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Press Releases
The North/South Chamber Orchestra Premieres Four Works February 6 at 3 PM
North/South Consonance, Inc. continues its 31st consecutive season of free-admission concerts on Sunday afternoon February 6, 2011. The event will feature the acclaimed North/South Chamber Orchestra performing four new works especially written for the occasion by American composers. The concert will start at 3 PM and take place at the auditorium of Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St) -- between Broadway & Columbus in Manhattan.
The program will feature works by three generations of composers including Dinos Constantinides, Sean Hickey David Maves and Rain Worthington.
The featured composers will be in attendance and plan to meet with the public during intermission and after the performance. The composers and the performers are also available to the press for interviews and may be contacted through our office at ns.concerts@att.net
North/South Consonance’s 2010-11 season is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; grants from Columbia University’s Ditson Fund and the American Federation of Musicians (Local 802); as well as contributions by many generous individuals.
For further information about all North/South activities including concerts and recordings please visit http://www.northsouthmusic.org/
Brief information about the composers and their music follows:
Dinos Constantinides (b. 1929) began studying violin and composition in his native Greece. He settled in this country in 1960 continuing his training at Indiana University and The Juilliard School. As a violinist, Constantinides played with the State Orchestra of Athens in Greece; the Indianapolis Symphony; and also served as concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony. Currently, he is the Music Director of the Louisiana Sinfonietta. Writing for the New York Times, Tim Page described Constantinides as a composer whose “music speaks simply, often combining Greek modes with an attractive quality of ritual mystery.” Sound Waves is a virtuosic single-movement work that juxtaposes simple sonorities with grand, dramatic gestures. The music is built around vivid and frantic waves of sound that seek to engage the listener with changes of rhythm and color.
Sean Hickey (b. 1970; Detroit) began playing jazz guitar and piano at an early age eventually studying composition at Wayne State University with James Lentini and Leslie Bassett. His music has been performed in many countries including Russia, Spain, Indonesia and the US. His debut recording on the NAXOS label Left at the Fork in the Road released in 2005 broke the Billboard Top 100 Classical Chart. Also active as a writer on travel and musical subjects, Hickey liner notes to numerous compact disc albums and is the main writer for the Omnibus Guide to Classical Music on CD, Hickey’s Sinfonietta is cast in the traditional fast-slow-fast three movement pattern. It employs jazz-derived rhythms and harmonies blended with many techniques usually associated with the avant garde. The last movement employs a quote from an orchestral work by the late Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. The composer stated: "I was honored to write this piece for North/South Consonance, an ensemble whose recordings and concerts I have been following since I was a teenager. In fact, a North/South concert was the first performance I attended after moving to New York in the 90s. It is an honor to compose a new work for this ensemble."
David W. Maves (b. 1937, Salem, OR) served as Composer-in-Residence at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, for over 30, years. He has composed over 200 works including symphonies, concertos, works for symphonic band, works for chorus, as well as chamber and solo works. He studied with Homer Keller at the University of Oregon and Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett at the University of Michigan. In 1964 he was appointed Ford Foundation Composer-in-Residence in Raleigh, NC, and since has received various other honors including ASCAP awards for 30 years, and two Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Awards. Pianist Max Lifchitz recording of his four Piano Sonatas is available on the North/South Recordings label.
Maves writes that his "Dectet is based on a scene from the first act of my Opera Bodas de Sangre from the play of the same name by Federico Garcìa Lorca. The prelude is the tense, dry as dust meeting of the two families about to be united by marriage, progressing into a kind of fugal elaboration of a conversation about how to live on and with this dry land. This is followed by the tense, frantic coda wherein the bride's fixation on and assignations with the wrong man come to light."
Rain Worthington (b. 1950, West Virginia) represents a unique voice within contemporary music. World music, romanticism and minimalism have influenced her compositional style which is nuanced, delicate, powerful and transporting Writer Kyle Gann stated:“…her music take(s) ideas of American musical style to a new place – like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park... And isn't afraid to come up with its own startling conclusions.”
Concerning her work Memories of Place, Ms. Worthington writes:
“As an adult, I was fortunate to spend a year traveling with a musician friend who was studying the music and instruments of Greece, Egypt and Turkey. Once more, I felt strongly drawn to the musical crosscurrents that overlay these cultures. I became immersed in a full spectrum of music– from formal concerts of the beautiful ancient classical art music of Turkey, to the alluring strains of Arabic pop music filtering through the streets and bazaars, to the lively dance rhythms and evocative melismatic singing of the Greek folk song traditions.”
The program will feature works by three generations of composers including Dinos Constantinides, Sean Hickey David Maves and Rain Worthington.
The featured composers will be in attendance and plan to meet with the public during intermission and after the performance. The composers and the performers are also available to the press for interviews and may be contacted through our office at ns.concerts@att.net
North/South Consonance’s 2010-11 season is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; grants from Columbia University’s Ditson Fund and the American Federation of Musicians (Local 802); as well as contributions by many generous individuals.
For further information about all North/South activities including concerts and recordings please visit http://www.northsouthmusic.org/
Brief information about the composers and their music follows:
Dinos Constantinides (b. 1929) began studying violin and composition in his native Greece. He settled in this country in 1960 continuing his training at Indiana University and The Juilliard School. As a violinist, Constantinides played with the State Orchestra of Athens in Greece; the Indianapolis Symphony; and also served as concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony. Currently, he is the Music Director of the Louisiana Sinfonietta. Writing for the New York Times, Tim Page described Constantinides as a composer whose “music speaks simply, often combining Greek modes with an attractive quality of ritual mystery.” Sound Waves is a virtuosic single-movement work that juxtaposes simple sonorities with grand, dramatic gestures. The music is built around vivid and frantic waves of sound that seek to engage the listener with changes of rhythm and color.
Sean Hickey (b. 1970; Detroit) began playing jazz guitar and piano at an early age eventually studying composition at Wayne State University with James Lentini and Leslie Bassett. His music has been performed in many countries including Russia, Spain, Indonesia and the US. His debut recording on the NAXOS label Left at the Fork in the Road released in 2005 broke the Billboard Top 100 Classical Chart. Also active as a writer on travel and musical subjects, Hickey liner notes to numerous compact disc albums and is the main writer for the Omnibus Guide to Classical Music on CD, Hickey’s Sinfonietta is cast in the traditional fast-slow-fast three movement pattern. It employs jazz-derived rhythms and harmonies blended with many techniques usually associated with the avant garde. The last movement employs a quote from an orchestral work by the late Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. The composer stated: "I was honored to write this piece for North/South Consonance, an ensemble whose recordings and concerts I have been following since I was a teenager. In fact, a North/South concert was the first performance I attended after moving to New York in the 90s. It is an honor to compose a new work for this ensemble."
David W. Maves (b. 1937, Salem, OR) served as Composer-in-Residence at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, for over 30, years. He has composed over 200 works including symphonies, concertos, works for symphonic band, works for chorus, as well as chamber and solo works. He studied with Homer Keller at the University of Oregon and Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett at the University of Michigan. In 1964 he was appointed Ford Foundation Composer-in-Residence in Raleigh, NC, and since has received various other honors including ASCAP awards for 30 years, and two Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Awards. Pianist Max Lifchitz recording of his four Piano Sonatas is available on the North/South Recordings label.
Maves writes that his "Dectet is based on a scene from the first act of my Opera Bodas de Sangre from the play of the same name by Federico Garcìa Lorca. The prelude is the tense, dry as dust meeting of the two families about to be united by marriage, progressing into a kind of fugal elaboration of a conversation about how to live on and with this dry land. This is followed by the tense, frantic coda wherein the bride's fixation on and assignations with the wrong man come to light."
Rain Worthington (b. 1950, West Virginia) represents a unique voice within contemporary music. World music, romanticism and minimalism have influenced her compositional style which is nuanced, delicate, powerful and transporting Writer Kyle Gann stated:“…her music take(s) ideas of American musical style to a new place – like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park... And isn't afraid to come up with its own startling conclusions.”
Concerning her work Memories of Place, Ms. Worthington writes:
“As an adult, I was fortunate to spend a year traveling with a musician friend who was studying the music and instruments of Greece, Egypt and Turkey. Once more, I felt strongly drawn to the musical crosscurrents that overlay these cultures. I became immersed in a full spectrum of music– from formal concerts of the beautiful ancient classical art music of Turkey, to the alluring strains of Arabic pop music filtering through the streets and bazaars, to the lively dance rhythms and evocative melismatic singing of the Greek folk song traditions.”
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