Music and Composers

Steve Bloom (b. 1946) is a social activist, poet, and composer who lives in Brooklyn NY. He was a music composition major before dropping out of college in 1970 to make the revolution, an activity he is still engaged in. He began writing poetry in the late 1990s, returned to composing in 2013 with a specific goal of setting some of his own poems to music.

The piano prelude and trio were both written within the last year, specific-ally for this performance. “City Life” is also being premiered today. “Blind-fold” was first performed by an amateur ensemble at the Park Slope Metho-dist Church in Brooklyn on August 7, 2016. (www.stevebloompoetry.net)

Annika Socolofsky (b. 1990) is a U.S. composer and avant-folk vocalist. Her music stems from the inflections and resonance of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral works to unac-companied folk ballads. She has collaborated with artists such as the Ro-chester Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, and others. Her research focuses on physiology in contemporary vocal composition, using a pedagogical approach to composition that is inclusive of many vocal styles and tech-niques. A doctoral candidate and fellow in composition at Princeton Uni-versity, Annika holds an MFA in composition from Princeton and an MA in composition from the University of Michigan. She received her BFA in com-position from Carnegie Mellon University.

Inspired by the breathy timbre of the Bulgarian kaval and the complex meters of Bulgarian folk music, Bulgarious is a virtuosic dance for solo flute. The piece was commissioned by Weronika Balewski, who performed it at its premier in 2012 in Pittsburgh, PA. (http://www.aksocolofsky.com)

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) is an Estonian composer known for his “tin-tinabular” style, in which contrasting voices are featured, moving simul-taneously in either steps or arpeggiated chords.

“Fratres” (Brothers) composed in 1977 has no fixed instrumentation. It has been performed by a variety of ensembles. We present it here in a version for cello and piano.

Daniel Felsenfeld (b. 1970) has been commissioned and performed by Opera On Tap, UrbanArias, Metropolis Ensemble, the New York Phil-harmonic New Music Biennial, NANOWorks Opera, Two Sense, ASCAP, San Jose Opera, ETHEL, Great Noise Ensemble, American Opera Projects, The Secret Opera, The Da Capo Chamber Players, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Transit, Redshift, Two Sides Sounding, Al-cyone Ensemble, Parhelion Trio, Friction Quartet, Momenta Quartet, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, New York City Opera (VOX), ACME, New Gallery Concert Series, The Jessold Consort, and New England Conservatory Philharmonic, among others. When rapper Jay-Z per-formed in Carnegie Hall, backed by a full orchestra, Felsenfeld did all of the orchestrations and arrangements. He collaborated with The Roots (offering music on their Grammy-nominated record Undun). He is also the Court Composer for John Wesley Harding's Cabinet of Wonders, for which he wrote the theme. Residencies include Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, The Hermitage, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Just Seventeen, commissioned by a consortium of 30 cellists, premiered in May 2018. Here is what Daniel writes about this composition: “In February of this increasingly complicated year, as my daughter was waiting for an antic, uncomfortable hour in a doctor's waiting room, the television blazed images of terrified students streaming out of a school that had just been shot up by a white supremacist. My daughter is seven, just a decade shy of those students, and the immediacy kicked me hard, her delightful innocence against the cruelest possible reality aglow on the screen. And this, along with the subsequent valiant crusade of the school's survivors against a seething impossible crew of monsters (actual monsters, as opposed to the more abstract monsters my daughter ad-mits), has been difficult to shake. This piece is just a piece, a myopic reaction from a single source, but it goes out to them regardless. (www.daniel-felsenfeld.com)

Performers

Dmitry Glivinskiy (piano) is a Ukrainian vocal coach and conductor. He is a graduate of Mannes College of Music and of the Peabody Institute where, among his teachers, were Genya Paley, Pavlina Dokovska, Boris Slutsky and Scott Jackson Wiley. Dmitry has worked with numerous opera companies as a répétiteur, coach, and conductor. Most recently, he was on staff for the revival of Figaro 90210! on Broadway, conducted Eu-gene Onegin with Utopia Opera in NYC, was assistant conductor for OnSite Opera’s production of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Morning Star and returned to Chicago Summer Opera as music director for the company's scenes pro-gram. Last fall, he joined the faculty of Hofstra University as a vocal coach.

Max Potter (mezzo-soprano) joins Opera Southwest in the Spring of 2019 as an Apprentice Artist. During her time there she will perform Clarina in Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio, cover the role of Ortrud, and also sing the Page, in Wagner's Lohengrin. In 2018, Ms. Potter sang Dorabella in Mo-zart's Cosi fan tutte for The North Shore Music Festival, Second Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflte for the CoOPERAtive Program, and Damigella in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea with Bare Opera. She also joined The Muses Creative Artistry Project for their annual Opera Classics tour. Other roles include Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Charlotte (Werther), Tebaldo (Don Carlo), Mercedes (Carmen), Concepcion (L'eure Espagnole), Flora Bervoix (La Traviata), and Zita (Gianni Schicchi). Equally at home on the concert stage, Ms. Potter has shown her natural affinity for new works. With New Camerata Opera she also featured this Fall in The Sacred Feminine, a performance piece celebrating the work of Emily Dickinson through poetry and art song. At Des Moines Metro Opera, she sang The Breaking Waves, a song cycle by Jake Heggie, in recital. (www. margarethpotter.com)

Originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, Katie Cox (flute) resides in Brooklyn, NY. An active contemporary musician in NYC, Katie has performed with leading contemporary ensembles such as Transit, Contemporaneous, En-semble Signal, Experiments in Opera, Little Opera Theatre of NY, Opera on Tap, Bang on a Can, members of Eighth Blackbird, Numinous, and 2017 Latin Grammy winners Mariachi Flor de Toloache. She is a member of the NYC ensemble Hotel Elefant, and a member of Corvus, the resident new music ensemble of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska. Katie is the Executive Director of Wild Shore New Music in Alaska and Program Manager for Exploring the Metropolis in NYC, an arts service organization dedicated to resolving workspace issues for NYC's performing arts com-munities. Katie has performed at major venues in New York such as Roulette, the Park Avenue Armory, The Kitchen, Hearst Plaza for Lincoln Center Center Out of Doors (2014), Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Merkin Hall, Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium, Zankel Hall, and Weill Re-cital Hall. She has worked with leading composers including 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams, 2015 Guggenheim Fellow Richard Carrick, Conrad Winslow, Leaha Villarreal, Joseph Phillips, Anna Clyne, Carlisle Floyd, and Mary Kouyoumdjian. Katie is also a teaching artist for Little Orchestra Society and teaches private lessons at St. Luke's School in Manhattan. (www.katieleighcox.com)

Tara Hanish (cello) is classically trained but enjoys performing a wide variety of music. With degrees from Cleveland Institute of Music, Uni-versity of Miami, and University of Michigan, Tara collaborates and per-forms in a range of orchestral, theater, and chamber music settings. With a passion for new music and expanding the definition of "normal" for cello, Tara is a member of the Whiskey Girls (a duo of sweetly-singing cellists) and You Bred Raptors? (a post-rock instrumental trio of drums, 8-string bass and cello), and loves collaborating with composers and ar-tists of all genres in performance and studio settings. As an educator, Tara is on the faculty at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Queens College Preparatory School, Suzuki on the Island in Manhasset, and the JCC Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, NJ. Tara is Suzuki certified (most recently through the School for Strings), and enjoys teaching stu-dents of all ages and levels. (www.TaraHanish.com)