The North/South Chamber Orchestra Performs 43rd Season Finale This Month

The North/South Chamber Orchestra concludes its 43rd consecutive season on June 20, 2023, performing five recent works by American composers.

The free-admission concert will start at 8 PM and end around 9:20 PM. It will be held at the intimate and acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th St - between Broadway and Columbus) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. First come, first served. No registration or ticket required.

Wearing a mask while in the auditorium is optional, but strongly encouraged.

The program will fete California-based composer Deon Nielsen Price on her upcoming 90th birthday. Described by the NY Times as The Tom Brady of Composers, Ms. Price has been a strong advocate for American Women composers throughout her lengthy career. Her works are receiving performances throughout the country and are widely available on recordings. Price's If Life Were to Sing is a cheerful single-movement work full of melodic turns and enjoyable harmonies.

The program will also feature Cellos in the Woods, a work by Bill Apollo Brown. Subtitled A Serenade to Joy, the work was inspired by the Innisfree Gardens in the Hudson River Valley. The music depicts the beautiful sacred gardens that sit in the low hills of the Catskills, embracing a haven of trees, waterlilies, springs, special flowers, waterfalls, and ancient rocks and stones. A native of Tarrytown, Brown has been active in the world of jazz and is on the teaching staff of the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.
  Leonard Mark Lewis's Weeping, An Angel. Immense for viola and chamber orchestra will be heard in New York for the first time. Written for Ben Geller, the evening's soloist, the work was written to mourn the sudden and unexpected passing of Lewis'  former composition student, Nick Firimonte. The music hopes to capture Nick's jovial energy, bright mind, and kind heart. The recipient of many prizes including Columbia University's Bearns Prize, Lewis is on the faculty of Winthrop University. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Ben Geller serves as Principal Violist for the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

Two round-off the program, the North/South Chamber Orchestra will perform with two recent works by Max Lifchitz, the ensemble's founder and director. Active as composer and performer, Lifchitz has received grants from the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim foundations and was awarded first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Contemporary Music held in Holland. His Four Tango Sketches were written last summer for a concert celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the tango master Astor Piazzolla. Forget Me Not is a cycle of four songs based on poetry by the 19th century American writer Lillian E. Curtis. Soprano Hannah Spierman, a graduate of the New England Conservatory, will be the featured soloist for the occasion.

North/South Consonance's concert activities are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support from the BMI Foundation, the Music Performance Trust Fund, the Zethus Fund, and numerous generous individual donors is gratefully acknowledged.

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