Gordon Beeferman: ALERTA!
$25 advance, $30 doors ($20 student/senior 65+ with ID)
- Gordon Beeferman, piano
- Steven Beck, piano
- Stephanie Griffin, viola
- Karen Kim, violin
- Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin & voice
- Emmalie Tello, clarinet
- Alice Teyssier, soprano
- James Baker, conductor
Gordon Beeferman — THE SWAY
Gordon Beeferman — APOCALYPSCAPADES
Gordon Beeferman — TUNNEL VISIONS
Composer and pianist Gordon Beeferman presents a program of his recent solo, chamber, and vocal music, with a stellar roster of performers.
ALERTA! ANTIFASCISTA (2020) juxtaposes musical variations on anti-fascist slogans and chants in Spanish, Greek, and Yiddish with spoken excerpts from speeches, writings, and interviews from the Berlin Reichstag, the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jim Crow South, and Trump-era USA.
THE SWAY (2021) is a solo work for Eden MacAdam-Somer, violinist, improviser, singer, and dancer, weaving her exceptional abilities together in one piece, featuring Beeferman’s original texts. Commissioned for the 50th Anniversary of the New England Conservatory’s Department of Contemporary Musical Arts. NY Premiere
APOCALYPSCAPADES (2018-9) is a set of decadently virtuosic piano pieces, draws on feelings of the perpetual effort, futility, excitement, desperation, danger, and absurdity of living in our times.
TUNNEL VISIONS (2015) is a sprawling four-movement viola/piano duo written for Stephanie Griffin. Jumping off from their shared work in Beeferman's avant-jazz Other Life Forms quartet, the piece is a harrowing and rhythmically rigorous journey through microtonal, cinematic landscapes.
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm Eastern on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing: https://roulette.org/event/gordon-beeferman-alerta/
About Gordon Beeferman, piano
About Steven Beck, piano
A New York concert by pianist Steven Beck was described as "exemplary" and "deeply satisfying" by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where his teachers were Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin, and Bruce Brubaker.
Mr. Beck made his concerto debut with the National Symphony Orchestra, and has toured Japan as soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. His annual Christmas Eve performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations at Bargemusic has become a New York institution. He has also performed as soloist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and Miller Theater, as well as on WNYC, and summer appearances have been at the Aspen Music Festival and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. He has performed as a musician with the New York City Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and as an orchestral musician he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Orpheus.
Mr. Beck is an experienced performer of new music, having worked with Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Wuorinen, George Crumb, George Perle, and Fred Lerdahl. He is a member of the Knights, the Talea Ensemble, Quattro Mani, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. His discography includes George Walker’s piano sonatas on Bridge Records, and Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto on Albany Records. He is a Steinway Artist, and is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as the Colorado College Summer Music Festival and the Sewanee Music Center.
https://nyphil.org/about-us/artists/steven-beckAbout Stephanie Griffin, viola
Stephanie Griffin is an innovative violist and composer with an eclectic musical vision. Born in Canada and based in New York City, her musical adventures have taken her to Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Mongolia. Stephanie founded the Momenta Quartet in 2004, and is a member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble and Continuum; principal violist of the Princeton Symphony; and viola faculty at Hunter College. She was a 2019 Composition Fellow at the Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and has received prestigious composition fellowships and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Bronx Council on the Arts. As an improviser she has performed with Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris and Adam Rudolph, among others, and was a 2014 Fellow and 2021 Alumna-in-Residence at Music Omi. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Samuel Rhodes, and has recorded for Tzadik, Innova, Naxos, Aeon, New World and Albany records. Since August 2020, she has served as the Executive Director of ACMP, a nonprofit organization providing grants and services for amateur chamber music worldwide.
https://www.stephaniegriffinviola.com/About Karen Kim, violin
Grammy Award-winning violinist Karen Kim is widely hailed for her sensitive musicianship and passionate commitment to chamber and contemporary music. Her performances have been described as "compellingly structured and intimately detailed" (Cleveland Classical), "muscular and gripping" (New York Classical Review), and having "a clarity that felt personal, even warmly sincere" (The New York Times). She has performed in such prestigious venues and series as Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium and Zankel and Weill Recital Halls; the Celebrity Series of Boston; the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; the Vienna Musikverein; London’s Wigmore Hall; the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; the Seoul Arts Center; and Angel Place in Sydney, Australia. She received the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2011 for her recordings of the complete quartets of György Ligeti.
Esteemed for her versatility across a broad spectrum of musical idioms and artistic disciplines, Ms. Kim has collaborated with artists ranging from Kim Kashkashian, Jörg Widmann, and Shai Wosner to Questlove & The Roots and the James Sewell Ballet. She is a member of the Jasper String Quartet, winners of Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award and the Professional Quartet in Residence at Temple University's Center for Gifted Young Musicians. She is also a member of the critically acclaimed Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Échappé, and Deviant Septet, and she is a founding member of the "forward-looking, expert ensemble" Third Sound (The New Yorker).
Ms. Kim received a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Violin Performance, as well as a Master's degree in Chamber Music from the New England Conservatory, where she worked with Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Paul Katz, and Dominique Eade. She is a supporter of the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.
http://www.jasperquartet.com/karenkimAbout Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin & voice
Eden MacAdam-Somer is one of today's most exciting and versatile artists. Hailed by The New York Times as reflecting "astonishing virtuosity and raw expression," her music transcends genre through soaring violin, vocals, and percussive dance, weaving in and out of the many cultures that have formed her experience. She has been a featured soloist with symphony and chamber orchestras, jazz, and swing bands, and Romanian, Jewish Music, and American folk ensembles. She has been a guest artist at such institutions as the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and the Dundalk Institute of Technology, a featured performer at the Eastbourne, Texas, and Beijing International Music Festivals, and she has toured across the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, India, Iceland, Europe, the UK, and Afghanistan.
https://necmusic.edu/faculty/eden-macadam-somerAbout Emmalie Tello, clarinet
About Alice Teyssier, soprano
About James Baker, conductor
James Baker is principal percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He is music director and conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Baker was the conductor of the New York New Music Ensemble and is conductor of the Talea Ensemble.
As instrumentalist or conductor, he has premiered music by many of the great composers of the 20th and 21st centuries including Boulez, Cage, Carter, Messiaen, Dillon, Harvey, Wourinen, Davidovsky, Glass, Aperghis, Reynolds, Henze, Crumb, Babbitt, Neuwirth, Furrer, and many, many others, often working closely with the composers.
Through his work with his groups at conferences, universities, and festivals, he is an advocate for the music of a whole new generation of composers from around the world, premiering hundreds of new works. Mr. Baker was a conductor of Broadway shows for many years, conducting "The King and I," "The Sound of Music," "The Music Man," "Oklahoma," "An Inspector Calls," and "La Boheme," among others.
An active composer of electro-acoustic music, Mr. Baker won a Bessie award for composition for dance. He has written extensively for the theater and for various ensembles with electronics and has written a number of pieces for longtime collaborator/choreographer Tere O'Connor. Recent commissions include the Opera Ballet de Lyon, BAM Next Wave, The Dublin Dance Festival, and the Abbey Theater in Dublin.
As a percussionist he appears often with Orpheus, was a member of the American Composers Orchestra and the Eos Orchestra, and has played with the New York Philharmonic, the Paris Opera Orchestra, and the Royal Danish and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras, among others.
https://www.newschool.edu/mannes/faculty/james-baker/