MUSIQA Presents AMERICAN TRIOS! at the MATCH

By: Feb. 16, 2017
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Musiqa, two-time winner of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, presents American Trios!, the third in its series of major concert series. The program consists of four works for three performers, by prominent American composers: John Harbison, Dan Visconti, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, and Musiqa's own Marcus Maroney. In addition, Musiqa will screen the two top prize winning shorts from Houston Cinema Arts Society's Cinespace Competition.


The highlight of the concert will be the world premiere of Marcus Maroney's "Horn Trio", commissioned by Musiqa. Maroney, a member of Musiqa's artistic board, studied both composition and horn at the University of Texas at Austin before pursuing two graduate degrees in composition at Yale University. A member of the composition faculty at the University of Houston, he is an active member of Houston's diverse contemporary music scene, and his works continue to receive performances around the world. Musiqa audiences will remember Maroney from another work commissioned for last year's collaboration with FotoFest, "Earth Music".


Musiqa will be presenting a second horn trio, "Twilight Music", by John Harbison. The 1984 work typifies Harbison's style, one exemplified by, in the composer's words, the hiding of "abstract structure... beneath a warmer exterior." In the work Harbison explores the similarities and differences between the horn and the violin, two very disparate instruments. The composer writes that the virtuosity of the musicians of the commissioning body, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, "allowed me to write with reckless subtlety for instruments which I heard meeting best under cover of dusk."


Also on the program is a piano trio by Ellen Taafe Zwilich, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize. Her "Piano Trio" was written in 1987, four years after she won the prestigious award. The trio exemplifies her more post-romantic style from the mid-1980s onward, but still leaves room for aggression and drive.


Finally, Musiqa will perform Dan Visconti's "Lonesome Roads" for piano trio. Visconti, a leading composer of the younger generation (he was born in 1982), has won a number of significant awards, including the Rome Prize and the Bearns Prize from Columbia University. Additionally, he is heavily involved with the promotion of contemporary music through his work with the Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble. Visconti's works are grounded in "the improvisational energy and maverick spirit of rock, folk music, and other vernacular performance traditions." "Lonesome Roads" is no exception: beginning with all three instruments playing a hard-driving folk-like figure in unison, the energy rarely relents.


Houston Cinema Arts Society's Cinespace Competition invited filmmakers to submit short films that were inspired by or incorporated actual NASA footage. The international competition drew 457 entries from 6 continents. Academy Award-nominated director, producer and screenwriter and Houston native Richard Linklater helped NASA and the Houston Cinema Arts Society judge the contest entries. The second prize winner, "Music of the Spheres", is a documentary about a blind astronomer who "listens" to the stars. The first prize winner, "1950DA", concerns a young boy who is mocked for his dreams of voyaging into outer space.


ABOUT MUSIQA

Musiqa is dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. Founded in 2002 and led by four composers, Musiqa aims to enrich and inspire the community through programs that integrate contemporary music with other modern art forms. Musiqa celebrates modern creative arts through interdisciplinary concerts that highlight modern music and its connections to literature, film, dance, art, and more. With its innovative collaborations and educational programming, Musiqa strives to make modern repertoire accessible and vital to audiences of all ages and musical backgrounds.


Major support for Musiqa is provided by Houston Endowment, Inc., the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Powell Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Texas Commission on the Arts, R. Stan and Reinnette Marek, the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, the Brown Foundation, the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Kinder Morgan Foundation.



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