April 29th 5PM, at Mark Morris Dance Center, Ekmeles opens Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival with a performance of 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.
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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.
May 27th 7:30PM, at the crypt of Church of the Intercession, Ekmeles sings the world premieres of new works written for them. Max and vax proof required for entry.
Hannah Kendall’s this is but an oration of loss sets words from Ezekiel as well as M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, weaving together the voices with harmonicas and music boxes, and images of bones and tendons.
Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece 36 follows on the ensemble’s lauded recording of her 3 Scenes from Sleep. Since that collaboration, Gee has further developed her idiosyncratic and idiomatic vocal techniques to specifically explore the timbres of Ekmeles’s performers, resulting in a deep and characterful new work. The commission of this work has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Fredrik Rasten’s Harmony for Six Voices explores subtle variations of tuning, rocking back and forth between two different tonal centers in an exploration of the composer’s work in microtonality as a composer and part of the Harmonic Space Orchestra in Berlin. Julie Zhu’s Empty House explores tuning through a hand drawn alternative notation, in homage to R. Murray Schafer’s Snowforms. The piece consists of wave after wave of sound, suspended and floating. Finally, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s Green pairs a vocal quartet with small hand percussion, dissecting a miniature madrigal in characterful and lyrical fashion.
Hannah Kendall – this is but an oration of loss (2022) WP
Erin Gee – Mouthpiece 36 (2021) WP
Fredrik Rasten – Harmony for six voices (2017/19/21) WP
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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.
April 7that the Cathedral of St. John in Albuquerque, NM, and April 9th at St. Peter’s Church in Chelsea, New York, Ekmeles performs works from the UNM Robb Composers Symposium.
Works by members of Ekmeles will be performed alongside works by world premieres of composers of the UNM Robb Composers’ Symposium.
Charlotte Mundy – New Work (2022) WP
Jeffrey Gavett – Waves (2019)
Karola Obermüller – Mass:Distance:Time (2010/2016)
Peter Gilbert – As the waters began to rise (2022) WP
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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.
March 18th, 7PM at Merkin Hall, Ekmeles performs in the program Forest Song as part of the UCMF.
Ekmeles will sing alongside four flutes and percussion in a concert revealing contemporary composers’ preoccupation with the natural world and the myths that have grown from the mysterious settings of Ukrainian forests in the North.
Ivan Nebesnyy – Air Music 1/Wind Music
Personnel for concert
Joy Tamayo, soprano
Kate Maroney, mezzo soprano
Tomás Cruz, tenor
Steven Hrycelak, bass
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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.
March 4th 8PM, at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, presented by the Americas Society, Ekmeles performs works of the Americas.
Ekmeles performs works by composers of the Americas focused on language and communication. Marc Sabat’s Seeds of Skies Alibis is the most ambitious and largest-scale microtonal work that Ekmeles has yet commissioned, stretching 40+ minutes of complex pitch ratios to describe the origin of the world through Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Paired with this will be, Hilda Paredes’s Fragmentos de Altazor, setting Vicente Huidobro’s metaphysical text; portions of Mauricio Kagel’s Der Turm zu Babel, telling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel in many different languages; and 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Tania León’s De-Orishas, sparkling in its evocation of a variety of musical styles.
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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 2021-2022 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, and the generosity of private donors.
Saturday, January 22nd, 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
Baldwin Giang – New Work (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 2021-2022 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, and the generosity of private donors.
October 30th at 8PM, Ekmeles is presented by Qubit New Music at Riverside Church Theater
CREDO envisions a contemporary mass celebrating our technoreligion, as we congregate by algorithm, confess through our phones, and put our memories and hopes in the Cloud. This collaboration between composer Alec Hall, video artist Bernhard Fasenfest, and poet Vanessa Place draws upon user data and harvested media.
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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, and the generosity of private donors.
This program is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and administered by LMCC; and funding from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation and administered by LMCC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
November 20th at 7:30PM, Ekmeles returns to live performance at Our Saviour’s Atonement, with a program of microtonal music. Vaccination and masks required. The concert will then be repeated at Bowling Green State University November 22nd.
James Weeks – Primo Libro
The program includes a world premiere by Shawn Jaeger, playing with the boundaries between words and their meanings. James Weeks’s Primo Libro explores the origins of the madrigal through engagement with Arcadelt’s first book of madrigals, setting them in a 31-tone division of the octave. Nirmali Fenn’s Pokój w pokoju takes a different approach to microtonality, setting each half of the ensemble in a different tuning system. Stuart Saunders Smith presents a jewel of a miniature with the duet Light. Finally, Anthony Braxton’s Composition no. 255 presents a rich and monumental environment for performance, blurring lines between interpretation and improvisation.
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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, and the generosity of private donors.
This program is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and administered by LMCC; and funding from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation and administered by LMCC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
October 21 at 7:30PM at the Winter Garden in Brookfield Place, Ekmeles performs as part of John Luther Adams’s Veils and Vesper.
Experience an immersive sound installation within the Winter Garden palm trees as part of Brookfield Place‘s annual music series, New Sounds Live, curated by John Schaefer of WNYC.
The installation titled, Veils and Vesper, is a composition of synthetic sounds by John Luther Adams that is formed by the interactions of a mathematical algorithm and prime numbers to create a sensuous, ever-changing soundscape.
We will sing for one hour during this six-hour installation work for electronics that loops from October 16-24.
Ekmeles’s 2021-2022 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, and the generosity of private donors.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
