Glenn Kotche and Victoire to Play Zankel Hall, 2/22

On Saturday, February 22 at 6:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall, percussionist Glenn Kotche of rock band Wilco joins composer Missy Mazzoli's ensemble Victoire for a concert featuring world premieres of two Carnegie Hall commissions, and the New York premiere of John Luther Adams's Ilimaq.

The program opens with the world premiere of Kotche's new piece, Bells and Honey, which was written for Victoire. Kotche began composing the piece on a drum kit before expanding and arranging the timbres to suit the unique voices and personalities of the full ensemble. In the composer's own words, "The title of the work references a line from the Biblical book, Exodus, '...a land flowing with milk and honey,' alluding to the fruitful possibilities of using the drum kit as a compositional tool for other mediums."

Missy Mazzoli's new work, Vespers for a New Dark Age, features sopranos Mellissa Hughes and Martha Cluver, and mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken, Kotche, and Victoire. The piece offers an alternative take on the traditional Vespers prayer service, with the customary sacred text replaced by award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder's prose about technology, ghosts, death, doubt, and God. "I love the strange juxtaposition of these fragmented, secular texts with the rigid structure of a musical church service, complete with all its ritualistic repetition and call and response," said Mazzoli. The musicians will be wearing apparel by designer Andrea Katz, created specifically for this work.

Kotche will also perform the New York premiere of John Luther Adams's layered Ilimaq, a work for solo percussion which fuses modern music with found sounds of the natural world and Alaskan field recordings. Illimaq, which translates to "spirit journeys," aurally narrates the journey of a shaman riding the sound of the drum to and from the spirit world.

Tickets, priced $34 and $40, are available at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, 154 West 57th Street, or can be charged to major credit cards by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or by visiting the Carnegie Hall website, carnegiehall.org.

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