Talea Ensemble to Present 24-25 Season Opener EXPLORING HOME

Talea Ensemble will kick off its 2024-2025 season with a program titled Exploring Home on Saturday, September 20, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. at the Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew.

Exploring Home celebrates the centennial of Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono with a spotlight on his work, Guai ai gelidi mostri. The program examines the concept of home within our universe, our surroundings, and our bodies as Nono's work is performed alongside music by Chaya Czernowin, Claudia Jane Scroccaro, and Marcos Balter.

Talea Executive Director and bassoonist, Adrian Morejon, said, "In Talea's continued search for a new home, we have considered what a "home" means to any of us. This program acknowledges the different facets of "home," exploring the ways in which sound deepens our awareness within ourselves and our own bodies (Scroccaro and Balter), our awareness of sound within the space around us (Nono), and our awareness of the universe (Czernowin)."

Chaya Czernowin's Fast Darkness iii (moonwords) (2022), for flute, clarinet, piano, and string trio, is part of a trilogy of pieces that capture the sense of bewilderment and imagination of the worlds that exist between sleeping and waking. The composer calls it a "virtuosic, wild, and overgrown exploration," capturing the energy of constant exploration of the universe around us.

Claudia Jane Scroccaro's I sing the body electric (2020) for double bass and electronics takes its title from a Walt Whitman poem and grew from the composer's research with double bassist Florentin Ginot on the sensory interactions between the musician's body, the instrument, and electronics.

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly (2015) by Marcos Balter for flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola, cello acknowledges the practice of vocalizing as a spiritual, communal, and personally reflective practice. It incorporates Yorubá chant used in Umbanda and Candomblé ceremonies in Brazil, passed around the musicians of the ensemble.

Finally, in celebration of Luigi Nono's centennial, Talea performs Guai Ai Gelidi Mostri for two contraltos, flute, clarinet, tuba, viola, cello, double bass and live electronics. The piece experiments with the relationship between sound and space by using speakers to redistribute each musician's sound around the room, giving rise to new combinations and ways of perceiving sound.

The concert comes just days before Talea makes its debut as part of its Talea Ambassadors initiative at the International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival in Nicosia, Cyprus in a program that includes world premieres by Cypriot composers George Christofi and Andreas Tsiartas. Throughout the season, Talea will continue its new Talea Ambassadors initiative, a hybrid residency spotlighting composers from a different country or region each season through performance, podcast interviews, discussion, and other content highlighting the work and creative processes of partner composers. The Talea Ambassadors program debuted in June 2024 with a concert at New York's West End Theatre titled Aux Étoiles, featuring works by France-based composers.

Talea returns to St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church on Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. for a holiday presentation of Jon Deak's Passion of Scrooge.

Talea is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Talea Ensemble's 2024-25 season projects are supported in part by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, Amphion Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, and generous donors like you. Talea's season is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Concert Information
Exploring Home
Saturday, September 20, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew | 520 Clinton Ave | Brooklyn, NY 11238
Link: https://taleaexploringhome.eventbrite.com

Program:
Chaya Czernowin - Fast Darkness III: Moonwords
Claudia Jane Scroccaro - I sing the body electric
Marcos Balter - We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly
Luigi Nono - Guai ai gelidi mostri

About the Talea Ensemble

Heralded as "a crucial part of the New York cultural ecosphere" by The New York Times, the Talea Ensemble's mission is to champion musical creativity, cultivate curious listeners, and bring visionary new works to life with vibrant performances that remain in the audience's imagination long after a concert. Recipients of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the ensemble has brought to life over 50 commissions of major new works since it was founded in 2008, including bold and inventive productions that span multiple genres, bringing together music and other contemporary art forms such as theater and visual art. Talea has helped introduce NYC audiences to important works of seasoned composers such as Pierre Boulez, Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth, Unsuk Chin, and Hans Abrahamsen, and has regularly commissioned composers of the following generations.

The Talea Ensemble's work has spanned imaginative performances, collaboration with composers, artist development projects, discussion, and reflection around music. Highlights from Talea's most recent performance seasons have included: world premieres by Wang Lu, Tyshawn Sorey, Sarah Hennies, Natacha Diels, Anthony Cheung, Agata Zubel, Mark Applebaum, and more; a production of Georg Friedrich Haas's concert-length Solstices in complete darkness; the US premiere of the immersive theater work Love & Diversity by Manos Tsangaris; and a performance of Julius Eastman's Femenine in the NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series.

Festival engagements have included performances at Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, TIME:SPANS, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Festival Musica, and many more. The ensemble has also partnered with institutions from across disciplines, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the City of Ideas Festival in Mexico, and the Storm King Art Center.

Talea undertakes residencies in music departments around the country to support early-career composers. Residencies in the current season include the Peabody Institute, Rice University, Hunter College, Brown University, Ithaca College, and Queens College. Since 2020, Talea has targeted support to early career composers through the Talea Access Project, which includes a commissioning program and a composer recording workshop. Talea is committed to continuing to build these artist development programs in the upcoming seasons.

Photo credit: Drew Bordeaux Photography

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