Press Release

February 25, 2021

For Immediate Release

Press Contact:

Gail Wein - (646) 484-9691

Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, now in its 23rd season, presents two concerts live-streamed from Symphony Space on April 12 & 19, 2021. Both programs explore facets of contemporary music by living composers, all of whom will be on hand to discuss their music with CEC artstic director, Victoria Bond.

Access is free, via Victoria Bond's YouTube channel, and the programs will be available on-demand after their premieres.

April 12, 7:30 pm EST | The Art of the 21st Century Trombone

The Art of the 21st Century Trombone features the New York Philharmonic’s principal trombonist Joseph Alessi, and others from the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra trombone sections: John Romero, George Curran and Collin Williams. Each will perform the the premiere of a work written expressly for them. Composers include Jorge Machain, Harrison J. Collin, Anthony Barfield and Kenneth Fuchs. Pianists Hanako Yamagata Greenberg and Martha Locker accompany the brass players.

 

Beaming in remotely from Kansas City, JoDee Davis, trombone professor at University of Missouri-KC, performs The Voices of Air, by Victoria Bond, which she recently recorded for Albany Records.

 

Program details are at the Cutting Edge Concerts website.

NY Philharmonic Principal Trombone Joseph Alessi

April 19, 7:30 pm EST | Immigrant Dreams

The New York premiere of Philip Glass's Annunciation headlines the program. Paul Barnes performs his own arrangement of the work for solo piano, as well as the world premiere of Victoria Bond's Enite ton Kyrion and the New York premiere of a work by David von Kampen.

 

Native American flutist Ron Warren joins Barnes for the regional premiere of his work, Beads. Barnes has the stage to himself once again to perform the world premiere of Distances Between 2, also by Warren.

 

Program details are at the Cutting Edge Concerts website.

Philip Glass

Inspired by Pierre Boulez's series, "Perspective Encounters", the composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts in 1998. With more than two decades of concerts, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented over 300 new works by nearly 200 composers. Each program highlights the music of living composers, all of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers. CEC has been called "a full-throttle commitment to contemporary music" by Chamber Music America.

Read an interview with Victoria Bond in The National Sawdust Log

A major force in 21st century music, composer Victoria Bond is known for her melodic gift and dramatic flair. Her works for orchestra, chamber ensemble and opera have been lauded by The New York Times as "powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding."

 

Victoria Bond's discography includes Instruments of Revelation (Naxos, 2019), Soul of a Nation (Albany, 2018), and a new recording of chamber and vocal music (Albany, 2021). Victoria Bond’s compositions have been performed by the New York City Opera, Shanghai, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, American Ballet Theater and the Cassatt and Audubon Quartets.  

 

The New York Times praised Victoria Bond's conducting as "full of energy and fervor." She is principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, and has held conducting positions with Pittsburgh Symphony, New York City Opera, Roanoke Symphony, and Bel Canto and Harrisburg Operas. Ms. Bond is Artistic Director of Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival in New York, which she founded in 1998, and is a frequent lecturer at the Metropolitan Opera Guild.