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Press Releases
Five Boroughs Music Festival Presents Oracle Hysterical and Hub New Music in Concert-Length Song Cycle, Terra Nova
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts & Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214
Five Boroughs Music Festival Presents
Oracle Hysterical and Hub New Music in Terra Nova
The New York City and Digital Premieres of a Concert-Length Song Cycle
Inspired by New Lands, and the People who Ventured into Them
In Person at Brooklyn Public Library, Saturday, May 15 at 4:00pm
A Digital World Premiere, Filmed at and Co-Produced by the Newhouse Center for
Contemporary Art in Snug Harbor, Staten Island, Out June 17
NEW YORK, NY (May 11, 2021) — Five Boroughs Music Festival, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor present the New York and digital premieres of Terra Nova, a new concert-length song cycle created by the members of composer-collective Oracle Hysterical and performed in collaboration with the contemporary mixed-instrument quartet Hub New Music. Commissioned by Hub New Music and Five Boroughs Music Festival, Terra Nova is inspired by a range of ambitious, gritty (and sometimes naïve, cruel, and myopic) explorers, comprising songs that are by turns darkly ironic, heartrending, and straight-up fun (and occasionally a confounding mix of all three), coalescing into a powerful experience of both text and music. The New York premiere takes place outdoors on Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 4:00pm at Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza and the ensemble will record the cycle the next day at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor in Staten Island for digital world premiere co-produced by the Newhouse Center on Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 7:30pm ET.
Among its songs is a playful setting of John James Audubon’s descriptions of wood warblers by Brad Balliett; Dylan Greene’s depiction of the pre-Columbian exploration of North America by Chinese mariners; a melancholy view from Amelia Earhart’s cockpit by Majel Connery; Elliot Cole’s haunting setting of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s final letter home; Doug Balliet’s tension-filled spoken-and-sung cantata depicting the ill-fated king Agamemnon’s reunion with Clytemnestra; plus many more. These adventurers, captivated by unchartered territory, share an often combustible mix of guts, ego, greed, and unwavering determination, their discoveries ranging from the beautiful to the terrible.
Both the Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor share deep connections with the musical material. Terra Nova will be in its element on the grounds of the library, one of the city’s great monuments to the printed word, whose collection contains all of the texts that inspired these new works. The Newhouse Center, by contrast, shares in the songs’ spirit and history; now a museum for contemporary art, it was once a dormitory for sailors, with frescoed walls that still read “Rest after dangerous Toil,” a 188-year-old space, existing then and now for intrepid explorers and explorations.
Program Information
Five Boroughs Music Festival Presents Terra Nova
Learn More: https://5bmf.org/events/terra-
Terra Nova, Part of BPL Presents
Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 4:00pm
Brooklyn Public Library | 10 Grand Army Plaza | Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: Free and Open to the Public
Terra Nova (Digital World Premiere)
Filmed at and Co-Produced by the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor
Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 7:30 PM
Tickets: Free on the 5BMF YouTube channel through December 31, 2021
Program:
Terra Nova
A collection of songs inspired by new lands, and the people who ventured into them
Majel Connery – All the way down (2021)
Inspired by the musings of Amelia Earhart
Brad Balliett – Wood Warblers (2021)
Excerpts from the writings of naturalist John James Audubon
Dylan Greene – When China Discovered the World (2021)
Instrumental after the book by Gavin Menzies
Majel Connery – Fallen Angel (2021)
From Milton’s Paradise Lost
Doug Balliett – The Gothic Pater Noster (2021)
From the Gothic Bible, ca. 390 AD
Doug Balliett – Agamemnon Crosses the Line (2021)
Loosely based on Aeschylus’s Oresteia
Dylan Greene – laundry and cooking (2021)
Adapted from the poem by Bret Harte
Elliot Cole – Terra Nova (2021)
From the journals of Robert Falcon Scott
Oracle Hysterical:
Doug Balliett, bass/viola da gamba
Brad Balliett, bassoons
Majel Connery, keyboards/vocals
Elliot Cole, guitars/keyboards/vocals
Joe Bergen, guest percussion
Hub New Music:
Michael Avitable, flute
Nicholas Brown, clarinet
Alyssa Wang, violin
Jesse Christeson, cello
Sound Engineer: Chris Botta
Videography: Eric Jenkins-Sahlin, Meristem Pictures
About Oracle Hysterical
Oracle Hysterical is twin brothers Doug Balliett (double bass, viola da gamba) and Brad Balliett (bassoons), Majel Connery (vocals, keyboards), Elliot Cole (vocals, guitars, keyboards), and Dylan Greene (percussion). Part band, part book club, Oracle Hysterical combines eclectic musical influences with literary breadth. All members of the group perform and compose, with each project developed collectively. Oracle’s works occupy the fluid space between classically-inclined song-cycle and art-rock concept album. The group’s songwriting illuminates fragments of great literary works like a child in a dark forest with a flashlight. Text sources have ranged from Grimms' Fairy Tales to Greek tragedy, and falsely-attributed Shakespeare, all in collections of songs that distill centuries-old writing through a unique contemporary lens.
The group’s recent past projects include Hecuba, released on the National Sawdust Tracks label in May 2018, a lush and experimental rock-leaning album based on Euripides’ 424 BCE tragedy of the same name that tells the story of the disgraced queen of Troy, her city razed and children murdered, as she descends from nobility to primal violence. In 2017, Oracle Hysterical collaborated with period-instrument ensemble New Vintage Baroque on Passionate Pilgrim, released on Naxos/Vision into Art, called “music that is unstuck in time” by the Wall Street Journal, and what it would sound like if “Belle and Sebastian were to cut a record of Baroque-inspired folk songs,” by The New Yorker. And in 2016, The Sea, a collaboration with the Grammy-nominated orchestra A Far Cry, premiered at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; a song-cycle weaving together texts by history’s greatest seafarers, explorers, and aquatic fabulists, from Shakespeare to Homer, and John Donne to the Book of Jonah.
Oracle Hysterical has appeared at the MATA Festival, the Berkshire Fringe Festival, The Stone (NYC), The Hideout (Chicago), (Le) Poisson Rouge (NYC), National Sawdust (NYC), the Toledo Museum of Art, and at the Lucerne Festival Academy, where they were Spotlight Artists in 2011.
About Hub New Music
Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music — comprised of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello — is forging new pathways in 21st-century repertoire. Through creative programming and ambitious commissioning projects, the quartet of “intrepids” (WQXR) celebrates the fluidity and diversity of today’s classical music landscape. Its performances have been described as “gobsmacking” (Cleveland Classical) and “innovative” (WBUR), and HNM was named one of WQXR’s “10 Cutting-Edge Artists that Have Captured the Imagination” in 2016.
Highlights for the 2020-21 concert season include performances presented by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Williams Center for the Arts at Lafayette College, Texas Performing Arts, Celebrity Series of Boston, Sacramento State Festival of New American Music, and a European debut at the Alba Music Festival (Italy). The season features premieres of new works by Christopher Cerrone and Eric Nathan; and multiple performances of recent commissions by Hannah Lash, Kati Agócs, Takuma Itoh, and Michael Ippolito.
Hub’s debut album, Soul House, released on New Amsterdam Records in 2020 was called “ingenious and unequivocally gorgeous” by the Boston Globe. The ensemble’s upcoming recording with Silkroad’s Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi) and Asia-America New Music Institute (AANMI) will be released on Toro Records.
Hub New Music brings its passion for adventurous and relevant programming to global audiences as both a quartet and as collaborative artists. Recent projects include The Nature of Breaking, a 30-minute collaborative work with composer/harpist Hannah Lash; and a choreographed production of Robert Honstein’s Soul House with Boston’s Urbanity Dance. Upcoming projects include Requiem for the Enslaved, an evening length mass by Carlos Simon supported by Georgetown University’s GU272 Project that honors the lives of 272 African American slaves and their descendants; a new ‘modular’ work by So Percussion’s Jason Treuting; and new works by composers Nina C. Young, Nathalie Joachim, and Laura Kaminsky.
About Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF)
Since 2007, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) has brought virtuosic chamber music performances of the highest caliber to every borough of NYC, cultivating new audiences for the genre and encouraging music lovers to look beyond Manhattan for outstanding performances. Lauded as “imaginative” by The New York Times, “enterprising” by The New Yorker, and “vital” by WQXR’s Operavore blog, 5BMF’s commitment to musical outreach and diverse programming has distinguished it as a standout presence in the New York City arts community from its earliest days.
5BMF’s artist roster of over 250 individual performers and ensembles is comprised of talented emerging artists and distinguished musicians alike, representing an incredibly diverse range of musical genres and styles. Its venues are just as eclectic, and have included performing arts spaces, cultural centers, and historic New York City landmarks such as Federal Hall, Pregones Theater, Flushing Town Hall, King Manor Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society, the Alice Austen House, and the Staten Island Museum, to name merely a few.
As champions of new music, 5BMF has commissioned over 50 composers and presented world premieres of their works all across New York City, most notably the two borough-wide tours of its Five Borough Songbook Volumes I and II. 5BMF’s outreach initiatives continue to expand every year, and have included program-related interactive lectures and discussions, public masterclasses with world renowned performing artists, and free public programming. Learn more at www.5bmf.org.
About Brooklyn Public Library
Brooklyn Public Library is one of the nation’s largest library systems and among New York City’s most democratic institutions. As a leader in developing modern 21st-century libraries, we provide resources to support personal advancement, foster civic literacy, and strengthen the fabric of community among the more than 2.7 million individuals who call Brooklyn home. We provide nearly 65,000 free programs a year with writers, thinkers, artists, and educators from around the corner and around the world. And we give patrons millions of opportunities to enjoy one of life’s greatest satisfactions: the joy of a good book.
About Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art
The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor has been an incubator for bold and innovative artists developing new work since the 1970’s, promoting inquiry and advancing scholarship. The largest and oldest contemporary art gallery on Staten Island, the Newhouse Center hosts multiple exhibitions per year in 15,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, in addition to public art installations spread out across our 83-acre campus. Artist talks, lectures, screenings, workshops and tours activate our community. We present a wide range of voices and artistic practices, and are committed to equity and inclusion. The Newhouse Center has grown from a pioneering alternative space to a venue for major solo and group exhibitions that include a mix of local and international work.
Snug Harbor is a springboard for artistry that is bold and unexpected, which reflects and celebrates the vibrant diversity of Staten Island. Snug Harbor’s dynamic arts spaces range from the iconic Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and the 686-seat historic Music Hall theater, to the flexible 75-seat Carpenter’s Shop, Outdoor Stage on the South Meadow, and indoor and outdoor performance spaces of varying scale. Experience the transformative power of the arts through interdisciplinary programming that activates the historical, cultural and environmental aspects of our campus. Snug Harbor is proud to be Staten Island’s cultural anchor and incubator for creativity and community.
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Terra Nova is supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Anonymous.
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