Fulcrum Point New Music Project Presents SHANTI: 15th ANNUAL CONCERT FOR PEACE Today

Fulcrum Point New Music Project, the city's leader in new art music and inventive collaborations, in partnership with Build the Peace Chicago, The Peace School, the International Day of Peace and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, commemorates September 11th and celebrates its 15th anniversary season with a free concert of classical and contemporary music from India and America in Shanti: 15th Annual Concert for Peace, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph Street, tonight, September 11 at 6:30 pm.

The uplifting concert for peace, inspired by a vision of a harmonious world, features the Fulcrum Point ensemble led by Founder and Artistic Director, Stephen Burns, and an array of renowned international guest artists. This interactive concert for strings, percussion and song opens with a procession of international flags by Chicago Public School students accompanied by the ringing of gongs. The audience is invited to participate by "ringing a gong for peace" utilizing tuned gongs positioned around the Pavilion.

The program continues with the Midwest Premiere of a setting of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Two Tones" by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail. This poignant ballad about the spirit which binds all people is performed by soprano Genevieve Thiers, violinist Mathias Tacke and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang.

The 100-voice Chicago Children's Choir led by Josephine Lee, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and the Fulcrum Point ensemble come together for the World Premiere of Robert and Kathleen Lombardo's Against Forgetting, a tribute to the children of the Holocaust with a metaphorical journey through the changing seasons full of youthful spring ebullience, warm summer frolicking, the foreboding onset of fall, harsh winds of winter, all to be relieved by the return of spring. The Lombardos collaborated on this work based on their family memories of assisting holocaust survivors in their childhood neighborhoods.

Following, local acoustic rock band Zamin, led by Indian vocalist Zeshan Bagewadi, performs new alternative rock works inspired by Indian classical music.

Next on the internationally collaborative concert is an improvisation in the classical Indian style by special guests, sarod virtuoso artistSoumik Datta and tabla master Kalyan Pathak.

As the program continues, audiences hear a preview of a Parma Vir commission that Fulcrum Point will debut in Fall 2014. Made possible by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the work creates a new genre of music fusing Eastern and Western classical music. Glimpses of this piece are heard in Intimations of Luminous Mind performed by Huang.

The World Premiere of Shanti Paath: One Resonance: One Peace by Elizabeth Basta and Kalyan Pathak follows next. Utilizing 52 tuned gongs, harp and the Chicago Children's Choir, Shanti Paath invites the audience to sing along and once again ring the public gongs for peace. The chorus sings a text written by the composers' father invoking the profound wisdom inherent in the human spirit.

The program concludes with the whole group performing Om Shanti, composed by Jai Uttal and arranged by TEd Hearne and W. Mitchell Owens, III, featuring the Chicago Children's Choir, Fulcrum Point New Music Project and all guest artists.

The Shanti: 15th Annual Concert for Peace is free to the public and no tickets are required.

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