Multimedia program features American premiere
McGRATHPR.com – Cutting-edge contemporary music and multimedia group ENSEMBLE / PARALLAX (E/P) kicks off its 2019-20 season with a four-concert tour of the Northeast from September 26 through October 4, with performances in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York. The ensemble comprises top Northeast instrumentalists, led by Artistic Director and Conductor Peyman Farzinpour, performing a program centered on Italian works featuring renowned Italian master Salvatore Sciarrino, culminating in the American premiere of a work by composer Patricia Alessandrini. The performances are enhanced by the premiere of three multimedia video commissions, each custom created for its companion music counterpart by German multimedia artist Wolfgang Lehmann.
ENSEMBLE / PARALLAX’s four fall concerts feature soprano Kathleen Roland -Silverstein performing Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Infinito Nero” (Black Infinity), noted for its delicate passages linked to the dark visions and utterances of 16th century Italian mystic nun St. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. Roland -Silverstein is also featured in Sciarrino’s “Le voci sottovetro” (The Voices Under Glass), re-settings of 16th century madrigals by composer Gesualdo da Venosa. The exploration of the themes of night and darkness continue with E/P’s performance of Patricia Alessandrini’s gripping “Nachtgewächse.” All three pieces are accompanied by premiere presentations of Lehmann’s video art commissions.
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Awarded “Ensemble of the Year” in Rhode Island during its 2015 inaugural season, ENSEMBLE / PARALLAX is a premiere new music and multimedia group led by Artistic Director and Conductor Peyman Farzinpour, based in New England. The ensemble performs 20th century masterworks alongside 21st century avant-garde music from composers such as Schoenberg and Boulez to Hosokawa, Haas, Francesconi, Nono, Sciarrino, Grisey, Alessandrini, Xenakis and Farzinpour. Multimedia video art is presented in tandem through collaborations with award-winning artists from around the world. In its first four seasons, E/P commissioned and premiered over two-dozen compositions and multimedia works, as well as numerous U.S. and regional premieres of new compositions. The group is considered a champion of original composition and video art premieres on the regional and national stage.
E/P most recently collaborated with AgX Boston Film Collective at Tufts University, and in residencies and performances at Eastern Connecticut State University, Tufts University, Miami University (Ohio) and Berklee College of Music. The group recently performed the world premiere of the multimedia chamber opera Island of Peoples in New York City by Berklee Professor Gabriele Vanoni. The ensemble has collaborated with numerous award-winning multimedia and video artists from around the globe, including Zebbler, Ionee Waterhouse, A-li-ce, Maura Mcdonnell, Russell Chartier, Malo Lacroix, David Webber and Roxell Karr.
Highlights of E/P’s fifth season include residencies at Syracuse University and Middlesex Community College, as well as performances in Boston, Providence and at Brooklyn’s premiere contemporary music and multimedia venue, National Sawdust. The ensemble’s spring tour destinations feature new programs in March and April.
Northeast Tour Schedule:
Thursday, September 26, 8 pm
Rhode Island College’s Sapinsley Hall, 600 Mt Pleasant Avenue, Providence, RI, ric.edu/nazarian-center, Admission: $20, $10 students and seniors
Friday, September 27, 8 pm
The Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA, artsatthearmory.org, Admission: $20, $10 students and seniors
Sunday, September 29, 3 pm
Syracuse University’s Hendricks Chapel, West Zone, Crouse Drive, Syracuse, NY, humcenter.syr.edu/event-items/2019/2019.09.29-Edge.html
Admission: Free
Friday, October 4, 7:30 pm
National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY, nationalsawdust.org, Admission: $25
Program:
Salvatore Sciarrino: Le voci sottovetro
Salvatore Sciarrino: Infinito Nero
Patricia Alessandrini: Nachtgewächse
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein, Soprano
Wolfgang Lehmann, Video Artist
Peyman Farzinpour, Conductor
For more information about ENSEMBLE / PARALLAX, visit ensembleparallax.com, email ensembleparallax@gmail.com, or follow the ensemble on Facebook or YouTube.
About the Artists:
image by Luca Carrà, (c) RaiTrade
Born in Palermo, Italy in 1947, Salvatore Sciarrino started composing at age twelve as a self-taught musician and held his first public concert in 1962. He characterizes his music as leading to a different way of listening, a global emotional realization of reality as well as of one’s self. His music has been commissioned and performed by the leading ensembles and orchestras around the globe, and at the most prestigious venues such as Teatro alla Scala, RAI, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Biennale di Venezia, Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, Fondazione Arena di Verona, Stuttgart Opera Theatre, Brussels La Monnaie, Frankfurt Opera Theatre, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, London Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Suntory Hall.
Sciarrino has taught at several of Italy’s top music academies. From 1978 to 1980, he served as Artistic Director of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He has won many awards, most recently the Prince Pierre de Monaco (2003), the Feltrinelli International Award (2003), the Salzburg Music Prize (2006), the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize from the Spanish BBVA Foundation (2011), A Life in Music Prize from the Teatro La Fenice in Venice (2014) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale (2016).
Patricia Alessandrini’s works actively engage with the concert music repertoire and issues of representation, interpretation, perception and memory, often in the context of social and political issues. These works are often multimedia, theatrical and collaborative, involving live electronics, resonating objects and interactive video.
Alessandrini studied composition and electronics at the Conservatorio di Bologna, Conservatoire de Strasbourg, and IRCAM, and holds two PhDs from Princeton University and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) respectively. Her principal composition teachers were Ivan Fedele, Paul Koonce, Tristan Murail and Thea Musgrave. Her works have been presented at Musica Strasbourg, Musiques Démesurées, Mostly Mozart, Sonorities and Miso Music (Lisbon), and performed by ensembles including the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Aleph, Ensemble Alternance, and Ensemble InterContemporain. She has collaborated with institutions including le centquatre (Paris), Elektromusikstudion (EMS-Stockholm), the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), IRCAM and La Muse en Circuit (Paris). She is also a performer and improviser of live electronics. She served as Composer-in-Residence at the 2010 soundSCAPE festival and with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2012. She was awarded first prize in 2009 in the Sond’Arte Composition Competition for Chamber Music with Electronics, and received a Förderpreis in Composition by the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 2012. During 2015 and 2016, she was featured in the four-concert Soundkitchen series of the Ensemble InterContemporain at the Gaîté lyrique. She is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Stanford University.
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Multimedia Artist Wolfgang Lehmann was born in Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany in 1967. His first cinematic efforts began in 1989. Since 1994, Lehmann has realized and produced his own films, and has received invitations and awards for showings at festivals and museums in Europe, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Bangladesh, Israel, Canada, USA, Argentina, Brazilian, Peru, Ecuador, Columbian and New Zealand. Retrospectives have been shown in Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, Granada and Cagliari (Sardinia). Lehmann divides his time between Stockholm, Sweden and Gundelfingen, Germany with his wife and his two children.
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein, soprano, is a highly regarded concert soloist and specialist in 20th and 21st century music. She has been a featured singer with many music festivals, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Britten-Pears Institute and the Tanglewood Music Festival. The soprano has appeared frequently with the Grammy® award-winning Southwest Chamber Music Society of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and with the New York New Music Ensemble in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and San Diego. International performances include concerts in Sweden, Finland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Australia and Germany. Recordings include a CD created with American composer Libby Larsen, Aura, for orchestra and soloists, and Spirals XII, both by Cambodian composer Chinary Ung. Dr. Roland is a Fulbright senior scholar, and a two-time American Scandinavian Foundation grantee. She is a frequent lecturer and master class clinician on the topic of Scandinavian song, and has taught at the Tanglewood Festival, Songfest Festival in Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Eastman School of Music and Manhattan School of Music. She is a faculty member at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music, and is the author of an anthology of Swedish art song, Romanser: 25 Swedish Art Song with Guide to Lyric Diction. Dr. Roland is also a music reviewer for Journal of Singing, assistant editor for Opera Journal and is currently working on a performance guide to the songs of Jean Sibelius.
Peyman Farzinpour, Artistic Director/Conductor, enjoys a diverse career as a conductor, composer and music educator. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Artistic Director and Conductor of contemporary and multimedia music group, ENSEMBLE / PARALLAX, and serves as Music Director and Conductor of the Rivers Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Berklee College of Music’s Faculty Fellowship Award, the Fellowship Merit Award in Music Composition by Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, as well as grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the American Composers Forum. He has also served as a Composer-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada.
Farzinpour previously served as Music Director and Conductor of Erato Philharmonia in Los Angeles, Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra in Massachusetts, and as Conductor-in-Residence with Opera Cabal, with which he led the world staged premiere of the Georg Friedrich Haas opera ATTHIS in New York City. He has served as a guest conductor with orchestras and ensembles throughout North America and Europe, including Congress Orchestra of Saint Petersburg, New Symphony and Pleven Philharmonic in Bulgaria, Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic in the Czech Republic, the Banff Chamber Orchestra in Canada, the St. Matthews Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles, Cygnus Ensemble, at Berklee College of Music, Conservatoire Maurice Ravel in Paris, and with two of Italy’s foremost new music groups, the Divertimento Ensemble and the MDI Ensemble of Milan. He appears regularly as a guest conductor at Tufts University leading concerts of contemporary music. Prior to moving to the east coast, Farzinpour served as Director of New Music Programs for Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he created highly innovative concerts that were awarded first place by ASCAP/Chamber Music America for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.
Farzinpour’s compositional activity is evidenced by performances of his works throughout the United States, Canada and Europe by groups such as MDI Ensemble of Milan, Cygnus Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Empyrean Ensemble, Piano Spheres, Conservatoire Maurice Ravel in Paris and Tufts University Festival of Contemporary Music.
Farzinpour holds a B.M. in classical guitar performance from Peabody Conservatory, a B.A. in English Literature from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. in composition from U.C. Davis. He engaged in post-graduate studies in Italy, where he studied conducting with Emilio Pomarico and Sandro Gorli, and composition with Giacomo Manzoni.
