Composer Curator: Mari Kimura
Friday, September 24, 2021, 7 pm
YouTube stream
Chat live with Mari and her guest creatives
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Mari Kimura | Val-Inc | Mariheini Luoto | Ensemble Decipher
Get the inside story through performance and conversation with host composer/performer Mari Kimura on how she captures her own creativity, alongside the imagination and ingenuity of three equally groundbreaking creators, in a unique program she has crafted for Composers Now.
Tune in for the YouTube Premiere on Friday, September 24 at 7pm (NYC) for her Composer Curator event and chat live with Mari, Val-Inc (Val Jeanty), Meriheini Luoto, and Chelsea Loew of Ensemble Decipher.
Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a composer, performer, researcher, and entrepreneur, she has opened up new sonic worlds and new musical possibilities for the violin. Notably, she has mastered the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin's lowest string without re-tuning. This technique, which she calls Subharmonics, has earned Mari considerable renown in the concert music world and beyond. She is also a pioneer in the field of interactive computer music. At the same time, she has earned international acclaim as a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire. Her most recent efforts involve entrepreneurship, bringing her prototype motion sensor MUGIC™, (pronounced "mu" as in music +"gic" as in magic) to the market.
To read more about the Composer Curator initiative and past events in the series:
https://www.composersnow.org/cn/programs/curator/
Dialogues
LISTEN. COMMUNICATE. RELATE.
Monday, September 27, 2021, 8 pm
Marc Scorca Hall of the National Opera Center
+ Livestream Access
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Adonis G Matos | Yumi Kurosawa | Whitney George
Dialogues is hosted by Composers Now Founder/Artistic Director Tania León. On the 27th, she welcomes three dynamic and virtuosic artists, Whitney George, Adonis Gonzalez, and Yumi Kurosawa, to join her in-person as Composers Now steps back on stage with a live audience - its first such endeavor since the start of the Pandemic - in Marc Scorca Hall at the National Opera Center.
The evening opens with inspiring performances of short works by these composers, followed by thought-provoking town hall-style conversation, a forum for meaningful exchanges of ideas between composers, performers and audiences.
The vaccine mandate and the addition of masks on at all times will be strictly enforced for the safety of all. The event will also be livestreamed for those who prefer to attend from the comfort of their own homes.
To read about the Dialogues initiative and past events in the series:
https://www.composersnow.org/cn/programs/dialogues/
Sweet Land Named 'Best New Opera'
The Music Critics Association of North America announced that its 2021 Award for Best New Opera goes to composers Du Yun and Raven Chacon and librettists Aja Couchois Duncan and Douglas Kearney for Sweet Land.
The site-specific premiere of Sweet Land was a surreal travelogue through the Los Angeles State Historic Park.
Separating the audience into two experiences of erasure and survival, Sweet Land explored the ingrained assumptions surrounding America's origins by inventing a new, experimental myth of Hosts and Arrivals. As the natural landscape and the undeniable remnants of industrialization stood in silence, the land itself was a central character-stark relief to the fantastical world of an imaginary place called "Sweet Land."
The MCANA's annual award for Best New Opera honors musical and theatrical excellence in a fully staged opera that received its world premiere in North America during the preceding calendar year. It is one of the few awards that simultaneously recognizes both composer and librettist.
Matana Roberts: Distinguished Guest Composer
At the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition
The University of Chicago's Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC) appoints Chicago-born artist Matana Roberts to serve as this year's Distinguished Guest Composer. As part of the residency, the CCCC has commissioned an original musical composition that will become a new 45-minute chapter in Roberts's COIN COIN series project, a multi-chapter work that combines conceptual scoring, storytelling and historical narrative, performative theatre, and a deeply considered channeling of personal ancestry and the 'universal' experience of Africans in America. Roberts will participate in composition activities on campus and take the CCCC's programming outside of the concert hall with a variety of university and community activities.
Matana Roberts, currently based in NYC, is one of the leading lights of contemporary experimental music, combining their widely recognized gifts as an alto saxophone player and improviser with an intensely engaged re-definition of Jazz traditions. Roberts has been called "a major talent" (The Wire) and "the spokeswoman for a new, politically conscious and refractory Jazz scene" (Jazzthetik). A self-taught mixed media composer, Roberts earned two degrees in performance from a smattering of American institutions but received their primary training from free arts programs in the American Public School System.
For more information about the Distinguished Guest Composer residency and upcoming events featuring Matana Roberts, visit the CCCC website HERE.
