Friday June 10 at 7pm
RAM Composers/Players and Guest Composers with special guest, dancer Miki Orihara

Miki Orihara, dancer  https://www.mikiorihara.com/
Christine Perea, flute
Thomas Piercy, clarinet  http://www.thomaspiercy.com/  
Douglas Da Silva, electric guitar 
Sabina Torosjan, violin
Liuh-Wen Ting, viola  https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/music/people/graduate-profiles/performance/liuh-wen_ting
Daniel Hass, cello  http://danielhass.ca/
Marina Iwao, piano  https://www.marina-iwao.com/

Joji Yuasa “Solitude” for clarinet and dancer (1980)
https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/joji-yuasa
 

Frances White
“That of which I speak has all, all passed away” for violin, viola, cello, and piano (2014)
Program note: "In my recent music I have become interested in storytelling in various forms. This piece tells a story--but I do not know what that story is. It is told by a character who I understand, but who is unknown to me. While composing this work, I was listening to traditional music of the hurdy-gurdy, an ancient instrument which is also known as the vielle a roue (wheel fiddle), or simply vielle. This music, with its melismas floating over a persistent drone, moved me deeply and permeated my writing. It seemed, somehow, to belong in the mysterious story I was trying to touch. The title of the piece is a line from a poem by the tragic Roma poet Papusza. It captures
something of the essence of both this unknown narrator and her story." https://rosewhitemusic.com/

Nerissa Campbell
“When They Talk We Know When” for flute, clarinet, electric guitar, violin, viola, and cello (2022) (World Premiere)
“When They Talk We Know When” was inspired by mycorrhizae - the association between tree roots and fungi, specifically in relation to a mast year. My curiosity at how the Black Spruce trees in Alaska’s Denali National Park all “knew” when to excessively produce an abundance of cones en masse led me to research the symbiotic relationship between fungi that are entwined with the root systems of the trees, and how they communicate to fulfill each other’s needs for survival. This association in turn, as in all of nature, has a cause and effect beyond this one complex and beautiful relationship to the surrounding natural world. Communication, support, growth, survival, and interaction that weaves together a community, a kind of communion even: a kind of listening and understanding that reverberates in the collaborative, thoughtful & beautiful world of our (human) music. https://www.crookedmouthmusic.com/bio

yaz lancaster
“intangible landscapes” for flute, bass clarinet, violin, piano, and dancer (2020)
"intangible landscapes deals with the growing feelings of ennui and isolation I encounter[ed] living in New York over the past six years, and how perceived landscapes of memory shift, breathe and transform over periods of time. Many people I love no longer live here. I question whether a home is a tangible, real place, or if it exists in the intangibility and quiet intimacy of created and/or remembered landscapes that can only exist ephemerally." https://www.yaz-lancaster.com/

Gilbert Galindo
"Clean Slate” for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2022) (World premiere)
"After wiping away what was before, insistent, romantic, and primal energies are explored in "Clean Slate". Commissioned by Random Access Music." https://www.gilbertgalindo.com/

 

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Friday June 10 at 9pm

Emilio Teubal Trio

Emilio Teubal: piano and compositions

Federico Diaz: guitar

Ivan Barenboim: clarinet
 

Tides (2019)
Memorias de Otro Tiempo (2016)

April 7th (2016)

El Orzuelo (2016)

Children of MMXX (2020)

Futuro (2020)

Guashington (La Casita de Mis Viejos) (2016)

La Inquieta (2016)
 

Emilio Teubal, pianist and composer from Argentina has been based in NYC for over 22 years. After three records released as a band leader, Mr. Teubal presents his latest ensemble consisting of piano, guitar, and clarinet. The music written especially for this ensemble draws from a wide variety of musical styles that are part of Mr. Teubal's cultural background: Latin-American Folk music, Tango music, Jazz, Free improvisation, Classical music, and some hints of Middle Eastern music. This is the first public appearance of the trio since their show at The Kennedy Center in February 2020. https://www.emilioteubal.com/


 

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Saturday June 11 at 4pm
Quintet of the Americas

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Echoes From a Distant Land (1983)          José Raul Bernardo (1928-2008)

I: Very Free as if each player is searching for the others

II: Fast and Playful, Full of Life

Dedicated to Matt Sullivan and the Quintet of the Americas, New York, Oct. 1983.

 

Woodwind Quintet No. 1 Jazz Quintet in Three Movements (1981 rev 2004)          Ed Bland (1926-2013)

Begin Again (2020-2022)          B. Allen Schultz (b. 1964)

Allegro

Dentro Szherzo. Allegro.

I Take My Walk Slowly. Slow.

Finale. Allegro con brio.

Commissioned with support from the Queens Council on the Arts

 

Rockaway Baby (2016)          Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin (b. 1978)

III: D.O.M.

Commissioned with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature

 

Klezmer Fantasy (2019)          James Cohn (1928-2021)
 

Quintet of the Americas
Kim O’Hare Bonacorsa, flute    Matt Sullivan, oboe    David Valbuena, clarinet    Alexander Davis, bassoon    Barbara Oldham, horn
 

The first piece on the program by José Raul Bernardo begins with the players musically searching for each other. We all were in isolation, and to reach out and find our colleagues and friends again has been very meaningful.  The next work by Ed Bland was commissioned and premiered in 1981 and has not been performed again until now, surely a re-emergence of an important work. B. Allen Schulz spent 29 days in a coma and had a long but persistent recovery. For Allen, working on this piece, conceived before his heart attack, has been an important part of his recovery, a re-emergence of great significance and an inspiration for us all. Ljova’s D.O.M. is the 3rd movement of Rockaway Baby, inspired by seniors at a rehab hospital in the Rockaways. It is the first time we will be swinging it with contrabassoon. We premiered the last work on the program, James Cohn’s Klezmer Fantasy, in February 2019 in Pleasantville, NY. More performances were planned for that spring, but all venues were closed out as we went into isolation due to Covid. We are happy to be giving this piece those performances now as we re-emerge into live concerts.
 

José Raúl Bernardo, a true "Renaissance man" was born in La Habana, Cuba on October 3, 1928. As a young man in Cuba, he studied piano, theory, solfege, and composition, receiving his Bachelor of Music degree in 1958 from the Havana Conservatory. In 1959 when Fidel Castro took over the government, the mayor heard Bernardo speak out against communism and advised him to leave the country or face probable consequences. In Florida, he earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Miami in 1969. His passion for art led him to study architecture. With a fellowship from Columbia University, he completed a master's degree in architecture magna cum laude, and ultimately earned his doctorate. During this time he was also writing poetry and composing music. Years later he wrote Silent Wing, The Wise Women of Havana and The Secret of the Bulls, novels that were published in many countries and translated into several languages. Among his musical compositions were concertos for piano, violin, viola and harpsichord; a symphony; two operas, several film scores, solo works, and chamber works including many for Quintet of the Americas. His deepest passion was composing music with that special Cuban Rhythm. After a long illness he died on February 4, 2008.

 

Considered by some Hip-Hoppers to be the great grandfather of Hip-Hop, because of the confrontational quality of his musical film work, Ed Bland has left his mark in several fields. In the late 30s in Chicago, Bland began music as a jazz protege, eventually composing atonally, using Schoenberg's 12-tone system.  In concert music, Bland's "Piece For Chamber Orchestra" (1979) was called, "An amazing tour de force in terms of relentless energy and build- up of tension...a fascinating strong piece," by Gunther Schuller, American composer/conductor/author; and "Original and Fresh," by Bruce Creditor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Among the groups that have performed Bland's works are the Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis, and St Louis Symphonies, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. In 1959, he produced the first Hip-Hop film, "The Cry of Jazz." Willard Van Dyke, pre-eminent American film documentarian (and head of the Film Division of the Museum of Modern Art NYC), said that "Cry" predicted the riots in the American cities of the '60s and '70s. Bland used the early music of Sun Ra and his Arkestra in the soundtrack of the film. Bland's synthesis of three canons of music, Western, Jazz and West African drumming, made it possible for him to work as composer, producer, arranger, and orchestrator in the recording and film industries. Among those sessions was one using Jimi Hendrix in his early days. In the '90s, after years in the record industry, many of Bland's efforts were sampled by Hip-Hop artists that led to sales in excess of 30 million CDs. Fat Boy Slim and Cypress Hill are among artists that sampled his works. After 20 years in Los Angeles, Bland moved to Smithfield, VA, where he was finishing a percussion Dance Suite entitled "Penderecki Funk" when he passed away on March 14, 2013.

 

B. Allen Schulz (b. 1964) is the great grandson of the famous vaudevillian and Chicago jazzman, Ollie Powers. Allen studied music composition at Wabash College, Yale University, and The City University of New York. His primary composition instructors have been Eric Lund and Charles Dodge. Allen’s musical interests are eclectic and varied. His compositional activities range from music theater to experimental computer-generated music; from arrangements of sacred music for use in worship services to large-scale works for orchestra. He has been commissioned to compose music for groups as diverse as the award-winning Minimum Wage theater troupe, secondary school ensembles at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, NY, The Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, The Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, Iktus Percussion Ensemble, the Parthenia Viol Consort, Anubis Saxophone Quartet, Quintet of the Americas, Voces Novae et Antiquae Chorus, and others. His awards include The John Cage Prize in Experimental Music, Finalist in the National Flute Association’s “Best Newly Published Work for Solo Flute” (2011), and high honors in the University of Oregon Waging Peace Through Singing choral competition. Allen is the founder of Random Access Music, a consortium of New York City-based composers who manage and present performances of their own music in collaboration with new music performance ensembles. In 2012, Allen founded, organized, and led the production of the Queens New Music Festival–a festival featuring 9 different new music ensembles performing works written in the last 50 years. The festival is now an annual showcase of some of NYC’s best emerging new music ensembles and performers. Allen continues to be deeply involved in supporting all the arts in his community in Astoria, Queens by volunteering his time and energy for cultural groups ranging from schools to orchestras to theaters.

 

Allen writes “I completed Begin Again on April 29, the 7th year anniversary  of my emergence from a 29 day-long coma. The coma was caused by a cardiac arrest (my heart stopped beating), and when I regained consciousness, I was blind and could not stand or move easily. For many years, most of my hours were spent in therapy of various kinds. My vision and movement have returned, and earlier this year (2021) I felt healed enough to attempt my great joy: composing. Throughout 2020, I relearned the composition software I had once used, and I attempted some short etudes and songs for voice and piano. Eventually, I felt secure enough to Begin Again working on the work I was composing when the cardiac arrest struck. This piece you will hear today sounds, according to my wife and musical friends, much like my style before the injury: it is a fun romp through the quintet’s instruments and a challenge for the performers. The horn part is given prominence at one point to honor Quintet of the Americas hornist, Barbara Oldham, who I had met the year before my injury and who has encouraged me to Begin Again.”
 

LJOVA (Lev Zhurbin) was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between composing for the concert stage, contemporary dance & film, leading his own ensemble LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, as well as pursuing a busy career as a freelance violist, fadolínist & musical arranger. Among recent projects are commissions from the City of London Sinfonia, The Louisville Orchestra, a new work for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a string quartet for Brooklyn Rider, a clarinet quintet for Art of Élan, and works for The Knights, Sybarite5 and A Far Cry, as well as arrangements for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, Bond, Matmos, and others. His many collaborations have resulted in arrangements of music from Argentina, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Uruguay, as well as gypsy music from Romania and France. He has released ten albums on his label, Kapustnik Records, and his compositions have been recorded on Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, Bridge Records, Naxos and In A Circle labels.  He is an alum of the Sundance Institute’s Film Composers Lab, and is the curator of “Out of Leftovers”, a family-friendly performance series at New York’s Symphony Space. Ljova is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was a pupil of Samuel Rhodes (violist of the Juilliard String Quartet). He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife, vocalist and attorney Inna Barmash, and their sons, Benjamin and Yosif.
 

Rockaway Baby was commissioned as part of the Quintet’s Memory Project, a project that involves community members as inspiration for the creative process. Ljova accompanied the Quintet to Peninsula Rehab and Nursing Center in Far Rockaway Queens where he and Quintet members conducted interviews with the disabled residents. The interviews were video recorded by high school students in an after-school program at Rockaway Waterfront Alliance. Ljova used the interviews and his experience at the center as inspiration for Rockaway Baby. The piece was premiered at Peninsula for the residents and was also performed at the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance new center RISE. Ljova has also written Lullaby and Memory (2016) a piece for and inspired by the seniors at the Salvation Army in Jackson Heights, and For the Sparrows (2018), a multi-movement work involving many groups in the community including elementary school recorder players, an elementary school chorus, seniors, and the Jackson Heights Orchestra.
 

James Cohn (1928-2021) majored in Composition at The Juilliard School having studied composition with Roy Harris, Wayne Barlow and Bernard Wagenaar. He wrote solo, chamber, choral and orchestral works, among them 3 string quartets, 5 piano sonatas and 8 symphonies. He was awarded a Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Prize for his Symphony No. 2 (premiered in Brussels) and an A.I.D.E.M. prize for his Symphony No. 4 (premiered in Florence at the Maggio Musicale). His Symphony No. 3 and Variations on "The Wayfaring Stranger" were premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Paul Paray. His works can be heard on the Naxos and MSR labels. A long-time supporter and board member of Quintet of the Americas, he wrote or arranged many works for the group, among them the Klezmer Fantasy.

 

Founded in 1976 in Bogotá, Colombia, and re-formed in NYC in 1979, Quintet of the Americas has long been recognized as a leading ensemble in the interpretation of  contemporary and folk-inspired wind quintet music of the Western Hemisphere. Devoted to contemporary music and composers, the Quintet has commissioned over 100 works. Recipient of two ASCAP/Chamber Music America Adventuresome Programming Awards, the Quintet’s repertoire includes electronic music, Sephardic music, Native American music, music from the African Diaspora, music influenced by jazz, music involving the Quintet’s collection of folk instruments, music from Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba, and music with theatrical elements such as spoken word, lighting effects and projections, masks and choreography.

 

The Quintet has toured to over 300 cities in the U.S.A., and in Canada, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, the Caribbean, the Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. The Quintet is currently in residence in The Department of Music and Performing Arts in The Steinhardt School at New York University. The group has extensive residency experience including residencies at Northwestern University, Austin Peay State Univ. (TN); and Hunter College (NYC). Foreign master classes and concerts include residencies in Colombia,  Kharkiv, Ukraine and at the National Conservatoire in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

 

In 1992, the Quintet presented a debut recital in Carnegie Hall (the main hall) featuring three commissions for Quintet with orchestra. Other important concerts have included the Carnegie Hall American Music Week Series at Weill Recital Hall; the Bermuda International Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Inter-American Festival in Puerto Rico, the Bar Harbor Festival, the Chautauqua Festival, the Pan American Music Festivals at the Library of Congress and the O.A.S., Washington, D.C.; the Festival Internacional de Música Contemporanea in Bogotá, Colombia, the First International Congress on Women in Music; two Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festivals, the International Flute Convention, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, a two-day Villa-Lobos centennial festival co-produced by the Quintet and  SineNomine Singers, an 80th Birthday concert for Karel Husa, as well as appearances on retrospective concerts of composers David del Tredici at Town Hall, Ursula Mamlok at Merkin Concert Hall, and Ann McMillan at Greenwich House Music School.

 

The Quintet has recorded four CDs of contemporary American music: Recollections, the wind chamber music of Karel Husa (New World), Quintet of the Americas Self Portrait (CRI) Discovering the New World (MMC) and Never Sing Before Breakfast, (Newport Classics). Additional CDs include - XANGO, music of Villa-Lobos (Newport Classics,)  Souvenirs (XLNT), Dancing in Colombia (MSR 2001), and Sounds of Brazil (MSR 1279).  The Quintet’s website is www.quintet.org.

 

Kim O’Hare Bonacorsa, a New Jersey native, is an avid orchestral and chamber musician based in New York City. She is a regular sub for Wicked on Broadway, performs with the Harrisburg Symphony and Lancaster Symphony, among others, and has worked as a professional consultant for the television series Mozart in the Jungle. She recorded flute and piccolo for the NBC television broadcast of A Very Wicked Halloween to celebrate the Broadway production’s 15th year anniversary. Internationally, she was chosen to perform as a soloist in Nice, France, at the Nice Academy of Music. Each summer she travels to Austria to perform with the AIMS Festival Orchestra, as well as hold the position of Assistant Orchestra Manager. Kim earned her Master of Music degree from New York University and her Bachelor of Music degree from The College of New Jersey. She directs a flute ensemble and maintains a private teaching studio. Kim enjoys long distance running, and has completed 12 half marathons and the 2017 NYC marathon. She resides in New York City with her husband, Chris, and two cats, Yoshi and Pickles.

Matt Sullivan has performed extensively on four continents and is recognized internationally as a virtuoso performer and master teacher, as well as an important advocate for the modern oboe. The New York Times has praised his "gorgeously lyrical playing" and the New Yorker has called his inventive programming the "cutting edge".  As composer, his innovative works created for oboe, English horn and digital horn, along with his solo and chamber music performances and compact discs, have been featured locally on WNYC. WQXR and WBAI, NPR and Voice of America.  Sullivan’s solo performances include concerts ranging from Cindy Lauper at Carnegie Hall to films including Miller’s Crossing.  Concert venues include Carnegie Hall, The Library of Congress, the Palladium, Roulette, The Kitchen, CBGBs…   Matt Sullivan serves as Director of Woodwind Studies at NYU’s Steinhardt School, and is a Performing Artist for Buffet Crampon USA and plays exclusively on Buffet Greenline’s Orfeo.

 

Clarinetist and bass clarinetist David Valbuena is a versatile and compelling musician, performing throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and China, with many prestigious ensembles including the American Composers Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Southwest Florida Symphony and in the 2018 Off-Broadway revival of Fiddler on The Roof in Yiddish, both in the pit and on stage as a klezmer musician. His festival appearances include The Endless Mountain Music Festival, Montreal New Music Festival, NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. He has recorded for New Amsterdam Records and can be heard on ShoutHouse’s most recent album, Cityscapes. Equally passionate about Music Education, David has held residencies at several NYC public schools as a bilingual teaching artist. He holds a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor of Music from Queens College where he studied with Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima.  

 

Alexander Davis is a New York City based freelance bassoonist whose artistic practice centers healing, connecting, and building community within classical music. An advocate of creating cross-cultural influences in the arts, Alexander is the founder and artistic director of the Sugar Hill Salon Chamber Music series based in the culturally robust community of Harlem, NY. This live-streamed series was created in response to the lack of black and brown woodwind representation within chamber music (www.SugarHillSalon.com). He has played with orchestras and series incluiding Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, CityMusic Cleveland, Harlem Chamber Players, Symphony in C, Symphoria, Sherman Chamber Ensemble, The North Country Chamber Players, and Brooklyn Orchestra. He has performed in summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Ensemble Evolution, Banff Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Maine Chamber Music Seminar, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival. In addition to performing, Alexander is bassoon faculty at Montclair State University, the Maine Chamber Music Intensive and Usdan Summer Arts, administrative manager for the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and a teaching artist at the Park Avenue Armory. He studied with bassoonists Laura Koepke, Frank Morelli, and Bob Williams. 

Horn player Barbara Oldham is a founding member of Quintet of the Americas. Her vnappearances as a chamber recitalist include performances with Chamber Music Northwest, the Marlboro Music Festival, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and Festival Brass. She has presented recitals at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the American Landmark Festivals, and has appeared as a soloist at the Westchester Chamber Music Festival, with the Contreras Chamber Ensemble and with the Jackson Heights Orchestra. She was the recipient of a 1999 Brooklyn Arts Council Individual Artist Grant for a series of recitals in Brooklyn. She has served as principal horn of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Colombia in Bogotá, Opera Northeast, National Symphony of the Dominican Republic, and as a member of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and West End Symphony. Active as a freelance player, she has performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Long Island Philharmonic, Radio City Music Hall, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Joffrey Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and on Broadway. She serves on the faculty of Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University, Brooklyn College Conservatory, and Summertrios, and taught beginning band to elementary school students in a public school in Brooklyn as part of Project Arts.

https://quintet.org/
 

Credits

This performance is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. This program is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Additional funding comes from The Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation and generous individuals.

 

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Saturday June 11 at 6pm
Shutterspeed Duo

Erich Barganier and Ford Fourqurean
 

Like Horses - Erich Barganier
Aperture - Ford Fourqurean
Natural Fractals of Blood Vessels, Tributaries, and Mountain Ranges - Erich Barganier
Grotesquerie No. 2 - Erich Barganier
New Work - Ford Fourqurean and Erich Barganier

Divergent Roads - Ford Fourqurean
 

Erich Barganier is a composer and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida who currently resides between New York City and Montreal. He writes chamber, orchestral, film, solo instrumental and electronic music that explores experimental technology, the edge of noise, improvisation, generative processes, and new forms of notation.His music has been released on People Places Records, [walnut+locust], Belts and Whistles Records, Infrequent Seams, Off Latch Press, Nebularosa Records, Pleroma Records, NOUS Records, and Janus Music and Sound. Barganier's works have been presented by Bang on a Can, The International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), Mostly Modern Festival, The New Music Gathering, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, Diffrazioni Festival, The DiMenna Center For Classical Music, Spectra Malaysia, Arts, Letters, & Numbers,  New Music New College, New York University, McGill University,  Spectrum NYC, The University of Wisconsin, The University of Georgia, The University of North Georgia, and The University of Alabama, among others. www.barganiermusic.com/about

 

Ford Fourqurean strives to bring communities together through music. He is an award-winning clarinetist, electronic musician, and composer based in New York City. He serves as artistic director of Unheard-of//Ensemble along with many other projects connecting contemporary music with new audiences. Known as “a unique force” (The Clarinet Journal) in contemporary music, he has toured across the United States with Unheard-of//Ensemble performing at Cornell, Manhattan School of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and many others. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Collaborative Composition Initiative workshop (CCI//Sessions) bringing together composers each summer from across the country. He has won grants from Chamber Music America, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, the Barlow Endowment to commission Reiko Füting, Alice M. Ditson Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Johnstone Fund for New Music, and New Music USA. https://www.fordfourqurean.com/about

 

Erich Barganier (guitar/violin/electronics) and Ford Fourqurean (clarinets/electronics) are Shutterspeed Duo, a composer/performer ensemble combining contemporary classical composition, diy aesthetics, multimedia electronics, and video art. The group released their debut EP Iris in February 2021. The Classicyl Vine described their latest release as “a kaleidoscope of textural and timbral shifts in the electronic processing of acoustic instrumentals,” and pushes the genre of indie-classical to new realms. https://www.shutterspeedduo.com/

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Ford Fourqurean and Erich Barganier first started collaborating during the summer of 2020 when both artists were participating in the Westben Composer-Performer residency program. Fourqurean and Barganier initially came together with other musicians to create a piece of video art centered around their early pandemic experiences. After the residency program ended, the two musicians came together to form what would be known as Shutterspeed duo, an ensemble that composes and performs its own music on clarinet, bass clarinet, electric guitar, violin, and various electronics. In addition to Foruqurean and Barganier both writing original works for the group to perform, both artists create accompanying visual art to perform with. The ensemble has performed and recorded music exclusively as a telematic ensemble as a result of geographical distances and pandemic conditions. The ensemble, born out of the necessity to perform at a distance, has found new ways to explore technology and performance capabilities in a new era of modern art music.
https://www.shutterspeedduo.com/



 

Saturday June 11 at 8pm
Guitarist Giacomo Baldelli

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And Watch - Giacomo Baldelli

Until It Blazes - Eve Beglarian

Dream - John Cage

Two - Ryan Pratt 
Slow Earth - Nick Norton

The music presented in this concert mainly belongs to Baldelli's latest album "Electric Creatures".From Baldelli: "In 2020 I was supposed to tour this album both in the US and Europe, but, because of the pandemic,I never had the chance to do it. I like the idea of starting again from where I left off." https://www.giacomobaldelli.com/


 

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Sunday June 12 at 4pm
Portrait concert and tribute to RAM and Queens New Music Festival founder Allen Schulz
 

“Jade Dance” for piano (2000)
Max Lifchitz, piano     

“Crazy Cat Lady” for flute (2009)
Christine Perea, flute

“as big as alone” for clarinet and piano (2011)
Thomas Piercy, clarinet   |   Taka Kigawa, piano

"Ayre and Earth" for violin and piano (2009)
Sabina Torosjan, violin  |  Taka Kigawa, piano

"Throttle" for violin, cello, and piano (2012)
Sabina Torosjan, violin   |   Daniel Hass, cello  |   Taka Kigawa, piano

B. Allen Schulz (b. 1964) is the great grandson of the famous vaudevillian and Chicago jazzman, Ollie Powers. He studied music composition at Wabash College, Yale University, and The City University of New York. His primary composition instructors have been Eric Lund and Charles Dodge. Allen’s musical interests are eclectic and varied. His compositional activities range from music theater to experimental computer-generated music, from arrangements of sacred music for use in worship services to large-scale works for orchestra. He has been commissioned to compose music for groups as diverse as the award-winning Minimum Wage theater troupe, secondary school ensembles at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, NY, The The Quintet Of The Americas, The Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, Iktus Percussion Ensemble, the Parthenia Viol Consort, Anubis Saxophone Quartet, Voces Novae et Antiquae Chorus, and others.
 

Until his cardiac arrest and subsequent severe brain injury, he worked as a consulting editor for the G. Schirmer Music Publisher new works and premieres department. Allen is the founder of Random Access Music, a consortium of New York City-based composers and performers who manage and present performances of their own music in collaboration with other new music performance ensembles. In 2012, Allen founded, organized, and led the production of the Queens New Music Festival–a festival featuring 9 different new music ensembles performing works written in the last 50 years. The festival is now an annual showcase for new music ensembles and performers. Allen continues to be deeply involved in supporting all the arts in his community by volunteering his time and energy for cultural groups ranging from schools to orchestras to theaters.

 

Allen is interested in composing for all types of ensembles, and he is comfortable working with experimental compositions as much as he is with simpler and more accessible genres, such as music written specifically for children. His awards include the The John Cage Prize in Experimental Music, Finalist in the National Flute Association’s “Best Newly Published Work for Solo Flute (2011), and high honors in the University of Oregon Waging Peace Through Singing choral competition.

In 2014, Allen suffered a cardiac arrest, which left him in a coma for 29 days. When he emerged from the coma, he was blind, couldn’t stand or walk, and had memory problems. With hundreds of hours of therapy, from physical, to occupational, to cognitive, to speech, to vision, and cardiac, he began composing again in 2020 and returned to performances of his music in 2021, with a performance of the first movement of his woodwind quintet Starting Over–the piece he was working on when he was stopped by the cardiac arrest mentioned
above.     https://www.allenschulz.net/

Guest Artists
Max  Lifchitz, piano https://www.northsouthmusic.org/about.asp
Taka Kigawa, piano https://www.takakigawa.com/

 

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Sunday June 12 at 6pm
Random Access Music (RAM)
 

Seth Gilman, baritone https://www.youtube.com/user/SethimusMaximus
Christine Perea, flute
Thomas Piercy, clarinet  http://www.thomaspiercy.com/  
Sabina Torosjan, violin
Daniel Hass, cello  http://danielhass.ca/
Marina Iwao, piano  https://www.marina-iwao.com/

Seth Boustead “The Light Years” for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2022) (World Premiere)
"The Light Years is inspired by the short story of the same name by Italo Calvino from 1965.  An unnamed narrator, apparently an interstellar immortal being of some kind, notices a sign hung on a galaxy facing him that says simply "I saw you."  Using the distance of 100,000,000 light years as a guide, he's able to check his diary to find out what he had been doing that day, and finds out that it was something he wished to hide.  He frets. Of all the good things he's done over the eons this entity apparently only saw, or only paid attention to, something unflattering.  Then other signs appear in other galaxies saying "I saw you" and it goes viral from there.  Calvino's story is light and funny and meant as a joke but I can't help but wonder what he would have thought of social media.  My piece is a reaction to the many emotions living our lives in public can elicit: anxiety, joy, melancholy and obsession. " http://sethboustead.com/

 

Masatora Goya “CALL” for baritone, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2013/2022) (World premiere, quintet version)
"CALL" explores a theme and variation format in a dramatic perspective. In Japanese "O-I" is a word most commonly used for calling people, but typically with different emotions depending on the situation, near or far, or the degree of fondness. At the same time, this two-syllable word could describe the way someone cries sadly or wildly, a self-utterance of disapproval, or just the state of being old. From the moment we were born into this world through to our time of death, we may be calling out to the universe and keep uttering the same word again and again, with a multitude of nuances.  https://www.masatoragoya.com/

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Zhihua Hu “Don't Leave Me Alone” for baritone, clarinet, cello, and piano (2022) (World premiere)

Inspired by the Kids and the people Whose Relatives Are Suffering During Covid-19
"Don’t Leave Me Alone" Words and Music by Zhihua Hu

"Oh, where I am
Oh, who am I

Can you believe suddenly things are changed

Is it a dream
How could I lose
If it taught me how to cherish
I would hear you
You would hear me
Don’t leave me alone
Don’t leave me alone
All the time we get along
Don’t leave me alone
Are you alone
Tell me when could we get along
when we get along

Oh, where I am
Is it a dream
Be with you"

https://www.zhihuahu.website/bio

Miho Sasaki “Swirling Spheres” flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano (2021)
"Inspired by looking at the snow views from my studio window. The snowstorm was passing across the Midwest heading to the East coast. All humans were stuck in the house just like the recent pandemic. The endless snow falling from the sky separates our lives, which adds to feelings of isolation and despair. Yet, simultaneously, it is beautiful to watch the snow swirling like the feathers of angels.
http://sasakimusic.com/2.html

 

Jennifer Higdon “Smash” for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano (2006)
""Smash" comes at the beginning of the 21st Century, where speed often seems to be our goal. This image fits well the instruments in this ensemble, because these are some of the fastest moving instruments in terms of their technical prowess. Each individual plays an equal part in the ensemble, contributing to the intensity and forward momentum, as the music dashes from beginning to end, smashing forward in momentum." http://jenniferhigdon.com/

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