Collage New Music to Present Virtual World Premiere Of ERIC NATHAN'S SHORT STORIES

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 8:00pm, Collage New Music will present the virtual world premiere of composer Eric Nathan's Short Stories. Performed live from Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music with no audience, the concert will also feature the Boston premieres of Talia Amar's When a Dream Becomes Reality and Marjorie Merryman's Four Images, plus Andrew Imbrie's Pilgrimage in honor of Imbrie's 100th birthday. The concert, previously planned for in-person audience, will now be viewable for free on Collage New Music's YouTube channel.

Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, Short Stories (2021) was composed for Collage New Music, Founder Frank Epstein, and Music Director David Hoose in honor of Collage's 50th anniversary. At just over 30 minutes, "Short Stories is about life at home-the beautiful, intimate, ordinary, little things that fill daily life that we may not always notice," says composer Eric Nathan. The music draws on experiences from Nathan's time at home during the pandemic, including learning to play the harmonica. As he composed, Nathan thought of his chamber musician friends, many of whose lives also shifted during this period as they needed to make music primarily alone at home. Short Stories is structured in four musically interconnected vignettes. Each movement celebrates specific instruments as soloists, highlighting each member of the ensemble in turn. The "stories'' themselves are purely musical ones, told by the instruments.

Thoughts that guided Nathan as he composed for cello include, "me sitting alone at home watching the evening rain streak down the window and imagining I was somewhere far away. The feeling when music that I'm composing suddenly comes to life and I truly meet it for the first time." Guiding thoughts for clarinet and violin included, "the daily pas-de-deux between my dog and the rabbits in the yard. A chase-graceful, swift, eager, playful, frustrated. Coexisting, never quite meeting." Thoughts for piano: "The sounds of my wife practicing J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations wafting upstairs through the floorboards of my studio as I sit down to compose. Her escape into Bach, mine into my music." For piccolo and percussion: "Birds singing outside my window-always. The garage band jamming down the street. What if they spoke to each other? Life seems on pause, nature keeps moving on. What do the birds say about it all?"

Concert Information

Collage New Music: Concert I
Monday, January 17, 2022 at 8:00pm
Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music | 27 Garden Street | Cambridge, MA 02138
Tickets: Free
Link to Watch: https://youtu.be/YxMgzYucipQ

TALIA AMAR: When a Dream Becomes Reality (2012) [Boston premiere]
MARJORIE MERRYMAN: Four Images (2018) [Boston premiere]
ANDREW IMBRIE: Pilgrimage (1983)
ERIC NATHAN: Short Stories (2021) [World Premiere]

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