The North/South Chamber Orchestra Welcomes the New Year

The North/South Chamber Orchestra welcomes the New Year on Tuesday evening January 9, 2018 performing optimistic and vibrant works by four living American composers.

Violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Maria Asteriadou will appear as soloists in the first New York performance of Encore II by Dinos Constantinides -- the Greek-American composer celebrating his 90th birthday next year.

Other works also receiving their first hearing in New York include the American Elegy by Richard Brooks; Hextet by Paul Reale; and Fire Within by the ensemble's conductor, Max Lifchitz. The concert will take place at the intimate and acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th Street) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The free-admission event will start at 8 PM and end around 9:30 PM. The auditorium is ADA accessible. No tickets or reservations needed.

Since its inception in 1980, the North/South Consonance, Inc. has brought to the attention of the New York City public over 1,000 works by composers hailing from the Americas and elsewhere representing a wide spectrum of aesthetic views. Its activities are made possible in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as well as by the generosity of numerous individual donors.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC

Brooklyn-based Richard Brooks has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NYS Music Teachers National Association. A graduate of the Crane School of Music and New York University, Brooks was elected President of the American Composers Alliance in 1993. His opera Rapunzel -- commissioned by Binghamton's Tri-Cities Opera -- has also been mounted by the Cincinnati Opera, the Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia and Denver's Central City Singers. His compositions appear on recordings issued by the Capstone and Ravello labels.

Brooks' American Elegy for string orchestra was written in response to the horrific events of September 11. The composer states that the work's musical fabric "incorporates fragments from the melody of America the Beautiful generating a type of reverie and reverent homage to the memory of all that was lost as a result of the 9/11 attack on America."

The New York Time, described Dinos Constantinides as a composer whose "music speaks simply, often combining Greek modes with an attractive quality of ritual mystery." Born in 1928 in Ioannina, Constantinides began his musical studies in his native Greece before moving to the US to train at Indiana University and The Juilliard School. As a violinist, Constantinides played with the Indianapolis Symphony before serving as concertmaster for the Baton Rouge Symphony. He is the current Music Director of the Louisiana Sinfonietta.

Constantinides' Encore II -- a double concerto for violin, piano and string orchestra in one movement -- is a vivacious and rhythmically exciting composition. Its simple formal structure features a hasty opening, a lyrical interlude and a fast concluding section. The soloists for the occasion, violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Maria Asteriadou, premiered the work in Baton Rouge last September.
Max Lifchitz began his musical training in his native Mexico City before relocating to NYC to attend The Juilliard School. Active as composer, pianist and conductor, he earned first prize in the 1976 International Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Twentieth Century Music held in Holland. He has appeared on concert stages throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. His recently completed Fire Within was written as a reaction to the tragic passing of Heather Heyer in the midst of the distressing events that transpired in Charlottsville, VA last August.

Los Angeles-based Paul Reale studied at Columbia University and The University of Pennsylvania. His mentors included Otto Luening, George Crumb and Edgar Varese. Between 1969 and 2004 he was professor of music at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of six awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Luckmann Prize and Beeler Prizes and commissions from the Jerome Foundation and the Ahmanson Organ Trust. Commercial recordings of his works are available from Music & Arts and Naxos.

Reale writes that the music of Hextet "summons up images of witches, zombies, and other dark world creatures, as is revealed in the names of the three movements: I: Tarantella, II: Zombies, III: Walpurgisnacht. Throughout the movements are all kinds of scary effects made out of collisions of ragged dissonances, overlapping glissandi, and harmonic surprises."

MEET THE PERFORMERS

American violinist Kurt Nikkanen made his Carnegie Hall debut, performing with the New York Symphony before being invited by Zubin Mehta to perform the Paganini Concerto No.1 with the New York Philharmonic for a Young People's Concert. The Concertmaster of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Nikkanen has given numerous performances of the John Adams Violin Concerto, with orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Oregon Symphony, Hallé Orchestra and Cincinnati Symphony (all under the composer's direction).

The New York Times described pianist Maria Asteriadou's palying as "showing unusual poise, confident technique and an intimate contact with style usually reserved for mature professionals and very few of them." A graduate of Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music, Asteriadou has performed in major halls through the United States, Canada, and Europe, including Carnegie Hall.

Embarking on its 38th consecutive season, the North/South Chamber Orchestra presents a yearly concert series in New York City while maintaining an active recording schedule. The ensemble's recents release features five fascinating compositions inspired by Arshile Gorky's abstract expressionist paintings by New York based composer Robert Martin.

For the complete Winter/Spring concert series schedule please visit http://www.northsouthmusic.org/calendar.asp