OWLS Comes to 92NY With Special Guest Claire Chase, Flute

The 92nd Street Y will present the Owls with special guest Claire Chase, flute on Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:30pm ET on the Buttenwieser Hall stage at The Arnhold Center and streaming online. 

The phenom young supergroup Owls performs in their 92NY debut. Comprising one violin, one viola, and two cellos in the artistry of four superb young musicians and new-music champions - Alexi Kenney, Ayane Kozasa, Gabriel Cabezas, and Paul Wiancko - Owls' performances invite listeners into a wholly unique sound world conjured by four of today's most exciting young string players.

The program will feature:

PAUL WIANCKO When the Night (arr. Owls)

BARBER Adagio for Strings (arr. Owls)

FRANGHIZ ALI-ZADEH Rəqs (arr. Owls)

TERRY RILEY Holy Lift Off for Flute, Strings, and Electronics (arr. Birmaher)

Musicians: Alexi Kenney, violin; Ayane Kozasa, viola; Gabriel Cabezas, cello; Paul Wiancko, cello; Claire Chase, flute

Drawing from a deep well of musical passions and backgrounds, Owls is a quartet collective that defies expectations and labels with original, visceral, and personal performances. Each member is an artistic force in their own right; violinist Alexi Kenney,

violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabriel Cabezas and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko share an uncommonly fierce creative spirit which drives the quartet to challenge the way meaningful concert experiences are conceived.

The 2024/25 season sees a debut album from Owls, as well as performances in Chicago, New York City, Berkeley, Albany, and Montana, following invitations from prestigious series from, among others, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Tippet Rise, U Chicago Arts, Cal Performances, and Celebrity Series of Boston.

By weaving together new compositions with collaboratively generated arrangements of music ranging from the 1600s to the present, Owls' distinctive instrumentation allows them access to beautiful and exhilarating new sound worlds-effectively guaranteeing that each performance is uniquely theirs and without limits.

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as "the North Star of her instrument's ever-expanding universe," is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator.

Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its 12th year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education and an accessible archive at densityarts.org.

Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A dedicated teacher, she is currently Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University's Department of Music, and a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2022/23 season, and will serve as Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival. She lives in Brooklyn.