Nov. 10: Join Pianist Sarah Cahill in November for a Nature Inspired Concert as part of Wave Hill's Fall Foliage Fest
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs The Woods So Wild at Wave Hill
Photo of Sarah Cahill by Miranda Sanborn, available in high resolution here.
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs The Woods So Wild at Wave Hill
A Concert Inspired by Nature Featuring Music by
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mamoru Fujieda, William Byrd, Errki Melartin, Amy Beach, Leo Ornstein and Leokadiya Kashperova
Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 2:00pm
Mark Twain Room | 4900 Independence Ave. | Bronx, NY
Tickets and More Information
“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music” – NPR Music
Watch Sarah Cahill’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
Bronx, NY – On Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 2:00pm pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “keen and captivating pianist” by The Washington Post, brings her program The Woods So Wild to Wave Hill’s Mark Twain Room (4900 Independence Ave.) as part of Wave Hill’s Fall Foliage Fest. Cahill’s program features a colorful assortment of music that resonates with the beauty of the fall season.
Forests, oceans, desert, mountains, flowers, grasslands, wilderness – throughout music’s history, composers have celebrated nature and the great outdoors. As humanity urgently strives to preserve this precious environment, reflecting on nature through music heightens society’s attention to its great wonders. In this program, beginning with William Byrd’s The Woods So Wild from 1590, Sarah Cahill takes listeners on a wondrous journey through musical portraits of the natural world including Forest Scenes by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Morning in the Woods by Leo Ornstein, The Murmur of the Wheat by Leokadiya Kashperova, Hermit Thrush at Eve by Amy Beach, Patterns of Plants by Mamoru Fujieda, and The Mysterious Forest by Erkki Melartin.
“It's such an honor to perform at Wave Hill as part of their Fall Foliage Fest! Trees and forests have enchanted composers from William Byrd to Leo Ornstein, and I’m excited to combine these works in my concert.” says Cahill. “I look forward to this musical journey into the natural world together, in the Mark Twain Room overlooking the Wave Hills gardens”
About the Music Cahill Features in The Woods So Wild:
Composed in 1907 at the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s remarkable Forest Scenes depicts an ethereal tale of a romantic encounter between a forest maiden and a phantom. The five movement work unfolds like a musical novel, with each section depicting a new chapter between the maiden and the phantom. The writing is fanciful and expressive; Coleridge-Taylor includes a variety of rhythms, tempo changes, and chord progressions throughout the work to evoke both the vacillating emotions of the characters and the dynamic actions of the story.
The impetus behind Mamoru Fujieda’s Patterns of Plants is just as organic as the work’s namesake objects. Fujieda measured and recorded the electrical impulses on different plants’ leaves with the help of “Plantron” –– a tool created by botanist and artist Yūji Dōgane. From there, Fujieda converted the electrical impulses into sound using Max, a visual programming language applicable to music and multimedia. It was from this converted information that Fujieda analyzed and noticed different musical patterns, which became the melodic foundation for the work’s miniature pieces. Sarah Cahill recorded Patterns of Plants in 2014 on Pinna Records.
During a summer at MacDowell – a New Hampshire retreat that nurtures all types of American artists – the serene ambiance inspired Amy Beach to compose The Hermit Thrush at Eve and The Hermit Thrush at Morn, the melodies of which echo the calls of the namesake bird, which Beach called "lonely and appealing."
Prominent Finnish composer Erkki Melartin’s The Mysterious Forest is an expressive cycle of six piano pieces, which are largely reflective of Melartin’s appreciation of rural life and nature’s beauty. The works were unfortunately never published during Melartin’s lifetime.
English Renaissance composer William Byrd wrote fourteen variations on the melody of The Woods So Wild, a song from the Tudor era. The first of the variations presents a simple rustic version of the main theme, alongside a drone accompaniment and the last variation is formed around a structure of rich polyphony.
Au sein de la Nature is a piano suite of six movements. As its title infers, the emotive suite of music evokes connections to nature. This was inspired by Kashperova’s nostalgia for the tranquil and secluded Russian countryside where she spent her childhood.
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as a “keen and captivating pianist” The Washington Post, brings her program The Woods So Wild, a colorful array of music resonating with the beauty of the fall season, to Wave Hill. The concert will include works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Byrd, Leo Ornstein, Leokadiya Kashperova, Amy Beach, Mamoru Fujieda, and Errki Melartin.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill in The Woods So Wild
Presented by Wave Hill
What: Music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Mamoru Fujieda, William Byrd, Errki Melartin, Amy Beach, Leo Ornstein and Leokadiya Kashperova, Henry Cowell, Aida Shirazi, Amy Beach, and Samuel Adams
When: Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 2:00pm
Where: Wave Hill House, Mark Twain Room, 4900 Independence Ave., Bronx, NY 10471
Tickets and information: www.wavehill.org/calendar/concert-sarah-cahill
Nov. 12: The Jupiter Quartet Continue Their Season at Krannert Center Performing the Music of Kati Agócs, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert
The Jupiter Quartet Continue Their Season at Krannert Center Performing the Music of Kati Agócs, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert
Photo of the Jupiter Quartet by Todd Rosenberg available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/jupiter-string
The Jupiter Quartet Continues Concert Season
Presented by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Performing Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Kati Agócs
Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 7:30pm
University of Illinois | Krannert Center | Foellinger Great Hall | 500 S Goodwin Ave. | Urbana, IL
Tickets and Information
“technical finesse and rare expressive maturity”
– The New Yorker
Urbana, IL – On Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 7:30pm, the Jupiter String Quartet continues its season at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’s Foellinger Great Hall (500 S. Goodwin Ave), with an intriguing, contrast-driven concert featuring three works that collectively span more than two centuries and several musical eras. The program includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s intense Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 (1810); Kati Agócs’ lyrical Imprimatur (2018); and Franz Schubert’s epic Quartet in G Major, D. 887 (1826).
While Beethoven and Schubert’s works form a bridge between the end of the Classical era and beginning of the Romantic era, Kati Agócs’ work Imprimatur offers a welcome contrast to these two dramatic and serious pieces, focusing on uplifting positivity. Agócs says, “My piece is a meditation on spiritual lightness, expressing joy and affirmation that is celebratory in tone, via a collective (shared) energy.” Imprimatur was co-commissioned for the Jupiter Quartet’s fifteenth anniversary by the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Harvard Musical Association; and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“As always, we are excited to share some of our favorite works with our hometown audience, with whom we feel a special connection.” says the Jupiter Quartet. ”This particular program offers great contrast, starting with the highly condensed drama of the Beethoven Op. 95 quartet, continuing through the sustained lyricism of the Agócs, and ending with the massively built Schubert G Major, which has an almost orchestral texture and breadth.”
Founded in 2001, the Jupiter Quartet is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous. The New Yorker states, “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.”
The Quartet has been in residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program. This season, they will perform two more concerts at the Krannert Center, including a program of sextets with two of their Ying Quartet colleagues, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying on February 4, 2025; and a concert of octets including the Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat Major with the Aris Quartet on March 13, 2025.
Based in Urbana, IL and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). The Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall, and more.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which The New Yorker describes as having “technical finesse and rare expressive maturity,” will perform a bold and stylistically diverse concert program, featuring music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kati Agócs, and Franz Schubert.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Kati Agócs, and Franz Schubert
When: Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: University of Illinois; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Foellinger Great Hall
500 S Goodwin Ave.; Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: https://krannertcenter.com/events/jupiter-string-quartet-4
Oct. 25: Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili Releases First Ever Mozart Album on Sony Classical with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili Releases First Ever Mozart Album on Sony Classical with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili Releases First Ever Mozart Album on Sony Classical
Including Piano Concertos No. 20 and 23
with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K.466/II. Romance
Out Today - Listen Here
Album Release Date: October 25, 2024
Pre-Order Available Now
For her tenth album on Sony Classical, Khatia Buniatishvili joins an iconic orchestra in performances of two cherished piano concertos by Mozart, her first ever album dedicated to the composer. The recording will be released on October 25, 2024. Listen here.
After a string of releases on Sony Classical that have redefined the parameters of the classical recital album, Khatia Buniatishvili is returning to tradition with a recording of two of Mozart’s most sublime late piano concertos.
In his Piano Concertos Nos 20 and 23, Mozart takes the genre of the concerto to new heights of sophistication and communicative power.
The works come from a cherished crop of late piano concertos that are among the jewels of Mozart’s output and have long formed touchstone works for great pianists and recording artists.
Mozart’s music, says Buniatishvili, carries ‘a simplicity that makes you lost before finding yourself.’ She is joined on her recording by an orchestra with a near-unrivaled pedigree in Mozart recording, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Mozart wrote his first piano concerto at the age of 11 in 1767. But everything changed in 1781 when the composer moved to Vienna and encountered a discerning public eager to hear piano concertos of increasing scope and variation.
The composer’s Piano Concerto No 20, dating from 1785, is not just the first he wrote in a minor key, it is the first to truly explore the properties that would make Mozart’s later concertos such masterpieces. This thrilling, changeable score forms the turning point in the composer’s project to reimagine the piano concerto as more than a superficial entertainment; to engage audiences in serious reflection and ensnare them with stories of drama, conflict, joy and loss. It is filled with the smoldering tensions of the composer’s iconic opera Don Giovanni, which launches with an imposing, troubled overture in the same key as the concerto, D minor.
The concerto’s key of D minor carries particular importance for the Georgian pianist. ‘D minor has always been my favorite in Mozart’s music,’ Buniatishvili says, referring to the sophisticated way in which the composer hides the comic inside the tragic in works including the opera Don Giovanni. ‘It is the unbearable heaviness of a pain transformed into a sigh of relief, which weirdly resembles happiness,’ she says, drawing comparison with the late Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
A year after his D minor concerto, in March 1786, Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto No 23, a score filled with the spirit of another of the composer’s operatic masterpieces, Le nozze di Figaro, written at the same time. In this bold, spontaneous piece the sense of conversation is deepened further still, with instruments including the solo piano appearing as characters with distinct personalities vying for attention. It contains a sublime slow movement in the ‘black pearl’ key of F sharp minor.
After strong statements in the music of Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Mussorgsky and the folk music of her native Georgia, Buniatishvili is well placed to put her formidable pianism and fearless musical imagination in the service of Mozart’s singular combination of the human and the divine. Her recording also includes the composer’s so-called ‘sonata facile’ or ‘little sonata for beginners’ - a work whose outward simplicity enshrines a playful introduction to the art of composition.
It was written in 1788, three years before the composer died, and only published after his death. Again, it occupies a telling key in Mozart’s oeuvre: the pure and radiant C major.
Buniatishvili recorded her album at Air Studios in London with the famed Academy of St Martin in the Fields - the orchestra whose recordings of operas, symphonies and concertos by Mozart under its music director Sir Neville Marriner became classics and which recorded the 13 Gold Disc-winning soundtrack to the iconic film Amadeus.
Khatia Buniatishvili is one of classical music’s true one-offs, a pianist with almost unequaled delicacy of touch and a film-director’s ear for focus-pulling and storytelling. She was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1987 and studied at the University of the Arts in Vienna.
A former BBC New Generation Artist and protégé of Martha Argerich, Buniatishvili is a preferred collaborator of top-drawer musicians including Zubin Mehta, Paavo Järvi and Gidon Kremer - and has recorded with all three.
She signed to Sony Classical in 2010 and has now released ten albums on the label - including the concept albums Motherland and Labyrinth - all of which have ignited conversations on interpretation, presentation and repertoire.
Khatia Buniatishvili will play Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 20 and 23 around the world in the coming season, including, in December 2024, as part of her residency at the Barbican Centre in London, where she will be joined by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Nov 8 & 9: Opera Double Bill features One-Act Operas by David T. Little (NYC Premiere) and Kamala Sankaram
Opera Double Bill features One-Act Operas by David T. Little (NYC Premiere) and Kamala Sankaram
Mannes Opera at The New School’s College of Performing Arts
Presents N.Y.C. Premiere of David T. Little’s Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera,
and Kamala Sankaram’s The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace
An Opera in Concert Double Bill on November 8 & 9
Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera - N.Y.C. Premiere
Music by David T. Little, Libretto by Royce Vavrek
The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace
Music by Kamala Sankaram, Libretto by Rob Handel
Commissioned by Opera Ithaca
Friday, November 8 at 7:30pm and Saturday, November 9 at 2:00pm
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Information: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts
For press tickets, contact Christina Jensen: christina@jensenartists.com
New York, NY – Mannes Opera at The New School’s College of Performing Arts announces a duo of one-act operas by Mannes faculty members and prolific composers David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram. The Opera in Concert Double Bill features the New York City premiere of David T. Little’s complete Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and Kamala Sankaram’s The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace with libretto by Rob Handel, directed by New School Drama alumna Alison Pogorelc and conducted by Christopher Allen, on Friday, November 8 at 7:30pm and Saturday, November 9 at 2:00pm, at the John L. Tishman Auditorium (63 Fifth Ave.). This event is open to the public and free with registration.
Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera (2010/2018), composed by David T. Little on a libretto by Royce Vavrek, receives its New York City premiere of the complete work in these performances. Vinkensport is a bitter-sweet comedy in one act, which explores obsession, desire, and the need to win, through the frame of an obscure Flemish folk sport, “finch-sitting.” Trained finches race to sing the most “susk-e-wiets” over the course of an hour. As they compete, the joys, sorrows, delusions and all-too-stark realities of their trainers are revealed. The New York Times reports, “Vinkensport has an exuberant, rhythmically vibrant score by David T. Little with an infectious opening chorus,” while Opera Magazine writes, “Vavrek’s interweaving of the human characters is extremely touching and allows for nice musical counterpoint. Little’s music is tuneful but sophisticated and original. . .”
The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace (2019), composed by Kamala Sankaram with a libretto by Rob Handel, follows Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Lord Byron's daughter, who has been asked to help Charles Babbage with his work on the Difference Engine. She struggles between her work in mathematics and upholding her reputation as a wife, mother, and public figure. The revolutionary concepts that she put forth in her notes about the potential ability of the Engine to carry out an algorithm led Ada to be considered the world’s first computer programmer. ArtsKnoxville writes, “Sankaram's deliciously tonal score is loaded with poise and charm that feigns minimalism to suggest binary math, but wanders through some intriguing stylistic territory that has flavors and textures of jazz, blues, classical, and 19th century romanticism, among others.” The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace was commissioned by Opera Ithaca and is presented through special arrangement with UIA Talent Agency and Just a Theory Press.
“In 1916 David Mannes hired Ernest Bloch to be the very first composition faculty member at the brand new Mannes School of Music. Fast forward to today, with this program of works by David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram and one cannot miss how the tradition of world class composers teaching and studying at Mannes is stronger than ever. I cannot wait to attend this double bill, with two brilliant composers and colleagues who are a big part of the rapid evolution of opera in the United States,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.
Under the leadership of Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin, Mannes Opera is a dynamic training program for operatic artists, marked by a curiosity for new and a devotion to craft. The program utilizes opera as a medium for exploration, improvisation, and creation, providing students with extensive performance opportunities and practice.
Mannes Opera’s season opens on October 18 and 19 with a jewel box production of W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni, arranged by Danyal Dhondy, realized by Griffin and Mannes faculty member Cris Frisco at a crisp 100 minutes. Additional highlights include SCENEWORKS FALL24 on December 6 and 7 at the Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street, offering a delightful serving of operatic scenes; program to be announced. On March 7 and 8, Mannes Opera presents Handel’s Alcina at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater, directed by Sam Helfrich and conducted by Mannes alumnus Geoffrey MacDonald. On May 9, Mannes Opera gives an invite-only workshop presentation of Hildegard, a new opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider, in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects.
Performances by students and faculty at the College of Performing Arts break new ground, pushing the boundaries of convention and reinventing traditional forms. Additional highlights for the College this season include (Un)Silent Film series presenting Tod Browning’s classic film Dracula with Philip Glass’s score performed by Orange Road Quartet, the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence, with pianist and guest conductor Michael Riesman on October 25; the Namekawa-Davies Duo (Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies) in Pianographique featuring music by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan, on October 26; performances by celebrated Mannes/School of Jazz Ensembles-in-Residence The Westerlies, Sandbox Percussion, and JACK Quartet throughout the season, including Sandbox Percussion’s world premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM on December 11; the New School Studio Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite on December 5; and multiple performances of the Mannes Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, including Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc with The New York Choral Society on November 1, the U.S. premiere of Augustus Hailstork’s Ndemera on December 9, and Sandbox Percussion in Viet Cuong’s percussion concerto Re(new)al paired with John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées performed by Stefan Jackiw on April 11. The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere of jazz great Carla Bley’s rarely heard landmark album Escalator Over the Hill on May 2.
For a complete overview of performances at The College of Performing Arts at The New School, read the 2024-2025 season press release here.
Presenting approximately 900 performances each year by students, faculty and guest artists, nearly all of which are free and open to the public, the Mannes, Jazz, Drama season provides an incredible performing arts resource for the greater New York community and beyond. Performances at The New School’s College of Performing Arts are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Some events require advance registration. View the full calendar of performances at the College of Performing Arts – including Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama – for details on how to attend.
About The College of Performing Arts at The New School
The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for vigorous training, bold experimentation, innovative education, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and world-class performances.
The 1,000 students at the College of Performing Arts are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts for all people. Students and faculty collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more.
The curriculum at the College of Performing Arts is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.
Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for radically progressive music education, anchored in foundational excellence and dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. As part of The New School’s College of Performing Arts, together with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the School of Drama, Mannes makes its home on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus in a state-of-the-art facility at the newly renovated Arnhold Hall.
Founded in 1919, The New School was established to advance academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. A century later, The New School remains at the forefront of innovation in higher education, inspiring more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students to challenge the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The university welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and public programs that encourage open discourse and social engagement. Through our online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence.
Nov. 8-9: Emerald City Music Season 09 Continues with Composer in Focus: Pauline Oliveros’s Sound Meditations Curated by Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir
Emerald City Music Season 09 Continues with Composer in Focus: Pauline Oliveros’s Sound Meditations Curated by Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir
High resolution photo available here.
Emerald City Music Season 09 Continues with
Composer in Focus: Pauline Oliveros’s Sound Meditations
Curated by Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir
Friday, November 8, 2024 at 8pm
415 Westlake | 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA
Tickets: https://bit.ly/EmeraldNov2024Seattle
Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 7:30pm
Capital High School Performing Arts Center | 2707 Conger Ave NW | Olympia, WA
Tickets: https://bit.ly/EmeraldNov2024Olympia
“[Artistic Director Kristin Lee] wants to show you, through Emerald City Music’s concert series, just how varied and innovative chamber music can be.” – The Seattle Times
Seattle & Olympia, WA – Emerald City Music (ECM), led by founding Artistic Director Kristin Lee, continues its Season 09 on a theme of Global Resonance with two performances celebrating the life and music of pioneer of “deep listening” and “sonic awareness,” Pauline Oliveros. The performances, curated and hosted by cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, take place on Friday, November 8, 2024 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N) and Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 7:30pm in Olympia at Capital High School Performing Arts Center (2707 Conger Ave NW). During the concert at 415 Westlake, audiences can enjoy ECM’s flagship “date-night experience,” which combines vibrant classical performance with an open bar, and a “wander-around” concert setting with no stage dividing the audience from the musicians.
These meditative evenings will combine live performance, film, and an interactive audience experience. Pauline Oliveros' life was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe, influencing American music profoundly through improvisation, meditation, and technological exploration. She was one of the original members of The San Francisco Tape Center – a significant resource for electronic music in the 1960s – and a founding member of the Deep Listening Band, which was formed in 1988 in Port Townsend, Washington.
Together with Thorsteinsdóttir and Lee, violist Melia Watras, and percussionist Bonnie Whiting will perform .music by Oliveros, spanning several decades throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Featured works include Pauline’s Solo (1992), String-utopia for violin and cello (2005), Triskaidekaphonia for soloist (2005), and Buffalo Jams (1982). A film by Oliveros titled on listening will be interspersed with the music, in addition to several segments of Oliveros speaking about community, which will involve audience participation, improvisation, and communal exercise in creating sound meditation: “Teach yourself to fly,” “Breathe in/breathe out,” and “The new sound meditation.”
Of Pauline Oliveros’ impact on music and collaborating with Emerald City Music, Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir says, "I am thrilled to return to Emerald City Music with such a special composer spotlight on the iconic composer and thought-leader Pauline Oliveros. In embracing her steadfast focus on listening to ourselves, each other and our surroundings, I couldn't think of a more meaningful way to experience her music than in this immersive concert with some of the most creative and compelling musicians I know."
Emerald City Music (ECM) is the Pacific Northwest home for eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. Deemed “a welcoming and more inclusive environment for intimate music-making” (The Seattle Times), ECM hosts world-renowned musicians in unique concert experiences. Founded in 2015, Emerald City Music produces and tours seven productions annually, with each tour visiting venues including Seattle’s South Lake Union (415 Westlake, a chic contemporary venue with an open bar), Olympia’s Minnaert Center (a 495 seat modern concert hall), a once annual concert at the Bellingham Music Festival, and an annual concert in New York City.
About the Artists: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/season-artists
About Kristin Lee, ECM Artistic Director: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/team/kristin-lee
About ECM: www.emeraldcitymusic.org/about
Follow ECM on Social Media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/emeraldcitymusic
Instagram: www.instagram.com/emeraldcitymusic
Nov 1 & 15: Newport Classical presents Chamber Series Concerts by Baritone Markel Reed and Cellist Seth Parker Woods in Downtown Newport
Newport Classical presents Chamber Series Concerts by Baritone Markel Reed and Cellist Seth Parker Woods in Downtown Newport
Photos available in high resolution here.
Newport Classical Presents Two Chamber Series Concerts in November
November 1: Baritone Markel Reed
November 15: Cellist Seth Parker Woods
Fridays at 7:30pm
Newport Classical Recital Hall | 42 Dearborn St. | Newport, RI
Newport, RI – Newport Classical continues its fourth full-season Chamber Series, featuring twelve concerts held on select Fridays at 7:30pm at the organization’s home venue Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with two performances in November. On Friday, November 1, 2024 at 7:30pm, baritone Markel Reed, known for his appearances at The Metropolitan Opera, performs the music of Brahms, Margaret Bonds, Terence Blanchard, and more. On Friday, November 15, 2024 at 7:30pm, cellist Seth Parker Woods, celebrated by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace,” explores three centuries of music with Bach’s contemplative Sarabandes as a point of departure and return in his solo cello concert.
A passionate conveyor of the operatic repertoire, Markel Reed boasts an impressive resume including roles with The Metropolitan Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Boston Lyric Opera, and more. This season, he performs the role of Masetto in Opera Omaha’s production of Don Giovanni, James Baldwin in The Tongue & The Lash at Town Hall NYC, Jigger Craigin in Boston Lyric Opera’s Carousel, and Yusef Salaam in Anthony Davis’ The Central Park Five with Detroit Opera. He recently performed in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. Reed’s recital in Newport celebrates standard and contemporary works, beginning with biblical texts and poetry from Brahms and Poulenc, and including Margaret Bonds’ Three Dream Portraits and selections from Benjamin Moore’s Ode to a Nightingale. Reed concludes the evening with an aria from Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, having originated the role of Chester in the world premiere of this seminal work.
Two-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods presents Thus Spoke Their Verse in Newport. Celebrated by The Guardian as possessing “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” In Thus Spoke Their Verse, he explores three centuries of music centering around identity and narrative storytelling. The evening is anchored by three Sarabandes from the first, second, and fifth Bach suites, which provide points throughout the concert to transition from a familiar experience toward the possibility of something radically new. The program includes selections from Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Lamentations, “Black Folk/Song Suite;” Frederick Gifford’s Difficult Grace; Nathalie Joachim’s Dam Mwen Yo; Alvin Singleton’s Argoru II; Monty Adkins’ Winter Tendrils; Conrad Beck’s Drei Epigramme für solo cello; Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds; and Chinary Ung’s Khse Buon.
Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. The Chamber Series, newly expanded to twelve concerts held between September and June, reaffirms Newport Classical’s commitment to year-round classical music programming. Audiences are invited to enjoy performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with a complimentary glass of wine from Greenvale Vineyards and homemade treats by Newport Classical volunteers.
As part of Newport Classical’s desire to create connections between classical music, the artists who perform it, and the Newport community, all musicians performing on the Chamber Series also go into the Newport-area public schools to perform for and speak with students, through Newport Classical’s Music Education and Engagement Initiative.
Up next on the Newport Classical Chamber Series, Anton Mejias gives the US premiere of Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory by composer Philip Lasser, alongside Book II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, on October 18. Newport Classical celebrates the holiday season with two weekends of festive programs in December – Cantus at the Mansion: Songs of the Season featuring Cantus with The Choir School of Newport County on December 8 at Rosecliff, and Classical Christmas featuring Frisson on December 14 at Emmanuel Church.
The Newport Classical Chamber Series kicks off 2025 with a performance by the Telegraph Quartet, described as “powerfully adept, with a combination of brilliance and subtlety” by the San Francisco Chronicle, in music rarely experienced by its creators, the composers Rebecca Clarke, Beethoven, and Smetana, on January 24. Boyd Meets Girl comes to Newport for a performance on Valentine’s Day, February 14 – the impressive husband-and-wife guitar and cello duo has toured the world sharing their eclectic mix of music from Debussy and Bach to Radiohead and Beyoncé. On February 28, the acclaimed Trio Karénine, which has established itself in recent years as a key group on the French and international stage, pairs Schubert’s second piano trio with Dvořák’s rarely programmed second piano trio, filled with color, warmth, lively dance, and Slavic folk elements. Oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, joins forces with acclaimed pianist Gloria Chien in music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and more, on March 21. On April 25, Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) presents the music of Bach and Messiaen, alongside works by Grieg and Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, with pianist Anna Polonsky. Pianist Orion Weiss, known for his “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post) returns to Newport for a solo recital of Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations on May 16. On June 13, the GRAMMY-nominated Norwegian Trio Mediaeval, who captivate audiences with their crystalline voices, closes the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Chamber Series with an enchanting evening of Norwegian and Swedish traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads.
The 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-22, 2025.
Single tickets for Chamber Series concerts start at $45 and packages are available starting at $200 for five concerts. AARP members and their guests receive discounts on fall Chamber Series tickets and packages, graciously provided by AARP of Rhode Island through their supporting sponsorship of the fall concerts, and thanks to a generous grant from the Gruben Charitable Foundation, a limited number of free student tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
About Newport Classical
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 55 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of music on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.
Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, and Clarice Assad.
Oct 18: Simone Dinnerstein Releases New Album The Eye is the First Circle - Charles Ives' Concord Sonata
Simone Dinnerstein Announces New Album The Eye is the First Circle - Charles Ives' Concord Sonata
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution at: https://jensen-artists.squarespace.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
Simone Dinnerstein Announces New Album The Eye is the First Circle
Featuring Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata
Coinciding with the Composer’s 150th Birthday
Release Date on Supertrain Records: October 18, 2024
Listen to Simone’s NPR Interview About the Live Production of The Eye is the First Circle
CDs and press downloads available upon request.
www.simonedinnerstein.com | www.eyeisthefirstcircle.com | www.supertrainrecords.com
GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The Washington Post as “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” will release her next album, The Eye is the First Circle featuring iconic American composer Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records – timed to coincide with Ives’ 150th birthday on October 20. The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021.
The recording is Dinnerstein's last to be released with her longtime recording partner, GRAMMY-winning producer Adam Abeshouse, who also produced her previous thirteen albums. She says, “The Eye is the First Circle was a deeply personal project for me, and it was very meaningful to have Adam there. It is even more meaningful that this marks our last album together.”
Dinnerstein has long been drawn to the music of Charles Ives. “There is a type of wild struggle in his music between the weighty influences of the past and the Americana of his upbringing and his quest for developing his own musical language,” she says. “The music seems to vacillate between a kind of haunting memory of beauty and an extremely dissonant and forward-looking anticipation of the future. It’s deeply human, incorporating tragedy and comedy, a striving for the spiritual and an embrace of popular culture. In our present day, when every one of us is able at the drop of the hat to curate the most esoteric of playlists, both literally and metaphorically, his music resonates deeply.”
With her production The Eye is the First Circle, Simone Dinnerstein ventured into bold interdisciplinary artistic territory in collaboration with projection designer Laurie Olinder and lighting designer Davison Scandrett. Conceived and directed by Dinnerstein, the dynamic production deconstructs and collages elements from two iconic works of art – Simone’s father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata – and also incorporates ambient sounds of children playing, night sounds from the pond, and birdsong.
In the live, multimedia performance, Simon Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright Triptych places a family portrait (including an infant Simone) within the tradition of Medieval altar paintings, against a wall teeming with art historical references, and the Concord Sonata expresses the imaginative and natural world of the Transcendentalists through an ecstatic and fractured musical lens. Olinder pulls visuals including animated elements of the painting and real-time video to all points of the stage, and Scandrett’s lighting gives them breathtaking theatricality. Dinnerstein’s searching performance sits within this disorientingly immersive visual space. The piece asks: How do our origin stories mold us? How can a sense of self come from the musical and visual fragments we remember from childhood?
The Eye is the First Circle was inspired in part by a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Circles: “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.”
Dinnerestein explains the work further, writing in the liner notes for this album:
“We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact, identity is always a never-completed process of becoming – a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being. Ives’ music teems with invention, with the music that was all around him – art music and popular music – from which he, in turn, created his own distinctive and changing voice. . . This artistic project was a way in which I could ponder the process we’ve all been through – the accretion of experiences and influences that brought me to the place I was. It was an attempt to do what Emerson argued that we all want to do: to draw a new circle.”
In addition to the premiere at Montclair State University presented and commissioned by PEAK Performances, Dinnerstein has performed The Eye is the First Circle at the Folly Theater in Kansas City presented by the Harriman Jewell Series and at the Gogue Performing Arts Center at Auburn University.
About Simone Dinnerstein:
American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. In addition to The Eye is the First Circle, she premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera and the Cleveland Orchestra. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs.
The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.
Track List:
Simone Dinnerstein: The Eye is the First Circle
Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Supertrain Records | Release Date: October 18, 2024
Charles Ives: Concord Sonata
1. "Emerson" (after Ralph Waldo Emerson) [16:19]
2. "Hawthorne" (after Nathaniel Hawthorne) [12:21]
3. "The Alcotts" (after Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott) [5:33]
4. "Thoreau" (after Henry David Thoreau) [11:31]
Produced and engineered by Adam Abeshouse
Edited, mixed and mastered by Adam Abeshouse
Sequencing by Matthew Agoglia
Photos by Maria Baranova
Yamaha CFX
Piano Technician: Shane Hoshino
The Eye is the First Circle is a multimedia work commissioned by PEAK Performances at Montclair State University. This recording is the audio from the premiere at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021.
The New School's College of Performing Arts Announces School of Drama 2024-2025 Highlights
The New School's College of Performing Arts Announces School of Drama 2024-2025 Highlights
The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama
Announces School of Drama 2024-2025 Highlights
September 2024 – April 2025: Naked Angels 1st Mondays at The New School
September 30, December 9, February 3, March 17, and April 21 at 7:00pm
Free, No Advance Registration
October 31, November 1, November 2 at 7:30pm & November 2, 2024 at 2:00pm
World Premiere of The Ruminants
Written by Dipti Bramhandkar | Directed by Ana Margineanu
Bank Street Theater | 151 Bank St., NYC
Free, Registration Required
Monday, November 4, 2024 at 7:30pm: Guest Artist Series – Ping Chong and Company
The Glassbox Theater | 55 W. 13th St., NYC
Free, Registration Required
November 21, 22 and 23 at 7:30pm & November 23, 2024 at 2:00pm: Orestes
Written by Euripides | Translated by Anne Carson | Directed by Ashley Kelly Tata
Bank Street Theater | 151 Bank St., NYC
Free, Registration Required
April 25-26 & May 2-3: APEX Festival
Weekend 1: April 25-26 at 7:30pm; April 26 at 2:00pm
Weekend 2: May 2-3 at 7:30pm & May 3 at 2:00pm
Final program and venues to be announced
Information: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts
New York, NY – The College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama, a progressive creative center at the heart of The New School, announces 2024-2025 highlights for the School of Drama. The School of Drama is the creative home to a dynamic group of actors, directors, writers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary theater artists. With a focus on authenticity of expression, the school’s curriculum confronts today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media.
Season highlights for the School of Drama include the world premiere of The Ruminants from October 31-November 2; the premiere of a devised piece curated by the artistic leaders of Ping Chong and Company as part of the MFA Guest Artist Series on November 4; Euripides’ Orestes translated by Anne Carson from November 21-23; the APEX Festival on April 25-26 and May 2-3; and the ongoing Naked Angels 1st Mondays at The New School series running from September 2024 through April 2025.
From Thursday, October 31 through Saturday, November 2, the School of Drama presents the world premiere of The Ruminants at Bank Street Theater (151 Bank St.), directed by faculty member Ana Margineanu. Admission is free but registration is required. The Ruminants is a new play that explores protest, privilege, and the lasting effects of one's actions. With only weeks left in her senior year, Bekka wonders if she has done enough to impact animal rights at her university. As the president of Animal Rights Now (ARN), she has organized numerous protests, but nothing seems to change. Determined to leave her mark, she plans a bold action that no one can ignore. But what will the cost be for those who join her and the animals she tries to help? The Ruminants was developed as part of the 2023-2024 Farm Theater College Collaboration Project with three universities: Austin Peay State, Shenandoah, and Middle Tennessee State.
Each year, the School of Drama invites regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized guest artists to share their artistic, collaborative, and philosophical approaches to theater-making with students in its groundbreaking MFA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance program. This year marks the return of members of Ping Chong and Company (PCC), longtime collaborators with the School of Drama and the College of Performing Arts, on Monday, November 4 at 7:30pm at The Glassbox Theater (55 W. 13th St.). Admission is free but registration is required. Rooted in the company's mission to “create[s] theater and art that reveal beauty, invention, precision, and a commitment to social justice,” PCC engaged students in their “Undesirable Elements” series, an ongoing practice of creating interview-based theater works that explore culture, identity, and belonging in specific communities. This production – an original student-devised ensemble-based piece centered on creative producing and community-engaged practice – culminates PCC’s residency.
From Thursday, November 21 through Saturday, November 23 at Bank Street Theater (151 Bank St.), the School of Drama presents Euripides' Orestes. Admission is free but registration is required. In this exciting reimagining of Orestes, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson gives birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. Anne Carson’s watershed translation of a death-dance of vengeance and passion is not to be missed, combining contemporary language with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy. “I’m interested in having the chorus members step out from the chorus into any of the roles to focus on the communal in the performance of this work and explore the idea that any member of a community can be the protagonist of the narrative,” says Ashley Kelly Tata, director. “Ultimately, Orestes should serve what I think is so urgent about the piece right now: these are young people playing out the story of a history of violence that they have inherited from the generations before them.”
The APEX Festival is a collective, artistic activation of the Bank Street Theater and surrounding spaces by graduating MFA Contemporary Theatre and Performance students, which this year will take place on Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26 and Friday, May 2 and Saturday, May 3. Eight distinct projects serve as each student's capstone offering as well as a public introduction to their work as it exists at this stage in their development. In celebration, the School of Drama invites audiences to experience a collection of performative artworks that push the boundaries of discipline and form. Anticipated performances include A TIME (June Seo); the starry-eyed (Lars Montanaro); Lacuna(e) (Catalina Cofone Polack); Unsay (Moira Zhang); Guanahani (Neka Knowles); Ernestine (Jasmine Kiah); Ameliaorated (Alina Burke); and Eros Without Love (working title, Anamaría Willars). Specific dates and times to be announced.
The School of Drama also continues its dynamic partnership with Naked Angels, a prominent figure in New York City’s theater community. The esteemed 1st Mondays at The New School series, is a vital platform for emerging playwrights from Naked Angels’ Tuesdays@9 community to showcase their work and for School of Drama students to interact with and learn from these emerging talents, gain insights into the process of creating and workshopping new plays, and forge meaningful connections within the industry. The 1st Mondays at The New School series will run through the 2024-25 season and include in-person readings of full-length plays on December 9, February 3, March 17, and April 21.
“The diversity of works this season includes a new translation of classic Greek texts, a world premiere play that resonates deeply with and speaks to the present moment, collaborations with leading arts organizations in New York City, and a festival of new and exciting multidisciplinary works from our third-year MFA cohort,” says Jermaine Hill, Dean, School Of Drama and Associate Dean, College of Performing Arts. “These offerings demonstrate the depth and breadth of artistic exploration at the School of Drama and exemplify our commitment to being a destination that celebrates and epitomizes the best of student artistry in a variety of genres, mediums, and forms. We welcome you to join us for this bold and exciting production season.”
Established in the fall of 2015, the College brings together Mannes School of Music, the iconic 100-year-old conservatory; the legendary School of Jazz and Contemporary Music (SJCM); and the innovative and groundbreaking School of Drama. The College of Performing Arts creates opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration, innovative education, and world-class performances, encouraging students to work across traditions to become a force of new artistry. With an enrollment of over 900 students taught by 630 full- and part-time faculty, the College presents approximately 750 performances each year, nearly all of which are free and open to the public, creating an incredible performing arts resource for New Yorkers and visitors alike.
Performances by students and faculty at the College of Performing Arts break new ground, pushing the boundaries of convention and reinventing traditional forms. Additional highlights for the College this season include (Un)Silent Film series presenting Tod Browning’s classic film Dracula with Philip Glass’s score performed by Orange Road Quartet, the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence, with pianist and guest conductor Michael Riesman on October 25; the Namekawa-Davies Duo (Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies) in Pianographique featuring music by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan, on October 26; Mannes Opera’s double bill featuring one-act operas by David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram on November 8 and 9; performances by celebrated Mannes/School of Jazz Ensembles-in-Residence The Westerlies, Sandbox Percussion, and JACK Quartet throughout the season, including Sandbox Percussion’s world premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM on December 11; the New School Studio Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite on December 5; and multiple performances of the Mannes Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, including Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc with The New York Choral Society on November 1, the U.S. premiere of Augustus Hailstork’s Ndemera on December 9, and Sandbox Percussion in Viet Cuong’s percussion concerto Re(new)al paired with John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées performed by Stefan Jackiw on April 11. The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere of jazz great Carla Bley’s rarely heard landmark album Escalator Over the Hill on May 2.
For a complete overview of performances at The New School’s College of Performing Arts, read the 2024-2025 season press release here.
Performances at The New School’s College of Performing Arts are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Some events require advance registration. View the full calendar of performances at the College of Performing Arts – including Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama – for details on how to attend.
About The College of Performing Arts at The New School
The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for vigorous training, cross-disciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, innovative education, and world-class performances.
The 1,000 students at the College of Performing Arts are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts. Students and faculty collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more.
The curriculum at the College of Performing Arts is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.
The School of Drama is the most recent incarnation of theater education at The New School that goes back to the programs once led by the Group Theater, Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop, and The Actor’s Studio, and is a creative home to a dynamic group of actors, directors, writers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary theater artists. With a focus on authenticity of expression, the school’s curriculum confronts today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media. The School of Drama’s faculty is made up of award-winning actors, playwrights, and directors who bring a currency of professional experience, artistic training, and project-based learning into the classroom. The multidisciplinary MFA and BFA degree programs bring together rigor, creativity, and collaborative learning to create work marked by professionalism, imagination, and civic awareness. The school takes inspiration from the greats who walked its halls in the past, including Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Shelley Winters, and Vinnette Carroll, as well as more recent graduates, like Adrienne C. Moore, Bradley Cooper, Jordan E. Cooper, and Jason Kim.
Founded in 1919, The New School was established to advance academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. A century later, The New School remains at the forefront of innovation in higher education, inspiring more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students to challenge the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The university welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and public programs that encourage open discourse and social engagement. Through our online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence.
Nov. 19: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections – A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection Presented by Tuesday Musical Association
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs Reflections – A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection Presented by Tuesday Musical Association
Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution at: https://jensen-artists.squarespace.com/artists-profiles/simone-dinnerstein
GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs Reflections
A Concert Shaped by Musical Interconnection
Presented by Tuesday Musical Association
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 7:30pm
Edwin J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall | 198 Hill St. | Akron, OH
Tickets and More Information
“colorful and idiosyncratic” – The New York Times
Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Akron, OH – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” performs on Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at the Edwin J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall (198 Hill St.) presented by Tuesday Musical’s 2024-25 Akron Concert Series..
Dinnerstein –– who is celebrated for her Bach recordings and is Tuesday Musical’s Margaret Baxtresser Pianist this season –– will perform the music of J. S. Bach and other Baroque era-inspired selections in a program titled Reflections, which includes Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations On A Chorale By J.S. Bach (2002); Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (c. 1729-30); J. S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias, BWV 787–801 (1720-23); and Encore From Tokyo (1978) by Keith Jarrett.
“I have titled this program Reflections, as I think that each work sounds unusual because of the way it is reflected against the music around it,” Dinnerstein says. “To enhance this quality, I play each half of the program (Rameau-Lasser and Bach-Jarrett) without pause between the pieces.”
Simone Dinnerstein has been playing Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach for over two decades –– including as part of The Berlin Concert, her 2008 album. Lasser takes the chorale from Cantata No. 101 in which, he says, “Bach chooses a particular melodic moment from the Lutheran hymn and infuses all the other voices of the Chorale with this unique sonority, with an almost maniacal insistence. In my Variations, I take on this mania to see how far one can go.”
Bach’s contemporary Rameau also composed a set of variations but on his own gavotte: Gavotte et 6 doubles from Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin. In his preface, Bach wrote that his Fifteen Sinfonias were, “An honest guide by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Keith Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo embraces the Baroque convention of a descending repeating bass line and builds a harmonically adventurous and wide-ranging improvisation around it.
About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY.
In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative. For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: GRAMMY-nominated® pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” will perform a program of Baroque-era inspired works in a concert presented by Tuesday Musical’s 2024-25 Akron Concert Series. Her program, titled Reflections, will include J.S. Bach’s Fifteen Sinfonias (1720-23), Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach (2002), Keith Jarrett’s Encore From Tokyo (1978), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Gavotte et 6 Doubles from Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin (c. 1729-30).
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Presented by Tuesday Musical’s 2024-25 Akron Concert SeriesWhat: Reflections – Music by J.S. Bach, Philip Lasser, Keith Jarrett, Jean-Philippe Rameau
When: Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Edwin J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, 198 Hill St., Akron, OH 44325
Tickets and information: www.akronconcertseries.org/simone-dinnerstein
Nov 1: ECM New Series Releases Danish String Quartet's Keel Road on Vinyl
ECM New Series Releases Danish String Quartet's Keel Road on Vinyl
ECM New Series Releases Danish String Quartet's Keel Road on Vinyl
US LP Release Date: November 1, 2024
Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin; Frederik Øland, violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, violoncello
“Folk tunes are not just a part of our repertoire, but an important element of our identity as musicians” – The Danish String Quartet
ECM New Series 2785
Listen: https://ecm.lnk.to/KeelRoad
Press downloads available upon request.
Keel Road is the latest chapter in the Danish String Quartet’s reckoning with music from – or inspired by – northern folk and traditional sources, rounding off a decade of sustained engagement with the genre. Wood Works, issued in 2014 on the Danish Dacapo label gave notice of the extent of the DSQ’s commitment to folk, explored in parallel with their classical activities, and Last Leaf, released in 2017 on ECM New Series took the story further. A resounding success with press and public, Last Leaf ranked high amongst albums of the year at NPR, The New York Times and Gramophone, the latter magazine suggesting this might be “the best album of folk ditties from a string quartet you’ll ever hear,” an assertion now challenged by Keel Road. Keel Road was released on CD and digitally on August 30, 2024, and will be released on vinyl in the US on November 1, 2024
Once again, the group casts its associative net wide: “We set out on a musical journey that traverses the North Sea. For centuries, the main communication channel of Northern Europe, the highway and the internet of bygone eras. And even though known for its swift upsurges and strong gales, brave sailors would again and again travel the keel road, enabling a continuous exchange of goods, culture and music. The musical keel road of this album will take us from Denmark and Norway to shores far away: to the Faroe Islands, to Ireland and England.” The journey illuminates musical affinities as well as distinctions. “While folk music represents local traditions and local stories, it is also the music of everywhere and everyone. At the end of the day, our stories and our music remain closely connected.”
Amid the traditional pieces, Keel Road subtly interweaves compositions by Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, which eloquently convey a “folk” spirit. A brief excerpt from a field recording of the Danish traditional “En Skomager Har Jeg Været” (A cobbler I was) precedes Sørensen’s reflective tune “Once A Shoemaker."
With characteristic attention to detail, the Danish String Quartet creatively colour the album’s arrangements with the addition of instruments including spinet, harmonium, bass and clog fiddle. Guest musicians Ale Carr (cittern) and Nikolaj Busk (piano), meanwhile, both members, with Rune, of the folk trio Dreamers’ Circus join the DSQ for a performance of Carr’s “Stormpolskan."
Keel Road’s musical stopover in Ireland proves particularly productive, as the quartet interprets pieces composed by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738), the legendary harpist from County Meath. Unusual among the itinerant harpists of his day, O’Carolan drew influence not only from local tradition but also from then-contemporary European composers including Vivaldi and Corelli, intuitively seeking his own blend of form and folk spontaneity.
For the Danish String Quartet traditional music has been part of the group’s story since their early days: “As we came together to form the quartet, folk melodies naturally blended into our rehearsals. We were experimenting with lots of different tunes, each of us adding a personal touch. This evolved into a serious endeavour over time.”
*
Now widely recognized as one of the most adventurous string quartets, the Danish String Quartet celebrated their 20th anniversary in the 2022/3 season. 2023 also saw the completion of their five volume PRISM series on ECM, which explored musical and contextual relationships between Bach fugues, Beethoven string quartets and works by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Bartók, Mendelssohn, and Webern.
The group made their ECM debut in 2016 with music of Thomas Adès, Per Nørgård & Hans Abrahamsen, reflecting their special affinity for contemporary composition.
“What they do know is how to be an exceptional quartet, whatever repertory they play.” — Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
*
Keel Road was recorded at Copenhagen’s Village Recording Studio in November 2022, and mixed at Munich’s Bavaria Musikstudios in March 2024.
The Danish String Quartet celebrates the release of Keel Road with concerts in the US and Europe. Further details and information at www.danishquartet.com and www.ecmrecords.com.
Nov 15: Ethan Iverson Releases New Album Playfair Sonatas - Six Sonatas for Six Different Instruments and Piano
Ethan Iverson Releases New Album Playfair Sonatas - Six Sonatas for Six Different Instruments and Piano
Cover art by Roz Chast
Ethan Iverson Announces New Album Playfair Sonatas
With Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet
Release Date on Urlicht AudioVisual: November 15, 2024
CDs and press downloads available upon request.
https://iverson.substack.com | www.urlicht-av.com
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson will release his next album Playfair Sonatas digitally and as a 2-CD set on November 15, 2024 via the Urlicht AudioVisual label. Playfair Sonatas features six sonatas composed by Iverson for six different instruments and piano, and recorded by Iverson with some of today’s most vibrant classical performers – Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet. The album is bookended by a Fanfare and Recessional performed by the whole ensemble.
Playfair Sonatas was born in 2020 during the pandemic, when Iverson met curator, producer, and frequent commissioner of new work Piers Playfair for a summertime outdoor dinner. Like most musicians that year, Iverson had downsized and was concerned about making a baseline income. He had recently moved and rented a smaller, cheaper studio, and when Playfair asked if there was anything he could help with, Iverson replied, “Yeah, I’d love to cover the studio rent for a few months.” The two agreed that in exchange for six months of rent, Iverson would write six sonatas, and that Playfair would be allowed to choose the instrumentation.
Writing these Playfair Sonatas led Iverson to composing larger works, including his Piano Sonata, recently recorded as part of his album Technically Acceptable on the Blue Note label. Seth Colter Walls wrote of the piece in The New York Times, “Classical in conception... it also contains traces of crunchy harmonic modernism and the bumptious sounds of vintage American jazz styles.”
Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas similarly showcase this signature approach. The sonatas intertwine 21st-century jazz gestures with the formal structures of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. While the outer movements are titled with traditional tempo indications (Allegro, Rondo, Scherzo, and similar), the middle movements of each work are dedicated to an artist whose work blended jazz and classical.
"These dedications came about late in the game," says Iverson. "I had scrapped a previous Adagio for clarinet, and wrote a new middle movement I really liked. However, was this ‘oom-pah' rhythm too much like one of Carla Bley's amusing ‘music hall’ pieces? Well, what if I dedicated the movement to her? That would fix the issue of appropriation. As it turned out, Carla passed away the same day I finished ‘Music Hall’ and devised the ‘dedications’ stratagem. The other five salutations to Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Paul Desmond, Joe Wilder, and Roswell Rudd came easily, for they had been in the back of my mind the whole time."
Piers Playfair adds, “It’s cool that out of a Covid dinner we were able to put a project together that so encapsulates one of our joint core beliefs, that the divisions that divide music, such as jazz, classical, blues etc, into neat little boxes are really just names that people put on them and shouldn’t define the artists."
“Ethan and Piers assembled an absolute dream team of soloists, each of who brought their A game to Oktaven Audio for two days of amazing and inspiring music-making,” says producer Gene Gaudette. “The recording sessions were spirited, crackling with energy, and seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. The Playfair Sonatas are such terrific music – engaging, witty, and still fresh even after multiple hearings. They will no doubt find not only a wide listening audience via this recording but surely be embraced by players looking for new, challenging, genre-crossing repertoire.”
Read Ethan Iverson’s notes on each of the Playfair Sonatas, including the dedication movements, here.
Alongside the album, Iverson will publish the scores for all of the Playfair Sonatas, making them available to interested musicians free of charge.
Listen to Movement II, “Music Hall (for Carla Bley)” from the Clarinet Sonata and follow along with the score:
https://youtu.be/6WjyyiuDJ2A?si=suSporFPhI1oIhYo
Playfair Sonatas are commissioned by Piers Playfair and 23Arts Initiative.
The album is released worldwide on Gene Gaudette’s Ulricht AudioVisual label.
About Ethan Iverson:
Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson was a founding member of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King. The New York Times called TBP “Better than anyone at melding the sensibilities of post-60’s jazz and indie rock.” During his 17-year tenure, TBP performed in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, and Bonnaroo; collaborated with Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and the Mark Morris Dance Group; and created a faithful arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and a radical reinvention of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction.
Since leaving TBP, Iverson has released critically-acclaimed jazz albums on ECM and Blue Note, often accompanied by bonafide jazz stars such as Tom Harrell or Jack DeJohnette. Downbeat has called Iverson “A master of melody” while Hot House recently raved, "Known for his intellectual depth and adventurous musical spirit, Ethan Iverson has traversed the boundaries of jazz tradition while leaving an indelible mark on its evolution.” After witnessing a 2024 concert of standards spontaneously chosen by the audience, Stereophile wrote, “Iverson is a natural, consistent crowd-pleaser. For his entire career, he has been finding ways to be accessible while pushing the envelope.
Iverson holds down the piano chair in the critically acclaimed Billy Hart quartet and has recorded with other elder statesmen like Albert “Tootie” Heath and Ron Carter. In terms of performing classical music, Iverson has accompanied Mark Padmore in Schubert’s Winterreise and Johnny Gandelsman in the three Brahms Violin Sonatas.
On top of his activities as a pianist and composer, Iverson has an active career as a writer, publishing significant criticism in The Nation, JazzTimes, The New York Times, and the Culture Desk of The New Yorker. He also posts frequently on his Substack, Transitional Technology.
About the Instrumentalists:
Miranda Cuckson, violin: www.mirandacuckson.com
Makoto Nakura, marimba: www.makotonakura.com
Carol McGonnell, clarinet: www.carolmcgonnell.com
Mike Lormand, trombone: www.deviantseptet.com/mike-lormand
Taimur Sullivan, saxophone: www.taimursullivan.com
Tim Leopold, trumpet: www.mostlymodernfestival.org/tim-leopold-trumpet
Track List:
Playfair Sonatas
Music by Ethan Iverson
Ethan Iverson, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet
Ulricht AudioVisual | Release Date: November 15, 2024
CD 1
1 Fanfare [1:54]
The Full Ensemble
2 Violin Sonata: I. Andante – Allegro moderato [7:14]
3 Violin Sonata: II. Blues (for Ornette Coleman) [3:50]
4 Violin Sonata: III. Rondo. Allegro [5:25]
Miranda Cuckson, violin • Ethan Iverson, piano
5 Marimba Sonata: I. Allegro [5:13]
6 Marimba Sonata: II. Blues (for Eric Dolphy) [2:10]
7 Marimba Sonata: III. Cadenza [3:13]
8 Marimba Sonata: IV. Rondo. Presto [3:04]
Makoto Nakura, marimba • Ethan Iverson, piano
9 Clarinet Sonata: I. Allegro [5:22]
10 Clarinet Sonata: II. Music Hall (for Carla Bley) [3:06]
11 Clarinet Sonata: III. Scherzo – Minuet [2:25]
12 Clarinet Sonata: IV. Rondo. Allegro moderato [3:45]
Carol McGonnell, clarinet • Ethan Iverson, piano
CD 2
1 Trombone Sonata: I. Allegro moderato [4:32]
2 Trombone Sonata: II. Hymn (for Roswell Rudd) [4:14]
3 Trombone Sonata: III. Rondo [5:30]
Mike Lormand, trombone • Ethan Iverson, piano
4 Alto Saxophone Sonata: I. Allegro [5:44]
5 Alto Saxophone Sonata: II. Melody (for Paul Desmond) [5:16]
6 Alto Saxophone Sonata: III. Allegro [5:17]
Taimur Sullivan, alto saxophone • Ethan Iverson, piano
7 Trumpet Sonata: I. Allegro [5:56]
8 Trumpet Sonata: II. Theme (for Joe Wilder) [4:30]
9 Trumpet Sonata: III. Rondo [4:34]
Tim Leopold, trumpet • Ethan Iverson, piano
10 Recessional [1:16]
The Full Ensemble
Recorded December 2 & 3, 2023 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY
Recording engineer: Ryan Streber
Piano technician: Shane Hoshino
Edited by Ryan Streber and Gene Gaudette
Produced by Gene Gaudette
Executive producer: Piers Playfair
Cover art: Roz Chast
Dec 8 & 14: Newport Classical Celebrates the Holiday Season with Four December Concerts
Newport Classical Celebrates the Holiday Season with Four December Concerts
L-R Photo of Cantus by Nate Ryan; Photo of Frisson by Dorothy Shi. Available in high resolution here.
Newport Classical Celebrates the Holiday Season with Four December Concerts
Cantus at the Mansion: Songs of the Season
Featuring Cantus with The Choir School of Newport County
Sunday, December 8, 2024 | 1pm and 3:30pm
Rosecliff | 548 Bellevue Ave. | Newport, RI
Classical Christmas
Featuring Frisson
Saturday, December 14, 2024 | 1pm and 3:30pm
Emmanuel Church | 42 Dearborn St. | Newport, RI
Tickets On Sale October 7: www.newportclassical.org
Newport, RI – Newport Classical celebrates the holiday season with two weekends of festive programs in December – Cantus at the Mansion: Songs of the Season featuring Cantus with The Choir School of Newport County in two performances on Sunday, December 8, 2024 at 1pm and 3:30pm at Rosecliff (548 Bellevue Ave.), and Classical Christmas featuring Frisson on Saturday, December 14, 2024 at 1pm and 3:30pm at Emmanuel Church (42 Dearborn St.). Tickets will go on sale on Monday, October 7, 2024 at www.newportclassical.org.
On December 8, Newport Classical presents a modern twist on a timeless Christmas tradition with Cantus’s Songs of the Season in the gilded opulence of Rosecliff Mansion. The acclaimed low-voice ensemble, known for their “exalting finesse” and “expressive power” (Washington Post), returns to Newport after their enchanting, sold-out performance in 2023. Cantus is joined by the Professional Choristers of The Choir School of Newport County, led by Peter Berton. In a performance perfect for families and classical music aficionados alike, the hour-long concert blends poetry with sacred and secular music by reimagining the beloved Nine Lessons and Carols format made famous by the Choir of King’s College at the University of Cambridge. This concert is made possible through Cynthia Sinclair’s generous philanthropic support of The Choir School of Newport County. The fan-favorite Messiah at the Mansion will return to Newport in 2025.
Newport Classical’s community holiday celebration, Classical Christmas, returns to the English Gothic Revival architecture of Emmanuel Church on December 14 with two spirited afternoon concerts of classical chamber music. The dynamic ensemble Frisson, featuring young master musicians led by oboist Thomas Gallant, will perform seasonal favorites including the Nutcracker Suite, Vivaldi's "Winter," Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, Carol of the Bells, a Christmas Jazz Suite, and traditional carols. Following the concert, ring in the holidays with a festive reception graciously hosted by the Vestry of Emmanuel Church.
Up next on October 6, Newport Classical welcomes the globe-trotting musical duo Bridge & Wolak for a free, family-friendly Community Concert at Newport Classical Recital Hall. On October 8 and 9, GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist Emanuel Ax will make his Newport Classical debut in two special concerts featuring a solo recital program of Beethoven and Schumann, entitled Fantasies. Newport Classical’s Chamber Series at Newport Classical Recital Hall continues on October 18 when Finnish-Cuban pianist Anton Mejias gives the US premiere of Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory by composer Philip Lasser, performed alongside Book II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Lasser’s new work is co-commissioned by the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and Newport Classical. Join Lasser for a conversation about his new work at 6:30 pm. On November 1, baritone Markel Reed, known for his appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, performs the music of Brahms, Margaret Bonds, Terence Blanchard, and more. Cellist Seth Parker Woods, celebrated by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace,” explores three centuries of music with Bach’s contemplative Sarabandes as a point of departure and return in his solo cello concert on November 15.
The Chamber Series kicks off 2025 with a performance by the Telegraph Quartet, described as “powerfully adept, with a combination of brilliance and subtlety” by the San Francisco Chronicle, in music rarely experienced by its creators, the composers Rebecca Clarke, Beethoven, and Smetana, on January 24. Boyd Meets Girl comes to Newport for a performance on Valentine’s Day, February 14 – the impressive husband-and-wife guitar and cello duo has toured the world sharing their eclectic mix of music from Debussy and Bach to Radiohead and Beyoncé. On February 28, the acclaimed Trio Karénine, which has established itself in recent years as a key group on the French and international stage, pairs Schubert’s second piano trio with Dvořák’s rarely programmed second piano trio, filled with color, warmth, lively dance, and Slavic folk elements. Oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, joins forces with acclaimed pianist Gloria Chien in music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and more, on March 21. On April 25, Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) presents the music of Bach and Messiaen, alongside works by Grieg and Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, with pianist Anna Polonsky. Pianist Orion Weiss, known for his “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post) returns to Newport for a solo recital of Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations on May 16. On June 13, the GRAMMY®-nominated Norwegian Trio Mediaeval, who captivate audiences with their crystalline voices, closes the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Chamber Series with an enchanting evening of Norwegian and Swedish traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads.
The 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-22, 2025.
For Newport Classical’s complete concert calendar, visit www.newportclassical.org/concerts.
About Newport Classical:
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 55 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of music on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.
Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, and Clarice Assad.
Oct. 31: Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by The Mansion at Strathmore in Phantom – An Evening of Dramatic and Haunting Music Fit for Halloween
Pianist Sarah Cahill Presented by The Mansion at Strathmore in Phantom
Pianist Sarah Cahill Performs Phantom
Presented by Strathmore
A Dramatic and Haunting Concert featuring Music by
Deirdre Gribbin, Frederic Rzewski, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Henry Cowell, Aida Shirazi, Amy Beach, Samuel Adams,
and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 7:30pm
The Mansion at Strathmore | 10701 Rockville Pike | North Bethesda, MD
Tickets and More Information
“Pianist Sarah Cahill commands a near-godlike status among fans of contemporary classical music” – NPR Music
Sarah Cahill: www.sarahcahill.com
North Bethesda, MD – On Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 7:30pm pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, will perform at The Mansion at Strathmore (10701 Rockville Pike). For this concert, Sarah Cahill gives a performance befitting Halloween. Cahill will perform a wide array of stylistically diverse works in a program she has titled Phantom.
The concert will feature performances of: Unseen by Deirdre Gribbin; Forest Scenes by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; Humanitas by Frederic Rzewski; April Preludes by Vítězslava Kaprálová; The Banshee by Henry Cowell; Albumblatt by Aida Shirazi The Mysterious Forest by Erkki Melartin; and Shade Studies by Samuel Adams.
Phantom presents uncanny and spectral works centered around Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s remarkable and rarely-played Forest Scenes, which depicts a romantic encounter between a forest maiden and a phantom. Frederic Rzewski composed his extraordinary Humanitas for Sarah in 2020, which includes texts written by Catullus, Plautus, and other Classical poets, as well as texts by radical feminist writer Audre Lourde selected by Sarah. Finnish composer Erkki Melartin's The Mysterious Forest, in six short movements, immerses us in an atmosphere of witches, trolls, and supernatural beings.
Henry Cowell’s The Banshee is his musical interpretation of the Gaelic folktale. According to Cowell, “A Banshee is a fairy woman who comes at the time of a death to take the soul back into the Inner World.” Cowell evokes the Banshee’s legendary wail by instructing the performer to manipulate the inner strings of piano. Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi is a founding member of the Iranian Female Composers Association. Her piece Albumblatt uses a number of techniques inside the piano, like strumming and plucking the strings, finger muting, and creating harmonics on the nodes of the strings.
In his program note, Samuel Adams says of Shade Studies: “I wrote Shade Studies in the fall of 2014 as part of Sarah Cahill's commissioning project in honor of minimalist pioneer Terry Riley's 80th birthday. The work examines the counterpoint between the acoustic resonance of the piano and sine waves. The music rests in a very narrow dynamic field and is built of cadences, silences, and repeated gestures. As the work unfolds, the two resonance systems engage through masking and illumination, creating a brief exploration of musical ‘shade’.”
Vítězslava Kaprálová was one of the most brilliant young Czech composers to emerge between the two world wars. Before her death at age 25, she composed prolifically, and was the first woman to conduct the Czech Philharmonic. Her April Preludes were composed for the pianist Rudolph Firkusny. Born in Belfast and now living in London, Deirdre Gribbin describes her work Unseen as an homage to lives lost in the Grenfell Tower fire as well as large numbers of unhoused people in London. She composed the piece in 2017.
Cahill says of the music on this program and performing at The Mansion at Strathmore:
“It's such a great pleasure to be returning to the gorgeous Mansion at Strathmore. Many of us love Halloween but are too old for trick or treating, so this is a way to gather together to celebrate our connection to the supernatural world and how composers have conjured up spirits and phantoms.”
About Sarah Cahill: Sarah Cahill, hailed as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, has commissioned and premiered over seventy compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated works to Cahill include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Julia Wolfe, Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and Ingram Marshall. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music, awarded by the American Composers Forum (ACF).
Cahill’s latest project is The Future is Female, an investigation and reframing of the piano literature featuring more than seventy compositions by women around the globe, from the Baroque to the present day, including new commissioned works. Recent and upcoming performances of The Future is Female include concerts at The Barbican, Carolina Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Carlsbad Music Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Iowa, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, North Dakota Museum of Art, Mayville State University, the EXTENSITY Concert Series’ Women Now Festival in New York, and the Newport Classical Music Festival. Cahill also performed music from The Future is Female for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
Sarah Cahill’s discography includes more than twenty albums on the New Albion, CRI, New World, Tzadik, Albany, Innova, Cold Blue, Other Minds, Irritable Hedgehog, and Pinna labels. Her three-album series, The Future is Female, was released on First Hand Records between March 2022 and April 2023. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe, from the 17th century to the present day, and include many world premiere recordings.
Cahill’s radio show, Revolutions Per Minute, can be heard every Sunday evening from 6 to 8pm on KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory and is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For more information, visit www.sarahcahill.com.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by The New York Times, is presented by Strathmore Mansion in Phantom. Cahill will perform an extensive program of melodically dramatic music, featuring an array of uncanny and spectral works centered around Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s remarkable and rarely-played Forest Scenes.
Concert details:
Who: Pianist Sarah Cahill
Presented by Strathmore
What: Music by Deirdre Gribbin, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Frederic Rzewski, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Henry Cowell, Aida Shirazi, Erkki Melartin, and Samuel Adams
When: Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: The Mansion at Strathmore, 10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda, MD 20852
Tickets and information: www.strathmore.org/events-tickets/what-s-on-in-the-mansion/sarah-cahill/
Oct 25-26: Two Free Performances of the Music of Philip Glass by Dennis Russell Davies, Maki Namekawa, Michael Riesman, and Orange Road Quartet at The New School College of Performing Arts
Two Free Performances of the Music of Philip Glass by Dennis Russell Davies, Maki Namekawa, Michael Riesman, and Orange Road Quartet at The New School College of Performing Arts
The Mannes School of Music at The New School College of Performing Arts
Presents A Weekend of Glass
Two Performances Featuring the Music of Philip Glass
Both Free and Open to the Public
Including the U.S. Premiere of Philip Glass’s Elergy for the Present
Friday, October 25, 2024 at 7:30pm: (Un)Silent Film – Dracula
Orange Road Quartet Performs Philip Glass’s Score Live to Tod Browning’s Classic Film
Conducted by Michael Riesman
Part of the (Un)Silent Film Series
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., NYC
Free, Registration Required
Saturday, October 26, 2024 at 7:30pm: Pianographique
Performed by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies with Live Visuals by Cori O’Lan
Featuring the U.S. Premiere of Philip Glass’s Elergy for the Present
With Music by Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson
Presented by Mannes School of Music at The New School College of Performing Arts
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., NYC
Free, Registration Required
Information: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts
For press tickets, contact Christina Jensen: christina@jensenartists.com
New York, NY – The Mannes School of Music at The New School College of Performing Arts announces A Weekend of Glass, performances on October 25 and 26 featuring the music of iconic American composer Philip Glass, as part of its 2024-2025 season. This special weekend includes the U.S. premiere of Glass’s Elergy for the Present performed by the Namekawa-Davies Duo – Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies – and the Philip Glass score to Tod Browning’s 1931 classic film Dracula, performed live to film by the Orange Road Quartet, conducted from the piano by Michael Riesman. Both concerts are open to the public and free with registration.
On Friday, October 25 at 7:30pm, perfectly timed for Halloween, the (Un)Silent Film series presents Dracula, featuring the Orange Road Quartet (Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet in Residence at Mannes) and two pianists, in Glass’s acclaimed score performed live with Tod Browning’s 1931 classic film starring Bela Lugosi, at the John L. Tishman Auditorium (63 Fifth Ave.). The performance will be conducted from the piano by Michael Riesman, music arranger and music director of the Philip Glass Ensemble and a Mannes School of Music alumnus. Glass was commissioned by Universal Studios Home Entertainment to write the score for Dracula for the re-release of the film in 1998, and it was premiered by the Kronos Quartet and Michael Riesman. “I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century – for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective,” Glass wrote. “I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With Kronos we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film.” Orange Road Quartet cellist Jordan Bartow says, "We view new music as the future, the ‘orange road’ on the horizon, and we are thrilled to continue on that road and share our vision here at The New School and beyond.”
On Saturday, October 26 at 7:30, the Mannes School of Music presents the Namekawa-Davies Duo (Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies) in Pianographique featuring music by Philip Glass (U.S. Premiere), Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan, at The Auditorium on 12th Street (66 West 12th St.). The concert features Steve Reich’s iconic Piano Phase (1967), two pieces by Laurie Anderson including Song for Bob, and a second half comprised of works by Philip Glass, including the U.S. premiere of Elergy for the Present (2020), music from The Truman Show, and Four Pieces for Two Pianos which Glass composed for the Namekawa-Davies Duo. All of Cori O'Lan's graphic elements will be derived directly from the acoustic material – the sound of the music – created live in response to frequency, pitch, dynamics, and other elements of the performance.
“The influence of Philip Glass on music cannot be overstated. As such, it is an honor for us to present a Weekend of Glass, featuring the U.S. premiere of Elergy for the Present alongside Philip’s bringing Dracula to life through his brilliant score to the 1931 classic horror film. Michael Riesman, Mannes alumnus and Philip’s longtime bandmate in the Philip Glass Ensemble will conduct Dracula. The students, faculty, and staff all hope you will join us for this very special weekend devoted to the great Philip Glass,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.
Performances by students and faculty at the College of Performing Arts break new ground, pushing the boundaries of convention and reinventing traditional forms. Additional highlights this season include performances by celebrated Mannes/School of Jazz Ensembles-in-Residence The Westerlies, Sandbox Percussion, and JACK Quartet throughout the season, including Sandbox Percussion’s world premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM in Concert on December 11; Mannes Opera’s double bill featuring one-act operas by David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram on November 8 and 9; the New School Studio Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite on December 5; and multiple performances of the Mannes Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, including Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light to the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc with The New York Choral Society on November 1, the U.S. premiere of Augustus Hailstork’s Ndemera on December 9, and Sandbox Percussion in Viet Cuong’s percussion concerto Re(new)al paired with John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées performed by Stefan Jackiw on April 11. The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. premiere of jazz great Carla Bley’s rarely heard landmark album Escalator Over the Hill on May 2.
For a complete overview of performances at The College of Performing Arts at The New School, read the 2024-2025 season press release here.
Presenting approximately 900 performances each year by students, faculty and guest artists, nearly all of which are free and open to the public, the Mannes, Jazz, Drama season provides an incredible performing arts resource for the greater New York community and beyond. Performances at The New School’s College of Performing Arts are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Some events require advance registration. View the full calendar of performances at the College of Performing Arts – including Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama – for details on how to attend.
Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for radically progressive music education, anchored in foundational excellence and dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. As part of The New School’s College of Performing Arts, together with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the School of Drama, Mannes makes its home on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus in a state-of-the-art facility at the newly renovated Arnhold Hall.
Dedicated to the performance of new works and modern classics, the Orange Road Quartet creates unique listener-centered musical experiences for curious audiences. The programs they develop in collaboration with composers connect art and audiences beyond the traditional elite-dominated concert hall, and leave people from all backgrounds with a transformative experience. In recent years, Orange Road has been featured twice as an ensemble in residence at The Cortona Sessions for New Music, bringing cutting edge programs of premieres and modern masterpieces from Xenakis to John Luther Adams to audiences in Italy and the Netherlands. Orange Road is currently in the midst of their 2024-2025 concert season, which has included performances in New York City and Europe, with more on the horizon at The Southern Exposure Series at the University of South Carolina and residencies at the University of Florida and University of California, Davis, with more than 15 premieres to take place over the next few months. Orange Road began as The New Sounds Quartet in residence at the University of South Carolina in 2021, where they have enjoyed the mentorship of Ari Streisfeld, co-founding member of the JACK quartet. The current members are Miguel Calleja and Holly Workman, violins, Nicky Moore on viola, and Jordan Bartow on cello. Orange Road's members enjoy robust and varied careers as International soloists, interdisciplinary artists, and hold multiple chairs in regional orchestras. Orange Road is especially honored to join The New School as the Cuker and Stern Quartet in Residence, where they will be mentored by the current members of the JACK quartet, carrying on the seed of inspiration that began with their cherished mentor, Ari. As the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet, Orange Road will have unique performance opportunities, including appearances at the Mannes Sounds Festival; workshops and readings of new works by Composition faculty and students; masterclasses at Mannes Prep; collaborations with The Mannes Orchestra, Mannes American Composers Ensemble, and Mannes Opera; as well as performances at special events.
The (Un)Silent Film series has been critical in advancing the resurgence of film screenings with live music and has been hosted by Matthew Broderick, Bill Irwin, Rob Bartlett, Ed Rothstein, and Michael Bacon. (Un)Silent Film nights have presented the world premieres of works composed for The Birds and The Immigrant (by Nathan Kamal and Alexis Cuadrado respectively), a New York premiere of a score by Hollywood composer Craig Marks for the film Sherlock, Jr., and Charlie Chaplin's original scores for Gold Rush and other Chaplin classics. The most recent (Un)Silent presented the world premiere of a new score to the iconic film, METROPOLIS, composed by Mannes student, Amir Sanjari.
Dec. 13: Sony Classical to Release Charles Ives – The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology in Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of American Composer
Sony Classical to Release Charles Ives – The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology
Sony Classical to Release
Charles Ives – The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology
In Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of
American Composer Charles Ives
Iconic Albums from the RCA and Columbia catalogs recorded in the analog era 1945–76 with 83 works for the first time on CD
Album Release Date: December 13, 2024
Reviewer Rate: $30.01
In celebration of the Ives 150th anniversary year, Sony Classical proudly presents two of the most authoritative collections ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic American genius. The 22-CD box set Charles Ives – The Anthology 1945–1976, which will be released on November 29, 2024, brings together the entire discography amassed over three decades by Columbia Masterworks, the label that dedicated itself with unmatched zeal to bringing his visionary works to public attention. The important albums made by RCA Victor during those years are also included in this, the largest and most comprehensive Ives compilation ever issued.
In January 1939 – twelve years after Ives had stopped composing new works altogether – John Kirkpatrick, the pianist who would become the composer’s friend and leading collaborator, played his Second Sonata (1916–1919), subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840–1860” at New York’s Town Hall. It was the first public performance of Ives’s ferociously demanding masterpiece, and it garnered the first review of his music by a prominent, mainstream critic, who hailed the work as “the greatest music composed by an American”.
This was the turning point: “the artist and the work that launched the Ives revolution”, as it came to be known. In 1945, Kirkpatrick recorded the “Concord” Sonata for Columbia, which released it on 78s in 1948 and on vinyl a year later. Two decades later, the pianist made the celebrated stereo LP version of his painstakingly revised edition. Both of these still definitive recordings are in Sony’s new Ives “Anthology”.
In 1949, another outstanding interpreter of American music, William Masselos, gave another long overdue première, Ives’s remarkable First Piano Sonata (1909–21). A year later Masselos recorded it for Columbia, then he remade it in stereo for RCA Victor in 1966. Once again, a single artist’s two benchmarks, though in this case quite different, readings – the later one rather less reverential, more rhapsodic – are included in the new set.
Ives’s breakthrough as an orchestral composer finally came in 1946, when his Third Symphony “The Camp Meeting” (1901–12) was played in New York – the first time he had ever heard any of his symphonies performed complete. The next year it won him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. In 1951, his Second Symphony (1907–09) had its première, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. It was the first time that Ives, by then 77 years old, heard one of his major orchestral compositions played to his own satisfaction. Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded the symphony in 1958, Columbia released it in 1960 along with an invaluable 13-minute bonus record of Bernstein talking about Ives and the symphony’s musical quotations.
During the 1960s, when the posthumous “Ives Revolution” was in full swing, Bernstein recorded the Third Symphony and the symphony of “New England Holidays”. In 1965, Ives’s profoundly searching Fourth Symphony, which Aaron Copland termed “an astonishing conception in every way”, had its première in 1965, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony – a Grammy-winning milestone in American music history. In the same year, Morton Gould, conducting the Chicago Symphony for RCA, made the first recording of Ives’s First Symphony, begun when he was a student at Yale and still clearly in the European tradition. It also won a Grammy.
Not to be outdone, Eugene Ormandy jumped on the Ives bandwagon in Philadelphia, recording the first three symphonies, the “Holidays” and the beloved orchestral set Three Places in New England (the last-named work twice!) between 1964 and 1974. In that year, in London, José Serebrier, a co-conductor with Stokowski of the hugely complex Fourth’s première, recorded a version edited for a single conductor. The New York Times called the performance “stunning” and praised it for “extraordinary control and textural clarity”. Every one of these classic performances by Ormandy, Bernstein, Stokowski and Serebrier can be found in the Sony Ives “Anthology”.
Ives’s more than 150 songs rank among his finest achievements. 24 were recorded in 1969 by soprano Evelyn Lear and baritone Thomas Stewart, with Ives specialist Alan Mandel at the piano. This is the album’s first outing on CD. The greatest of the songs is the stirring General William Booth Enters into Heaven, now more familiar in the arrangement for bass, chorus and chamber orchestra. That version was part of the Gregg Smith Singers’ acclaimed 1966 album of Ives’s choral works, reissued in this set. Of his many chamber works, probably the best known are Ives’s two String Quartets, included here in the Juilliard String Quartet’s unsurpassed 1967 recording. The Second of his four Violin Sonatas is heard in a historic recording from 1950, never before issued on CD. The violin prodigy Patricia Travers was joined by pianist Otto Herz.
There are numerous other landmark recordings gathered in this epoch-making set, exploring works from every corner of Ives’s vast output, many of them also appearing for the first time on CD. One is a wildly entertaining album entitled Old Songs Deranged, played by the Yale Theater Orchestra and never reissued after its original Columbia release a half century ago. Edited and conducted by leading Ives authority James Sinclair, it inspired this wholehearted endorsement in a recent MusicWeb International Ives survey urgently calling for its re-release: “It sounds great! The marches are high-stepping, toe-tapping, swaggering romps. The sound of the orchestra is … completely idiomatic. This recording does such a good job of evoking Ives’ description of a ‘marching band with wings’ that it practically smells like Ives. The other works are wonderful too. Pieces like ‘Mists’ and ‘Evening’ conjure Victorian salon music filtered through the nostalgia of intervening years.” In short, Sinclair’s disc is a welcome addition to Sony Classical’s “Anthology 1945–76”, without doubt the essential Ives collection.
SET CONTENTS
Disc 1:
ML 4250
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
MM-749
Ives: Piano Sonata No.1: IIb. In The Inn: Allegro-Chorus
Disc 2:
ML 4490 Modern American Music Series
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 1
ML 2169
Ives: Sonata No.2 for Violin and Piano
Disc 3:
KS 6155
Ives: Symphony No. 2
Leonard Bernstein discusses Charles Ives
Disc 4:
MS 6775
Ives: Symphony No. 4
MS 7015
Ives: Robert Browning Overture
Disc 5:
MS 6843
Ives: Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”
Ives: Central Park in the Dark
Ives: Decoration Day
Ives: The Unanswered Question
MS 6161
Ives: Variations on “America”
Disc 6:
LSC-2893
Ives: Variations on “America”
Ives: Symphony No 1 in D Minor
Ives: The Unanswered Question
Disc 7:
MS 6921 Music for Chorus
Ives: General William Booth Enters into Heaven
Ives: Serenity
Ives: The Circus Band
Ives: December
Ives: The New River
Ives: Three Harvest Home Chorales
Ives: Psalm 100
Ives: Psalm 67
Ives: Psalm 24
Ives: Psalm 90
Ives: Psalm 150
Disc 8:
LSC-2941
Ives: Piano Sonata No.1
Disc 9:
LSC-2959
Ives: Orchestral Set No 2
Ives: Three Places in New England: II. Putnam's Camp
Ives: Robert Browning Overture
Disc 10:
MS 7027
Ives: String Quartet No. 1 “From the Salvation Army”
Ives: String Quartet No. 2
Disc 11:
MS 7111
Ives: Symphony No. 1
Ives: Three Places in New England
MS 7289
Ives (arr. William Schuman): Variations on “America”
Disc 12:
MS 7147
Ives: A Symphony, New England Holidays
M3X 31068 (M 31071)
Ives: The Gong on the Hook and Ladder
Ives: The Circus Band. March
Disc 13:
MS 7192
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
Disc 14:
MS 7321: New Music of Charles Ives
Ives: Processional “Let There Be Light”
Ives: Psalm 14
Ives: Psalm 54
Ives: Psalm 25
Ives: Psalm 135
Ives: Walt Whitman
Ives: 2 Slants (Christian and Pagan)
Ives: Duty
Ives: Vita
Ives: On the Antipodes
Ives: The Last Reader
Ives: Luck and Work
Ives: Like a Sick Eagle
Ives: A Lecture (Tolerance)
Ives: from the "Incantation"
Ives: The Pond
Ives: At Sea
Ives: The Children’s Hour
Ives: The Rainbow
Disc 15:
MS 7318 Calcium Light Night
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 1
Ives: Tone Roads No. 1
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 3
Ives: From the Steeples and the Mountains
Ives: The Rainbow
Ives: Ann Street
Ives: Scherzo: Over the Pavements
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 2 - Selections
Ives: Tone Roads No. 3
Ives: The Pond
Ives: Scherzo: All the Way Around and Back
Ives: Chromâtimelôdtune
M 33513
Ives: Omega Lambda Chi
Ives: March Intercollegiate
Disc 16:
M 30230 Chamber Music
Ives: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
Ives: A Set of Three Short Pieces
Ives: In re con moto et al
Ives: Largo for Violin, Clarinet and Piano
Ives: Largo risoluto No. 1
Ives: Hallowe'en
Ives: Largo risoluto No. 2
Ives: Largo for Violin and Piano
Disc 17:
M 30229 American Scenes - American Poets
Ives: The Things Our Fathers Loved
Ives: Walking
Ives: Autumn
Ives: Maple Leaves
Ives: At the River
Ives: Circus Band
Ives: The Side Show
Ives: Charlie Rutlage
Ives: Tom Sails Away
Ives: They are There!
Ives: In Flanders Field
Ives: Two Little Flowers
Ives: The Greatest Man
Ives: There is a Lane
Ives: The Last Reader
Ives: The Children’s Hour
Ives: Walt Whitman
Ives: The Light that is Felt
Ives: Serenity
Ives: Thoreau
Ives: Duty
Ives: Afterglow
Ives: The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Ives: Grantchester
Disc 18:
M 32969 Old Songs Deranged - Music for Theater Orchestra
Ives: Country Band March
Ives: The Swimmers
Ives: Mists
Ives: Charlie Rutlage
Ives: Evening
Ives: March II
Ives: March III
Ives: Overture and March 1776"
Ives: An Old Song Deranged
Ives: Gyp the Blood or Hearst? Which is Worst?
Ives: Remembrance
Ives: Fugue in Four Keys on The Shining Shore"
Ives: Chromatimelodtune
Ives: Holiday Quickstep
MG 33728 (2) Spirit Of '76
C. Ives (arr. William Schumann): Variations on “America”
Disc 19:
ARL1-0589
Ives: Symphony No. 4
Disc 20:
ARL1-0663
Ives: Symphony No. 2
LSC-3060
Ives: Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”
Disc 21:
ARL1-1249
Ives: A Symphony: New England Holidays
ARL1-1682
Ives: Three Places in New England
Disc 22:
ARL1-1599
Barber: String Quartet in B Minor, Op. 11
Ives: String Quartet No. 2
Ives: Scherzo for String Quartet
Nov 2-3: California Symphony Led by Artistic & Music Director Donato Cabrera Continues 2024-2025 Season with BRAHMS ODYSSEY
California Symphony Continues its 2024-2025 Season with BRAHMS ODYSSEY
Photo of Donato Cabrera by Stefan Cohen; high resolution photos available here.
California Symphony Continues its 2024-2025 Season with BRAHMS ODYSSEY
Led by Donato Cabrera, Artistic & Music Director
In Concert November 2 at 7:30pm & November 3 at 4:00pm
At Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts
Featuring Mason Bates’s GRAMMY Award-Winning Concerto for Orchestra & Animated Film Philharmonia Fantastique
Watch a Preview
California Symphony’s 2024-2025 Season Showcases the Crowning Achievements of Composers at the Peak of Their Powers
Watch Donato Cabrera’s Introduction
Tickets & Information: www.californiasymphony.org
WALNUT CREEK, CA – California Symphony and Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera continue the 2024-2025 season, showcasing the crowning achievements of composers at the peak of their powers, with BRAHMS ODYSSEY – two thrilling concerts that will take audience members on an odyssey through the orchestra on Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 7:30pm and Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 4:00pm at Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts (1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek).
The concerts open with Benjamin Britten’s lively Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which uses a memorable theme to introduce different instruments in the orchestra, taking listeners on a journey through the strings, woodwinds, percussion, brass, and more. Next, former California Symphony Resident Composer Mason Bates invokes the spirit of Disney’s classic Fantasia in his GRAMMY-winning concerto for orchestra and animated film, Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, guided by a mischievous sprite. The performances close with Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 4 – a deeply emotional, poignant masterpiece which was the eminent composer’s last symphony. Even though Brahms lived for more than a decade after its premiere, it was the final symphony he wrote, with many considering it to be the pinnacle of his career.
Following these concerts, on Monday, November 4, the California Symphony launches its first Education Concerts held during the school day, welcoming 1500 fourth grade students from local Title I schools in Contra Costa County to two performances at the Lesher Center. In advance of the performances, California Symphony Teaching Artists will visit classrooms to provide pre-concert music education, and the in-classroom learning will give students a deeper understanding and appreciation of music and lay the groundwork for a fun, productive, and memorable field trip.
“Over the course of my tenure with the California Symphony, the music of Johannes Brahms has figured prominently in our concerts. So, not only does performing his final symphony fit within the theme of our season, it brings to a close our survey of his symphonic output,” says Donato Cabrera. “When it came to pairing works with Brahms’s fourth symphony, I was reminded of the old phrase, ‘The Three B’s of classical music: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms,’ and thought that it would be fun (and high time) to update it! In choosing Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and Mason Bates’s Philharmonia Fantastique, a piece that Mason describes as a ‘concerto for orchestra and animated film,’ we will be performing two works that belong to a long tradition of works composed to showcase and introduce the incredibly powerful and unique sounds that only the instruments of the orchestra can produce.”
Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra was commissioned in 1945 for a British documentary film, Instruments of the Orchestra, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra. “Britten’s Guide is meticulously structured, exquisitely paced, and magnificently orchestrated,” writes California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong. “After a grand statement of the theme in full orchestra, Britten takes us through 13 variations, each highlighting specific instruments.”
Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra is a 25-minute multi-media concerto from former California Symphony Resident Composer Mason Bates and award-winning filmmakers Gary Rydstrom (Jurassic Park, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan) and Jim Capobianco (The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Inside Out). Philharmonia Fantastique, like Britten’s Guide, is also a tour through the orchestra – this time paired with an animated film guided by a magical character, Sprite. The imaginative piece won a GRAMMY in 2023. “With uncanny synchronicity, [Philharmonia Fantastique] transposes the composer’s sweeping score into a charming chronicle of a wide-eyed young listener – a ‘Sprite’ – whose curiosity leads to a vibrantly colorful dive into not just the makings of an orchestra, but also the inner workings of its instruments,” reports The Washington Post.
Johannes Brahms’s final symphony, Symphony No. 4, was premiered in 1885 and declared to be, “New and original and yet authentic Brahms from A to Z,” by the composer Richard Strauss. Brahms wrote the piece over the summers of 1884 and 1885 in the Austrian Alps, while reading a translation of Sophocles. While the symphony is lyrical and immediately captivating, it is also poignantly tragic. Scott Foglesong describes the Symphony as, “incomparably rich, sweeping and majestic,” while Brahms’s contemporary, Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that it is, “like a dark well; the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back.”
Illustrating California Symphony’s signature approach to creating vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers, the 2024-2025 season features the iconic final symphonies of titans of classical music Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; the unfinished masterpieces of Anton Bruckner and Franz Schubert; a Grammy-winning Disney Fantasia-esque concerto for film and orchestra by Bay Area composer Mason Bates paired with Benjamin Britten’s lively introduction to the ensemble; a world premiere by the orchestra’s 2023-2026 Young American Composer-in-Residence Saad Haddad; a recent work by Grammy-nominated composer and Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon; Joaquin Rodrigo’s famous tour-de-force guitar concerto Concierto de Aranjuez; and rarely performed music by 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc and 20th-century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz.
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Donato Cabrera since 2013. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area. California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.
Three-concert subscriptions start at $120 and are available now. Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under. A 30-minute pre-concert talk by lecturer Scott Foglesong will begin one hour before each performance. More information is available at CaliforniaSymphony.org.
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS:
WHAT: California Symphony presents Brahms Odyssey
This November, California Symphony, conducted by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera, takes audience members on an odyssey through the orchestra. Benjamin Britten’s lively Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra uses a memorable theme to introduce different instruments in the orchestra, making it a great way to learn about the symphony. Former California Symphony Resident Composer Mason Bates invokes the spirit of Disney’s classic Fantasia in his Grammy-winning concerto for orchestra and animated film guided by a mischievous sprite, Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra. We wrap up the performance with Brahms's Symphony No. 4. His final symphony is a deeply emotional, poignant masterpiece. Even though Brahms lived for more than a decade after its premiere, it was the last symphony he wrote, with many considering it to be the pinnacle of his career.
California Symphony takes the stuffiness out of the concert experience: Take selfies at the photo booth, order a signature cocktail, and sip at your seat. Tickets include a free 30-minute pre-concert talk by award-winning instructor Scott Foglesong, starting one hour before the show.
WHEN: Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 7:30pm
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 4:00pm
WHERE: Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
CONCERT:
BRAHMS ODYSSEY
7:30pm, Saturday, November 2
4:00pm, Sunday, November 3
Donato Cabrera, conductor
California Symphony
PROGRAM:
Benjamin Britten: Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Mason Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique – The Making of the Orchestra
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No.4, Op. 98, E minor
TICKETS: Three-concert subscriptions start at $120 and are available now. Single tickets start at $50 and at $25 for students 25 and under.
INFO: For more information or to purchase tickets, the public may visit CaliforniaSymphony.org or call the Lesher Center Ticket Office at (925) 943-7469 (open Wed – Sun, noon to 6pm).
PHOTOS: Available here.
About the California Symphony:
Founded in 1986, California Symphony has been led by Artistic and Music Director Donato Cabrera since 2013. It is distinguished by its vibrant concert programs that span the breadth of orchestral repertoire, including works by American composers and by living composers. Its concert season at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California serves a growing number of music lovers from across the Bay Area.
California Symphony believes that the concert experience should be fun and inviting, and its mission is to create a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive environment for the entire community. Through this commitment to community, imaginative programming, and its support of emerging composers, California Symphony is a leader among orchestras in California and a model for regional orchestras everywhere.
Since 1991, California Symphony's three-year Young American Composer-in-Residence program has provided a composer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collaborate with the orchestra over three consecutive years to create, rehearse, premiere, and record three major orchestra compositions, one each season. Every Composer-in-Residence has gone on to win top honors and accolades in the field, including the Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Awards, and more.
The orchestra's nationally recognized educational initiative Sound Minds impacts students' trajectories by providing instruction for violin or cello and musicianship skills. Sound Minds has proven to contribute directly to improved reading and math proficiencies and character development, as students set and achieve goals, learn communication and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. Inspired by the El Sistema program of Venezuela, the program is offered completely free of charge to the students and families of Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, California.
Through its innovative adult education program Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed, California Symphony provides lifelong learners a fun-filled introduction to the orchestra and classical music. Led by celebrated educator and California Symphony program annotator Scott Foglesong, these live classes are held over four weeks in the summer annually and are available to stream online year-round.
In 2017, California Symphony became the first orchestra with a public statement of a commitment to diversity. Its website is available in both Spanish and English.
Reaching far beyond the performance hall, since 2020 the orchestra's concerts have been broadcast nationally on multiple radio series through Classical California (KUSC/KDFC) and the WFMT Radio Network, reaching over 1.5 million listeners across the country.
For more information, visit CaliforniaSymphony.org.
California Symphony’s 2024-25 season is sponsored by the Lesher Foundation.
Oct. 18-19: The Birch Festival is Back in the Berkshires for Fall – Featured Performance: Bold Beginnings with Cellist Amit Peled, Pianist Roman Rabinovich, & Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Announcing The Birch Festival Fall Edition: October 18-19, 2024
Yevgeny Kutik, Artistic Director & Rachel Barker, Executive Director
Announcing The Birch Festival Fall Edition: October 18-19, 2024
Yevgeny Kutik, Artistic Director & Rachel Barker, Executive Director
Featured Performance: October 19, 2024 at 4pm
Church on the Hill, Lenox
Bold Beginnings: First Works by Brahms, Beethoven, and More
Cellist Amit Peled, Pianist Roman Rabinovich, & Violinist Yevgeny Kutik
Tickets and Registration Information: www.thebirchfestival.org
Lenox, MA — The Birch Festival is back for the fall season from October 18-19, 2024. Returning just in time to embrace the Berkshires’ beautiful autumn foliage, this year’s festivities include an evening of wine, music, and community camaraderie with a musician meet-and-greet; the return of the “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal; and a feature performance with cellist Amit Peled, pianist Roman Rabinovich, and violinist and Birch Festival Artistic Director and Co-Founder Yevgeny Kutik.
The Birch Festival was founded in 2022 by Lenox-based husband-and-wife team Yevgeny Kutik, an internationally renowned violinist who serves as Artistic Director, and writer/educator Rachel Barker, who is the non-profit organization’s Executive Director.
The Birch Festival’s mission is to bring world-leading musicians for artist residencies in Berkshire County schools, and work in tandem with local business and cultural partnerships. Kutik, a Belarusian-Jewish refugee resettled in Pittsfield by the Jewish Federation in the 1990s, named the festival for his grandmother Sima Berezkina, whose last name means “birch tree.” With significance in many global cultures, birch trees symbolize growth, resilience, and adaptability – qualities that Sima embodied.
On Friday, October 18, 2024 from 6-7:30pm, The Birch Festival will present a free meet-and-greet event at the newly opened Doctor Sax House in Lenox, MA (35 Walker St). Attendees will have the opportunity to meet Kutik, Peled, and Rabinovich while enjoying a wine tasting provided by Dare Bottleshop and Provisions. Space will be limited. Registration is required. On Saturday, October 19 at 10:30am, the public is welcome to join the festival’s “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal at the Church on the Hill in Lenox (55 Main St). No registration required.
Concluding the festival on Saturday, October 19 at 4pm, cellist Amit Peled, pianist Roman Rabinovich, and violinist Yevgeny Kutik will perform together in a program entitled Bold Beginnings. The concert will include performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3, Gaspar Cassadò’s Requiebros in D Major, Sergey Rachmaninov’s Prelude Op. 23 No. 5 and Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8. The performance will be held at the Church on the Hill in Lenox (55 Main St) and at 3:30pm there will be a pre-concert talk open to all ticket holders. Berkshire County Students and a guardian may attend for free. Tickets are available at www.thebirchfestival.org.
“For the third edition of The Birch Festival, we’re excited to be going bold by featuring works that Beethoven and Brahms wrote very early in their careers, works that foreshadow great music to come,” says Kutike. ”We love the Berkshires in the fall and are excited to celebrate with great music and artists.”
The Birch Festival promotes and propels distinct voices in music, whether through new composition or creative interpretation of old favorites. The Festival offers leading musicians a chance to play and establish relationships in the Berkshires, while recognizing the importance of their work by offering compensation that sustains and values their efforts in this industry.
The Birch Festival’s Spring Events
Artist Meet-and-Greet & Wine Tasting
Friday, October 18, 2024 from 6-7:30pm
Doctor Sax House
35 Walker St. Lenox, MA
Registration Required: www.thebirchfestival.org
Wine and music! Meet the Musicians of the Birch Festival at the newly opened Doctor Sax House while enjoying a wine tasting provided by Dare Bottleshop and Provisions. Space is limited, registration is required.
“Don’t Tap on the Glass” Open Rehearsal
Saturday, October 19 at 10:30am
Church on the Hill
55 Main St., Lenox, MA
Free and open to the public.
The Birch Festival welcomes the community of the Berkshires to enjoy some morning music at its “Don’t Tap on the Glass” open rehearsal at the Church on the Hill in Lenox. No registration required.
The Birch Festival Feature Performance – Bold Beginnings: First Works by Brahms, Beethoven, and More
Sunday, October 19, 2024 at 4pm
Church on the Hill
55 Main St., Lenox, MA
Tickets: www.thebirchfestival.org
Cellist Amit Peled, pianist Roman Rabinovich, and violinist Yevgeny Kutik will give a collaborative performance in a program entitled Bold Beginnings. The concert will feature Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3 by Ludwig van Beethoven, Requiebros in D Major by Gaspar Cassadò, Prelude Op. 23 No. 5 by Sergey Rachmaninov, and Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8 by Johannes Brahms. Tickets are required. Berkshire County students and a guardian may attend for free. A pre-concert talk will be held at 3:30pm in the Church on the Hill.
For The Birch Festival’s Complete Fall Schedule, Event Registration, and More Details visit: www.thebirchfestival.org/events
About Yevgeny Kutik: With a “dark-hued tone and razor-sharp technique” (The New York Times), violinist Yevgeny Kutik has captivated audiences worldwide with an old-world sound that communicates a modern intellect. Praised for his technical precision and virtuosity, he is also lauded for his poetic and imaginative interpretations of both standard works and newly composed repertoire.
A native of Minsk, Belarus, Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya, and immigrated to the US with his family at the age of five. An advocate for the Jewish Federations of North America, the organization that assisted his family in coming to the US, he regularly speaks and performs across the country to promote the assistance of refugees from around the world. Kutik’s discography, all on Marquis Classics, includes The Death of Juliet and Other Tales (2021), Meditations on Family (Marquis Classics 2019), Words Fail (2016), Music from the Suitcase (2014), and Sounds of Defiance (2012).
In August 2022, Kutik gave the world premiere of Cântico, a work for solo violin by Andreia Pinto Correia, at the Tanglewood Music Festival. The work was co-commissioned for Kutik by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Yevgeny Kutik was a featured soloist in Joseph Schwantner’s The Poet’s Hour – Soliloquy for Violin on episode six of Gerard Schwarz’s All-Star Orchestra, a made-for-television classical music concert series released on DVD by Naxos and broadcast nationally on PBS. In 2021, Kutik made his debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin, performing the world premiere of Schwantner’s Violin Concerto, an expansion of The Poet’s Hour written specifically for Kutik. In 2019, he made his debuts at the Kennedy Center, presented by Washington Performing Arts, and at the Ravinia Festival. Kutik made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and The Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition. In 2006, he was awarded the Salon de Virtuosi Grant as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Jules Reiner Violin Prize.
Kutik holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory and currently resides in Boston. Kutik’s violin was crafted in Italy in 1915 by Stefano Scarampella.
For more information, please visit www.yevgenykutik.com.
About Rachel Barker: Rachel Barker is an educator and writer with over a decade of experience working in public and international schools and currently writes about science and engineering for Harvard University.
Barker has been awarded spots in writers workshops for both nonfiction and fiction, including the Key West Literary Seminar, the Aspen Institute's Aspen Summer Words, and multiple residencies with Write On, Door County. She has consulted and presented for a number of organizations throughout the country, including the Yale Council for African Studies, Flint Institute of Music, Boston University's African Studies Center, Primary Source, and the Wayland/Weston Interfaith Council on Teaching Religion in Schools.
Rachel Barker’s MEd. is from Boston College, where she graduated with a focus on social justice and teaching English language learners. Her undergraduate degree in Anthropology is from Boston University, and she currently studies Religion at Harvard University.
Follow The Birch Festival on Social Media
Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebirchfestival
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/the-birch-festival/
The College of Performing Arts at The New School Announces 2024-2025 Performance Season
The College of Performing Arts at The New School Announces 2024-2025 Performance Season
The College of Performing Arts - Mannes, Jazz, Drama at The New School
Announces 2024-2025 Performance Season
Highlights Include:
September 30: Mannes Orchestra in World Premiere of New Work by Jihwan Yoon, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, with Mannes Violist Yuchen Lu as Soloist in Hindemith’s Der Schwanendreher
October 14: The Westerlies, School of Jazz & Contemporary Music Ensemble-in-Residence, perform Frisell, Holcomb, Horvitz
October 18-19: Mannes Opera Season Opener features a newly realized version of Don Giovanni
October 24: The New School Studio Orchestra performs the Music of Bob Brookmeyer
October 25: (Un)Silent Film - Orange Road Quartet performs Philip Glass score live to Tod Browning’s classic film, Dracula, with pianist and conductor Michael Riesman
October 26: Pianographique featuring Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies with Live Visuals by Cori O’Lan
Music by Philip Glass (U.S. Premiere), Steve Reich, and Laurie Anderson
November 1: Mannes Orchestra & The New York Choral Society in Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light with Silent Film The Passion of Joan of Arc at Alice Tully Hall
October 31-November 2: School of Drama presents World Premiere of The Ruminants
November 8-9: Mannes Opera Presents
Vinkensport, or the Finch Opera – Composed by David T. Little, Libretto by Royce Vavrek (N.Y.C. Premiere)
The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace – Composed by Kamala Sankaram, Libretto by Rob Handel
November 14: JACK Quartet, Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence
Modern Medieval: Music by Taylor Brook, Vincente Atria, Austin Wulliman, Johnny MacMillan, and Juri Seo
November 21-23: School of Drama presents Anne Carson's Translation of Euripides' Orestes
November 25: Mannes American Composers Ensemble led by David Fulmer
Music by Carola Bauckholt, Augusta Read Thomas, Matthew Ricketts, George Lewis, and Pierre Boulez, plus Mannes student Ryan Brideau
December 5: The New School Studio Orchestra presents Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite
December 9: Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall in the U.S. Premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara, the N.Y.C. Premiere of Marion Bauer’s Rarely Performed Symphony No. 1, and David Diamond’s Symphony No. 2
December 11: Sandbox Percussion, Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence, presents World Premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM in Concert
February 28: Mannes Orchestra gives the World Premieres of JL Marlor’s Saltwater Lung and Alex Glass’s The World Inside, both winners of the Martinů Prize, with Sibelius’s The Wood Nymph
March 7 & 8: Mannes Opera presents Handel’s Alcina
Directed by Sam Helfrich and Conducted by Geoffrey MacDonald
March 31-April 1: Mannes Sounds presents The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds; a Chamber Opera by Ofer Ben-Amots, Based on the Play by S. Ansky
April 2: Mannes American Composers Ensemble led by David Fulmer
Music by Matthias Pintscher, Pierre Boulez, Augusta Read Thomas, and Gyorgy Ligeti, plus a Mannes student work TBA
April 11: Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall in Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al featuring Sandbox Percussion
Plus John Zorn’s Contes de Fées featuring Violinist Stefan Jackiw and Berio’s Sinfonia
May 2: The New School Studio Orchestra presents U.S. Premiere of Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill
September-May: Residencies at The Stone at The New School
Featured Artists include Craig Taborn, Raven Chacon, Cyro Baptista, Zeena Parkins, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Uri Caine, Theo Bleckmann, Annie Gosfield, Fred Frith, Mary Halvorson, and many more
Complete Performance Calendar: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts/performance-calendar
For Complete Program Descriptions, See the End of this Press Release.
For Press Tickets Contact: Christina Jensen, christina@jensenartists.com
New York, N.Y. – The College of Performing Arts - Mannes, Jazz, Drama at The New School announces performance highlights for its 2024-2025 season. The College of Performing Arts – the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama – is a hub for vigorous training, bold experimentation, innovative education, cross-disciplinary collaboration and world-class performances. Students are mentored by the legendary faculty, artists and professional performing partners within New York City's vibrant artistic community, gaining hands-on experience performing across the city and around the world. Presenting approximately 900 performances each year by students, faculty and guest artists, nearly all of which are free and open to the public, the Mannes, Jazz, Drama season provides an incredible performing arts resource for New Yorkers and visitors alike.
“It’s hard to imagine that the founders of our performing arts schools could have foreseen a season of performances like this. From our world renowned ensembles in residence, the long overdue United States premiere of Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill, Philip Glass’s score with the legendary 1931 film Dracula, or one act operas by our composition faculty members David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram, this season of works by our wonderful students, faculty, and guest artists will offer something special no matter what genre or style you are interested in. We are incredibly excited to bring this season to audiences through the metro New York region,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.
Performances by students, faculty and guest artists at the College of Performing Arts break new ground, pushing the boundaries of convention and reinventing traditional forms. Highlights this season include the (Un)Silent Film series presenting Tod Browning’s classic film Dracula with Philip Glass’s score performed by Orange Road Quartet, the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence, with pianist and guest conductor Michael Riesman on October 25; the Namekawa-Davies Duo (Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies) in Pianographique featuring music by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan, on October 26; performances by celebrated Mannes/School of Jazz Ensembles-in-Residence The Westerlies, Sandbox Percussion, and JACK Quartet throughout the season; the world premiere of The Ruminants directed by School of Drama faculty member Ana Margineanu from October 31 through November 2; Mannes Opera’s double bill featuring one-act operas by David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram on November 8 and 9; the New School Studio Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite on December 5; the Mannes Orchestra performing at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in a concert featuring Sandbox Percussion in Viet Cuong’s percussion concerto Re(new)al and John Zorn’s violin concerto with Stefan Jackiw on April 11; and the New School Studio Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of jazz great Carla Bley’s rarely heard landmark album Escalator Over the Hill on May 2.
Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for radically progressive music education, dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. Distinguished Mannes alumni include the 20th-century songwriting legend Burt Bacharach, the great pianists Michel Camilo, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, and Bill Evans, acclaimed conductors Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung, JoAnn Falletta, and Julius Rudel, beloved mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, as well as the great opera stars of today, Yonghoon Lee, Danielle de Niese, and Nadine Sierra.
Led by conductor David Hayes and known for its bold and adventurous programming, the Mannes Orchestra has been hailed by The New York Times as an orchestra whose quality is “a revelation,” and for its “intensity of focus.” Exploring the concept of the “radical orchestra” during the 2024-2025 season and seeking to amplify the work of underrepresented composers, this year’s programming features composers who went beyond traditional orchestral structures to explore new ground in sound and structure. The Mannes Orchestra’s season opens on September 30 with a concert featuring two prizewinning students – composer Jihwan Yoon, winner of the Martinů Prize and violist Yuchen Lu, winner of the 2024 George and Elizabeth Gregory Concerto Competition – plus Berlioz’s epic Symphonie Fantastique. As part of its ongoing partnership with the New York Choral Society, the orchestra will perform Voices of Light, a work by Richard Einhorn paired with legendary silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on November 1. The orchestra returns to Alice Tully on December 9 to give the U.S. premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara, the New York City premiere of Marion Bauer’s rarely performed Symphony No. 1, and David Diamond’s Symphony No. 2. The orchestra’s spring season opens on February 28 with the world premieres of Mannes alumni JL Marlor’s Saltwater Lung, winner of the Martinů Prize in 2023, and The World Inside by Alex Glass, winner of the 2024 Martinů prize, presented with Sibelius’s rarely performed The Wood Nymph, Op. 15. On April 11 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Mannes Orchestra performs Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al with Sandbox Percussion, Berio’s Sinfonia, and John Zorn’s violin concerto Contes de Fées featuring Stefan Jackiw.
Under the leadership of Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin, Mannes Opera is a dynamic training program for operatic artists, marked by a curiosity for new and a devotion to craft. The program utilizes opera as a medium for exploration, improvisation, and creation, providing students with extensive performance opportunities and practice. Mannes Opera’s season opens on October 18 and 19 with a jewel box production of W.A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni, arranged by Danyal Dhondy, realized by Griffin and Mannes faculty member Cris Frisco at a crisp 100 minutes. The Opera in Concert double bill on November 8 and 9 features a duo of one-act operas by Mannes faculty members and prolific composers, David T. Little (Vinkensport, or the Finch Opera with libretto by Royce Vavrek, New York City premiere) and Kamala Sankaram (The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace with libretto by Rob Handel), directed by New School Drama alum Alison Pogorelc. SCENEWORKS FALL24 on December 6 and 7 at the Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street offers a delightful serving of operatic scenes; program to be announced. On March 7 and 8, Mannes Opera presents Handel’s Alcina at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater, directed by Sam Helfrich and conducted by Mannes alumnus Geoffrey MacDonald. On May 9, Mannes Opera gives an invite-only workshop presentation of Hildegard, a new opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider, in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects.
The 2024-2025 season at the Mannes School of Music also includes performances that are part of the Mannes Sounds Festival, founded in 1999 by piano chair Pavlina Dokovska, which presents more than 20 concerts by Mannes students, faculty and guest artists annually at venues and institutions across New York City; such as The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, a chamber opera by Ofer Ben-Amots based on the play by S. Ansky, presented on March 31 and April 1 at the Center for Jewish History in partnership with the American Society of Jewish Music and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, and performed by students from Mannes and the College of Performing Arts. In addition, chamber music students’ achievements each semester will be highlighted in two Mannes Chamber Music Festivals in fall (November 7-14) and spring (April 8-15). The season also features fall (November 25) and spring (April 2) performances by the Mannes American Composers Ensemble – founded in 2012 by Lowell Liebermann and now led by David Fulmer, representing works by iconic American and new and upcoming composers. This season's artistic curation and programming includes four innovative initiatives for the Ensemble; a two-year composer-in-focus workshop, collaboration and integration with the Vocal Performance Department, student composer commissioning projects, and collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble and JACK Quartet.
The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music is renowned across the globe as the most innovative school of its kind, offering students an artist-as-mentor approach to learning. The world’s leading contemporary and jazz musicians, like Reggie Workman, Mary Halvorson, Arturo O’Farrill, Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkens, Jane Ira Bloom, and more, work with students to hone their craft and create groundbreaking music. At the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, students are immersed in the creative epicenter of New York City and are supported by a faculty of renowned professionals who challenge them to expand the boundaries of their art form, experiment with sound, and use creative voice for change. The school’s approach is unique, allowing students to choose their own teachers and create their own ensembles. This education with agency provides students with the tools and experience needed to navigate and thrive as performing arts professionals. All groups rehearse, record, and perform live (with livestream) every semester.
The College of Performing Arts' newest large ensemble, the New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO), is composed of students from the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Mannes School of Music, performing music from a wide variety of genres including jazz, soul, pop, and improvised music. The NSSO kicks off its three-concert season on October 24 with an evening dedicated to the compositions and arrangements by the great jazz trombonist and composer Bob Brookmeyer. Ellington and Strayhorn’s beloved The Nutcracker Suite will be presented during the holiday season on December 5. The U.S. premiere of Carla Bley’s rarely performed but hugely influential Escalator Over the Hill, described by Rolling Stone as “an international musical encounter of the first order,” is the epic close to this season’s series, led by Arturo O'Farrill on May 2, 2025.
"This is an exciting season for the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music,” says Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Associate Dean, College of Performing Arts. “The New School Studio Orchestra presents the U.S. Premiere of Carla Bley's rarely performed Escalator Over the Hill in May and starts off the fall in a big way with music by Bob Brookmeyer in October and Ellington's beloved Nutcracker Suite in December – I can't wait for people to hear this group. We have a boygenius Ensemble for the first time, and our Fall Ensemble Festival features Reggie Workman's John Coltrane Ensemble, the Carla Bley Ensemble directed by Arturo O'Farrill, and the Waterfalls 90s R&B Ensemble directed by Marlon Saunders, as well as groups helmed by Immanuel Wilkins, Jane Ira Bloom, Joel Ross, Mary Halvorson and more. Folks should come get in the room with these talented musicians."
The (Un)Silent Film series has been critical in advancing the resurgence of film screenings with live music and has been hosted by Matthew Broderick, Bill Irwin, Rob Bartlett, Ed Rothstein, and Michael Bacon. (Un)Silent Film nights have presented the world premieres of works composed for The Birds and The Immigrant (by Nathan Kamal and Alexis Cuadrado respectively), a New York premiere of a score by Hollywood composer Craig Marks for the film Sherlock, Jr., and Charlie Chaplin's original scores for Gold Rush and other Chaplin classics. This season, in addition to Dracula on October 25, the series presents Safety Last!, an American silent romantic-comedy film from 1923 starring Harold Lloyd and produced by Hal Roach, and Kid Auto Races [at Venice], also known as The Pest, a 1914 American film starring Charlie Chaplin with music by Carl Davis performed by Mannes' (Un)Silent Orchestra, conducted by David Fulmer on April 25.
The Stone at The New School, named by Time Out New York as one of the best jazz clubs in New York City, serves as an artist-centric community for experimental and avant-garde artists. With concerts every Wednesday through Saturday evening, The Stone at The New School continues the tradition of the landmark non-profit performance space founded in 2005 by Artistic Director John Zorn, within a greatly improved space. The 2024-2025 season features a varied roster of artists from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to renowned concert and new music violinist Jennifer Choi. This season showcases notable New School faculty members such as MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Mary Halvorson; Cyro Baptista, who has shared the stage with the likes of Paul Simon and David Byrne; and Fay Victor, praised in The New York Times for inventing “her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.” The 2024-2025 season also marks the premiere of the Students at The Stone series featuring performances by current New School students, where audiences can hear the future of the experimental music scene.
The School of Drama is the creative home to a dynamic group of actors, directors, writers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary theater artists. With a focus on authenticity of expression, the school’s curriculum confronts today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media. From October 31-November 2, the School of Drama presents the world premiere of The Ruminants at Bank Street Theater, directed by faculty member Ana Margineanu. The Ruminants is a new play that explores protest, privilege, and the lasting effects of one's actions, which was developed as part of the 2023-2024 Farm Theater College Collaboration Project. Each year, the School of Drama invites regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized guest artists to share their artistic, collaborative, and philosophical approaches to theater-making with students in its groundbreaking MFA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance program. This year marks the return of members of Ping Chong and Company (PCC), longtime collaborators with the School of Drama and the College of Performing Arts, on November 4. Rooted in the company's mission to “create[s] theater and art that reveal beauty, invention, precision, and a commitment to social justice,” PCC engaged students in their “Undesirable Elements” series, an ongoing practice of creating interview-based theater works that explore culture, identity, and belonging in specific communities. From November 21-23 at Bank Street Theater, the School of Drama presents an innovative rendition of Euripides' Orestes, translated by poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson and directed by Ashley Kelly Tata. The APEX Festival will take place over two weekends at Bank Street Theater, April 25-26 and May 2-3, and will spotlight eight projects serving as graduating MFA Contemporary Theatre and Performance students' capstone offerings. The School of Drama also continues its dynamic partnership with Naked Angels, a prominent figure in New York City’s theater community. The esteemed 1st Mondays at The New School series, entering its second year, is a vital platform for emerging playwrights from Naked Angels’ Tuesdays@9 community to showcase their work and for School of Drama students to interact with and learn from these emerging talents, gain insights into the process of creating and workshopping new plays, and forge meaningful connections within the industry.
“The diversity of works this season includes a new translation of a classic Greek text, a world premiere play that resonates deeply with the present moment, collaborations with leading arts organizations in New York City, and a festival of new and exciting multidisciplinary works from our graduate student cohort,” says Jermaine Hill, Dean, School Of Drama and Associate Dean, College of Performing Arts. “These offerings demonstrate the depth and breadth of artistic exploration at the School of Drama and exemplify our commitment to being a destination that celebrates and epitomizes the best of our student artists in a variety of genres, mediums, and forms. We welcome you to join us for this bold and exciting production season.”
Performances at The New School’s College of Performing Arts are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Some events require advance registration. View the full calendar of performances at the College of Performing Arts – including Mannes School of Music, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and School of Drama – for details on how to attend.
The College of Performing Arts at The New School – 2024-2025 Season Highlights
Cross-College Collaborations
February 21 at 7:30pm: A Celebration of Black History
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Co-Produced by the College of Performing Arts Committee for Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice
Free with registration
Artists from across the College of Performing Arts join together to celebrate Black History through music and theatrical performance, in a special gathering of song, dance, theater, oration and community. The evening is curated by Charlotte Small and features special guests and performers from the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, the School of Drama, and special guests. Last year’s inaugural performance featured Dr. Cornel West, Cyrus Chestnut, Arturo O'Farrill, Power Silhouette, The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music Gospel Choir, School of Drama actors, and more. This season’s special guests are to be announced.
Mannes School of Music
September 30 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra Fall Season Opener
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Mannes Orchestra, led by conductor David Hayes, opens its season with a concert featuring two prizewinning students plus Berlioz’s epic Symphonie Fantastique. Violist Yuchen Lu, winner of the 2024 George and Elizabeth Gregory Concerto Competition, will perform Hindemith’s dramatic Der Schwanendreher. The orchestra gives the world premiere of In the Mirror…for Orchestra by Jihwan Yoon, winner of the Martinů Prize for his unique voice and originality in musical composition for orchestra. The Martinů Prize is named in honor of former Mannes faculty member, distinguished composer Bohuslav Martinů.
October 3 at 7:30pm: Mannes Wind Symphony performs Adams, Copland, Piazzolla and Rodrigo
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Anchored around John Adams' challenging and seldom performed Grand Pianola Music, this exciting program features works by some of our greatest composers of Latin and American music. With the support of a full wind ensemble throughout, this concert dances between varied Spanish, American, and Latin American styles all originating from the last century. The Spanish/Latin compositions by Rodrigo and Piazzolla center around traditional clave rhythms. Copland's Quiet City works with rhythmic freedom and lush, open chords that support the solo voices of trumpet and English horn.This "American" sound is also evident in the use of Adams' harmonic language, coupled with a minimalistic, yet complex, rhythmic drive. The addition of two harmonious pianos and three voices give new range to the sound of a wind ensemble, making Grand Pianola Music a unique, masterful composition like no other.
October 18 & 19 at 7:30pm: Mannes Opera presents Don Giovanni by W.A. Mozart, arranged by Danyal Dhondy
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Mannes Opera season opener is a classic realized anew. This Don Giovanni (1788) (by W.A. Mozart, arranged by Danyal Dhondy), is presented in a crisp 100 minutes, with an ensemble of piano, string trio, and trombone. Featuring the sonorous acoustics of The New School’s art deco auditorium on 12th street, the jewelbox production created by Mannes Opera Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin and faculty member Cris Frisco serves Mozart’s music and Da Ponte’s storytelling with a twist of horror.
October 25 at 7:30pm: (Un)Silent Film – Philip Glass’s Dracula in Concert conducted by Michael Riesman
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The acclaimed Philip Glass score to Tod Browning's 1931 film classic, Dracula, originally composed for the Kronos Quartet, will be performed by the Orange Road Quartet, the Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet in Residence, with pianist, guest conductor and music arranger Michael Riesman, music director of the Philip Glass Ensemble.
October 26 at 7:30pm: Pianographique performed by Maki Namekawa & Dennis Russell Davies with visuals by Cori O’Lan
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Namekawa-Davies Duo present Pianographique, an exciting evening of music featuring works by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies’ personal friends Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Steve Reich, with real-time visualizations by Cori O’Lan. The concert features Steve Reich’s iconic Piano Phase (1967), two pieces by Laurie Anderson including Song for Bob, and a second half comprised of works by Philip Glass, including the American premiere of Elergy for the Present (2020), music from The Truman Show, and Four Pieces for Two Pianos which Glass composed for the Namekawa-Davies Duo.
November 1 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra & The New York Choral Society in Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light with Silent Film The Passion of Joan of Arc
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center | 1941 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The New York Choral Society presents Voices of Light, a work by New York native Richard Einhorn, for orchestra, soloists, and chorus. This compelling piece will be paired with the legendary silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, which chronicles the trial and torment of Joan of Arc. Starring the famous Comédie Française actress Renée Falconetti, this recently restored 1928 film offers a unique opportunity for both film and music lovers to experience the movie on a large screen at Alice Tully Hall, in partnership with the Mannes Orchestra.
November 7-14: Fall Mannes Chamber Music Festival
Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Chamber Music Festival is a special weeklong series of performances highlighting Mannes students’ accomplishments in chamber music over the course of a semester, showcasing Mannes’ new specialized and diversified chamber music courses, new community partnerships, and performance opportunities. Register once for the week with CHAMBERPASS!
November 8-9: Mannes Opera presents Opera in Concert Double Bill
Vinkensport, or the Finch Opera – composed by David T. Little, libretto by Royce Vavrek (New York City Premiere)
The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace – composed by Kamala Sankaram, libretto by Rob Handel (Commissioned by Opera Ithaca)
November 8 at 7:30pm and November 9 at 2:00pm
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Mannes Opera presents an Opera in Concert double bill featuring the works of Mannes faculty members and prolific composers David T. Little and Kamala Sankaram, directed by New School Drama alum Alison Pogorelc, offering an operatic lens into the strange world of human experience. Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera (2010/2018), composed by David T. Little on a libretto by Royce Vavrek, receives its New York City premiere. Vinkensport is a bitter-sweet comedy in one act, which explores obsession, desire, and the need to win, through the frame of an obscure Flemish folk sport, “finch-sitting.” Trained finches race to sing the most “susk-e-wiets” over the course of an hour. As they compete, the joys, sorrows, delusions and all-too-stark realities of their trainers are revealed.
The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace (2019), composed by Kamala Sankaram with a libretto by Rob Handel, follows Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Lord Byron's daughter, who has been asked to help Charles Babbage with his work on the Difference Engine. She struggles between her work in mathematics and upholding her reputation as a wife, mother, and public figure. The revolutionary concepts that she put forth in her notes about the potential ability of the Engine to carry out an algorithm led Ada to be considered the world’s first computer programmer. The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace is presented through special arrangement with UIA Talent Agency and Just a Theory Press.
November 14 at 7:30pm: JACK Quartet, Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence presents Modern Medieval
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
JACK Quartet's Modern Medieval program explores the connections of musicality and thought between European composers of the past and the voices of music today, featuring works by JACK members Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, as well as Vicente Atria (JACK Studio Commission), Taylor Brook, Johnny MacMillan, and Juri Seo (JACK Studio Commission).
November 25: MACE – Mannes American Composers Ensemble
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Founded in 2012 by composer Lowell Liebermann, MACE represents works by iconic American composers such as Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, John Zorn, George Lewis, Augusta Read Thomas, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Steve Reich, as well as works by young, and up-and-coming composers. Composer and conductor David Fulmer has been directing the Ensemble since 2016 and has presented a kaleidoscopic lens of different aesthetics and styles, while exploring diverse musical programs of established 20th and 21st century masterpieces, together with presentations of newly commissioned works and premieres. On November 25, MACE gives the world premiere of a new work by Mannes student Ryan Brideau, alongside music by Carola Bauckholt, Augusta Read Thomas, Matthew Ricketts, George Lewis, and Pierre Boulez.
December 6 & 7: Mannes Opera presents SCENEWORKS FALL24
The Auditorium on 12th Street | Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall | 66 West 12th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Under the leadership of Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin, Mannes Opera is a dynamic training program for operatic artists, marked by a curiosity for new and a devotion to craft. The program utilizes opera as a medium for exploration, improvisation, and creation, providing students with extensive performance opportunities and practice. On December 6 and 7, Mannes Opera presents a delightful serving of operatic scenes; program to be announced.
December 9 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center | 1941 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Tickets
The Mannes Orchestra, led by conductor David Hayes, presents an evening of pioneering American composers. The program includes the N.Y.C. Premiere of Marion Bauer’s rarely performed Symphony No. 1, which was composed between 1947 and 1950 but was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. It finally had its world premiere performance in 2022 in Syracuse, NY. The concert features the U.S. premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara for two horns, two oboes, and strings, which was premiered in Paris in 2017. The piece is inspired by a bright star, prominent in the summer sky, called Ndemara or “The Sweetheart Star” by the Shona, and Ntshuna or “The Kiss Me Star” by the Tswana – its appearance is said to indicate when lovers should part ways, before being discovered by their parents. David Diamond’s Symphony No. 2 completes the program – widely lauded as a mid-twentieth century masterwork; it was composed in the midst of World War II and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1944.
December 11 at 7:30pm: Sandbox Percussion, Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence, performs World Premiere of Michael Torke’s BLOOM
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence Sandbox Percussion, a Brooklyn-based percussion ensemble of established leaders in contemporary art music, has teamed up with the acclaimed composer Michael Torke for BLOOM, a new piece composed for the group, which they will premiere at The New School. Sandbox's recording of BLOOM was released on Ecstatic Records on August 30, 2024. BLOOM uses a series of interlocking rhythms that create a groove when played together, using each player’s drums (non-pitched instruments), and vibraphone and marimbas (pitched). “Just as shoots of plants push through dirt erupting in blooms, the vibes and marimbas burst forth from the drums,” writes Torke in his program notes. Michael Torke’s work has been described as "some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years" (Gramophone).
February 5 at 7:00pm: Final Round of The George and Elizabeth Gregory Concerto Competition
Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Final Round of The George and Elizabeth Gregory Concerto Competition for the 2024-2025 academic year is open to the public. The finalists will perform their entire pieces, and the winners will be announced live by the panel of judges. In addition to a public performance with the Mannes Orchestra on Friday, February 28, the first-prize winner will receive a financial award of $4,000. The two runners-up alternates will also be announced, each receiving $500.
February 28 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra Spring Season Opener
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Mannes Orchestra, conducted by Mannes alumnae Mina Kim and Laura Gentile, gives the world premiere performances of two recent Martinů Prize composers and Mannes alumni – JL Marlor’s Saltwater Lung (2023 winner) and Alex Glass’s The World Inside (2024 winner). The Martinů Prize is given annually in honor of the distinguished composer and former Mannes faculty member Bohuslav Martinů. Sibelius’s rarely performed tone poem The Wood Nymph, Op. 15 completes the program. Premiered in 1895, it subsequently fell into obscurity with few performances in the 20th century, before finally being published in 2006.
March 7 & 8 at 7:30pm: Mannes Opera presents Handel’s Alcina
The Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, 524 West 59th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues), New York, N.Y
Event Information
Witchcraft, transformation, love-sick fools, magic rings – all taking place on an island. Alcina (1773) is one of Handel’s three operas based on Ludovico Ariosto’s epic work, Orlando Furioso (1516). The opera is a wild, messy story of love and deception – a fairy tale with magic that accurately describes the pain and exaltation of falling in love. Mannes Opera is thrilled to work with director Sam Helfrich, and to welcome back esteemed Mannes alumnus Geoffrey MacDonald as conductor with the Mannes Opera Orchestra.
March 31-April 1: Mannes Sounds presents The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds; a Chamber Opera by Ofer Ben-Amots, Based on the Play by S. Ansky
Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16th St., NYC
Event Information
Through his haunting and evocative score, Ofer Ben-Amots offers an operatic retelling of S. Ansky’s masterpiece of the Yiddish theatrical canon. Wracked with grief for her beloved, Leah, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, recounts her love of a young scholar who died on learning of her betrothal to another man. On the day of the wedding, she becomes possessed by an evil spirit, known in Jewish folklore as a dybbuk. In order to exorcize the spirit and save Leah’s soul, the village must learn the spirit’s true origin. A partnership with the American Society of Jewish Music and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, directed by Stephen Brown-Fried and performed by students from Mannes and the College of Performing Arts, The Dybbuk is certain to excite your spirits.
The Mannes Sounds Festival, founded in 1999 by Pavlina Dokovska, chair of the piano department, presents more than 20 concerts annually performed by Mannes’ talented students, as well as master classes and lectures by distinguished faculty members and renowned guest artists. The events are held at prestigious venues and institutions across New York City.
April 2 at 7:30pm: MACE – Mannes American Composers Ensemble
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Founded in 2012 by composer Lowell Liebermann, MACE represents works by iconic American composers such as Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, John Zorn, George Lewis, Augusta Read Thomas, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Steve Reich, as well as works by young, and up-and-coming composers. Composer and conductor David Fulmer has been directing the Ensemble since 2016, and has presented a kaleidoscopic lens of different aesthetics and styles, while exploring diverse musical programs of established 20th and 21st century masterpieces, together with presentations of newly commissioned works and premieres. On April 2, MACE gives the world premiere of a student work TBA, alongside music by Matthias Pintscher, Pierre Boulez, Augusta Read Thomas, and Gyorgy Ligeti.
April 8-15: Spring Mannes Chamber Music Festival
Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Chamber Music Festival is a special weeklong series of performances highlighting Mannes students’ accomplishments in chamber music over the course of a semester, showcasing Mannes’ new specialized and diversified chamber music courses, new community partnerships, and performance opportunities. Register once for the week with CHAMBERPASS!
April 11 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall with Sandbox Percussion & Violinist Stefan Jackiw
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center | 1941 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Event Information
The Mannes Orchestra, led by conductor David Hayes, brings a program featuring Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence Sandbox Percussion performing Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al, to Alice Tully Hall. The piece, which is dedicated to Sandbox Percussion, is inspired by renewable energy initiatives. Cuong writes, “Re(new)al is a percussion quartet concerto that is similarly devoted to finding unexpected ways to breathe new life into traditional ideas, and the solo quartet therefore performs on several ‘found’ instruments, including crystal glasses and compressed air cans. And while the piece also features more traditional instruments, such as snare drum and vibraphone, I looked for ways to either alter their sounds or find new ways to play them. For instance, a single snare drum is played by all four members of the quartet, and certain notes of the vibraphone are prepared with aluminum foil to recreate sounds found in electronic music. The entire piece was conceived in this way.” The concert also features John Zorn’s violin concerto, Contes de Fées, performed by Stefan Jackiw. Composed in 1999 at the turn of the millennium, Contes de Fées is one of Zorn’s classical masterworks. Building on this season’s theme of exploring the radical orchestra – unusual orchestrations and non-standard symphonic structures – the program includes Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, which includes eight amplified singers embedded within the orchestra.
April 25 at 7:30pm: (Un)Silent Film – Safety Last! & Kid Auto Races
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
(Un)Silent Film presents Safety Last!, an American silent romantic-comedy film from 1923 starring Harold Lloyd and produced by Hal Roach, and Kid Auto Races [at Venice], also known as The Pest, a 1914 American film starring Charlie Chaplin. See the iconic shot of Lloyd hanging from the clock (Safety Last!), and the pivotal moment in cinema where the camera breaks the fourth wall as Chaplin plays spectator at a "pushcar" race in Venice (Kid Auto Races). Mannes' (Un)Silent Orchestra conducted by David Fulmer brings these scores to life in live performances. With extra attention paid to phrase structure, articulation, and temporal coordination, the scores by long-time friend of The New School Carl Davis will leap off the page.
May 7 at 7:30pm: Mannes Orchestra Conductors’ Recital
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The Mannes Orchestra showcases and celebrates graduating conductors William Cabison and Hae Lee, who curated this program featuring Kodály’s Hungarian folk dance-inspired Dances of Galánta, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34, based on Spanish folks melodies, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7, Op. 131.
The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music
September 25-27 and November 3-December 12: The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music Fall Ensemble Festival
Jazz Performance Space at The New School | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Walk-up/First come, first-served seating
Event schedule
Featuring ensembles led by Reggie Workman, Immanuel Wilkens, Joel Ross, Mary Halvorson, Jane Ira Bloom, Arturo O'Farrill, and many more. Don't miss these artist led ensembles featuring the musicians of now and tomorrow, in the intimate setting of the Jazz Performance Space at The New School.
October 14 at 7:30pm: The Westerlies, School of Jazz & Contemporary Music Ensemble-in-Residence
Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The origins of The Westerlies go back to the high school bandrooms of Seattle, Washington, where the four original members first met and came of age together. In this program, the ensemble returns to their roots to celebrate music from their hometown, including Wherein Lies the Good, an expansive work by Robin Holcomb originally written for solo piano, as well as works by her contemporaries Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, and Ron Miles.
October 24 at 7:30pm: The New School Studio Orchestra – Music of Bob Brookmeyer
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The College of Performing Arts' newest large ensemble, the New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO), is composed of students from the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Mannes School of Music, performing music from a wide variety of genres including jazz, soul, pop, and improvised music. The NSSO kicks off its three-concert series with compositions and arrangements by the great jazz trombonist and composer Bob Brookmeyer, from across his long career. Nick Marchione, guest artist. Conducted by Keller Coker.
December 5 at 7:30pm: The New School Studio Orchestra – Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
The NSSO celebrates the holidays with music from Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite, featuring jazz interpretations of themes from Tchaikovsky’s beloved 1892 ballet. The Smithsonian Jazz Program writes of The Nutcracker Suite in an article for the Smithsonian, “Ellington and Strayhorn did not simply place jazz rhythms over Tchaikovsky's music. Instead, they picked up the notes, recast the beats, communed with the themes, and recreated the work, turning it into something that was at once completely their own and completely Tchaikovsky's. In doing so, they showed that while music may be the universal language, it is spoken with many accents (and therein lies the fun).” Featuring guest artists Nick Marchione. Conducted by Keller Coker.
May 2 at 7:30pm: The New School Studio Orchestra – Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill
John L. Tishman Auditorium | 63 Fifth Ave., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
On May 2, the NSSO led by Arturo O'Farrill and Keller Coker, presents the U.S. premiere performance of Carla Bley’s landmark 1971 album, Escalator Over the Hill. J.D. Considine captures the essence of Bley’s iconic work, writing in TIDAL magazine, “Whenever the topic of Great Albums of the 1970s crops up, certain titles invariably recur. There’s Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. But while reading through the recent tributes to the great jazz composer and pianist Carla Bley, who died on Oct. 17, [2023] at age 87, I was reminded of the masterwork that’s always missing from those lists: Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill…Escalator Over the Hill goes well beyond the usual boundaries of genre. In addition to bracing bursts of free jazz, there are cabaret songs, snatches of country music, deep dives into jazz fusion, an excursion into Hindustani pop, elements of ambient music and nods to New York minimalism.”
The Stone at The New School Residencies & Student Concerts
Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8:30pm
The Glassbox Theater | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
$20 at the door, no advance sales
Information
The Stone at The New School serves as an artist-centric home and community for experimental and avant-garde artists, where they can perform what they want without any interference. With concerts every Wednesday through Saturday evening, The Stone at The New School continues the tradition of the landmark non-profit performance space founded in 2005 by Artistic Director John Zorn, within a greatly improved space.
September 4-7: Trey Spruance
September 11-14: Craig Taborn
September 18-21: Sara Serpa
September 25-28: Peter Evans
October 2-5: Matt Mitchell
October 9-12: Yura Lee
October 15: The Stone Student Concert
October 16-19: Laura Ortman
October 23-26: Yuka C. Honda
October 30-November 2: Cyro Baptista
November 6-9: Raven Chacon
November 12: The Stone Student Concert
November 13-16: Zeena Parkins
November 20-23: Anna Webber
December 4-7: Thurston Moore
December 11-14: Ikue Mori
January 2-4: Marta Sanchez
January 8-11: Mary Halvorson
January 15-18: Ingrid Laubrock
January 22-25: Ches Smith
January 29-February 1: Jorge Roeder
February 5-8: Larry Ochs
February 11: The Stone Student Concert
February 12-15: Uri Caine
February 19-22: Matthew Shipp
February 26-March 1: Wendy Eisenberg
March 4: The Stone Student Concert
March 5-8: Micah Thomas
March 19-22: Theo Bleckmann
March 26-29: Kate Gentile
April 2-5: Zoh Amba
April 8: The Stone Student Concert
April 9-12: Annie Gosfield
April 16-19: William Parker
April 23-26: Jad Atoui
April 30-May 3: Fay Victor
May 7-10: Kweku Sumbry
May 14-17: Ned Rothenberg
May 12-24: Fred Frith
May 28-31: Ben Goldberg
School of Drama
October 31-November 2: World Premiere of The Ruminants
Bank Street Theater | 151 Bank St., N.Y.C.
October 31, November 1, November 2 at 7:30pm & November 2 at 2:00pm
Free with registration
Directed by Ana Margineanu, School of Drama faculty
Written by Dipti Bramhandkar
With only weeks left in her senior year, Bekka wonders if she has done enough to impact animal rights at her university. As the president of Animal Rights Now (ARN), she has organized numerous protests, but nothing seems to change. Determined to leave her mark, she plans a bold action that no one can ignore. But what will the cost be for those who join her and the animals she tries to help? The Ruminants is a new play that explores protest, privilege, and the lasting effects of one's actions. The Ruminants was developed as part of the 2023-2024 Farm Theater College Collaboration Project, with three universities: Austin Peay State, Shenandoah, and Middle Tennessee State University.
November 4 at 7:30pm: Guest Artist Series – Ping Chong and Company
The Glassbox Theater | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
Free with registration
Each year, the School of Drama invites regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized guest artists to share their artistic, collaborative, and philosophical approaches to theater-making with students in its groundbreaking MFA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance program. This year marks the return of members of Ping Chong and Company, longtime collaborators with the School of Drama and the College of Performing Arts. Rooted in the company's mission to “create[s] theater and art that reveal beauty, invention, precision, and a commitment to social justice,” PCC engaged students in their “Undesirable Elements” series, an ongoing practice of creating interview-based theater works that explore culture, identity, and belonging in specific communities. This production – an original student-devised ensemble-based piece centered on creative producing and community-engaged practice – culminates PCC’s residency.
November 21-23: Orestes
Bank Street Theater | 151 Bank St., N.Y.C.
November 21-23 at 7:30pm & November 23 at 2:00pm
Free with registration
Written by Euripides
Translated by Anne Carson
Directed by Ashley Kelly Tata, SDC Member
In this exciting reimagining of Orestes, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson gives birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. Anne Carson’s watershed translation of a death-dance of vengeance and passion is not to be missed, combining contemporary language with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy. “I’m interested in having the chorus members step out from the chorus into any of the roles to focus on the communal in the performance of this work and explore the idea that any member of a community can be the protagonist of the narrative, says Ashley Kelly Tata, director. “Ultimately, Orestes should serve what I think is so urgent about the piece right now: these are young people playing out the story of a history of violence that they have inherited from the generations before them.”
April 25-26 & May 2-3: APEX Festival
Weekend 1: April 25-26 at 7:30pm; April 26 at 2:00pm
Weekend 2: May 2-3 at 7:30pm & May 3 at 2:00pm
Final programs and venues to be announced
APEX Festival is a collective, artistic activation of the Bank Street Theater and surrounding spaces by graduating MFA Contemporary Theatre and Performance students. Eight distinct projects serve as each student's capstone offering as well as a public introduction to their work as it exists at this stage in their development. In celebration, the School of Drama invites The New School community, communities surrounding The New School, and communities beyond to experience a collection of performative artworks that push the boundaries of discipline and form.
Anticipated performances include: A TIME (June Seo); the starry-eyed (Lars Montanaro; Lacuna(e) (Catalina Cofone Polack); Unsay (Moira Zhang); Guanahani (Neka Knowles); Ernestine (Jasmine Kiah); Ameliaorated (Alina Burke); Eros Without Love (working title, Anamaría Willars)
September-April: Naked Angels 1st Mondays at The New School
September 30, December 9, February 3, March 17, April 21 at 7:00pm
Walk-up only/No advance registration.
Event Information
The School of Drama continues its dynamic partnership with Naked Angels, a prominent figure in New York City’s theater community. The esteemed 1st Mondays at The New School series, entering its second year, is a vital platform for emerging playwrights from Naked Angels’ Tuesdays@9 community to showcase their work and for School of Drama students to interact with and learn from these emerging talents, gain insights into the process of creating and workshopping new plays, and forge meaningful connections within the industry. The 1st Mondays at The New School series will run through the 2024-25 season and include in-person readings of full-length plays.
September 30: Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
December 9: The Glassbox Theater | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
February 3: Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
March 17: Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
April 21: Ernst C. Stiefel Hall | Arnhold Hall | 55 W. 13th St., N.Y.C.
About the College of Performing Arts at The New School
The College of Performing Arts at The New School was formed in 2015 and draws together the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. With each school contributing its unique culture of creative excellence, the College of Performing Arts is a hub for cross-disciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, innovative education, and world-class performances.
The 1,000 students at the College of Performing Arts are actors, performers, writers, improvisers, creative technologists, entrepreneurs, composers, arts managers, and multidisciplinary artists who believe in the transformative power of the arts for all people. Students and faculty collaborate with colleagues across The New School in a wide array of disciplines, from the visual arts and fashion design, to the social sciences, public policy, advocacy, and more.
The curriculum at the College of Performing Arts is dynamic, inclusive, and responsive to the changing arts and culture landscape. New degrees and coursework, like the new graduate degrees for Performer-Composers and Artist Entrepreneurs are designed to challenge highly skilled artists to experiment, innovate, and engage with the past, present, and future of their artforms. New York City’s Greenwich Village provides the backdrop for the College of Performing Arts, which is housed at Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street and the historic Westbeth Artists Community on Bank Street.
Founded in 1916 by America’s first great violin recitalist and noted educator, David Mannes, and pianist and educator Clara Damrosch Mannes, the Mannes School of Music is a standard-bearer for radically progressive music education, dedicated to supporting the development of creative and socially engaged artists. Through its undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies programs, Mannes offers a curriculum as imaginative as it is rigorous, taught by a world-class faculty and visiting artists. As part of The New School’s College of Performing Arts, together with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the School of Drama, Mannes makes its home on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus in a state-of-the-art facility at the newly renovated Arnhold Hall.
The School of Drama is the creative home to a dynamic group of actors, directors, writers, creative technologists, and multi-disciplinary theater artists. With a focus on authenticity of expression, the school’s curriculum confronts today's most pressing societal issues through the making of theater, film, and emerging media. The School of Drama’s faculty is made up of award-winning actors, playwrights, and directors who bring a currency of professional experience, artistic training, and project-based learning into the classroom. The multidisciplinary MFA and BFA degree programs bring together rigor, creativity, and collaborative learning to create work marked by professionalism, imagination, and civic awareness. The school takes inspiration from the greats who walked its halls in the past, including Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and Vinnette Carroll, as well as more recent graduates, like Adrienne C. Moore, Jordan E. Cooper, and Jason Kim.
The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music is renowned across the globe as a center for progressive, innovative artists. Considered the most innovative school of its kind, it offers students an artist-as-mentor approach to learning. The world’s leading contemporary and jazz musicians, like Matt Wilson, Mary Halvorson, Linda May Han Oh, Jane Ira Bloom, and more, work with students to hone their craft and create groundbreaking music. This is a rare place where students can pursue what makes you a unique contemporary musician. We encourage students to explore their own talents and reach across disciplines to construct new rhythms, inventive compositions, and original means of expression. There are nearly 80 ensembles students can play in each semester. Outside the classroom, New York City becomes a performance hall. Play in clubs, concert halls, and venues throughout New York and in festivals and exchange programs around the world. Start your professional performance career now through our Gig Office; we have the largest music internship program in New York. You can work with producers, editors, and recording artists of the highest caliber. Students will be immersed not only in the newest music but also in the nuances of how the music industry runs. Our curriculum allows students to infuse their music education with elements of design, literature, history, journalism and more. You can take courses offered at the Mannes School of Music, Parsons School of Design, and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. In addition, we have created a number of project-based interdisciplinary classes, such as an exploration of sound-image relationships in early 20th-century multimedia art, offered by Parsons and Jazz. The results of this university-wide interconnectivity can be seen in the success of our alumni in a range of genres and categories of creative work, both in and outside of music.
Founded in 1919, The New School was established to advance academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. A century later, The New School remains at the forefront of innovation in higher education, inspiring more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students to challenge the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The university welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and public programs that encourage open discourse and social engagement. Through our online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence.
Nov 8: ECM New Series Releases Alexander Lonquich's recording of Beethoven Piano Concertos
ECM New Series Releases Alexander Lonquich's recording of Beethoven Piano Concertos
ECM New Series Releases
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Concertos
Alexander Lonquich
Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexander Lonquich, piano
Münchener Kammerorchester
Daniel Giglberger, concertmaster
Release Date: November 8, 2024
ECM New Series 2753-55
CD: 0289 487 6904 9
Press downloads available upon request.
Alexander Lonquich, one of the foremost performers in chamber music and as a soloist, has said that “every encounter with a work of art is at the same time an exploration of one's own existential position. This is the only way to make music today.” The New York Times has called him “an original at the piano who features both orderliness and suppleness”, and his musical authority has brought him to some of the most prestigious festivals and stages across the world and led to collaborations with renowned orchestras and musicians alike. After a first appearance on ECM’s New Series with premiere recordings of Israeli composer Gideon Lewensohn’s works on Odradek (2002), two subsequent solo recitals plus a duo programme with violinist Caroline Widmann (2012), here pianist Alexander Lonquich, alongside the Münchener Kammerorchester, rises to a more extensive challenge, in performing the entirety of Beethoven’s piano concertos, programmed in chronological order. Beethoven’s five completed piano concertos – the C major op. 15, the B flat op. 19, the C minor op. 37, the G major op. 58 and the “Emperor”, in E flat major, op 73 – were composed between about 1793 to 1809, documenting the composer’s development over two decades.
In his detailed liner note, the German pianist calls these recordings a “very special experience, for performers and listeners alike. The usually common placement of the individual works in the context of a symphony concert all too often runs the risk of confirming and reinforcing what is already traditional, while this chronological order draws attention to stylistic leaps in the compositions and allows the listener to experience Beethoven's development as the author of these outward-looking creations that illustrate his pianistic virtuosity between 1790 and 1809.”
Almost no other genre in Beethoven’s body of work was created within as condensed a time-span as his piano concertos – his quartets, symphonies and piano sonatas for instance he wrote over the entire span of his artistic life. Accordingly, his rapid stylistic evolution, from a deeply Mozart-inspired thinker to the utterly independent and influential composer he is known to be, can be traced in detail over the course of these concertos.
Lonquich talks about this evolution in his liner note, also addressing the always technically challenging qualities of Beethoven’s works: “The one aspect of the concertos he performed himself that cannot be ignored is a tendency towards virtuosity: the cadenzas of the first movements written down by him give an impression of his exuberant playing, while in elaborations written years later, such as in the 1809 C major concerto's candenza, he certainly did not shy away from stylistic breaks; we also know, in contrast to his interpretative demands concerning the piano sonatas, that even the final versions were little more for him than templates for spontaneous or prepared variation – the audience had to be surprised time and again. With op. 37, the period of orientation towards the past definitely comes to an end; what follows is itself a model.”
The concertos were captured at the Rathausprunksaal, Landshut in January 2022.
Oct 18: Newport Classical Presents Pianist Anton Mejias in Chamber Series Concert - Music by J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser
Newport Classical Presents Pianist Anton Mejias in October Chamber Series Concert
Photo by Jiyang Chen, available in high resolution here.
Newport Classical Presents Pianist Anton Mejias in October Chamber Series Concert
Friday, October 18, 2024 at 7:30pm
Newport Classical Recital Hall | 42 Dearborn St | Newport, RI
Tickets and Information
Newport, RI – Newport Classical continues its fourth full-season Chamber Series, featuring twelve concerts held on select Fridays at 7:30pm at the organization’s home venue Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with a performance by Finnish-Cuban pianist Anton Mejias on Friday, October 18, 2024 at 7:30pm. Mejias will give the US premiere of Twelve Preludes: The Art of Memory by composer Philip Lasser, alongside Book II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Lasser’s new work is co-commissioned by the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and Newport Classical.
Born in 2001, Anton Mejias was fascinated by the music of Bach from a very young age. He made his recital debut at the age of eight, and by ten, he had already learned the entire Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. In August 2023, he made his US debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. He has won top prizes from the Viotti International Piano Competition and the Nordic Piano Competition, and performs around the world. Legendary pianist Gary Graffman has described him as, “one of the great Bach players of our time.”
In Newport, Anton Mejias will perform a new work written for him by renowned composer Philip Lasser, created in response to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II. Lasser, a distinguished member of The Juilliard School faculty, is known for creating a unique sound world that blends the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities with the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music. Lasser writes of his work The Art of Memory, a set of twelve preludes, “Descending chromatically from E to F, these Preludes are in homage to J.S. Bach and designed to be played either alone or in conjunction with the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II. They are a study in memory. As they evolve, each Prelude collects more and more from the past until, at last, we reach the twelfth, which is entirely made up of memory.”
Newport Classical's Chamber Series takes place at Newport Classical Recital Hall in downtown Newport, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics. The Chamber Series, newly expanded to twelve concerts held between September and June, reaffirms Newport Classical’s commitment to year-round classical music programming. Audiences are invited to enjoy performances by world-class classical musicians in a relaxed setting, with a complimentary glass of wine from Greenvale Vineyards and homemade treats by Newport Classical volunteers.
As part of Newport Classical’s desire to create connections between classical music, the artists who perform it, and the Newport community, all musicians performing on the Chamber Series also go into the Newport-area public schools to perform for and speak with students, through Newport Classical’s Music Education and Engagement Initiative.
Up next on the Newport Classical Chamber Series, the fiery Ariel Quartet performs a concert of catharsis featuring music by composers Mendelssohn, Lera Auerbach, and Britten on September 27. On October 6, Newport Classical welcomes the globe-trotting musical duo Bridge & Wolak for a free, family-friendly Community Concert. On October 8 and 9, GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist Emanuel Ax will make his Newport Classical debut in two special concerts featuring a solo recital program of Beethoven and Schumann, entitled Fantasies. The Chamber Series will continue on November 1 with a performance by baritone Markel Reed, known for his appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, featuring the music of Brahms, Margaret Bonds, Terence Blanchard, and more. Cellist Seth Parker Woods, celebrated by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace,” explores three centuries of music with Bach’s contemplative Sarabandes as a point of departure and return in his solo cello concert on November 15.
The Newport Classical Chamber Series kicks off 2025 with a performance by the Telegraph Quartet, described as “powerfully adept, with a combination of brilliance and subtlety” by the San Francisco Chronicle, in music rarely experienced by its creators, the composers Rebecca Clarke, Beethoven, and Smetana, on January 24. Boyd Meets Girl comes to Newport for a performance on Valentine’s Day, February 14 – the impressive husband-and-wife guitar and cello duo has toured the world sharing their eclectic mix of music from Debussy and Bach to Radiohead and Beyoncé. On February 28, the acclaimed Trio Karénine, which has established itself in recent years as a key group on the French and international stage, pairs Schubert’s second piano trio with Dvořák’s rarely programmed second piano trio, filled with color, warmth, lively dance, and Slavic folk elements. Oboist James Austin Smith, hailed by The New York Times as “virtuosic,” and for his “dazzling” and “brilliant” performances, joins forces with acclaimed pianist Gloria Chien in music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, and more, on March 21. On April 25, Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (The New York Times) presents the music of Bach and Messiaen, alongside works by Grieg and Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, with pianist Anna Polonsky. Pianist Orion Weiss, known for his “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post) returns to Newport for a solo recital of Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations on May 16. On June 13, the GRAMMY-nominated Norwegian Trio Mediaeval, who captivate audiences with their crystalline voices, closes the 2024-2025 Newport Classical Chamber Series with an enchanting evening of Norwegian and Swedish traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads.
Newport Classical will also present two holiday programs in December, which will be announced later this fall. The 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival will take place from July 4-22, 2025.
Single tickets for Chamber Series concerts start at $45 and packages are available starting at $200 for five concerts. AARP members and their guests receive discounts on fall Chamber Series tickets and packages, graciously provided by AARP of Rhode Island through their supporting sponsorship of the fall concerts, and thanks to a generous grant from the Gruben Charitable Foundation, a limited number of free student tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
About Newport Classical
Newport Classical is a premier performing arts organization that welcomes people of every age, culture, and background to intimate, immersive musical experiences. The organization presents world-renowned and up-and-coming artistic talents at stunning, storied venues across Newport – an internationally sought-after cultural and recreational destination.
Originally founded in 1969 as Rhode Island Arts Foundation at Newport, Inc., Newport Classical has a rich legacy of musical curiosity having presented the American debuts of hundreds of international artists and is most well-known for hosting three weeks of concerts in the summer in the historic mansions throughout Newport and Aquidneck Island. In the 55 years since, Newport Classical has become the most active year-round presenter of music on Aquidneck Island, and an essential pillar of Rhode Island’s cultural landscape, welcoming thousands of patrons all year long.
Newport Classical invests in the future of classical music as a diverse, relevant, and ever-evolving art form through its four core programs – the one-of-a-kind Music Festival; the Chamber Series in the Newport Classical Recital Hall; the free, family-friendly Community Concerts Series; and the Music Education and Engagement Initiative that inspires students in local schools to become the arts advocates and music lovers of tomorrow. These programs illustrate the organization’s ongoing commitment to presenting “timeless music for today.”
In 2021, the organization launched a new commissioning initiative – each year, Newport Classical will commission a new work by a Black, Indigenous, person of color, or woman composer as a commitment to the future of classical music. To date, Newport Classical has commissioned and presented the world premiere of works by Stacy Garrop, Shawn Okpebholo, Curtis Stewart, and Clarice Assad.