Celebrating the release of my second album of original works for double bass quartet, featuring:
Tristan Kasten-Krause, double bass
Pat Swoboda, double bass
Evan Runyon, double bass
Isaac Mizrahi narrates and directs Sergei Prokofiev’s charming children’s classic with music performed by Ensemble Signal. A cast wearing costumes by Mizrahi, performs choreography by John Heginbotham, bringing the 30-minute story to life for the young and young at heart.
Music Future is a concert series started in 2014 by composer, conductor, and pianist Joe Hisaishi. Intended to introduce the latest in contemporary classical music, Music Future includes works from composers Arnold Schoenberg, John Adams, David Lang, Philip Glass, and Bryce Dessner performed by the Future Orchestra. In addition, Hisaishi presents a newly composed work each year. This year, David Lang will join Music Future at Carnegie Hall.
Now in its fifth year, Brooklyn Boundis a popular series of concerts at Sō’s working studio in the Navy Yard section of Brooklyn. Casual and intimate, the concerts feature us and emerging ensembles from our local scene. The groups are encouraged to try out new material, premiere new commissions, completely experiment, or just get another performance under their belt.
When Sō Percussion first started performing in New York City, there were many venues – Galapagos, The Stone, 285 Kent, The Tank – where artists could play for small groups and experiment. We’d try new music and get feedback from other artists and avid fans of our scene. In recent years these venues moved away or closed as rents skyrocketed. We want to keep some of that spirit alive in our own studio, both for ourselves and for younger artists who need to play those gigs as well.
Brooklyn Bound is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Wavefield begins its existence with an exploration of reviewing, revising, re-visioning and rethinking.
Anahita Abbasi: Situation 2
(2016 / US Premiere)
Aaron Helgeson: Echoes of Always
(2018 / NYC Premiere)
Victoria Cheah: i watched her smile her hand
(2017 / Premiere)
Pierre Boulez: Dérive 2
While struggling as an eager young alto saxophonist in New York during the mid-1980s, Steve Coleman stumbled upon an idea that seemed obvious but has proven revolutionary: Music should reflect the experiences of those who make it. Coleman’s nascent philosophy, M-Base, has since become gospel for some of the world’s foremost jazz players. For the ever-inquisitive Coleman, it has prompted daring albums that turn conceptual obsessions (mathematics, the African Diaspora, the body’s joints) into some of our era’s most sophisticated compositions and improvisations. The recent winner of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, Coleman is, as The New York Times has noted, “one of the most rigorously conceptual thinkers in improvised music.”
In Durham, Coleman leads his newest and most immersive band yet, the drummerless octet Natal Eclipse. Years ago, when he was preparing to record the boxing-inspired album Morphogenesis, the drummer he had in mind didn’t have the time. So Coleman rebuilt the pieces, shifting their surging sense of rhythm to the other instruments. With meticulous counterpoint and infinite elasticity, this music dashes and darts, bobs and weaves, lunges forward and pulls back, creating an athletic sense of drama in which every move feels like a surprise. These performances are rigorous and complex but strikingly accessible, a distinctive and welcoming musical world.
Works by Dufay, Purcell, Diaz de Leon, Grisey
As part of its educational collaboration with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Wavefield Ensemble joins the students of the Rensselaer Orchestra for a side-by-side performance in a gala fundraising concert at Carnegie Hall to benefit scholarship recipients and celebrate the launch of Rensselaer's new Bachelor of Science in Music program.
Missy Mazzoli: River Rouge Transfiguration (2013) - NYC Premiere
Jean Sibelius: Symphony 5
Fred Lerdahl: Cyclic Descent *World Premiere (2018)
Fred Lerdahl: Duo (2016)
Chris Gross, cello
Steve Beck, piano
James Baker, conductor
Music by Missy Mazzoli
Libretto by Royce Vavrek
Adapted from the short story Proving Up by Karen Russell
Co-commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha, and Miller Theatre at Columbia University
© 2018 G. Schirmer Inc.
In a new production by Opera Omaha
Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek thrilled audiences and critics alike in 2016 with the premiere of their opera Breaking the Waves. This dynamic creative duo reunites for Proving Up, a harrowing tale of a family's pursuit of the American Dream set in post-Civil War Nebraska. Miller's 30th Anniversary Season opens with the New York premiere of this chamber opera that is by turns optimistic, exultant, and menacing.
