World premiere of
Forgotten Voices
celebrates Music Kitchen’s 15th Season
15 noted composers set words of homeless men and women to create a unique song cycle
Presented in Association with Carnegie Hall
"The [Music Kitchen] concerts have an air of authenticity and directness that sometimes does not exist in concert halls." -
The New York Times
Music Kitchen
, an organization founded and led by concert violinist and entrepreneur Kelly Hall-Tompkins, will make its debut at
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, May 21, 2020 at 7:30 p.m
. The program, presented in association with Carnegie Hall, features the world premiere of
Forgotten Voices,
a song cycle created by 15 noted composers. The text consists of words
written by the audience at homeless shelters coast to coast in reaction
to the Music Kitchen concerts they experienced. Tickets are $35,
available at
CarnegieHall.org; details are below.
The
composers contributing works to this unique song cycle represent a
diversity of genders, cultures and backgrounds. The list includes
Pulitzer Prize winners and internationally renowned figures alongside
emerging artists and Ms. Hall-Tompkins herself: Courtney Bryan, Jon
Grier, Gabriel Kahane, James Lee III, Tania León, Beata Moon, Paul
Moravec, Angélica Negrón, Kevin Puts, Steve Sandberg, Jeff Scott, Carlos
Simon, Errollyn Wallen, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
In
addition to the violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, the featured performers
include Allison Charney, soprano; Adrienne Danrich, mezzo soprano; Jesse
Blumberg, baritone; Mark Risinger, bass; Ling Ling Huang, violin;
Andrew Gonzalez, viola; Alexis Gerlach and Peter Seidenberg, cellos;
with additional artists to be announced at a later date.
Kelly
Hall-Tompkins founded Music Kitchen in 2005, seeing a need to bring the
joy of live music to people in homeless shelters. Hall-Tompkins and her
Music Kitchen colleagues – top-notch international concert performers –
have given over 100 concerts at homeless shelters around the world. At
each performance, members of the audience are invited to write down
their comments and emotions, and these words, collected over 14 years
now form the text of the 15 songs in
Forgotten Voices
.
“By
setting the life experiences and hardships of homeless men and women to
music by some of the world’s greatest composers, we bring voice to the
voiceless in an unprecedented way, and share the triumphs, hopes and
humanity that exists in us all,” says Ms. Hall-Tompkins. Through the
Forgotten Voices
project, we hope to inspire concert-goers to learn more about the forgotten people they may overlook in their own communities.”
Some
of Kelly Hall-Tompkins' inspiration comes from a particularly tragic
story that touched her deeply. Just a day before Music Kitchen’s concert
at a shelter in Los Angeles, news arrived that a homeless woman well
known to many in that community had passed away. Ms. Hall-Tompkins said,
“When we decided to dedicate that day’s performance to this woman, the
clients were deeply moved by the gesture. The director of the shelter told me that
one of the biggest fears among the people they work with is living and dying in the shadows of an uncaring society.”
The
featured cycle is comprised of songs that have been premiered in
shelters each month since the beginning of 2019. The world premiere of
the complete work, entitled
Forgotten Voices
, will be performed by an ensemble of outstanding string players and vocalists.
Forgotten Voices
is commissioned by Music Kitchen with support from Carnegie Hall. The
evening will include also include Q&A from the stage led by NBC
senior correspondent Harry Smith. Full program information is listed
below.
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