GHMS Presents Pianist Jenny Lin As She Plays A Ligeti Program 3/31

Greenwich House Music School (GHMS) is pleased to present a not to be missed all-Ligeti program by one of today's most respected young pianists, Jenny Lin, on Thursday, March 31 at 8 p.m. Hailed as "brilliant" and "beautifully attentive" (Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times), Lin will perform ten of György Ligeti's Études pour piano (1985-2001), as well as his Continuum for Harpsichord (1968), and Musica ricercata (1951-3).

The concert is presented as part of the 25th anniversary season of North River Music - one of New York City's first concert series devoted to new and experimental music and founded by Frank Wigglesworth in 1985. The concert will be followed by a reception.

WHEN: Thursday, March 31 at 8 p.m.

VENUE: Renee Weiler Concert Hall, Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street (between Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC

TICKETS: $15 General Admission/$10 Students/Seniors
All tickets are payable at the door from 7:30pm

INFO: (212) 242-4770, http://www.greenwichhouse.org/programs/arts/music

Written between 1985 and 2001, Ligeti's Études pour piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988-94; Book III, 1995-2001) are considered by many as the best piano works of the last 50 years. Combining virtuoso technical problems with new ideas, they draw from such diverse sources as gamelan, one of his favorite jazz pianists, Thelonious Monk, African polyrhythms, Bartók, Conlon Nancarrow, and Bill Evans. Jenny Lin will perform Etudes No. 1,3,4,7,8,11,13,16,17, and 18.

Continuum for harpsichord (1968) was dedicated to the contemporary harpsichordist, Antoinette Vischer. Around the time of writing Continuum, Ligeti turned away from total chromaticism and began to concentrate on rhythm, and the work is described by the composer as "a series of sound impulses in rapid succession which create the impression of continuous sound."

Musica ricercata (1951-1953) is a set of eleven pieces. Although the ricercata (or ricercar) is an established contrapuntal style (and the final movement of the work is in that form), Ligeti's title can be interpreted literally as "researched music" or "sought music." This work captures the essence of Ligeti's search to construct his own compositional style, and as such foreshadows many of the more radical directions Ligeti would take in the future. Another important feature of the piece is that the composer confines himself to certain pitch classes in each movement, with each subsequent movement having exactly one more pitch class than the last.

About the Artist:

Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. Her ability to combine classical and contemporary literature has brought her to the attention of international critics and audiences. She has been acclaimed for her "remarkable technical command" and "a gift for melodic flow" by The New York Times. The Washington Post praises "Lin's confident fingers...
spectacular technique..." and Gramophone Magazine has hailed her as "an exceptionally sensitive pianist."

She has appeared with orchestras worldwide and her concerts have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, Whitney Museum, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Spivey Hall, University of Chicago Presents, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Paris' Salle Cortot. Festivals such as at Chopin Festival, Flanders Festival, Shanghai New Music, Potsdam Festival, Winnipeg New Music, BAM's Next Wave, Spoleto and Portland International Piano
Festival. Upcoming performances include Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, San Francisco Performances, Freer Gallery of Art, and Strathmore.

As one of the most sought-after players of the music of our time, Jenny has numerous premieres and dedications to her credit, as well as an extensive discography on Hanssler Classic, Koch/E1, BIS Records, and Sunrise Records. Upcoming releases include Federico Mompou's Musica Callada on the newly launched Steinway & Sons label and Xavier Montsalvatge's Concerto Breve with NDR Radiophilharmonie. Born in Taiwan and raised in Austria, Jenny studied at the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She currently resides in New York City. www.jennylin.net

Born in Transylvania, Romania, György Ligeti (1923-2006) studied composition with Ferenc Farkas in Klausenburg and Sandor Veress in Budapest. He was a lecturer at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music (1950-56) before fleeing Hungary in 1956 to work in the electronics studio of the WDR, Cologne. He subsequently taught at the Darmstadt Summer courses and the Stockholm Academy of Music, was a DAAD-scholar in Berlin, and composer-in-residence at Stanford University, California. In 1973 he became Professor of Composition at Hamburg Musikhochschule and caused a considerable sensation with his works for orchestra, Apparitions (1958-59) and Atmospheres (1961). Atmosphères (1961), along with Requiem (1963-65) and Lux aeterna (1966), was chosen by Stanley Kubrick to be included in the soundtrack for his film 2001 - A Space Odyssey. In the 1980s Ligeti developed a new polyrhythmic composition technique which led to the highly complex polyphony of his Piano-Etudes (1985) and his Piano Concerto (1985-88). Ligeti is a fellow of the Order Pour le mérite for Science and Arts and has won numerous prizes including the Grawemeyer Award in 1986. He was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society and was winner of the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo in 1991.

>> Future Concert - Thursday, April 8, 2011 at 8 p.m.: Morton Subotnick
The 25th Anniversary Season of the North River Music Series will finish with an evening featuring one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving interactive computer music systems. www.mortonsubotnick.com

About Greenwich House Music School:

Founded by Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch in 1902, Greenwich House is a nonprofit settlement house which offers cultural and educational programs, social and health services and opportunities for civic involvement to New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds - from any neighborhood. Greenwich House Music School, located in the historicAl West Village, provides a wide range of concerts and recitals as well as instructional classes and outreach in NYC's public schools. With a faculty of about 50 instructors, its has 520 students ranging in ages from 3 years old to seniors - from beginner to advanced - in classes and private lessons, in piano, voice, violin and viola, cello, clarinet, flute, guitar, five-string banjo, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, harp and the Chinese qin, a seven-string plucked instrument. www.greenwichhouse.org

Funding for North River Music is provided, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.