On Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 3pm, Concerts on the Slope presents composer Robert Sirota's second string quartet, American Pilgrimage, at St. John's Episcopal Church (139 St. John's Place). The quartet will be performed by violinists Sheng-Ching Hsu and Brian Bak, violist Maren Rothfritz, and cellist Benjamin Larsen. The program also includes Tania León's Elegia a Paul Robeson for piano trio and Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 26, with pianist Daniel Epstein.
Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 3pm
St. John's Episcopal Church
139 St. John's Place | Brooklyn, NY
Free admission; $20 suggested donation.
More information:www.concertsontheslope.org
The American String Quartet commissioned Sirota to write American Pilgrimage after championing his first string quartet, Triptych, written for the Chiara String Quartet as an impassioned response to the 9/11 tragedy. American Pilgrimage is conceived as a companion piece to Triptych: a celebration of the beauty, pathos, and variety of both our geography and culture. It is laid out in four movements: Morning: Waldo County, Maine; Mid-day: Mother Emanuel Church, Charleston, South Carolina; Sunset: High Desert, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Evening: Manhattan. The raw material is drawn from four sources: Protestant hymnody, Gospel music, Native American songs, and jazz. Sirota describes the work as an effort to "capture a glimpse of the epic quality of our country - the awesome diversity of its landscape and its people."
American Pilgrimage was partially funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, about which Sirota says, "More than a decade since composing my first string quartet and after months of consideration and deliberation, I decided that I want to make this piece the property of many, many people. I want to gather a community who will follow this project from the beginning, who will share my belief that a composer's uninterrupted devotion to create something beautiful and useful is worth getting behind." The quartet was premiered by the American String Quartet in September 2016 at Manhattan School of Music and has since been performed in Maine, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Since March 2012, Concerts on the Slope has presented talented musicians, a wide variety of repertoire, and remarkably diverse musical styles to historic St. John's Church, located in one of the most scenic and culturally active neighborhoods in the city-Park Slope, Brooklyn. The monthly series aims to enrich the classical music culture in Brooklyn by presenting top-quality chamber music concerts with accomplished and emerging young artists from New York and around the world.
Over four decades, composer Robert Sirota has developed a distinctive voice, clearly discernible in all of his work - whether symphonic, choral, stage, or chamber music. Writing in the Portland Press Herald, Allan Kozinn asserts: "Sirota's musical language is personal and undogmatic, in the sense that instead of aligning himself with any of the competing contemporary styles, he follows his own internal musical compass."
Robert Sirota's chamber works have been performed by Alarm Will Sound; Washington Square Contemporary Music Society; Sequitur; Sandbox Percussion; Yale Camerata; yMusic; TACTUS Ensemble; Chameleon Arts Ensemble; New Hudson Saxophone Quartet; Left Bank Concert Society; Dinosaur Annex; the Chiara, American, Ethel, Elmyr, and Blair String Quartets; the Peabody, Concord, and Webster Trios; and the Fischer Duo, and at festivals including the Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn, and Cooperstown music festivals; Bowdoin Gamper and Bowdoin International Music Festival; and Mizzou International Composers Festival. Orchestral performances include the Seattle, Vermont, Virginia, East Texas, Lincoln (Neb), Meridian (Miss), New Haven, Greater Bridgeport, Oradea (Romania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) symphonies, as well as conservatory orchestras of Oberlin, Peabody, Manhattan School of Music, Toronto, and Singapore.
Sirota's liturgical works include three major commissions for the American Guild of Organists: In the Fullness of Time, a concerto for organ and orchestra, Mass for chorus, organ and percussion, and Apparitions for organ and string quartet, as well as works for solo organ, organ and cello, and organ and piano.
Recent and upcoming highlights include the world premiere performances of Sirota's second string quartet, American Pilgrimage, by the American String Quartet; creating and curating the Bridging the Gap series at National Sawdust in Brooklyn; a commission by the Naumburg Foundation to compose a new chamber work; a new arrangement of
Paul Simon's America, which was premiered by Simon and yMusic at the Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival; as well as three other major commissions: Three Nocturnes, commissioned and premiered by Alarm Will Sound at the Mizzou International Composers Festival; A Call for the Battle to Cease, a work for orchestra, chorus, and piano commissioned by Concert Artists of Baltimore; and a new chamber work for Jeffrey Kahane and yMusic, which will be premiered at the Sarasota Music Festival in 2018. Sirota's passion as an educator is reflected in his schedule of university seminars and residencies, most recently at schools such as
Carnegie Mellon University, Peabody Institute, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and New World School of the Arts at Miami Dade College.
Recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Information Agency, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, and the American Music Center, Sirota is recorded on the Capstone, Albany, New Voice and Gasparo labels. His music is published by Muzzy Ridge Music, Schott, Music Associates of New York, MorningStar, Theodore Presser, and To the Fore.
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A native New Yorker, Sirota's earliest compositional training began at the Juilliard School; he received his bachelor's degree in piano and composition from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with
Joseph Wood and Richard Hoffman. A Thomas J. Watson Fellowship allowed him to study and concertize in Paris, where his principal teacher was Nadia Boulanger. Returning to America, Sirota earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, studying with
Earl Kim and
Leon Kirchner.
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Before becoming Director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in 1995, Sirota served as Chairman of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University and Director of Boston University's School of Music. From 2005-2012, he was the President of Manhattan School of Music, where he was also a member of the School's composition faculty.
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Sirota makes his home in New York and in Searsmont, Maine, with his wife, Episcopal priest and organist Victoria Sirota, Priest-in-Charge at St. John's Episcopal Church, Getty Square, Yonkers. For the Sirotas, music is a family affair. They frequently collaborate on new works, with Victoria as librettist and performer, at times also working with their two children, Jonah and Nadia, both world-class violists. In his spare time, Sirota is an amateur painter and often depicts the landscape around Muzzy Ridge and Levenseller Mountain near his home in Maine.
For more information, visit www.robertsirota.com.
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