Saturday, October 8, 2016

Ensemble Pi Presents Its 13th Peace Project Concert: Black Lives Matter, Thursday, November 10, 2016, 7:30 p.m. @ Roulette, Brooklyn

Terrance McKnight

Clockwise (from top left): Alvin Singleton (photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey), Nkeiru Okoye (photo by P. Marino), Valerie Coleman, Trevor Weston, Jessie Montgomery, Courtney Bryan (Photo by Elizabeth Leitzell)
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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