New Chamber Orchestra Music by Composers from Australia, Ireland and the US Will Perform in St Patrick's Day Concert

North/South Consonance, Inc. celebrates St. Patrick's Day with a free-admission concerts to be held on Sunday afternoon March 17 at 3 PM. The North/South Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Max Lifchitz will perform music by composers hailing from Australia, Ireland and the US. To be heard for the first time in New York City will be music by Ireland's Frank Corcoran; Australia's John David Little, as well as Americans David Froom and Heather Niemi-Savage. Flutist Lisa Hansen and clarinetist Sammy Lesnick will appear as soloists.

The event will start at 3 PM and end approximately at 4:30 PM. It will be held at the auditorium of Christ and St. Stephen's Church (120 West 69th Street) in Manhattan. The auditorium is ADA accessible. No tickets or reservations needed.

Frank Corcoran's Quasi un concerto for clarinet and strings was written especially for this concert with funding provided by the Irish Arts Council. Completed in 2018, Corcoran's intensely vivid three movement work provides the soloist and ensemble with ample opportunity for technical display. The composer writes that "the piece could use as its subtitle the Joycean

'It soared a bird' from Mr. Bloom's org*smic shout in his Ulysses." Born in Tipperary in 1944, Corcoran is a founding member of Aosdana, the Irish Academy of the Arts which honors artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. The recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship he has lectured at several US universities including CalArts, NYU and Harvard. The concert will honor the composer on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

David Froom's Petali di Gelsonimo (Jasmine Flower Petals) for flute and strings was commissioned by China's Fudan University and premiered last year in Shanghai. It takes its title from the Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower used as basis for the work. Froom writes that Chinese melody -- also used by Puccini in his opera Turandot -- is first "broken" into small motivic fragments (as if picking petals from this Jasmine flower) and as the music progresses the petals are "reassembled" into the full flower. Froom teaches at St. Mary's College in Maryland and has received honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim, Fromm, Koussevitzky, and Barlow Foundations, and the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award.

Jonathan David Little's Sacred Prelude is a haunting, single-movement work for string orchestra. The Australian composer describes the work as "a poignant prayer for strings" as it was inspired by Gregorian Chant and evokes the sound of ancient church music. Little's musical style has been described by the European press as ecstatic minimalism and antique futurism. Little attended the University of Melbourne and holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in music for his research at Monash University into the development of "exotic" 19th- and 20th-century orchestration, and has written and broadcast extensively on this, and related topics such as songwriting and composition. Heather Niemi-Savage's Daughter of the Stars for string orchestra was inspired by the American folk tune Shenandoah. The title comes from the meaning of the word Shenandoah, which is "spruce stream, great plains, beautiful daughter of the stars." The folk song refers to a river, so while writing the piece the composer imagined traveling down a river and seeing the beautiful countryside surrounding it. Niemi-Savage's style has been described as "stunningly resourceful with scant material, exploring the interaction between the old and the new, tradition and innovation." Her works have been performed throughout New England and at festivals sponsored by the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers