Charles Wuorinen's ELECTRIC QUARTET to Premiere at Tenri Cultural Institute's NAFTA Concert

Composers and performers from all of the signatories of the North American Free Trade Agreement are represented in a concert at Tenri Cultural Institute on March 13, 2017.

This program features the long awaited premiere of Charles Wuorinen's Electric Quartet, composed in 2013 for John Chang and Bodies Electric. Guitarist John Chang was born in Korea, but grew up in Montreal before settling in Queens, where he formed Bodies Electric.

Virtuoso guitar soloist Angel Mendez Barrios is from Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico. He brings to the event his own Tema Variado y Finale, and other recent guitar solos by Emil Awad & William Anderson. Emil Awad studied at Harvard and Juilliard with Donald Martino & Milton Babbitt. Awad's Fouad gets its title from a family name. Awad is of Lebanese descent. The piece reinvents flamenco gestures and harmonies.

The music of Canadian composer Stephen Chatman is performed with great frequency all over the US and Canada. The Toronto Star calls him, "one of our country's most successful composers Frank Brickle grew up in New York and was educated at Princeton before emigrating to Canada.

Members of Sheer Pluck (guitar orchestra) compose and perform new works by colleagues. Think of Sheer Pluck as kindred to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. They are new music messengers.

DETAILS:

NAFTA Concert
March 13, 8pm at Tenri Cultural Institute

featuring composers and performers from Mexico, the US, and Canada,
including first performance of Charles Wuorinen's Electric Quartet

with soprano Sharon Harms
guitar soloists Ángel de Jesus Mendez Barrios, Kyle Smith, Pascual Araujo
baritone Rodrigo Vega
pianist Joan Forsyth
Bodies Electric (electric guitar quartet)
Sheer Pluck (guitar orchestra)

New & recent works by Emil Awad (Mexico), Ángel Mendez Barrios (Mexico), Stephen Chatman (Canada), Frank Brickle (Canada), Luke Gopnik-Parker (USA), Daniel Conant (USA), and Charles Wuorinen (USA), and others.

Marsyas Productions is the production unit of the Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music (RSF). Established by composer/pianist Dina Koston, who named the endowment after her husband, psychiatrist Roger Shapiro. The Roger Shapiro Fund is devoted to the commissioning, performance and recording of contemporary classical music with special emphasis given to music in the Western modernist tradition. In 2012, Marsyas Productions presented Sounding Beckett, a sold-out, two-week run at the Classic Stage Company, under the direction of Joy Zinoman. Sounding Beckett alternated the abstract "ghost plays" of Beckett with original compositions that responded to the plays.

Sheer Pluck (guitar orchestra) is comprised of guitarists from all over the New York metro area. The ensemble has been giving sold-out performances at various venues since 2004. In 2015, Sheer Pluck was the featured ensemble at the Wintergarden in a concert hosted by John Schaefer for New Sounds Live, giving the premiere of David Lang's questionnaire. The ensemble has long and strong connections to the guitarists of Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico and hopes to forge similar connections with Canadian guitarists. Like Art Blakey's Jazz Messngers, the guitarists of Sheer Pluck are messengers of "contemporary classical" or "non-pop" music.