Chapel of the Holy Innocents | Bard College
Free and open to the public

The music on this program is sure to stick in your head like a like an infectious disease! Nine composers from around the world form the nucleus of this festeringly intense program, which includes four New York premieres, an East Coast premiere, and one world premiere. The music takes grooves and beats from music as diverse as rock, jazz, American folk, West African folk, and Indian ragas to form a rhythmic reverberation as strong as a throbbing gash.

One of today's most respected and sought-after composers, Julia Wolfe is a style mixer, drawing on musical idioms from her eclectic background to form a uniquely electrifying idiom of her own. Her piece Believing is as driving as a rigid metal song, but altogether optimistic. Inspired by a ravenous parasite he contracted while studying music in Northern India, Brendan Faegre contributes a big, brash work for chamber orchestra that celebrates the power of human will over whatever stone the world has to hurl. Julia Wolfe's belief and perseverance, then, are answered by Brendan Faegre's ultimate success!

Program:

Julia Wolfe (b. 1958): Believing (1997)
Jordan Nelson (b. 1984): Groove Tendency (2006/2010) *
Lainie Fefferman (b. 1982): Ed (2009) *
Ryan Brown (b. 1979): Big Dig (2006) *

– Intermission –

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)
Timothy MacKay (b. 1990): Aquí te amo (2010) †
Brendan Faegre (b. 1985): Blastocystis Hominis: Three Portraits of a Parasite (2009) **

* New York premiere
** East Coast premiere
† World premiere