Tana Quartet And Baritone Thomas Buckner Interpret Works By Bun Ching Lam At Brooklyn's Roulette

Tana Quartet and Baritone Thomas Buckner, interpreting works by Bun Ching Lam, will headline the third concert of the 2018-2019 Thirtieth Interpretations series on *Friday, November 16th at 8pm at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY. The Interpretations Series is dedicated to nurturing the relationship of composers with the growing community of new music virtuoso performers. *Note that this concert is being held on a Friday, exceptionally from the other series concerts, held on Thursdays. Ticket link is: http://roulette.org/event/interpretations-bun-ching-lam-tana-quartet/

Chinese-American composer Bun Ching Lam presents music for string quartet: L'air du Temps (1991), and Conversations with My Soul (2015-16), for baritone voice with quartet featuring baritone Thomas Buckner, to a text by Lebanese-American poet and painter Etel Adnan (New York Premiere). As part of their first US tour, the Paris-based Tana Quartet will also present works from their recent repertoire, including Slapsticks by Spanish composer Voro Garcia, Substance by Berlin-based French composer Raphael Cendo, Solliloques by British composer Edwin Hillier, and Shadows by French composer Yann Robin.

Born in Macao, Bun Ching Lam began her piano study in her native city, then further pursued her music education in Hong Kong and the United States. She holds a B.A. in Piano Performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California at San Diego. She has taught at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and served as Visiting Professor at the Yale University School of Music and at Bennington College. She has been recognized by numerous awards including a Rome Prize, the highest Award at the Shanghai International Composers' Competition, two NEA grants, fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She now divides her time between Paris and New York.

For decades, baritone Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the promotion and performance of new and improvised music, collaborating with a host of new music luminaries. For the past thirty years Thomas Buckner has curated the Interpretations series in New York City. His long term collaborations include 35 years as a member of Robert Ashley's opera company, and performing with Roscoe Mitchell regularly since 1979.

Tana Quartet is the quartet of the twenty-first century. They are audacious, pioneers and precursors. Tana foresee the new sounds of the modern string quartet. Recognized by The Guardian as "impeccable players", the quartet is recipient of an array of international awards, from the Pro Quartet - CEMC foundation in Paris, the Verbier Festival Academy and the Union of Belgian Composers (Fuga Prize), they also received the Octave for best exponents of contemporary music. In 2013, they were honored at the HSBC EMA Awards and received an invitation to premiere Oracion; a major cross-over project featuring both world and contemporary music, produced by the Abbaye de Royaumont and premiered as part of the Aix-en-Provence festival.
According to Intrepretations Founder Thomas Buckner, the idea for this concert began with the desire to commission Bun Ching Lam "to compose a setting of our mutual friend Etel Adnan's poem 'Conversations with my Soul' for baritone and String Quartet for a concert of Bun Ching Lam's music in Paris. Etel is an exceptional poet and painter who has been my friend for over 50 years. The Paris concert wa sperformed with the Tana Quartet, who turned out to be truly remarkable, and so I decided to bring them to New York to perform that piece and Bun Ching's other quartet along with pieces with which they are particularly committed to. It is a great opportunity for our NY audience to hear works from Europe that we would probably not otherwise get to hear, along with Bun-Ching's wonderful quartets."

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