Sandbox Percussion and NOVUS NY present a third Renewal concert on December 3, at 4pm, in Trinity Church, featuring Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al and pieces inspired by Richard Powers’s powerful novel on activism, resistance, and the natural world— The Overstory: Jessica Meyer’s A Passage Between Earth and Sky and the collaborative eco-cantata by four composers and five authors, A Forest Unfolding. Free, and reservations are recommended. Info and tickets here.

Tickets – $15, available here
Doors at 7pm, music at 8pm

NEW THREAD QUARTET: NYC-based new music saxophone quartet.
EL NOORDZO: Psychedelic afro-carribean surf jazz.
JOY ON FIRE: Sax-bass-drums punk-jazz trio that frequents the P237 stage.

NTQ is headed to Prototype for an evening of saxophone featuring three bands, three unique styles, one badass instrument. We will be performing a set at 8pm, featuring our latest commission: Walk for a shell by Victoria Cheah.

We will be joined by Anna Meadors in the alto chair for this event.

Tickets – $10 online and at the door

NTQ presents our 6th Explorations concert with a program of cutting edge works for saxophone, drawing from meditative breath, temporal flux, sine tone clusters, dissembled instruments, and vocalization.

The concert opens with works from NTQ’s residencies at New York University and Binghamton University. Neva Derewetzky‘s small voices explores time and air, growing from meditative breath to sweeping dynamic swells. Derewetzky writes the saxophone “is an instrument that begs to run… For just a few minutes, I want the instrument to be patient. To take a breath and to wait.” Michael Seltenreich‘s Ornamentation 1 uses flux in tempo to build a constant pulsing line. The work builds harmonically while always centered around the push and pull of time. Our program will continue with commissioned works by NTQ founding member Erin Rogers and by Victoria Cheah. Erin RogersFoliage utilizes timbral and harmonic shifts to produce slow motion color changes in a gradual transition to noise. Victoria Cheah‘s Walk for a shell incorporates fixed media playback alongside the saxophone quartet, and explores how actions along a path may connect you to others. Cheah writes “Pilgrimage journeys put time and effort to work at covering a distance in an offering of respect. Walk for a shell attempts this respect with gestures of tuning, ghosts of words exchanged, and offerings of effort.”

Program
Neva Derewetzky – small voices (2023), NYC premiere
Michael Seltenreich – Ornamentation 1 (2022), NYC premiere #
Erin Rogers – Foliage (2023), world premiere *
Victoria Cheah – Walk for a shell (2023), world premiere *

* Commissioned by New Thread Quartet
# Written for New Thread Quartet and Cincinnati Saxophone Quartet

Tickets – $10 online and at the door

Program:
Becky Brown – some favored gem (2018)
Ben Luca Robertson – Opheodrys (2017)
Aron Dahl – Fluid Interference – (2022, revised 2023) *world premiere
Ebun Oguntola – Interim (2022) *in-person world premiere
Dennis K. Sullivan, II – As Above, So Below (2018, revised 2023) *world premiere, commissioned

Electric Sax Vol. 1: Workings and Re-Workings is the first offering of our new annual multimedia performance series. This program draws from one of our earliest large-scale electro-acoustic projects: a residency at the University of Virginia in 2018. NTQ is excited to revisit collaborations with composers Becky Brown and Ben Luca Robertson from UVA. In addition, New Thread presents recastings of works by Aron Dahl, Ebun Oguntola, and Dennis Sullivan, and . The program features novel sounds and inspirations: from emotions researcher, Brené Brown, to garden snakes, the deeply personal to the abstract.

Becky Brown’s some favored gem for saxophone quartet and fixed media (2018) explores the distinction between shame and guilt proposed by Brené Brown, equating phrases from Bréne Brown’s TED Talks to melodic fragments to express challenging emotional states. Ben Luca Robertson’s Opheodrys (2017) uses an interactive score to direct the performers through nested microtonal layers. The result is a thickly vibrating web of sound that evokes the chaotic and glacially-shifting environment the green snake inhabits. Aron Dahl wrote Fluid Interference for soprano saxophone, Buchla Music Easel, and video in 2022. A project that has been described as meditative, queer, and beautiful, Dahl’s new adaptation for quartet promises an immersive sonic and visual experience that extends and deepens this expressive work. Ebun Oguntola’s Interim, was composed for a trio of saxophones + electronics featuring the players of New Thread. Oguntola received the Composers Now: First Commission Award in January 2022 to compose this work, and to encourage artistic potential and creative development. This will be the first in-person performance.

Dennis K. Sullivan, II’s As Above, So Below (2018/2023) is three movement work for amplified saxophone quartet with fixed media, transducer/object installation, lighting and custom built light reactive circuits. The piece draws on practices from Sullivan’s own output as a percussionist, electronics performer and instrument builder. As well as for their contemporary playing techniques, Sullivan uses the saxophones as a conical amplifier for all sorts of harsh and abrasive noise provided by the electronics. In turn, the electronics function as an extension of the saxophones and sometimes, an ensemble all to themselves. Sullivan wrote the first movement in 2018, and added two additional movements to premiere in this performance.

New Thread Quartet is delighted to be joined by saxophonist Eric Troiano on alto saxophone. A guest artist at the Asia Pacific Saxophone Academy, Singapore Saxophone Symposium, Great Plains Saxophone Workshop, among others, Troiano is also a founding member of the Viridian Saxophone Quartet. The VSQ won top prizes in the North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition, Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and the MTNA National Chamber Music Competition. Troiano is Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Ithaca College.

About The Composers

Aron Dahl is a songwriter, composer, filmmaker, sound synthesist and singer based somewhere in between Los Angeles, Oslo and Copenhagen. His work is a genre defying mix of auto fiction and documentary, ambient, chamber music, field recordings, techno and nativistic pop, encompassing themes of identity, alienation, BDSM and transcendence. His debut solo album Loosening Orion’s Belt was awarded by the Danish Arts Council as one of the 10 best releases of 2018. As a composer he has collaborated with ensembles like Athleas, Pinquins and Aksiom and his music has been performed at festivals like Nordic Music Days (ISL), New Now Festival (US), Borealis (NO) and Nordic Saxophone Festival (DK).

Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia.

Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, sound artist, experimental luthier, educator, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. As a practicing artist, he employs a variety of instrumental and electronic forces, including chamber ensembles, generative algorithms, analog circuits, and handmade instrumentation. The bulk of his projects address an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems—often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound and place, just intonation, spectral tuning structures, and microtonality.

Ebun Oguntola (Èbùn) is an avid, award-winning 17-year-old composer, conductor, producer, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who thrives off the adrenaline-inducing surge of artistic exploration, and will be attending Harvard University in the fall of 2023. In 2021, she was commissioned to write a solo violin piece, Reflections, for GRAMMY-award winning violinist, Johnny Gandelsman. Her piece was performed at Carnegie Music Hall and The Wallis.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Dennis K. Sullivan II is a percussionist, composer, electronicist and educator based in Queens NY. Dennis is a founding member of the performance duo, Radical 2 with percussionist/electronics engineer, Levy Lorenzo and Popebama, a high octane experimental percussion/saxophone duo with composer/saxophonist Erin Rogers. Percussionist and co-director of Wavefield Ensemble, Dennis 6was also awarded the grand prize at the Van Rooy Competition for Musical Excellence, and has received the Stipiendienpreise at the Darmstadt International Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik (Darmstadt, Germany).


This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council On The Arts (NYSCA).

NTQ joins composer Roberto Scarcella Perino for the North American premiere of his opera FURIOSUS for vocalists, string quartet, sax quartet, piano, and percussion.

Event details and tickets here – THIS CONCERT IS SOLD OUT.

FURIOSUS, opera in two acts
Music by Roberto Scarcella Perino
Libretto by Flora Gagliardi
based on the epic poem ‘Orlando Furioso’ by Ludovico Ariosto

Inspired by Orlando Furioso, one of the best-known works in Italian literature, the two act opera Furiosus with libretto by Flora Gagliardi takes us on a galactic journey from earth to moon, from mythical to human, highlighting the vicissitudes of life, love, sorcery, and seduction while Roberto Scarcella Perino’s score provides a warm, whimsical, and thoroughly transportive musical underpinning of the unfolding drama.

The North American premiere of Furiosus in concert is made possible by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at New York University.

Originally commissioned by The Opera Theater of Philadelphia, the world premiere of Roberto Scarcella Perino’s opera Furiosus took place on August 25th, 2017, in Città della Pieve at the Teatro Comunale degli Avvaloranti. It was performed again in June 12th, 2019, in Florence at New York University’s Continuum Theater.

Robert Tweten, conductor

Cast in order of vocal appearance:
ASTOLFO – Omar Najmi
ANGELICA/FIORDILIGI – Amani Cole-Felder
MEDORO/ALCINA – Cierra Byrd
ORLANDO – Daniel Rich
BRADAMANTE – Siphokazi Molteno
RUGGIERO/BRANDIMARTE – Brad Walker
RODOMONTE – Le Bu

A Chorus of Magical Creatures:
Anna Elder
Kate Fruchterman
Julie Schoonover
Demetra Adams
Candace – Lynn Matthews
Maria Kolomiets
Sable Strout
Silvana Chu

Orchestra:
Violin I, Doori Na
Violin II, Caroline Drexler
Viola, Tia Allen
Cello, Marta Bagratuni

New Thread Quartet
Soprano Saxophone, Jonathan Hulting-Cohen
Alto Saxophone, Noa Even
Tenor Saxophone, Erin Rogers
Baritone Saxophone, Zach Herchen

Percussion, Daniel Matei
Piano, Juan José Làzaro

Cover Angelica/Fiordiligi + Cover Bradamante/Medoro/Alcina

NTQ is headed to Binghamton University for a 2-day residency. We will be working with their composition students on new works for saxophone quartet including workshops, a panel talk on entrepreneurship, and a concert performance of student compositions alongside some works from NTQ’s repertoire.

I’ll be joining SMUSH Gallery’s potluck salon event to performance “Anuib-Nout” by Gerard Grisey. Come meet local artists, poets, and musicians!

https://www.smushgallery.com/

Tickets – $10 online and at the door.

Wow, NTQ @ 10 years?! Time flies by with all that microtonal, theatrical, noise focused, computer generated, light bulb conducted, meditative, and leg muted rep. Join us on Sept 16 as we celebrate with Explorations Vol. 5, featuring works by Martin Bresnick, Malaika Paralkar, Noah Meites, Elori Saxl and Om Srivastava.

New York’s most adventurous saxophone quartet celebrates 10 years of excellence-driven performance with five boundary-defying new works by American composers. Explorations Vol. 5: New Thread @ 10 Years evokes an expansive range of voices and techniques, including driving unison lines, microtonal harmonies, extended sonic palettes, complex rhythmic interplay and poetic inspirations. Following an 18-month hiatus for Covid-19, New Thread returned to the stage with renewed vigor in Spring 2022, debuting 3 exciting new programs and a new Soprano chair.

The program begins with decorated composer Martin Bresnick’s Mending Time. Co-commissioned by New Thread, PRISM, and a consortium of 18 other saxophone quartets, Mending Time is a 4-movement work inspired by Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” a poignant work for the current political climate. Malaika Paralkar’s Haze at the Edge of the Sky plays with micro-tunings and decorative sonic effects. A flutist and composer from the Philadelphia area, Paralkar blurs color and key in this short work for saxophones, combining trills, multiphonics, and singing to create textural drones. In Fracture Mechanics, from LA-based composer Noah Meites, cascading unison lines with competing articulation patterns interrupt whirring multiphonic sustains, exposing cracks in the ensemble-as-machine as it drives and ultimately falters, while Elori Saxl’s Private Life explores a deeper drone world using only tenor and baritone saxophones. KRIYA, a New Thread co-commission from composer Om Srivastava, is heavily inspired by rhythms from the North Indian tabla tradition. Sanskrit for “action,” KRIYA refers to a set of practices regarding breath control techniques in yoga, in this case testing the players in passages of lengthy, sweeping lines, and guiding the listener through a wild adventure.

New Thread Quartet will be joined by Thomas Giles at the alto sax chair for this concert.

Program
Martin Bresnick – Mending Time, co-commissioned *
Malaika Paralkar – Haze at the Edge of the Sky
Noah Meites – Fracture Mechanics, world premiere, written for NTQ
Elori Saxl – Private Life
Om Srivastava – KRIYA, world premiere, co-commissioned #

* Co-comissioned by New Thread Quartet in a consortium led by PRISM Quartet with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

# Co-commissioned by New Thread Quartet and Palmetto Quartet

After many years of adventurous opera making, Rhymes With Opera is closing down. Join us for a celebration concert!

The centerpiece of RWO’s farewell season was a special live performance that featured greatest hits from across the company’s 15-year history of commissioning, producing, and performing new chamber opera. The performance featured the three RWO ensemble singers (Elisabeth Hallday-Quan, Bonnie Lander, and Robert Maril) and included music by RWO’s resident composers Ruby Fulton and George Tsz-Kwan Lam. In addition to works by ensemble members, the concert included works by ten different composers, all of whom were commissioned by RWO since its founding in 2007. The retrospective was directed by Ashley Tata and the singers were accompanied by the Rhymes With Opera Orchestra, conducted by Alex Wen.

https://www.rhymeswithopera.org/final-concert-a-celebration

I’ll be performing for art opening for one of my favorite local non-profits at the Jersey City Public Library. Come check out the art and music!

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