Tickets on Sale Now for AGBU Sayat Nova International Composition Competition Gala Concert

Compositions to premiere in New York by an international ensemble of musicians

On May 11, 2015, the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) Sayat Nova International Composition Competition will hold its biannual gala concert and award ceremony. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space in New York. Opening remarks will be given by Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, the permanent representative of Armenia to the United Nations, and Ara Guzelimian, the dean and provost of the Juilliard School.

The gala concert will premiere compositions by the three winners of the 2014 Sayat Nova International Composition Competition. Hovik Sardaryan, 21, of Armenia was awarded first prize; Fun Gordon Diclun, 26, of Hong Kong received second prize; and Richard Melkonian of the United Kingdom, 25, received third prize. Their works will be performed by an international ensemble of musicians from Armenia, France, Finland, Macedonia and the United States.

The Sayat Nova International Composition Competition is designed to introduce Armenian musical traditions to a wider audience. This year, in commemoration of centenary of the Armenian genocide, the competition asked composers to include in their submissions the poetry of Daniel Varoujan, one of the first victims of the Armenian genocide.

The concert will also feature songs on the kamancha by eighteenth-century Armenian bard Sayat Nova and a recitation of poems of Ottoman Armenian poet Daniel Varoujan.

Hayk Arsenyan, composer and artistic director of this year’s competition, advised on the selection of the AGBU Carnegie Hall Prize winner: “This project is one of the brightest examples of what the AGBU Performing Arts department is aiming to accomplish—to introduce Armenian traditional instruments to an international audience and to strengthen cultural connections between Armenia and the rest of the world,” says Arsenyan.

This year, the Sayat Nova International Composition Competition partnered with music company Vox Novus, which developed Music Avatar, a software that allowed all submissions and judging to take place online. Robert Voisey, the executive director of Vox Novus, was instrumental in the collaboration: “We are very proud to have worked with AGBU and contributed to making the competition inspirational and creative.”

“As this is an international endeavor, we wish to celebrate with an international audience. Over 60% of this year’s applicants represented the best of the arts outside of Armenia’s borders, ranging from Brazil to China to Russia and beyond. In short, we wish to celebrate an evening of exceptional talent, which we have spent months evaluating and preparing for this momentous occasion,” said Hayk Arsenyan, director of the AGBU Performing Arts Department.

The Sayat Nova International Composition Competition is designed to introduce Armenian musical traditions to a wider audience by inviting composers of all heritages to submit original compositions for an ensemble of Armenian traditional and Western classical instruments. This year, in commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, the competition asked composers to include in their compositions the poetry of Daniel Varoujan, one of the first victims of the Armenian Genocide.

To purchase tickets to the gala concert, please visit: http://www.symphonyspace.org/event/8736/Music/sayat-nova-international-composition-gala-concert

For more information about the Sayat Nova International Composition Competition, please visit: http://sayatnova.agbueurope.org/

Composer’s Voice will feature the teen ensemble Face the Music and their string quartet Quartet: This Side UP with a smorgasbord of new music by living composers both young and old. The Composer's Voice Concert Series is acclaimed as "One of the premier showcases for promising composers" - Time Out New York

Face the Music is the only teen ensemble in the U.S. dedicated to the creation and performance of music by living composers. In residence at Kaufman Music Center, the 170+ member Face the Music has taken its place as a full-fledged player in New York City’s vibrant contemporary classical scene, rapidly becoming what Allan Kozinn of the New York Times has called “a force in the New York new-music world.” Quartet: This Side Up will be premiering the 15 one-minute miniatures from different composers for Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame.

"…the 15 Minutes of Fame project of Vox Novus is a godsend. It organizes competitions whereby ensembles commission worldwide calls for submissions of approximately one-minute pieces, and then select their 15 favorites for premieres. The players, themselves emerging … get original works to present, while the likewise emerging composers get a chance for exposure and a premiere…" - Seth Gilman, New York Music Culture Examiner Quartet: This Side Up is a string quartet consisting of four Face the Music string players, mentored by the Kronos Quartet as part of the Kronos at Kaufman program.

Also included on the program are works by: Composer Austin Celestin is a 7th grade student at the Center School in Manhattan. Amelia Krinke is a violist and composer in fifth grade at Special Music School, a public school for musically gifted children. (She started composing when she was three.) Caroline Adelaide Shaw a New York-based musician appearing in many different guises, she is a Grammy-winning singer in Roomful of Teeth and in 2013 became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices (also nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Composition). And Terry Riley who launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic IN C in 1964.

Composer's Voice concert featuring:
Face the Music with Quartet: This Side Up
Sunday, May 17 at 1:00pm
New York, New York 10021
FREE ADMISSION
DONATIONS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED

Works selected for this Fifteen Minutes of Fame include:

Imperfect Recollection by David Bohn,
Throw the Switch by Justin Breame,
Scherzo by Zach Gulaboff Davis,
Oval Spinet by Ethan Helm,
Bouncing off Walls by Nathan R. Johnson,
All and Nothing by Steve Lansford,
Circolo by Peter Longworth,
Lueurs miniatures des lucioles by Luc Martin,
Opus 17 by Lysenko Maryana,
Fleeting Fragrance by Akmal Parwez,
Are You Sure? by Juan Maria Solare,
Face it! by José Jesus de Azevedo Souza,
Mini-Werk XXVII by Shigeru Kan-no,
When One Evening by Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau, and
BLOOM! by Kalle Vainio

FACE THE MUSIC

Face the Music is the only teen ensemble in the U.S. dedicated to the creation and performance of music by living composers. In residence at Kaufman Music Center, the 170+-member Face the Music has taken its place as a full-fledged player in New York City’s vibrant contemporary classical scene, rapidly becoming what Allan Kozinn of the New York Times has called “a force in the New York new-music world.”

Highlights of the 2013-14 season included a performance with Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall, a four-concert series at the Queens Museum of Art and participation in the 2014 New York Philharmonic Biennial as well as collaborations with the avant-garde composer-performer collective thingNY, chamber-punk-jazz ensemble Gutbucket and the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble. In honor of Black History Month, they performed Haitian-American violinist and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain’s immersive, multi-media piece Human Songs and Stories at Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Quartet: This Side Up is a string quartet consisting of four Face the Music string players, mentored by the Kronos Quartet as part of the Kronos at Kaufman program. Formed in September 2013, the quartet has played repertoire such as Ljova's Ori's Fearful Symmetry at the National Opera Center, for the release of the composer’s album No Refund on Flowers, Philip Glass' String Quartet No. 2 at Spectrum, Gregor Hübner's String Quartet No. 3 at Drom, Paris Lavidis' Swan Boulevard in a quartet masterclass with David Harrington, Elena Kats Chernin's Fast Blue Village at St. Barnabas Church, Francis Schwartz's Cannibal Caliban at Queens Museum, and Salvado Briseño's El Sinaloense at Carnegie Hall, which they performed alongside the Kronos quartet.