"Expression: Ism" at Barbro Osher Recital Hall, Bowes Center, SF Conservatory of Music

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2. "Expression: Ism"

The highlight of E4TT’s 2022/24 season will be our annual commissions concert and our fourth collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Department, exploring Expressionism—music that emphasizes the expression of strong feelings, often involving the distortion of shapes, images, and colors to create wildly unrealistic works of art. The concert title, “Expression: Ism,” breaks the word in two, highlighting the two primary aspects of Expressionism: the artist’s internal landscape as expressed externally and the artist’s subjective "I," much as can be seen in Arnold Schoenberg’s own painting, “Alliance."  For this concert, E4TT will create a multimedia dialogue between music by two of Schoenberg’s best-known students— Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1883-1945)—and new music inspired by their groundbreaking work, with World Premieres of new works by two outstanding Bay Area composers: Piano Trio #2, by E4TT co-founder and Senior Artistic Advisor David Garner (b. 1954) using tonal serialism (a technique he developed in direct reference to Schoenberg’s atonal serialism), and a trio for English horn, cello, and piano, by The American Prize Finalist Honorable Mention winner Valerie Liu. E4TT has also commissioned SF Conservatory of Music graduate, percussionist/composer TJ Martin to create a new chamber arrangement of Berg’s major early twelve-tone song cycle, Sieben Frühe Lieder (1905-1908), for soprano, English horn, cello, and vibraphone. The program will be rounded out with Sonatensatz (Rondo) für Klavier (Sonata Movement [Rondo] for Piano, 1906) by Webern, “Olive Orchard” and “Kandinsky” from Picture Etudes (2013) by Adam Schoenberg (b. 1980), and the winning piece from the TAC student multimedia composition competition. E4TT soprano Nanette McGuinness will be joined by guests percussionist Adrienne Anaya, cellist Megan Chartier, violinist Jennifer Redondas, English hornist Laura Reynolds, pianist Taylor Chan and E4TT emerita pianist Dale Tsang. The concert is free to attend and will also be livestreamed at no charge on the SF Conservatory of Music’s Vimeo channel. RSVP recommended.