Five Boroughs Music Festival to Welcome Grammy Winners Roomful of Teeth, 5/4

Five Boroughs Music Festival's 2013-2014 season concludes this May with a presentation of the groundbreaking vocal ensemble ROOMFUL OF TEETH. Fresh off their 2014 Grammy™ win for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, this genre-bending group will join us for a program of vocal works which showcase the ensemble's wide vocabulary of singing techniques. The program will feature works by William Brittelle, Elliot Cole, Merrill Garbus, Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, as well as RFOT's own, Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw.

The concert will take place Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 7:00 PM at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. Tickets are $40 for VIP Front Island Seating ($45 at the door), $35 for Premium Rear Island Seating ($40 at the door), and $22.50 for General Admission ($25 at the door). Tickets for this program are available now via TicketWeb.com.

The program will feature Elliot Cole Hanuman's Leap (Choral version World Premiere), Missy Mazzoli's Vesper Sparrow, Sarah Kirkland Snider's The Guest, Caroline Shaw's Passacaglia (from Partita), Judd Greenstein's Montmartre, William Brittelle's High Done No Why To, and Merrill Garbus's Quizassa.

Roomful of Teeth is made up of the vocal talents of Cameron Beauchamp, Steven Bradshaw, Martha Cluver, Estelí Gomez, Avery Griffin, Neil Netherly, Caroline Shaw, and Virginia Warnken. Brad Wells is the director.

Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth is a vocal project dedicated to mining the expressive potential of the human voice. Through study with masters from non-classical traditions the world over, the eight voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an on-going commissioning project, invites today's brightest composers to create a repertoire without borders. The ensemble gathers annually at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), where they've studied Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, belting, Inuit throat singing, Korean P'ansori, Georgian singing and Sardinian cantu a tenore styles with some of the world's top performers and teachers of the styles. Commissioned composers include Rinde Eckert, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Merrill Garbus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Missy Mazzoli. The project's debut album, Roomful of Teeth, was released in 2012. It was included on many Best of 2012 lists, topped the classical charts on iTunes and Amazon, and even broke into the top 10 on the Billboard charts. The album was nominated in three categories for the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards, including Best Engineer for Classical Album, Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, and Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices. Roomful of Teeth received a GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. In April 2013, ensemble member Caroline Shaw received the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Partita, the four movements of which appear on the debut album. An iTunes exclusive EP of Partita was subsequently released and ranked no. 1 on iTunes Classical charts.

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to presenting traditional and contemporary chamber music in all five boroughs of New York City. With the dual aims of bringing affordable, high-caliber chamber music concerts to all parts of NYC and of cultivating new audiences for the genre, 5BMF engages top composers and performers from the New York City region and beyond and partners with many local cultural institutions. 5BMF's programming is rooted in familiar classical music traditions, but is inclusive of a broad range of styles; art song recitals, early music, jazz, new music and other non-classical forms are all represented.

Founded and led since 2007 by Artistic Director Jesse Blumberg, 5BMF has presented over 30 traditional and contemporary chamber music programs in six complete cycles around NYC. 5BMF's commitment to musical outreach and diverse programming has attracted positive attention from the NYC arts community from its earliest days; highlights include a performance for over 1,500 music lovers at the Third Annual Bryant Park Fall Festival in 2010, and the annual presentation of free outdoor concerts for Make Music New York.

5BMF's artist roster is comprised of diverse, talented emerging artists and distinguished musicians alike. 5BMF's venues are just as eclectic, and have included historic NYC landmarks such as Steinway Hall, the University Church at Fordham University, Flushing Town Hall, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, to name merely a few. Outreach initiatives include public masterclasses; artist talk-backs; and the donation of programming to charitable causes. In 2011, 5BMF presented the World Premiere of its ambitious Five Borough Songbook, a collection of 20 newly commissioned vocal chamber works from 20 composers. Over the course of the 2011-2012 season, 5BMF premiered the Songbook in each of NYC's five boroughs, and released a 2-CD album of the collection with GPR Records. Further information can be found at www.5BMF.org

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