92Y Harkness Dance Center Presents CALEB TEICHER & CONRAD TAO: COUNTERPOINT

The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center's 2021-22 Mainstage Series continues with the New York City premiere of Caleb Teicher and Conrad Tao's Counterpoint. In this collaborative duet, the two explore the dichotomy of their different perspectives and artistic practices and how together they can expand their individual expressive capacity through a collective experience. Harmonic, rhythmic, and theatrical counterpoint between the artists seeks to map out constellations linking their disparate traditions, driving an opening of the hearts and imaginations of the audience.

The stylistically diverse music of Counterpoint includes the Arias from Bach's Goldberg Variations, Art Tatum's demented stride piano, Arnold Schoenberg's ironic take on the Viennese waltz, a delicate miniature from Tao and Teicher's More Forever, and threading it all together, a work that bridges traditions, approaches, and styles - Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Tao and Teicher's earlier work, More Forever, is a Bessie Award-winning, New York Times critic's pick which was lauded for "constantly extend[ing] the sonic aspects of dance."

"Conrad and I had premiered More Forever, which was a much larger production," notes Caleb Teicher. "But some folks wanted to hear a 'stripped-down' set of just us. Counterpoint responds to that call. It's just me and Conrad in artistic conversation and it's a joy to play together. It's a great dance concert for music audiences and an excellent music concert for dance audiences."

"I hope that audiences come in with their senses open, and feel their senses intertwining, so that musical, visual, and bodily gesture, phrasing, and composition may be experienced as a unity," comments Conrad Tao, going on to exclaim, "it's almost embarrassingly fun working together this way. Because of Caleb's power on the floor, I play the loudest I've ever played in my life in this program. It's a workout!"

Counterpoint Program

• J.S. Bach, Aria from the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
• Tao/Teicher, Swing 2 from More Forever and improvisations
• Schoenberg, Five Piano Pieces, op. 23: V. Walzer
• Noble/Powell/Tatum, "Cherokee"
• Coles & Bufalino, The Coles and Bufalino Soft Shoe
• Brahms, Intermezzo in E major, op. 116/4
• Mozart/David Parker, Song and Dance, based on Mozart's Sonata in A major, K.331: III. Allegretto "Alla Turca"
• Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, arr. for solo piano
• Ravel, Sonatine: II. Mouvement de Menuet
• J.S. Bach, Aria from the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988