Center for New Music: May, 2021

According to my records, the Center for New Music (C4NM) has not presented two concerts in a single month since this past February. Ironically, as was the cast in February, there will be two concerts this month, both taking place on the same weekend: Friday evening followed by late Saturday afternoon. Both performances will be streamed via the C4NM YouTube channel. Specifics are as follows with hyperlinks for the respective event pages:

• Friday, May 21, 7:30 p.m.: This may be the first time that the Circadian String Quartet, whose members are violinists Monika Gruber and David Ryther, violist Omid Assadi, and cellist David Wishnia, will be performing at C4NM. (In the past I have grown used to encountering them giving Old First Concerts recitals.) C4NM will provide the platform for their premiere performance of “Vita Oscura,” a brand-new work they commissioned from composer Davide Verotta. This will be “in the moment” music inspired by present-day upheavals. Appropriately enough, it will be coupled with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 110 (eighth) string quartet in C minor. Composed over the course of three days in July of 1960, the music was written for the film Five Days, Five Nights, which was about the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Tickets are being sold for $15 with a $10 rate for C4NM members. The link to the YouTube video will be sent by electronic mail after tickets have been purchased.
• Saturday, May 22, 4:30 p.m.: Women in Parallel Empires is a 22-minute acousmatic video conceived by Jane Rigler and Tessa Brinckman. They will collaborate posthumously with Cécile Chaminade by incorporating her 1911 “Sérénade aux Étoiles” (serenade to the stars), scored for flute and piano. As Rigler and Brinckman put it, the video is a “space opera” that “explores how we might reclaim flute compositions by women composers dismissed from the Western canon, by re-assembling them within contemporary contexts, and addressing (and/or subverting) the concept of Empire, genius, and extraction in Western ‘art’ music.” There will be no charge for admission; but, as always, donations will be appreciated. All proceeds will benefit C4NM. The link to the video will be found on the Web page for the C4NM YouTube channel.