American Contemporary Music Ensemble Performs at Roulette in NYC Concert Series Curated by Meredith Monk

ACME, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, will perform music from its new "portrait" album Thrive on Routine on Monday, February 13, 2017 at 8pm at Roulette (509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY), on a concert series curated by Meredith Monk. The concert will feature Monk's first string quartet, Stringsongs, from 2005, which ACME has performed frequently and recorded for Q2 Music's Meet the Composer podcast. In addition, ACME will perform Caroline Shaw's in manus tuas for solo cello, Caleb Burhans' Jahrzeit for string quartet, and Timo Andres' Thrive on Routine for string quartet, from the new album. ACME players for this concert are Ben Russell and Laura Lutzke, violins; Caleb Burhans, viola; and Clarice Jensen, cello and ACME artistic director.

ACME's album Thrive on Routine features music by composers who are also performers in ACME - Timo Andres, Caleb Burhans, and Caroline Shaw - plus John Luther Adams' mesmerizing In a Treeless Place, Only Snow for string quartet, piano, celesta, and vibraphones. Sono Luminus' album package for Thrive on Routine includes both CD and Pure Audio Blu-ray with 9.1 Auro-3D and 5.1 Surround Sound versions, as well as the mShuttle application containing FLAC, WAV, and MP3 audio files. The new album will be released worldwide on February 24, 2017, but copies will be available for purchase at the Roulette concert. Review copies for press are available upon request.

About the Music on Thrive on Routine:

Caleb Burhans' Jahrzeit was commissioned and premiered by ACME in 2009. The jahrzeit is a time of remembering the dead by reciting the Kaddish, lighting a 24-hour candle, and remembering the person who has died. Burhans' Jahrzeit was written around the anniversary of his father's death.

Caroline Shaw's in manus tuas for solo cello from 2009 is based on a 16th century motet by Thomas Tallis. Of the work, Shaw says, "While there are only a few slices of the piece that reflect exact harmonic changes in Tallis' setting, the motion (or lack of) is intended to capture the sensation of a single moment of hearing the motet in the particular and remarkable space of Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut." Shaw's Gustave Le Gray for solo piano from 2012 is a multi-layered portrait of Chopin's Op. 17 A minor Mazurka, which Shaw calls "one of the most exquisite, perfect pieces of music ever made."

Timo Andres' Thrive on Routine for string quartet was commissioned and premiered by ACME in 2010. It is inspired by Charles Ives' morning routine, which Andres describes as "a kind of transcendental calisthenics program" - waking up at four or five, digging in his potato patch, and playing through some of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Thrive on Routine is in four movements - Morning, Potatoes, Passacaglia, and Coda.

John Luther Adams' In a Treeless Place, Only Snow from 1999 succinctly yet sensuously depicts the landscape described in the title. On landscape, the composer writes in "Winter Music: A Composer's Journal," as published in Reflections on American Music: The Twentieth Century and the New Millennium (Pendragon Press, 2000): "In art and music, landscape is usually portrayed as an objective presence, a setting within which subjective human emotions are experienced and expressed. But can we find other ways of listening in which the landscape itself - rather than our feelings about it - becomes the subject? Better yet: can the listener and the landscape become one? If in the past the more melodic elements of my music have somehow spoken of the subjective presence, the human figure in the landscape, in the new piece there's no one present... only slowly changing light and color on a timeless white field. I remember the Gwich'in name for a place in the Brooks Range: 'In A Treeless Place, Only Snow.'"

Performers on the album include Yuki Numata Resnick and Ben Russell, violins; Caleb Burhans, viola; Clarice Jensen, cello and ACME artistic director; Timo Andres, piano; Peter Dugan, celesta; and Chris Thompson and Chihiro Shibayama, vibraphones.

About ACME:

American Contemporary Music Ensemble is dedicated to the outstanding performance of masterworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, primarily the work of American composers. The ensemble presents music by living composers alongside the classics of the contemporary. ACME's dedication to new music extends across genres, and has earned them a reputation among both classical and rock crowds. NPR calls them "contemporary music dynamos," and The New York Times describes ACME's performances as "vital," "brilliant," and "electrifying." Time Out New York reports, "[Artistic Director Clarice] Jensen has earned a sterling reputation for her fresh, inclusive mix of minimalists, maximalists, eclectics and newcomers." ACME was honored by ASCAP during its 10th anniversary season in 2015 for the "virtuosity, passion, and commitment with which it performs and champions American composers."

ACME's instrumentation is flexible, and includes some of New York's most sought-after, engaging musicians. World premieres given by ACME include Ingram Marshall's Psalmbook, Jóhann Jóhannsson's Drone Mass, Caroline Shaw's Ritornello, Phil Kline's Out Cold, William Brittelle's Loving the Chambered Nautilus, Jefferson Friedman's On in Love, Timo Andres' Senior and Thrive on Routine, Caleb Burhans' Jahrzeit, and many more.

ACME has recorded with Max Richter (Sleep, 2015) and Jóhann Jóhannsson (Orphée, 2016) for Deutsche Grammophon, as well as for Butterscotch Records (Fantasias for String Quartet and Theremin, 2016), New World Records (Joseph Byrd: NYC 1960-1963, 2013), and New Amsterdam Records (On in Love, 2014 and Loving the Chambered Nautilus, 2012).

The ensemble's many collaborators have included The Richard Alston Dance Company, Wayne McGregor's Random Dance, Gibney Dance, Satellite Ballet, actress Barbara Sukowa, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Blonde Redhead, Grizzly Bear, Low, Matmos, Jeff Mangum, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Roomful of Teeth, Lionheart, and Theo Bleckmann.

ACME has performed at leading international venues including Carnegie Hall, BAM, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Kitchen, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Columbia University's Miller Theatre, St. Ann's Warehouse, Montclair's Peak Performances, Washington Performing Arts, UCLA's Royce Hall, Stanford Live, Chicago's Millennium Park, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Harvard's Sanders Theatre, The Library of Congress, Duke Performances, Dartmouth's Hopkins Center, The Satellite in Los Angeles, Triple Door in Seattle, Melbourne Recital Hall and Sydney Opera House in Australia, and at festivals including the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Poland, All Tomorrow's Parties in England, and Big Ears in Knoxville, TN.

Thrive on Routine | American Contemporary Music Ensemble
Sono Luminus | Release Date: February 24, 2017

1. Caleb Burhans: Jahrzeit for string quartet [10:10]
2. Caroline Shaw: in manus tuas for solo cello [8:57]
3. Caroline Shaw: Gustave Le Gray for solo piano [10:09]
4-7. Timo Andres: Thrive on Routine for string quartet [13:44]
8. John Luther Adams: In a Treeless Place, Only Snow [17:27]

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