FAST FORWARD: MUSIC’S NEXT GENERATION

Spotlighting the next generation of extraordinary young performers from Kaufman Music Center's Special Music School and Lucy Moses School

Also: New York Festival of Song, World Music Institute, and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival

 

S E R I E S

GIVE VOICE

This season marks the debut of Give Voice, a series intended to amplify both human voices – star mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and VOCES8 – and diverse compositional voices, as in Harlem Quartet’s program of music by Fanny Mendelssohn, young Cuban composer Aldo López-Gavilán, and others (March 23).

Cooke’s recital features the New York premiere of her 2020 project how do I find you?, in which she commissioned seventeen composers under 40 to create pieces responding to the pandemic. The results are by turns earnest, abstract, mournful, and wryly humorous (May 25).

VOCES8 will present two programs on this series: Choral Dances, with dance-inspired repertoire by composers from William Byrd to Benjamin Britten to Nat King Cole to Van Morrison (October 13), and Lux Aeterna, with works on the theme of light by Felix Mendelssohn, Orlando Gibbons, Stephen Paulus, and others (February 14).

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BRIDGES

Introduced last season, Kaufman Music Center’s Bridges series presents artists whose music surmounts conventional barriers of medium and style. Each Bridges concert features trailblazing performers alongside students from Kaufman Music Center and co-presenter Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music.

This season, Bridges features a recital by Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning composer/vocalist/violinist Caroline Shaw, who will delve into a program of recent and older works, on her own and with help from student performers from pre-teen to college age (February 11).

VOCES8 joins the series with a characteristically eclectic program titled Underneath the Stars, featuring music from England, Germany, the Nordic countries, and the US, spanning from the Renaissance to the present day (October 14).

The “completely engrossing, powerful, and elegant” (Washington Post) Cavani String Quartet will bring music by Shostakovich, jazz/rock/country/Hip-hop/classical violist Josh Henderson, and Felix Mendelssohn (November 5). The venturesome artist-led chamber collective Decoda will play music by Benjamin Horne, Joseph Jones, Stravinsky, and John Harbison (March 24).

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ECSTATIC MUSIC

Wrote Steve Smith in The New Yorker, “No series has better instincts in fomenting post-genre alchemy than Ecstatic Music.”

Ecstatic Music opens with the rescheduled premiere by Imani Winds of Andy Akiho’s BeLoud, BeLoved, BeLonging, inspired by the sound of 2019 protests by immigrant detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center and workshopped with incarcerated men at Rikers Island. The program also includes music by Mongo Santamaría (arranged by Valerie Coleman), Tania Léon, Nathalie Joachim, and Jason Moran (October 26).  

Moor Mother, the stage name of songwriter, composer, vocalist and poet Camae Ayewa, premieres new music fusing jazz, blues, and soul (April 28). Joe Rainey, who blends Pow Wow singing with dynamic electronics, is joined by supergroup string ensemble Owls for a world premiere collaboration (February 3).

Singer/songwriter Haley Fohr, performing as Circuit des Yeux, teams up with the virtuosic, barrier-defying pianist Erika Dohi (May 11). William Tyler and Yasmin Williams, two guitarists who are taking a fresh look at folk-inspired playing styles, present a new collaborative work for themselves with chamber ensemble (March 22).

Multi-Grammy-nominated violinist-composer Curtis Stewart premieres new music with pianist Aaron Diehl, Harlem Quartet, and violin/vox/freestyle composition artist Mazz Swift (June 1).

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PIANO DIALOGUES

This highly popular series presents leading pianists in recital and conversation, responding to Merkin Hall’s fine acoustics and intimate atmosphere with memorable performances.

In The Pianists United: Rzewski in New York, an incredible lineup of pianists gathers to celebrate the work of one of the great keyboard composers of our time in a marathon day of three concerts. Artists include Anthony de Mare, Ursula Oppens, Lisa Moore, Conrad Tao, Mikael Darmanie, David Friend, Blair McMillen, Lisa Moore, Isabelle O’Connell, Kathleen Supové, Jed Distler, Ignacio Ojeda, Aron Kallay, Vicki Ray, and Rob Schwimmer (May 6 at 3 pm, 5:30 pm, and 8 pm).

Artist-in-Residence Aaron Diehl opens the series with works from two masterful composers who have each created sets of 24 preludes: J. S. Bach and Roland Hanna (November 18).

Shai Wosner and Gilles Vonsattel team up for 2x4: music for 2 pianos 4 hands, including pieces by Mozart, Schubert, Clara Schumann, Debussy, Brahms, and Ravel (April 27). David Kaplan presents a program titled Moments of Invention, spanning contemporary composers Christopher Cerrone, Anthony Cheung, and Andrea Casarrubios, along with Couperin, Janácek, Mozart, and Robert Schumann (March 16).

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MUSIC SPEAKS

A fresh take on the concert recital for the 21st century: exceptional artists perform classical repertoire from traditional to contemporary and tell their personal stories. Co-presented with Concert Artists Guild.

Flutist Adam W. Sadberry presents Musical Journalism – Continuing a Legacy through the Flute, inspired by the work of his late grandfather L. Alex Wilson, a hero of the Civil Rights movement. He’ll play works by Valerie Coleman, Fred Onovwerosuoke, and William Grant Still. With Artina McCain, piano and Ayo Jackson, dancer-choreographer (March 10).

In Emotional Landscapes, violinist Geneva Lewis, pianist Audrey Vardanega, and painter Katie Swatland join forces to create an immersive audiovisual experience of two masterpieces of the sonata repertoire: Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10 and Robert Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (Oct. 20).

Cellist Gabriel Martins weaves his own original poetry through an evening of works by J. S. Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Webern, Debussy, Shostakovich, and Kaija Saariaho, with an assist from pianist Wynona Wang (January 26). In Unfiltered, the rising Balourdet Quartet charts the evolution of the string quartet through pieces by Beethoven, Hugo Wolf, Felix Mendelssohn, and contemporary Canadian composer Karim Al-Zand (April 4).

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TUESDAY MATINEES

Tuesday Matinees has proven to be “a dependable incubator of burgeoning talent” (The New Yorker), with early-career appearances by artists such as Attacca Quartet, Tessa Lark, Julia Bullock, Randall Goosby, and many others.

Briana Elyse Hunter has been hailed by Opera News as “a mesmerizing mezzo-soprano with a fiery theatrical presence and dynamic vocalism.” Her recital will include selections by Julian de la Chica, Ravel, Duparc and Ricky Ian Gordon (December 6).

Double bassist Kebra-Seyoun Charles performs his own Dance Suite, a selection from Five Negro Spirituals arranged by Lawrence Brown, plus Bach‘s fourth cello suite, an arrangement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and contemporary composer John Hedges’ Prayer of Winds and Rain (January 17). 

The Balourdet Quartet offers works by Brahms, Haydn, Debussy, and Rome Prize-winning composer Nina C. Young (October 11). Praised for her “sweet-toned playing” by The New York Times, Alice Ivy-Pemberton takes the stage with music by Bach, Messiaen, Beethoven, and others (November 15).

Praised as “a moving young poet” (Le Devoir), young Dutch pianist Albert Cano Smit will play works by Bach, Mozart, Messiaen, Albéniz, and Ginastera (February 7). The duo of cellist Thomas Mesa and pianist Ilya Yakushev offers selections by Andrea Casarrubios, Stephanie Ann Boyd, Carlos Simon, Kevin Day, and Rachmaninoff (April 4).

Violinist Kevin Zhu – praised for his “awesome technical command and maturity” (The Strad) completes the season with a program of works by Stravinsky, Massenet, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Wieniawski, and Franz Waxman (May 16).

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BROADWAY CLOSE UP

This popular series, hosted by Sean Hartley, features appearances by Allison Blackwell, Eddie Cooper, Charlotte Maltby, Jason Robinson, Kirsten Scott, Matthew Scott, Gabrielle Stravelli, Sally Wilfert, Michael Winther and more.

Party at the Porters: What a Swell Party This Is!, a follow-up to last season’s Party at the Gershwins, is a black-tie affair featuring the songs of Cole Porter and his contemporaries (October 24). Broadway in the 60s: From The Sound of Music to Hair looks at the impact of that tumultuous decade as reflected (or not) in shows like Camelot, How To Succeed …, Man of La Mancha, Hello, Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, Promises, Promises, 1776 and Hair (November 7).

Broadway Herstory spotlights writers, producers and other theater artists including Vinnette Carroll, Betty Comden, Cheryl Crawford, Agnes de Mille, Dorothy Fields, Micki Grant, Theresa Helburn, Carolyn Leigh, Tharon Musser and Kay Swift, focusing on their personal stories as well as their work in such classic shows as Oklahoma!, Sweet Charity, On The Town and A Chorus Line (December 5).

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WHAT MAKES IT GREAT?

What Makes It Great? host Rob Kapilow "is a winning combination of Leonard Bernstein and Bill Nye the Science Guy, an infectiously enthusiastic explainer of the inner mechanical workings of music, that most abstract of all arts" (The New York Times).

A session devoted to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue features Terrence Wilson, piano and the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Band & Orchestra (October 17). In a nod to the season, Kapilow looks at Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols with help from the Accord Treble Choir and Special Music School Treble Choir (December 19).

The Ulysses Quartet joins Kapilow in exploring Leoš Janácek’s Intimate Letters, inspired by the composer’s letters to the woman who served as his muse during his final decade (February 27). Kapilow then turns his attention to Mozart’s haunting Symphony No. 40 – written without a commission, with no known performances during the composer’s lifetime – aided by the Manhattan School of Music Sinfonia (April 3). 

The series concludes for the season with a very special installment: Ladies of the Canyon: The Music of Carole King & Joni Mitchell, featuring an all-star band led by Broadway star Brittain Ashford. This snapshot of a uniquely collaborative and creatively fertile time focuses on Mitchell’s epoch-defining 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon and King’s best-selling 1971 LP Tapestry (May 15).

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Also of interest: FAST FORWARD, spotlighting the latest generation of extraordinary young performers from Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School and Lucy Moses School. Events in the series include the Kaufman Music Center Concerto Competition Winners Concert (February 12), Contemporary Festival (March 5), Henry Schneider Young Artists Concert (March 21), ComposerFest (April 20), and ChamberFest (May 14).

Co-presented series include New York Festival of Song, World Music Institute, and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival. For a complete listing of Kaufman Music Center concerts, visit kaufmanmusiccenter.org.