March 25, 2012 - Composer's Voice Concert

Performers

Gelsey Bell

Gelsey Bell is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She has four albums of original work including the most recent In Place of Arms (2010). This last fall, she premiered her new song cycle, SCALING, as part of the Vital Vox festival at Roulette, and cocreated the site-specific adaptation of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives with Varispeed. Her song-cycle Bathroom Songs has been performed in restrooms throughout New York City, she can be heard on the recording of Jay Vilnai's Shakespeare Songs with the MIVOS string quartet, and she has premiered over a hundred works by contemporary composers as a core member of thingNY. She is also a PhD Candidate at NYU in performance studies currently writing her dissertation on American experimental vocal performance and the Critical Acts Editor for TDR/The Drama Review. www.gelseybell.com.

Martha Cargo

Hailed by the New York Times as "excellent," flutist Martha Cargo is committed to the integration of experimental music into various media, be it contemporary art, theater or dance. She has performed at diverse venues, from Cleveland's Severance Hall, to the NYC jazz haunt Local 269, Stern/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, the Aldrich Estate in the Hudson Valley, and the intimate WMP Concert Hall in midtown Manhattan. As a performer, Martha's credits include experimental theater, improvised music for modern dance, and early music-infused free jazz. Ms. Cargo has performed works by Zosha Di Castri, Beavan Flanagan, Ellen O'Meara, Anne Goldberg, Alex Burtzos, and Travis Reuter, premiering 6 works since 2009.

Mila Henry

Mila Henry is Resident Music Director with American Opera Projects in Brooklyn, where she has delighted audiences in accompanying new vocal works in the most operatic, and unoperatic, of settings. A regular at their OPERAtion Brooklyn series at Galapagos Art Space, Mila has worked with emerging and established composers alike, and is a music director for their Composers & the Voice series. Notable performances include her Lincoln Center debut with Kamran Ince's Judgment of Midas, the NY Premiere of John Musto's Later The Same Evening, collaborating with Libby Larsen on Try Me Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Mila holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Elizabethtown College. www.milahenry.com

Delea Shand

Guest Curator Delea Shand is dedicated to performing and promoting new music. She recently completed a Masters of Music in Contemporary Performance at the Manhattan School of Music, and studies with Lucy Shelton. She was a fellow at the Bang on a Can summer festival at MassMoca, Massachusetts, where her performance of George Crumb's "Madrigals, Book Two" was hailed by the Albany Times Union as, "Especially impressive.... even while delivering some swooping and percussive vocal affects." As a proud member of Opera on Tap, Delea sings regularly in bars and backrooms. . Delea also directs Opera on Tap's new music ensemble, New Brew, whose mission is present contemporary opera with the same rowdy energy audiences have come to love and expect.

Eleanor Taylor

Soprano Eleanor Taylor has given readings and concerts of new music-theater works at the Alliance Francaise, Galapagos and New Dramatists, performed with Brooklyn-based experimental music group Ensemble Youkali in works by Ravel and Stravinsky, and portrayed Gilbert & Sullivan heroines Josephine (HMS Pinafore), Yum-Yum (The Mikado) and Phyllis (Iolanthe) with Ridge Light Opera (NJ). She is half of the new music duo Two Sides Sounding with pianist Jocelyn Dueck, and has premiered works by Eve Beglarian, Corey Dargel, Edward Ficklin, Daron Hagen, Edie Hill, Gilda Lyons, Eric Moe, Kala Pierson, Michael Rose, Daniel Sonenberg and Aleksandra Vrebalov. This season she appears in concerts at the NY Society for Ethical Culture, Cornelia Street Cafe and Third Street Settlement, with Brooklyn New Music Collective and The Phoenix Concerts. www.eleanortaylor.com

Composers

Andrea Arias-Martin

Andrea Arias-Martin, a native from Long Island, is a graduate from the Master's program at Manhattan School of Music and Bachelor's from C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. While at Manhattan, Andrea performed Mother in Griffelkin and Anna Maurrant in Street Scene. New York Times review stated, "As Anna Maurrant, Andrea Arias-Martin sings with a bright soprano and effectively conveys the character's disillusionment and unhappiness." Andrea was part of the Chautauqua Opera Studio Artist for the 2009 and 2010 season. While at Chautauqua Opera, Andrea covered the roles of Foreign Woman in The Consul and the title role of Norma. She is currently part of the Composers and the Voice Workshop with American Opera Projects.

Anne Goldberg

Anne Goldberg is the founder/artistic director of the Synthesis Aesthetics Project, a collaborative between musicians, dancers, multimedia and spoken word artists. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a M.M. of Classical Composition at Manhattan School of Music in Marjorie Merryman's studio. Anne is a freelance pianist and oboist-English hornist, and was a member of the New England Philharmonic and Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra. She and three of her friends recently formed the Tempus Continuum Ensemble, a touring mixed quartet that premiers a lot of her music. Anne's music has also been premiered in Boston and New York by ensembles such as Boston New Music Institute & the Novatrio.

Kjersti Kveli

Soprano Kjersti Kveli started her music studies at the Tromso Music Conservatory in Norway. She has performed with the Youth Orchestra of Nord-Trondelag, Tromso Symphony Orchestra (Norway); Bremer Baroque Orchestra (Germany); TACTUS, MIVOS String Quartet and CLOGS (USA). Studied: Harry Van der Kamp, Bremen, Germany; Lucy Shelton, Manhattan School of Music, where she received a Master's of Music in Contemporary Performance. Kveli established the experimental ensemble Cochlea Freedom Ensemble, which debuted at the TANK, NYC. With Asami Tamura, (Toy Piano) she creates alternative performance art, as DUO TAMUVELI. Kveli is currently focused on songwriting in a modern folk style, performing solo and with her band (KK GROUP), playing regularly at venues in New York City as well as in Norway.

Julia Meinwald

Julia Meinwald's music has been heard at the York Theatre (NEO5), the Cherry Lane Theatre (Edgewise), Barrington Stages (Bill Finn Presents Ridiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists That You've Probably Never Heard of But Should), Goodspeed Opera House (Shelter), and the Hangar Theatre (The Adventures of Haarlem Berlin.) She was a 2009-2010 Dramatists Guild fellow, where she developed Pregnancy Pact with her collaborator Gordon Leary. Pregnancy Pact received the 2011 Weston Playhouse New Musical Award and enjoyed two sold out concerts at Ars Nova. The show was also selected for the Yale Institute of Musical Theatre, where it received a workshop in New Haven under the direction of Mark Brokaw, and then for the 2011 NAMT conference.. www.juliameinwald.com

Rachel Peters

Rachel Peters' music include Only Children, Tiny Feats of Cowardice, Write Left, f2m, and Public Domain. Short operas includeThe Wild Beast of the Bungalow and an adaptation of Arthur Phillips's Companionship. She has scored many plays including the critically acclaimed Stretch (a fantasia)by Susan Bernfield, The Bacchae, Unrequited, and Veritas, The Tale of the Good Whistleblower... and Definite Possibilities, by Stan Richardson. Concert works: Jack's Vocabulary, I Live Here, Canon I. Cabaret songs performed at Lincoln Center, the DLounge, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Don't Tell Mama, Cornelia Street Cafe. Awards: Anna Sosenko Assist Trust, ASCAPlus. The Coterie; Alumna, New Dramatists Composer- Librettist Studio; Current fellow, American Opera Projects' Composers and the Voice.

Program Notes

Support from the Puffin Foundation "...continuing the dialogue between art and the lives of ordinary people."

Vox Novus is a collective of composers, musicians, and music enthusiasts collaborating together to create, produce, promote, and enjoy the new music of today. Our members are from a variety of composers committed to the creation and dissemination of new music. Their music is of a variety of styles, aesthetics, and ideologies. Vox Novus produces and promotes new music. They are dedicated to contemporary music, the musicians who perform, and the composers that write the music of today. Their mission is to cultivate a music community and make their work available to the greater public.

Remarkable Theater Brigade founded by Christian McLeer, Dan Jeselsohn and Monica Harte, creates and produces new operas and musicals and takes children's versions out to special-needs and at-risk children free of charge.

Presenters:

Remarkable Theater Brigade

Remarkable Theater Brigade founded by Christian McLeer, Dan Jeselsohn and Monica Harte, creates and produces new operas and musicals and takes children's versions out to special-needs and at-risk children free of charge.

Remarkable Theater Brigade creates and produces new works including operas, orchestral pieces, ballets, musicals, and electro-acoustic works and co-produces the Composer's Voice Concert Series concerts. Remarkable Theater Brigade was founded in 2002 by Christian McLeer, Monica Harte, and Dan Jeselsohn.

Jan Hus Church

This is the place you were welcome, long before you arrived!
www.janhus.org

Vox Novus

Vox Novus promotes contemporary music and its creators through concerts, recordings, publications, broadcasts, and online publicity. Vox Novus believes strongly in the intrinsic value of contemporary music, recognizing it as a force in the advancement of culture and art. Our goal is to keep music alive by strengthening the connection between composer and audience, providing greater exposure to new music.

Program: