The North/South Chamber Orchestra Presents The Curved Road

The North/South Chamber Orchestra continues its 38th consecutive season of free-admission New York City concerts on Tuesday evening June 5. Guitarist Jordan Dodson will appear as soloist while Max Lifchitz - the ensemble's founder - will be on the podium.

The program will feature five listener-friendly spinetingling compositions by Alejandro Basulto, Ofer Ben-Amots, Oliver Caplan, Max Lifchitz and Ricardo Coelho de Souza. The event will take place at the intimate and acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th Street) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The free-admission event will start at 8 PM and end around 9:30 PM. The auditorium is ADA accessible. No tickets or reservations needed.

Since its inception in 1980, the North/South Consonance, Inc. has brought to the attention of the New York City public over 1,000 works by composers hailing from the Americas and elsewhere representing a wide spectrum of aesthetic views. Its activities are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the BMI Foundation; the Music Performance Trust Fund; and the generosity of numerous individual donors.

Alejandro Basulto is a young Mexican-born composer whose music is being heard in New York for the very first time. His Jig Variations -- a concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra -- evokes popular Latin American dances including the romantic Bolero, Son Montuno, Cumbia, Salsa and Reggateon. The young American guitarist Jordan Dodson wll be the featured soloist for the occasion.

Born in Israel, Ofer Ben-Amots studied with Alberto Ginastera in Switzerland and with George Crumb at the Universityof Pennsylvania. The winner of international composition competitions he now heads the music department at Colorado College. A tango for seven instruments, the musical language of Ben-Amot's The Curved Road is rhythmically strict and precise as well as warm and sentimental.

A native New Yorker, Oliver Caplan studied at Dartmouth College and he Boston Conservatory. The artistic director of the Juventas New Music Ensemble his music celebrates the beauty of the natural world and the resilience of the human spirit. His Love Letters was written to mark the Supreme Court's landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling recognizing a fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry. Excerpts from this work were used as the processional music for the composer's wedding to Chris Beagan.

Active as composer, pianist and conductor, Max Lifchitz has appeared on concert stages throughout Latin America, Europe and the US. Trained at Juilliard and Harvard, Lifchitz was awarded the first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition held in Holland. His creative endeavors have earned the support of the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim Foundations.

His Yellow Ribbons No. 40 belongs to an ongoing series of compositions written as homage to the former American hostages in Iran. These compositions represent a personal way of celebrating the artistic and political freedom so often taken for granted in the West. The tragic events that befell New York City on September 11, 2001 convinced the composer that returning to work on this series begun in the early 1980's was both appropriate and worthwhile. The work is in four movements: Distant Fanfare, Waging Peace, Days of Wrath and Reveries.

Brazilian Ricardo Coelho de Souza is active as percussionist and composer. The winner of a BMI Young Composers' Award, de Souza studied at the Carlos Gomes Conservatory and now teaches at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. His virtuosic Oferendas No. 5 is an eclectic work employing conventional and novel techniques. It is being heard in New York fr the very first time.

Described by the press as "one of the top young guitarists of his generation," Jordan Dodson is an active soloist and chamber musician based in New York and Philadelphia. He has received prizes in numerous competitions, including the 2013 Astral Artists National Auditions, 2011 Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition, 2010 Indiana International Guitar Competition, and 2008 American String Teachers Association Competition. In 2013, he was a Young Artist in Residence on American Public Media's Performance Today. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Dodson trained at the Curtis Institute of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Cincinnati. He appears as soloist in the North/South recording of Robert Martin's Water of the Flowery Mill

For the complete Winter/Spring concert series schedule please visit http://www.northsouthmusic.org/calendar.asp

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