Miller Theatre Presents A Composer Portrait Of SUZANNE FARRIN This February

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its 2022-23 Composer Portraits series with Suzanne Farrin.

The Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner showcases her visceral compositions and virtuosic ondes Martenot playing with International Contemporary Ensemble. Includes an onstage discussion with Suzanne Farrin and Melissa Smey, Thursday, February 2, 8:00 P.M. at Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets starting at $20; Students with valid ID starting at $10.

Winner of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellow, Suzanne Farrin explores the interior worlds of instruments and the visceral potentialities of sound in her music. This Portrait highlights another facet of her artistic practice, as an accomplished performer of the early electronic music instrument ondes Martenot. International Contemporary Ensemble delves into a program of her atmospheric work, including the world premiere of Their Hearts are Columns and selections from dolce la morte, an opera based on the love poetry of Michelangelo.

Program:
Their Hearts are Columns (2020) world premiere for soprano, harp,
ondes Martenot, percussion, and double bass
dolce la morte: unico spirto, come serpe, veggio, l'onde della non vostra, rendete (2016)
for countertenor and ensemble
Il Suono (2016) for harp and soprano
corpo di terra (2009) for cello
polvere et ombra (2008) for harp
Time is a Cage (2007) for violin

Artists:
Alice Teyssier, soprano
Eric Jurenas, countertenor
Josh Modney, violin
Mariel Roberts, cello
Nuiko Wadden, harp
Suzanne Farrin, ondes Martenot
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
International Contemporary Ensemble
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Randy Zigler, double bass
James Austin Smith, oboe
Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Nathan Davis, percussion

Suzanne Farrin is a composer whose works have been performed around the world. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called her first opera, dolce la morte, a work of "shattering honesty." Her debut recording, Corpo di Terra, was described in TimeOut Chicago, "like field recordings from inside the cerebral cortex." Recent commissions include works for the Parker Quartet, Talea, the Library of Congress, Sō Percussion, JACK Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. She was a 2018 Rome Prize Winner and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition.

Farrin's music has been featured at venues such as Theaterforum (Germany), Town Hall Seattle, Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Symphony Space, and Wigmore Hall, and festivals including The BBC Proms, Mostly Mozart, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Matrix, Alpenklassik, Music in Würzburg, and BAM's NextWave, among many others.

In addition to composing, Farrin is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in France in the 1920s as a response to the simultaneous destruction and technological advances of WWI. Her life as an interpreter on the instrument has taken her to venues such as the Abrons Arts Center (New York City), Centro de Artes (Buenos Aires), as well as to film and television. She has performed in film scores such as Chicuarotes (Gael Garcia Bernal, director), Sade Ma'bar/Blockage (Mohsen Gharaie, director), and USERS (Natalia Almada, director), which was featured at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She appears as herself in an episode of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle (Roman Coppola, director).

Farrin is the Frayda B. Lindemann Chair of Music at Hunter College and The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, where she teaches composition. She has been the lead mentor composer for Evolution: Quartet at the Banff Centre since 2021. She holds a doctorate from Yale University.

With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble-as a commissioner and performer at the highest level-amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time.

Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble's programming since its founding in 2001, and the group's recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music's present. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at www.digitice.org.