CCi Presents SOLO FLIGHTS SERIES AT SPECTRUM

ComposersCollaborative's legendary Solo Flights series returns to the New York concert scene, marking the organization's 30th year with a rare opportunity to experience Morton Feldman's last piano pieces as a cycle over three Sundays in March, performed by three of new music's most respected composer/pianists: Jed Distler, Tania Chen and Nils Vigeland.

Morton Feldman's last piano pieces are riveting aural landscapes, characterized by their large time scale and contemplative aura. The composer's uniquely mesmerizing and oddly comforting sound world gently pulls listeners inwards. This music lends itself to Spectrum's spaciously intimate ambience. "I can't think of a better way to mark ComposersCollaborative's 30th year and the 30th anniversary of Morton Feldman's death than by bringing this composer's large-scale late solo piano works together on consecutive Sundays, under one roof," says CCi Artistic Director Jed Distler. "In turbulent times, we need a quiet and contemplative mini-festival. This music slips back and forth between foreground and background. You can listen with acute alertness, but you can let your mind wander, or you can just be, and it makes no difference. That's Morty's magic, and a compelling reason to relaunch Solo Flights. It's a series whose time has come again."

Spectrum is located at 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor. Tickets are $10 at the door. Limited seating.

Reservations by e-mail only: write to jdistler@composerscollab.org

Full Schedule:

Morton Feldman: The Late Piano Works

Sun., March 12th at 3PM: Jed Distler plays Triadic Memories (1981)

Sun., March 19th at 7PM: Tania Chen plays For Bunita Marcus (1985)

Sun., March 26th at 7PM: Nils Vigeland plays Piano (1977) & Palais de Mari (1986)

Jed Distler, Composer/Pianist

Composer/pianist Jed Distler co-founded ComposersCollaborative, inc. in 1987 with managing director Célia Cooke (1948-2011), producing hundreds of new music events and world premiers in New York for more than two decades. Distler's recent projects include recordings for Steinway & Sons's Spirio High Definition Player Piano and a chamber opera collaboration with librettist Luigi Ballerini and scenographer Maria Scarpini. He curates Symphony Space's Steinway Salon recital series, and hosts the weekly radio program Between the Keys on The Classical Network WWFM.org, where he is artist in residence. Visit www.jeddistler.com for the full scope of his musical life.

Tania Chen, Composer/Pianist

Tania Chen has recorded with Stewart Lee, Steve Beresford, Henry Kaiser, William Winant, Wadada Leo Smith, Thurston Moore, David Toop, Jon Raskin and with the bands Bad Jazz and Tender Buttons. Forthcoming recordings are John Cage's "Electronic Music for Piano." Her solo recordings include Michael Parsons & Cornelius Cardew's Piano music, John Cage's "Music of Changes" and a forthcoming recording of Andrew Poppy's piano music. Tania is Sound Artist in Residence at Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. Recently Tania has been creating sound pieces. Her pieces "Rendez-Vous I & II" and "Jeanne Dielman" explore found sounds through found moments, video, objects, voice, electronics and digital electronics.

www.taniachen.com for recordings and shows

Nils Vigeland, Composer/Pianist

Nils Vigeland was born in Buffalo in 1950. He made his professional debut as a pianist in 1969 with the Buffalo Philharmonic under Lukas Foss. He studied composition with Foss and David Del Tredici at Harvard College and earned his Ph.D at the University at Buffalo where he studied composition with Morton Feldman and piano with Yvar Mikhashoff. For eight years (1980-89). Vigeland directed The Bowery Ensemble which gave an annual series of concerts in Cooper Union, NYC. The ensemble was strongly associated with the music of the New York School. Vigeland has recorded with Eberhard Blum and Jan Williams a 10 CD series for HAT ART of the complete extended duration works for flute, percussion and piano by Morton Feldman. His own work appears on CDs from Mode, EMF, Lovely Music, New Focus and Naxos. His choral music is published by Boosey and Hawkes. He taught at Manhattan School of Music for thirty years, retiring as Chair of the Composition Department in 2013.

www.nilsvigeland.com

About Solo Flights

ComposersCollaborative's new music piano series Solo Flights ran for nine years in New York City between 1994 and 2003. It presented a veritable who's who of keyboard luminaries in recital like Anthony de Mare, Kathleen Supové, Sarah Cahill, Michael Harrison, Frederic Rzewski, Eleonor Sandresky, Andrew Violette, Nurit Tilles, Joseph Kubera, Phillip Bush, Margaret Leng Tan, and the late Robert Helps, along with premiers by guest composers like Meredith Monk, Lukas Foss, David Del Tredici, Eleanor Hovda, Lois V Vierk, Chester Biscardi, Ned Rorem and Richard Rodney Bennett. In 2000 CRI/New World released a highly acclaimed CD culled from the series' live performances.

From 2004 until 2014, CCi focused its presenting activities on collaborative projects such as its summer Non Sequitur Festival, the long running monthly Serial Underground series at the Cornelia Street Café, plus outdoor co-productions with Make Music New York and Peppergreen Media involving massed performers.

Large-scale piano projects encompass a central role in CCi's presenting history. For Virgil Thomson's 1996 centenary celebration, CCi and The New School co-produced the first complete performance of that composer's 150-plus musical portraits. 2003 saw the world premier of Frederic Rzewski's eight-hour magnum opus The Road, with the composer at the piano over six concerts.

The New York premier of Simeon Ten Holt's 1979 minimalist manifesto Canto Ostinato with four pianos took place outdoors on Cornelia Street for Make Music New York 2009. Four years later, a composition by Jed Distler for 175 electronic keyboards earned the Guinness Book Record for world's largest keyboard ensemble. And in 2015 CCi presented the second complete performance of the late Arthur Jarvinen's 24-hour solo piano composition Serious Immobilities, in tandem with Randall Woolf's Spineless Dog. Visit www.composerscollab.org.