Calendar

Arts at The Park (AATP) is pleased to present the virtuosic guitarist Mak Grgic (recently hailed by the Washington Post as playing with “beauty” and “intelligence” long with organist and Arts at The Park’s Artistic Director, Paul Vasile, for a program featuring the unique duo of guitar and chamber organ. The concert will take place on Tuesday, May 14^th at 8:00 pm at The Park Avenue Christian Church (known affectionately as “the Park”), 1010 Park Avenue at 85^th Street in Manhattan.  Tickets are $25 general admission, and $20 for students and seniors, are available online at Arts at The Park or by calling 212-868-4444. Guitarist Mak Grgic

The program will include solos and duos for acoustic guitar and portative (or chamber) organ (a miniature pipe organ), including the Concerto for Lute in F Major by Karl Ignaz Augustin Kohaut the Austrian lutenist and composer of Czech descent who is considered one of the last important composers for Baroque lute. The performers will also offer several new works, including a newly commissioned piece by Brooklyn-based composer and instrumentalist David Crowell of the Philip Glass Ensemble, who has been praised for compositional work that is “notable for its crystalline sonic beauty.” Transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s well known “Chaconne” and “Sheep May Safely Graze” will round out this eclectic program.

On Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 7:00 PM, the critically acclaimed Momenta Quartet (Emilie-Anne Gendron and Adda Kridler, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Michael Haas, cello) will present three world premieres by Latin American composers Manena Contreras, Ileana Pérez Velázquez, and Arthur Kampela at The Americas Society (680 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065; 212-628-3200). Tickets: $20 general; free for AS members.

The concert features the long-awaited full-version world premiere of Brazilian composer Arthur Kampela’s Uma Faca Só Lâmina (“A Knife All Blade,” 1998). Praised by the Washington Post for “an extraordinary musical experience,” Momenta is the first and only ensemble ever to tackle Kampela’s fiercely difficult string quartet. Kampela has received commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation and the New York Philharmonic, among others, but he still considers this 1998 quartet his most important work to date. Some of the world’s leading contemporary ensembles have shown deep interest in the piece but have been deterred by its extreme complexity. Momenta took it on in 2009 as part of an intense multi-year collaboration with Kampela, and by the time of the premiere, will have put in over 150 hours of rehearsal time.

Momenta will round out the program with two new Latin American works written especially for the quartet: Alma de Guije (2012) by Cuban composer Ileana Pérez Velázquez, and Venezuelan composer Manena Contreras’ Trazos (2010) for bassoon and string quartet. The quartet will be joined in the latter work by sought-after bassoonist Adrian Morejon, lauded for his “teeming energy” and “precise control” by the New York Times.

For more information, contact Emilie-Anne Gendron: emilie@momentaquartet.com.

Shanghai/New York based pianist Jenny Q Chai (www.JennyChai.com) will perform a concert entitled Acqua Alta (High Water), at New York City’s Spectrum on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 8pm. Spectrum is located at 121 Ludlow St., New York City. Admission is $15 general / $10 students & seniors.

Acqua Alta (High Water) will be the anchor of a month-long programming focus on global warming at Spectrum, with installations based on data curated by Ian Fenty, whose doctoral dissertation at MIT addressed global warming and its effects on our oceans.

“I wanted to create a program that is multifaceted like the surface of a sparkling stream in Venice,” says pianist Chai. “The music on this program features the piano’s range of expression, from exquisite nuance to bold gesture.”

John Cage’s athletic Water Walk is the centerpiece of the program. Written in 1959, John Cage’s Water Walk is scored for a number of objects, including bathtub, rubber duck, prepared piano and five radios. It was originally premiered on the Italian TV show Lascia O Raddoppia. Ninnananna from Marco Stroppa’s Miniature Estrose—a lullaby in which its out of worldly tremors creates a gentle watery shimmer and explores the two relations between two states of mind, with initiated knowledge one might trace hidden lullabies by Brahms, Schubert, Stravinsky and an Italian lullaby Stroppa’s mother used to sing to him. Scarlatti and Gibbons provides the sensation of traveling back in time in Italy, while Debussy and Ravel adds their watery imagery. Three world premieres by Nils Vigeland, Milica Paranosic and Michael Vincent Waller reflect contemporary composers’ take on global warming.

Acqua Alta (High Water) Concert Program:

• Milica Paranosic Bubble World Premiere
• Kurtag Hommage à Scarlatti
• Scarlatti, Sonatas
• Gibbons, Allemande (1613)
• Marco Stroppa, Ninnananna from Miniature Estrose
• Liszt, La lugubre gondola
• Debussy, Prelude La cathédrale engloutie
• Ravel, Une Barque Sur L’océan  from Miroirs
• Nils Vigeland, I Turisti World Premiere
• Michael Vincent Waller Acqua Santa World Premiere
• John Cage, Water Walk

Recently having made her Carnegie Hall debut at Zankel Hall, pianist Jenny Q Chai was praised by the New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini for her “resourceful technique and sensitivity” as well as playing that is “admirable for its refinement and directness.” Of her performance at the Keys to the Future Festival, Zachary Woolfe wrote, also in the New York Times: “Jenny Q Chai opened the concert playing two of Ligeti’s Études with rich tone and rhythmic clarity; especially strong was her “Cordes à vide.” In addition to Carnegie Hall, Jenny has played at New York venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, Symphony Space, the Stone and recently made her Chicago debut playing Schumann’s Kreisleriana at the Dame Myra Hess Series.

An adventurous and prodigiously talented young player, Jenny Q Chai cultivates a mercurial and engrossing stage presence and seeks to create “fairy tales for grown-ups” in her themed and multimedia concert performances. Ms. Chai’s unique programs include standard classical repertoire such as Schumann and Debussy to 20th and 21st century piano works, often by living composers, such as Marco Stroppa, with whom she has a close affiliation.

Recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissioning Project, first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporary Solo Piano Festival, and recipient of the DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Chai has premiered, most notably, Life Sketches and Five Pieces (for Jenny Q Chai) by Nils Vigeland, Intimate Rejection by Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang, Messiaen’s Canteyodjaya (China premiere) and Marco Stroppa’s Innige Cavatina (US premiere). Chai has also premiered “Marriage (Mile 58) Section F” from The Road by Frederick Rzewski in Ghent, Belgium, where she was given the Logos Award for the best performance of 2008. Chai played the first contemporary solo piano concert in China this June at the National Performing Arts Center in Beijing; and she recently had the privilege of introducing the concept of prepared piano to a Chinese audience, with the world premiere of Mallet Dance by John Slover, in Shanghai Concert Hall.

Ms. Chai is currently working on a CD of the works of composer Nils Vigeland for Naxos Records.

New operas, works in progress

The World Premiere performances of Dan Locklair’s Hail the Coming Day (A Festive Piece for Orchestra), commissioned by the City of Winston-Salem to celebrate their Centennial, will be presented by the Winston-Salem Symphony, Robert Moody, Music Director, on Sunday, May 12 at 3:00 PM as part of their concert at the Stevens Center of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and on Tuesday, May 14 at 7:30 PM, again at the Stevens Center.

Dr. Locklair has written about Hail the Coming Day, “Completed in January 2013, this approximately five-minute composition is in one movement and consists of five short sections. Scored for a large orchestra of triple woodwinds, triple brass, strings and percussion, the composition takes its title from an 1876 speech given by one of early Winston’s most influential leaders, Robert Gray. He said: “I speak of Winston and Salem as one place….Would that I could speak of them under one name. They are one in identity of interest and future…I hail the coming day [from] which shall rise one united town.” Download the complete program notes at http://www.w-s100years.com/events.cfm/5-12-2013/16/.

Other works on the Pictures at an Exhibition program will be Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain”, Mason Bates’ Liquid Interface and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, orchestrated by Ravel.

Tickets for the May 12 and 14 concerts are $15 to $62 dollars. For tickets or more information, call 336-464-0145 or visit http://www.wssymphony.org/experience/concerts/pictures-at-an-exhibition/. More about Winston-Salem’s Centennial Celebration at http://www.w-s100years.com/index.cfm.

More information about Dan Locklair, including a bio, list of works and discography, can be found at http://www.locklair.com.

The World Premiere of Lawrence Dillon’s Broomstick for violin and piano will be performed on Monday, May 6 at 8:00 PM by violinist Piotr Szewczyk and pianist John Callahan at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. This will be part of Violin Futura – 21^st Century Music for Violin, presented by The Florida State University College of Music.

Dillon writes about the new piece, “To illustrate the first of his six artistic principles – Lightness – Italo Calvino recalls the weight of the domestic life borne by women through the centuries. In a leap that conveys the power of the imagination, these women took the tool of their servitude – the broom – and transformed it into an extraordinary symbol of lightness and power, donning their steep-peaked hats and soaring off to the moon.”

Other composers on the program are Kari Henrik Juusela, John Kennedy, Marc Mellits, Gary Smart, Adam Schoenberg, Richard Belcastro, Sydney Hodkinson, Clifton Callender (World Premiere), Moritz Eggert, Piotr Szewczyk and Ethan Wickman.

Piotr Szewczyk says about Violin Futura, “I created the Violin Futura project because I wanted to expand the contemporary violin repertoire with pieces that are exciting to play and listen to while bringing something new and unique to the repertoire. Violin Futura is currently in its 3rd edition and I have over 40 pieces written for me by composers from United States, Germany, England, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Australia.” See a video about it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywd_mkPa8Oo.

For tickets and more information about the May 6 concert, call CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or visit  http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2013/5/6/0800/PM/Florida-State-University-Concert/.

Naxos has issued Lawrence Dillon Violin Music (Catalogue No: 8.559644 – http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559644), featuring seven chamber works performed by violinist Danielle Belen, 2008 Grand Prize Winner of the Sphinx Competition. His other recent, critically-acclaimed CD release, Insects and Paper Airplanes, is on the Bridge label – http://www.bridgerecords.com/catpage.php?call=9332. His music is published by American Composers Alliance – http://composers.com/. Visit his website at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/.

Richard Masters, Kathryn Findlen, and Kenneth Frazelle

SONGS IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR

Weill Recital Hall
May 20, 2013 – 8:00 PM

Mezzo soprano Kathryn Findlen and pianist Richard Masters give New York premieres of two recent compositions by Kenneth Frazelle. The evocative “Songs in the Rear View Mirror” will be paired with Ken’s newest piano work: “Book of Blue Flowers.” The concert is also a New York debut for the duo.

“Songs in the Rear View Mirror” is part road trip, part reminiscence, as composer and lyricist Frazelle travels through his native North Carolina and other southern states, inspired by the words of James Agee and photographs of Walker Evans and William Christenberry. Ten songs in total, the cycle covers a great deal of emotional ground, from the comedic road signs dotting the rural landscape, to painful memories of a childhood trauma. A San Francisco critic called the piece “one of the finest American song cycles in recent or distant memory…”

The program will begin with three songs of composer Robert Ward, including his “Hymn to the Night” from the Fifth Symphony, featuring violinist Emily Ondracek-Peterson, first violinist of the Voxare String Quartet. Pianist Richard Masters also presents the world premiere of Frazelle’s “Book of Blue Flowers” a short set of impressions for solo piano.

For more information on Kathryn, Rick, Ken, & Emily:

www.kathrynfindlen.com
www.richard-masters.com
http://kennethfrazelle.com/
http://www.voxarequartet.com/emily-ondracek-peterson/

To buy tickets ($25 each):
http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2013/5/20/0800/PM/Kathryn-Findlen-Mezzo-Soprano-Richard-Masters-Piano/

LA natives Panic Duo (Pasha Tseitlin, violin; Nicolas Gerpe, Piano) perform a concert in conjunction with the New Lens Concert Series; new music with a different perspective. Secret programs, hints and clues, and a scandalous disregard for the traditional concert atmosphere.

Do we listen differently if we hear music blind – without knowing the composer, date, style? Hear new music without preconceptions: works by an insomniac Canadian bird-lover, an American obsessed with surrealist art, a vastly under-appreciated Pole, George Crumb and others.

Sunday May 5th, 8pm

Thayer Hall at the Colburn School of Music

200 S Grand Ave  Los Angeles, CA 90012

Free Admission

more information at https://www.facebook.com/NewLensConcertSeries

Dancing strings! Electro-cabaret! 3D video!

Groundbreaking laptop ensemble Sideband and Bay Area techno-songstress Amy X Neuburg will team up at Roulette on Thursday, May 16th at 8:30 to bring you a night of dancing string controllers, electro-cabaret, and 3D video sonifications. Neuburg and Sideband will each bring their own individual repertoires that combine elements of live electronics, acoustic performance, and innovative HCI objects. They will also share the stage for Sideband founder Dan Trueman’s piece Clapping Machine Music Variations and a new guided improvisational work by Neuburg specifically created for this collaboration at Roulette. Sideband will be performing pieces by Anne Hege, Daniel Iglesia, Konrad Kaczmarek, Jascha Narveson, Lainie Fefferman, and Dan Trueman, all works from their upcoming album. ($15 admission | $10 members/students/seniors)

In a note of enjoyable trivia: though they never knew it till recently, turns out composer/Sidebandit Lainie Fefferman and Bay Area techno-songstress Amy X Neuburg were both born of mathematician dads and grew up on the same block in Princeton, New Jersey.

Amy X Neuburg (Oakland, CA) has been developing her own brand of irreverently genre-crossing works for voice, electronics and chamber ensembles for over 25 years. Best known for her innovative use of live looping technology with electronic percussion, her 4-octave vocal range and her colorful lyrics, Neuburg has performed at such diverse venues across the world as Other Minds, Bang on a Can, the Berlin Intl. Poetry Festival, the Wellington and Christchurch Jazz Festivals (NZ), the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Her acclaimed Secret Language of Subways song cycle with cello trio has been presented by Yerba Buena Center, the SF Symphony After Hours, and the LA Philharmonic Left Coast Festival. Neuburg’s commissions include works for Del Sol String Quartet, Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Robin Cox, Present Music, Solstice, Sqwonk, and numerous dancers and media artists. As vocalist she toured Europe and Japan with three Robert Ashley operas and has premiered many contemporary voice works. Neuburg studied at Oberlin College & Conservatory and the Mills College CCM. Among her many grants and honors she is a recent recipient of the Alpert/Ucross prize.
http://www.amyxneuburg.com/

Born of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), Sideband first came together as an ensemble for their Carnegie Hall premiere with the American Composers Orchestra and their collaborative concert at The Kitchen with So Percussion and Matmos. Using specially designed and custom made hemispherical speakers and a fleet of laptops, Sideband turns each member of its ensemble in to an island of sound, returning a sense of acoustics and space to the normally flat world of electronic music. Sideband is an evolving project that inspires composers, performers and audience members to reevaluate the role of computers in performance.  The first ensemble of its size and kind, our parent ensemble, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), has inspired the formation of laptop orchestras across the world, from Oslo through Dublin, to Bangkok and Hong Kong through Stanford. PLOrk has been covered by the New York Times, Wired Magazine, NPR, The Guardian (UK), and many others. In 2008, PLOrk was awarded a major grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
http://sidebandband.com/

RANDOM ACCESS MUSIC ANNOUNCES SECOND ANNUAL QUEENS NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

FROM MAY 16-19, 2013, AT THE SECRET THEATRE

 Nine programs of new music and dance over four days featuring 14 world premieres

 NEW YORK, NY – The New York-based composers’ group Random Access Music announces the second annual Queens New Music Festival from May 16-19, 2013, at The Secret Theatre Main Stage (44-02 23^rd Street, Long Island City, Queens). The mission of the festival is to promote new music in Queens by focusing on the wealth of composers, musicians, and ensembles living and working in Queens, as well as highlighting artists from other parts of New York City and the country.

 Random Access Music was founded in 2005 to help composers establish fuller collaborative experiences, long-term relationships amongst artists, and support and interaction among fellow composers.  The composer-members include Allen Schulz (President), Gilbert Galindo (Artistic Director), David Fetherolf, Manly Romero, Jonathan Pieslak, Stefan Weisman, and Wang Jie.

Following a call for proposals in fall 2012, Random Access Music selected nine diverse programs from established and emerging composers, choreographers, ensembles, and artists.  Highlights of the second annual festival include the newly established Periapsis Music and Dance ensemble presenting new music with dance, the Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music program featuring exceptionally gifted young New Yorkers, a staged theatrical performance of urban poetry and art song, two different programs highlighting Japanese and Spanish heritages in New York City, plus more cutting-edge music by some of today’s most exciting composers and composer-led musical ensembles.

All-access festival passes are available for $50; Saturday or Sunday one-day passes are $30; single tickets for individual performances are $20.  Passes and tickets are on sale today online: to purchase or for more information, visit http://www.queensnewmusicfestival.org.

 Thursday, May 16, 8 pm; Periapsis Music and Dance

Founded in 2012 by composer-pianist Jonathan Howard Katz and dancer-choreographer Leigh Schanfein, Periapsis Music and Dance will present the second program of its inaugural season as part of the Queens New Music Festival. Periapsis Music and Dance was founded in response to the growing gap between dance and live musical performance in the New York City arts scene and exists to give composers and dance artists the opportunity to collaborate on new work.

The program new music and choreography by the founders and guest artists: Tra:verse Re:verse Moerae [The Fates], for piano trio, by Mary Kouyoumdjian, choreography by Leigh Schanfein, Periapsis Music and Dance Dancers; Crescit eundo, by Jonathan Howard Katz , choreography by Sarah Mettin, Mettin Movement; Passacaglia, by Jonathan Howard Katz, choreography by Erin Dillon Dancers; Mayn Yingele, for solo piano, by Frederic Rzewski, choreography by Lorena Egan, LorenaEganDance; Evening, for bass clarinet and cello, by James Holt, choreography by Yesid Lopez; Supernatural Love, by Kati Agócs, choreography by Leigh Schanfein, Periapsis Music and Dance. Tickets link:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348591

Friday, May 17, 8 pm; Face the Music

Praised for “stunning performances” by The New York Times, the Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music is an alt-classical ensemble of more than one hundred and fifteen talented teenagers from in and around New York City. Their program for the Queens New Music Festival highlights three string quartets from within the larger ensemble: the Face the Music Quartet, the Pannonia Quartet, and the Sorpresa Quartet.

Running as a common thread through the program will be a stream of constant sixteenth notes. The oldest work on the program, Steve Reich’s Different Trains, for string quartet and playback, is a dark work about the holocaust and a seminal work for the composer’s innovative use of voice “pitches” in the instrumental part;  Tristan Perich’s Interface (2007) for string quartet is coupled with special 1-bit electronics created by the composer; San Francisco-based composer Dan Becker’s Lockdown (2010) brings a rock groove to the fore; and David Crowell’s Open Road (2010), evokes a funky playfulness with interweaving polyrhythms above a confident bass line. The program also includes the world premiere of Crossing by twelve-year-old, Russian-born composer Sofia Belimova. Belimova, who is enrolled in the Special Music School at the Kaufman Music Center, was named an Emerging Composer by the 2012 Tribeca Young Composer Competition. Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348795

Saturday, May 18, 1pm; Two Sides Sounding: BrooklynQueens Expressway

New music ensemble Two Sides Sounding presents BrooklynQueens Expressway, a concert featuring vocalists Daniel Neer and Eleanor Taylor with pianist Mila Henry in works that explore life in Brooklyn and Queens through snapshots of New Yorkers’ everyday modes of transportation. The program includes the world premiere of BQE, an urban cantata by composer Robinson McClellan and lyricist Daniel Neer, which juxtaposes the tempestuous relationship of master city builder Robert Moses and the writer/activist Jane Jacobs, with the controversial planning of one of New York City’s most audacious super-highways: The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Also featured are two world premieres inspired by the recent destruction to the Queens and Brooklyn coastline by the effects of Hurricane Sandy: Chandler Carter’s Far Rockaway and Patricia Burgess’ Red Hook, set to poems by Daniel Neer. Tom Cipullo’s G is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train (with special guests mezzo-soprano Hayden DeWitt and tenor Brandon Snook); Eric Moe’s Rapid Transit, and Gabriel Kahane’s Coney Island Avenue round out the program. Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348809 

Saturday, May 18, 3 pm; Thomas Piercy: Tokyo to New York

Clarinetist and composer Thomas Piercy presents Tokyo to New York, a concert of new music by contemporary Japanese composers based on their thoughts about New York City, and works by non-Japanese composers inspired by Japan.  The concert will be enhanced by projections of photography of New York City by photographer Christina Boers as well as photos of Tokyo by Thomas Piercy.

The musical program includes 25 works composed or arranged for and premiered by Piercy, including several works combining Western classical instruments with traditional Japanese instruments. The performance, which features composer/pianist Mika Tanaka and renowned Shakuhachi player Elizabeth Brown, includes two world premieres by composers Mika Tanaka and Masatora Goya, and seven US premieres by Yohei Kurihara, Ippei Inoue, Yuichi Matsumoto, Kento Iwasaki, Katsuhiro Oguri, Tomoko Uzawa, and Hifumi Shimoyama. American composers also featured on this program include: Thomas Piercy, Armando Ayala, Greg Bartholomew, John Bilotta, Andy Cohen, Douglas DaSilva, Andrew Davis, Jim Fox, Michael Frazier, Nana Siniakova, Daniel J. Thompson, and David Wolfson. Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348815

Saturday, May 18, 5 pm; Hans Tammen and Third Eye Orchestra: PIKAIA

Hans Tammen uses Earle Brown’s open form composition idea as a starting point to create large multi-movement pieces for string and wind quartet, keyboards, rhythm section, voice, and live sound processing. The Queens New Music Festival performance will feature the world premiere of Tammen’s evening-length work PIKAIA, created for and performed by his ensemble Third Eye Orchestra. The work combines composed material with extemporization to create a score whose modus operandi is constant change.

All About Jazz has described Tammen’s work for Third Eye Orchestra as “nothing short of breathtaking… a masterpiece of musical evocation.” The ensemble includes David Soldier and Jason Hwang (violins), Stephanie Griffin (viola), Alex Waterman (cello), Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet), Michael Lytle (clarinet, contra bass clarinet), Briggan Krauss (alto and baritone saxophones), Chris McIntyre (trombone), Dafna Naphtali (live sound processing, voice), Denman Maroney and Ursel Schlicht (piano/keyboards), Andrea Parkins (accordion), Jonas Tauber (bass), Andrew Drury (percussion).  Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348819

Saturday, May 18, 8 pm; Random Access Music Presents Crossings: New York – Pittsburgh

New music for cello by the composers of RAM (NYC) and Alia Musica (Pittsburgh) featuring cellist Kate Dillingham and pianist Amir Khosrowpour

The Random Access Music (RAM) composers’ collective unites with the Pittsburgh-based collective Alia Musica to present cellist Kate Dillingham and pianist Amir Khosrowpour in a program that includes six new works—including five world premieres. The program features A Dance of Shadows for cello and piano by Allen Schulz (RAM); Venera for solo cello by Kerrith Levingood (AM); All I Ever Wanted for cello and piano by Wang Jie (RAM); Chemins for solo cello by Federico Garcia (AM); e io li tenni dietro for solo cello by David Fetherolf (RAM); and a new work for cello and piano by Gilbert Galindo (RAM).

New York-based cellist Kate Dillingham enjoys an active career in the United States and abroad. Her contemporary music discography includes the works of Arthur Honegger, Witold Lutoslawski, and Jennifer Higdon, among others. The New York Concert Review praised her as “An adventurous, dedicated champion of contemporary music, she performed with admirable control, conviction, and authority.” Praised by The Los Angeles Times as having “irresistible verve, unpretentious directness, and fingers of steel”, Bronx-based pianist/composer/teacher Amir Khosrowpour has performed throughout the United States, in China and Italy. Khosrowpour is a company composer for The Actors Company Theatre, and has also collaborated with many NYC dance companies.Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348825

Sunday, May 19, 1 pm; Kim-Castillo-Evol Trio

Violinist Karen Kim, composer Patrick Castillo, and poet Keno Evol present a program of contemporary solo violin music with the added dimensions of electronics and spoken word. The program revisits an experimental salon evening presented by the trio at The Third Place Gallery in Minneapolis on the occasion of the John Cage centenary – a meditation on Cage’s legacy, featuring a spoken word remix of Cage’s The Future of Music: Credo and the world premiere of Castillo’s Music for the Third Place, a work for violin and electronics that combines pre-composed fragments, found sounds, field recordings, synthesizers, and live audio processing systems.

Their festival program incorporates music for solo violin by Jörg Widmann, John Harbison, and the world premiere of a newly commissioned work, In Search of a Violin Sonata (2013) by Craig Woodward. The program explores the sympathetic expressive resonance between the violin and the human voice – from the New York premiere of Keno Evol’s The Future of Music: Remixed (2012) as its point of departure, to a responsive work, Patrick Castillo’s Anthem [anathema] (2009) and Widmann’s Etude no. 2 (2001) (both of which involve sung vocalise as part of their compositional texture) and arriving again at Keno Evol’s The Violins Who Were Blind When the Thunderstorms Hit for violin and spoken word. The New York premiere of Castillo’s Music for the Third Place for violin and electronics offers the program’s most expansive sonic breadth, serving to amplify the austerity of John Harbison’s Four Songs of Solitude (1985), which concludes the program. Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348827

Sunday, May 19, 3 pm; Duo Sonidos / Adam Levin

Praised by Julian Haylock of BBC Music Magazine for their “stunning performances, and beguiling tonal warmth,” top prize-winning chamber ensemble Duo Sonidos, featuring New York-based violinist William Knuth and classical guitarist Adam Levin, is gaining considerable acclaim among audiences and critics in Europe and the USA for their distinctive, non-traditional chamber music combination and for their commitment to expand the chamber repertoire for violin and guitar duos.

Duo Sonidos presents three commissioned chamber duos from contemporary Spanish composers: the world premiere of Jardin Bajo La Luna (Moonlight Garden) by David Del Puerto;  the New York premiere of Tre Divertimenti (violin and guitar version) by Catalan composer Salvador Brotons; and Volavérunt: Homage to Francisco Goya by Spanish-Cuban composer Eduardo Morales-Caso. Guitarist Adam Levin also presents four solo works drawn from his collection of 30 new works dedicated to him from four generations of living Spanish composers, all commissioned by Levin while living and studying on a Fulbright Scholarship in Madrid. The works performed will be featured on Levin’s new release on the Naxos label, 21st Century Spanish Works for Guitar, Volume 1 (April 30, 2013). Levin’s programincludes the US premiere of Two New Suggestions by Salvador Brotons and the New York premieres of Handeliana by Spanish composer and Juilliard faculty member Ricardo Llorca, Caprichos No.8: Abstractions of Albeniz by Leonardo Balada, and Nostos: Suite for Guitar by New York-based Spanish composer Octavio Vazquez. Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348834

Sunday, May 19, 6:30 pm; Mantra Percussion

Recognized by The New Yorker and TimeOut New York for presenting one of the ten best classical performances of 2012 for their presentation of Michael Gordon’s Timber at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mantra Percussion is committed to substantially expanding the future of percussion repertoire. The ensemble will present selections from their 3Nights portrait concerts of music by electro-acoustic composer Paula Matthussen, whose work often features analog circuit bending; Daniel Wohl, who intimately merges digital and acoustic elements; and Zs: a three-piece “rock” band whose music can be described as a hybrid between Louis Andriessen and the Velvet Underground.

Mantra Percussion will perform one commissioned work and other selected works from the composers’ catalogues, to be announced from the stage. Tickets link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/348838

ABOUT THE SECRET THEATRE

The Secret Theatre, 44-02 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY. The Secret Theatre performance space is located just 3 blocks from the PS1 art museum and just a 4 block walk (or less) from the N, Q, R, E, V, G and 7 trains. Long Island City has a burgeoning arts scene, with the Fisher Landau Center for Art, the Dorsky Gallery, the Noguchi Museum, the SculptureCenter, The Socrates Sculpture Garden, the Flux Factory, the Secret Theatre Main Stage, and a dozen other flourishing arts groups and venues all located nearby.

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