Contemporaneous: ORBIT – Midtown Arts Common

An ambulatory concert, featuring works by Eve Beglarian, Fjóla Evans, Janice Giteck, Nicole Lizée, and Angélica Negrón

O R B I T is an immersive musical experience that traces the seasonal cycle through sound and light and explores the idiosyncratic and alluring spaces of Saint Peter’s Church, a celebrated architectural masterwork in midtown Manhattan. Three different works are performed simultaneously, with the audience, divided into three groups, moving from one to the other, until finally all come together for a final piece. The program includes paired works by Angélica Negrón and Fjóla Evans that convey two different sides of summer, autumn is evoked in a serene piece by Eve Beglarian, and spring comes to life in the strange magic of Nicole Lizée’s music for phonograph and ensemble. Reconvening at the end to hear the wintry beauty of Janice Giteck's Breathing Songs from a Turning Sky, audience and musicians together may find that that they have, in the words of T. S. Eliot, come "to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

This performance is generously underwritten by the Paul R. Judy Center for Applied Research.

Program

Eve Beglarian (b. 1958): The Continuous Life (2000; arr. 2016)
Fjóla Evans (b. 1987): FIVE (2015)
Janice Giteck (b. 1946): Breathing Songs from a Turning Sky (1984)
Nicole Lizée (b. 1973): Phonographenlieder (2014)
Angélica Negrón (b. 1981): bubblegum grass / peppermint field (2011)

About Contemporaneous

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 21 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the music of now by performing and promoting the most exciting work of living composers through innovative concerts, commissions, recordings, and educational programs.
Based in New York City and active throughout the United States, Contemporaneous has performed over 90 concerts at a wide range of venues, including Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, (le) poisson rouge, Merkin Concert Hall, Baryshnikov Arts Center, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and the Bang on a Can Marathon. The ensemble has worked with artists as diverse as David

Byrne, Donnacha Dennehy, Andrew Norman, Dawn Upshaw, and Julia Wolfe.

Recognized for its “passionate drive for new music in a younger generation of composers” (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous has encouraged the composers of the over 70 works the ensemble has premiered to take risks and defy constraints. The ensemble’s recordings are featured on New Amsterdam Records, Roven Records, and two releases on Innova Recordings. Contemporaneous has held residencies at Simon's Rock College, the University of New Orleans, Williams College, and Bard College, where the ensemble was founded in 2010. For more information, visit www.contemporaneous.org.