THE FUTURE IS NOW II

Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 7pm
Bloomberg Center of Johns Hopkins University
555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C.

With the support of a generous grant from the Nexus Awards, Dr. Felipe Lara, Polyaspora will host a five-day contemporary music festival, at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. in fall 2024. Hosted by the Peabody Institute and curated by Professor Lara and George Lewis of Columbia University, Polyaspora centers Black and Brazilian perspectives in contemporary music alongside a showcase of new musical works by Peabody Conservatory students. The globally renowned and New York City-based International Contemporary Ensemble will serve as guest performers and educators for the festival. The festival includes three concerts with pre-concert talks at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center’s state-of-the-art Theatre, and one concert on the Peabody Institute’s Baltimore campus. All four concerts will be free and open to the public. Additional workshops and open rehearsals at Peabody will be open to JHU and Peabody students to attend and participate in.

PROGRAM

Xinglan Deng: That’s the end of winter for oboe, alto saxophone, bassoon, harp, piano, and violin
Christopher Thompson: Precipice for soprano saxophone, bassoon, horn, piano, and violin
Rodrigo Valente Pascale: escritura for oboe, alto saxophone, bassoon, harp, electric guitar, and violin
Alexander Wu: Measure of the wound for oboe, alto saxophone, bassoon, horn, and electric guitar
Spencer Winell: Avec la Gomme for alto saxophone, bassoon, piano, harp, electric guitar, and violin
Jia Yi Lee: Rotations for oboe, soprano saxophone, bassoon, horn, electric guitar, and harp
Emma Tucker: Crudely, Gilded, Brutally Adorned for conductor, oboe, alto saxophone, bassoon, harp, electric guitar, and violin

PERFORMERS

Rebekah Heller, conductor
Nick Masterson, oboe
Erin Rogers, saxophone
Alexander Davis, bassoon
Kyra Sims, horn
Josh Modney, violin
Nuiko Wadden, harp
Daniel Lippel, guitar
Jacob Greenberg, piano

New Thread Saxophone Quartet is kicking off its 2024-2025 Season with Explorations Vol. 7: A Little Night Music. This collection of pieces grips, soothes, and marvels after dark.

While Irish composer Emma O’Halloran was living in Miami, she listened to the ocean waves at night for comfort and reflection. Her Night Music ripples and whirls like the sea with a nod to Latin music and Miami Sound Machine, the mixtape that kept O’Halloran company during that year abroad. LA-based Kay Rhie composed Night Blooms for mixed trio following her father’s death in 2019. Adapted for saxophone quartet, the piece tells the story of his final days in the hospital. As she watched his breathing machine expand and contract, Rhie was reminded of flowers that bloom at night and how “many first-generation immigrants probably dreamed of beautiful ‘blooms’ during the quiet hours when not too many people took notice.” Wong Foo Jeng’s light/erasure draws inspiration from several art pieces and literary works that address the idea of confronting an object that was defaced, abstracted, or erased from its previous form. Wong’s distortion of musical material symbolizes the disappearance of stars from the night’s sky due to artificial light pollution. Öö, Estonian for “night,” sets an unsettled atmosphere of impending doom. Helena Tulve provides the perfect closer, in which the night is darkest before the dawn.

Explorations Vol. 7: A Little Night Music
Saturday, Sept 14 @ 7:30pm
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Benzaquen Hall
450 West 37th Street, New York, NY, 10018
Tickets – suggested $15 donation

Reception to follow.

Program
Emma O’Halloran – Night Music (2014)
Kay Rhie – Night Blooms (2019, rev. 2023)
Wong Foo Jeng – light / erasure (2024)*#
Helena Tulve – Öo (1997)

More Info

Abilities Dance Boston
presents

Branches 2024

Mon, Aug 19
PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance
Pavilion Theatre
2980 New York Route 66
Chatham, NY

PS21 HOUSE BLEND II: Konus Quartett. Konus performs Klaus Lang’s Drei Allmenden, for saxophone quartet and harmonium, which the quartet recorded for Cubus Records in 2020 with the composer as soloist. Paired with Skylighght, written and performed by Gelsey Bell (voice) and Erin Rogers (saxophone).

Center for Contemporary Performance is a state-of-the-art venue on 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands in the heart of the Hudson Valley. Performances in our open-air Pavilion Theater and 100 acres of orchards, meadows, and woodlands in the heart of the Hudson Valley

More Info & Tickets

AUG 15 @ 8pm
AUG 16 @ 8pm
AUG 17 @ 8pm

The Brick
579 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY

TICKETS

You Against Nature
[world premiere]
by Joseph White

Performed by:
Paul Pinto
Gelsey Bell
Dave Ruder
Andrew Livingston
Erin Rogers

Mouthful
[world premiere]
Written and performed by:
alejandro t. acierto
Isabel Castellvi
Dave Ruder
Paul Pinto
Andrew Livingston
Gelsey Bell

thingNY returns to the Brick with a double bill made up of Joseph White’s You Against Nature and their latest collectively written opus, Mouthful, as part of the eclectic Exponential Festival.

You Against Nature is a new opera from the genre-fluid librettist and composer Joseph White who the Times calls “magical… mulchy… ribald… outlandish…” You Against Nature is based on the French decadent classic Against Nature, and situates a self-isolating aesthetic explorer in the present day. Expect forty minutes of homilies on modern-day alone time, attempts at life-hacking, and nihilistic indulgence taken to extraordinary lengths, performed by five singing, storytelling instrumentalists.

Mouthful is the latest collaboratively composed experimental opera from thingNY. Situated in the orbit of a large communal table, the ensemble explores digestion and excretion: of food, of blood, of ancestry and linguistic transmission. Each performance is different. With switching roles, in-ear monitors and instruments, the performers act as transmitters of each other’s songs, languages and choreography: reckoning with various degrees of appropriateness and appropriation, comprehension and (mis)translation.

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