Sound Waves Presents Premieres by Constantinides, Hickey, Maves & Worthington, 2/6

North/South Consonance, Inc. continues its 31st consecutive season of free-admission concerts on Sunday afternoon February 6. The event will feature the acclaimed North/South Chamber Orchestra under the direction of its founder Max Lifchitz performing four compositions especially written for the occasion by American composers representing three different generations. They are: Dinos Constantinides, Sean Hickey, David Maves and Rain Worthington.

The concert will start at 3 PM and will take place at the auditorium of Christ & St. Stephen's Church (120 West 69th St) in Manhattan. Admission is free.
The program will open with the first performance of Sound Waves (2010) a single-movement work by the Greek-American composer Dinos Constantinides (b. 1929). The title refers to the vivid and frantic waves of sound that permeate the work and seek to engage the listener with constant changes of rhythm and color. Constantinides is the music director of the Louisiana Sinfonietta and has also served as concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony. Writing for the NY Times, Tim Page described his music as "speaking simply.....often combining Greek modes with an attractive quality of ritual mystery."

The first half of the concert will conclude with a three-movement Sinfonietta by Sean Hickey (b. 1970) . Cast in the traditional fast-slow-fast three movement pattern, Hickey's engaging work employs jazz-derived rhythms and harmonies as well as many techniques associated with the avant-garde. The last movement of the work pays homage to Silvestre Revueltas, the late Mexican composer for whom Hickey has a special affinity. A native of Detroit, Hickey writes: "I feel honored to have had the opportunity to write a work for the North/South Chamber Orchestra - an ensemble whose activities I've followed since I was a teenager. In fact, the very first concert I attended after moving to New York in the early 1990's was a North/South event."

David Maves' Dectet will open the second half of the concert. The work is based on the last scene of the first act from an opera Maves recently completed using Federico Garcia Lorca's play Bodas de Sangre as libretto. The composer writes that the beginning of the Dectet is "tense and dry just as the meeting of the two families to be united by marriage. The music progresses into a kind of fugal conversation about how to cope with the dry, arid land. A tense, frantic finale represents the bride's fixation on and assignations with the wrong man come to light." Maves (b. 1937) served as Composer-in -Residence for the College of Charleston for over 30 years and was also the Ford Foundation Composer-in -Residence for the city of Raleigh, NC.

The concert will conclude with a performance of Memories of Place by Rain Worthington (b. 1950) a composer influenced by both romanticism and minimalism. The Village Voice critic Kyle Gann compared her style to " ....a walk in a familiar, yet very different park." Ms. Worthington writes that the title of her work refers to the fact that ".... ...she was fortunate to spend a year traveling throughout Greek, Egypt and Turkey studying the music and instruments of those countries .... Memories of Place represents how strongly she felt drawn to the musical crosscurrents that overlay these cultures..."

The featured composers will be in attendance and will be happy to meet with the public during intermission and after the performance. The composers and the performers are available for interviews and may be contacted through the North/South office at <ns.concerts@att.net>.

North/South Consonance's 2010-11 season is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; grants from Columbia University's Alice M. Ditson Fund as well as contributions by many generous individuals. For further information about its activities, including concerts and recordings, please visit http://www.northsouthmusic.org.