Archived News and Events

The Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music has presented the works of contemporary composers, including the Festivals composers-in-residence, guest composers, and top participants, since 1965. All performances, 7:30 PM at Studzinski Recital Hall, Bowdoin College. All seats general admission. Suggested donation $10.

On July 28th, music of Maine composer Elliott Schwartz - Vienna Dreams for clarinet, viola, and piano - is scheduled for performance.

The New England Conservatory Chamber Orchestra, with Donald Palma, conductor, will perform Down to a Sunless Sea by David Froom, for string orchestra, on October 17th. Other works on the program include Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48, and Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op. 110a.

Jordan Hall
New England Conservatory
7:30pm
Free

Join us as we celebrate the music of composer Elliott Schwartz, in honor of his 80th birthday year. Guest artists scheduled to perform include pianists John McDonald, George Lopez, and Blair McMillen; bassist Doug Balliett, flutist Emi Ferguson; ensemble counter)induction; Marina Kifferstein, violinist; percussionist Christopher Graham; and violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved.

Symphony Space Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
New York, NY

Wed. Sept. 21, 2016
7:30pm
Free Admission, no tickets required

Reception following the concert at Thalia Cafe

Help support this concert in honor of Elliott's 80th Birthday, as well as a studio recording of the concert works to be released by the end of 2016 - with your helpful donation to the Elliott Schwartz Music Fund:

Bascom Little Fund, a philanthropic organization celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, presents a Gala Concert celebrating great Cleveland area composers of the past, present and future, on Sept. 17th at 7:30pm, at CSU, Drinko Hall. "For You There Is No Song" and "The Return from Town" from Five Millay Songs by H. Leslie Adams will be performed. This event is co-sponsored by WCLV, Cleveland Public Library, and the Western Reserve Historical Society. There will be a champagne reception following the concert.

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Bascom Little Fund. Several of last years grantees are helping to celebrate this milestone with special programming in their current season showcasing the support of the Bascom Little Fund and what it has done for composers, their music, performers, ensembles, audiences and the greater arts community over the past 50 years.

Leslie Adams (b. 1932) was the winner of the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Born in Cleveland, he attended school in California, andserved many years as a choral conductor, show musical director, and educator. His unique music touches a wide variety of musical tastes and preferences. His stage work BLAKE was featured on the VOX Showcase of New York City Opera, and on the National Opera Association programs. His art songs have been sung by leading artists worldwide, in many languages. His orchestral works have been performed by the Prague Radio Symphony, Iceland Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and Indianapolis Symphony, among others.

The Bascom Little Fund is a charitable trust created to support the work of Northeast Ohio Composers. This trust was created for the promotion through the media of concerts, publications, recordings, and otherwise, of serious and semi-popular music, newly composed and performed in or near Cleveland, Ohio.

Bascom Little (1910-1965) was a Cleveland architect and amateur composer who studied composition with Donald Erb at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was deeply concerned about the difficulty of modern composers getting their music performed. His home included a concert facility and many performances of works by local composers were held there. After he died, his wife determined to perpetuate his memory and interests by creating a fund to enable performances and recordings of regional composers in order to promote their music.

Mezzo-soprano DAnna Fortunato, an admired favorite on the international concert stage, will celebrate Maine composers in a concert at the UMaine School of Performing Arts, with esteemed colleagues Peter H. Bloom, multiple flutes; Thomas Hill, clarinet; and Mary Jane Rupert, piano and harp. The program, Mostly Maine Composers, will be a tribute to Elliott Schwartz in his 80th year, and will honor other Maine composers Beth Wiemann, Richard Nelson, Elizabeth Vercoe and Michael Viens.

Tickets are $9, or free with a valid student MaineCard, and available online. For more information or to request a disability accommodation, call 207.581.4703.
The performance also will be held at 3 p.m., Sept. 24 at the University of Maine at Augusta.

The unique program will feature the premiere of Dividend (2016, for voice, flute, clarinet and piano), written for the occasion by Beth Wiemann, chair of the Music Department at UMaine School of Performing Arts. Also being performed: Souvenir for Clarinet and Piano (1990) and Soliloquy III for Solo Flute by Elliott Schwartz (2015, written for Peter H. Bloom); Play of Light (2010, for Bloom and Rupert: flute, piccolo, bass flute, and harp) by Richard Nelson, professor of music at the University of Maine at Augusta; Ah, Winged Muse and other songs by Michael Viens; As It Fell Upon a Day for (voice, flute, and clarinet) by Aaron Copland; Kleemation (2003, flute and piano) by Elizabeth Vercoe and Four Fragments from the Canterbury Tales (voice, flute, clarinet, and piano) by Lester Trimble.

Ensemble Mise-en Festival 2016 - this week, starting Wednesday, featuring a gaggle of more than 30 composers from all over the world. On Friday, trombone soloist Mark Broschinsky will perform an unusual work by Robert Carl - Updraft for tenor trombone and 9 other trombones pre-recorded. Composer notes that "all the pitches are natural harmonics off fixed positions of the slide, so it has a very open and striking sound, basically nothing but overtones (but a lot of them!)." The concert is 6 PM (note the time!) on this coming Friday June 24, at Scandinavia House (58 Park Ave, Manhattan).

In total, mise-en music festival will feature four curated concerts, one marathon concert (total 6 hours, comprising 6 sectional concerts), and two workshops.

Following the success of last years MISE-EN Festival, ensemble mise-en is enthusiastic and excited to present another festival of music by some incredibly talented composers from all over the world. Last years festival featured primarily pieces that already composed, but this year will include world premieres written specifically for ensemble mise-en. This festival is not just a series of performances it as a composer-performer community event developed through mise-ens close engagement to each composer involved.

ENSEMBLE MISE-EN is a New York-based contemporary music collective led by composer Moon Young HA. Comprised of talented young musicians, our personnel strive to bring a repertoire of challenging new sounds to diverse audiences. We wish to impart 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.