Long Island Premiere of Alice Shields’ The Wind in the Pines - after the climate catastrophe

The Eurasia Consort and the Association for the Promotion of New Music will present the Long Island Premiere performance of composer Alice Shields’ Chamber Music America commission The Wind in the Pines - after the climate catastrophe for soprano, alto recorder, flute, Renaissance bray harp, Turkish oud, theorbo and percussionist, on Thursday, October 28 @ 7:00 PM at Hofstra University’s Helene Fortunoff Theater in Monroe Lecture Center on California Avenue in Hempstead, NY.

Performers will be David Bloom, conductor; Martha Cluver, soprano; Daphna Mor, recorder; Sarah Carrier, flute; Karen Lindquist, Renaissance bray harp; Adem Birson, Turkish oud; August Denhard, Baroque theorbo and Rex Benincasa, percussion, playing glockenspiel, vibraphone and crotales.

This event is free and open to the public.  Proof of vaccination and masking is required.   For more information, visit https://news.hofstra.edu/organizer/department-of-music/, email jamesarts@att.net or call 516-586-3433.

The Wind in the Pines - after the climate catastrophe was inspired by Japanese Noh Theater.  The composer writes about it, “(I had studied) the chants ("utai"), poetic texts and dramatic structure of traditional Japanese Noh Theater with Noh performer Mayo Miwa…With Mayo I had studied aspects of some of the chants and text and music from certain Noh plays, including the play Matsukaze, which means “the wind in the pines.”  This inspiring and at the same time devastating play is about the frenzied, deluded passion of two peasant sisters ---who are ghosts --- for an aristocratic lover who will never return to them.  So when Tomoko Sugawara and Gus Denhard of the Eurasia Consort approached me to write a piece for them and their unique instrumental possibilities, I knew what I wanted to do.”

“With The Wind in the Pines I have written a piece influenced by Noh. It’s not Noh, of course, and it is not Matsukaze, but in it I am experimenting with creating a female character in a dream-like state of slow-motion frenzy in sound.”

“This new work is dedicated to The Eurasia Consort for the rare opportunity to write for musicians and instruments who bridge both East and West, ancient and modern cultures.”

The commission for The Wind in the Pines has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

For artist photos or more information, contact Jeffrey James Arts Consulting at 516-586-3433 or jamesarts@att.net.

About Alice Shields

Alice Shields’ operas and music for voice, instruments and media morph together Western and Non-Western forms of classical music and theater, such as the Noh Theater of Japan and the Bharata Natyam dance-drama of India.   

Described by reviewers as "luxuriant yet eerily supernatural" (SRUTI, India), "holds the listener spellbound" (Musical America) and "intense, richly scored" (New York Times), Shields' music has been performed by groups including the New York City Opera VOX Festival, Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Venice Biennale, American Chamber Opera Company, Composers Chamber Theater, Santa Fe Opera Gallery Concerts, American Virtuosi Opera Theater, ISCM World New Music Days, NYC-Electroacoustic Music Festival, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Canadian Broadcasting System, CBS-TV, Dance Alloy, Frostburg State University Dept. of Dance, George Mason University Dept. of Dance, Arangham Dance Theater (India), Azure Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, Iktus Percussion, North-South Consonance, Composers Concordance, the Aurora Ensemble, Association for the Promotion of New Music and the American Composers Alliance.

Shields has received grants and awards from Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, NEA, NYFA, National Opera Institute, Mary Flagler Cary Trust for Music and other institutions. Her music is recorded on New World Records, CRI, American Composers Alliance, Albany Records, Koch International Classics, Opus One and Tellus. Her work is published by the American Composers Alliance. Her website is at www.aliceshields.com.

About the Performers

The Seattle-based Eurasia Consort presents music from across the Silk Road. 

Founded by Tomoko Sugawara and August Denhard in 2013, they present concerts in Seattle, New York and Houston, collaborating with leading East Asian and MIddle Eastern musicians. Their New York concerts have taken place at the Gotham Early Music Midtown Concert series at St. Bartholomew’s Church, the Rubin Museum and Tenri Institute, in Seattle at Trinity Parish Church, the Edmonds Library and the Gig Harbor History Museum and in Houston at the Asia Society. In May 2019 the Eurasia Consort received grants from the Dunhuang Foundation to travel to the Dunhuang Caves in China and research its cave paintings of ancient musical instruments from the Tang Dynasty. The Consort are now designing concert programs that reflect their conclusions about how this ancient court music was probably performed. Visit them at https://www.eurasiaconsort.com/.

About APNM

The New York-based Association for the Promotion of New Music is a national composers organization that curates and makes available to the public significant contemporary musical compositions from composers across the country through performance, recordings and publication of their works.  APNM encourages the highest craft in the creation of contemporary classical music, and actively seeks compositions from female composers and composers of diverse ethnic, racial and gender identities to apply to its Call for Works for the APNM chamber music concerts and electronic music concerts.  APNM concerts are presented in NYC at venues including the Kosciuszko Foundation, Baruch Performing Arts Center, National Opera Center, Abrons Art Center, Tenri Institute and the Church of the Ascension. Since the COVID shutdown of live performance in 2020-2021 in NYC, APNM has created its innovative Masked Music Commissions Call for Works in which composers and performers are paid to create and video-record these world premieres, which are now released to the public on APNM's YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbDP5VqnS5ri57zvvugI2Cw/videos.  Their  website is at http://www.apnmmusic.org.

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