Last May, this was the first show we had to cancel. Now, masked up and remote, we’re excited to bring it to you! The show will go live at 5:30PM on May 8th, and stay up for a week following.
First off, we’ll have an opening set by composer and pianist Courtney Bryan, from whose work our concert takes its title.
Then we move to Ekmeles’s portion of the show: Wolfgang Rihm’s Sieben Passionstexte is a wrenching set of seven Latin texts relating to the biblical Passion, or crucifixion story. Weaving between evocations of renaissance polyphony and stirring dissonance, the piece exists in a unique stylistic world. Courtney Bryan’s A Time For Everything, written for Ekmeles, is a set works on biblical texts drawing from the composer’s experience as a New Orleans-born jazz pianist and church musician. The works range in harmonic language from austere atonal shimmers to rich chorales. Shades of Aka pygmy music via Herbie Hancock, funeral wails, and groans mix with more traditional classical vocalism in an expression of the composer’s diverse musical interests. Finally, the late radical gay Black American composer Julius Eastman is represented with his 1989 work Our Father. Built on a sacred text of his own devising, the work echoes ancient plainchant traditions while reaching towards the future.
- Courtney Bryan – A Time for Everything (2013) Ekmeles commission
- Wolfgang Rihm – Sieben Passions-Texte (2001-2006)
- Julius Eastman – Our Father (1989)
Personnel for concert
- Charlotte Mundy, soprano
- Elisa Sutherland, mezzo soprano
- Jonathan May, countertenor
- Nathaniel Barnett, tenor
- Nickolas Karageorgiou, tenor
- Jeffrey Gavett, baritone and director
- Steven Hrycelak, bass
- Charles Mueller, sound and video engineer
Ekmeles’s 2020-2021 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 Andrew Cuomo 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.
Ekmeles performs the World Premiere of James Weeks’s Primo Libro, the U.S. Premiere of Cassandra Miller’s Guide and other works on the theme of personal and spiritual longing.
Ekmeles performs the World Premiere of Christopher Trapani’s End Words, a Chamber Music America commission. It will be paired with the U.S. premiere of a work by Joanna Bailie, as well as Ekmeles commissions by Courtney Bryan and Zosha di Castri
