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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 15, 2007 Contact: DoubleSharp@DoubleSharp.org (206) 434-9969 Russian Artists, Members of the Seattle Chamber Players and Seattle symphony Perform at Festival of Wayward Music in the Chapel Performance Space, July 21, 2007
Seattle, WA— DoubleSharp will present a program of experimental and folk music as part of the Festival of Wayward Music on Saturday, July 21, 2007, at 7pm. This festival of adventurous music will be a day-long marathon run from 12pm–10pm on Saturday, July 21, 2007 and presented by Nonsequitur to celebrate the recently opened Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, the permanent concert venue of Nonsequitur. The event coincides with Historic Seattle’s dedication of the renovated Chapel and commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Good Shepherd building on Sunday, July 22. The 2-day festival will present a sampling of the Seattle creative music community, and the DoubleSharp presentation will be part of its second day’s marathon featuring an amazing line-up of adventurous Seattle musicians. DoubleSharp’s program will include performances by three local Russian folk artists and four professional musicians introducing highly experimental and at the same time accessible and enjoyable music.
Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Juliana Svetlichnaia has degrees in traditional and folk music performance from the Moscow Music Teachers Institute, Russia, and the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense, Denmark. While Russian traditional music is her main passion, she also enjoys singing Bulgarian, gypsy, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and many other songs, and she also plays many ethnic instruments. Juliana has participated in numerous projects and festivals of world music and collaborated with many musicians. In 2000, she founded the folk ensemble Pava. Their album was nominated for the Danish World Awards in 2005 as the World Album of the Year. Juliana has lived in the U.S. since 2005.
Juliana will perform several highly original ancient Russian folk songs which she discovered and collected during her folk expeditions to Russian villages. She will accompany herself on unusual Russian village-style instruments.
The three following performances will feature members of the Seattle Chamber Players (SCP). For eighteen years, SCP has been passionately dedicated to introducing works by a wide range of composers whose styles and influences broaden the language of contemporary chamber music. SCP’s history is marked by its commitment to the music of our time. From its commissioning of nearly 100 works by the world’s leading composers to collaborations with the most prominent American and international creative artists, the ensemble has established itself in the vanguard of the contemporary music world. Recent awards and honors include a January 2004 ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming; an internationally broadcast concert of the Baltic repertoire for Saint Paul Sunday; and performances and residencies in Italy, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Costa Rica, and Estonia.
Flutist Paul Taub has been a leading performer of chamber and contemporary music in the Northwest. Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts, Taub was trained at Rutgers University and the California Institute of the Arts. He is a founding member and Executive Director of the Seattle Chamber Players. Taub is an active soloist and recitalist, with extensive work in American, Soviet/Russian, and international contemporary repertoire. He performed a commissioned program of twelve solo pieces (1999) in Benaroya Hall's first flute recital, reprised in Atlanta and New York and later recorded on the Periplum label. Taub is the Chairman of the New Music Advisory Committee of the National Flute Association and a member of the Board of Directors of Chamber Music America.
Taub will perform Antanas Kučinskas’ Magic Flute (1995) for flute and tape. Antanas Kučinskas (b.1968) graduated from the Vilnius Conservatory and the Lithuanian Academy of Music. From 1991 to 1999 he taught contemporary music history at the Vilnius Conservatory. For five years since 1993 he has been sound director and, since 1998, head of the music department of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. As the composer says about his Magic Flute: “The flute is one of the oldest instruments in the world. In ancient faiths it was used in various rites and had magic power. That piece is like a voyage to the roots of the flute - from the concert flute to the magic flute. During this voyage, the flute approaches ever more closely its ancient nature. The performer quite literally deconstructs the instrument—taking it apart and performing on the ever-diminishing remaining sections—and, in its ultimate simplicity, the instrument joins together with the sounds and ambience of nature.”
Clarinetist Laura DeLuca joined the Seattle Symphony in 1986 and is a co-founding member of the Seattle Chamber Players. She has twice appeared as soloist with the Seattle Symphony. DeLuca has performed on dozens of recordings including more than 70 compact discs with the Seattle Symphony and many movie soundtracks, including the solo clarinet work on the Academy Award-winning feature-length documentaries The Long Way Home and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Chamber music activities have included performances all over the world and Seattle-area appearances in Music of Remembrance, Icicle Creek, Marrowstone, and Methow music festivals. DeLuca received her formal training at Northwestern University. She has taught at University of Puget Sound, Marrowstone Music Festival, and MidSummer Music Retreat.
Cellist Joshua Roman is the Seattle Symphony's Principal Cellist. The 23-year-old Oklahoma native studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and has won top prizes at numerous competitions. He has soloed with many orchestras including the Seattle Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Northwest Sinfonietta, and the Oklahoma Philharmonic. Roman’s solo recitals feature classical and jazz compositions that highlight his eclectic musical tastes and his youthful energy. An avid promoter of contemporary music, Roman has premiered many works including those written expressly for him.
Deluca and Roman will perform Derek Bermel’s Coming Together (1999). Derek Bermel (b.1967) is active as a composer of concert music, as a classical clarinetist, conductor, jazz and rock keyboard player, and vocalist. He has been awarded many of today's most important prizes, including the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and residencies at Tanglewood, Banff, Yaddo, and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. His works have been performed by leading ensembles and orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National and St. Louis symphonies, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was trained at Yale University and the University of Michigan. Coming Together is a short and humorous duo which is entirely built of glissandi invoking the human voice. Bermel says, “I wanted to write a piece without any ‘straight’ pitches, one which relied solely on gestural development, yet which would still be convincing and emotional.” By the end of the piece, both instruments “come together” in playing, hence the title.
Violinist Mikhail Shmidt was born in Moscow, Russia. At age 14, he won the International Chamber Music Competition “Concertino Prague.” While still at Gnessin Institute of Music, Shmidt participated in the highly successful Gnessin String Quartet, winner of several national competitions. He also played in the State Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Radio String Quartet, and was concertmaster of “Camerata Boccherini” Baroque Orchestra. A highlight of Shmidt’s Russian career was collaborating with composer Alfred Schnittke. Since immigrating to the United States in 1989, Shmidt has established himself as a leading chamber musician. He was a founding member of the Bridge Ensemble. He annually tours Europe with the Moscow Piano Quartet, and his “remarkable musicianship” was hailed by Lisbon newspaper Tempo. Shmidt has recorded on the Melodia, Delos, ECM, Tzadik, Six Degrees, Naxos, Albany, and Inova labels.
Mikhail will perform Michel van der Aa’s Memo (2003) for violin and portable cassette recorder. Michel van der Aa (b.1970) completed his training as a recording engineer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and studied composition with Louis Andriessen. His music has an idiomatic sense for the stage, combining sounds and scenic images in a play of changing perspectives. Van der Aa has collaborated with several choreographers and with film directors Hal Hartley and Peter Greenaway. He was the first Dutch composer to win the prestigious International Gaudeamus Prize (in 1999). In 2004 Van der Aa won the Matthijs Vermeulen prize for his opera One. The Ernst von Siemens Foundation awarded him a Siemens Composers Grant in 2005. In 2006 van der Aa was awarded the Paul Hindemith Prize. Memo is a theatrical solo work for violin. The violinist records him/herself with a small cassette recorder and then plays along with it.
The duet of guitarist Anna Stovall and domrist Luba Malkina is inspired by music that Russians love so much, the authentic Russian romance, as well as well-known world classics. The unique combination of instruments, guitar and domra, create warm nostalgic atmosphere, while the songs and other works charm with their timeless beauty. Anna Stovall was born in Novosibirsk and studied at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts (GITIS) in Moscow. In the United States, her passion for performing arts has continued to blossom. She is a very popular performer (singer and guitarist) within the Seattle Russian community. She has taken part in many song and music festivals and has organized various cultural events. Luba Malkina received her degree in Mathematics from St. Petersburg State University. She also graduated from a music school in St.-Petersburg and has played domra in orchestras and ensembles throughout her academic carrier.
Stovall and Malkina will perform Russian folk songs as well as Waltz and Snowstorm, perhaps the most popular works of Georgy Sviridov. Sviridov (1915-1998) was one of the most significant figures in Russian music of the second half of the 20th century and one of the most popular composers of concert works in post-World War II Russia. His consistent striving towards a distinctively Russian style made him the leader of a new nationalist movement in his country.
DoubleSharp is a non-profit organization established to present artistic and educational events with excellence, creativity, and diversity in order to actively promote the appreciation of contemporary and world music and to challenge, educate, and enrich our audiences. DoubleSharp is dedicated to researching contemporary and world music and to enriching American and world audiences with musics of other cultures. For more information, call (425) 802-3503 or visit www.DoubleSharp.org.
Nonsequitur is a non-profit organization dedicated to the presentation of experimental music and sound art: contemporary / post-classic composition, improvisation, electro-acoustic and computer music, minimalism, sound poetry, radio art, sound installations, field recordings, microtonality, newly invented instruments, "lower case sound", historical avant garde, and various unclassifiable hybrids.
Program
Saturday, July 21, 2007, 7-8 pm Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., Seattle (in Wallingford, just south of 50th St.)
DoubleSharp presents members of the Seattle Chamber Players and Russian artists
Traditional Ancient Ritual Russian Folk Songs Juliana Svetlichnaia, vocals and traditional Russian folk instruments
Antanas Kučinskas
Magic Flute for flute and tape
Derek Bermel Coming together for clarinet and cello (United States) Laura DeLuca, clarinet Joshua Roman, cello
Michel van der Aa Memo for violin and portable cassette recorder (Netherlands) Mikhail Shmidt, violin
Georgy Sviridov Waltz (Russia) Snowstorm Traditional Russian Folk Songs Anna Stovall, guitar Luba Malkina, domra
Admission is free.
The Good Shepherd Center is located in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood at 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. (just south of 50th St., one block east of Meridian), on the fourth floor. Media Contact: DoubleSharp@DoubleSharp.org; (206) 434-9969
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