For its third concert of the season, Soundings: New Music at the Nasher presents In Return For My Song: Tonalities At Once Ancient and New on Friday, April 24, 2015 at 7:30 pm, featuring works for string quartet and percussion by Bach, Beethoven, Berio, Rzewski, Tan Dun, and Wood featuring percussionist Ian Rosenbaum and the Parker String Quartet.
Soundings Music Director Seth Knopp describes the concert as a sonic adventure that explores the incredible variety of music that can be referred to as “microtonal.” Microtonal music makes use of intervals smaller than the evenly spaced, Western semi-tone, and is used in a wide variety of music; from traditional systems of Indian music and Indonesian gamelan music, to rock and roll and the blues.
“Seth Knopp is always finding means to push the way we understand familiar musical forms by arranging them with instrumentation and interventions that are novel and surprising,” says Director Jeremy Strick. “The way that this Soundings concert pushes our understanding of tonality will underscore the challenge common to contemporary art forms—that is, to contextualize formal contemporary innovations with the history of a medium.”
Of this challenging pairing of percussion and strings for In Return For My Song: Tonalities At Once Ancient and New, Seth Knopp says: “The play of tension and release is a vitally important element in our experience of music and tonality—the hierarchical relationship between pitches or harmonies is one framework that guides us. Much is asked of an audience experiencing new work with sounds that are less familiar, but the ear is quick and can adapt when context is there to guide us.”
About Ian Rosenbaum
Praised for his “excellent” and “precisely attuned” performances by the New York Times, percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. He made his Kennedy Center debut in 2009 and later that year garnered a special prize created for him at the Salzburg International Marimba Competition. Mr. Rosenbaum joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program in 2012 as only the second percussionist they have selected in their history. He has appeared at the Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Chamber Music Northwest, Bridgehampton and Music@Menlo festivals. Continuing his passionate advocacy for contemporary music, this season Mr. Rosenbaum will premiere new works by Rex Isenberg, Thomas Kotcheff, Robert Sirota, and Alex Weiser as well as perform a program of percussion music with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and Chicago.
Mr. Rosenbaum is a member of Sandbox Percussion, Le Train Bleu, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Novus NY, Time Travelers and HOWL. He has recorded for the Bridge, Innova and Naxos labels and is on the faculty of the Dwight School in Manhattan.
About the Parker String Quartet
Formed in 2002, the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet has rapidly distinguished itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation. The New York Times has hailed the quartet as “something extraordinary,” the Washington Post has described them as having “exceptional virtuosity [and] imaginative interpretation,” and the Boston Globe acclaims their “pinpoint precision and spectacular sense of urgency.” The quartet began touring on the international circuit after winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition as well as the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in France. Chamber Music America awarded the quartet the prestigious biennial Cleveland Quartet Award for the 2009–2011 seasons. The Parker Quartet recently joined the faculty of Harvard University’s Department of Music as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence.
About Soundings: New Music at the Nasher
Soundings: New Music at the Nasher, is an innovative, music series, which explores the definition of music and tests the very boundaries of the art form. Created in partnership with Seth Knopp, a founding member of the Peabody Trio and artistic director of Yellow Barn Music School and Festival, Soundings presents groundbreaking concerts showcasing both today’s music and that of the great composers of the past, performed by nationally and internationally renowned musicians amid the art-filled spaces of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
The series will continue with a concert on May 20.
Soundings tickets are available for purchase here: http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/engage/event?id=148