TAK Ensemble Announces Fall 2022 Season Highlights, Marking 10th Anniversary 

TAK celebrates its 10th anniversary in the 2022-2023 season. Marking a decade of cultivating creative programming at the highest level, TAK's season features the world premiere of a New York Philharmonic co-commission by Tyshawn Sorey for the Kravis Nightcap series; premiere live performances of Ashkan Behzadi's Love, Crystal, and Stone and Taylor Brook's Star Maker Fragments from recent TAK albums; and commissions from Michelle Lou and DM R with Joy Guidry to be premiered at TAK's 10th anniversary celebration in May 2023.

This season will see the release of TAK's first collaboratively composed work on dinzu artefacts, opening for Ensemble Pamplemousse in Brooklyn, and a season-long residency at the University of Pennsylvania. The ensemble is also at work on new works from Eric Wubbels, Seth Cluett, Natacha Diels, Raven Chacon, Bryan Jacobs, Matana Roberts, Elaine Mitchener, Ann Cleare, Weston Olencki, and Jessie Cox.

Founded on the principles of curiosity, change, and caring communication, TAK is dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists and they have premiered hundreds of works to date. TAK is Laura Cocks, flutes; Madison Greenstone, clarinets; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; and Ellery Trafford, percussion.

Of this milestone season, the group shares, "It's with immense gratitude that we look back at a decade of making music together. We're humbled by the care of our collaborators and the care of our community of listeners, supporters, and friends and we're ecstatic to share what's to come!"

TAK's season begins with their first of six appearances as Long-term Visiting Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania from September 14-16, 2022. Their season-long residency will feature seminars and lectures as well as workshops with student musicians; classes on songwriting, experimental music, DIY practices, and microtonal theory; and a year-long collaboration with graduate composers that culminates in a public performance and recording session.

Back in New York, TAK finally performs the live world premiere of Taylor Brook's Star Maker Fragments, from the ensemble's new album of the same name (TAK Editions, March 2021), at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music on Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 8:00pm. Rescheduled twice due to the pandemic, Brook's Star Maker Fragments is a setting of portions of Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel, Star Maker, most notable for the invention of the many-worlds model of the universe. Conceptualized as a hybrid recording and "impossible performance," the work plays with the illusion of instrumental performance, expanding the sound of the quintet of flute, clarinet, voice, percussion and violin with multitrack recordings, nature soundscapes, and sound synthesis. This stunning concert-length work weaves transcendentally detailed microtonal lines and textures into Brook's visceral and evocative hypothetical worlds. An Earful called the album "sublime art... a masterpiece" and Textura raved, "The six have birthed with this project an experimental chamber album unlike any other...engrossing and transporting...a presentation that plays like a live performance." Listen to Star Maker Fragments on Bandcamp.

TAK celebrates the release of its latest album, Love, Crystal, and Stone (TAK Editions, May 2022) - with collaborators Ashkan Behzadi, Saharnaz Samaienejad, and Helena Grande - at Brooklyn's The Invisible Dog on Monday, October 3, 2022 at 8:00pm. Ashkan Behzadi's concert length work, Love, Crystal and Stone, is a sensual, intricately interwoven, and deeply philosophical setting of the poetry of Federico García Lorca. The CD's accompanying 76-page book features Ahmad Shamlou's Farsi translations and re-imaginings of Lorca's poetry, an original essay by Saharnaz Samaeinejad, and the ecstatically macabre paintings of Mehrdad Jafari, bringing together bold visual gestures and elemental icons evoking birds, rivers, fear, ecstasy, and exaltation. Listen to Love, Crystal and Stone on Bandcamp.

The following month, TAK will appear in concert in New York City at DiMenna Center Cary Hall on Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 8:00pm performing the world premiere of Lewis Nielson's Siesta Negra and works by Hannah Kendall and Bethany Younge. Siesta Negra bears quiet witness to imperial violences, intertwining elegiac remembrances with poetic futures born of reconstructed fragments of the past.

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00pm, a rare duo subset of Charlotte Mundy and Ellery Trafford will perform original works opening for Ensemble Pamplemousse at Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn.

To close the year, TAK gives the world premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its Kravis Nightcap Series, on Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 10:30pm at Lincoln Center's new Sidewalk Studio.

TAK Ensemble Fall 2022 Calendar

September 14-15, 2022
Residency at the The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation
University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, PA
Link: https://sachsarts.org/grant-awards/long-term-ensemble-in-residence-program/

September 17, 2022
Taylor Brook's Star Maker Fragments (World Premiere)
DiMenna Center, Cary Hall | New York, NY
Link: www.takensemble.com/starlive

October 3, 2022
Love, Crystal and Stone with Ashkan Behzadi, Saharnaz Samaienejad, and Helena Grande
The Invisible Dog | Brooklyn, NY
Link: www.takensemble.com/stone

October 17-18, 2022
Residency at The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation
University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, PA

November 9, 2022
TAK Concert Feat. Lewis Nielson, Hannah Kendall, and Bethany Younge
DiMenna Center, Cary Hall | New York, NY
Link: www.takensemble.com/terrain

November 17, 2022
TAK Opens for Ensemble Pamplemousse
Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn, NY
Link: www.takensemble.com/1117

November 30-December 1, 2022
Residency at The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation
University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, PA

December 3, 2022
New York Philharmonic Kravis Nightcap Series: Tyshawn Sorey World Premiere
Lincoln Center's Sidewalk Studio | New York, NY
Link: https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/2223/nightcap-dec3

About TAK Ensemble
Regarded as "one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music" (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex" (The WIRE), and "impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity" (New Sounds, WQXR).

The quintet has released seven albums to critical acclaim; recent records have been described as "sublime art... a masterpiece," (AnEarful), and "one of the most distinct and eclectic releases of the year" (I Care If You Listen). Their recorded output fosters a "deep sense of connection and communication" (Bandcamp Daily), and features collaborations with Mario Diaz de Leon, Taylor Brook, Erin Gee, Brandon López, Ann Cleare, Tyshawn Sorey, Natacha Diels, Scott L. Miller, David Bird, and Ashkan Behzadi. Their most recent release - Love, Crystal and Stone - brought together composer Ashkan Behzadi, scholar Saharnaz Samaienejad, painter Mehrdad Jafari, and design-house Sonnenzimmer to fuse poetry, visual art, original essays, and music into an experience-based hybrid publication. The ensemble's 2019 album Oor launched their in-house media label, TAK editions, that aims to support recorded musical endeavors from across the experimental music communities, highlighting direct conversations with artists through the TAK editions Podcast. Recent TAK editions releases have included those of Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Nina Dante + Bethany Younge, and several of TAK's own recordings.

Deeply committed to educational collaborations, TAK has conducted residencies at institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Oberlin Conservatory, Cornell University, Wesleyan University, New York University, The Delian Academy for New Music, and many others. The ensemble has also collaborated with the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program and Juilliard's Music Advancement Program. TAK is currently the Long-term Visiting Ensemble in Residence at University of Pennsylvania.

TAK was formed in 2013 in Brooklyn. Learn more at www.TAKensemble.com.

*Photo Credit: Kaveh Kowsari