Composer/performer Elizabeth Brown and visual artist Lothar Osterburg join forces for two evenings of chamber music and art.
Elizabeth Brown, theremin, shakuhachi, alto flute
Lothar Osterburg, video
Momenta String Quartet: Annaliesa Place and Sharon Roffman, violins;
Stephanie Griffin, viola;
Joanne Lin, cello
Ben Verdery, guitar
Flute Force: Elizabeth Brown, Sheryl Henze, Rie Schmidt, and Wendy Stern
John Gurrin, video and sound design
Featuring the world premiere of Piranesi, for theremin and string quartet, and video, inspired by the visionary etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The theremin, with its unearthly vocal quality and seemingly magical playing technique, portrays the dramatic, exaggerated architectural world created by Piranesi (1720-1778) in his etchings. Lothar Osterburg, an artist in residence at The Old American Can Factory, who shares Piranesi’s October 4th birthday and is himself a Master Printer in etching and photogravure, will create the video, in which the musicians’ physical gestures will bring Piranesi’s etchings to life. On view will be Osterburg’s sculpture and photogravures, including the models for Piranesi. The program will also include Brown’s Atlantis, for guitar and theremin, The Baths of Caracalla, for four alto flutes and recorded sound, and a new work for shakuhachi and string quartet. Also on the program: Tony Prabowo’s Music for Multiple Violas B-A-C-H 2004, performed by Stephanie Griffin, with video by John Gurrin; and Ben Verdery’s Ghosts of Cordoba.
Elizabeth Brown, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, combines a successful composing career with an extremely diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, theremin, and dan bau (Vietnamese monochord) in a wide variety of musical circles. Her chamber music, shaped by this unique group of instruments and experiences, has been called luminous, dreamlike and hallucinatory. Brown’s music has been heard in Japan, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Australia and Vietnam as well as across the US and Europe. She has received grants, awards and commissions from Orpheus, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Newband, the Asian Cultural Council, the US/Japan Friendship Commission, the Cary Trust, the Barlow Foundation, and NYFA. A solo CD, “Blue Minor: Chamber Music by Elizabeth Brown” is available from Albany Records.
http://www.ElizabethBrownComposer.com
Lothar Osterburg is a sculptor, photographer, and printmaker specializing in photogravure. He is the foremost teacher of photogravure in the US, and also collaborates with other artists as a Master Printer. Osterburg’s images of forgotten or imagined times show the remains of human presence: empty cities, obsolete transportation devices and machines, and the traces of civilization, altered by memory and imagination.
To learn more about the photogravure process, and to see some of Lothar Osterburg’s photogravures:
http://www.LotharOsterburgPhotogravure.com
Celebrated for its eclectic programming, the Momenta Quartet (Annaliesa Place and Sharon Roffman, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; and Joanne Lin, cello) has performed in venues as diverse as Tonic, Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (for the League of Composers/ISCM), and the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Mozart Festival. The quartet has performed Tony Prabowo’s Pastoral in Jakarta, Indonesia and in Singapore. In residence at Temple University since its inception in 2004, Momenta presents concerts of works by students and faculty, gives seminars on various elements of string-writing, introduces the students to a wide range of contemporary compositions, and records extensively.
http://www.MomentaQuartet.com
Musical America has called Flute Force “an extremely persuasive advocate for the flute quartet medium: four top-quality players in a perfectly balanced and expressive ensemble.” Currently celebrating its 25th anniversary season, the group has performed and recorded extensively. Flute Force has received recording, commissioning and residency grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund and the American Composers Forum.
http://www.FluteForce.com
Called “an American original, an American Master” by Guitar Review magazine, guitarist Ben Verdery performs and teaches internationally, is a prolific composer, and has released some 15 CDs of his own, in addition to performing and recording with such diverse musicians as Frederic Hand, William Coulter, Jessye Norman, Andy Summers (of the Police), Paco Pena, Herman Prey, and John Williams. He is chairman of the guitar faculty at the Yale School of Music.
http://www.BenVerdery.com
Violist Stephanie Griffin has performed internationally as soloist and a chamber musician, and is a member of the Momenta Quartet, Argento New Music, SONYC, the Riverside Symphony, and is principal violist of Princeton Symphony. She has collaborated with Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo on numerous projects in Indonesia and America. An active improviser, Stephanie has worked with traditional Indonesian musicians and free jazz legend Butch Morris. Ms. Griffin has recorded for Koch, Arte Nova, Centaur, Harmolodic and Siam Records, and recently released a CD of Tony Prabowo’s music on an independent Indonesian label. She holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Samuel Rhodes.
http://www.momentaquartet.com/Stephanie.html
John Gurrin is a filmmaker, photographer, and sound designer. His projections were recently shown in Singapore and Jakarta and he has exhibited video and computer work in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Columbia and Venice. He teaches at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television.
http://www.momentaquartet.com/John.html
The music of prominent Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo has been performed in Indonesia, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea. He writes for both Western ensembles and for traditional Indonesian musicians, and his music has been recorded on Siam Records and on the Indonesian label Aksara.