The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series Presents Hanna Benn & Deantoni Parks: Procession

Analogue, digital, acoustic and synthetic sonorities seamlessly intermingle in this luminous collaboration between Atlanta-based duo vocalist/composer Hanna Benn (Son Lux, Boots) and percussionist/composer/producer Deantoni Parks (John Cale, Sade, T Bone Burnett, Flying Lotus). Procession explores the spiritual and emotional core of ceremonial music in the form of a song cycle, with new arrangements by Benn featuring her ethereal vocal textures elevated by electronic flourishes, and anchored by Park's ceaselessly kinetic rhythms alongside an SPCO string quintet of Maureen Nelson, Nick Tavani, David Auerbach, Rebecca Merblum and Zachary Cohen. This world premiere for chamber ensemble marks the Twin Cities debut of Benn and Parks as a duo. Join us to step into this truly numinous sanctum of sound.

"In this fast paced world filled with screens and social media, we wanted to create a piece reflecting purposeful procession of being," said Benn and Parks in a statement describing their collaboration. "Procession is a song cycle that enters a ceremony and never exits, a set of musical meditations on letting go of the past and the myth of tomorrow. Like a whirling dervish, the intention spins and dances. We're excited to share this music and for the opportunity to bring this to life with members of the SPCO."

Tickets: liquidmusicseries.org or 651.291.1144

With origins rooted in gospel and choral music, Hanna Benn began exploring music as both an intimate and collective experience at an early age. Her influences soon included Stravinsky, English pastoral music, R&B, Alice Coltrane and Olivier Messiaen. Benn studied composition and voice at Cornish College of the Arts and has been composing ever since. While in Seattle, she co-founded an experimental pop band called Pollens. She has worked with CMF Festival Orchestra, Saint Helen's String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, St. Marks Cathedral Choir, Opus 7 and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

She wrote and recorded work on Son Lux's Bones album and toured with Boots (who has produced Beyoncé, FKA Twigs and Run the Jewels). Her commissioned work and compositions have been performed across the country, from a five-hour immersive opera and dance performance in collaboration with Alice Gosti and the Northwest Symphony Orchestra to a composition celebrating Black American composers with Davida Ingram and the North Chamber Orchestra. She recently completed a residency at Central State in Indianapolis where she wrote much of her new album.

Benn's voice carries with it the crispness of cathedral tones - the sensuality of her sacred sonic corpus mixes with a clarity that rushes ambiguity out through the stained glass windows. She is able to take clearly delineated genres, deconstruct them and then unify them in her work - creating pieces that are simultaneously accessible and profound, elevated and organic, sacred and common.

Deantoni Parks is an American new wave/avant-garde/experimental drummer, songwriter, film director, actor and record producer. He is the founder, producer and drummer of the New York band KUDU, and one-half of the writing duo Dark Angels with producer and keyboardist Nick Kasper, also a member of KUDU.

Maureen Nelson, violin, became a full-time member of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2016. As former founding member and first violinist, she led the Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet for nearly two decades captivating audiences from major concert stages of the world, regularly concertizing throughout North America and abroad. Founded at Yale University in 1999, the quartet has been described by Strad magazine as "thrilling" and praised by the Washington Post for its "glorious sonorities...half honey, half molten lava." The quartet quickly went on to win top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition. Classical Voice praised the ensemble as "one of the eminent string quartets of our era." Along with a busy touring and teaching schedule, Maureen made numerous critically acclaimed recordings on the Naxos label with the Enso.

A native of Pennsylvania, Maureen was enrolled in Temple University's Center for Gifted Young Musicians at the age of 12, and began attending the Curtis Institute of Music shortly thereafter. While studying in Germany, she was concertmaster of the Detmolder Kammerochester and has been a member of the Houston-based River Oaks Chamber Orchestra since 2010.

Violinist Nicholas Tavani is a Guest Musician with the SPCO for the 18.19 season. He debuted in Washington, D.C.'s Gaston Hall at the age of eight. As a chamber musician, recitalist and concerto soloist, Tavani has performed extensively to critical acclaim in the United States and around the world. The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently praised him as "an alert and sensitive artist, with beautiful tone and exquisite phrasing," and the Washington Post hailed his "brilliant musicianship." As first violinist of the Aeolus Quartet, he was a prizewinner of the Plowman International Chamber Music Competition, the Yellow Springs Chamber Music competition, the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and the Coleman International Chamber Music Competition.

A passionate advocate of new music, Tavani has premiered and recorded several works by living composers, including Samuel Adler, Alexandra Bryant, Christopher Theofanidis and Dan Visconti. His discography includes two albums with the Aeolus Quartet in wide release on the Longhorn/Naxos label. He performs on a 2003 violin by Samuel Zygmuntowicz, on generous loan from the Five Partners Foundation.

Since moving to the Twin Cities in the fall of 2007, violist David Auerbach has cultivated a varied performing and teaching career. He is the principal violist of the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, has held several one-year positions with the Minnesota Orchestra and performs regularly with the SPCO, as well as many other local orchestral and chamber ensembles. He frequently performs elsewhere in the country, including with the chamber orchestra A Far Cry in Boston. A dedicated chamber musician, Auerbach has participated in the music festivals of Ravinia, Kneisel Hall and Norfolk. He joined the faculty of the University of St. Thomas in 2012, and also maintains a private teaching studio.

David earned a DMA from Stony Brook University in 2007, where he was a scholarship student of Katherine Murdock. Additionally, he received a Master Degree from the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Samuel Rhodes and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with majors in Music Performance and Molecular Biology.

Rebecca Merblum has been dedicated to chamber music throughout her life as a cellist. Originally from Connecticut, Rebecca studied the cello at the Hartt School and earned Bachelor and Master Degrees from the Cleveland Institute and New England Conservatory. As a founding member of the Azmari Quartet, she participated in the Graduate Quartet Residency at Northern Illinois University under the tutelage of the Vermeer Quartet. The Azmari Quartet served as the Corbett String Quartet in Residence at Northern Kentucky University from 2004-2009. Along with her colleagues, she served as Co-Artistic Director of the Norse Festival.

Merblum joined the Artaria Quartet from Los Angeles where she has cultivated a voice within the city's diversified landscape, performing with the Salastina Chamber Music Series, Sundays at LACMA, the Green Umbrella Series (Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Classical Encounters. She also was a substitute with the LAPhil and LAOpera from 2010-2016 and performed on several film soundtracks. A dedicated teacher, Merblum served as the Chair of the String Department at the Pasadena Conservatory where she was a member of the cello and chamber music faculties.

Zachary Cohen, a native of the Bronx, is the Principal Double Bassist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Prior to the SPCO, Cohen was Principal Bass of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, a position he won at the age of 22. Cohen received his musical training at Juilliard where he studied with legendary bassist Homer Mensch. While attending Juilliard, Cohen became a member of the chamber orchestra The Knights. He has recorded three albums with them on Sony Classical.

As an active soloist and chamber musician Cohen has performed with such prominent artists as Itzhak Perlman, Edgar Meyer, Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor and members of the Guarneri and Mendelssohn quartets. Cohen's summer festival engagements include the Marlboro Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival and The Dresden Musikfestspiele. He has also worked closely with some of today's most respected composers such as Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov and Mario Davidovsky.

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