

Ruth Crawford Seeger: Two Ricercare (1932)

"Sacco and Vanzetti"

"Chinaman, Laundryman"

Jacob Druckman: The Sound of Time (Norman Mailer) (1964)

Desserts:

Miriam Gideon: from The Seasons of Time (Japanese Tanka) (1970)

"I have always known..."

"Gossip grows like weeds..."

"The wild geese..."

"Can it be..."

Shulamit Ran: Love's Call (2016)

Rochberg: from Eleven Songs (Paul Rochberg) (1969)

"We are like the mayflies"

Stravinsky: Berceuse (1917)

Stravinsky: Three Songs: Recollections of Childhood (1913)

"The Magpie"

"The Rook"

"The Jackdaw"

Ms. Shelton is joined by pianists Robert Fleitz, Jeremy Gill, Yoon Lee, and Sophiko Simsive

Chris Grymes' Open G Series

October 28, 2019 | A Night with George Crumb

December 15 | Lucy Shelton

February 2, 2020| Cellist Jakob Kullberg

May| Nia Franklin

June | Clarinetist Chris Grymes and Friends

June 14 | Fidelio Trio

About National Sawdust

National Sawdust is a non-profit music venue whose mission is to build new audiences for classical and new music by providing outstanding resources and programmatic support to both emerging and established artists and composers. National Sawdust engages artists in an ecosystem of incubation to dissemination, programming groundbreaking new music in our state-of-the-art Williamsburg venue, and developing and touring new, collaborative music-driven projects — the National Sawdust DNA produces and presents world-class artistic work which embraces a wide stylistic approach to music.

National Sawdust believes in being an innovative leader in changing the landscape of contemporary music, by bringing all voices to the stage and beyond — artistic representation that reflects the ever-evolving multicultural society in which we live.

Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv’s new Mendelssohn album is released on November 1, 2019 on Brilliant Classics

Recording features Mendelssohn’s “Other” Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra

"pyrotechnic mastery of trills, stops and chromatic motion...performed with impeccable skill and verve" - Times Herald

The violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv, praised for her “superlative and consummate artistry” (Fanfare) shares her passion for the music of Felix Mendelssohn in a radiant new recording. Ms. Ivakhiv’s performances of two rarely-heard gems: the Concerto in D minor for Violin and Strings, and the Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra are released in the United States on Brilliant Classics (95733) on November 1, 2019.

These are two striking examples of the precocious talent of the young Felix Mendelssohn. Written in his early teens, the D minor Violin Concerto (1822) and the Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings (1823) display wit, charm, sentiment and skill beyond his years. Joining Solomiya Ivakhiv for the double concerto is the award-winning pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, and both works feature the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, Theodore Kuchar conducting.

"Many people are familiar with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, but hardly anyone gets to hear this earlier concerto in D minor," said Ms. Ivakhiv. "Though it was written when Mendelssohn was just a teenager, it is clearly the work of a mature composer."

The Violin Concerto draws on Classical era compositional techniques, but it is also influenced by French innovations in violin writing developed in Mendelssohn’s own time. There is much dazzling writing, but also some deeply expressive modulations which convey an emotional maturity far beyond what one could expect from a 13-year-old composer.

Written less than a year later, the Double Concerto is an even more polished work, full of memorable melody. Mendelssohn originally composed the work for string orchestra; Ms. Ivakhiv and Mr. Pompa-Baldi chose to play his later, more colorful score with winds and timpani added. "I am delighted that I have found the perfect 'doubles' partner in Antonio," said Solomiya of the pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi. "Our musical chemistry was evident from the first time we played together. It was a priviledge to record the Mendelssohn Double Concerto with him." The detailed liner notes by Alain Frogley illuminate the history and musicology of these works in depth.

This is the first recording of Solomiya Ivakhiv’s “Singles and Doubles” project. Her next CD, "Concertos for Violin, Piano and Orchestra by Haydn and Hummel", will be released on the Centaur label in early 2020. As with the Mendelssohn album, performers include pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi and the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra led by Theodore Kuchar.

The third recording of Solomiya Ivakhiv’s “Singles and Doubles” project, "Poems and Rhapsodies", will be released late in 2020 on the Centaur label. The featured work on the album is American Rhapsody for violin and orchestra by the Grammy-winning American composer Kenneth Fuchs. The album also features The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, Poème Symphonique by Ernest Chausson and works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Myroslav Skoryk and Anatol Kos-Anatolsky. Performers include cellist Sophie Shao and the National Symphony Of Ukraine led by Volodymyr Sirenko.

“Mendelssohn Concertos”

Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin

Antonio Pompa-Baldi , piano

Theodore Kuchar, conductor

Slovak National Symphony Orchestra

Brilliant Classics 95733

U.S. release date: November 1, 2019

Purchase on Amazon

TRACKS

Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra in D minor MWVo3 (1822)

1. Allegro – 9:40

2. Andante – 11:11

3. Allegro – 4:41

Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra MWVo4 (1823)

4. Allegro – 19:25

5. Adagio – 11:02

4. Allegro molto – 10:09

November 8 & 10: Concert performances of Victoria Bond’s acclaimed opera about Clara Schumann

The German Forum presents Clara at Symphony Space in NYC (Nov. 8), and Rhinebeck CMS presents Clara at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck, NY (Nov. 10)

On Friday, November 8 and Sunday, November 10, the German Forum presents Victoria Bond's acclaimed opera about Clara Schumann, performed in concert. Clara will be performed at Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre (2537 Broadway at 95th St., New York, NY 10025) on November 8 at 7:00 pm. Tickets are $30 and are available at this link.

A second performance of Clara with the same cast will be presented by the Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society on November 10 at 3:00 pm, at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck, NY. Tickets are $35 and available at this link. Both performances of Clara will be an abbreviated concert version; cast details are below.

Victoria Bond’s opera about Clara Schumann (libretto by Barbara Zinn Krieger) premiered to critical acclaim at the Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival in Baden-Baden earlier this year. The celebration of the 200th anniversary of Schumann's birth continues with these performances in New York. Composed by Ms. Bond during her residencies at the Brahms House in Baden-Baden, Clara weaves the intertwining lives of Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms into a dramatic mixture of music and passion. Complete cast details are below.

The world premiere of Victoria Bond's opera about Clara Schumann received worldwide media attention (listen to Ms. Bond's interview about Clara on WWFM) and enormous audience acclaim at 11 sold-out performances. Co-presented by the Easter Festival of the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and the Berlin Philharmonic, Clara was performed by a cast of outstanding singers and orchestra, conducted by Michael Hasel, principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Calendar Listing

November 8 and 10, 2019

Clara

performed in concert

an opera about Clara Schumann

by Victoria Bond

November 8, 7:00 pm: Symphony Space

Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre

2537 Broadway at 95th St., New York, NY 10025

presented by The German Forum,

Babette Hierholzer, artistic director

Tickets are $30 (plus $5 service fee) and available at this link

November 10, 3:00 pm: Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society

Church of the Messiah

6436 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY 12572

presented by Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society

Babette Hierholzer, artistic director

Tickets are $35 and available at this link

Cast

Clara Schumann - Christine Reber, soprano

Robert Schumann - Jonathan Estabrooks, baritone

Friedrich Wieck (Clara’s father) - Robert Osborne, bass-baritone

Johannes Brahms - Heejae Kim, tenor

Yana Goichman, violin

Thilo Thomas Krigar, cello

Babette Hierholzer, piano

Victoria Bond, conductor

Music by Victoria Bond

Libretto by Barbara Zinn Krieger

A major force in 21st century music, composer Victoria Bond is known for her melodic gift and dramatic flair. Her works for orchestra, chamber ensemble and opera have been lauded by the New York Times as "powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding."

Highlights of Ms. Bond’s catalogue include the operas Clara (premiered at the 2019 Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival), Mrs. President, The Miracle of Light and The Adventures of Gulliver; ballets Equinox and Other Selves; orchestral works Thinking like a Mountain, Bridges and Urban Bird; and chamber works Dreams of Flying, Frescoes and Ash and Instruments of Revelation, among many others. Her compositions have been performed by the New York City Opera, Shanghai, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, American Ballet Theater and the Cassatt and Audubon Quartets.

Bond’s recordings include Instruments of Revelation (Naxos American Classics, 2019), performed by members of The Chicago Symphony; and Soul of a Nation: Portraits of Presidential Character (Albany Records, 2018), works featuring soloists from the Chicago and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras that pay tribute to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and FDR. Her music has also been recorded on the Koch International, GEGA, Protone, and Family Classic labels, and her works are published by G. Schirmer, Theodore Presser, C.F. Peters, Subito Music and Protone Music.

The New York Times praised Victoria Bond’s conducting as “full of energy and fervor.” She has served as principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago since 2005. Prior positions include Assistant Conductor of Pittsburgh Symphony and New York City Opera and Music Director of the Roanoke Symphony and Opera, Bel Canto Opera and Harrisburg Opera. Ms. Bond has guest conducted throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. She is the first woman awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School.

Ms. Bond is Artistic Director of Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, an annual new music series in New York, which she founded in 1998. She is a frequent lecturer at the Metropolitan Opera, has lectured for the New York Philharmonic and in 2019 was elected to the roster of the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows. The Wall Street Journal, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times and other national publications have profiled Ms. Bond.

Take Effect Reviews andPlay "playlist"

ANDPLAY

Playlist

New Focus, 2019

8/10

Listen to Playlist

andPlay is the duo of violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson, and on Playlist the pair deliver the work of David Bird, Clara Iannotta and Ashkhan Behzadi with precision, mystery and a whole lot of varied sounds.

“Crescita Plastica” starts the listen with almost sci-fi sounding strings, as dramatic tension is met with adventurous ideas and cautious manipulation, and “Bezier” follows with a similar approach where a cinematic quality invades the unpredictable setting that’s playful, textured and sometimes vulnerable.

The back half of the listen offers “Limun”, which, at over 7 minutes, is the shortest tune but no less impactful with acrobatic swells of sharp violin, and “Apocrypha” ends the listen haunting and with electronics, as the balance between digital and organic unfolds with ingenuity.

Though this is their debut as andPlay, Bennardo and Levinson have both been involved in many other outfits. Together, however, their dynamic sensibilities and keen sense of song craft collide with an inimitable, extraordinary performance.

Travels well with: Hilary Hahn & Hauschka- Silfra; Joshua Bell- Voice Of The Violin

Blogcritics reviews Alon Goldstein at Baruch PAC

Concert Review: Pianist Alon Goldstein (NYC, 22 Oct. 2019)

Jon Sobel

Pianist Alon Goldstein performed an era-spanning program of animated piano music at the Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC) Oct. 22. Beginning with four selections from his large Scarlatti arsenal, he also offered thoughtful and frequently amusing commentary on the music. When a musician talks directly to the audience, it lightens the formal air that tends to hang over classical music, and that’s all to the good for listeners and artists alike.

Domenico Scarlatti’s astoundingly imaginative sonatas – there are 555 of them – can speak for themselves, of course. And I always appreciate hearing how different keyboardists interpret these works by a composer born in 1685, the same year as J.S. Bach.

Goldstein took a middle ground between the clockwork formalism some pianists apply to this music – perhaps in an effort to evoke the lesser dynamics of the harpsichord for which it was written – and the more romantic approach exemplified by Vladimir Horowitz.

Goldstein read K. 11 with pensive delicacy, carefully delineating each note while weaving a smooth imaginative tapestry out of the whole. Slightly excessive speed made K. 159 a little less satisfying, with overly distracting tempo breaks necessitated by quick changes in hand positions. But aside from that, his rubatos and tempo changes felt emotionally valid. Light, judicious use of the sustain pedal in K. 324 brought the harpsichord heritage to mind. The set closed with K. 120, whose over 100 hand crossings require almost superhuman dexterity and earned the pianist rousing applause.

Moving on to Beethoven, Goldstein first demonstrated the world of color differences produced by different keys, playing for a moment the opening bars of the “Moonlight” Sonata in C minor, instead of the unusual key of C sharp minor that the composer chose. The latter key gave it, in Goldstein’s words, “a color no one expected or heard before.”

He chose a relatively quick tempo for that famous opening movement. The effect, for me, was to suggest the music’s connection to the baroque lineage of J.S. Bach. I’d never thought about this before when hearing – or playing, as I did too often as a young piano student – this beloved and indeed over-played piece. It also brought to mind the songfulness of Mendelssohn and Schubert. I found it a really enlightening interpretation of a movement that’s often performed so slowly that it lands heavily on the soul.

The crisp syncopated rhythms of the second movement were equally effective. But the tempo got ahead of good intentions in the third movement’s piled-up arpeggios, which at times got muddy under the sustain pedal.

Stunning clarity returned in Janáček’s agonized Piano Sonata 1.X.190 “From the Street.” This protest piece from 1905 carries a painful sting, and Goldstein wielded it with force and precision. Moments of calm proved illusory amid the stormy first movement (“Foreboding”). The more solemn second (“Death”) only brought more pain in Goldstein’s insightful reading, though some relief as well after the first movement’s gut punch.

Wisely, he followed up with two Debussy Preludes. These carry their own unpredictable drama but in a dreamy style, full of airy colors and kaleidoscopic clusters.

The concert closed with impressive showpieces courtesy of Alberto Ginastera, the 20th-century Argentine composer whose work seems to be turning up on concert programs everywhere these days. Even the titles are fun: “Dance of the Old Herdsman” was racy and playfully intense, “Dance of the Delicate Maiden” softly romantic with delicate dissonances. Finally, assertive high spirits ruled in the tightly wound virtuosity of “Dance of the Arrogant Gaucho.”

For an encore, Goldstein gave us something perfect for a New York City audience: a piano transcription from Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” Symphony, loaded with wild pianistic jazziness and played masterfully. Visit Alon Goldstein’s website for upcoming concerts and BPAC’s site for its busy season of cultural events.

World Music Report reviews andPlay "playlist"

andPlay: Playlist

By Raul da Gama

Ashkan Behzadi – Crescita Plastica; David Bird – Bezier; Apocrypha; Clara Iannotta – Limun

andPlay is Maya Bennardo: vn and Hannah Levinson: va

In a rather audacious complaint, pianist and contemporary composer Thomas Larcher once posited that to him, the piano’s natural sound was “of something  worn out, obsolete, at a dead-end” and said that this led to his desire to attempt to resuscitate it through a wholly new “sound” through his work need never apply to violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson performing as andPlay. The string duo has simply re-invented the sound of their instruments – played separately and in harmony with each other. They have, of course, had the benefit of being given a leg up by three brazen composers who have imagined what this “newly invented sound” would be like once music was created out of it.

But creating dissonance and stringing up discordant notes into musically acceptable phrases on paper is no guarantee that such precocious imaginings would work in practice. Interpreting it successfully not one – it appears – but at least twice by this duo is the other – missing – piece. And so, positioning themselves in creative conflict with age-old protocols about how string instruments should be played, and dispensing with travelling a naturally well-worn road Miss Bennardo and Miss Levinson have chiseled their performances into something provocative and unique on this repertoire on Playlist.

Throwing out the dead and, in Mr Larcher’s words that which seems “worn out” and “obsolete” the duo ends up throwing overboard melodic, structural and harmonic hooks that have become expressively blunted by overuse and built music from what might – or might not – be left. In doing just so, the duo has enabled the brave new worlds of Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird and Clara Iannotta to come to life not in the musical traditions that we expect but with a new definition of beauty central to their new artistic credo.

With those composers, then, Miss Bennardo and Miss Levinson argue against the “beauty” of overly perfumed, audience-ingratiating beauty typical of commercial music and in favour of “authentic beauty”. This often evokes the German word Geräusch – meaning noise, but in a sense of natural noise such as perhaps the wind blowing through trees or representative of an icy dulled chill in the scenario of a narrative to shepherd these works without compromising their newly declared elementally “beautiful” sound-world.

Released – 2019
Label – New Focus Recordings (fcr 233)
Runtime – 48:04

BlogCritics reviews Momenta Festival

Concert Review: Momenta Quartet Plays Ligeti, Partch, and a Roberto Sierra World Premiere (Oct 16, 2019)

Jon Sobel

The Momenta String Quartet gave each of its members an evening to curate during this year’s edition of the ensemble’s Momenta Festival. Despite a heavy rainstorm, a sizable audience turned out for the “Night Dances” concert curated by first violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron. While her inspiration may have lain in the shadows, the energy was bright during a program of fascinating music by legendary 20th-century iconoclast Harry Partch, modernist icon György Ligeti, and others. Notable was the world premiere of an intense piece written for the Momenta Quartet by the eminent Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra – who can count Ligeti as one of his teachers.

It’s hard to imagine Sierra, who was in attendance, being anything but delighted by the debut of his “Cuarteto para Cuerdas (String Quartet) No. 3.” A thoughtful and virtuosic showpiece, with five flowing movements built around a single nine-note scale, it leaps off the page with tricky rhythms right from the start. A percussive and densely harmonic “Cantando” second movement opens the way for the intriguing fits and starts of the “Rapidísimo” third. The final movements boil together with untrackable (yet somehow playable) rhythms. Altogether it’s a brilliantly constructed contiguous whole that leaves the listener metaphorically breathless.

The musicians’ convincing reading made Sierra’s new baby a fitting counterweight to the big beast of the concert’s second half, Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes.” This work demands a great variety of techniques and colors, which the musicians achieved with a warm humanism matching their technical mastery.

As the instruments traded off on the simple main theme in the final section, sometimes straightforwardly, sometimes in reverse, sometimes with slides, the theme’s wild variations and developments, which had formed the meat of the piece, came back to me in a satisfying recall (including a sort-of-cubist waltz). This youthful work may predate the full flowering of the composer’s personal language, but it fully deserves its place in the 20th-century canon, as the Momenta’s accomplished performance demonstrated.

Harry Partch was surely one of the last century’s most unusual musical spirits, defying most conventions and composing for instruments of his own invention. Gendron chose to open the concert with an arrangement for string quartet by Ben Johnston of Partch’s “Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales.” These folksy miniatures featured playful melodies with startling use of just intonation, evoking in a humble but effortless way the weirdness of the large 44-string resonating boxes called the Harmonic Canon II for which Partch originally wrote them.

The Ligeti and Partch on the program drew me to this concert, but I was pleased to hear music by Erwin Schulhoff as well. This Czech-German-Jewish composer who perished in the Holocaust is little heard today. I first encountered his music on the Jerusalem Quartet’s recent Yiddish Cabaret album (reviewed here), which included Schulhoff’s spirited “Five Pieces for String Quartet.” Gendron of the Momenta performed a piece I hadn’t heard before, Schulhoff’s 1927 “Sonata for Violin Solo.” Playing a modern violin that sounded both fulsome and intimate in the Americas Society‘s small concert hall, she regaled us with magnificent fiddling in this colorful, barnburning music.

As if the pieces described above didn’t offer enough variety, the night-inspired program also included Mario Lavista’s String Quartet No. 2 “Reflejos de la noche” (1984), comprised entirely (with the exception of some lighthearted squeaks) of harmonics. So of course it’s a quiet piece, but its suggestions of bird and insect sounds are punctuated by siren wails. The single movement develops into a kind of skewed pastoral, with a surprisingly wide variety of colors (given the restrictions of harmonics), and tugged in unexpected directions by blue notes.

The Momenta musicians played this innovative (if somewhat overlong) work with sensitivity and charm, as they did the entire program. Their festival wraps up Oct. 18 and 19 with concerts at the Tenri Cultural Institute. Visit the Momenta’s website for information on upcoming concerts, and the Americas Society website for its calendar of upcoming musical events.

Lucid Culture reviews Momenta Festival

Things Go Bump in the Night With the Momenta Quartet

It’s extremely rare that an artist or group make the front page here more than once in a single week. But today, because the Momenta Quartet play such stylistically diverse, consistently interesting music, they’ve earned that distinction – just like the Kronos Quartet have, on two separate occasions, since this blog went live in 2007. Some people are just a lot more interesting than others.

This year’s annual Momenta Festival is in full swing, with its usual moments of transcendence and blissful adrenaline. The Momenta Quartet’s violist Stephanie Griffin programmed night one; night two, violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron took charge. As she put it, the theme was “Lively things that happen at night.” She wasn’t kidding.

Maybe, to provide a little break for her bandmates – who also include violinist Alex Shiozaki and cellist Michael Haas – Gendron supplied a major portion of the adrenaline with an irresistible romp through Erwin Schulhoff’s rarely performed Sonata For Violin Solo. Throughout its eclectic shifts from evocations of Appalachian, Middle Eastern, Asian and rustic Romany music, she swayed and practically clogdanced at one point, and that vivacity was contagious.

The high point of the night was one of the group’s innumerable world premieres, Roberto Sierra‘s sublimely shapeshifting, relentlessly bustling Cuarteto Para Cuerdas No. 3. Flurrying, almost frantic interludes juxtaposed with brief, uneasily still moments and all sorts of similarly bracing challenges for the group: slithery harmonics, microtonal haze spiced with fleeting poltergeist accents, finally a wry series of oscillations from Haas and a savagely insistent coda. Distant references to boleros, and a less distant resemblance to restless, late 50s Charles Mingus urban noir drove a relentless tension forward through a rollercoaster of sudden dynamic changes. There were cameras all over the room: somebody please put this up on youtube where it will blow people’s minds!

There was even more on Gendron’s bill, too. The hypnotic horizontality and subtle development of playful minimalist riffs of Mario Lavista’s String Quartet No. 2 were no less difficult to play for their gauzy microtonality and almost total reliance on harmonics. Harry Partch’s Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales have a colorful history: originally written for the composer’s own 88-string twin-box invention, the Harmonic Canon II, the Momentas played the string quartet arrangement by the great microtonal composer Ben Johnston, a Partch protege. Part quasi Balkan dance, part proto horror film score, the group made the diptych’s knotty syncopation seem effortless.

They closed with Gyorgy Ligeti’s String Quartet No.1, subtitled “Metamorphoses Nocturnes.” The ensemble left no doubt that this heavily Bartokian 1953 piece was all about war, and its terror and lingering aftershock (Ligeti survived a Nazi death camp where two of his family were murdered). The similarities with Shostakovich’s harrowing String Quartet No. 8 – which it predated by six years – were crushingly vivid. If anything, Ligeti’s quartet is tonally even harsher. In the same vein as the Sierra premiere, these dozen movements required daunting extended technique. Which in this case meant shrieking intensity, frantic evasion of the gestapo, (musical and otherwise) and deadpan command of withering sarcasm and parodies of martial themes. All that, and a crushing, ever-present sense of absence.

The 2019 Momenta Festival winds up tonight, Oct 19 at 7 PM at the Tenri Institute, 43A W 13th St., with a playful program assembled by Shiozaki, including works by Mozart, toy pianist Phyllis Chen (who joins the ensemble), glass harmonica wizard Stefano Gervasoni and an excerpt from Griffin’s delightfully adult-friendly children’s suite, The Lost String Quartet. Admission is free but you should rsvp if you’re going.

anearful reviews andPlay "playlist"

andPlay - playlist There’s so much overlap in NYC’s fecund new music scene that it took me a minute to connect the Hannah Levinson I was watching play Catherine Lamb with Talea Ensemble at Tenri Cultural Center last month with this album, which I already had on repeat at the time. But, yes, this is the same violist, here paired with violinist Maya Bennardo, whom I also know as a member of Hotel Elefant. Though they founded andPlay about seven years ago and have commissioned many works, this is their debut album. The five world-premiere recordings make a perfect statement of the versatility and even power of this combination of instruments.

Ashkan Behzadi’s Crescita Plastica (2015) opens the album with dramatic swoops and glides, guttural stops and eerie harmonics in a bold statement of purpose. Bezier (2013), the first of two works by David Bird, turns the viola and violin into glitchy simulacra of electronic instruments, with bird-like tones intruding playfully before the real fireworks start. It’s a tour de force and quite a calling card for this composer, who was new to me. Clara Iannota’s Limun (2011) is next, adding a harmonica to the sound world, which provides a drone over which Levinson and Bennardo alternately duel and join forces. Bird’s Apocrypha (2017) further expands things with electronics and brings the album to a stunning close. He is a composer I hope to hear more from soon. Bennardo and Levinson have made such a strong case for this instrumentation that I hardly thought about it, just reveling in all the fantastic sounds, expertly captured by New Focus. I hope andPlay is prepared to be overwhelmed next time they put out a call for scores!

New York Music Daily reviews opening night at the 2019 Momenta Festival

Transcendent Rarities and World Premieres to Open The 2019 Momenta Festival

by delarue

A few months ago at a panel discussion at a major cultural institution, a nice mature lady in the crowd asked a famous podcaster – such that a podcaster in the 21st century serious-music demimonde can be famous, anyway – what new composers she should be listening to. Given a prime opportunity to bigup her favorites, the podcaster completely dropped the ball. She hedged. But if she’d thought about the question, she could have said, with complete objectivity, “Just go see the Momenta Quartet. They have impeccable taste, and pretty much everything they do is a world premiere.”

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the annual Momenta Festival, and the fifteenth for the quartet themselves. There was some turnover in the early years, but the current lineup of violinists Emilie-Anne Gendron and Alex Shiozaki, violist Stephanie Griffin and cellist Michael Haas has solidified into one of the world’s major forces in new music. Opening night of the 2019 Momenta Festival was characteristically enlightening and often genuinely transcendent.

Each of the quartet’s members takes a turn programming one of the festival’s four nights; Griffin, the only remaining member from the original trio that quickly grew into a fearsome foursome, took charge of the opening festivities. Each festival has a theme: this year’s is a retrospective, some of the ensemble’s greatest hits.

In a nod to their trio origins, Shiozaki, Griffin and Haas opened with Mario Davidovsky’s 1982 String Trio. Its central dynamic contrasted sharp, short figures with lingering ambience, the three musicians digging into its incessant, sometimes striking, sometimes subtle changes in timbre and attack.

The night’s piece de resistance was Julian Carrillo’s phantasmagorical, microtonal 1959 String Quartet No. 10, a piece the Momentas basically rescued from oblivion. Alternate tunings, whispery harmonics and a strange symmetric logic pervaded the music’s slowly glissandoing rises and falls, sometimes with a wry, almost parodic sensibility. But at other times it was rivetingly haunting, lowlit with echo effects, elegaic washes underpinned by belltone cello and a raptly hushed final movement with resonant, ambered, mournfully austere close harmonies.

In typical Momenta fashion, they played a world premiere, Alvin Singleton‘s Hallelujah Anyhow. Intriguing variations on slowly rising wave-motion phrases gave way to stricken, shivering pedal notes from individual voices in contrast with hazy sustain, then the waves returned, artfully transformed. Haas’ otherworldly, tremoloing cello shortly before the coy, sudden pizzicato ending was one of the concert’s high points.

After a fond slideshow including shots of seemingly all of the violinists who filtered through the group in their early years, conductor David Bloom and baritone Nathaniel Sullivan joined them for another world premiere commission, Matthew Greenbaum’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a setting of Walt Whitman poetry. The program notes mentioned that the text has special resonance for the composer, considering that he grew up close to where the old ferry left Manhattan and now resides across the river near the Brooklyn landing. Brain drain out of Manhattan much?

It took awhile to gel. At first, the music didn’t seem to have much connection to the text, and the quartet and the vocals seemed to be in alternate rhythmic universes – until about the time Sullivan got to the part cautioning that it is not “You alone who know what it is to be evil.” At that point, the acerbic, steady exchange of voices latched onto a tritone or two and some grimly familiar, macabre riffage, which fell away for longer, rainy-day sustained lines.

The Momenta Festival continues tonight, Oct 16 at 7 PM at the Americas Society, 680 Park Ave at 70th St. with works by Harry Partch, Mario Lavista, Roberto Sierra, Gyorgy Ligeti and Erwin Schulhoff programmed by Gendron. How much does this fantastic group charge for tickets? Fifty bucks? A hundred? Nope. Admission is free but a rsvp is very highly advisable.

Amsterdam News features Alvin Singleton premiere at Momenta Festival

Prolific composer Alvin Singleton talks upcoming work, ‘Black culture’ as ‘American culture’

NADINE MATTHEWS

Alvin Singleton was a kid with access in the midtwentieth century close-knit Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of his childhood. “Where I grew up,” he explains in an interview with Amsterdam News, “there were a lot of jazz musicians. I had friends in their families so I used to go to their rehearsals.” That informal exposure became the foundation for what became Alvin Singleton’s international career as an award-winning musical composer.

He studied music composition at New York University and Yale University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Rome. After returning to the U.S., after living in Europe for almost 15 years, he was Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Ritz Chamber Players and Spelman College. Singleton still spends much of his time in Atlanta.

Momenta Quartet will premiere Singleton’s Chamber Music America-commissioned piece “Hallelujah Anyhow” at Americas Society in New York City on Oct. 15. It will be part of the fifth annual Momenta Festival, a series of four concerts with diverse programs curated by the members of Momenta Quartet. Admission is free, but reservations are strongly recommended.

Singleton’s parents also played a significant role in his decision to become a musician. “They made me learn an instrument and I chose piano. Eventually, I learned to play jazz.” Singleton’s experience with jazz led to an interest in composing music. He enrolled in the New York College of Music (now part of NYU) where he began studying music composition. “I didn’t really categorize myself. I had begun listening to classical pieces and I knew there were a lot of Black composers.” Singleton joined the Society of Black Composers, which further fueled his fascination.

Singleton demurs when described as a composer of classical music. “I know that I write music. I’m a composer. So, categorization always gets us in trouble because it defines us very narrowly.”

When asked to describe “Hallelujah Anyhow,” he is characteristically reluctant to do so. “When people ask me about the titles for my pieces, I always say titles are for identification, not explanation. To know the music, you have to listen to it.”

The process of composing “Hallelujah Anyhow” was unexpectedly interrupted by a health scare. Singleton shares, “This piece took quite a long time,” he says, “because I had to have heart bypass surgery last year. It came out of nowhere because I didn’t have a heart attack or anything, I just had a blockage.”

He will, however, share his thoughts on some of his works that are relatively special to him. He has admitted that his “After Fallen Crumbs” was dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. due to King’s focus on helping

the poor.

The prolific Singleton will also share that he is particularly proud of “Shadows,” which he wrote for orchestra. “When I go back and examine it I see ideas that I was using that I didn’t realize at the moment. When I go over early music, I see ideas that aren’t fully developed because I was still developing. The more I write, the more I mature. In fact, I’m still developing even at this age.”

Perhaps because of his special connection to “Shadows,” Singleton has ventured to describe it in a past interview as, “An idea based upon different-sized spinning tops, each having its own little melody, and they intersect and shadow one another as the work develops.”

The general acknowledgment that Black American culture is an integral part of U.S. culture itself is something Singleton is excited about. In part borne out by recent developments such as the announcement by The Met that it will present Terence Blanchard’s opera based on New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s memoirs “Fire Shut Up In My Bones,” the first time in the storied institution’s history that it will present an opera by a Black composer. The libretto is by writer and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”). “I think it’s about time, first of all,” Singleton says. “Secondly, it’s about the music. There are plenty of Black composers writing really good music but they don’t get the opportunity to be invited to be composers. Slowly but surely Black culture is being recognized as true American culture. I can’t imagine this country without Black people.”

NYC-ARTS previews Dan Siegler's “Concrète Jungle”

“Concrète Jungle” is a work of sound art performed live by composer Dan Siegler and special guests. The piece is inspired by and takes its title from musique concrète, an electroacoustic genre in which ready made sounds are employed in place of instrumentation. Featuring hundreds of intricately edited New York voices, “Concrète Jungle” highlights borough-specific accents, linguistic filler and word repetitions to form assembled sentences and musical grooves. Siegler has pointilistically sequenced these recordings, creating a work that contains both pre-arranged and improvisational components. Layered under the dialogue, Siegler transforms harsh urban street noise, filtering it through digital delay, reverb and echo effects, rendering it meditative and ambient.

Connected to his father’s loss of language from dementia, Siegler attempts to create order out of verbal chaos, removing words from their original context and intended meaning and reassembling surprisingly comedic, often poignant invented dialogue between people who have never met. A native New Yorker, Siegler grew up in Greenwich Village at a time when artists and middle-class families could afford to live there.”Concrète Jungle”contrasts that era’s debates with today’s public discourse, illustrating the value of meaningful conversation around challenging subjects across generations. The piece engages the audience in what composer Pauline Oliveros called “deep listening.”

The world premiere performance includes collaborative performers, including dancer Pam Tanowitz, vocalist Christina Campanella and violinist Tomoko Omura, improvising onstage with the electronic sounds manipulated by Siegler in real time.

Image courtesy of Dan Siegler.

MusicWeb International Review: Mozart Piano Concertos

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, K453 (1784) [30:01]
Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor, K491 (1786) [29:04]
Orli Shaham (piano)
St Louis Symphony Orchestra/David Robertson
rec. 2017/18, Powell Hall, St Louis, Missouri
CANARY CLASSICS CC18 [59:10]

Coupling two such theatrical concertos as these, and ones that sport theme and variations in their finales, makes good sense. It also marks the first commercial recording in 16 years for the St Louis Symphony under David Robertson, then nearing the end of his 13-year stint as music director. Who better to accompany, then, than his wife, Orli Shaham playing on a New York Steinway.

Clearly there was perceptive microphone placements in Powell Hall, as the balances are finely judged, and things emerge naturally and not spotlit. In the Concerto in G the opening orchestral introduction is genially characterised and there is a chamber-like colloquium between soloist and wind principals. The violins sound divided too, and the consequent performance marries elegance, precision in voicings and secure ensemble. Similarly, there’s a touching intimacy in the slow movement and Shaham’s cadenza here has a quality of veiled melancholy. Cannily judged, the variations in the finale are both engaging and full of bubbling wit.

The companion concerto in C minor is the moodier and more introspective work but it too receives a buoyant and winning reading. The horns make their presence felt and the St Louis strings sound lithe but full toned and mercifully free of period desiccation. To enliven the first movement Shaham plays the Saint-Saëns cadenza with fiery intensity and commanding bravura – Robert Casadesus did the same in his old recording with Szell. The slow movement is fluency itself, in a clarity-conscious landscape, and the finale reprises the virtues, of line, definition and characterisation, that imbued the G major work.

Working hand in glove ensures a particularly simpatico reading of this brace of concertos. The booklet is a symposium between Shaham, Robertson and writer and academic Elaine Sisman that goes into some interesting musical detail about the works and is well worth reading. And as for this disc – it’s well worth hearing.

Jonathan Woolf

OperaWire previews Victoria Bond's "Clara"

Victoria Bond’s ‘Clara’ Comes To NYC This November

ByDavid Salazar

The German Forum is set to showcase Victoria Bond and Barbara Zinn Krieger’s “Clara” in New York.

The new opera will be presented at Symphony Space in New York City on Nov. 8 with another showcase set for Nov. 10 at the Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck.

The opera will feature Christine Reber as Clara Schumann with Jonathan Estabrooks as Robert Schumann. Heejae Kim will take on the role of Johannes Brahms while Robert Osborn will portray Friedrich Wieck. The performance will also showcase a piano trio comprised of violinist Sumina Studer, cellist Thilo Thomas Krigar, and pianist Babette Hierholzer.

The opera had its premiere at the Berlin Philharmonic Festival in Baden- Baden earlier this year in celebration of Schumann’s birth.

“Bond’s opera emphasizes Clara’s inner life and the conflicts of a woman struggling to balance the demands of those who depend on her against her rising consciousness of her own needs,” stated the review from Classical Voice America.

Lucid Culture reviews andPlay CD release party

New Music Duo andPlay and Cello Rocker Meaghan Burke Put on a Serious Party at the Edge of Chinatown

How do violin/viola duo andPlay manage to create such otherworldly, quietly phantasmagorical textures? Beyond their adventurous choice of repertoire, they use weird alternate tunings. Folk and rock guitarists have been doing that since forever, but unorthodox tunings are a relatively new phenomenon in the chamber music world. At the release party for their new album Playlist at the Metropolis Ensemble‘s second-floor digs at 1 Rivington St. last night, violist Hannah Levinson and violinist Maya Bennardo – with some help from their Rhythm Method buds Meaghan Burke and Leah Asher, on harmonica and melodica, respectively – evoked a ghost world that was as playful and bracing as it was envelopingly sepulchral. Anybody who might mistakenly believe that all 21st century serious concert music is stuffy or wilfully abstruse needs to check out the programming here.

The party was in full effect before the music started. A sold-out crowd pregamed with bourbon punch and grapefruit shots. As the performance began, Levinson sent a big bucket of fresh saltwater taffy around the audience, seated in the round. The charismatic Burke opened with a brief solo set of characteristically biting, entertainingly lyrical cello-rock songs. Calmly and methodically, she shifted between catchy, emphatic basslines, tersely slashing riffs, starry pizzicato and hypnotic, loopy minimalism. The highlights included Hysteria, a witheringly funny commentary on medieval (and much more recent) patriarchal attempts to control womens’ sexual lives, along with a wry, guardedly optimistic, brand-new number contemplating the hope tbat today’s kids will retain the ability to see with fresh eyes.

Dressed in coyly embroidered, matching bespoke denim jumpsuits, andPlay wasted no time introducing the album’s persistently uneasy, close harmonies  with a piece that’s not on it, Adam Roberts‘ new Diptych. Contrasting nebulous ambience with tricky polyrhythmic counterpoint, the duo rode its dynamic shfits confidently through exchanges of incisive pizzicato with muted austerity, to a particularly tasty, acerbic, tantalizingly brief coda.

Clara Ionatta’s partita Limun, Levinson explained, was inspired by the Italian concept of lemon as a panacea. Playful sparring between the duo subtly morphed into slowly drifting tectonic sheets, finally reaching a warmer, more consonant sense of closure that was knocked off its axis by a sudden, cold ending.

The laptop loops of composer David Bird‘s live remix of his epic Apochrypha threatened to completely subsume the strings, but that quasar pulse happily receded to the background. It’s the album’s most distinctly microtonal track, Bennardo and Levinson quietly reveling in both its sharp, short, flickeringly agitated riffs and misty stillness.

The next concert at the space at 1 Rivington is on Oct 11 at 7:30 PM with composer Molly Herron and the Argus Quartet celebrating the release of their new album “with music and poetry that explore history and transformation.” Cover is $20/$10 stud.