Ecstatic Music Festival Press Release
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Kaufman Center Presents the Second Annual
Ecstatic Music Festival
at Merkin Concert Hall
February 4 – March 28, 2012
Collaborations that re-define music for the post-classical generation
This year’s pairings include: The Mountain Goats & Anonymous 4, Rhys Chatham & Oneida,
Dan Deacon with NOW Ensemble & the Calder Quartet, Glasser & Roomful of Teeth
This winter, the second annual Ecstatic Music Festival will feature more than 150 performers and composers from different musical backgrounds who are re-defining music today. In 11 collaborative concerts – all with first performances of new works – the festival will put its finger on the pulse of contemporary “post-classical” music, where lines between genres are blurred and audiences are equally likely to find classically-trained instrumentalists performing in downtown clubs and non-traditional venues as well as concert halls.
Hailed as “a who’s who of the current music scene” (WQXR), last winter’s Ecstatic Music Festival was a critical and popular success. Critics called the festival “too engaging, too thought-provoking, and too musically compelling to pass up” (Daniel Kushner, Huffington Post) and “the most bracing combinations of adventurous, fulfilling music in recent memory” (Joel Harrison, National Public Radio).
The 2012 Ecstatic Music Festival kicks off on Saturday, February 4, when Jherek Bischoff and the Wordless Music Orchestra will be joined by special guests David Byrne, Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), Mirah and Zac Pennington (Parenthetical Girls). The festival continues throughout February and March with programs pairing artists well-known in the indie/pop world with composers and performers with a more classical bent in collaborations such as Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry with Son Lux and yMusic, Dan Deacon with NOW Ensemble and the Calder Quartet, and the Mountain Goats with Anonymous 4.
The Ecstatic Music Festival is curated by Judd Greenstein, Co- Director of New Amsterdam Records. “This year’s festival brings the themes from the 2011 festival into new focus, with an incredible breadth of creative musicians working in brand-new collaborations,” says Greenstein. “Most of this year’s artists didn’t know their collaborator before the festival brought them together, making the resulting concerts as adventurous for the artists as they are for the audience. The 2012 festival is also a celebration of geographic diversity, with artists from five countries and nine states, from China to Sweden, Washington to Texas, California to North Carolina, represented across the 11 evenings. All in all, the 2012 Ecstatic Music Festival continues to provide artists with the opportunity to grow in new directions, and provides audiences the opportunity to witness that growth as it occurs in front of them, live and on stage in one of New York’s great concert halls.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome such a wonderful group of groundbreaking artists to Merkin Concert Hall, which is especially well-suited to this festival,” says Lydia Kontos, Executive Director of Kaufman Center. “Well known for its intimate scale and excellent acoustics, the hall combines the close connection between audience and performer you would experience in a smaller club with the extraordinary sound of a world-class concert hall.”
The Ecstatic Music Festival includes New Sounds® Live concerts hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer, which will be webcast live on Q2 Music and taped for future broadcast on WNYC. WQXR and Q2 Music are the media partners of the Ecstatic Music Festival. Q2 Music is the festival’s digital venue and will be the center for on-demand artist interviews and concert audio. The festival is presented in association with New Amsterdam Presents.
Series schedule (all concerts are at 7:30 pm)
Sat, 2/4/12
Jherek Bischoff and the Wordless Music Orchestra, with Special Guests David Byrne, Craig Wedren, Greg Saunier, Mirah, Zac Pennington, Carla Bozulich, Charlie Looker & Sam Mickens
A co-presentation with Wordless Music
Musical polymath Jherek Bischoff is joined by an all-star cast of guest vocalists from his new album, due out in February, including David Byrne, Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), Mirah, Zac Pennington (Parenthetical Girls), Carla Bozulich, Charlie Looker and Sam Mickens. This concert features the Wordless Music Orchestra, supplemented by a number of Bischoff’s long-time collaborators.
Tue, 2/7/12
Sxip Shirey and Angélica Negrón, with special guests Todd Reynolds, Noveller, Jonny Rodgers & Face the Music
The “mesmerizing” (New Yorker) multi-instrumentalist and composer Sxip Shirey teams up with Angélica Negrón, composer of “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR) music for an evening of fabulously eclectic and sonically wide-ranging collaboration. In addition to working together, they will be joined by a slate of special guests, including the violinist/composer/Ableton master Todd Reynolds, guitar sound-architect Noveller (“simultaneously soothing and mind-wrecking,” NY Press) and the wine-glass/guitar marvel Jonny Rodgers (“beautiful, fragile and consistently challenging,” New Haven Register). The teen alt-classical sensations Face the Music (“stunning,” “polished, exuberant,” New York Times) will give the world premiere of Angélica Negrón’s El Gran Caleidoscopio.
Wed, 2/8/12
Richard Reed Parry, Son Lux & yMusic
New Sounds® Live hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer
Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre) and Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) are joined by yMusic, a “stunning sextet” (WQXR) of players who return to the Ecstatic Music Festival following last year’s collaboration with Shara Worden and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Parry, well-known for his work as part of the Grammy Award-winning Arcade Fire and the chamber collective Bell Orchestre, here takes on the role of composer, presenting a series of works for yMusic and its members utilizing the organic processes of the human body — heartbeats and breathing — to articulate the works’ progress. Son Lux will likewise have his yMusic compositions (the title track from their debut album, Beautiful Mechanical) performed, and will also present new arrangements from his album We Are Rising (“shamefully good,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer), which used yMusic as source material for its electronic compositions. Parry and Lott will also each write new works that incorporate each other into the process as vocalists, instrumentalists, or even as providers of source material for the new compositions.
Thu, 2/9/12
This Will Destroy You, Christopher Tignor/Slow Six & A Far Cry
The unique, “brilliant” (Boston Globe), self-conducted string orchestra A Far Cry joins forces with post-rock powerhouse This Will Destroy You and renowned composer Christopher Tignor with his band, Slow Six, for an evening of music that is large-scale in every sense. Tignor will offer his stunning work for string orchestra and electronics, Thunder Lay Down In the Heart, as well as new arrangements for Slow Six, “a compelling voice that supersedes the need for any words” (The Deli) with A Far Cry. This Will Destroy You, whose “immersive live performances and remarkable composition skills place them at the forefront of pioneering contemporary music” (The Austinist), will present new arrangements (by Tignor) of their atmospheric instrumental pieces, prominently featuring the strings of A Far Cry mixed with their usual layers of effects-laden guitar, keyboards, bass and drums.
Thu, 2/23/12
Nick Zammuto & Jason Treuting with janus, Daisy Press & Grey McMurray
New Sounds® Live hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer
Nick Zammuto of The Books and Jason Treuting of So Percussion break away from their bands for an evening of spelling bees, homemade videos and fantastically-textured music, joined by janus trio, guitarist Grey McMurray and vocalist Daisy Press.
Sat, 2/25/12
Glasser & Roomful of Teeth
The polyglot vocal octet Roomful of Teeth returns to the Ecstatic Music Festival, presenting a new collaboration with Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), praised for her “beautiful songs, both sweet and abstract, deeply felt and anodyne” (NY Times). Roomful of Teeth will also present new work by Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) along with selections from their ever-growing catalogue of dynamic repertoire.
Thu, 3/1/12
Mariam Wallentin & Mikael Karlsson with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble
Mariam Wallentin, hailed for her “beyond gorgeous” voice (Prefix) in the band Wildbirds & Peacedrums (praised by Pitchfork as “highly complex and agile pop music”), teams up with acclaimed composer Mikael Karlsson to create a new song cycle, The Spirit & the Cloud, performed with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (“some of New York’s brightest, busiest players,” Time Out New York). The evening will also include a selection of Karlsson’s instrumental compositions and arrangements of Wildbirds & Peacedrums songs for Wallentin and ACME.
Sat, 3/17/12
Oneida & Rhys Chatham
Legendary composer Rhys Chatham, “who toys with the expectations of amplified guitars so mirthfully in his punk-influenced orchestrations” (New York Times), is joined by the “Brooklyn psych alchemists” (Pitchfork) Oneida, whose performance at the recent All Tomorrow’s Parties festival was called “some of the best music I heard all weekend” by Ben Ratliff in the New York Times.
Tue, 3/20/12
Dan Deacon with NOW Ensemble & the Calder Quartet
New Sounds® Live hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer
Dan Deacon returns to the Ecstatic Music Festival after last year’s sold-out show, this time writing a series of new works for acclaimed chamber groups NOW Ensemble (“a deft young group gaining attention,” New Yorker) and the Calder Quartet (“outstanding,” New York Times), both for the individual ensembles and for the two together in a mini-chamber orchestra.
Sat, 3/24/12
The Mountain Goats & Anonymous 4
Co-commissioned by the Barbican
The Mountain Goats are joined by the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 in a collaborative presentation of songs from Transcendental Youth, a new work by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats (“one of America’s most startling lyricists,” Boston Globe). Anonymous 4, celebrating their 25th anniversary, are famous for their purity of tone and astounding blend, gaining wide recognition for their intense scholarship and attention to historical context, both in medieval and early American repertoire. Transcendental Youth features new songs from Darnielle, heard here in special arrangements for voices, piano, and guitar by the acclaimed musical polymath Owen Pallett. The songs visit a small community on Puget Sound in Washington, north of Seattle at the foot of Glacier Peak, and are inhabited by the mournful voices of the isolated and the lost in motels and apartment complexes around Snohomish County. A short solo Mountain Goats set begins the evening, followed by Anonymous 4 performing selections from their rich catalog in a program curated by both Darnielle and A4, and concluding with the collaborative performance.
Wed, 3/28/12
Derek Bermel, Samson Young, Gaybird Leung, Du Yun, Music from China & Music from Copland House
Two venerable contemporary music ensembles, Music from Copland House and Music from China, offer world premieres by celebrated young composers Du Yun, Samson Young, Derek Bermel and Gaybird Leung. These four idiosyncratic composers — originally from Shanghai, Hong Kong and New York — will take radically different approaches to the challenge of composing for a blend of Chinese and Western instruments, along with electronics or their own voices, in some cases. Placed together collectively, along with other works that explore this mixed space, the concert will be a fascinating examination of the music that lives at multiple intersections, between China and the United States, and between classical and vernacular traditions.
Tickets
11-concert festival pass: $175
Single tickets: $25
Subscriptions (available after Dec 10): $80 for 4 concerts
(Subscribers may purchase discounted $20 tickets to additional concerts)
Student tickets (in person sales only; ID required): $15
Press contact
Joan Jastrebski
212 501 3386
joan@kaufman-center.org
Merkin Concert Hall
at Kaufman Center
129 West 67th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam)
Ecstatic Music Festival information at EcstaticMusicFestival.com.
Tickets at 212 501 3330 or http://www.kaufman-center.org
Support for the Ecstatic Music Festival is provided by: The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Charly Dimston, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York City Council through the good offices of Councilmember Gale Brewer, the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support for Kaufman Center presentations in Merkin Concert Hall is provided by: Bloomberg Philanthropies, the BMI Foundation Inc., The Edward T. Cone Foundation, The Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, The Friars Foundation, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation, The Janis and Alan Menken Foundation, The Edith Meiser Foundation, the Open Society Foundations and the Fund for the City of New York, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.
