7:00 PM
FREE ADMISSION

Iaido: Sword Drawing Demonstration
MARTIAL ARTS

8:00 PM
$15 SUGGESTED DONATION

Sachiko Kato
Founder and Artistic Director

Weaving Japanese Sounds was established in 2004 by pianist Sachiko Kato, in the hopes of stimulating inter-cultural understanding and inspiring cross-cultural music-making by introducing new music from Japan to American audiences Its concerts have already received critical acclaim attracting loyal and deeply involved audiences.

Since the advent of TV and internet, the world has become so much smaller, enabling us to obtain information from anywhere instantaneously. What used to be a one-way exchange in which the East absorbed the cultural influences from the West is now a two-way exchange in which now the West is hungry to learn what is happening in the East. Particularly new trends from Japan such as arts, films including anime, fashion, etc. have garnered interest from mainstream America. Serious music, however, is not so easily discovered through TV and the internet. Unless it is a work by a very prominent composer, it is unlikely that anyone in the West will be exposed to it even in recording. Thus, it falls upon Weaving Japanese Sounds to fill this gap.

Weaving Japanese Sounds is a concert series devoted to presenting classical Japanese contemporary music in friendly and accessible settings so that the audiences can fully enjoy the beauty and diversity of the music without feeling "intimidated" by it. The programs are designed to showcase a variety of styles as well as instrumentations. Special attention is paid to illustrate the diversity of Japanese new music by programming the works by such prominent composers as Toru Takemitsu and Toshi Ichiyanagi alongside the works by relatively unknown young composers. We also commission new works from these emerging composers to help invigorate the new music scene in general. Our performers are superbly talented young musicians who are all passionate about discovering new music from around the world. Their energetic first-rate playing is one of the factors that make the Weaving Japanese Sounds concerts unparalleled experiences for the audiences.

Artists: (in order of appearance)
Greg Giannascoli, marimba
Airi Yoshioka, violin
Matthew Gold, percussion
Blair McMillen, piano
Masayo Ishigure, koto
Tamara Hardesty, soprano
Katherine Cherbas, cello
Sachiko Kato, piano

Works by:
Moto Osada, Somei Satoh, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Akira Nishimura, Mari Takano, and Dai Fujikura

3:00 PM
ADMISSION: $15, $10 Seniors/Students

In the Beginning...BANG!

Creationism, Intelligent Design and Evolution are recently hot topics among the Christian right, scientist and scholars. So, what is a musician to do? Well, the name of this project is, In the beginning…BANG! The “Big Bang” theory of creation of the universe and Darwin are the springboards for Turn On The Music's new musical challenge. Turn On The Music will be performing newly composed works with percussive effects dedicated to the Earth…from its embryonic stage to its manifestation and the surrounding universe in space and time.

Works written by Kali Fasteau, Arthur Hernandez, Kevin Kim, Bruce McKinney, Clive Smith & Deborah Thurlow.

 ARTISTS

Kali Z. Fasteau, drumset
Gregor Kitzis, violin
Bruce McKinney, trumpet
Susan Schneider, Torah Reader
Marc Sloan, electric bass
Clive Smith, electric guitar
Deborah Thurlow, horn
Michael Thurlow, narrator
Peter Wilson, percussion
Steven Weiss, recording engineer
 

8:30 PM
ADMISSION: $15, $12 Seniors/Students

Myra Melford and Tanya Kalmanovitch 
HEART MOUNTAIN CD RELEASE

Myra Melford - piano, harmonium
Tanya Kalmanovitch - viola, violin

Free improvisations and compositions by Myra Melford and Leroy Jenkins.

This is music about the spaces where musicians meet, and a perfect moment in which all possibilities are suspended. It's also about the spaces between musical genres, where music really lives. Most of the music on “Heart Mountain” was freely improvised. The duo spoke little about what they would play, waiting instead to realize the moments to begin and to end. It was recorded in the Canadian Rockies, under the watch of a pair of imposing mountains: many of the tracks are named after places in Alberta, Canada (where Kalmanovitch spent much of her life), and after places in the Himalayas where both musicians have traveled. The recording is a way of representing the spaces each of them carry, and the different shapes they assume through time and travel. For Kalmanovitch and Melford, free improvisation is a process of discovery, and a practice of being open to all of the glorious, brutal, absurd and lovely things that life reveals. In documenting such moments on this recording, and in creating them anew in performance, they invite the listener to share in this experience. 

Born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, violist and violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch now inhabits the spaces between modern jazz, classical music and free improvisation. Actively performing in New York City since 2004, she has been named “Best New Talent” by All About Jazz New York, while Time Out New York identified her as “the Juilliard-trained violist who’s been tearing up the scene”.

Tanya’s debut recording with her quartet Hut Five was hailed by the Montreal Gazette as “an exceptional recording, one of the more engaging recordings heard in some time” and was garnished with a number of stars by DownBeat magazine. Her latest recording, Heart Mountain, with pianist Myra Melford, will be released in May 2007.

Tanya teaches regularly at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London UK and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag NL, and is a member of the faculty of the department of Creative Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory. She frequently presents workshops on improvisation for string players, classical musicians, jazz musicians, and musicians in general in the Netherlands, Ireland, the United States, and the Czech Republic.

She is a founding member of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, a collective of ten independent bandleaders based in New York City. She is also the Canadian representative to the International Association of Schools of Jazz, a founding member of the Jazz String Caucus of the International Association for Jazz Education, and a mentor to the Sisters in Jazz Program.

8:30 PM
ADMISSION: $15, $5 Seniors/Students

Manhattan Chamber Players
SPRING CONCERT

PROGRAM
J.S. Bach - Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825
Aaron Rosenthal - Dance Suite (world premiere)
Olivier Messiaen - Quartet for the end of time

The Manhattan Chamber Players’ mission is to perform some of the masterpieces of the chamber music genre while also commissioning new works for the combination of violin, cello, clarinet and piano – a genre that has often been neglected.

Ben Baron, clarinet
Michael Mizrahi, piano
Brian Snow, cello
Robert Uchida, violin

Opening Reception: May 18, 6-8pm
FREE ADMISSION

Shinduk Kang

Shinduk Kang’s interlocking characters sculpted in granite take the shape of endearing entities both in their coloristic softness but also in their textural interest. But, this is the earth principle that my choice of title suggests. Then there are also Kang’s videos, her filmy veils and her silkscreen prints on metal mesh that relate more to the insubstantial or heavenly. Together these pieces speak to Heaven and Earth as a theme not only because of their qualities, physicality and transparency, but also because her site specific installation combines these media suggesting the idea of having it all, anotherwords, heaven on earth.

Kang’s installations address not only the current issues of sculpture but also expand the medium’s parameters, for critically, it is difficult to know whether to place her silk-screens in the three dimensional category or in the painted idiom. They occur in space by being placed in the middle of the gallery floor, like sculpture to interrelate with the viewer but they are flat panels, painted, yet unlike paintings they are double sided. Kang’s videos appear ghostlike in their eerie fluorescent glow and are used as sculpture placed behind her fabric veils thereby obscuring the clarity in our field of vision. They are not flat screens that are present for the purpose of conveying a specific artwork but rather they are televisions present as sculptures themselves. For this reason too, Kang challenges conventional ideas of sculpture taking it further than ever before and with an ease and simplicity of methodologies that can only arise from a vast store of experience. Kang has dealt with issues of public sculpture, monumental construction and design, working with varied materials, and has arrived to her mature period whence she can engage with the global climate by challenging its paradigms and amplifying its content. Kang sculpts disparate pieces of granite giving them forms that work together as interlocking synthetic works after which she gives them textural surface. So in this sense her works are analytic and synthetic simultaneously. Sometimes she creates abstract forms at other times abstracted ones but regardless of whether or not any descriptive feature is present they can be appreciated on many levels. For them to lock into each other properly Kang has to carve her pieces with perfect accuracy or they will not fit each other. This type of accuracy is exploited in mortice and tenon craft indigenous to the Asian countries but also to Egyptian architecture wherein the positive knob is fitted perfectly with the female or groove so that grout is unnecessary. Combining her granite pieces with video, projection and silk-screening endows the total work of art with a free flowing illusory atmospheric quality that renders even the granite works with a romantic liquid fragility that negates their weight.

7:00 PM

I Love Ravel!
MUSIC FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO

Philip Wharton: Gypsy
Ravel: Sonata for violin and piano
Ravel: Selections from Le Tombeau de Couperin
Wharton: Tombeau de Ravel

ENSEMBLE PI is a new music ensemble dedicated to exploring the music of living composers.

Under the direction of Idith Meshulam, pianist and educator, Ensemble Pi builds a bridge through lively and thoughtful performances to reach new audiences. The artists of Ensemble Pi do more than look at the score and learn the music; the seek out and enjoy active collaboration with composers to create exciting performances with the composer's ideas and expectations in mind.

Idith Meshulam, piano
Philip Warton, violin

6:00 PM
FREE ADMISSION

Tenri School of Japanese Language accommodates students from beginning to advanced levels. Utilizing a unique method which was developed many years ago at the prestigious Tenri University, our courses are structured with a special focus on the individual needs of the students in a program that will allow each of them to meet his/her study goal.

The school facility includes a student library and lounge. Students may borrow various books and audio / visual materials to supplement classwork and texts.

We encourage you to visit the school and observe a class for FREE. Call ahead to make an appointment (212) 645-2800.
 

8:00 PM
$10 ADMISSION

Fireworks New Music Ensemble
ANNUAL PREMIERES EVENT

PROGRAM
Robert Paterson: Looney Tunes*
Adam Silverman: Spark in the Shoe*
Scott Johnson: Resist/Surrender*
Brian Coughlin: (New Work)*

*written for Fireworks

Hailed as “the hottest classical band in New York,” FIREWORKS redefines the chamber music experience for a new generation of listeners. Founded with the goal of creating a single, small ensemble capable of representing the full scope of today’s musical diversity, Fireworks draws on classical, rock, jazz, and world music traditions to create innovative, eclectic programs which combine masterpieces from an extraordinary range of styles into unified musical experiences. Fireworks embraces eclecticism not for its own sake but in order to spotlight works it believes deserve wider recognition as vital, living art, regardless of style. Fireworks’ dynamic performing style, relaxed concert atmosphere, and creative programming continue to draw new audiences and critical praise wherever the ensemble performs.

In addition to its regular concert series at Symphony Space in New York City, Fireworks performs at major venues and festivals throughout the United States each season. Highlights of the ensemble's 2006-07 SEASON include Cartoon, celebrating music and video created for and inspired by shorts from the golden age of Warner Bros. animation at the Lied Center of Kansas, a portrait of the maverick 20th-century master, Frank Zappa, including both the composer’s challenging instrumental rock music and rarely-heard works for traditional classical ensembles at the Miller Theater, and the second installment of its Dance Music project, featuring dance music from around the world at The Wolfeboro Friends of Music Festival. Recent engagements include The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Minnesota State University, and The Deer Valley Music Festival. In 2005, Fireworks was invited to participate in the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Young Performers' Career Advancement program, which culminated in a showcase performance at Carnegie Hall.

Recent Fireworks PROGRAMS include Dance Mix, party music from five continents and over 700 years, The Rite of Spring, a rock-infused interpretation of Stravinsky’s classic, and Pyrotechnics, highlighting the vibrancy of contemporary composers from John Adams to John Zorn. A strong voice for living composers, Fireworks has premiered over 100 compositions and arrangements, including new works by Glenn Branca, Robert Carl, and Nick Didkovsky.

Intensely passionate about its work with students, Fireworks devotes a large portion of its time each season to OUTREACH AND RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES. At the 2005 Oregon Bach Festival, the ensemble worked with fifty emerging composers and premiered fifteen new pieces. Other residencies include Williams College, The Hartt School, The Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, CT), and The KLHT School (Stamford, CT). This season the ensemble will conduct workshops and residencies at schools in Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire.

Fireworks' RECORDINGS have enjoyed critical praise and radio play worldwide. Their acclaimed, rock-inspired recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (2003) was recently broadcast on Soundcheck on WNYC in New York, La Otra Musica in Spain and Radio Rock in Italy. The group’s first recording, First Tracks (2002) was recently featured on John Schaefer's New Sounds on WNYC. Dance Mix, the group’s highly-anticipated third CD, is now available.

OREN FADER: guitar
JAMES JOHNSTON: piano
LEIGH STUART: cello
MICHAEL IBRAHIM: saxophone
ERIC POLAND: percussion
JENNIFER GRIM: flute
JENNIFER CHOI: violin
BRIAN COUGHLIN: bass

8:00 PM
ADMISSION: $10, $5 Seniors/Students

The Music of Mei-Fang Lin

Interaction - for piano and tape  
Disintegration - for piano solo  
Multplication Virtuelle (NY premiere)- percussion and live electronics  
Internal Landscape (NY premiere)- for tape  
Yarny/Wiry (World Premiere) - for 2 pianos and 2 percussion

The timbral and sonic possibilities of the combination of two pianists and two percussionists are so rich and exciting that Yarn/Wire formed to explore the existing repertoire as well as expand the body of works written for this instrumentation.  Comprised of current and former students of SUNY Stony Brook and based out of New York City, the quartet champions both acoustic and electro-acoustic works; its members' interests range from the standard classical repertory to rock and experimental popular music.

Laura Barger, piano
Daniel Schlosberg, piano
Ian Antonio, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion