SPCO's Liquid Music to Present Sarah Kirkland Snider's UNREMEMBERED

Sarah Kirkland Snider's Unremembered, "one of the most significant and harrowing releases of [2015]" (Thought Catalog), explores the fragility and nuance of memories and emotions in an hour-long, 13-part song cycle inspired by poems and illustrations by Nathaniel Bellows.

Musicians of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra join Snider's all-star ensemble including vocalists Padma Newsome (Clogs), DM Stith (Sufjan Stevens) and Shara Nova (My Brightest Diamond) to perform the U.S. premiere of Unremembered. Each movement is accompanied by video projections featuring Bellows' hand-drawn illustrations interleaved with photography and videography of his poetry's rural New England setting, augmenting the "intricately magical landscape" (New York Magazine) that Snider crafts with her "genre erasing" (The New Yorker) compositional skill.

"The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series is visionary, inspired, and exquisitely attentive to detail, making it one of today's most consistently inventive and widely-admired events in new music," says composer Sarah Kirkland Snider. "I'm honored to have Liquid Music give the U.S. premiere of my song cycle, Unremembered, next season. Spiritually and artistically I can think of no more fitting partner or home for this music."

"Sarah Kirkland Snider's Unremembered is, simply put, a gorgeous work of art," reflects Liquid Music curator Kate Nordstrum. "Sarah has an extraordinary imagination - her sound, sensitivity and the emotional quality of her music is entirely distinct. She is a conceptually-driven composer, and this work will resonate with anyone whose childhood memories of home are both haunting and sacred (in other words, relatable to all of us). Beyond Sarah's music making skills, I deeply admire her leadership and activism in the new music community, and I'm thrilled that Liquid Music will launch her most recent full-evening creation."

IF YOU GO:

UNREMEMBERED

Featuring:
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Nathaniel Bellows
Shara Nova
Padma Newsome
DM Stith
Mischa Santora

Saturday, Mar 11, 2017
Doors at 7pm | Music at 8pm
TEd Mann Concert Hall, Minneapolis
University of Minnesota
2128 Fourth Street South, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Tickets: $20 ($15 for Liquid Music subscribers), FREE for kids and students
liquidmusicseries.org | 651.291.1144

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Sarah Kirkland Snider
Recently deemed "one of the decade's more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers" (Pitchfork) and "a potentially significant voice on the American music landscape" (David PatRick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as "rapturous" (The New York Times), "haunting" (The Los Angeles Times), and "strikingly beautiful" (Time Out New York). With an ear for both the structural and the poetic, Snider's music draws upon a variety of influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. Of her orchestral song cycle, Penelope, Pitchfork's Jayson Greene proclaimed: "Snider's music lives in...an increasingly populous inter-genre space that, as of yet, has produced only a few clear, confident voices. Snider is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all."

In addition to her work as a composer, Snider is a passionate advocate for new music in New York and beyond. From 2001 to 2007, she co-curated the Look & Listen Festival, a new music series set in modern art galleries. Since 2007 she has served as Co-Director, along with William Brittelle and Judd Greenstein, of New Amsterdam Records, a Brooklyn-based independent record label recently called "the focal point of the post-classical scene," (Time Out New York) and "emblematic of an emerging generation" (The New York Times), and praised for "releasing one quality disc after another" (Newsweek). In 2011, New Amsterdam created a separate, non-profit organization for its presenting work, entitled New Amsterdam Presents.

Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Snider has an M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. In 2006 she was a Schumann Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. The 2013 winner of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award, Snider has also received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jerome Composers Commissioning Fund, New Music USA, and Opera America; Yale School of Music prizes; numerous young composer honors; and in 2011, was spotlighted in the NPR feature "100 Composers Under 40." Her teachers included Martin Bresnick, Marc-Andre Dalbavie, Justin Dello Joio, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, David Lang, and Christopher Rouse. She splits her time between New York and Princeton, where she lives with her husband, Steven; son, Jasper; and daughter, Dylan.

Shara Nova
Not many people can front a rock band, sing Górecki's Third Symphony, lead a marching band processional down the streets of the Sundance film festival and perform in a Baroque opera of their own composing all in a month's time. But Shara Nova can.

Her multi-faceted career as My Brightest Diamond (MBD), which began with an acclaimed independent rock record, has reflected her journey into the world of performing arts. "This Is My Hand," her fourth album, marks a confident return to rock music, one informed by her mastery of composition and a new exploration into the electronic.

Born in diamond rich Arkansas and then raised all around the country, Nova came from a musical family of traveling evangelists. She went on to study operatic voice and then classical composition after a move to New York City.

Shara began issuing recordings as My Brightest Diamond in 2006, following a protean period in the band AwRY, and joining Sufjan Stevens' Illinoisemakers live ensemble. Asthmatic Kitty Records released her debut album, "Bring Me The Workhorse" in 2006, "A Thousand Sharks' Teeth" in 2008, and 2011's "All Things Will Unwind," which featured songs written for the chamber ensemble yMusic.

In between MBD, well known fans became collaborators, and collaborative projects amassed. Highlights include singing in Laurie Anderson's 2008 show "Homeland," delivering guest vocals on The Decemberists' 2009 "Hazards of Love" album and subsequently joining them on tour, performing in Bryce and Aaron Dessner's multimedia presentation "The Long Count," singing and recording for Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang and singing in Sarah Kirkland Snider's Penelope and Unremembered. Shara has also worked with David Byrne (on his concept musical Here Lies Love), Fat Boy Slim, Bon Iver and The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Padma Newsome is an Australian composer, arranger, and performer (violin, viola, voice) based in Mallacoota, Victoria. His musical palette expresses colors of the modernist avant garde, folk music from India, chamber music remnants, and the energy founded in the pop/rock world. He composes for traditional large and small ensemble, the electro-acoustic medium, improvised chamber ensemble, music for dance and theatre, and develops arrangements for several rock bands.

Nathaniel Bellows was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Middlebury College and Columbia University. He is the author of a novel, On This Day, Nan, and a collection of poems, Why Speak?, along with numerous short stories and poems. He also works in the fields of visual arts and music and lives in New York City.

David Michael "DM" Stith (born June 24, 1980) is an American multimedia artist, singer, poet and song-writer whose work spans art song, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in drawing and painting, Stith designed album covers for New York musicians in the early 2000s making particular use of impressionistic drawing and watercolor painting techniques. He became more widely known in the independent music world in 2009 when his first album "Heavy Ghost" was released on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty Records, and more so when Stevens hired Stith as pianist, singer and opening act on his "Age of Adz" world tour.

Throughout 2015 Stith performed composer Judd Greenstein's newly commissioned work, "My City", which premiered in Manhattan with the American Composer's Orchestra (ACO), and The Crossing. The enormous work, based on Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Mannahatta", was written specifically for Stith's sometimes sweet, sometimes keening and vastly expressive voice. In July 2016, Stith's long awaited second album, "Pigeonheart", produced by Ben Hillier (Blur, Nadine Shah, Depeche Mode) was released.

Mischa Santora is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial conductors of his generation. He recently premiered Blind Banister by Timo Andres with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and pianist Jonathan Biss, as well as American Nomad by Steve Heitzeg with the Minnesota Orchestra, both to critical acclaim. This season's highlights with his newly founded Minneapolis Music Company include performances at the Baroque Room (Saint Paul), the launch of an interdisciplinary education program, and the creation of a forum for arts and business leaders focusing on new ways to engage the entire community in arts programming. In addition, Santora is the artistic director of the successful Spotlight Concert Series at the MacPhail Center for Music, featuring faculty and guest artists in collaborative programs.

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series develops innovative new projects with iconoclastic artists in unique presentation formats. Liquid Music performances invite adventurous audiences to discover the new and the fascinating within the flourishing landscape of contemporary chamber music.

Renowned for its artistic excellence, remarkable versatility of musical styles and adventurous programming, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world. Now in its 58th season, the SPCO has recently undergone transformational change with the opening of its new home, the Ordway Concert Hall, the addition of a new generation of players, and significant changes in its artistic vision. The SPCO is primarily an unconducted ensemble that performs a broad range of repertoire from Baroque to new music and works in close collaboration with a diverse series of artistic partners, including British Baroque specialist JoNathan Cohen, American pianist Jeremy Denk, Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst, Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto and Austrian conductor/violinist Thomas Zehetmair.

The virtuoso musicians of the SPCO present more than 130 concerts and educational programs each year, and reaches more than 200,000 listeners annually through its free online Listening Library. Nationally recognized for its commitment to broad community accessibility, the SPCO offers the most affordable tickets of any major American orchestra, with over 50 percent of tickets available for $12 or less. The SPCO has expanded accessibility even further by offering free tickets for children and students starting in the 2016.17 season as a part of the New Generation Initiative. The organization's award-winning CONNECT education program reaches over 5,000 students annually in 12 public schools, and its Target Free Family Music program provides engaging and educational experiences for thousands of children and families.

The mission of the School of Music is to understand, share, and disseminate music through creation, performance, research, and education. We are committed to excellence in all scholarly, creative, and pedagogical endeavors. We seek to provide the highest quality of professional training in music to students pursuing a broad variety of careers and offer artistic, cultural, and intellectual enrichment to the community within and beyond the University of Minnesota.

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