The North/South Chamber Orchestra To Host St. Patrick's Celebration

The North/South Chamber Orchestra marks St. Patrick's Day performing a concert featuring a work written especially for the occasion by Frank Corcoran -- the Irish composer celebrating his 80th birthday.

The event will take place on Thursday evening, March 16, 2023. It will start at 8 PM and end around 9:15 PM.

The concert will be held at the intimate and acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th St - between Broadway and Columbus) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. First come, first served. No registration or ticket required.

Wearing a mask while in the auditorium is optional, but strongly encouraged.

The program will open with the first New York performance of Angenieta by the Irish American composer Rob Smith. Originally from Upstate New York and now based in Houston, his energetic and highly accessible music has been performed throughout the US. Angenieta was written to mark the composer's dear friend Maria Angenieta van Lohuizen-Meijer's ninety-two years of life. Her love of Johann Sebastian Bach's music inspired Smith to paint a musical portrait of his friend's imaginative and expressive personality by weaving the old chorale tune Bist du bei mir ("If Thou art with me") into his original work.

The concert will continue with a work by Montreal native Robert Lemay who served as composer-in-residence with the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra and taught at Laurentian University before moving to Japan with his wife pianist Yoko Hirota. His Ici et là (Here and There) was inspired by the bare and often scattered landscapes of northern Ontario in Canada.

Frank Corcoran's Tre Sogni (Three Irish Dreams) will conclude the first half of the event. Corcoran was the first Irish composer to have his Symphony No. 1 premiered in Vienna, 1981. A native of Tipperary, he studied in Dublin, Maynooth, Rome and Berlin. The recipient of many commissions and prizes, Corcoran has guest lectured at many US and European universities. His Tre Sogni (Three Irish Dreams) was written especially for this concert, with commissioning funds provided by the Irish Arts Council. Corcoran writes that his Three Irish Dreams are firmly in the Joyce / Beckett tradition of Irish and English language as "stream of consciousness" or music as "dream" and "sce'al" ("story"). Corcoran's appearance at the event is made possible by a generous grant from Culture Ireland/Cultur Eireann.

After intermission, the concert will continue with the premiere performance of To the Edge and Back by the Chinese American composer Hsueh-Yung Shen. Written after experiencing sudden health problems related to congestive heart failure, Shen's dramatic music and expressive work conveys relief and gratitude upon surviving a near-death experience. Born in Washington, DC, Shen Trained at Harvard and Stanford before settling in Austin, Texas, to teach at Southwestern University and serve as timpanist with the Austin Lyric Opera.

Max Lifchitz is active as composer and performer. He has received grants from the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim foundations and was awarded first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Contemporary Music held in Holland. His work Expressions is in four contrasting, self-contained movements. Its musical language is highly melodic and lyrical, featuring long singing lines and rich post-tonal harmonies. It was commissioned by the Middleton (WI) Youth Symphony.

North/South Consonance's concert activities are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support from the BMI Foundation, the Music Performance Trust Fund, the Zethus Fund, and numerous generous individual donors is gratefully acknowledged.

For the complete North/South concert series schedule, please visit www.northsouthmusic.org

To stream, download and/or purchase the more than sixty North/South compact discs, please go to https://music.apple.com/us/search?term=North%20South%20Chamber%20Orchestra

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