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US Premiere of Richard Ayres's No. 42 "In the Alps" with Jennifer Zetlan and Alarm Will Sound

Mar. 31, 2014

US Premiere of Richard Ayres's <em>No. 42 "In the Alps"</em> with Jennifer Zetlan and Alarm Will Sound

As part of David Lang’s collected stories concert series, Alan Pierson leads soprano Jennifer Zeltan and the ensemble Alarm Will Sound in the US premiere of Richard Ayres’s No. 42 (In the Alps). The program, titled (post)folk, takes as its departure the complex and multi-dimensional relationship between music and storytelling.

Commissioned by the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble, No. 42 (In the Alps) was premiered in 2008 with soprano Barbara Hannigan. Ayres describes the work, subtitled “an animated concert,” as a melodrama in three acts, “separated by interludes describing how three animals experience time passing in relation to a musical temp.” Ayres continues:

[No. 42 (In the Alps)] combines many of the subjects that fascinate me: the relationship of text narrative and musical narrative, the history of opera, early cinema, the theatrical practices of the nineteenth century, along with the folk and popular music of the Alpine region… Like any self respecting melodrama the text and music combine to depict or imply a wide ranging theatrical adventure, in this piece starting at the Creation (or the big bang), a lonely existence, scenes of rustic village life, some carpentry, many mountain goats, unrequited love, and ending in a quest destined to fail. 

The premiere takes place April 27 at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall alongside works by Kaki King, Kate Moore and Donnacha Dennehy.

For more information on Richard Ayres, please visit www.schott-music.com.

Details on the performance, including ticketing information, can be found at www.carnegiehall.org.

Richard Ayres
No. 42 (In the Alps) (2008)
an animated concert
libretto (Eng) by the composer
for soprano and ensemble
2pic(1.fl, bfl).0.1.1(Ebcl).1.cbsn-2.2 in C(2.pictpt).btbn.1-2perc-3vn.db
45’

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