Shocking Red at Hunter Dunbar Projects
Free
- Kathleen Supové, piano
- Michelle Shocked, vocals
- Nabaté Isles, trumpet
- Thomas Piercy, clarinet
- Gregor Huebner, violin
- Alex Shiozaki, violin
- Nick Pauly, viola
- Hikaru Tamaki, cello
- Zach Nicely, conductor
Shocking Red is a narrative song cycle created by pianist-composer Kathleen Supové and lyric poet-composer-singer Michelle Shocked, based on the paintings of Mark Kostabi. It’s a fusion of American song, Romantic piano, avant garde music techniques and theater. It was premiered as a duo in 2023.
This year, Thomas Youngs commissioned Randy Woolf to add an arrangement for string quartet, trumpet, and clarinet. The ensemble is mostly notated in the traditional sense, but also involves improvisation. At times their rhythmic worlds are totally independent, at others strictly coordinated. At the center is conductor Zach Nicely, uniting these various kinds of music-making.
Presented by co-commissioner Ben Hunter. Admission is free, seating is very limited.
About Kathleen Supové, piano
In May 2012, Kathleen Supové received the John Cage Award from ASCAP for “the artistry and passion with which she performs, commissions, records, and champions the music of our time.” Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile new music pianists, continually redefining the pianist/keyboardist/performance artist in today’s world. Ms. Supové presents solo concerts under the moniker THE EXPLODING PIANO. A striking presence onstage, she has performed with computers, boxing gloves, robots, and laptop orchestra.
Recent projects include two solo CDs: "The Debussy Effect," on New Focus Recordings (La Barbara-Clark-Marks-Felsenfeld-Woolf-Gosfield-Cooper), the result of a multi-composer commissioning project; and "Eye to Ivory" (Childs-Woolf-Barash-Didkovsky-Naphtali), with vocalizing, extended techniques, Yamaha Disklavier, and noise-based effects.
http://www.supove.com/About Michelle Shocked, vocals
About Nabaté Isles, trumpet
Nabaté Isles is a Grammy-winning trumpeter as well as a composer and producer, born and raised in New York City.
https://www.nabateisles.com/About Thomas Piercy, clarinet
Thomas Piercy is a critically acclaimed musician with orchestral, concerto, solo recital, and chamber music appearances throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Described by The New York Times as “Brilliant... playing with refinement and flair… evoking a panache in the contemporary works…,” Mr. Piercy presents audiences to varied and exciting concerts of standard classical music, jazz-inspired programs, contemporary works, pieces written specifically for him and his own original arrangements, compositions and collaborations.
Piercy's repertoire ranges from the Classical period to premieres of compositions written for him by some of the most outstanding composers of today, including Ned Rorem, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Jennifer Higdon, Fernando Otero, and Shoichi Yabuta.
http://www.thomaspiercy.com/About Gregor Huebner, violin
Gregor Huebner is an award-winning, Grammy-nominated composer and violinist, celebrated by audiences and critics alike for his visionary work across genres. His music has been described by The New York City Jazz Record as “challenging and vivid… seamlessly incorporat[ing] chamber elements with Avant Garde Jazz.”
https://www.gregorhuebner.com/About Alex Shiozaki, violin
Praised by The New York Times as "spellbinding," violinist Alex Shiozaki is emerging as a strong advocate for the music of today.
At home with music new and old, he has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Sapporo Symphony, Sendai Philharmonic, AXIOM Ensemble, and the Juilliard Orchestra. Other highlights include summer residencies at the Tanglewood Music Center as a New Fromm Player and a Japan tour with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
A member of the Momenta Quartet since 2016, he also regularly performs with the IRIS Orchestra, Contemporaneous, and Mimesis Ensemble. As part of the Shiozaki Duo with his wife and pianist Nana Shi, Alex has given recitals in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and California.
Holding a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.M. and D.M.A. from the Juilliard School, he counts among his teachers Ronald Copes and Joseph Lin of the Juilliard String Quartet, Lynn Chang, and Robin Sharp. In addition to his performance activities, he is on faculty at the Juilliard School, State University of New York at New Paltz, and Interlochen Center for the Arts.
https://www.alexshiozaki.com/About Nick Pauly, viola
Nick is a violist, composer, and improviser from Brooklyn, NY.
https://paulyphonic.com/About Hikaru Tamaki, cello
Hikaru Tamaki concertizes regularly as a soloist and a chamber musician. He served as the principal cellist of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and was a member of the Freimann String Quartet. Before joining the Philharmonic, he was an associate principal cellist of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and performed under the baton of Daniel Barenboim at Carnegie Hall. Solo performances with the Philharmonic have included the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Don Quixote among other major concertos.
He was awarded a bachelor of arts degree from Rice University and a master of music degree from Northwestern University, where his teachers were Paul Katz and Hans Jorgen Jensen.
Hikaru was a prizewinner in the prestigious All Japan Viva Hall Cello Competition.
He performs regularly with Yoko Reikano Kimura (koto/shamisen) under the moniker Duo YUMENO, and they were awarded the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program grant in 2014, and received the Aoyama Baroque Saal Award in the following year.
https://hikarucello.com/About Zach Nicely, conductor
At home with both multimedia and scores born for the stage, Zach has conducted orchestras across the United States and Japan. He has served as Assistant Conductor with the Litha Symphony Orchestra and Music Director with Killer Queen Opera in New York City. Zach has appeared as a guest conductor with the Orchestra Conducting Symposium at University of Colorado Boulder and the Tokyo Sinfonia.
Zach toured with the Western Michigan University Symphony Orchestra in 2018-2019. While in Michigan, he organized and conducted an interactive rehearsal and concert, The Smash Experiment, featuring an orchestra playing video game scores in real time as audiences played the games themselves. Zach was awarded Western Michigan University’s Signature Designation in Leadership for this performance.
Zach founded Press Start, a New York orchestra dedicated to programming video game music with classical favorites. Through his artistic direction, the orchestra presented two thrilling programs pairing "Hollow Knight" composer Christopher Larkin with Dmitri Shostakovich, and "Journey" composer Austin Wintory with Samuel Barber. Zach was recruited by Mannes School of Music to develop such an ensemble for their pre-college program, establishing the Game Orchestra at Mannes Prep. His essay “Video Game Music: A Connection Beyond the Controller” was published in the Lexia Undergraduate Journal in Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication by the first unanimous vote of the journal’s editorial committee.
https://www.zachnicely.com/