07:30 PM: Contemporary Chamber Players and Composers Concert (PREMIERES)

Join us on April 10th (Staller Center Recital Hall) and April 11th (DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC) to hear four new premieres by John Fitz Rogers, Earl Maneeim, Mark Nowakowski, and Paula Matthusen as part of our annual Stony Brook Premieres!

It is said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Like our present historical moment, John Fitz Rogers’ Shadow Rhymes echoes other times and places, always with an undercurrent of tension that manifests in different ways throughout the piece.

Earl Maneeim’s Outrage explores cycles of violence, the corrosive nature of power and ambition, nihilism, destruction and its accompanying futile, dead end philosophies in musical form.

Mark Nowakowski’s Hildegard Songs is a work that draws deeply from the life and witness of the famous 12th-century nun, author, composer, and mystic. Nowakowski draws inspiration from the melodic contours of Hildegard’s chant to the fiery content of her mystical visions.

Paula Matthusen’s just one and one and one draws its inspiration from the chapter entitled “Threshold” from Norma Kaweloku Wong’s book When No Thing Works. The piece investigates the ideas of potential thresholds across the performers and various motive materials they play as a way of engaging with what describes as areas between “the chaos of collective acceleration and entering the slipstream.” It holds present the perspective Wong offers – “So take a breath. Take a step.”