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Posts tagged 'SONiC Festival'

Hannah Lash Premieres Two Works with ACO and Ensemble Intercontemporain



In the next two months, two new works by PSNY composer Hannah Lash will be heard by audiences in New York and Washington, D.C. On October 23rd, Lash premieres her new Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra with the American Composers Orchestra, as a part of their SONiC Festival, at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. George Manahan conducts, with Lash herself as soloist. For the concerto, Lash was concerned with taking on "all the ramifications of our perception of this instrument's character," creating a work that is "mysterious and beautiful and at the same time fearful, aggresive, lonely."

To get a sense of what some call her "avant-garde post-romantic" style, check out this in-depth interview produced by Harvard Magazine: 

Some weeks later, Lash will see a second world-premiere of a brand-new work by Ensemble Intercontemporain, led by Matthias Pintscher. Commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, Lash's Two Movements for Violin and Piano premieres at the Library of Congress on November 13th. This new work will be heard alongside works by Berg, Varèse, Ligeti, and the U.S. Premiere of Now I & II from Profiles of Light by Matthias Pintscher.  

JACK Quartet and ACO Premiere New Alex Mincek Concerto

On October 16, 2015, Alex Mincek's new concerto for string quartet and orchestra will be premeired by the legendary JACK Quartet, alongside the American Composers Orchestra. A continuation of his String Quartet No. 3, also composed for and premiered by the JACK Quartet, this new composition, "Continuo", has a double meaning: it is both an extension of the previous work, and also references the baroque concept of continuo, accompaniment provided for a group of soloists. Mincek writes,

"I try to fluidly connect various harmonic processes that are typically considered incompatible (by some). Namely, modal organization, tonal organization, organization by abstract intervallic relationships (symmetry, proximity, etc...), and organization pertaining to acoustic phenomena (Just Intonation, harmonic spectra, non-harmonic spectra, etc...). I'm traversing and combining these approaches not merely for the variety of their sensual qualities (surfaces), but for their structural properties relative to specific musical functions/goals."

For an idea of these disparate sound-worlds that Mincek is interested in combining, check out his String Quartet No. 3

The concert kicks off 2015's SONiC Festival, and will be broadcast as a part of New Sounds Live, hosted by John Shaefer. 

Ted Hearne's "The Source" Released on New Amsterdam Records

Ted Hearne's The Source, an immanently engrossing work based on the story of U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning, will be released by New Amsterdam Records in late October of this year. The work, a "modern-day oratorio", sets texts made available via WikiLeaks to Hearne's charactaristically powerful musical language. Hearne emphasizes that the work "never asks the audience to pretend the musicians are fictional characters," and also "approaches its subject matter through discrete movements with tangentially related texts, rather than through traditional narrative storytelling"—two features of oratorios stretching back to the 18th century. 

Hearne will also see the West-coast premiere of Dispatches, a co-commission from the New World Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. The new work will be performed on programs from September 30th-October 3rd, paired with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique). In addition to an interview with I Care If You Listen, Hearne has also done a video interview with the SF Symphony, with some previews of the piece itself: 

Finally, Hearne will also have another premiere on the American Composers' Orchestra SONiC Festival by Grammy-award winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The new work, Coloring Book, will premiere on October 17th at National Sawdust, a new venue for contemporary music in Williasburg, Brooklyn. Hearne is no stranger to writing for vocal ensembles; check out his Consent, for 16 voices, to get a taste for Hearne's cascading, generative, and powerful compositional voice.

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