Composer/Pianist Gregg Kallor Performs Concert to Benefit Hurricane Sandy Relief at New York’s Culture Project Theater, Sunday, January 13, 2013

Composer/pianist Gregg Kallor will give a benefit concert on January 13, 2013, 7:30 p.m. at Culture Project Theater (45 Bleecker Street at Lafayette, New York City) to raise money for hurricane Sandy relief. Kallor, joined by guest musicians, will perform some of his latest music including “Short Stories” for violin and piano; the world premiere of Undercurrent, a new piece for cello and piano; and several pieces for piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. In addition, Kallor will perform excerpts from his nine-movement solo piano suite, “A Single Noon” – a musical tableau of life in New York City, told through composition and improvisation – that was premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2011.

Tickets are $20, available through Ticketfly: www.ticketfly.com. All of the evening’s proceeds will benefit Occupy Sandy, a coordinated relief effort to help provide resources and volunteers to help the neighborhoods and people affected by Hurricane Sandy. For more information on Occupy Sandy, please visit http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy.

COMPOSER/PIANIST GREGG KALLOR BENEFIT CONCERT FOR HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF EFFORTS CULTURE PROJECT THEATER | 45 BLEECKER ST. (AT LAFAYETTE) | NYC, 10012

Program (subject to change):

Short Stories for Violin and Piano 1. Faces and Names 2. A Kept Promise 3. Sticks and Stones

A Single Noon (solo piano) 1. A Single Noon 2. Broken Sentences 3. Espresso Nirvana

Undercurrent (cello and piano) World Premiere

The Night Demons (quartet)

Found (quartet)

Straphanger’s Lurch (quartet)

Dave Eggar, cellist Meg Okura, violinist Sam Sadigursky, clarinetist

Tickets: $20; available through Ticketfly: www.ticketfly.com.

ABOUT GREGG KALLOR Composer. Pianist. Improviser In March 2007, the Abby Whiteside Foundation presented Gregg Kallor’s New York concert debut at Carnegie Hall. The performance featured the world premiere of Kallor’s acclaimed song cycles Exhilaration and Yeats Songs, and an innovative program of solo works that showcased Kallor’s versatility and fresh approach to the piano recital. Harris Goldsmith wrote: “It took but a few impeccably shaped phrases to make it plain that Kallor is a formidably well-trained technician and a master of stylish proportion as well... This superb recital debut truly established a new, important voice in our musical annals.”

Kallor’s most recent Carnegie Hall concert, in April 2011, featured the world premiere of his nine-movement suite for solo piano, A Single Noon - a musical tableau of New York life told through a combination of composed music and improvisation. The program also included music by Béla Bartók, Chick Corea, Annie Clark, Henry Mancini, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, and Louise Talma. “Kallor is one of the rare artists who successfully straddles the divide between jazz improvisers and classical interpreters.” –The New Orleans Times-Picayune

Kallor’s recording of A Single Noon will be released in early 2013. Five-time Grammy® nominee Fred Hersch calls it “the work of an extraordinary pianist, a composer of great distinction and a true conceptualist... this ambitious and unique suite really takes us somewhere that is very deeply heartfelt and dazzlingly executed. This is 21st-century music that has clearly absorbed the past and looks to a bright and borderless musical future.”

Kallor will celebrate the release of A Single Noon with a special concert at New York City’s SubCulture, on April 13th, 2013. Kallor’s fetishized coffee-drinking music video, “Espresso Nirvana” (set to the sixth movement of A Single Noon) will be featured at the CD release concert. (Watch “Espresso Nirvana” on YouTube.)

Kallor received the Aaron Copland Award for composition. He composed a three-movement concerto for piano and orchestra during his 2012 residency at the late composer’s home, integrating improvisation into the second movement. Kallor has also recently written several new chamber music pieces, further developing the combination of composition and improvisation in his music.

Kallor’s first album, There’s a Rhythm, features his jazz trio with bassist Chris Van Voorst Van Beest and drummer Kendrick Scott. “Kallor can carry a poetic mood right to the edge of sorrow, always sounding lyrical and moving.” (The Hartford Courant) His second album, Exhilaration - Dickinson and Yeats Songs, features his song-settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and Herschel Garfein sung by Adriana Zabala. Opera News wrote: “Kallor knows how to make these words sing, and Zabala gives perfect flight to them.”

Kallor was born in Ohio and raised in Connecticut. He graduated from Tufts University with a degree in American Studies, and lives in New York City.

For more information and tour dates, please visit www.greggkallor.com.

ABOUT DAVE EGGAR Dave Eggar has appeared worldwide as a solo cellist and pianist. A virtuoso of many musical styles, Eggar has performed and recorded with artists in numerous genres including Evanescence, The Who, Michael Brecker, Josh Groban, Coldplay, Beyonce, Pearl Jam, Fall Out Boy, Dave Sanborn, Kathleen Battle, Ray Lamontagne, Roberta Flack, The Spin Doctors, Dianne Reeves, Brandy, Carly Simon, Phil Ramone, Hannah Montana, Duncan Sheik, Sinead O’Connor, Bon Jovi, Manhattan Transfer, Corinne Bailey Ray and many others.

His list of awards and accomplishments includes accolades from Time Magazine, ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sony Records Elevated Standards Award in classical music, and the Geraldine Dodge & Leonard Bernstein Foundations. At age 15, Eggar was the youngest winner in the history of the Artists International Competition.

Eggar’s mission to “not just cross over, but to cross through” multiple genres of music is apparent in all of his releases. Whether it’s classical, reggae, bluegrass, jazz, pop, or world music, Eggar finds a common voice within his musical vocabulary and introduces it with his own unique imaginative vision.

For more information, visit www.daveeggarmusic.com.

ABOUT MEG OKURA All About Jazz called her the “queen of chamber jazz.” Meg Okura balances her roles as violin virtuoso, prolific composer, and erhu player. She was won numerous grants and awards as a composer, and her credits as violinist and erhu player appear on over fifty albums and soundtracks with various artists from David Bowie, Dianne Reeves to Lee Konitz. Native of Tokyo, Meg Okura has toured all of Asia as concertmaster and soloist of the Asian Youth Orchestra. She moved to the U.S. to study at the Juilliard School as a teenager, and made her solo debut at Kennedy Center that year, and switched to jazz upon graduation. She has toured with jazz masters such as Michael Brecker, Steve Swallow, Lee Konitz, Tom Harrell, as well as three Cirque du Soleil productions, and has performed as a soloist at venues from the Knitting Factory to Carnegie Hall to Madison Square Garden. Hailed by the New York Times as “vibrant” and “sophisticated,” her Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble weaves together jazz, classical, and world music to create a unique blend of world-chamber jazz.

For more information, please visit www.megokura.com.

ABOUT SAM SADIGURSKY Saxophonist, multi-reedist and composer Sam Sadigursky is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation, equally comfortable in a variety of musical and improvisational landscapes. His critically-lauded first recording, The Words Project, hailed as “an impressive debut” by the New York Times, was given a four-star review by Time Out New York, which also named it one of the Top Ten Albums of 2007. Noted music critic Steve Smith called it “that rare anomaly: a jazz-and-poetry record that sounds utterly natural and convincing.” His 2008 follow-up, Words Project II, just released on the New Amsterdam Records label, “may even surpass the first one” as reviewed by jazzchicago.net. His unique sound and sense of lyricism has been noted by Cadence magazine for its “subtlety and restraint, combined with power and purpose.”

As a composer whose works show a deep knowledge and fascination with classical harmony and instrumentation, he has been commissioned by vocal groups, film directors, and has collaborated with modern dance choreographers in live performances of their works. He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award and, more recently, a recipient of the prestigious Chamber Music America/French American Cultural Exchange grant.

In 2009, Sadigursky produced the first in an ongoing series of New Art Song concerts featuring composers and ensembles working in this medium. He has performed with, among others, the Mingus Orchestra, ECM recording artist Anat Fort, and Gabriel Kahane. He appears on numerous recordings for labels such as Fresh Sound/New Talent, Playscape Recordings, Chonta Records, and World Culture Music and has played in New York venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joe’s Pub, and Lincoln Center.

For more information, visit www.samsadigursky.com.

---END---