Eric Nathan's JUST A MOMENT to Premiere At Chelsea Music Festival

The Chelsea Music Festival presents the world premiere of composer Eric Nathan's Just a Moment (2021) for two antiphonal oboes performed by oboists John Ferrillo and Amanda Hardy on Friday, June 25, 2021 at 7:30pm as part of the 2021 Virtual Festival.

There will be a pre-concert Zoom conversation at 7:00pm with Eric Nathan, Amanda Hardy, and Chelsea Music Festival Artistic Directors Melinda Lee Masur and Ken-David Masur. The online concert also includes clips with violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Orion Weiss and visuals by artist Kyle Meyer.

Commissioned by the Chelsea Music Festival and Dr. Michael Sporn and dedicated to Ferrillo and Hardy, Just a Moment is a meditation on distance and intimacy. One oboe is placed on stage and the other in the balcony. They call out to each other, note-by-note, phrase-by-phrase, creating an unfolding melody, catching each other's notes, embracing these tones and the space that divides them, with subtle unisons and half-step dissonances mingling in echoes. There is a magical, trance-like sense of contemplation to the work, but also a sense of dancing joy. The audience hears the oboe on stage, and the echoes of the distant oboe from above, embracing and surrounding all in a sonic choreography that meets in the space between.

Nathan says, "What the experience of the struggles of the past year has taught me most is to appreciate fleeting moments of beauty and connection, and how these can sustain us."

In the recorded premiere, the videography enables the audience to feel the distance between the players as well as experience the vastness and beauty of Boston's Jordan Hall, where we cannot yet gather and listen to music. The video also brings us intimately into each of the players' worlds, closer and more privately, than if we heard it live.

Learn more at https://www.chelseamusicfestival.org/2021-virtual-festival.

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