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Composer Robert Sirota celebrates Sirota@70 at Merkin Hall
Kaufman Music Center Presents Sirota@70
A performance of selected works by Robert Sirota to celebrate his 70th birthday
Featuring the New York Premiere of Luminous Bodies performed by yMusic with pianist Timo Andres
Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2pm
Merkin Hall | 129 W 67th Street | NYC
Tickets ($30) available at www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org
“a compelling musical voice of our time” – The American Organist
New York NY – On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 2pm, composer Robert Sirota celebrates his 70th birthday with Sirota@70, a concert featuring an all-star lineup performing a selection of his chamber works at Merkin Hall (129 W 67th Street). Over his fifty-year career, Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernible in all of his work – whether symphonic, choral, stage, or chamber music. Writing in the Portland Press Herald, Allan Kozinn asserts: “Sirota’s musical language is personal and undogmatic, in the sense that instead of aligning himself with any of the competing contemporary styles, he follows his own internal musical compass.”
Sirota’s musical family joins him for a performance of Constellations (2012), which will be the first time all four Sirotas (children Nadia Sirota & Jonah Sirota, violas; wife Victoria Sirota, celesta; Robert Sirota, piano) have performed together on stage since 2012, when this piece was premiered at Manhattan School of Music.
Elegy for a Lost World (2017), written for Jonah Sirota’s debut solo album, Strong Sad, will be performed with pianist Molly Morkoski. Sirota’s self-proclaimed “confessional piece,” A Sinner’s Diary (2005/6), is a series of nine brief pieces for mixed ensemble. Each began as a reflection of his inner life on a given day, but, “evolved into a kind of conversation between my inner demons and the angels of my better nature
yMusic and pianist Timo Andres present the New York premiere of Luminous Bodies (2018). The title has multiple meanings, most explicitly referring to five composers, “who are significant in my own life and music, and after whom each of the work’s five movements are named: George, Lili, Aaron, Fanny, Lenny. That is, Gershwin, Boulanger, Copland, Hensel, and Bernstein,” Sirota explains. “Each of these great souls has had a deep influence on my life and work. I think of each movement as not so much an homage or portrait but an offering – a conversation that I am having with each composer in turn.” Epimetheus (2015), a frenetic encore composed for yMusic, closes the performance.
Performers for this Sirota@70 concert include yMusic (Rob Moose, violin; Nadia Sirota, viola; Gabriel Cabezas, cello; Alex Sopp; flute; Hideaki Aomori, clarinet; C.J. Camerieri, trumpet and horn). Jonah Sirota, viola; Victoria Sirota, celesta; Robert Sirota, piano; Timo Andres, piano; Molly Morkoski, piano; Chris Thompson, percussion.
Throughout the 19-20 season, Sirota continues the Sirota@70 celebration with performances, premieres, and residencies around the country and abroad. Commissions include Job Fragments for baritone Thomas Pellaton, cello, and piano with text adapted from the Book of Job; Dancing With the Angels for flute, viola, and harp, for Carol Wincenc; Blackird Singing, for flute, clarinet and piano, based on the Lennon/McCartney song, for Linda Chesis and the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival and Contrapassos with libretto by Stevan Cavalier for string quartet and soprano, for the Sierra Chamber Society. Residencies and composer forums include Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, among others.
Recent commissions include Sirota’s third string quartet, Wave Upon Wave for the Naumburg Foundation; Immigrant Songs for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine; Luminous Bodies performed by Jeffrey Kahane and yMusic at the Sarasota Music Festival;Hafez Songs for Palladium Musicum; O Blessed Holy Trinity for choir and organ, for Trinity Episcopal Church, Indianapolis; and his Cello Sonata No. 2, for Benjamin Larsen and Hyungjin Choi. In the past three years, Sirota has also been commissioned by the American String Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and yMusic, and has collaborated with Paul Simon on three arrangements of his iconic songs.
Robert Sirota’s chamber works have been performed by Alarm Will Sound; Washington Square Contemporary Music Society; Sequitur; Sandbox Percussion; Yale Camerata; yMusic; pianist Jeffrey Kahane; TACTUS Ensemble; Chameleon Arts Ensemble; New Hudson Saxophone Quartet; Left Bank Concert Society; Dinosaur Annex; the Chiara, American, Telegraph, Ethel, Elmyr, and Blair String Quartets; the Peabody, Concord, and Webster Trios; and the Fischer Duo, and at festivals including the Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, and Cooperstown music festivals; Bowdoin Gamper and Bowdoin International Music Festival; and Mizzou International Composers Festival. Orchestral performances include the Seattle, Vermont, Virginia, East Texas, Lincoln (NE), Meridian (MS), New Haven, Greater Bridgeport, Oradea (Romania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) symphonies, as well as conservatory orchestras of Oberlin, Peabody, Manhattan School of Music, Toronto, and Singapore.
Sirota’s liturgical works include three major commissions for the American Guild of Organists: In the Fullness of Time, a concerto for organ and orchestra, Mass for chorus, organ and percussion, and Apparitions for organ and string quartet, as well as works for solo organ, organ and cello, and organ and piano.
Sirota has held seminars and residencies at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Samford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Peabody Institute, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and New World School of the Arts at Miami Dade College. He also created and curated Bridging the Gap, a series of concerts at National Sawdust that explore the relationships between generations of composers.
Sirota is recorded on the Capstone, Albany, New Voice and Gasparo labels and his discography grows with an arrangement on Paul Simon’s In The Blue Light (Legacy Recordings, 2018); Elegy for a Lost World on violist Jonah Sirota’s Strong Sad (National Sawdust Tracks, 2018); his second string quartet, American Pilgrimage, on American String Quartet’s American Romantics (independently released, 2018); and Diners, on the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet’s New York Rising (Classax, 2019).
Recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Information Agency, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and the American Music Center, Sirota’s music is published by Muzzy Ridge Music, Schott, Music Associates of New York, MorningStar, Theodore Presser, and To the Fore.
Before becoming Director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in 1995, Sirota served as Chairman of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University and Director of Boston University's School of Music. From 2005-2012, he was the President of Manhattan School of Music, where he was also a member of the School’s composition faculty.
A native New Yorker, Sirota studied at Juilliard, Oberlin, and Harvard and divides his time between New York and Searsmont, Maine with his wife, Episcopal priest and organist Victoria Sirota. They frequently collaborate on new works, with Victoria as librettist and performer, at times also working with their children, Jonah and Nadia, both world-class violists. For more information, visit www.robertsirota.com.
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