Nkeiru Okoye: Invitation to a Die-In (2016) - Premiere
For baritone and chamber ensemble
Text by David Cote
I Want to Go Home (arranged by Jessie Montgomery, 2016) - Premiere
There Is a Balm (arranged by Trevor Weston, 2016) - Premiere
For baritone and chamber ensemble
Alvin Singleton: Jasper Drag (2000)
For clarinet, piano, and violin
Valerie Coleman: Wish (2015)
For flute and piano
Trevor Weston: Shape Shifter (The Angry Bluesman) (2011)
For cello
Courtney Bryan: Etude II: Secondline for Black Love;
Piano Etudes: Carnival for Unity (2003)
For piano
Moderated by WQXR’s Weekday Evening host, Terrance McKnight
Ensemble
Pi, the new-music collective praised for its socially conscious
programming, will present a concert of commissions and new works in
solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Since 2003, Ensemble
Pi’s Peace Project has sought to create a bridge between classical
contemporary music and some of today’s most pressing social and
political issues through the commissioning of works and collaborations
with artists, writers and journalists. Past concerts from the Peace
Project have addressed issues such as mass incarceration, suppression of
the media, South African apartheid, environmentalism and the Iraq War,
among others.
“Today, the level of despair, frustration and
anger caused by systemic racism and police brutality, and documented by
graphic videos of witnesses, is beyond any verbal discretion,” Artistic
Director and pianist Idith Meshulam says. “Ensemble Pi strongly believes
in the need for a more just society. With this concert, it wishes to
mourn the dead and celebrate the living by presenting the work of living
composers from Black and Brown communities, who have responded
musically to this painful situation.”
Performers: Barry Crowford, flute; Alexis Gerlach cello; Karl Kramer, french horn; Damian Norfleet, baritone; Idith Meshulam, piano; Moran Katz, clarinet; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin; andMarlon Daniel, conductor.
Ensemble Pi’s Black Lives Matter will
take place at Roulette, located at 509 Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn on
Saturday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and
seniors). To order tickets
Program:
Nkeiru Okoye: Invitation to a Die-In (2016) – Premiere
For baritone and chamber ensemble
Text by David Cote
Commissioned by Ensemble Pi, Nkeiru Okoye’s Invitation to a Die-In is
a sung story, which is a direct musical response to the recent murders
of unarmed Black men at the hands of police officers or vigilantes.
Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner were all stalked and
harassed before being shot or choked to death. In each case, the jury
returned a verdict of innocence or failed to indict an officer. The
nationwide outrage sparked by these incidents fuels the piece. An
African-American male singer tells the story from the perspective of the
victims, their families, the judges, police officers and citizens, on
all sides of the issue. Musically, it is a stark, dramatic portrait of
African-American men being hunted and haunted by the past. www.nkeiruokoye.com
Two spirituals:
I Want to Go Home (arranged by Jessie Montgomery, 2016) - Premiere
There Is a Balm (arranged by Trevor Weston, 2016) - Premiere
For baritone and chamber ensemble
Ensemble
Pi commissioned composers Jessie Montgomery and Trevor Weston to
arrange two spirituals for baritone and seven instruments.
Originally from the Southeastern area of the U.S., I Want to Go Home does
not often appear in the mainstream canon of African-American
spirituals. The melody is presented in a minimalist manner: in whole
notes on one line, and the text listed beneath in the manor of a cantus firmus.www.jessiemontgomery.com
There Is a Balm imagines
a better existence, where the problems of the world are healed. The
music reflects the stasis of the “balm,” an oasis of peace, with
sustained notes in the opening gesture of the arrangement (drop and)
throughout this work. www.trevorweston.com
Alvin Singleton: Jasper Drag (2000)
For clarinet, violin, and piano
Singleton’s Jasper Drag refers
to an incident on June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, in which three white
men dragged a black man to his death after chaining him to the back of a
pickup truck. “The composition is not intended to tell a story,”
Singleton says, “or even to evoke images. Jasper Drag is meant to be a
marker on the collective memory of a nation still growing.” The work,
commissioned by Michigan State University and the Phillips Collection
for the Verdehr Trio, is inscribed to the memory of James Byrd, Jr., the
murder victim. www.alvinsingleton.com
Valerie Coleman: Wish (2015)
For flute and piano
Valerie Coleman’s Wish is
based upon the Middle Passage: the selling, trading and transporting of
enslaved Africans to the New World, as referenced in the poem of the
same title by Fred D’Aguiar. The work is full of moments that allow both
flute and piano to interpret rhythm and melody as if it were a djembe
drum or soulful wailing voice. The different sections are marked by
phrases like “Defiant” or “Chaotic,” allowing the music to be much more
than a tempo or mood change. www.vcolemanmusic.com
Trevor Weston: Shape Shifter (The Angry Bluesman) (2011)
For cello
Trevor Weston composed Shape Shifter from
the aesthetic vantage point of a machine. “My guiding belief was that
machines could not create subtle changes in expression like humans, so
their expressivity would come from the juxtaposition of contrasting
musical ideas,” Weston says. “Two ideas merged: blues-like performance
practices, foot stomping (as if playing blues guitar or piano), along
with music that seems to toggle between different ideas mechanically.
The Shape Shifter is an angry bluesman because most American
Pop music still relies on the legacy of the blues—although the
contributions of the solitary itinerant Bluesman seem to have been
forgotten.” www.trevorweston.com
Courtney Bryan: Etude II: Secondline for Black Love; Piano Etudes: Carnival for Unity (2003)
For piano
Written as a set of four pieces for piano, these works were inspired by György Ligeti’s Piano Etudes, as well as by various forms of percussion from West African and Brazil. www.courtneybryan.com
This
concert was made possible in part by public funds from the Manhattan
Community Arts Fund, and the Fund for Creative Communities supported by
the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as through the generous
support of individual donors.
Ensemble Pi, a
socially conscious new-music group founded in 2002, features composers
whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of
the world’s current and critical issues. For more than thirteen years,
Ensemble Pi has presented an annual Peace Project concert, commissioning
new works and collaborating with visual artists, writers, actors and
journalists such as William Kentridge, Naomi Wolf and David Riker. The
ensemble was in residence for four American music festivals presented by
the American Composers Alliance and now collaborates with the APNM.
Symphony Space presented Ensemble Pi in birthday celebrations for
composers Gunther Schuller and Krzysztof Penderecki. A multi-year
collaboration with composer Elias Tanenbaum resulted in a CD of his
chamber music, Keep Going, released by Parma Recordings in 2010 and reviewed by Gramophone as
“a touching tribute to Elias Tanenbaum that is played with conviction
and verve.” It was followed by a second CD of the music Laura Kaminsky,
“played with warmth and variety” (American Record Guide). Ensemble Pi is
currently working on the third CD. www.ensemble-pi.org
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