Media Contact:
Charles Cevallos: [email protected], (202) 994-6245
The George Washington University
Corcoran School of the Arts & Design
Music Program
presents the
Corcoran New Music Festival
The George Washington University Corcoran School of the Arts and Design Music Program presents the Corcoran New Music Festival this November on the university’s Foggy Bottom Campus. The festival opens with the area premiere of the opera ON THE THRESHOLD OF WINTER by Michael Hersch and concludes with the world premiere of THE WINTER JOURNEY by GW faculty member Douglas Boyce, performed by piano and percussion quartet Yarn|Wire, featuring GW faculty member Ning Yu, piano. Also on the Yarn|Wire program will be George Crumb’s “Music for a Summer Evening.”
The Corcoran New Music Festival will include master classes, panel discussions and student performances. Professor Robert Baker, Head of the Music Program at the Corcoran School comments, “The theme of winter and loss is at the center of the area and world premieres featured in the CNMF. The ideas of being at a threshold, of being in a journey invites the audience into depths of meaning connecting literature and music. The George Crumb ‘Music for a Summer Evening’ continues that exploration of music and literature from the perspective of a different season, but no less profound.”
Corcoran New Music Festival Events
ON THE THRESHOLD OF WINTER Area Premiere
A monodrama in two acts
Music and Libretto by Michael Hersch
Directed and Performed by Ah Young Hong
Video Design by Maxwell Bowman
ON THE THRESHOLD OF WINTER will premiere on Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. at the Flagg Building's North Atrium (500 17th Street NW). Tickets are $10 for students and seniors and $20 for general admission, and are available online (calendar.gwu.edu/threshold-winter), by calling (202) 994-6245 or at the box office on the night of the performance in the Center Atrium of the Flagg Building.
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Piano Masterclass
Featuring Dr. Laura Barger
The class will take place on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 5 p.m. in Phillips Hall Room B-120 (801 22nd Street NW). The event is free and open to the public.
Yarn|Wire Chamber Music Workshop
The workshop will take place on Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 6 p.m. in Phillips Hall Room B-120 (801 22nd Street NW). The event is free and open to the public.
New Music Student Camerata
Curated by Professor Ning Yu
Curated student performances in a salon atmosphere presenting eclectic repertoire will take place Tuesday, November 6, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. in Phillips Hall Room B-120 (801 22nd Street NW). The event is free and open to the public.
THE WINTER JOURNEY World Premiere
a musical fiction in eight scenes
Composed by Douglas Boyce
Commissioned and Performed by Yarn|Wire
Work for two pianos and percussion based on the short story "The Winter Journey" by Geroge Perec. Yarn|Wire is Ian Antonio, percussion; Laura Barger, piano; Ning Yu, piano; Russell Greenberg, percussion. And then, to warm things up, George Crumb's music for a Summer Evening.
The performance will premiere Friday, November 9, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. at the Flagg Building North Atrium (500 17th Street NW). Tickets are $10 for students and seniors and $20 for general admission, and are available online (calendar.gwu.edu/winter-journey), by calling (202) 994-6245 or at the box office on the night of the performance in the Center Atrium of the Flagg Building.
About Michael Hersch:
His work described by The New York Times as "viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music...claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity," composer Michael Hersch is widely regarded as among today's most gifted artists. Recent events include his Violin Concerto at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Avanti Festival in Helsinki, world premieres with Ensemble Klang in Amsterdam, the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien in Austria, and new productions of his monodrama in Chicago and Salt Lake City. In 2018, he was in residence as a composer and pianist at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals; in 2019/20 he will be a Composer-in-Residence with the Camerata Bern in Switzerland. Mr. Hersch was one of the youngest ever recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. He has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the President's Frontier Award from the Johns Hopkins University.
About Ah Young Hong:
The soprano has interpreted a vast array of repertoire, ranging from the music of Monteverdi and Bach, to works of Shostakovich, Babbitt and Kurtág. Best known for her work in Michael Hersch's monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, The New York Times praised her performance in the world premiere as "the opera's blazing, lone star." In high demand as a concert and chamber soloist, Ms. Hong has performed with Konzerthaus Berlin's ensemble in residence, Ensemble unitedberlin, acclaimed Netherland-based contemporary music group Ensemble Klang, The Daedalus Quartet, Phoenix Symphony, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Wiener KammerOrchester, Concert Artists of Baltimore, and Tempesta di Mare, amongst others. During the 2017-2018 season, she performed with pianist Mark Wait, violinist Carolyn Huebl, cellist Felix Wang, Ensemble Dal Niente, Utah Opera, and she debuts at the Ojai Festival with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja in György Kurtág’s complete Kafka Fragments.
About Douglas Boyce:
Douglas Boyce writes chamber music that draws on Renaissance traditions and modernist aesthetics, building rich rhythmic structures that shift between order, fragmentation, elegance, and ferocity. Regarding A Book of Songs (2006, in process), the Washington Post wrote “[they] can only be described as drop-dead beautiful. Easily the most captivating works on the program, these songs of love and death are extraordinarily well written and insightful.” Regarding La Déploration, (2016) Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote that "...the violinist, cellist...and clarinetist...spread out throughout the crypt. Against vaporous harmonics and ghostly fragments of Renaissance music played by the strings, [a] warm, clear clarinet announced itself as very much alive as it sashayed in and out of blues territory and laughed in the face of their mournful keening." He has been awarded the League of Composers ISCM Composers Award (2005), the Salvatore Martirano Prize (2006), the Robert Avalon Prize (2010), and a Fromm Commission (2012). He holds degrees from Williams College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is Associate Professor of Music at the George Washington University, and is a founding member of counter)induction, a composer/performer collective.
About Yarn|Wire:
Yarn|Wire is a quartet of two percussionists and two pianists: Ian Antonio, percussion; Laura Barger, piano; Ning Yu, piano; Russell Greenberg, percussion. This instrumental combination allows the ensemble flexibility to slip effortlessly between classics of the repertoire and modern works that continue to forge new boundaries. Founded in 2005 while at Stony Brook University, Yarn|Wire is admired for the energy and precision they bring to performances of today's most adventurous music. The results of their collaborative initiatives with genre-bending artists such as Two-Headed Calf, Pete Swanson, and Tristan Perich point towards the emergence of a new and lasting repertoire that is "spare and strange and very, very new." (Time Out NY)
About the Music Program:
The George Washington University Corcoran School of the Arts & Design Music Program prides itself in providing its students with a diverse and well-rounded musical education in both academic programs and campus life. It is committed to independent student inquiry and informed expression in creating or performing music and teaching students to knowledgably situate their own musical activities within a culturally, aesthetically and intellectually pluralistic community. The Program’s students perform music from classical, jazz, modern and popular music and compose new works in a wide range of idioms. GW’s Bachelor of Arts in Music degree provides a broad base for understanding the role of music as an individual art form and in its social context, while ensuring that students have strong skills in musicianship, theory, musicology and performance. The degree lays a strong foundation for advanced music study in graduate school and entry into a variety of music-related professions.
For general information on the Corcoran New Music Festival, contact Charles Cevallos at (202) 994-6245 or [email protected]