CIRCADIA ENSEMBLE PRESENTS THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

Christ & St Stephen's Church
120 West 69th St
United States
212-787-2755
http://www.csschurch.org/?page=concerts

Kaoru Hinata, flute
Christopher Cullen, clarinet
Lynn Bechtold, violin
Jennifer DeVore, cello
Laura Barger, piano



On Friday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m., New York–based chamber ensemble Circadia will perform The Past Is Prologue. Four modern composers re-imagine music of the past, from the church vocal music of the German Renaissance to Elizabethan court music, from vaudeville to bebop—and finally to music from a culture that never actually existed.

Charles Wuorinen's Bearbeitungen über das Glogauer Liederbuch is a kaleidoscopic development of 15th-century church vocal music preserved in the songbook of a German cathedral. Thomas Adès' Court Studies from The Tempest is an evocative arrangement for clarinet, strings and piano from the composer's operatic setting of the Shakespeare play. Dan Cooper's Trio for Flute, Clarinet and Piano channels vaudeville, bebop, and other styles in a collection of concise little movements. Steven Mackey set out to create a completely original work which still evokes the distant past in Indigenous Instruments. With retuned strings and a vocabulary of primitive sounds, Mackey draws us into a soundscape that could have been but never was.

Founded in 1998, Circadia is committed to exploring and expanding the chamber music repertoire for winds, especially in combination with other instruments. Through concerts as well as education and outreach appearances, the members of our ensemble seek to introduce new audiences to chamber works ranging from the familiar to the innovative.


Dan Cooper : Trio for Flute, Clarinet and Piano
Thomas Ades : Court Studies from the Tempest
Steven Mackey : Indigenous Instruments
Charles Wuorinen : Bearbeitungen über das Glogauer Liederbuch