Reparations NOW! is Ensemble Pi’s new project, inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ congressional testimony and Ibram X. Kendi’s best-seller book, How to Be an Antiracist –
both of which offer powerful and compelling arguments in support of
reparations for the African-American community. Focusing on social
justice, the new-music collective Ensemble Pi has presented concerts in
solidarity with Black Lives Matter and opposing police brutality and
systemic racism since 2015. This new project features works from a
diverse group of talented composers, including world premieres by Allison Loggins-Hull, Angélica Negrón, and Trevor Weston, and a composition by Courtney Bryan – all commissioned by Ensemble Pi. It also includes Georg Friedrich Haas’ I can’t breathe (In memoriam Eric Garner), a musical improvisation, Requiem for Elijah,
based on the last words of Elijah McClain, and the reading of an
excerpt from Kendi's book, narrated by Damian Norfleet with
percussion accompaniment.
Reparations Now! is
presented by The Center at West Park, where Ensemble Pi are
artists-in-residence this fall. The concert premiere will be streamed on
Thursday, October 29 at 7 pm. This streaming premiere is free with a
suggested donation of $10. The
Center at West Park is a community performing arts center based in the
historic West Park Presbyterian Church, a New York City landmark. This
concert is presented as part of the Center’s new Virtual Performance
residency program, which provides artists with safe and socially-distant
space for media production, marketing and fundraising support, 100% of
the proceeds from ticket sales and donations, and connection to an
interdisciplinary creative community. Learn more at www.centeratwestpark.org.
PROGRAM: Courtney Bryan: Elegy (2018) Piano, clarinet, violin, cello
Georg Friedrich Haas: I can’t breathe (In memoriam Eric Garner) (2014) Solo trumpet
Allison Loggins-Hull: Pattern (2020, World Premiere) With text from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow Piano, flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, cello
Angélica Negrón: Conversación a distancia (2020, World Premiere) Piano, clarinet, percussion, violin, cello, accordion
Trevor Weston: Pinkster Kings (2020, World Premiere) Piano, clarinet, percussion, violin, cello, narrator and conductor Requiem for Elijah (2020) Improvisation for any combination of instruments and/or voices, based on Elijah McClain’s last words.
Reading of an excerpt from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist Narrator and percussion Idith Meshulam (piano), Allison Loggins- Hull (flute), Moran Katz (clarinet), Wayne Dumaine (trumpet), Bill Trigg (percussion), Airi Yoshioka (violin), Alexis Gerlach (cello), and Damian Norfleet (narrator), with Trevor Weston (conductor).
About the program: Courtney Bryan’s Elegy (2018) was written as a response to Abel Meeropol’s composition Strange Fruit. Made famous by the iconic 1939 Billie Holiday recording, Strange Fruit is
a protest song symbolizing the brutality and racism of the practice of
lynching in the United States in the early part of the 20th century.
Divided in three sections – “A lament,” “spirit journey,” and “the
ascent” – Bryan’s Elegy seeks to honor the spirits of
past victims, as well as present ones, through imagining the transition
of the spirit from the body to the beyond. I can’t Breathe (In memoriam Eric Garner) (2014) Georg Friedrich Haas is
a solo trumpet in memory of Eric Garner who died in the NYC borough of
Staten Island, after being placed in a chokehold by police. It begins
with a dirge within the world of twelve tones; the intervals start
contracting until the song suffocates, ending in a sixth-tone scale. The Pattern (2020) by composer/flutist Allison Loggins-Hull is a piece for chamber ensemble which features texts from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow projected
through video. The composition serves as a case for reparations,
focusing on the white supremacy’s toxic pattern of blocking Black
Americans from progress since the end of the Civil War through
Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and Black Lives
Matter. The music moves into a section expressing the hope and optimism
felt by Black Americans but also the looming and inevitable attack from
white supremacy. It suggests that history will repeat itself and putting
an end to this abuse is a much needed and overdue form of reparations. Conversatión a distancia (2020) by Puerto Rican-born composer/multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón is inspired by Conversación,
a danza from Puerto Rican composer, Juan Morel Campos (1857-1896).
Using field recordings from Ponce, where Campos was born, the piece is
also motivated by the composer’s personal realization of the erasure of
Afro-latinx in Puerto Rico, Latin America and the diaspora, and the
histories lost along the way. With Pinkster Kings (2020), composer Trevor Weston delves
into the little-known Afro-Dutch traditions in New York and New jersey
in the 17th-19th centuries. During the colonial period, the Dutch
celebration of Pentecost led to a week-long Black celebration, which
included a procession of the king and dancing. Using historical texts
with music, Weston simulates an imagined celebration of Pinkster
(Anglicization of the Dutch word for Pentecost) to illuminate the
important contributions of Africans to the formation of New York. Composers and performers will come together for the improvisation, Requiem for Elijah,
honoring Elijah McClain who died in August 2019 after being placed in a
chokehold by police and sedated by paramedics. The piece will include
McClain’s last words: “I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here. My name
is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an
introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I
don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting.” 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.
Bios: 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 eighteen
years, Ensemble Pi 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 Gramophoneas
“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 Courtney Bryan,
a native of New Orleans, is a pianist and composer whose music is in
conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types
of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and
hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan's
compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the
challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan’s work has
been presented in a wide range of venues, including Carnegie Hall,
Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, The Stone, Roulette Intermedium, La MaMa
Experimental Theatre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery
of Art, Blue Note Jazz Club, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, Bethany and Abyssinian Baptist Churches, New Orleans
Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Ojai Music Festival. Her compositions
have been performed by the Jacksonville Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic
Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Colorado Springs Philharmonic,
International Contemporary Ensemble, La Jolla Symphony & Chorus,
Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Aperture Duo, Duo Noire, Ekmeles, Ensemble Pi,
New York Jazzharmonic, Spektral String Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Quince
Vocal Ensemble, Jennifer Koh, and Kelly Hall-Tompkins. She has two
recordings, Quest for Freedom (2007) and This Little Light of Mine (2010) and has a third recording in progress, Sounds of Freedom (2020). Bryan is currently writing an opera, Awakening,
a collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Charlotte
Brathwaite, Helga Davis, Cauleen Smith, Sharan Strange, Sunder
Ganglani, and Matthew Morrison, which will premiere in 2021. Bryan was
the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019
Bard College Freehand Fellow, and is currently a 2019-20 recipient of
the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition and a 2020 United
States Artists Fellow. She has academic degrees from Oberlin
Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University
(DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed an appointment as
Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of African American
Studies at Princeton University. She is currently an Assistant Professor
of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, and
the Mary Carr Patton Composer-in-Residence with the Jacksonville
Symphony. Allison Loggins-Hull is
a flutist, composer and producer with an active career performing and
creating music of multiple genres. In 2009, she and Nathalie Joachim
co-founded the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix. Loggins-Hull has
performed at The Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Carnegie
Hall, Orchestra Hall (Chicago), World Cafe Live, and several other major
venues and festivals around the world. She has performed or recorded
with a wide-range of artists including the International
Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, Lizzo, The National Sawdust Ensemble
and others. With Flutronix, she has released two full studio albums (Flutronix and 2.0), a live album (Live From the Attucks Theatre), an EP (City of Breath)
and is signed to Village Again Records in Japan. As a member of The
Re-Collective Orchestra, Allison was co-principal flutist on the
soundtrack to Disney’s 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” working closely
with Hans Zimmer. As a composer, Loggins-Hull has written for Flutronix,
Julia Bullock and others and has been commissioned by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, Alarm Will Sound and The
Library of Congress. She was a co-producer of Nathalie Joachim’s
celebrated album “Fanm d’Ayiti,” which was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY
for Best World Music Album. In support of her work, Allison has been
awarded grants from New Music USA and a fellowship at The Hermitage
Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida. She is on the flute faculty of The
John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University and a
teaching artist at The Juilliard School’s Global Ventures. Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes
music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well
as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Negrón has been commissioned by
the Bang on a Can All-Stars, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth
Chorus, Kronos Quartet, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra,
and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Her music has been
performed at the Kennedy Center, the Ecstatic Music Festival, EMPAC,
Bang on a Can Marathon, and the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial, and
her film scores have been heard numerous times at the Tribeca Film
Festival. A founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún, she
is currently a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center (CUNY),
focusing on the work of Meredith Monk for her dissertation. She's a
teaching artist for New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program
working with young learners on creative composition projects. Upcoming
premieres include works for the LA Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony
Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus,
and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative. Negrón continues to perform
and compose for film. Trevor Weston is
a composer whose honors include the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the
University of California, Berkeley; a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and residencies from the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony. Carnegie
Hall co-commissioned Weston’s Flying Fish, with the American Composers Orchestra, for its 125 Commissions Project. The Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered Weston’s Dig It, for the Ecstatic Music Festival in NYC earlier this year. Weston’s work Juba for Strings won
the 2019 Sonori/New Orleans Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition.
Weston co-authored with Olly Wilson, “Duke Ellington as a Cultural Icon”
in the Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington,
published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Weston is currently
Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Drew University
in Madison, NJ. |
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