The Village Trip Presents Harold Meltzer

RSF and its production arm, Marsyas Productions collaborate with –>The Village Trip<– and St. John’s in the Village in a celebration of the much lauded village composer –>Harold Meltzer<–.

Special thanks to Fr. Graeme Napier and Liz Thomson

September 23 – 8PM at St. John’s in the Village

Soprano Elizabeth Farnum

members of Cygnus –
Cal Wiersma, vln; Susannah Chapman, vcl; Oren Fader & William Anderson, guitars

pianists Margaret Kampeier and Joan Forsyth

featuring world premiere of Doria Pamphili, for guitar solo

Battle Piece – 2016 for two guitars
Doria Pamphili – 2007 for guitar solo
from a book of beautiful monsters – 2013-14 for Vox n Plux (Cygnus guitarists & Elizabeth Farnum)
Two Songs from Silas Marner – 2000 for soprano and cello
Kreisleriana – 2012 for violin and piano
Snow White – 2003 for solo piano

Tommasini on Meltzer’s Naxos CD (<–Amazon link) –>

“… haunting, quirky and continually inventive… a splendid recording of four fascinating chamber and vocal works by Mr. Meltzer.”

— The New York Times

“His music joins a wry literary sensibility with a keen and often poignant instrumental palette to yield music that is both tender and incisive. Most striking… is Meltzer’s harmonic language, which draws on tonal and modal approaches without quite committing to either.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

Bio

Harold Meltzer is inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he “seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution.” The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 on Naxos, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times; the third recording—Songs and Structures, released in November 2018 on Bridge Records, made The New York Times list of the top 25 tracks of the year and in voix des artswas named the best contemporary music recording of 2018. And the second recording, released late in 2017 on Open G Records, elicited the most praise: an “enchanting and unpredictable release” (San Francisco Chronicle); “thrives on ample invention and an astute sense of color (The Wall Street Journal); “summoning up sounds from his ensemble that seem nearly impossible” (American Record Guide); “a composer fully in charge of his powers, and in his prime” (Fanfare Magazine).

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2009 for his sextet Brion, Harold has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Commissions in recent years have issued from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Music Foundations, New Music USA, the Library of Congress, Boston Chamber Music Society, Concert Artists Guild, the ASCAP Foundation for the New York Festival of Song, and the Brooklyn Art Song Society. Founder and co-director for fifteen years of the new music ensemble Sequitur, Meltzer lives in the East Village of Manhattan. Upcoming projects include a Piano Concerto for Sara Laimon and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a duet for countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and tenor Paul Appleby of the American Modern Opera Company, and a full-evening cantata for The Crossing and Sandbox Percussion.

February 2019