Heralded by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as “one of the most promising cellists in the country”, Khari Joyner has made numerous achievements nationally and abroad as a versatile soloist, chamber musician, and ambassador for the arts. He has collaborated with artists such as Magnus Lindberg and Hubert Laws, and has had numerous solo engagements with the Atlanta, Buffalo, New World, New Jersey, and Sphinx Symphonies. Other accomplishments include being awarded the William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement and leadership in music at Juilliard’s 109th Commencement ceremony, winning first prizes in the Juilliard Concerto Competition and Sphinx Competition, and giving a private performance in the Oval Office for President Obama.
A recently named C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow, Joyner was one of seven candidates accepted into Juilliard’s prestigious Doctor of Musical Arts program, and is continuing his studies with teachers Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnick, the latter for whom he serves as Teaching Assistant. In addition to concertizing, Joyner is passionate about community engagement and has also pursued a concentration in mathematics during his undergraduate and graduate degrees, in an exchange program with Columbia University.
Though the six-man ensemble Hudson Shad (five singers and a pianist) debuted officially in 1992 in a concert featuring the music of the legendary German group The Comedian Harmonists, their nucleus formed in 1977 when three of them made their Carnegie Hall debuts as soloists in Penderecki’s Magnificat. In 1989, the Arts at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn asked bass Wilbur Pauley to contract a quartet to perform as The Family in Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” with Marianne Faithfull. The response was favorable.
Over the last quarter century, Hudson Shad has most likely racked up more performances as The Family in the Seven Deadly Sins than any other group in history. They have performed in almost 40 different locations, from Arezzo to Zagreb, numbering over 100 performances worldwide. They participated in a staging of the work, in a double bill with Weill’s Der Lindbergflug, at the Macerata Festival. They have twice recorded the work, once with Masur and the NY Philharmonic and once with Ms. Faithfull, Dennis Russell Davies and the RSO-Wien. In NYC alone, Hudson Shad has sung the Sins in six different venues, most recently in 2008 with Ute Lemper at the Carnegie Hall premier of the work.
Other orchestra appearances by Hudson Shad have featured more Weill: “Kleine Mahagonny” with the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra, and ”Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” at the Salzburg Festival. The Schubert bicentennial found Hudson Shad returning to the NY Philharmonic for orchestral works with men’s voices, and they performed Schubert songs using the Reger orchestrations with the Bruckner Orchester in Linz. Hudson Shad debuted with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as “Wild Things” in Oliver Knussen’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” conducted by the composer. They have developed their own English translation of Stravinsky’s “Renard” and have performed it with Charles Dutoit at the Miyazaki Festival and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
In 1999 Hudson Shad was featured on Broadway in a musical tribute to the Comedian Harmonists: Band in Berlin. Since their German debut in 1995, they’ve presented the Comedian Harmonists’ repertoire in major opera houses, concert halls and prestigious cabarets throughout Europe.
Recent performances in 2014 included five performances with Storm Large of the Seven Deadly Sins at the Ojai Festival, the Britt Festival, and with the Louisville Orchestra; two tours of the Midwest under the auspices of Allied Concert Services; and their debut at Joe’s Pub last October.
ACO’s seasonopener features a rare performance of orchestral music by the pioneering composer and performer Meredith Monk with members of her ensemble. (Monk is holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall.) Genre -bending, -skipping and -skirting vocalist and composer Theo Bleckmann, a Monk protégé and longtime member of her inner circle, performs a new song commissioned especially for the occasion. The concert also features the premiere of the raucous first orchestral piece by experimental-rock guitarist Ian Williams (from the band Battles). ACO’s 2013 Underwood Emerging Composer Commission winner, A.J. McCaffrey, contributes Motormouth, a premiere that chronicles the shifting moods that he encounters as the parent of a toddler—from playfulness to delirium to sleepiness. Loren Loiacono a young woman of extraordinary talent, synthesizes her childhood experience playing with Barbie’s Dream House and her later discovery of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe in the NYC premiere of Stalks, Hounds.
Composers OutFront! Erin Gee and Colin Gee
Presented by American Composers Orchestra
and Whitney Live
A performance and discussion by siblings Erin Gee (composer & vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director & actor) Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC
FREE with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission (begins at 6 pm)
Information: 212.570.3676 or www.whitney.org/live
York, NY — American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and Whitney Live will present ComposersOutFront! featuring siblings Erin Gee (composer and vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director, actor, and Whitney Live Artist-in-Residence) on Friday, October 30, 2009, at 7pm at the Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC). The performance and discussion is free with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission, and no tickets or reservations are required.
According to Kultur Steiermark, “Erin Gee’s music defies a simple description. Often, an impression of ephemeral, fragile poetry is formed from the gossamer-quality of the work, which continually aspires to plumb the possibilities of the human voice.” At the Whitney Museum, Ms. Gee will perform several of her works for solo voice, which employ unusual techniques using two microphones and live computer processing. The performance and discussion will also include an excerpt from Dakota, an evening-length film mixed with live performances by both Ms. Gee and Colin Gee, and a preview of the siblings’ work in progress – Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, for electronically processed voice, actor, and orchestra, with film by Mr. Gee. Mouthpiece XIII will be premiered by ACO’s Orchestra Underground at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on November 30 at 7:30pm.
ACO’s annual Composers OutFront! series puts composers on the stage, bringing audiences closer to the creative process and making connections between composers’ roots as performers and their music for the concert hall. The series presents composers who will have major works performed by ACO during the concert season. In keeping with ACO’s eclectic musical programming, featured composers come from diverse backgrounds in jazz and improvised music, rock and pop, classical, and world music. Composers OutFront! events take place throughout the city in unusual spaces including community centers, museums and galleries, libraries, and other non-traditional venues for classical music.
Fun, bold, and unpredictable, the Whitney Live performance series showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge artists. Performances represent new trends, reinterpret American traditions, and resonate with the Whitney’s exhibitions and permanent collection.
Erin Gee, composer-performer
Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, which will premiere at ACO’s season opening concert on November 30 in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, is based on a fictionalized account of the life of Matteo Ricci, proponent of the Memory Palace or the Method of Loci, a mnemonic technique. Ms. Gee (voice) and her brother (actor) will be performing with the orchestra. The work was made possible through a new partnership between ACO and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.
Ms. Gee received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano and composition, respectively, from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. In Austria and Germany, she studied composition with Beat Furrer, Mathias Spahlinger, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett, and Steve Takasugi. She completed her Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz in 2007. Ms. Gee’s awards for composition include the Teatro Minimo first round prize from the Zürich Opera House, the International Rostrum of Composers Award, the Samuel Barber Rome Prize, the Impuls award, a CAP award from the American Music Center, the Look & Listen Festival Prize, the Judith Lang Zaimont Prize, and she was featured composer at the 4020 festival in Linz, Austria in 2008. She has worked with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Vokalensemble Zürich, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Klangforum Wien, and others..
Her opera, SLEEP, with libretto by Colin Gee, was premiered by the Zürich Opera House in January 2009. In November, the Zurich Tage für Neue Musik will present Repertorio Zero in a performance of Mouthiece XII. Gee is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2010, she will be in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. She is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.
Colin Gee, writer, director & actor
Trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell Arte School of Physical Theater, Colin Gee is currently the founding artist-in-residence in an 18-month Whitney Live residency program, and a visiting artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Prior to his residency, he was commissioned by the Whitney Museum in 2008 to create and perform Objective Suspense in the exhibition “Alexander Calder: the Paris Years.” His film Dakota (2006), with live solo performance and music by Erin Gee, was presented at P.S. 122, Diskurs’04 Giesen, Wexford Arts Center, 4020 Festival, and received the Best Male Performer award at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival.
Mr. Gee was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 in the touring production, Dralion, and appeared in the company’s television program Solstrom (2003). Recent works include Portrait and Landscape (2002 – current), an ongoing series of video portraits first shown at Dance Theater Workshop, Cathedral Project (2009), a series of 12 short films, and The Chestnut (2009), with Limerick Youth Theatre in Limerick, Ireland. Also in 2009, his essay Firespots, was published in the Austrian art journal kursiv. A second film/performance project, Across The Road (2009) premiered at The Chocolate Factory. Screenplays for Lady Heard Voices (2007) and Across The Road (2007) were selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and other film projects include the shorts Lady Heard Voices (2004), featuring Irene Hultman, and Stardust (2007). Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company from 2000 to 2001, and was co-artistic director of The Flying Machine Theater Company from 1998 to 2001, with works including Petrushka (2000) at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, Utopians (1998), The Escapist (1999), and Archipelago (2000).
About ACO
American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. More information about ACO is available online at www.americancomposers.org.
About the Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art is the leading advocate of 20th- and 21st-century American art. Founded in 1930, the Museum is regarded as the preeminent collection of American art and includes major works and materials from the estate of Edward Hopper, the largest public collection of works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras, as well as significant works by Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol, among other artists. With its history of exhibiting the most promising and influential American artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney’s signature show, the Biennial, has become the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in America today. The Whitney is currently moving ahead with plans to build a second facility, designed by Renzo Piano, located in downtown New York at the entrance to the High Line in the Meatpacking District.
Composers OutFront! is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Whitney Live is made possible by the Whitney Live Producers.
Major support of American Composers Orchestra is provided by The Achelis Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, BMI, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Fromm Music Foundation, GAP Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc, Meet The Composer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Paul Underwood Charitable Trust, The Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.
ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by New York City Council Member Gale A. Brewer.
American Composers Orchestra
Robert Beaser, Artistic Director
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor Laureate
Steven Sloane, Principal Guest Conductor
Derek Bermel, Creative Advisor
We kick off the season with the world premieres of Milica Paranosic’s multimedia The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue based on the bestselling novel by Téa Obreht along with Narong Prangcharoen’s The Migration of Lost Souls. We are also excited to bring the US premiere of José Serebrier’s Flute Concerto with Tango featuring Sharon Bezaly & Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3 (“Camp Meeting”). Jose Serebrier will also preside over the entire concert as our distinguished guest conductor.
American Composers Orchestra (ACO) kicks off its 2012-13 concert season with Orchestra Underground: Dreams & Dances on Friday, October 26, 2012 at 7:30pm at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. The concert, led by guest conductor José Serebrier, features music that draws inspiration from around the world – from the Balkans to Thailand, from South America to nostalgic New England – and includes two world premieres by up-and-coming composersMilica Paranosic
(The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue) and Narong Prangcharoen (The Migration of Lost Souls). The program also includes the US premiere of Serebrier’s own Flute Concerto with Tango featuring Sharon Bezaly and Charles Ives’ iconic Symphony No. 3 (“Camp Meeting”) from 1910. (Gabriela Frank’s Manchay Tiempo, previously announced as part of this concert, has been postponed.).
This concert program features:
Milica Paranosic: The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue (World Premiere, ACO/LVMH Commission)
photo: Gorazd Poposki
Milica Paranosic (b. 1968) is a New York City-based composer, sound designer, music educator, and producer. A 2002 participant in ACO’s New Music Readings, she is also a regular teaching artist in ACO’s educational outreach program in New York City public schools – Music Factory. She has received grants from Meet the Composer, American Music Center, Soros Foundation, Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg, among many others. She is the resident composer and multimedia director of VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary performance and production team; founder and executive director of Give to Grow, an education and cultural exchange project that brings technology to children in underdeveloped communities; and co-founder of Beyond the Machine, a festival of electronic and interactive music at Juilliard.
Paranosic’s new work, The Tiger’s Wife: Prologuefor Orchestra, Voice, Electronics and Visuals, takes as its inspiration a bestselling novel of the same title by Téa Obreht, who, like Paranosic, was born in Belgrade. Paranosic says, “Apart from obvious cultural and geographical connection between Obreht and myself, there are numerous parallels in our aesthetics, including mixing real and imagined, old and new, fantasy and history, folk and pop, Serbian and English languages, and the use of symbols.” Paranosic has partnered with librettist David Chambers on the text; videographer Carmen Kordas and photographer Beowulf Sheehan contribute original projections of imagery from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.
The Tiger’s Wife: Prologue is commissioned and premiered by ACO with the support of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.
Milica Paranosic: Zvrk for Violin, Cello and Electronics
Zentripital Duo: Lynn Bechtold, violin; Jennifer DeVore, Cello
Lori Cotler, vocals
photo: Henrik Olund
Described by The New Yorker as “using her voice in mystically percussive ways” and by The New York Times as “explosive…exuberant,” Lori Cotler is quickly gaining an international reputation as one of the most captivating and original vocalists of our time. Using exotic rhythms as her muse, she is able to execute with the human voice phrases that do not seem possible in their rhythmic speed and clarity. Cotler’s combination of world and jazz stylings has propelled her to performances in venues around the world. Cotler has just released the first drum language ringtone of its kind for iPhone called TAKA MOSHI available on iTunes. She is currently in the studio recording her solo album featuring repertoire from her new project RHYTHM VOICE. For more information, visit www.loricotler.com.
Carmen Kordas, videographer
Carmen Kordas was born in Germany and has been based in New York since 1998. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Coming out of video installations, her work has now developed into a wide range of disciplines: multimedia art and video projection for theater, opera and performance. Her work has been exhibited in VideoFestival in Munich, Freiberg, Berlin, Bochum, Dresden, and Arnheim, Netherlands. Ms. Kordas holds a MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin where she studied visual communication, digital editing, and three dimensional video sculpting with Valie Export.
Beowulf Sheehan, photographer
Beowulf Sheehan is a New York-based photographer of the arts and humanities, making commercial and conceptual images of compelling figures and their stories. His work has been published in the likes of Elle France, Esquire, L’Uomo Vogue, The New Yorker, and Spin, made for Audi, Furla, Godiva, and Random House, and exhibited at the International Center of Photography. You are welcome to view his work at www.beowulfsheehan.com. Beowulf is grateful to his artist colleagues, to American Composers Orchestra, and to Téa Obreht and her representatives for the opportunity to celebrate her brilliant work.
David Chambers, librettist
David Chambers is a producer, director, and writer of theatre and opera. His productions have been seen in theaters in Europe, throughout the US, and in New York on and off Broadway, in the BAM Next Wave Festival, at Bard Summerscape and PS 122. He is Professor of Directing at The Yale School of Drama, has taught extensively in Russia and eastern Europe and holds an honorary degree from The University of the Lower Danube in Romania.
Narong Prangcharoen:
The Migration of Lost Souls (World Premiere, ACO/Underwood Commission)
Narong Prangcharoen (b. 1973) studied with Chen Yi and received his doctoral degree from University of Missouri-Kansas City. His music has been called “absolutely captivating” by the Chicago Sun Times and has been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and the US. Prangcharoen is the 2011 winner of ACO’s Underwood Emerging Composer Commission. Of Prangcharoen’s winning piece Pubbanimitta (“Foreboding”), Underwood mentor composer Paul Chihara said, “Mr. Prangcharoen writes music that reaches and moves his listeners with soaring melodies and intense rhythmic dance patterns.” His works have been heard at the Beijing Modern Music, MoMA Music and Grant Park Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Library of Congress. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award.
The Migration of Lost Souls is commissioned by ACO with the support of Paul Underwood.
Narong Prangcharoen: Pubbanimitta (excerpt)
American Composers Orchestra
Charles Ives: Symphony No. 3 (Camp Meeting) Charles Ives (1874-1954) is one of the most remarkable composers America has produced. Ives studied the organ and was a composition pupil of Horatio Parker at Yale University, from which he graduated in 1898. At an early age, he decided that he would not make music the means of earning his livelihood; he realized that it might be too difficult not to compromise his artistic ideals if his livelihood depended on his music. Accordingly, he entered the insurance business and made a fortune. His Yankee refusal to accept the usual way of combining sounds left him to explore many novel and often descriptive ways of putting sounds together, placing him far ahead of his time. Many of Ives’ explorations into new harmonic and contrapuntal possibilities antedated the work of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. A long list of compositions, most written before 1920, includes four symphonies, chamber music, two piano sonatas, five violin and piano sonatas, and many songs and choral pieces, as well as a number of other orchestral works. Ives described his Symphony No. 3 in his autobiographical notes: “The themes are mostly basedaround hymnsand from organ pieces played in Central Presbyterian Church around 1901.”
Jose Serebrier:
Flute Concerto with Tango
(US Premiere)
Conductor and composer José Serebrier (b. 1938) is one of the most recorded classical artists. He has received 37 Grammy nominations in recent years. Serebrier has composed more than 100 works, and has won numerous awards including two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Flute Concerto with Tango was commissioned for flutist Sharon Bezaly, who performed and recorded it with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the BIS label. Serebrier explains the title, saying, “The fourth movement justifies the title of the work. Traditionally, tangos end with a strong dominant chord followed by a brief, barely audible tonic chord. I take this idea further, leaving my tango up in the air in the middle of a phrase, so that the listener can make his own conclusion.”
Jose Serebrier: Flute Concerto with Tango (excerpt)
Sharon Bezaly with The Australian Chamber Orchestra (courtesy of BIS Records)
Sharon Bezaly, flute
Sharon Bezaly gave her début concert as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta when she was 14. Sharon went on to study at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris under Alain Marion, Raymond Guiot and Maurice Bourge, winning the Academy’s first prizes for flute and chamber music.
To date Sharon Bezaly has seven dedicated concertos which she performs around the world. Sharon has commented: ’In recent years my sights have been turning towards a wider horizon and I hope that, by inspiring challenging composers to create new works, it could propel the flute further into the spotlight as well as provide standard repertoire for generations to come“.
Tickets & Info
ACO performs at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Friday, October 26, 2012, at 7:30pm. Tickets are $40 and $50, and may be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by visiting Carnegie Hall’s website at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office, 57th Street at 7th Ave.
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Heralded by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as “one of the most promising cellists in the country”, Khari Joyner has made numerous achievements nationally and abroad as a versatile soloist, chamber musician, and ambassador for the arts. He has collaborated with artists such as Magnus Lindberg and Hubert Laws, and has had numerous solo engagements with the Atlanta, Buffalo, New World, New Jersey, and Sphinx Symphonies. Other accomplishments include being awarded the William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement and leadership in music at Juilliard’s 109th Commencement ceremony, winning first prizes in the Juilliard Concerto Competition and Sphinx Competition, and giving a private performance in the Oval Office for President Obama.
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Narong Prangcharoen (b. 1973) studied with Chen Yi and received his doctoral degree from University of Missouri-Kansas City. His music has been called “absolutely captivating” by the Chicago Sun Times and has been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and the US. Prangcharoen is the 2011 winner of ACO’s Underwood Emerging Composer Commission. Of Prangcharoen’s winning piece Pubbanimitta (“Foreboding”), Underwood mentor composer Paul Chihara said, “Mr. Prangcharoen writes music that reaches and moves his listeners with soaring melodies and intense rhythmic dance patterns.” His works have been heard at the Beijing Modern Music, MoMA Music and Grant Park Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Library of Congress. In 2007, the Thai government named Prangcharoen a Contemporary National Artist and awarded him the Silapathorn Award.
Conductor and composer José Serebrier (b. 1938) is one of the most recorded classical artists. He has received 37 Grammy nominations in recent years. Serebrier has composed more than 100 works, and has won numerous awards including two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts.Mark%20Harrison.jpg)