I’m thrilled to be joining Parthenia and the distinguished panel of composers in a discussion about composing for viols, the challenges and delights. There will be a teaching component that starts at 6:30, if you’re interested. You can register for the event at info@parthenia.org.

We are delighted to present this, the second of three, Chamber Music Fall Fest ’23 concerts, here at Longy. This afternoon our students bring you music from Italy (Barbara Strozzi), Japan (Yuko Uebayashi), Germany (Clara Schumann), and the United States (Eleonor Sandresky & William Grant Still), works spanning from the Baroque to present-day.

Ralph Farris, Director of Instrumental Chamber Music
Corrine Byrne, Director of Vocal Chamber Music
Alexander Smith, Chamber Music Graduate Fellow

Collide-O-Scope Music:
Twelfth Anniversary Gala Concert

PROGRAM

Mikel Kuehn: Fünf Parabeln for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1993/2020)
Eleonor Sandresky: In Short, Db (2014)
Lou Bunk: Piano Trio (2006)
Felix Jarrar: New Work (2021) **World Premiere
Christopher Bailey: To Those Who Would Crush My Will (2008)
Venue TBA, New York City

LUNAR LANDSCAPES: Wolf Moon premieres on January 17, 2022 at 9pm ET. We will celebrate the full moon with special guest host/curator Eve Beglarian and her special guest Paula Matthusen.

Our themed cocktail is the She Wolf, and you will receive the recipe and snack recommendations when you purchase your $5 ticket, along with a unique link to the event.

Click below for tickets!

PROGRAM

Eve Beglarian, guest curator and host

Paula Matthusen, guest composer

Wolf Moon (2022) for electronics, video & narrators*

by Paula Matthusen and Eve Beglarian

texts by Matthew Cordell and Barry Lopez with texts from the Aberdeen Bestiary

*world premiere

About Eve Beglarian

According to the Los Angeles Times, composer and performer Eve Beglarian is a “humane, idealistic rebel and a musical sensualist.” A 2017 winner of the Alpert Award in the Arts for her “prolific, engaging and surprising body of work,”  she has also been awarded the 2015 Robert Rauschenberg Prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for her “innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation.”

Beglarian’s current projects include a collaboration with writer/performer Karen Kandel and writer/director Mallory Catlett about women in Vicksburg from the Civil War to the present, a piece about the controversial Balthus painting Thérèse Dreaming for vocalist Lucy Dhegrae, and a duo for uilleann pipes and organ that was premiered by Renée Louprette and Ivan Goff at Disney Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary celebrations. Since 2001, she has been creating A Book of Days, “a grand and gradually manifesting work in progress…an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements.” (Los Angeles Times)

In 2009, “Ms. Beglarian kayaked and bicycled the length of the Mississippi River [and] has translated her findings into music of sophisticated rusticity. [Her] new Americana song cycle captures those swift currents as vividly as Mark Twain did. The works waft gracefully on her handsome folk croon and varied folk instrumentation as mysterious as their inspiration.” (New York Times)

Beglarian’s chamber, choral, and orchestral music has been commissioned and widely performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the American Composers Orchestra, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the California EAR Unit, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, loadbang, Newspeak, the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble and individual performers including Maya Beiser, Lara Downes, Lucy Dhegrae, and Thomas Feng.

Highlights of Beglarian’s work in music theater includes music for Mabou Mines’ Obie-winning Dollhouse, Animal Magnetism, Ecco Porco, Choephorai, and Shalom Shanghai, all directed by Lee Breuer; Forgiveness, a collaboration with Chen Shi-Zheng and Noh master Akira Matsui; and the China National Beijing Opera Theater’s production of The Bacchae, also directed by Chen Shi-Zheng.

She has collaborated with choreographers including Ann Carlson, Robert LaFosse, Victoria Marks, Susan Marshall, David Neumann, Take Ueyama, and Megan Williams, and with visual and video artists including Cory Arcangel, Anne Bray, Vittoria Chierici, Barbara Hammer, Kevork Mourad, Shirin Neshat, Matt Petty, Bradley Wester, and Judson Wright.

Performance projects include Brim, Songs from a Book of Days, The Story of B, Open Secrets, Hildegurls’ Ordo Virtutum, twisted tutu, and typOpera.

Recordings of Eve’s music are available on ECM, Koch, New World, Canteloupe, Innova, Naxos, Kill Rock Stars, CDBaby, and Bandcamp.

 Learn more about Eve Beglarian

About Paula Matthusen

Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”.

Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, and the 2014 - 2015 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen is currently Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.

Learn more at: https://www.paulamatthusen.com/

LUNAR LANDSCAPES: Cold Moon premieres on December 19, 2021 at 9pm ET. We will celebrate the full moon with special guest composer Phyllis Chen. The livestream will also include music by Philip Glass and Eleonor Sandresky.

Our themed cocktail is a warm Holiday Hug on a cold winter’s night, and you will receive the recipe and snack recommendations when you purchase your $5 ticket, along with a unique link to the event.

Click below for tickets!

PROGRAM

GLASS “Orphée Bedroom” Final Scene based on the opera Orphée

from the Orphée Suite (2000) arranged for solo piano by Paul Barnes performed by Sandresky

CHEN From High Windows (2021) for organ and hand-cranked music box performed by Parker Kitterman, organ and Phyllis Chen, hand-cranked music box

Tone Grove (2021) for piano and electronics performed by Chen

CHEN/SANDRESKY New Work (2021)*

SANDRESKY Flowing Water Encountering Obstacles (2019) etude for solo piano

from Strange Energies performed by Erika Dohi

*world premier

About Phyllis Chen

Described by The New York Times as “spellbinding” and “delightfully quirky matched with interpretive sensitivity,” Phyllis Chen is a composer and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration of object and sound. The toy piano became her grounds to develop her personal voice,one that defies genre and reflects her third-culture kid experience . She has received commissions from ICE ensemble, A Far Cry Orchestra, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Claire Chase’s Density Project, Opera Cabal, Singapore International Festival for the Arts, Jerome-Roulette Intermedium, Look& Listen Festival, NYSCA, New Music USA, Fromm Foundation (Harvard), Pew Heritage Trust (via Christ Church) and was named one of the 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow by ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Current projects include a new sound installation/work using artist Isamu Noguchi's Sounding Stone sculptures and a new collaborative work for toy instruments with Newbery Honor children's author and illustrator, Grace Lin. Phyllis is the founder of the UnCaged Toy Piano and a founding member of ICE ensemble.

Learn more about Phyllis Chen

LUNAR LANDSCAPES: Beaver Moon premieres on November 19, 2021 at 9pm ET. We will celebrate the full moon with special guest composer Nkeiru Okoye. The livestream will also include music by Philip Glass and Eleonor Sandresky.

Our themed cocktail is Nkeiru-tini, and you will receive the recipe and snack recommendations when you purchase your $5 ticket, along with a unique link to the event.

Click below for tickets!

PROGRAM

GLASS Etude #9 for solo piano,

performed by Eleonor Sandresky

OKOYE Voices Shouting Out for orchestra,

performed by the Detroit Symphony

“I Am Moses the Liberator” from Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom, the opera

Performed by Sumayya Ali (Harriet Tubman), Sequina DuBose (Rachel Ross), Nicole Mitchell (Rittia "Ma" Ross), Clinton Ingram (Ben "Pa" Ross / William Still), John Damian Norfleet (Tubman / Robert Ross).

Featuring a string quintet from the The Harlem Chamber Players

3 Movements for string quartet

performed by the Harlem Chamber Players

SANDRESKY “What’s Left” and “Laughter” from Strange Energies, etudes for piano,

performed by Lisa Moore

About Nkeiru Okoye

A composer with a gift for incorporating many influences and styles within her work, Nkeiru Okoye is perhaps best known for her opera, Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom, the orchestral work, Voices Shouting Out, which is an artistic response to 9/11, and her suite, African Sketches, which has been performed by pianists around the globe. Dr. Okoye is a Guggenheim Fellow. She is profiled in the “Music of Black Composers Coloring Book” and Routledge’s “African American Music: An Introduction” textbook. She is the inaugural recipient of the International Florence Price Award for Composition. A recent New York Times article proclaimed, “Okoye’s work would make a fitting grand opening for an opera company’s post-pandemic relaunch.”

The State of Michigan issued a proclamation acknowledging Dr. Okoye’s “extraordinary contributions” to the history of Detroit, Michigan, for Black Bottom, a symphonic experience commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, in celebration of the centennial season of Orchestra Hall. Her other recent works include Tales from the Briar Patch, commissioned by The American Opera Project, and “Charlotte Mecklenburg,” commissioned by the Charlotte Symphony.  Some of her upcoming compositions for the 2021-2022 season include “Euba’s Dance,” for cellist Matt Haimowitz, “When young spring comes” for pianist and NPR Host, Laura Downes, and a micro-opera, “600 Square Feet,” for Cleveland Opera Theatre.  

Dr. Okoye is a board member of Composers Now!. She holds a BM in Composition from Oberlin Conservatory, and a PhD in Music Theory and Composition from Rutgers University.

Learn more about Nkeiru Okoye

Eleonor arranged the music for the new film by Sophie Dunér When the Saints Go Marching In, which will premiere at the AddAMovie Film and Visual Media Festival on November 2, 2021.

When the Saints Go Marching In (2021)
Sophie Dunér, filmmaker and vocalist
Eleonor Sandresky, film score arranger and pianist

AddAMovie Film and Visual Media Festival

LUNAR LANDSCAPES: Harvest Moon premieres on October 20, 2021 at 9pm ET. We will celebrate the full moon with special guest composer Mary Jane Leach. The livestream will also include music by Philip Glass and Eleonor Sandresky.

Our themed cocktail is the the Indian Summer, and you will receive the recipe and snack recommendations when you purchase your $5 ticket, along with a unique link to the event.

Click below for tickets!

PROGRAM

SANDRESKY Spice Mix 1 for open ensemble

LEACH Ariadne’s Lament for trombone choir

LEACH Dowland’s Tears for solo + 9 taped flutes

LEACH Xantippe’s Rebuke for solo + 8 taped oboes

GLASS Scene 6 from Les Enfants Terrible, arranged for solo piano by Eleonor Sandresky*

*World premier

About Mary Jane Leach

Mary Jane Leach is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from her deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities. “An acoustic ‘Through the Looking Glass’ world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker) The result is striking music which has a powerful effect on listeners.

Critics have commented on her ability to "offer a spiritual recharge without the banalities of the new mysticism" (Detroit Free Press), evoking "a visionary quest for inner peace" (Vice Versa Magazine), and "an iridescent lingering sense of suspended time." (Musicworks Magazine) Leach’s music has been performed throughout the world in a variety of settings, from the concert stage to experimental music forums, and in collaboration with dance and theatre artists. Recordings of her work are on Modern Love, Blume, Apostos, die Schachtel, Lovely Music, New World, XI, Starkland, Innova, and Aerial compact disc labels.

Learn more about Mary Jane Leach