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Posts tagged 'David Kaplan'

New Music from Christopher Cerrone

2015 has already been a busy year for PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone: a residency at EMPAC, a successful Kickstarter campaign with percussionist Owen Weaver, and on February 6th, the premeire of a new Violin Concerto at a new music venue in New York (new!) called Subculture. Jointly commissioned by violinist Rachel Lee Priday and pianist David Kaplan, with funding from the Fromm Foundation, this new piece will have its first performance on a program curated by Cerrone that centers around the relationship between contemporary music and 19th century Germany. Cerrone's work, a violin sonata, retains the formal sections of classical Sonata form while wildly reimagining its boundaries. Also on the program is Hannah Lash's Liebesbrief an Schumann which draws intertexts from Robert Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze [League of David Dances], instrumental works he wrote at the height of his compositional powers, which pit the fanciful league of David against the "Philistines"—Schumann's vision of (1830s) mass culture. Rounding out the program are new works by Samuel Carl Adams and PSNY's own Scott Wollschleger

Part of MATA's Interval series, the concert is jointly produced by Issue Project Room, and was curated by Cerrone. Check out a sneak preview of Priday and Kaplan rehearsing Cerrone's new sonata below. 

September Premieres for Hannah Lash & Pierre Jalbert

September has arrived and brought with it two upcoming premieres of new music by Hannah Lash and Pierre Jalbert. Lash’s piece Liebesbrief an Schumann (Love Letter to Schumann) is--as its title suggests--a work for solo piano paying homage to various compositional aspects of Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) music. Lash recalls,

I approached the composition of this piece both from the standpoint of paying homage to Schumann and fulfilling my own compositional needs.

Referencing Schumann’s “fluid,” “malleable” harmonies and chromatic figuration, Lash “based [her] entire composition on a chromatic line that was able to move in an infinite variety of ways, using a songful melodic disposition as a foil.” 

Liebesbrief will receive its world premiere on September 21st presented by Lyrica Chamber Music as part of a program in which pianist and Lyrica Artistic Director David Kaplan will intersperse specially commissioned miniatures by 17 composers throughout Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze

Check out a recording of Lash's piece Friction, Pressure, Impact (2012) for Cello and Piano: 

The second September premiere that should be on your radar is of Pierre Jalbert’s Howl for clarinet quintet. Howl was commissioned by the Pro Arte Quartet with Charles Neidich on B-flat and bass clarinets, and is set to premiere on September 26th at Wisconsin Union Theater on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The event will be the first classical music concert to take place in the historic theater’s newly refurbished Shannon Hall (for more info on the commission and performers, click here). 

Of Howl's origins, Jalbert maintains, 

The work...was somewhat inspired by the poem of Allen Ginsberg, not so much the content, but the long lyrical line created in the work. This long line is recreated [in Howl] by the clarinet with the strings providing an active underpinning. His poem has been referred to as a kind of 'litany of praise' and the second movement becomes the litany, with the clarinet acting as ‘Vox Dei,’ the voice of God.

Here is a video of the third movement of Jalbert's string quartet Icefield Sonnets (2004)

Following their respective premieres, both works will be available on PSNY.

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