Archived News and Events

The Astra Choir's 68th year of concerts in Melbourne continued its path through the ever-changing surroundings of contemporary and choral music, where emerging works, styles and voices give rise to new historical perspectives on the recent and more distant past.

The June 10 program, which took place in the sonorous space of the Carmelite Church, drew on an arc of choral soundscapes of the American tradition from Charles Ives and his neglected colleague John J. Becker to Donald Martino and Robert Carl around Keith Humbles spiralling perpetuo- moto of string-quartet sound and his open-form choral continuum ACCJ, first composed for the Astra Choir 10 years before the quartet, in 1979.

Program:

Charles Ives,The Celestial Country (1899), soloists, choir, string quintet & organ; John J. Becker, The Pool, (1924) (poem by H.D.); Missa Symphonica (1933); and Nunc Sancte nobis Spritus; Keith Humble, ACCJ (1979) multiple choral groups; Four All Seasons, Mouvement perpetuel (1989) string quartet; Donald Martino, Pious Pieces (1971), choir a cappella (Robert Herrick); Robert Carl, Sullivan Songs (1983/93), soloists and choir (Louis Sullivan).

Melbourne's Astra Choir has played a dynamic role in Australian musical life for several decades with presentations of new and original work from all musical periods. Its repertoire ranges widely from mediaeval and Renaissance music through Bach, 19th-century music and Schoenberg to the latest in electronic and post-minimal music from Australia, Europe and the USA. It frequently gives first Australian performances of music-works and experiments with various modes of presentation, including improvisation, spatial movement and sound technology.

Karl Weigl's Five Songs for Soprano and String Quartet will be performed this year at the final concert of the Rauma Festival in Finland. Five Songs for Soprano and String Quartet will be performed at Rauma Festivo Chamber Music Festival in Rauma, Finland. Soprano Kajsa Dahlbck will perform with Kamus String Quartet at Poselli Hall, Nortamonkatu 12, Rauma, Finland.

Rauma Festivo, 7th-11th August 2018, is a five day chamber music festival that takes place in the unique surroundings of Old Rauma, the largest wooden town centre in the Nordic countries.The concerts, matinees, lectures, street musicians, and pop up concerts performing in usually closed private gardens make music and world-class artists available to all, locals and visitors.

The Finnish soprano Kajsa Dahlbck is an experienced interpreter of early, classical and contemporary music. She has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, among themwith Tapiola Sinfonietta, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra at the Bolzano Festival (Italy), Musica Antiqua (Brazil), Brezice Festival (Slovenia), Kirkko Soikoon! festival, Helsinki Festival and Vantaa Baroque festival.

J. Willard Roosevelt (1918-2008), grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, was quite an esteemed composer, a student of Nadia Boulanger and married to poet E.E. Cummings's daughter. He was the creator of an opera and many songs and chamber works, scores and recordings of which are preserved in the American Composers Alliance Archives. Little of his music has been performed since his death at age 90 ten years ago.

Chamber opera portrayed with shadow puppets -

And Here We Are is a new shadow puppet opera composed by EiO co-founder Matthew Welch and librettist Daniel Neer. This evening-length opera tells Welchs great-uncle Edgar Kneedlers inspiring story of survival in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines during WWII, and illustrates the power of music to create bonds between cultures and transcend the greatest adversities. Scored for four vocalists and an orchestra combining Welchs ensemble Blarvuster and Mantra Percussion, And Here We Are will be staged using an innovative and macbre style of Asian shadow puppetry created by director and designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew.

Mark Utley, Percussion
Emily Manzo, Piano
Ian Riggs, Bass Guitar
Shayna Dunkelman, Drums and Electronics
Matthew Welch, Conductor, Saxophone and Electronics

Zuzanna Kwon (piano), Carmen Lemoine (flute), and Nathalie Colas (soprano) will present Music for Young Imaginations
Music by David Liptak - Constellations, Shawn Okpedholo - On a Poem by Miho Nonaka, Kenji Bunch - Velocity, Jacob ter Veldhuis - Lipstick, and Steven Rice - Benediction (premiere)

Redeemer Lutheran Church, 139 East 1st Street, Hinsdale, Illinois
Free admission, donations accepted

"The Voice of My Beloved/Arise, My Love, My Fair a duet for tenor and soprano from Frederick Douglass, an opera by Dorothy Rudd Moore, will be performed by Boston Lyric Opera in a concert series of scenes/selections from several dramatic works. BLO joins forces with CASTLE OF OUR SKINS to showcase the lives and stories of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Paul Robeson through the music of opera. Paired with spoken word, art song, spirituals and history, their livesand those of other legendary liberatorstake center stage.

Featuring the music of composers Nkeiru Okoye, Adolphus Hailstork, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Margaret Bonds, and Undine Smith Moore.

THURSDAY, MAY 31 AT 6PM | Codman Square BPL branch, Dorchester
FRIDAY, JUNE 1 AT 12:30PM | Central Library, Copley Square | Concert in the Courtyard series
THURSDAY, JUNE 7 AT 6PM | West End BPL branch, Boston

All events are free and open to the community.

This concert and educational series is dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music. The artists, basedin Boston, MA, are driven to bring greater cultural representation to the stage with an inventive mix of Black history, culture and Classical music.

Announcing the East Asian premiere of Robert Carl's piano trio, "Search" by new music specialists- Ensemble Eins, at the International Music Festival April 29th in Seoul. The festival also presents music by Michael Sidney Timpson, Larry Alan Smith, and more.

Music of Philip Carlsen - Monday afternoon, May 7, at 3:00 in the David Friend Recital Hall at Berklee College of Music: Nancy Zeltsmans advanced marimba quartet will be premiering NACH BACH, a refracted transcription of the slow movement of Bachs Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 in D minor. More info here.

Ghostlight Chorus, artistic director Dr. Evelyn Troester DeGraf, presents Heaven and Earth on Saturday, May 5th at 7:30pm at St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. Featured will be Michael Dellaira's Campers at Kitty Hawk, for mixed chorus, with texts from The Big Money by John Dos Passos. It captures the energy of the first flight by the Wright Brothers and is currently one of the most popular choral scores in the ACA catalog. Also on the program will be Eric Whitacres Leonardo dreams of his flying machine."

Tickets are now available for purchaseHERE.
$20 Online
$25 At the door

Concert Details
Heaven andEarth
Saturday, May 5th 7:30pm
Church of St. Luke in the Fields

GHOSTLIGHT CHORUS is an elite chamber choir based in New York City. Founded in 2010 by artistic director Dr. Evelyn Troester DeGraf, the choir is comprised of experienced singers who collectively strive for superior musicality, intonation, and choral blend. Acclaimed as beautiful by Vogue, first-class by Time Out New York, and simply one of the best vocal ensembles by Maines Press Herald, GHOSTLIGHT pursues both high-quality musicianship and a comprehensive repertoire, with a commitment to original concert programming and frequent world premieres.

Composer Michael Dellaira is known for his haunting harmonies (NewMusicBox.org), eloquence and sensitivity (New York Times) and flair for vocal writing (ClassicsToday.com).

Winners of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and following an international tour, SYBARITE5, a string quintet dedicated to mold-breaking programming, returns to the cell with a 2018 experimental LAB series featuring world premieres by composers Ehsan Matoori and Michael Dellaira. Featuring guest artists Blythe Gaissert, mezzo soprano and Santour virtuoso Ehsan Matoori. Michael Dellaira's Star Globe, a song for string quintet and mezzo-soprano, written specifically for Sybarite5 and Blythe Gaissert, is based on and inspired by a text by Cell founder and director Nancy Manocherian. The Cell Theatre 338 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011.

On Sunday, May 6th at 3pm, the Riverdale Choral Society will present a concert in Riverdale-Bronx at Christ Church Riverdale, on West 252nd St. at Henry Hudson Parkway. Works to be performed include music of Aaron Copland, as well as two works by Joelle Wallach, as well as music of Cole Porter and George Gershwin.

ENSEMBLE MISE-EN
February 26, 2018, 8P @ MISE-EN_PLACE Bushwick
ACOUSTIC+
Works by Karchin, Larssen and Rot

World premiere of a new work (septet) As the Circle Opens to Infinity, by Louis Karchin, for a Pierrot ensemble plus trombone, loosely based on the poetry of Bethlehem (PA) poet, H. D. The program will also feature works of Martin Q Larsson, Fernanda Navarro and John Rot. Misc-En Place, Bushwick, 678 Hart St., Brooklyn

ENSEMBLE MISE-EN is a New York-based contemporary music collective led by composer Moon Young HA. Comprised of talented young musicians, its personnel strive to bring a repertoire of challenging new sounds to diverse audiences. The ensemble strives for an experience that is simultaneously multi-cultural, intellectually stimulating, and aesthetically pleasing. As a collective, the multi-national personnel has coalesced around a real aesthetic agenda, crystallized in the name mise-en: mee, in Korean, means beauty, and zahn, to decorate, and the group unabashedly promotes beautiful artwork to increasingly diverse audiences of contemporary sounds.

More info/tickets

Quartz, a chamber group in Lisbon, Portugal, will perform Ray Luedeke's Tango Dreams on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 7pm Lisbon time (2:00 pm EST) at the National Museum o fAncient Art in Lisbon. The concert will be broadcast live on Antena 2, a national radio station. It can be heard online here.

In Christchurch, New Zealand on March 16, 19, and 20, three works by Richard Cameron-Wolfe will be presented: his 2009 violin/piano-4-hands ARQ: Region III - Refuge, his Lilith[premiere of the 2016 2nd version], and the 2006 solo-piano Code of Un-Silence: A Prayer. Featured artists are violinist-violist Mark Menzies (Head of Music Performance at UC) and American pianist Gayle Blankenburg. The programs also include George Crumbs Makrokosmos III, Lou Harrisons Grand Duo, plus works by Menzies, Schoenberg, Takemitsu, and Gershwin/Heifetz. Times and Venues: on 3/16 at 1:10PM and 3/19 at 8:00PM in the Canterbury University Arts Centre free admission); on 3/20 at 12:10 in The Piano Centre for Music and the Arts, Carter Auditorium - $15.00 adult; $5.00 student.

The word chroma describes the purity, hue or saturation of color. Paul Zonns Chroma for oboe and piano evokes just that, a sonic palette of varying intensities and purity to enliven ones senses! Chroma was played by oboist Jared Hauser, and pianist Karen Ann Krieger, in a program of colorful works including Poulencs Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon (with Peter Kolkay), Peter Hopes Four Sketches, and Arnolds Sonatine for Oboe and Piano.

Paul Martin Zonn (1938-2000), was born in Boston, and was internationally heralded as an innovator both in composition and in clarinet performance. His musical influences and interests were diverse. His music is published by Media Press, Sonic Arts Editions, and the American Composers Alliance.

The acclaimed countertenor Darryl Taylor will be performing a solo recital in New York City, at National Opera Center, on April 3 at 7:30pm. He will sing several New York premieres, songs, many of which were composed for him, by Rosanna Scalfi Marcello, Juliana Hall, Lori Laitman, Robert Owens, Jacqueline Hairston, H. Leslie Adams, and Maria Corley.
The recital is presented by the Hampsong Foundation with help from American Composers Alliance, in conjunction with Opera Noir. The extraordinary pianist accompanying Mr. Taylor will be Maria Thompson Corley, with Jennifer Peterson, harpsichord, and Ezra Seltzer, baroque cello. THIS THE EVENT IS FREE. Help us spread the word for this post-Eastertide celebration! Hope to see you there!

National Opera Center
Scorca Hall
330 7th Avenue, betw 28-29

April 3rd, 7:30pm
No reservations - seating on fcfs basis