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Posts tagged 'Chris Watford'

Upcoming Performances of Wollschleger, Cerrone

Schumann's Dichterliebe famously begins: "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai"—in the wonderful month of May. What follows is a masterful collection of discrete, yet interrelated compositions: a chain linked by its proximity to rebirth and spring. Schumann's song cycle is nice metaphor for what's happening with two of our PSNY composers this month: over the next few weeks, Scott Wollschleger and Christopher Cerrone will see a blooming and bountiful group of performances, all up and down the East coast. A wonderful month of May, indeed! 

Kicking things off in a lower register, Scott Wollschleger's trio for marimba, bass clarinet, and bassoon, Density is a Kind of Love, will see its New York Premiere at ShapeShifter Lab on May 9th, performed by Transient Canvas and Chris Watford. Keep an eye out for Density is a Kind of Love, which will soon be published on PSNY. 

Watford will also be performing Timothy McCormack's monumental BODY MATTER, which Watford commissioned in 2015—a nearly thirty-minute long exploration of the bassoon that pushes the instrument and its player to their limits. 

The very next day, Wollschleger's second string quartet, "White Wall", will be performed by the MIVOS Quartet alongside Helmut Lachenmann's String Quartet No. 3 ("Grido") at Roulette, as a part of the Darmstadt Institute New York's 70 Year Anniversary Celebration. Performing on a packed program that also includes the International Contemporary Ensemble performing works by Ashley Fure, Chaya Czernowin ,and Luigi Nono, MIVOS's performance of "White Wall"—a piece they commissioned from Wollschleger—will offer a "brontal" meditation on the process of becoming-sound, with quiet but intense energies circulating among the quartet members, sounding their own time. Check out MIVOS performing the first half of this quartet: 

If Wollschleger's "White Wall" plunges us into the sound-world of the instruments themselves, Christopher Cerrone's "Memory Palace", which sees two performances in the same week, brings us to the sound-world of the composer firmly rooted in space. Or, more properly, as the movement titles suggest, spaces: Harriman, the Long Island Expressway, Foxhurst. On May 8th, the Metropolis Ensemble, featuring percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, performs the Washington, DC premiere of "Memory Palace" at the Phillips Collection. Moving up the coastline, Rosenbaum will also perform the work in Baltimore at An Die Musik on May 10th, with Cerrone giving engaging in an intimate pre-concert conversation. The following week, on May 16th, Rosenbaum will again perform "Memory Palace" at the American Irish Historical Society—an innovative concert program that asks, "what would a house sound like if it could sing?". Check out Rosenbaum performing "Memory Palace" below. 

World Premiere of Scott Wollschleger's "Density Is A Kind Of Love" in Boston

On June 1, Boston's Equilibrium Concert Series closes its season with a concert of works for bassoon, bass clarinet and marimba, including the world premiere of Scott Wollschleger's Density Is A Kind Of Love featuring bassoonist Chris Watford and the Transient Canvas duo (Amy Advocat, bass clarinet; Matt Sharrock, marimba). Density Is A Kind Of Love, which was commissioned by Watford and Transient Canvas, reveals surprising new sonic landscapes between the three instruments and transforms them in strange and uniquely expressive ways. The work explores the wide timbral landscape of the bassoon and bass clarinet by weaving together complex multiphonic textures within a haze of bowed marimba, resulting in a unique, dance-like tapestry that Wollschleger describes as "an erotic soup of structured sound". He writes:

The marimba, which in some ways has nothing in common with the two wind instruments, finds a way to both interact with them yet also break free from their dance until all three instruments find a surprising and dramatic new configuration. I think of the work as a kind of choral love song. 

The program takes place at the Davis Square Theatre in Somerville, MA and also includes the premieres of Lattices of Blooms for bass clarinet and marimba by Zach Sheets and Timothy McCormack's BODY MATTER for solo amplified bassoon. 

Later this summer, Wollschleger sees the premiere of a new concerto for piano and string orchestra, Meditation on Dust, with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn and pianist Karl Larson. The concert will take place at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY on June 25 in a program including Feldman's Rothko Chapel and Penderecki's Dimensions of Time and Silence. Check out a video of Wollschleger's White Wall, performed by the Mivos String Quartet

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