Spectrum presents REFRACTIONS: 2017-1901 featuring Gayle Blankenburg, Susan Lamb Cook & Mariah Maloney

Spectrum proudly presents pianist Gayle Blankenburg and cellist Susan Lamb Cook in Refractions: 2017-1901 on Friday, March 17th at 7pm. The first half of the concert will include works by living composers: Antal Sporck, Pablo Ortiz, Jo Sporck, and Richard Cameron-Wolfe. Both Jo Sporck (coming from the Netherlands) and Richard Cameron-Wolfe (coming from Taos, New Mexico) will be in attendance.

Gayle and Susan will also be joined by dancer Mariah Maloney, who will choreograph and perform one of Richard Cameron-Wolfe's works for cello and piano. The second half of the concert will travel backwards in time to the early part of the twentieth century, beginning with a post-Romantic style work of Cameron-Wolfe and ending with a 1901 work of Rachmaninoff.

Gayle Blankenburg has performed extensively to great critical acclaim as a solo pianist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. She was a roster artist with Southwest Chamber Music from 1996 to 2003, with whom she regularly performed and recorded. Among nearly a dozen award-winning CDs recorded for Southwest Chamber Music on Cambria Records are her performances of Elliot Carter's song cycle Of Challenge and of Love (with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson) and the Carlos Chavez Invencion for solo piano. She has also performed with Phyllis Bryn-Julson at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, at Cooper Union in New York City, and at the Schöenberg Institute in Vienna, Austria. Her recording of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with the LA-based ensemble "inauthentica" has received the highest critical acclaim from Gramophone Magazine, Opera News, and The American Record Guide. She will be completing a 2-CD recording project of music of Richard Cameron-Wolfe this March in New York City, where she will also be performing.

The Los Angeles Times has reviewed her playing on numerous occasions, saying, "Blankenburg played with elegant power and poise... Her crisp touch and light pedaling produced crystalline, pensive, haunting sequences... This is a gratefully idiomatic piece for a pianist with both power and a palette, requirements Blankenburg met easily."

Susan Lamb Cook is an active performer and educator both nationally and internationally and is sought after as soloist and chamber musician with performances throughout Europe, the Far East, and the United States. She is on the artistic staff for the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, and has served on faculty for the Vianden Festival, Luxembourg, and the Saarburg Festival, Germany. She is currently lecturer in Cello and Chamber Music at UC Davis and visiting lecturer in cello at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Her tours of China have included performances and master classes in Jinan, Liaosheng, Dezhou, Qilu, Hangzhou, and Xiamen and at the prestigious Shanghai Conservatory. Lamb Cook has performed as soloist with the UC Davis Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Camellia Symphony, and the Folsom Symphony. In 2015 she was featured as soloist with the Classical Music Festival Orchestra for a Gala Concert in the Haydn Concert Hall of the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt. She studied with Angelica May at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria, and Charles Wendt at the University of Iowa.

Mariah Maloney, Choreographer & Dancer

Mariah Maloney, Artistic Director of Mariah Maloney Dance originally from Homer, Alaska is a New York based dance artist. From 1995-2002 she performed, lectured and taught around the world as a featured soloist and ensemble dancer with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Mariah Maloney Dance formed in 2003 and today the company is invited to perform, teach and create new work in New York, throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.

Mariah grew up listening to her mother play live chamber music inside a small homesteader log cabin. This early relationship to live music informs Mariah's dance making process today. Improvisation practice in dialogue with choreographic structure and collaborations with artists of other disciplines continues to inform Mariah's work. In New York she is produced at several venues including La MaMa Experimental Theatre; The Kitchen; Judson Church; Danspace Project. Mariah Maloney Dance presents at the prestigious Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out. Mariah enjoys her relationship with the Trisha Brown Dance Company serving as an international guest artist and directing restaging projects.

Friday, March 17th at 7pm

SPECTRUM

121 Ludlow St., 2nd Fl., New York

Admission: $20 at the door; $10 for students & seniors

Gayle Blankenburg, piano

Susan Lamb Cook, cello

Mariah Maloney, choreography and dance

PROGRAM:

5 Preludes, for piano solo by Antal Sporck

Manzi, for cello solo by Pablo Ortiz

Ketting, for piano solo by Jo Sporck

Time Refracted, for cello, piano, and dance by Richard Cameron-Wolfe

INTERMISSION
Roerich Rhapsody-Liaison for cello and piano by Richard Cameron-Wolfe

Sonata for Cello and Piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff