GOTHAM CHAMBER OPERA STEPS OUT Comes to Le Poisson Rouge, 3/27

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, Gotham Chamber Opera will return to Le Poisson Rouge for an evening of chamber music, opera, and rock and roll. Gotham Chamber Opera Steps Out will take place on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 8pm (doors open at 7pm) at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, NYC. Tickets are $15 and are available at http://lepoissonrouge.com/events. 

Gotham Chamber Opera Steps Out will feature singers, musicians and composers associated with the company, in a downtown setting different from their usual appearances in the theater. The repertoire will combine works from the Baroque era to the present, juxtaposing genres from classical to alternative rock, from operatic chestnuts to contemporary art song. Special guests performing this evening include singers Jennifer Check, Maeve Höglund, Eve Gigliotti, Gennard Lombardozzi, and Benjamin LeClair from Gotham Chamber Opera's roster; alternative rock band Miracles of Modern Science, whose members include Gotham's assistant conductor Geoff McDonald; and composer and performer Gabriel Kahane, whose work "You left me, sweet" was commissioned by Gotham Chamber Opera.

Among the other contemporary composers featured on the program are Lembit Beecher, composer-in-residence of the Opera Company of Philadelphia in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theatre Group; and George Lam, who is not only a composer but also the Producing Associate for GCO. 

Gotham Chamber Opera Steps Out is a general admission event. Seating is limited and available on a first come, first seated basis. There is a two-item minimum per person at all tables. Standing room is also available. For more information, visit http://lepoissonrouge.com/events.

 

Jennifer Check, soprano

Maeve Höglund, soprano

Eve Gigliotti, mezzo-soprano

Gennard Lombardozzi, tenor

Benjamin LeClair, bass

 

R.B. Schlather, stage director

 

Neal Goren, piano and conductor

Gabriel Kahane, piano and vocals

Keun-A Lee, piano and harpsichord

George Lam, conductor

Nurit Pacht, violin

Orlando Wells, viola

Sophie Shao, cello

Sato Moughalian, flute

Amy Zoloto, clarinet and bass clarinet

Barry Centanni, percussion 

Miracles of Modern Science

Evan Younger, double bass and lead vocals

Josh Hirshfeld, mandolin and vocals

Kieran Ledwidge, violin

Geoff McDonald, cello

Tyler Pines, drums 

Program

LEMBIT BEECHER  Heart Rhythms Trio

MIRACLES OF MODERN SCIENCE  Tensity

MOZART  "Quercia annosa su l'erte Pendici" (Publio's aria) from Il sogno di Scipione

Gabriel Kahane  You Left Me, Sweet

RAVEL  Chansons Madécasses

GEORGE LAM / Benjamin Rogers  New York Premiere of Variations On

KAHANE  Solo Set

PURCELL  Sound The Trumpet

STRAUSS  "Wie schön ist doch die Musik" from Die Schweigsame Frau

MIRACLES OF MODERN SCIENCE  MOMS Away

RAMEAU  "Les vents furieux" from La Princess de Navarre

STRAUSS  "Marie Theres! Hab' mir's gelobt" (Trio) from Die Rosenkavalier

Gotham Chamber Opera continues its 10^th-anniversary celebration with a revival of Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione, which announced the company's arrival on the New York cultural scene ten years ago. The original creative team will be reunited for the production, which opens at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College on April 11, 2012 and runs through April 21, 2012. Performances: Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30pm (Opening Night); Friday, April 13 at 8pm; Sunday, April 15 at 3pm; Tuesday, April 17 at 8pm; Thursday, April 19 at 8pm; and Saturday, April 21 at 8pm. Tickets are $30-$125 and are available online atwww.ticketcentral.com or by phone at 212-279-4200. 

Gotham Chamber Opera is the nation's leading opera company dedicated to the highest quality productions of chamber operas rarely performed today. Its mission is to produce vibrant, fully-staged productions of works from the Baroque era to the present that are intended for intimate venues. As the only company committed solely to producing chamber opera, Gotham has a unique brand that is recognized nationally. Founded by conductor and Artistic Director Neal Goren in 2000, in its first ten years, Gotham Chamber Opera has produced eighteen operas, including seven American premieres, two New York City premieres and two world premieres. Recently, Gotham made news world-wide in 2010 for its high-tech production of Haydn's Il mondo della luna staged in the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History and for Montsalvatge's El gato con botas (Puss in Boots), at The New Victory Theater, staged by Tony Award-nominated director Moisés Kaufman with puppet design by Blind Summit Theatre. This season, Gotham Chamber Opera celebrates its tenth anniversary with two productions: the world premiere of Dark Sisters, by composer Nico Muhly, and a revival of Gotham's first production, the American premiere of Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione (1772). The season opened with the world premiere of Dark Sisters, an opera by composer Nico Muhly and librettist Stephen Karam, directed by Rebecca Taichman and conducted by Gotham's Artistic Director Neal Goren. A co-commission and co-production of Gotham Chamber Opera, Music-Theatre Group, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Dark Sisters was presented six times at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College. In April 2012, Gotham Chamber Opera will revive Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione, which announced the company's arrival on the New York cultural scene ten years ago. To commemorate that anniversary, the original creative team of director Christopher Alden, set designer Andrew Cavanaugh Holland, costume designer Fabio Toblini, and lighting designer Allen Hahn will be reunited for six performances of the production, to be conducted by Gotham Chamber Opera's Founding Artistic Director Neal Goren, at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College. For more information, visit www.gothamchamberopera.org. 

Miracles of Modern Science are an unlikely rock band. Using just mandolin, violin, cello, standup bass, and drums, they create explosive pop that upends notions of what these instruments can do. The band began life at Princeton University. Vocalist/bassist Evan Younger and mandolinist Josh Hirshfeld shared a hall their freshman year and soon began hijacking open mics with their off-kilter acoustic collaborations. They found kindred spirits in other restless musicians from the school's orchestras and jazz bands: conductor-by-day cellist Geoff McDonald, Aussie violinist Kieran Ledwidge, and finally powerhouse drummer Tyler Pines, who spurred them to plug their miniature orchestra into amps. The band built a cult following on campus and graduated to New York City, where their ecstatic live shows and dorm-grown EP earned them nods from NPR,SPIN, Wired, and Brooklyn Vegan. MOMS' debut album Dog Year finds the band pushing the limits of their antique instruments and throwing aside conventions as readily as their genre-bending idols, Bowie and Bartok. You'll hear unhinged baritone vocals anchored by a looming upright bass, mandolin riffs that share more DNA with post-rock than bluegrass, and a two-man "string section" shredding as ferociously as the rock drummer behind them. The result is as daring as it is infectious. 

Gabriel Kahane writes string quartets and musicals and pop songs, and his heart is fully in all of those endeavors. But what unites all of his musical efforts is the desire to communicate honestly and without pretense. Born in Venice Beach, California in 1981 and raised on both coasts in a slo-mo game of residential ping-pong, Gabriel's relationship to geography is never far from the surface in his songwriting. He writes about place with a passion often reserved for a lover, the resulting songs offering a unique path toward emotional catharsis. And at a time when irony dominates our cultural terrain, Gabriel is unafraid to be emotionally direct. On his rich and focused sophomore LP "Where are the Arms," anthemic pop choruses are followed by intricate brass cadenzas in odd time signatures, and folky refrains are interlaced with tightly wound flute filigrees- yet it's always in the service of the song. Launched by his 2006 song cycle "Craigslistlieder," Kahane's rapid ascent as a composer of concert works continues to bloom in the 2011-2012 season, with the premiere of an orchestral song cycle slated for performance in March with Kahane as soloist alongside the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. "Little Sleep's Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight," a cello sonata-cum-song cycle written for Alisa Weilerstein, will be heard in a concert for Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society with the composer as pianist and singer. A string quartet, "The Red Book," written for the Kronos Quartet, will premiere in the fall.

In the fall of 2011, Lembit Beecher was appointed for a three-year term as the first Composer In Residence of the Opera Company of Philadelphia in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre Group of New York. Born of Estonian and American parents, he grew up under the redwoods in Santa Cruz, California, a few miles from the wild Pacific. Since then he has lived in Boston, Houston, Ann Arbor, Berlin and New York, earning degrees from Harvard, Rice and the University of Michigan. This varied background has made him particularly sensitive to place, ecology and the strong emotional relationships that people forge with patterns in nature. He is also interested in memory and the various ways we tell stories, from emotional personal narratives to crisp and clean documentaries. Recent pieces have focused on reflections of the immigrant experience and the integration of recorded interviews with music.  While a fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (2008 - 2009), Lembit wrote And Then I Remember, a multi-media, documentary oratorio based on the World War II stories of his grandmother.  And Then I Remember won the 2010 Opera Vista competition leading to a fully staged production in March of 2011 in Houston, Texas. Active also as a pianist and conductor, his work has been performed at the Tanglewood, Aspen and Cabrillo Music Festivals and he has received awards and grants from the American Music Center, ASCAP, New York Youth Symphony, NewMusic@ECU, Society for New Music and Austin Peay State University. Lembit served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University for the fall of 2009. 

George Lam began working for Gotham Chamber Opera in July 2011.  After graduating from Boston University, George continued studies in music composition and theory pedagogy at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and at Duke University, where he received his PhD.  As a composer, George is interested in writing music that directly engages with everyday life, exploring the intersection between music, theater, and the documentary.  George has collaborated with numerous ensembles in both the U.S. and in Hong Kong, including American Opera Projects, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Contemporary Musiking, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta.  Recent fellowships and residencies include the Aspen Music Festival and School's composition master class, the Dartington International Summer School, the Virginia Arts Festival, the Volti Choral Arts Laboratory, and the Gesher Music Festival of Emerging Artists.  George is the recipient of a grant from the American Music Center for his orchestral work The Queen's Gramophone (2009), as well as the 2010-11 Evan V. Frankel Fellowship in Humanities at Duke University.  George is a founding member and co-artistic director of Rhymes With Opera.

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