12.Apr.2014 Washington Square Ensemble Concert: Cuckson, Hoffman, Karchin, Lee, Oliver

By | March 31, 2014

Washington Square Ensemble performs:

ROBERT CUCKSON Piano Quintet (1993) afiche
ELIZABETH HOFFMAN Silky (2014) Premiere
LOUIS KARCHIN Ancient Scenes (2013) Premiere
YOON-JI LEE 찌리릿 (ZZi-ri-rit) (2013) Premiere
JAIME OLIVER grid1 (2014) Premiere 

Please join us for our second concert on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 8 PM at the Tenri Cultural Institute. The Washington Square Ensemble presents premieres in a fascinating range of musical styles by some of the most vital composers working in New York. Composer ROBERT CUCKSON’s Piano Quintet is a Bergsonian meditation on the creation of artistic form, starting from inchoate inspiration, and ending with retrospection. It references paintings by Soulages, Lichtenstein, Newman, and Fairweather. ELIZABETH HOFFMAN‘s Silky is a series of timbre studies that deal with ideas of reflection and projection, and composite sound images in space. Ancient Scenes, an extended vocal-instrumental cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble by LOUIS KARCHIN, will receive its world premiere performance with soprano Sharon Harms.  Three instrumental movements frame four vocal ones based on poetry of the late Nobel Prize-winning poet, Seamus Heaney.  Korean composer YOON-JI LEE, based in Brooklyn, took her motivation for composing this piece from the Korean word 찌리리(zzi-riri), meaning “electrifying.” Grid1 marks a return to acoustic instruments for composer JAIME OLIVER, combining them with electronic processes. The players perform with a computer system that listens and interacts, a system that the players only partially control.