Monday, May 1, 2023, at 7:30PM, Ekmeles joins with Sandbox Percussion to perform world premiere works by students at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Music at the University of Chicago. This is a reschedule of a twice-COVID-delayed program!
Baldwin Giang – our chinatown, their chinatown (2021) WP
Yuting Tan – Fire and Spice (2021) WP
Justin Weiss – My Life in Branches (2021) WP
Kari Watson – [ of desire (2021) WP
Maria Kaoutzani – More Silent (Than Ever) (2021) WP
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
May 23 2023 at 7:30PM, at DiMenna Center’s Cary Hall, Ekmeles sings Verfluchung, a program featuring a world premiere by Corie Rose Soumah, the live premieres two works only previously recorded by Joshua Alvarez Mastel and Katherine Balch, a recent Ekmeles commission by Erin Gee, and the title work: a monumental trio by Mathias Spahlinger.
Mathias Spahlinger’s verfluchung is a searing 30 minute tour de force for three vocalists playing small wooden percussion. The title translates to a ‘cursing’, and Li Tai-Pei’s text ‘cursed be war, cursed be the work of weapons’ is intoned, broken apart, and repeated endlessly, in a powerful cry for peace. The titanic structure of the piece is built on prime numbers, especially twin primes, separated by two. E.g. 107 and 109.
Joshua Alvarez Mastel’s animal takes a fragile and intimate soundworld of subtle vocalization, and makes it mechanically intense via the means of close amplification. The composer’s performance note for the piece implores the singers to ‘focus their performance inwardly, as if singing to each other in a darkened cellar’. Gossamer threads of voice at the edge of control are gently passed back and forth across the ensemble in space, with each voice placed in a single speaker surrounding the audience.
Corie Rose Soumah’s like a frog on the road to it will explore aspects of her biracial identity, and will feature immersive, uninterrupted electronics throughout, making use of a complex 6-speaker setup surrounding the audience.
Katherine Balch’s forgetting takes as its text an excerpt from Katie Ford’s Estrangement, dealing with forgetting as a labor and a practice, a kind of inverse of learning. Stuttering and whispered vocal figures are complemented by the clicking of toy ratchets played by each member of the ensemble. The work grows toward a gentle chorale, only to be overwhelmed by the crescendo of the ratchets.
Finally Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XXXVI, written for Ekmeles after working with the composer to record her Three Scenes from Sleep, and with the support of a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, skitters and pops along with Gee’s idiosyncratic and idiomatic vocal gestures. Despite the unfamiliar materials, the subtle play of repetition and variation draws the listener forward through the intricate web of voices.
Corie Rose Soumah – like a frog on the road to it (2023) World Premiere
Katherine Balch – forgetting (2021) Live Premiere
Joshua Alvarez Mastel – animal (2021) Live Premiere
Erin Gee – Mouthpiece XXXVI (2021)
Mathias Spahlinger – verfluchung (1983/85) US Premiere
Total duration of the program is approximately 90 minutes including 10 minute intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
May 11, 2023 at 1:15PM, at the Actor’s Chapel St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, as a part of Midtown Concerts, Ekmeles explores the music of Don Carlo Gesualdo through the lens of lute tuning. The six singers of Ekmeles are joined by Adam Cockerham, lutenist, with whom they will demonstrate the effect that the lute’s tuning had on the expressive qualities of the madrigals. To highlight this quality, a didactic work by Crescentio will be given its modern premiere in contrasting approaches to tuning. Midtown Concerts is a project of Gotham Early Music Scene.
Carlo Gesualdo – Mentre, mia stella miri
Carlo Gesualdo – Sparge la morte al mio Signor nel viso
Simon Crescentio – Tu parti, ohime (modern premiere)
Carlo Gesualdo – Se vi duol il mio duolo
Carlo Gesualdo – Moro, lasso
Carlo Gesualdo – Chiaro risplender suole
Total duration of the program is approximately 45 minutes without intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
Performance details
Date:Thursday, May 11th 2023
Time:1:15pm
City:Ekmeles in
New York
Venue:The Actor’s Chapel St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church
March 10, 2023 at 8PM, at the DiMenna Center’s Cary Hall, Ekmeles sings the world premieres of works written for them by members of the international composer collective Tesselat.
Hailing from Canada, China, France, Iran, Japan, and Poland, the composers bring a variety of backgrounds and influences to their music. The works take inspiration from such varied sources as the ripples of goldfish in a pond, Berio’s Sequenza III, an Old High German magical incantation, and the memory of being lost on a mountain.
Ramin Akhavijou – ttttt (2023) World Premiere
Jean-Patrick Besingrand – La colline sans nom est perdue dans le brume (2023) World Premiere
Amy Brandon – Erratics (2022) US Premiere
Amy Brandon – Night is the Darkest Weather (2022) US Premiere
Chatori Shimizu – Kingyo Obsession (2023) World Premiere of new arrangement
Tomasz Skweres – Merseburg Charm (2022) World Premiere
Piyawat Louilarpprasert – i.u. (2023) World Premiere
Total duration of the program is approximately 60 minutes without intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
Performance details
Date:Friday, February 3rd 2023
- Saturday, February 4th 2023
Feburary 14th 6PM, at Miller Theatre, Ekmeles performs Karlheinz Stockhausen’s legendary 1969 work Stimmung.
A work that explores the interiority of vowels and the self, Stimmung manages to be utopian, private, universal, spiritual, sexual, goofy, and ecstatic all at once. And we plan to bring it to you every Valentine’s Day.
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Stimmung (1968)
Doors are at 5:30, concert at 6. The duration of the work is approximately 72′ with no intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
April 15, 2023 at 7:30PM, at Saint Peter’s Church in Chelsea, Ekmeles sings Voices Across Time, a program featuring four world premiere commissions, as well as a live premieres of a work previously only recorded during quarantine.
Featuring a diverse range of pieces from five composers, this concert explores themes of memory, impermanence, and the power of the voice across a variety of literary and cultural traditions. From ancient Chinese poetry to science fiction literature, and from traditional Iranian music to Greek mythology, each piece presents a unique and inventive exploration of the human experience.
LI Qi’s flower isn’t flower sets Tang dynasty poetry by 8th-9th century poet BAI Juyi, reaching into the past for an expression of impermanence. Nick Dunston’s Mothership on the other hand goes into the future, taking inspiration from Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis, and building a science fiction hivemind unity from the six voices of the ensemble. Arash Yazdani’s New Work explores the acoustic phenomena of the voice with reference to traditional Iranian music.
Zosha Di Castri’s We live the opposite daring is a kind of vocal timelapse, being written 10 years after her first piece for Ekmeles. It also deals with time and memory in its text, setting various fragments of Sappho, partially redacted by time and decay of sources. In Per Aures Erik Oña builds a kind of 14th century Ars Subtilior polyrhythmic structure, fermented and shifted by the passage of time into strange harmonies and rhythmic loops.
LI Qi – flower isn’t flower (2021) Live Premiere
Nick Dunston – Mothership (2022) World Premiere
Arash Yazdani – New Work (2023) World Premiere
Erik Oña – Per Aures (2019) US Premiere
Zosha Di Castri – We live the opposite daring (2023) World Premiere
Total duration of the program is approximately 60 minutes without intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
Ekmeles sings live premieres of works previously only recorded during quarantine, as well as a US premiere.
Artun Çekem’s Silicone Skin and Fleshy Masses explores a hybrid human/machine sound through the combination of voices and voice-like combinations of sine waves. This electronic world is transformed from partner into antagonist in Jeff Myers’s Advice to a Migraineure, whose pulsing drone evokes the omnipresent dread of someone suffering from migraines. The battle to keep out migraine triggers is expressed as a desire to close out the world and to become a “walled city” in the evocative text by Jennifer de Guzman. Both works are heard here in their live premieres.
Josep Sanz’s King Lear sets text from Act IV, scene 6 of Shakespeare’s late tragedy of succession, as well as a portion of Antigone. The king’s madness is paired with keening recitation of the Sophocles text, reaching across time to join two royal tragedies of power and loss. The US premiere of Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Hin-Nun (White Snow) brings a vision of winter with icy swirling vocal lines, evoking also the traditional color of mourning in Korean culture. We then move from narrative and poetic in the aforementioned works, to the completely abstracted in Anthony Green’s BA4. The vocal mechanism is addressed in component parts in an extended metaphor around the motor cortex’s mapping of our body.
Nina Fukuoka’s fever dream made manifest expresses the anxieties and oddities of early COVID quarantine life, and the composer’s experience of American politics from an outside point of view. She describes it as a “double irony tribute to” among other things, bad taste, nostalgia, pandemic, and -That Person-. Anna-Louise Walton’s the deep glens where they lived filters small vocal sounds through a variety of PVC pipes, creating a watery and evocative texture that ebbs and flows, and earned the composer the International Alliance for Women In Music Choral/Vocal Ensemble prize for 2021. Both works are heard here in their live premieres.
Jeff Myers – Advice to a Migraineure (2019) Live Premiere
Younghi Pagh-Paan – Hin-Nun II / White Snow (2005) US Premiere
Artun Çekem – Silicone Skin and Fleshy Masses (2021) Live Premiere
Josep Sanz – King Lear (2008)
Anthony R. Green – B A 4 (2013) US Premiere
Nina Fukuoka – fever dream made manifest (2021) Live Premiere
Anna-Louise Walton – the deep glens where they lived (2021) Live Premiere
Total duration of the program is approximately 70 minutes without intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize. Ekmeles is a recipient of the 2023 Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Ensemble Prize.
October 28th 2022 at 7:30PM, at the crypt of Church of the Intercession, Ekmeles sings colorful and microtonal works, as well as a world premiere.
Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Hin-Nun II /White Snow brings a vision of winter into our New York fall with icy swirling vocal lines, evoking also the traditional color of mourning in Korean culture. Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis’s salle cinq resonates with the crypt space in a different way, by its gloss on 14th century French music, and vocal writing intended for the Leechkirche in Graz Austria.
Several of our works for the evening involve an extremely proscribed view of the overtone series. Laura Steenberge’s Piriforms takes a single just-intoned harmony and explores all of the shadings of it through vowel shifts, while Frank J. Oteri’s (not) knowing the answer spins out melodies using only overtones 8-15 of a low G, setting a series of sijos by james r. murphy.
Our soprano mezzo baritone and bass have begun building a repertoire of works for quartet within the larger sextet of Ekmeles. Two of those pieces appear on this concert. Nomi Epstein’s piece for voices, heard here in its world premiere, was written by the composer after she heard Ekmeles’s performance of her Four Voices as part of a live broadcast in 2021, on which Rebecca Bruton’s i n s t i t u (appearing here in its second performance) was originally broadcast.
Finally Erin Gee‘s Mouthpiece 36, written for Ekmeles after working with the composer to record her Three Scenes from Sleep, and with the support of a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, skitters and pops along with Gee’s idiosyncratic and idiomatic vocal gestures.
Younghi Pagh-Paan – Hin-Nun II / White Snow (2005) US Premiere
Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis – salle cinq (2018) US Premiere
Laura Steenberge – Piriforms (2010)
Frank J. Oteri – (not) knowing the answer (2015) World Premiere
Nomi Epstein – piece for voices (2021) World Premiere
Rebecca Bruton – i n s t i t u (2021)
Erin Gee – Mouthpiece 36 (2021)
Total duration of the program is approximately 75 minutes without intermission.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Ekmeles’s 2022-2023 season is made possible with funds from the Amphion Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The New York portion of this program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
