PSNY

Posts tagged 'National Sawdust'

Kate Soper's "Here Be Sirens" Performed in Massachusetts and New York

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 11, 2018, 3:43 p.m.

Kate Soper's Here Be Sirens has been hailed as "audacious, genre-bending music theatre", and is described by the composer as "an opera/theatre work that blends beautiful music, terrifying noise, screwball comedy, and Aristotelian tragedy." After two widely acclaimed stagings in 2014, Fresh Squeezed Opera will mount a new production directed by Amber Treadway, featuring sopranos Victoria Benson, Claire Myers McCormick, and Devony Smith. Before its performance at National Sawdust on January 28th, Fresh Squeezed Opera will also perform the work on January 12th at the I/O Fest at Williams College, where Soper will also herself perform George Lewis' 2011 work, Anthem, for ensemble.

Fresh Squeezed Opera has previously performed a suite from Here Be Sirens at New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on a program of "nano-operas" in 2017.

Tags: Fresh Squeezed Opera Kate Soper National Sawdust Williams College

Anthony Cheung's "The Real Book of Fake Tunes" in Chicago and New York

by Ted Gordon on April 13, 2017, 11:37 a.m.

Players, students, and enthusiasts of jazz will be familiar with the many iterations of the "fake book"—a collection of lead sheets that has seen many versions throughout the 20th century, even an "official" edition as The Real Book in the 1970s. Anthony Cheung, no stranger to the long stylistic and compositional traditions of jazz, takes the "real book" as a starting point for his The Real Book of Fake Tunes, written for fellow Chicagoans Claire Chase and the Spektral Quartet. Cheung takes the architecture of a "Real Book" and designs his own plans for the classical instrumentation of string quartet and flute, recalling the dance or compositional suites of the 18th century while catapulting the listener into the 21st.

On Thursday, April 13th, Claire Chase and the Spektral Quartet will perform The Real Book of Fake Tunes at Northwestern University, as a part of Chase's "Density" project, alongside a new commission by fellow PSNY compoer Marcos Balter. Later in the month, the ensemble will travel to New York to present The Real Book of Fake Tunes at National Sawdust, in a program that features a new quartet by George Lewis and Katherine Young's arrangement of Arthur Russell's Hiding Your Present From You.

Tags: Anthony Cheung Claire Chase Katherine Young Marcos Balter National Sawdust Northwestern University Spektral Quartet

Jeffrey and Gabriel Kahane Perform Works by Timo Andres

by Ted Gordon on March 9, 2017, 11:13 a.m.

The music of Timo Andres glimpses the history of Western art music while steadfastly looking at the present. Thus it's fitting that his music be performed by two generations of the same musical family on America's two coasts, in the span of only six days. On March 12th, Jeffrey Kahane performs Andres's Heavy Sleep in Berkeley—a work that begins to obsess with a musical idea from a Chopin nocturne in dream-like free association. Check out Bruce Levingston's Naxos recording below:

And on March 18th, Andres will see a performance of his song cycle Work Songs at National Sawdust with a group of close collaborators including Gabriel Kahane, Becca Stevens, Ted Hearne, Nathan Koci, and Taylor Levine. Work Songs, which premiered in 2014, begins from the long tradition of American folk songs that thematize labor—Andres remembers the Fireside Book of Folk Songs from his childhood—and explores the habits and methods of working artists today, including Andres himself and his collaborators. Listen to a 2015 performance below.

Tags: Cal Performances Jeffrey Kahane National Sawdust Ted Hearne Timo Andres