North/South Chamber Orchestra Closes 35th Season Tonight

This evening, June 16, the North/South Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Max Lifchitz welcomes the summer season when it concludes its 35th season performing a concert featuring four new works by composers hailing from Puerto Rico and the US.

The event will start at 8 PM and end approximately at 9:30 PM. It will be held at the intimate but acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th St - between Broadway and Columbus) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The auditorium is ADA accessible. Admission is free - no tickets needed.

The following compositions will be heard for the first time: Edmund Cionek's Dark Music; Dinos Constantinides' Family Triptych; Max Lifchitz's Forget Me Not; and William Ortiz's Trilogia Jabao.

Clarinetist Richard Goldsmith will appear as solosit for the Cionek and Constantinides works while soprano Carol Wilson -- in a rare New York appearance -- will be the soloist for the work by Max Lifchitz.

The composers will be present at the concert to introduce their works and meet with the audience.

Performers and composers are available for media events and interviews and may be contacted through the North/South office at ns.concerts@att.net.

Since its inception in 1980, North/South Consonance has brought to the attention of the New York City public over 1,000 recent works by composers representing a wide spectrum of aesthetic views. Its activities are made possible in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The event is also possible by grants from the Zethus Fund and the Music Performance Trust Fund as well as contributions from many generous donors.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC

Edmund Cionek's music is as vibrant and eclectic as New York, the city in which he resides. His works reflect a deft blend of classical design, pop elements, and humor mixed in a post-modern style. He attended the University of Michigan and also studied in Paris with Schoenberg disciple Max Deutsch at the École Normale de Musique. He serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Bar Harbor (ME) Music Festival where he curates the Festival's "New Composers Concert," a platform for emerging talent.

A lyrical and riveting work in three movements for clarinet and strings, Cionek wrote Dark Music to celebrate North/South Consonance's 35th season while honoring clarinetist Richard Goldsmith who has performed with North/South Chamber Orchestra since 1986. Listeners will enjoy its highly accessible and eminently melodic style built around transformations of the opening solo cello line.

A native of Greece, Dinos Constantinides studied at the Athens Conservatory before attending The Juilliard School where his mentors included Dorothy DeLay and the legendary Ivan Galamian. He also trained at Indiana University with Josef Gingold eventually joining the string section of the Indianapolis Symphony. In 1984 he accepted the Boyd Professorship at the Louisiana State University Music School in Baton Rouge where in addition to teaching composition he conducts the Louisiana Synfonietta.

A listener-friendly work in three movements for clarinet and strings, Constantinides' Family Triptych seeks to portray the individual members of the composer's family on specific occasions. The first movement, Ballade for John and Samantha, was written for the wedding celebration of the composer's son and his bride in 1995. The second, Lenna in Minneapolis, is meant to represent the activities of the composer's daughter while pursuing her doctorate at the University of Minnesota. The closing movement, Judy Mostly at Home, was written for the composer's wife on the occasion of her retirement after many years of service as a children's librarian in the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System.

Active as composer and performer, Max Lifchitz studied at The Juilliard School and Harvard University and won first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition for performers of new music held in Holland. His activities have earned awards and grants from the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim Faoundations; the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His performances and compositions may be heard on the more than 50 compact discs released by North/Sotuh Recordings, the label he directs.

Poetry by the 19th century American writer Lillian Curtis inspired the recently completed song cycle Forget Me Not. Written as a showcase for Carol Wilson's vocal virtuosity, it consists of four contrasting songs that deal with descriptions of nature as well as feelings of longing, anticipation and even humor. The individual titles of the songs are: The Sunlight, The Potato, Au-Revoir and A Summer Evening.

A member of the fascinating hybrid culture known as "Nuyorican," the music of William Ortiz Alvarado often reflects the realities of urban life. Born in 1947 in Salinas, Puerto Rico, Ortiz studied with Héctor Campos-Parsi at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, eventually earning his M.A. from SUNY Stony Brook and a Ph.D. in Composition from SUNY Buffalo where he studied with Morton Feldman. A Professor of Music and Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico's Bayamón campus Ortiz also serves as Music Director of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño.

The three movements of Trilogia Jabao for string orchestra summarizes the three mayor influences that have informed Ortiz's music and identity. The word jabao is used in the Caribbean to refer to a person with mixed racial characteristics. In this work it refers to the juxtaposition of musical and programmatic elements drawn from dissimilar traditions. The first movement - Sobre el Puente de Brooklyn ("Over the Brooklyn Bridge"), rhythmically conveys the hustle and bustle of city life and is an abstract musical impression of what one might feel growing up in New York City. The meditative harmonies and glissandi of the middle movement -- named after the Zen Buddhist Satori tradition -- evoke a spiritual connection, a contemplative mood and reach a higher consciousness. The closing movement titled Las siete potencias ("The Seven African Powers") refers to the synchretic religious tradition called "Santería". African in origin, Santería teaches that the seven powerful saints or "orishas" known as the "siete potencias" control every aspect of life.

MEET THE SOLOISTS

American Soprano Carol Wilson has performed in prestigious opera houses throughout the world including those in Frankfurt, Stockholm, Vancouver, Netherlands, Taipei, Dresden, Stuttgart, Bonn, Hannover and Manitoba. She earned much critical acclaim for her Metropolitan Opera appearances as Marschallin in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. A strong advocate of music by 20th and 21st century composers, Ms. Wilson has appeared as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Duesseldorf Symphoniker. She earned the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts at the Yale University School of Music and is now Associate Professor of Voice at the University of North Texas.

The NY Times praised clarinetist Richard Goldsmith for his "technical mastery, breath-taking playing and virtuosic fair." A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Mr. Goldsmith has taught at the United Nations School, New York University and CUNY's Aaron Copland School of Music. He has recorded for the Albany, Classic Masters, CRI and Opus One labels. His acclaimed solo album Clarinet Fantasy appears on the North/South Recordings label (N/S R 1006).

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