The North/South Trio Presents Free Concert NOTHING FORGOTTEN

On Monday evening May 22, violinist Claudia Schaer and cellist Marisol Espada will join forces with pianist Max Lifchitz for a free-admission concert featuring alluring and refreshing chamber works by composers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and the US.

The program will introduce recent works by New Yorkers Edmund Cionek and Hilary Tann as well as music by Julian Fueyo and Ivan Enrique Rodriguez, emerging composers from Mexico and Puerto Rico respectively. Two Yellow Ribbons by Max Lifchitz will round-off the program. The event will take place at the intimate but 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; the BMI Foundation; the Music Performance Trust Fund; and the generosity of numerous individual donors.

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ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC

Edmund Cionek's music is as vibrant and eclectic as New York, the city in which he lives. The composer-in-residence at the Bar Harbor Summer Festival in Maine, Cionek studied at the University of Michigan and the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. Inspired by the artistic accomplishments of jazz violinist Joe Venuti, Cionek's Stolen Moments for violin and piano, reflects a deft blend of classical design, pop elements, and humor mixed in a post-modern style.

Mexican-born Julian Fueyo studied at Interlochen and is now an undergraduate at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Also an aspiring conductor his Zaphire for violin and piano was awarded first prize in the 2016 Belvedere Chamber Music Festival Composition Competition. It will be heard in New York for the first time.

Ivan Enrique Rodriguez studied at the Escuela Libre de Muisica in his native Puerto Rico and the San Juan Conservatory before moving to Miami where he served as assistant conductor for the Miami Symphony Orchestra. He describes his recently completed virtuosic piano trio El Abrigo Negro (The Black Overcoat) "...as an enigmatic journey moving from disorienting darkness to the struggle of escape, from the bewildered confusion and unresolved limbo to fleeting moments of hope to tortuous reality," It was inspired by the lugubrious and sinister descriptions of the Russian writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's storytelling.

Max Lifchitz has appeared on concert stages throughout Latin America, Europe and the US. He won first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition held in Holland. His creative endeavors have earned the support of the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim Foundations. Being heard in New York for the first time, Lifchitz's Yellow Ribbons No. 51 for violin and piano is a dramatic composition inspired by the tragic events that took place at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL last June. His Yellow Ribbons No. 46 for cello and piano is a sorrowful lyric lament.

Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College, Schenectady. Praised for its lyricism and formal balance, her music is influenced by her strong identification with the natural world. Inspired by the beauty of the Adirondacks mountains, Nothing Forgotten - for violin, cello and piano - takes its title from part of a long poem by JorDan Smith: "You see, what scares me /about this landscape is that nothing is new, / nothing forgotten, nothing lost, / and nothing changes."

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MEET THE PERFORMERS
Canadian violinist Claudia Schaer trained at The Juilliard School before earning a doctorate from Stony Brook University. Described by the press as a "rock-solid performer" and praised for her "outstanding musicianship," Schaer has appeared as soloist at the Thy Chamber Festival in Denmark; the Berlin Philharmonic's Opera Barga Festival in Italy; the Luzerne Festival in Switzerland; and China's Nanning Festival.

A versatile artist, cellist Marisol Espada began her education at the Escuela Libre de Música in Puerto Rico before training at The Juilliard School. She has performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic. She has recorded with Ron Carter, Alicia Keys, Chuck Mangione, David Murray and Barbra Streisand.

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