Composer Georgia Shreve's First Solo Multi-Media Concert Featuring The Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble To Debut Three Premieres On May 17

Georgia Shreve, Composer and writer, announces her first solo multi-media concert.

On May 17th, her work will be performed at Carnegie Hall for the 7th time, in a multi-media concert for chamber orchestra, piano, choir and vocal soloists. The concert will include her new setting of Alice in Wonderland featuring Salvador Dali's paintings based on Alice. It will also include her new film Protopia which she is creating and setting to music. The third multi-media piece, The Four Seasons, is composed of time-lapse video of the seasons created on iconic New York terraces accompanied by her Piano Concerto. Her new choral piece, Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way, will also be performed.

"It is my first solo-concert and will feature three premieres," she says. "Four works of mine will be performed by chamber orchestra, choir, and vocal soloists that evening."

The May 17th concert marks her fifth consecutive collaboration at Carnegie Hall with the Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble.

The concert will include Georgia Shreve's setting of Alice in Wonderland accompanied by a montage of Salvador Dali's fascinating paintings inspired by the book. Alice in Wonderland has had a long and lively life since its debut almost 150 years ago," says Shreve. "It has appeared in numerous animated and live-action films, has attracted over 40 illustrators, and has been issued in almost 50 editions. In setting it, I have worked hard to bring it alive in music while fusing it with the extraordinary paintings by Salvador Dali to provide new visions of the story."

Her new film Protopia will also have its debut at the concert. "I created the word Protopia to express a vision of the future which is coming to life today, that is positive, optimistic, idealistic and altruistic, positive progress in the making. We are bombarded with negative news that blinds us to all the awe-inspiring prosocial projects and accomplishments that are happening right now."

To illuminate this vision the composer has created a film, set to a poem by Walt Whitman, that expresses a positive universal spirit that connects us all. The film highlights the composer's perception of current developments which are making the world a better place.

"Georgia Shreve is a unique voice in the world of contemporary music," observes Richard Auldon Clark, founder and conductor of the Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, created 30 years ago. "Her original settings combine vocal, choral and instrumental beauty with great literature and stunning images to create a new performance art for the twenty-first century."

"Richard Auldon Clark is an extremely talented violist, conductor and composer," says Georgia. "He and the ensemble bring my work beautifully to life and has always been a pleasure to work with him."

"Georgia has a true passion for poetry and music, and has composed musical settings for poems by some of the world's foremost poets, including T.S. Eliot, Dante, and Wallace Stevens," says Dr. Howard Cass, Musical Director & pianist of Ideation Productions. "Each of Georgia's past concert events has been enthusiastically received, and I am certain that this year's event, which features three premiere performances, will be received with equal enthusiasm and applause."

The 3rd and final multi-media piece which will be performed at the May 17 concert is called the Four Seasons. The work features time lapse photography of some of New York's iconic terraces that has been merged into a video and set to Shreve's four-movement Piano Concerto.

"The concerto movements guide you through these perspectives from a private and unique vantage of the city. It is my own version of the Four Seasons," says Georgia.

The concert also includes a new choral piece composed by Georgia, her setting of the poem Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way by Juan Felipe Herrera, the recent Poet Laureate (whose parents were migrant workers) which expresses joy, longing, and optimism.

About Georgia Shreve:

Georgia Shreve is a noted composer, fiction writer, playwright and poet. She holds degrees from Stanford, Brown, Columbia, and PENN. Her poetry and fiction have been published in magazines such as the New Yorker, New Republic, and New Criterion, and her short story, The Countess of M-, won the Stanford Magazine Fiction award. She is in the process of putting the final touches on her novel, Spring Lake. Her plays and musicals have received numerous readings and workshops across New York. In 2012 The New York Times praised the musical composition of Georgia Shreve, writing "The program also included Georgia Shreve's expansive, psychologically pointed setting of part of T. S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' in an artfully blended performance...."

Georgia's Rock Opera, Lovesick, will be premiered in the Fall of 2018.