Christopher Jesina 11/11/24 Christopher Jesina 11/11/24

Dec. 18: GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein is Guest Soloist with Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall Conducted by Music Director Kent Tritle

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein is Guest Soloist with Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall Conducted by Music Director Kent Tritle

***Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Tanya Braganti available in high resolution*** ***here***

GRAMMY®-nominated Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Performs as Soloist with Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall

Choral Fantasy in C Minor, Op. 80 by Ludwig van Beethoven
Conducted by Music Director Kent Tritle

Wednesday December 18, 2024 at 7:30pm
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage | Carnegie Hall
57th St. and 7th Ave. | New York, NY 10019
Tickets and More information

“colorful and idiosyncratic” – The New York Times

Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com

New York, NY – GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” is a guest soloist with Musica Sacra for its annual holiday season concert on Wednesday December 18, 2024 at 7:30pm.”Classics for Christmas: Mozart, Bach & Beethoven,” led by Music Director Kent Tritle, will be held in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage (57th St. and 7th Ave.).

Dinnerstein, who is celebrated for her distinctive musical voice and commitment to sharing classical music with everyone, will be the featured soloist in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy in C Minor, Op. 80. The concert program will also include selections from J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, “Weihnachtsoratorium,” motets by Franz Biebl, Francis Poulenc, James Bassi, and Morten Lauridsen, and W.A Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate, K. 165, featuring Metropolitan Opera soprano Susanna Phillips.

This is the first time that Simone Dinnerstein will perform with Musica Sacra and Kent Tritle. She says, “I am thrilled to collaborate with Kent Tritle and Musica Sacra for the first time. The Chorale Fantasy is a remarkable piece of music, and I have only had the pleasure of performing it once before. I can’t think of a better group of musicians with whom to explore this exhilarating work!”

The concert follows Dinnerstein’s release of her newest album, The Eye is the First Circle, on October 18, 2024 via Supertrain Records. The album features Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata and its release was timed to coincide with the American composer’s 150th birthday (October 20, 1874). The new album is a live recording of the premiere of Dinnerstein’s multimedia production of the same title, which she conceived and directed. The performance took place at the Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey on October 17, 2021. The Eye is the First Circle also marks Dinnerstein’s fourteenth and final recording produced with the late Adam Abeshouse.

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 fourteen 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. Her live recording of the premiere of The Eye is the First Circle will be released on October 18, on Supertrain Records. 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 be a guest soloist with Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, led by Music Director Kent Tritle. Dinnerstein will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy in C Minor, Op. 80 as part of Musica Sacra’s annual holiday concert, which will also include selections from J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, “Weihnachtsoratorium,” motets by Franz Biebl, Francis Poulenc, James Bassi, and Morten Lauridsen, and W.A Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate, K. 165, featuring Metropolitan Opera soprano Susanna Phillips.

Concert details:

Who: Musica Sacra Conducted by Kent Tritle with Soloists Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Soprano Susanna Phillips
What: Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, Franz Biebl, Francis Poulenc, James Bassi, and Morten Lauridsen
When: Wednesday, December 18, 2024 at 7:30pm
Where: Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY 10019
Tickets and Information: www.musicasacrany.com/mozart-bach-and-beethoven/

Christina Jensen 11/2/24 Christina Jensen 11/2/24

Dec. 9: Mannes Orchestra Premieres Ndemara by Adolphus Hailstork and Long-Awaited Symphony by Marion Bauer at Lincoln Center

Mannes Orchestra Premieres Ndemara by Adolphus Hailstork and Long-Awaited Symphony by Marion Bauer at Lincoln Center

The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama
Presents the Mannes Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall
Conducted by David Hayes

Featuring the U.S. Premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara,
the N.Y.C. Premiere of Marion Bauer's Symphony No. 1,
and David Diamond's Symphony No. 2

Monday, December 9, 2024 at 7:30pm
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center | 1941 Broadway, N.Y.C.
Tickets and Information

Information: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts

For press tickets, contact Christina Jensen: christina@jensenartists.com

New York, NY – On Monday, December 9, 2024, 7:30pm, The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama, presents the Mannes Orchestra led by conductor David Hayes, at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Tickets for the performance are available now.

For its return to Alice Tully Hall, the Mannes Orchestra presents an evening of pioneering American composers, including the New York City 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; the U.S. premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara; and David Diamond’s Symphony No. 2 – widely praised 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. Ndemara is the second work by Hailstork to be premiered by the Mannes Orchestra – the group presented the world premiere of his lauded work, Survive (Symphony No. 4) in March 2023 at Alice Tully Hall.

“A few years ago we made a commitment that the most high profile performances of the Mannes Orchestra would be curated by prioritizing works that we love, were either a world, U.S. or New York premiere, were written by under-recognized composers, and would benefit from a recorded performance. This Tully Hall program, a distinctly American one, animates this commitment in a beautiful and powerful manner, giving life to a work by Marion Bauer that had been waiting to be heard for almost 75 years, as well as the U.S. premiere of a favorite Mannes composer, Adolphus Hailstork. Rounding out this program is a work by David Diamond that rarely appears on programs anymore. As dean, I am proud of this work and hope lots of people will come to hear it,” said Richard Kessler, Executive Dean of the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music.

Composed shortly before her death, Marion Bauer’s Symphony No. 1 was originally scheduled to premiere in 1950. However, due to significant issues on the part of the transcribers while working on Bauer’s score, the piece was not completed in time for its originally scheduled premiere date. The work was nearly forgotten until The Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy (WPA) meticulously prepared an edited score, which they presented to conductor Heather Buchman. Symphony No. 1, structured in three movements, finally received its long-awaited world premiere in 2022. “It caught my eye because it had a note attached, ‘has never been performed,’ even though it was composed in 1947-1950,” Buchman said. “Marion Bauer was a significant presence in American classical music in the first half of the 20th century…so the fact that her symphony was never performed seemed an egregious neglect of someone who should be celebrated.”

Adolphus Hailstork’s Ndemara is a single-movement nocturne inspired by the star for which it is named – a prominent star in the summer night sky. Scored for two oboes, two horns, and strings, Ndemara weaves a delicate tapestry of timbres, capturing the serenity of a starlit night and the bittersweet nature of parting. Hailstork says of Ndemara, “In 2016 I was commissioned to write a piece for 2 horns, and 2 oboes and strings to be premiered by a French chamber orchestra. The piece was premiered in Paris in 2017 and then, a few weeks later, in Milan. I was commissioned to write a piece that incorporated an idea related to Africa and the cosmos. All lands or nations have their own interpretation of the stars. That led to my choosing one of the stars interpreted by at least three African tribes as a warning to lovers of the need to end a romantic moment. The bright star Fomalhaut lies in a rather star-poor region and is prominent in the summer sky. It is called Ndemara, ‘The Sweetheart Star,’ by the Shona. The visibility of this star was supposed to indicate the time for lovers to part before their parents discovered them.”

David Diamond’s Symphony No. 2 was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky on October 22, 1944. The symphony unfolds over four movements, each rich in emotional depth and musical innovation. The first movement juxtaposes a sense of tragedy with moments of refined elegance, establishing a compelling emotional landscape. The second movement, a brief scherzo, features what Diamond described as, “a rhythmic figure mockingly tossed back and forth between the cellos and a bassoon,” imbuing it with a playful, almost whimsical character. The third movement revisits the emotional tone of the opening, weaving themes of introspection and resonance. The finale surges forward with a triumphant and exhilarating energy, bringing the symphony to a stirring conclusion.

Each of the composers on this program are esteemed in their own rights, but they also share bonds across time. Marion Bauer is known as Nadia Boulanger’s first American student. Bauer taught Nadia Boulanger English, and Boulanger gave Bauer lessons in harmony until Bauer returned to the United States in 1907. Bauer composed and published orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental music. She was well-regarded as an educator and served on the faculties at New York University and the Juilliard School of Music.

Adolphus Hailstork received his Ph.D. in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He had previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music, under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax. Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera.

Born in 1915 in Rochester, New York, David Diamond earned numerous accolades for his compositions, including three Guggenheim Fellowships, the William Schuman Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986, the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991, and a GRAMMY® nomination for his String Quartet No. 4 from 1951. Diamond was a versatile, adventurous, and prolific composer, writing a total of 20 orchestral works, 29 chamber works, 14 piano works, five vocal works, two wind ensembles and nine concerto works. Beginning in 1973, Diamond was a professor of composition at The Juilliard School for 25 years.About the Composers:

Renowned composer Adolphus Hailstork has firmly established himself as one of America’s foremost composers, with his works celebrated in performances by prestigious orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His collaborations with distinguished conductors such as James DePreist, Paul Freeman, Daniel Barenboim, and Kurt Masur have further enriched his storied career. Most recently, in March, Thomas Wilkins conducted Hailstork’s An American Port of Call with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Hailstork’s prolific body of work spans a diverse range of ensembles, from choral and vocal solo to instrumental chamber, band, orchestral, and operatic compositions. Among his early works are Celebration (1976), Out of the Depths (1977), American

Guernica (1983), Consort Piece (1995), and Joshua’s Boots (1999). More recent compositions include Rise for Freedom (2017), Set Me on a Rock (2008), The Gift of the Magi (2009), Zora, We’re Calling You (2011), and Speak of Peace (2013). In addition to his compositional achievements, Dr. Hailstork is highly respected as an educator. His teaching career began with graduate assistantships at Michigan State University (1969-1971), followed by professorships at Youngstown State University in Ohio (1971-1977) and Norfolk State University in Virginia (1977-2000). He currently serves as an Eminent Scholar and Professor of Music at Old Dominion University in Virginia (2000-present), where his contributions continue to inspire the next generation of musicians.

Marion Eugénie Bauer was an influential American composer, educator, writer, and music critic whose work helped shape American music in the early 20th century. A contemporary of Aaron Copland, Bauer was deeply engaged in defining a distinct American musical identity through both her compositions and advocacy. Bauer composed in many different genres, including works for piano, chamber ensembles, symphonic orchestra, solo voice, and vocal ensembles. Her music reflects a rich harmonic language, characterized by dissonance and extended tertian, quartal, and quintal harmonies, though she generally remained within an extended tonal framework, apart from a brief period experimenting with serialism in the 1940s. Bauer’s works were widely performed during her lifetime, with highlights including the New York Philharmonic’s 1947 premiere of Sun Splendor conducted by Leopold Stokowski and a dedicated 1951 concert at New York’s Town Hall. In addition to her compositional achievements, she was a passionate teacher. Her academic career spanned 25 years on the faculty of New York University, where she taught music history and composition from 1926 to 1951. She was also a guest lecturer at Juilliard from 1940 until her passing in 1955. Bauer was a vigorous supporter of new music beyond her own compositions. She co-founded the American Music Guild, the American Music Center, and the American Composer’s Alliance, where she served as a board member. Additionally, she held leadership roles within the League of Composers and the Society for the Publication of American Music, often as the sole woman in these positions.

Awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1995 and the Juilliard Medal at the Juilliard School’s 100th commencement, David Diamond is celebrated as a leading 20th-century American composer. His prolific contributions began in the 1940s with notable works such as Concerto for Two Solo Pianos (1942), String Quartet No.2 (1943), Symphony No. 3 (1945), and Chaconne for Violin and Piano (1948). Diamond also composed the iconic theme for CBS Radio Network’s Hear It Now (1950-51) and See It Now (1951-58). From 1951 to 1965, Diamond taught in Europe as a Fulbright Professor. Soon after returning to the United States in 1965, the New York Philharmonic performed his Symphony No.5 under Leonard Bernstein and his Piano Concerto, which Diamond himself conducted. Diamond taught at the Manhattan School of Music (1965-67), earning the Rheta Sosland Chamber Music Prize for his String Quartet No. 8. In 1973, he joined The Juilliard School’s faculty, dedicating 25 years to teaching composition. His achievements were further recognized with awards such as the William Schuman Lifetime Achievement Award, the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Edward MacDowell Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement. In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the New York Philharmonic performed his Symphony No.11, affirming Diamond’s enduring impact on American music.

Led by maestro David Hayes, the Mannes Orchestra is the premiere large ensemble at The New School College of Performing Arts. The orchestra strives to foster the highest level of musicianship by engaging with a wide range of repertoire in a focused, dynamic, and supportive environment that mirrors the culture and practices of professional orchestras. 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.” The orchestra performs a multitude of concerts each season at venues including Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School, and appearances with the Mannes Opera at the Bank Street Theater and the Martha Graham Dance Company at New York City Center.

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 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.

Additional Upcoming Events featuring The Mannes Orchestra

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.
Information

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 foundational excellence and 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.

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.

Christina Jensen 11/1/24 Christina Jensen 11/1/24

Nov. 25 - MACE: Mannes American Composers Ensemble Fall 2024 Concert – Works by Several Living Composers and a World Premiere – Led by Ensemble Director David Fulmer

MACE: Mannes American Composers Ensemble Fall 2024 Concert – Works by Several Living Composers and a World Premiere – Led by Ensemble Director David Fulmer

(Clockwise) George Lewis, Augusta Read Thomas, Matthew Ricketts, Ryan Brideau, MACE logo, Pierre Boulez, Carola Bauckholt

The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama
Presents MACE: Mannes American Composers Ensemble Fall 2024 Concert

Featuring the World Premiere of Short Story No. 1
by Mannes Student Ryan Brideau plus works by Carola Bauckholt, Augusta Read Thomas, Matthew Ricketts, and George Lewis
Led by Ensemble Director David Fulmer

Monday, November 25, 2024, 7:30pm
The Auditorium at 12th Street at The New School
66 West 12th Street | New York 10011
Free with Registration

Information: www.newschool.edu/performing-arts

For press tickets, contact Christina Jensen: christina@jensenartists.com

New York, NY – On Monday, November 25, 2024, 7:30pm, the Mannes American Composers Ensemble (MACE) of the The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama, begins its 2024-2025 season with its fall 2024 concert, led by MACE Ensemble director, composer, and curator David Fulmer. For its first performance of the season, MACE gives the world premiere of Short Story No. 1 – a new work by Mannes student Ryan Brideau, alongside Treibstoff by Carola Bauckholt, Of Being is a Bird by Augusta Read Thomas, Enclosed Position by Matthew Ricketts, Shadowgraph 5 (for sextet) by George Lewis, and Dérive by Pierre Boulez. This event is open to the public and free with registration.

Founded in 2012 by composer Lowell Liebermann, MACE presents 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. Conductor and composer David Fulmer has been directing the Ensemble since 2016, presenting 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.

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 collaborations with some of the world's most renowned and trailblazing composers and performers. In MACE, students work closely with composers, developing an understanding of their style and aesthetic.Through the examination of a composer's catalog, they learn the microscopy of their notation, their musical symbols, and their sonic design. This special student-composer process creates the rare opportunity for students to engage in close collaboration and commissioning, which will be a hallmark of their professional careers.

Ryan Brideau's new work, Short Story No. 1, opens the concert. Scored for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, this new quartet marks a new direction in Brideau's work. Pierre Boulez' iconic Derive, has been a recurring theme within Fulmer's curation. MACE dives into Boulez while exploring the intricate colors and timbres of this important work. Carola Bauckholt's Treibstoff marks the first work by this composer that will kickoff a two-year exploration of Bauckholt's work. This motoric, highly energized piece is sure to stun audiences in its brilliance and unique sound world. The music of George Lewis returns to MACE in this highly anticipated performance of Shadowgraph 5. Matthew Rickett's Enclosed Position is built on fine lines, gorgeously homogenous textures, and extraordinary detail of phrase structure. The program will end with Augusta Read Thomas' Of Being is a Bird (Emily Dickinson Settings), featuring soprano Brooke Jones. This exquisite score is as detailed as all other of Thomas' work, bringing the listener to a heightened sense of structural and formal awareness, while carving intensely dramatic phrases and polyphonic gestures.

Fulmer says of MACE and its programming, "I'm intrigued by diverse programs that represent a wide-ranging collection of musical ideas and stylistic innovation. As an ensemble, we embrace a broad view of the vital landscape of American contemporary music, and contemporary music of the world abroad. As artists, we are responsible for, and should take care of the musical trends of tomorrow – we need to share this unique work as if the ink on the page has been dried for several hundred years...to craft, assemble, and refine a performance so that the canon continues in exponential dimensions. Each performance is malleable, and should chart new territory of performance practice and artistic expression. This is what we do here in MACE."

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 College of Performing Arts at The New School, read the 2024-2025 season press release here.

Additional Upcoming Events featuring The Mannes American Composers Ensemble (MACE)

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.

About The College of Performing Arts at The New School

Christina Jensen 11/1/24 Christina Jensen 11/1/24

Dec. 6-7: Emerald City Music Continues Season 09 with Quartet in Spotlight: Brentano Quartet – Performing Joseph Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets – Three in Seattle, Three in Olympia

Emerald City Music Continues Season 09 with Quartet in Spotlight: Brentano Quartet – Performing Joseph Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets1

Emerald City Music Season 09
Quartet in Spotlight: Brentano Quartet

Friday, December 6, 2024 at 8pm
415 Westlake | 415 Westlake Avenue N | Seattle, WA
Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldDec2024Seattle

Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 7:30pm
Capital High School Performing Arts Center | 2707 Conger Ave NW | Olympia, WA

Tickets: bit.ly/EmeraldDec2024Olympia

“[Emerald City Music and] artistic director Kristin Lee, a renowned violinist and member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, shows a flair for attracting younger audiences.” – Strings Magazine

www.emeraldcitymusic.org

Seattle & Olympia, WA – Led by founding Artistic Director Kristin Lee, Emerald City Music’s (ECM) Season 09 continues its theme of Global Resonance with a grand program dedicated exclusively to Franz Joseph Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets, spread over the two concerts –– three performed in Seattle and three in Olympia. The performances will take place on Friday, December 6, 2024 at 8pm in Seattle at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Avenue N) and Saturday, December 8, 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. The exact program of which three quartets will be performed at each venue is still to be determined.

The incomparable Brentano String Quartet, which has been a prolific and beloved ensemble for more than thirty years, will make its Emerald City Music debut performing the ornate and lively work of Haydn. If there was ever a time to experience the energy of Emerald City Music in both Seattle and Olympia, this is the program to do it: Two concerts, one complete set of Haydn’s quartets performed with striking artistic intuition forged from the Brentano Quartet’s decades of united musicianship.

Joseph Haydn, also known as “Papa Haydn,” earned his nickname through his pioneering contributions to symphonies, string quartets, and piano trios. Throughout his life, he composed 104 symphonies and 68 string quartets, becoming a pivotal figure in classical music and a mentor to both Beethoven and Mozart. In 1781, Haydn wrote his Opus 33 string quartets, which were dedicated to the Grand Duke of Russia, leading to their nickname, the “Russian” quartets. These works are renowned for their wit and humor, with the "Joke" quartet being one of Haydn’s most celebrated compositions.

“We are extremely honored and excited to welcome the legendary Brentano String Quartet to Emerald City Music's stage for the very first time, with a monumental program of the entire Opus 33 String Quartets by Joseph Haydn.” says ECM Artistic Director Kristin Lee. “Whenever I've been asked the question, ‘Which composer is underrated?’ I've often responded saying "Haydn's String Quartets!" His music is filled with beauty, surprises, and humor... and the Opus 33 quartets truly embody all of these genius traits of his compositions. The Brentano String Quartet has been recognized for their beauty of color and thoughtful approach to each composers' intentions, so I am eagerly waiting to welcome to our stage. I hope our audience won't miss this rare opportunity to hear these gems of works by the Brentano String Quartet!”

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), Capital High School Performing Arts Center (2707 Conger Ave NW), 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

Christina Jensen 11/1/24 Christina Jensen 11/1/24

Dec. 5: Celebrate the Holidays with a Performance of Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s Arrangement of Peter and the Wolf

Celebrate the Holidays with a Performance of Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s Arrangement of Peter and the Wolf

The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama

Presents Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and
Oliver Nelson’s Arrangement of Peter and the Wolf

Performed by the New School Studio Orchestra led by Keller Coker

Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 7:30pm
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 – The New School's College of Performing Arts – Mannes, Jazz, Drama will celebrate the holidays on Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 7:30pm, with special performances of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf by the New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO featuring guest artists including guitarist Steve Cardenas, led by Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. Coker also adapted the text, which will be narrated by Ramsey Faragallah. This event is open to the public and free with registration.

Ellington and Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite features jazz interpretations of themes from Tchaikovsky’s beloved 1892 ballet score. The Smithsonian writes, “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).”

Of the 1966 Peter and the Wolf recording of Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic work, AllMusic writes “Oliver Nelson arranged a variety of themes from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf into a swinging suite featuring the great organist Jimmy Smith. Although there is no verbal narrative on this LP, Nelson's liner notes tell the story, which can actually be followed through the music, and Smith pays respect to the original melodies while making strong statements of his own. [It’s] a classic of its kind.”

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, and performs music from a wide variety of genres including jazz, soul, pop, and improvised music. The NSSO kicked off its three-concert season on October 24, 2024 with an evening dedicated to the compositions and arrangements by the great jazz trombonist and composer Bob Brookmeyer. On May 2, 2025, 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,” will be the epic close to this season’s series, led by GRAMMY®-winning composer, pianist, and conductor, Arturo O'Farrill and Keller Coker.

"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."

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.

The College presents approximately 900 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.

Additional Upcoming Events from The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music

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.

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.”

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 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.

Christopher Jesina 10/30/24 Christopher Jesina 10/30/24

Dec. 1: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Noe Music Performing the Music of Stephen Prutsman: Film Score for Buster Keaton’s Silent Film The General

Telegraph Quartet Presented by Noe Music Performing the Music of Stephen Prutsman: Film Score for Buster Keaton’s Silent Film The General

Available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet

Telegraph Quartet Presented by Noe Music

Performing the Music of Stephen Prutsman:
Film Score for Buster Keaton’s Silent Film The General

Sunday, December 1, 2024 at 5:00pm
Noe Valley Ministry | 1021 Sanchez St. | San Francisco, CA
Tickets and More information

“full of elegance and pinpoint control” – The New York Times

www.TelegraphQuartet.com

San Francisco, CA – On Sunday, December 1, 2024 at 5:00pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello), a group described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” will be presented in concert by Noe Music at Noe Valley Ministry (1021 Sanchez St.). The award-winning ensemble will give a live performance of Stephen Prutsman’s film score to The General – Buster Keaton’s classic silent film from 1928.

The Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music, the Telegraph Quartet bring their well-honed musical chemistry and passion for music of the 20th century to Stephen Prutsman’s lively and dramatic score for The General –– a film that iconic critic Roger Ebert called a “masterpiece,” giving the film his highest 4-star rating. In 1997, Ebert wrote of the film: “[Keaton's films] have such a graceful perfection, such a meshing of story, character and episode, that they unfold like music…The General is an epic of silent comedy, one of the most expensive films of its time, including an accurate historical recreation of a Civil War episode, hundreds of extras, dangerous stunt sequences, and an actual locomotive falling from a burning bridge into a gorge far below. It was inspired by a real event; the screenplay was based on the book ‘The Great Locomotive Chase, written by William Pittenger, the engineer who was involved.”

The Telegraph Quartet’s latest album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths, was released in 2023 on Azica Records. The first in the Telegraph’s three-album series focused on string quartets of the first half of the 20th century, Divergent Paths explores the bewildering and unbridled creativity of the period through the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. The album has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times reporting, “[I]n the Schoenberg, they achieve something truly special, meticulously guiding its often wayward progress. At times Schoenberg makes the four strings sound almost orchestral, but the Telegraph players can also make his contrapuntal tangles radiantly clear. Every minute of their account sounds gripping and purposeful, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay the piece.”

More about Telegraph Quartet: The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. This first volume features two works that (to the best of the Quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. Through this series, the Telegraph Quartet intends to explore string quartets of the 20th century – an era of music that the group has felt especially called to perform since its formation. The New York Times praised the Telegraph’s performance as “…full of elegance and pinpoint control…” Divergent Paths follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten.

Beyond the concert stage, the Telegraph Quartet seeks to spread its music through education and audience engagement. The Quartet has given master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan. In fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet. In the summers of 2022 and 2024, the Telegraph Quartet traveled to Vienna to work with Schoenberg expert Henk Guittart in conjunction with the Arnold Schoenberg Center, researching all of Schoenberg's string quartets.

For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.

About Stephen Prutsman: Stephen Prutsman has been described as one of the most innovative musicians of his time. Moving easily from classical to jazz to world music styles as a pianist, composer and conductor, Prutsman continues to explore and seek common ground and relationships in the music of all cultures and languages. As a composer, Stephen’s long collaboration with GRAMMY Award winning Kronos Quartet has resulted in over 40 arrangements and compositions for them. Other leading artists and ensembles who have performed Stephen’s compositions and arrangements include Leon Fleisher, Dawn Upshaw, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Spoleto USA, and the Silk Road Project. In 2010, his song cycle “Piano Lessons” was premiered by Ms. Upshaw and Emanuel Ax at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Disney Hall and the Barbican Centre.

As a pianist or arranger outside of the classical music world, he has collaborated with such diverse personalities as Tom Waits, Rokia Traore, Joshua Redman, Jon Anderson of “YES”, Sigur Rós and Asha Bhosle.

In the past, his dedication to the creation of new musical environments led him to create music festivals in such far-flung places as the island of Guam and the border town of El Paso, Texas. Passionate about the value of music for all, Stephen is actively promoting music and arts education wherever he visits. He is involved in several projects whose missions are to create enjoyable artistic or recreational environments for children on the autistic spectrum and their families. Stephen lives in San Francisco.

For Calendar Editors:

Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Noe Music
What: A live performance of Stephen Prutsman’s film score to Buster Keaton’s silent film The General
When: Sunday, December 1, 2024 at 5:00pm
Where: Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez St., San Francisco, CA 94114
Tickets and information: www.noemusic.org/2425-mainstage/thegeneral

Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, which The New York Times describes as being “full of elegance and pinpoint control,” is presented by Noe Music on Sunday, December 1, 2024. The ensemble will perform live alongside a screening of Buster Keaton’s 1928 classic silent film The General –– a film that critic Roger Ebert called a “masterpiece.” The Quartet will perform the lively and dramatic film score by pianist and composer Stephen Prutsman, who is described as one of the most innovative musicians of his time.

Christina Jensen 10/29/24 Christina Jensen 10/29/24

GatherNYC - Mindful, Musical Mornings Every Other Sunday at the Museum of Arts and Design - Next Up Sirintip on Nov 10

GatherNYC Launches 2024-2025 Season in NYC at Museum of Arts and Design

GatherNYC Launches 2024-2025 Season in NYC
at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in Columbus Circle

Seventeen Concerts from October 2024 through June 2025

Season Schedule - Every Other Sunday Morning at 11AM:

10/27 The Overlook + Yasmina Spiegelberg
11/10 Sirintip
11/24 The Knights + WQXR: Play Out
12/8 W4RP
12/22 Excelsis Percussion Quartet
1/5 Emi Ferguson + Dan Tepfer
1/19 Gabriel Cabezas
2/2 ensemble 132
2/16 Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
3/2 Toomai Quintet
3/16 Daedalus Quartet
3/30 MATA
4/13 Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
4/27 ETHEL + Layale Chaker
5/11 Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
5/25 Rupert Boyd, guitar
6/8 Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl

“thoughtful, intimate events curated with refreshing eclecticism by its founders, the cellist Laura Metcalf and the guitarist Rupert Boyd, complete with pastries and coffee”
– The New Yorker

“A sweet chamber music series”
– The New York Times

“Impressive Aussie/American led concert series proves music can be a religion.”
– Limelight Magazine

Museum of Arts and Design | The Theater at MAD | 2 Columbus Circle | NYC

Tickets & Information: www.gathernyc.org

New York, NY – GatherNYC, a revolutionary concert experience founded in 2018 by cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, launches its 2024-2025 season at the series’ home venue, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) (2 Columbus Circle). The full season, 17-concert series runs from October 2024 through June 2025, with concerts held every other Sunday at 11am in The Theater at MAD. Coffee and pastries are served before each performance at 10:30am. Admission for children under 12 is free. The season opened on October 27 with a performance by The Overlook and Yasmina Spiegelberg and continues on November 10 with Sirintip in songs from her most recent album, Carbon.

Guests at GatherNYC are served exquisite live classical music performed by New York’s immensely talented artists, artisanal coffee and pastries, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour and evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service – but the religion is music, and all are welcome.

Spoken word artists perform briefly at the midpoint of each concert, many of whom are winners of The Moth StorySLAM events. “It’s an interesting moment of something completely different from the music, and it often connects with the audience,” Metcalf told Strings magazine in a feature about the series last year. “Then we have a two-minute celebration of silence when we turn the lights down, centering ourselves in the center of the city. Then the lights come back on, and the music starts again out of the silence. We find that the listening and the feeling in the room changes after that.”

Metcalf and Boyd say, “We are thrilled to be returning to the beautiful Museum of Arts and Design, offering 17 concerts throughout our 2024-25 season, our largest lineup yet. We look forward to inviting audiences to join us for these mindful, musical mornings with world-class artists in an intimate, unique setting – complete with spoken word, silence, coffee and a communal, welcoming environment.”

Up Next for GatherNYC – All Concerts Take Place on Sundays at 11AM:

Nov. 10: Sirintip
Praised for her depth of dimension, multimodal artist Sirintip draws inspiration from a range of styles and disciplines. Her works explore unsung intersections of humankind and the natural world – a focus that drives her curiosity and expands her output. Part ethereal, part impassioned, her vocals move nimbly across sophisticated harmony, soar over dense walls of sound, and pulse through rhythmic modulations. For this intimate performance, Sirintip will be performing songs from her most recent album Carbon where she has written electro/pop/jazz music as an invitational gesture to a new kind of conversation around climate action. She will also be sharing some of her most recent work from Mycelium, an interdisciplinary musical suite, born from a five-year artistic and research odyssey, that intertwines the wonders of fungi and plankton with the power of music and storytelling.

Nov. 24: The Knights + WQXR: Play Out!
Play Out! is an interactive, intergenerational family program (recommended 5 years old +) that focuses on what it means to feel deeply, and how our big emotions are the foundation for how we relate to ourselves and interact with others. Play Out! explores how music is an incredible outside representation of our emotions inside, through a wide range of music for string quartet performed by members of The Knights. Created and hosted by Knights cellist Caitlin Sullivan, this program includes the performance of original poetry by Jennifer Wynn, and video art by illustrator Jorge Carvajal.

Dec. 8: W4RP
Described as, “a talented group that exemplifies the genre-obliterating direction of contemporary classical music” (Columbia Free Times), W4RP (née Warp Trio) is an internationally touring cross-genre chamber music experience. Reflecting the combination of Juilliard-trained members juxtaposed with members steeped in rock and jazz styles, the one-of-a-kind trio ensemble can be seen performing classical works in prestigious halls on the same tour where they headline a standing-room-only show at a rock venue.

Dec. 22: Excelsis Percussion Quartet
Hailed as, "one of the most innovative and exciting percussion ensembles to emerge in the golden age of chamber music" (Jonathan Haas, New York University) for their immersive sound world, this international group of women with a multilingual combination of five languages join together to speak the universal language of rhythm, rooted in their belief that music possesses an ability to unite us all. Excelsis brings vibrancy to its audiences through eclectic programming, innovative storytelling, and embracing their intersectional identities.

Jan. 5: Emi Ferguson (flute) + Dan Tepfer (clavichord)
Two of NYC’s most acclaimed and versatile artists come together for a program of baroque delights by Bach, Bonporti and more. Tepfer is a #1 Billboard-charting keyboard player who is equally at home in classical and jazz realms, while Ferguson is a 2023 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, known for her performances alongside the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Paul Simon. The pair brings the spirit of their far-reaching musical practices to breathe new life into ancient music.

Jan. 19: Gabriel Cabezas
Acclaimed cello soloist and chamber musician Gabriel Cabezas shares a creatively constructed solo cello program that explores a wide range of timbral possibilities on the instrument. Bringing his thoughtful virtuosity to music by some of the most important compositional voices of his generation including Jessie Montgomery, Allison Loggins-Hull, Paul Wiancko, Alyssa Weinberg and more, Cabezas masterfully takes listeners on a journey through the world of the cello alone.

Feb. 2: ensemble132
ensemble132 presents a genre-bending program honoring the expansive legacy of two musical icons for their joint 150th birthday: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Maurice Ravel. This group of all-star chamber musicians drawn from the rosters of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Marlboro Music Festival, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and more, explores these composers’ influence on other visionaries through the 20th and 21st centuries. ensemble132 traces these connections in a program featuring movements from Ravel’s and Coleridge-Taylor’s string quartets along with special e132 arrangements and a rollicking finale by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Feb. 16: Sarah Elizabeth Charles + Jarrett Cherner
Vocalist and composer Sarah Elizabeth Charles, hailed as “soulfully articulate” by The New York Times, and acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Jarrett Cherner will present music from their debut album as a duo. The album, called Tone, centers its concept on the magical, fleeting and delicate nature of life as well as the need to take care of ourselves and the world around us as best as we possibly can.

Mar. 2: Toomai Quintet + Maria Brea
Toomai String Quintet, an ensemble dedicated to expanding the Latin American chamber music repertoire, presents this family-friendly concert of music from Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico. The program features Cuban composer Keyla Orozco’s The Song of the Cicada (2024) for narrator and quintet, inspired by Onelio Jorge Cardoso’s vivid children’s story of the same title. Also on the program are Toomai’s original arrangements of works by Hermeto Pascoal, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Léa Freire, and Manuel Ponce.

Mar. 16: Daedalus Quartet
Winners of the highest honor in string quartet playing, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Daedalus Quartet will perform the visceral, folk-inspired sixth string quartet by Béla Bartók, alongside the atmospheric, pop-influenced Space Between by acclaimed composer and Guggenheim fellow Anna Weesner.

Mar. 30: MATA
Music at the Anthology (MATA), an incubator for adventurous emerging artists in the early stages of their careers, presents, supports, and commissions composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA composers have since emanated to include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur “Geniuses.” In 2010 MATA was awarded ASCAP’s prestigious Aaron Copland award in recognition of its work. For its first collaboration with GatherNYC, MATA will showcase highlights from previous festivals as well as selected works from its global Call for Submissions. The New Yorker has hailed MATA as, “the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world.” The New York Times has called it “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic;” and The Wall Street Journal said that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.”

Apr. 13: Deborah Buck + Orli Shaham
Violinist Deborah Buck, praised by The Strad as having a “surpassing degree of imagination and vibrant sound,” and Orli Shaham, described as a “brilliant pianist” by The New York Times, present a program to celebrate Clara Schumann's legacy. In addition to works by Robert and Clara Schumann, the program features the couple's circle of friends, including the music of Amanda Maier.

Apr. 27: ETHEL + Layale Chaker
From their beginnings in 1998, the members of ETHEL have prized collaboration. In recent years, the quartet has struck up a particularly fruitful collaboration with the Lebanese-born, Brooklyn-based violinist and composer Layale Chaker. Their album Vigil offers a chance to document some of that collective work, with each member of ETHEL contributing a piece and Chaker contributing two works, one of which is the remarkable work that gives the project its name.

May 11: Solomiya Ivakhiv + Friends: Music from Ukraine
Acclaimed violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv is known for channeling her award-winning virtuosity as a means of championing worthy music by lesser or unknown composers from her native Ukraine. For her first appearance at GatherNYC, Solomiya is joined by violist William Frampton and cellist Laura Metcalf to present a forgotten masterwork by Fedir Yakymenko, a colorful and rhapsodic piece written around the turn of the 20th century. Ukrainian by birth and spending his life in Russia and France, Yakymenko deftly blends French and Ukrainian sounds and styles into this delightful piece, which deserves to be heard and remembered.

May 25: Rupert Boyd, guitar
GatherNYC artistic director and classical guitar virtuoso Rupert Boyd takes listeners on a journey across centuries and continents on the six strings of his guitar. From Malian kora music to atmospheric sounds from Japan to contemporary music from his home country of Australia to classic works for the Spanish guitar, Boyd’s riveting program has something for everyone.

June 8: Orpheus + Boyd Meets Girl
Building on a highly successful collaboration during the 2023-24 season, GatherNYC artistic directors Laura Metcalf and Rupert Boyd in their duo formation of Boyd Meets Girl once again team up with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for an expanded collaborative program featuring classical favorites and creative, virtuosic takes on popular tunes.

For tickets and information, visit www.gathernyc.org.

Press photos available here.

Christopher Jesina 10/25/24 Christopher Jesina 10/25/24

Dec 6: Experiential Orchestra in Transfigured Night Reimagined at the Library of Congress featuring the D.C. Premiere of Julia Perry’s Violin Concerto

Photo of James Blachly and Experiential Orchestra by Allison Stock. High resolution images available here.

Experiential Orchestra in Transfigured Night Reimagined
Presented by the Library of Congress

Featuring the D.C. Premiere of Julia Perry’s Concerto for Violin
with Soloist Curtis Stewart

Plus Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht
Reimagined with Narration by Ling Ling Huang

Friday, December 6, 2024 at 8pm
Pre-Concert Conversation at 6:30pm, Whittall Pavilion
Library of Congress | Thomas Jefferson Building | Coolidge Auditorium
10 1st Street SE, Washington, DC

Ticket Information: Free with RSVP
Note: This event is currently at capacity, but additional tickets will be released. You can join the waitlist here, and you will be notified when tickets become available. RUSH passes will also be available to walk-up patrons who do not have tickets.

www.experientialorchestra.com

Washington, D.C. – On Friday, December 6, 2024 at 8pm, the GRAMMY Award-winning, New York-based Experiential Orchestra (EXO) led by Music Director James Blachly brings one of its signature, immersive performances to the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium (Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 1st Street SE) to mark a trilogy of milestones – the Library’s 100th Anniversary, and two significant birth anniversaries for transformative composers Arnold Schoenberg (his 150th) and Julia Perry (her 100th). A pre-concert conversation with the artists will be held at 6:30pm in Whittall Pavilion. Tickets are free but an RSVP is required.

EXO's performances have been described as “strikingly persuasive” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “immaculate” by Musical America, and bring listeners close to the music through imaginative and interactive experiences. At the Library of Congress, EXO gives the D.C. premiere of African-American composer Julia Perry’s Concerto for Violin with four-time GRAMMY nominee Curtis Stewart, who made the first commercial recording of this landmark 1965 work with EXO as part of their recently released album, American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things). In March, EXO, Blachly, and Stewart performed Perry’s Concerto for Violin at Lincoln Center as part of the 2024 Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival, co-presented by EXO and Videmus. For this concert, Stewart will play legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler’s Guarneri instrument from 1730, part of the Library of Congress’s collection.

The New York Times reported of EXO, Blachly, and Stewart’s world premiere recording of Perry’s Concerto for Violin:

“Julia Perry, who would have turned 100 this month, achieved some real recognition during her lifetime, but – in a tale all too common for composers who aren’t white men – fell into obscurity after her death in 1979. There have been recent efforts to revive her works, including her Violin Concerto, written in the 1960s and now recorded by the Experiential Orchestra under James Blachly, with Curtis Stewart as the soloist. This brooding, 25-minute piece begins with a passionate violin cadenza, played like the rest of the concerto with heated commitment from Stewart, and then evolves frequently, without defined section breaks. It is a fine example of the sober yet seething angularity of its era, leavened with warm strings and hints of Coplandesque expansiveness. It’s a vigorous work of mid-20th-century Neo-Classicism . . .”

To mark Arnold Schoenberg’s 150th birth anniversary, violinist and author Ling Ling Huang (Natural Beauty, Dutton 2023) reimagines his Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) from 1899 for a modern audience, with new narration that expands the concept of the poem by Richard Dehmel that inspired Schoenberg to write this piece.

In celebration of the Library’s 100th anniversary, other works from the Library’s collections will be highlighted, including Irving Fine’s lush Serious Song: A Lament for String Orchestra and Alan Hovhaness’ touching tribute, In Memory of an Artist.

This concert is presented through the generosity of the Verna and Irving Fine Endowment in the Library of Congress, with thanks to the EXO Creative Team and Pauline Kim Harris, Henry Wang, Ling Ling Huang, and Lady Jess for concept development.

(left to right): Curtis Stewart, Ling Ling Huang, James Blachly — High resolution images available here.

About the Featured Artists:

James Blachly: www.jamesblachly.com
Curtis Stewart: www.curtisjstewart.com
Ling Ling Huang: www.linglinghuang.com

About Experiential Orchestra:

The GRAMMY®️-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) brings audiences close to the music by engaging listeners through imaginative, immersive, and interactive concert experiences. Founded by Music Director James Blachly in 2009, EXO’s performances and recordings have been described as “strikingly persuasive” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “immaculate” by Musical America, and have been praised for having “luscious tone and poise” by Classics Today.

EXO was founded on collaboration and co-creation, and each curated performance is imbued with a generous spirit of celebration, facilitating the exploration of what Blachly calls, “a new experience of sound” by audiences. The orchestra’s performances take place in and outside the concert hall with audiences invited to participate in unorthodox ways. EXO has performed the music of Arvo Pärt in the Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, invited audiences to dance during Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker at National Sawdust, enveloped the audience in concerts at Lincoln Center with audience and orchestra members sitting together, and presented  Symphonie fantastique and Petrushka with circus choreography at The Muse in Brooklyn.

Recent highlights have included a subscription concert at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, an immersive performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs with cellist Andrew Yee and soprano Sarah Brailey, and the New York premiere of Julia Perry’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with soloist Curtis Stewart. In January 2024, EXO performed Pärt’s masterwork Passio at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, offering audiences the opportunity to experience the concert while reclining on yoga mats. In March 2024, the orchestra co-presented a four-day Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in New York, coinciding with Perry’s 100th birthday that month.

EXO is known for imaginative and groundbreaking programming that frequently advocates for under-celebrated masterpieces and composers. The orchestra’s world premiere recording of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison (1930) was released on Chandos Records in 2020 to international critical acclaim in The New York Times, Gramophone, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and many other publications. The album won the Grammy®️ for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in 2021 – the first Grammy ever awarded for Smyth’s music. EXO’s world premiere recording of Julia Perry’s Violin Concerto, with soloist Curtis Stewart, was released on the Bright Shiny Things label in March 2024.

EXO is led by Music Director James Blachly, General Manager Raphaele de Boisblanc, and Director of Artistic Planning Pauline Kim Harris. EXO:Chamber, a series of chamber concerts, was inaugurated in 2023, curated by EXO’s Creative Team directed by Pauline Kim Harris. The Creative Team includes Henry Wang, concertmaster; Michelle Ross, co-concertmaster; Alexander Fortes, co-concertmaster; Lady Jess, principal; and Sami Merdinian, principal. EXO’s Artistic Advisors are Patrick Castillo, Brad Balliett, and Doug Balliett.

Christopher Jesina 10/25/24 Christopher Jesina 10/25/24

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 Season Highlights - Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich Creative Chair, Performances in at Least 17 Countries; World Premiere of New Cello Concerto

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 Season highlights

*Photo by Anna Maggy. High resolution photos available* *here*.

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 Season Highlights

2024-2025 Creative Chair of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

2024-2025 CHANEL Next Prize Winner

World Premiere of New Cello Concerto by Johannes Moser and the San Francisco Symphony in May 2025

Continued Country and Local Premieres of Major Orchestral Works METACOSMOS, AIŌN, CATAMORPHOSIS, ARCHORA

CATAMORPHOSIS Returns to the Berlin Philharmonie in February 2025

Performances in at Least 17 Countries

Forthcoming Album on Sono Luminus: Ubique
Release Date: February 28, 2025

“[Thorvaldsdottir] has carved her own corner in contemporary music by creating symphonic works of sustained brilliance” – The Times

Schedule: www.annathorvalds.com/performances

Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and striking sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material – it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. The Guardian reports, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s natural instrument is the symphony orchestra, but in her hands it is reborn as a natural organism.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s 2024-2025 season (September 2024 to June 2025) includes performances of her music across at least seventeen countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Her current schedule is available on her website and will be updated with additional performances throughout the year.

Anna has been appointed the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s Creative Chair for the 2024-2025 season. Since 2015, the orchestra has invited a composer to hold this position each season, including, formerly, Arvo Pärt, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Toshio Hosokawa, among others. From September 2024 to June 2025, a wide variety of Anna’s music will be performed, ranging from string quartets to large orchestral pieces. The season-opening concerts in September featured ARCHORA, conducted by music director Paavo Järvi. Two of Anna’s orchestral works will receive their Swiss premieres – CATAMORPHOSIS at the Sonic Matter Festival Zurich conducted by André de Ridder on November 29 and METACOSMOS conducted by Eva Ollikainen on April 3 and 4.

Additionally, Anna continues her two-year period as one of ten CHANEL Next Prize winners. The biennial prize is awarded to ten international contemporary artists who are redefining their chosen discipline. Each artist embodies CHANEL’s mission to advance the new and the next and receives €100,000 in funding, allowing them to fully realize their most ambitious artistic projects. The NEXT Prize was established in 2021 as part of the CHANEL Culture Fund, CHANEL’s global initiative to accelerate the ideas that advance culture, extending the House’s century-long legacy of cultural patronage.

A major highlight of the 2024-2025 concert season is the world premiere of Anna’s new cello concerto by the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Dalia Stasevska from May 15 to 17. Written for Johannes Moser and titled Before we fall, the new concerto is co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Odense Symphony Orchestra. Additional country premieres will be announced.

Anna’s other large orchestral works METACOSMOS (2017), AIŌN (2018), CATAMORPHOSIS (2020), and ARCHORA (2022) continue to receive country and local premieres as well as repeat performances throughout the world:

METACOSMOS will be performed at least six times this season, by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ollikainen (October 3); Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tabita Berglund (November 13); Houston Symphony conducted by Berglund (January 24 to 26); Dresdner Philharmonie conducted by Bergland (January 31 and February 2); La Jolla Symphony conducted by Arian Khaefi (March 15 and 16); and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by Ollikainen (Swiss premiere, April 3 and 4). METACOSMOS was premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2018 and in Europe by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert in January 2019. The Boston Globe reported, “There is possibly no other composer working today who is so adept at channeling the massive forces of nature, and given a full orchestral sound palette to play with, [Thorvaldsdottir] goes wild. Writing lines that ride the knife edge of order and chaos and giving poetic but direct suggestions to the musicians, she immerses listeners in eerie, irresistible landscapes of sound.”

AIŌN received its Finnish premiere in performances by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta led by Dalia Stasevska on September 12 and 13. Simultaneously, the piece was performed in Germany on September 13 by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin led by Lee Reynolds. AIŌN was commissioned by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece, The New York Times wrote, “Among the many wonders of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music – exquisitely honed timbres, an intricate play of shadow and light – perhaps the most mysterious is the way it can sound so static yet be in a state of constant (if sometimes glacial) change … This craftsmanship – a meticulous fusion of pacing, structure and coloring – is also at work in the three-movement AIŌN … Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener.”

CATAMORPHOSIS will have its Swiss premiere by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich conducted by André de Ridder on November 29, with additional performances this season by the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Jamie Martin on January 4 at the Barbican, January 5 at Warwick Arts Centre, and January 6 at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. As part of the Berliner Philharmoniker's 2025 Biennale, the piece returns to the Berlin Philharmonie, this time performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Nicholas Collon on February 16. It will also be performed this spring by the Berner Symphonieorchester led by Anna Sułkowska-Migoń on April 3 and 4 and by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra led by Ollikainen on May 22. CATAMORPHOSIS, premiered in 2021, was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Of the piece The Guardian reported, “Thorvaldsdottir’s impressive new work was detailed and powerful ... Lasting around 20 minutes, it’s a single movement of restrained power, a continuum of shifting, colliding layers of sound, which are minutely detailed in the score yet manage to seem simultaneously massive and delicate as they move from dense chromaticism to moments of almost lucid tonality ... this scrupulously prepared and wonderfully performed premiere showed that it’s a piece that stands entirely on its own feet, creating an utterly convincing musical world.”

ARCHORA was performed by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich during their season-opening concerts and the start of Anna’s residency as Creative Chair with the orchestra, from September 18 to 20. That same week on September 19, the Odense Symphony Orchestra led by Eva Ollikainen performed the work. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal led by Dalia Stasevska gives the Canadian premiere of ARCHORA on January 22 and 23. Of the world premiere, The Guardian reported, “Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today." ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and Klangspuren Schwaz, and was premiered in August 2022 at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Ollikainen in a concert selected as among The Guardian’s Classical Highlights of 2022.

In addition, Anna’s string octet Illumine was performed on tour throughout Australia by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in September, as well as by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in Oslo on October 15. It will be featured in performances by Boston chamber orchestra A Far Cry on March 28 and 29. Commissioned by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Anna writes in her note for the piece that it is, “based on the notion of dawn and the relationship between light and darkness.”

Anna’s string quartet Enigma will be performed by Ensemble ö! at the Atelier für Kunst und Philosophie in Zürich on October 20, and will receive its German premiere performed by the PULSE string quartet at Galerie Rabus in Bremen on October 27. Of the piece, which was commissioned by Spektral Quartet, Carnegie Hall, and Washington Performing Arts, NPR reported, “Describing Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Enigma – her first string quartet – is not easy, but imagine you’re suspended in some primordial gas cloud where matter is transforming, regenerating, building toward the birth of a planet.” Spektral Quartet’s recording of Enigma on Sono Luminus was named on both NPR’s and The New York Times’ best of 2021 lists.

Anna’s large ensemble piece Aequilibria will be performed by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra at the University of Oslo’s Aula on November 19. Aequilibria was commissioned by BIT20 Ensemble and recorded by International Contemporary Ensemble on Sono Luminus. The Wall Street Journal writes of the piece, “A cello drone gives way to busy, distant-sounding string and wind passages; brass writing moves between ominous, sustained tone, textured buzzing and Wagnerian heft, and a mournful alto flute line hovers briefly over a bleak ensemble texture. Shortly before the piece ends, unexpected percussion bursts and delicate piano tracery push the music toward an eerie landscape – a musical equivalent of magical realism.”

Notable festival performances of Anna’s music this season include Nordic Music Days in Glasgow (October 30) and at the 2025 Ojai Music Festival (June). For her complete performance calendar, visit www.annathorvalds.com/performances.

The 2024-2025 season also brings a new album featuring Anna’s evening-length chamber work Ubique, which will be released worldwide on Sono Luminus on February 28. The 50-minute piece was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Pnea Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, and Kurt Chauviere for Claire Chase’s Claire Chase’s Density project. The world premiere was given in May 2023 at Carnegie Hall, performed by Claire Chase, flutes; Katinka Kleijn and Seth Parker Woods, cellos; Cory Smythe, piano; and Levy Lorenzo, live sound. The same musicians have recorded the new album, and will perform its West Coast premiere at the Ojai Festival in California on June 7. Anna writes of the piece, “Ubique lives on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion. Through a combination of sounds, pitches, and textural nuances, low deep drones envelop lyrical materials and harmonies that breathe in and out of focus throughout the progress of the piece. The flow of the music is primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction — of various kinds and durations — as it streams with subtle interruptions and frictions but ever moving forward in the overall structure.”

All of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral music and many of her other works are recorded on the Sono Luminus label, and featured on Apple Music’s Anna Thorvaldsdottir Essentials Playlist.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is frequently performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Her “detailed and powerful” (The Guardian) orchestral writing has garnered her awards from the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, the Nordic Council, and the UK’s Ivors Academy. Anna was Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2018-2023, and was in 2023 also in residence at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She holds a PhD from the University of California in San Diego, and is currently based in the London area.

The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is published by Chester Music, part of Wise Music Group.

For more information about Anna Thorvaldsdottir: www.annathorvalds.com/bio

Christopher Jesina 10/25/24 Christopher Jesina 10/25/24

Nov. 14: Pianists Simone Dinnerstein and Awadagin Pratt in DIALOGUE Concertos for Two Pianos with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra Conducted by Aisslinn Nosky

L-R Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Lisa Marie Mazzucco; Photo of Awadagin Pratt by Rob Davidson

Pianists Simone Dinnerstein and Awadagin Pratt
in DIALOGUE Concertos for Two Pianos

with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Conducted by Aisslinn Nosky

Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 7.30pm
Crescent Arts Centre | 525 Wardlaw Ave. | Winnipeg, MB
Tickets and Information

www.simonedinnerstein.com | www.awadagin.com

Winnipeg, MB – On Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 7.30pm, GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who is described by The New York Times as “colorful and idiosyncratic” and GRAMMY®-winning pianist Awadagin Pratt, whose performances are described by the Washington Post as “forceful, imaginative, and precisely tinted,” will perform in concertos for two pianos with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra led by Aisslinn Nosky at Crescent Arts Centre (525 Wardlaw Ave.). Nosky was an Artist-in-Residence with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra from 2019 to 2022. Dinnerstein and Pratt will be the featured soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for two pianos, No. 3, BWV 1062 in C Minor and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Two Piano Concerto No. 10, K. 365. The program will also include John Adams’s Shaker Loops.

Longtime friends and collaborators Simone Dinnerstein and Awadagin Pratt have performed together many times over their respective careers, cultivating a deep respect and admiration for one another’s artistry. Each an accomplished musician and uniquely expressive pianist in their own right, Dinnerstein and Pratt have an intangible but compelling dynamic when performing together. Their poised synchronicity and mutual understanding unveils a blend of their musical voices.

“I am so looking forward to collaborating with Anne Manson and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra again.” Dinnerstein says. “I have wonderful memories of our summer tour playing Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No 3, which they co-commissioned for me. It will be a joy to combine the fun of two-pianos with Awadagin with this wonderful group of musicians!”

More about Simone Dinnerstein: 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.

About Awadigan Pratt: Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.

Born in Pittsburgh, Awadagin Pratt began studying piano at the age of six. Three years later, having moved to Normal, Illinois with his family, he also began studying violin. At the age of 16 he entered the University of Illinois where he studied piano, violin, and conducting. He subsequently enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he became the first student in the school’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting. In recognition of this achievement and for his work in the field of classical music, Mr. Pratt received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins as well as an honorary doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University after delivering the commencement address in 2012.

For more information, please visit: www.awadagin.com

For Calendar Editors:

Description: GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New York Times as “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation,” and GRAMMY®-winning pianist Awadagin Pratt, whose performances have been described by the Washington Post as “forceful, imaginative, and precisely tinted,” perform with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra led by Aisslinn Nosky. Dinnerstein and Pratt will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for two pianos, No. 3, BWV 1062 in C Minor and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Two Piano Concerto No. 10, K. 365. The program will also include John Adams’s Shaker Loops.

Concert details:

Who: Pianists Simone Dinnerstein and Awadagin Pratt
Performing with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Aisslinn Nosky
What: Music by J.S. Bach, John Adams, and W.A. Mozart
When: Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 7.30pm
Where: Crescent Arts Centre, 525 Wardlaw Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3L 0L9, Canada
Tickets and information: www.themco.ca/concerts/3-dialogue

Christopher Jesina 10/18/24 Christopher Jesina 10/18/24

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

Christopher Jesina 10/18/24 Christopher Jesina 10/18/24

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

www.jupiterquartet.com

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

Christopher Jesina 10/18/24 Christopher Jesina 10/18/24

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.

Christina Jensen 10/18/24 Christina Jensen 10/18/24

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.

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 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.

Christina Jensen 10/18/24 Christina Jensen 10/18/24

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

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

www.emeraldcitymusic.org

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

Christina Jensen 10/9/24 Christina Jensen 10/9/24

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

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 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.

Christopher Jesina 10/9/24 Christopher Jesina 10/9/24

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

Pre-Order/Save the Album

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.

Christina Jensen 10/9/24 Christina Jensen 10/9/24

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.

About The College of Performing Arts at The New School

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.

Christopher Jesina 10/9/24 Christopher Jesina 10/9/24

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

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.

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

Christina Jensen 10/4/24 Christina Jensen 10/4/24

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.