Dec
9
7:00 PM19:00

Daniel Schreiner: Fundamental Energy

Join pianist, composer, and visual artist Daniel Schreiner for a dynamic program of 20th-21st century repertoire investigating the intersection of resonance and rhythm at the piano. From Claude Debussy's Feux d'artifice (1913) to Yoshi Weinberg's The Lifespan of Beets (2024), the concert's featured works evoke restless textures and constantly transforming compositional forms that walk the line between predictable regularity and idiosyncratic caprice.

With partly-composed, partly-improvised interludes by Schreiner connecting these pieces, the concert attempts to present a single, continuous abstract narrative mirrored by a newly-created 8-panel painting/graphic score that will be projected alongside the music.

"Fundamental Energy" posits the following questions: what is the boundary between the mechanical and the organic in our current reality? Is mechanization ever really perfectly regular, and do the seemingly irrational processes of the natural world conceal a different kind of logic? What can this teach us about how we understand "order" vs. "chaos," and what happens if we embrace that which we can't predict or control?

View Event →
Dec
3
7:30 PM19:30

InfraSound: Somewhere Only We Know

InfraSound presents “Somewhere Only We Know,” a continuation of our annual InfraPop series with 17 world premiere arrangements of songs by folk, indie, pop, and rock artists in memory of those we have lost. Come as you are and join our community as we sing and play about relationships, grief, loss, memory, mortality, and healing. All are welcome.

Featuring Marisa Tornello and Luke Paulino with the InfraPop Orchestra with special guest artist Natti Vogel.

Performing songs by Keane, First Aid Kit, 4 Non Blondes, Björk, Owen Pallett, Haley Heynderickx, FKA Twigs, Joanna Newsom, Kate Bush, Anaïs Mitchell, Billie Holiday, CocoRosie, SOPHIE, Sam Amidon, Sinéad O'Connor, Sufjan Stevens, and more!

View Event →
Sep
21
5:00 PM17:00

Contemporaneous: History of Life: Act 1 at Kaatsbaan

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park’s 2024 Festival & Contemporaneous present an early look at Act 1 of an upcoming work entitled History of Life by composer Dylan Mattingly and writer Thomas Bartscherer. A new epic, History of Life is a wild, enthralling 6-hour musical event — a folk revival, a rock concert, a communal feast, and a meditation on all that has lived and all that has died in this world. More than just a performance, History of Life is a celebration — like a wedding or a wake — that bears witness to the vast, beautiful, violent, manyvoiced history of life on Earth. The performance at Kaatsbaan Festival 2024 will feature vocalist Isaiah Robinson.

View Event →
May
3
7:00 PM19:00

InfraSound: Dancing to the Music of You

  • The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Dancing to the Music of You is a multidisciplinary collaboration between a team of queer NYC-based artists and organizations including InfraSound, ChamberQUEER, sculptor Jeremy Martin, sound designer Alex Gray, and lighting designer Madeline Whitesell. It will be a synthesis of gallery exhibition, sound-art installation, and musical performance taking place on May 3rd, 2024 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bixsexual, and Transgender Community Center (The Center).

This project explores the concept of the queer body: what it means to live and work as a queer artist, how we conceptualize queerness through fashion, posture, and movement, and how we build community around our shared experience of queer embodiment. The collaborating artists will examine these themes through sculpture, lighting and sound design, and musical composition. 

Sculptor Jeremy Martin will install his JUSTAPOSE series at The Center, creating two new sculptures for this iteration. JUSTAPOSE is a set of ambiguous paper sculptures inspired by exaggerated fashion silhouettes, exploring ways humans pose in public spaces to feel seen, or upset conformity through their appearance and actions. JUSTAPOSE investigates how these liminal, paper objects mirror Martin’s own experience as a queer person of color through their ability to shape-shift or code-switch depending on the societal dictates of the environments they occupy. Martin will photograph participating artists’ poses, inspired by conversations about how they perform appearance and actions in society daily, which will form the basis for the new sculptures.

In collaboration with Martin, composer Alex Gray will devise an interactive sound installation to co-exist with the sculptures, which will be manipulated live, based on the movement of audience and artists throughout the space. Lighting design by Madeline Whitesell will leverage her synaesthesia to translate the visual-sonic world of the performances in real time.

World premieres by composers Sam Kaseta and Alex Gray will be performed alongside curated works from ChamberQUEER and InfraSound, activating the space at 8:00 pm. The evening will conclude with the whole complement of artists in an improvisation upon the sculptures, soundscape, and lights culminating in a celebratory synthesis of artistic mediums.

View Event →
Mar
21
8:30 PM20:30

InfraSound: Infra Pop! Vol. 2

As NYC's premiere avant-pop cover band, InfraSound’s InfraPop! Orchestra fuses popular music with the exceptional skills of NYC’s emerging musicians. With the mesmerizing voices of Ri Tornello and Luke Paulino accompanied by winds, strings, harp, piano, and drums, we curate a mosaic of covers and arrangements from iconic artists such as Britney Spears, Björk, Joanna Newsom, Owen Pallett, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and more. Melded with experimental improvisation, InfraPop! is a celebration of popular music through InfraSound’s signature queer contemporary style.

View Event →
Feb
27
8:00 PM20:00

Contemporaneous: Songs at Night

Songs at Night is an intimate evening of musical transfiguration, centered around the world premiere of a large-scale new song cycle by composer Lila Meretzky drawing on the poems of Yiddish-language poet Anna Margolin. The main work on the concert is a world premiere of a commissioned expanded version of Lila Meretzky’s “Four Songs at Night.” Performed by Contemporaneous. The work will also feature singers Lucy Dhegrae and Milena Gligić.

The program will also feature Shelley Washington’s A Kind of Lung and Dylan Mattingly’s The History of Life in Reverse. Washington’s A Kind of Lung can simply be described as an expression of an experience that we all share - breathing together - and was written for a diverse ensemble of instruments.

Mattingly’s “A History of Life in Reverse” is a standalone scene drawn from the upcoming project History of Life, an evening of music and story that imagines the Homeric oral tradition which created the Odyssey as though it had been passed down continuously from parents to children for the last 2700 years, evolving throughout and informed by human history, picking up new stories and sounds with every new generation. The full work is planned to premiere in 2025, and is being created in collaboration between Mattingly and writer/classicist Thomas Bartscherer.

View Event →
Jan
20
8:00 PM20:00

BlackBox Festival: Night 1

BlackBox Ensemble’s 2024 Festival begins with a program of works by new and frequent BlackBox collaborators, featuring an expanded roster of the BlackBox Ensemble in full force.

  • Paul Novak: Somatic Interludes (World Premiere)

  • Bobby Ge: Pupil of Light

  • Jessica Meyer: The dappled light just beyond her skin…

  • Baldwin Giang: butterfly, posthumously

  • Yaz Lancaster: Gender Envy

Stick around after our festival opening concert for a late night electroacoustic show featuring solo and chamber performances by members of the BlackBox Ensemble!

  • Brittany J. Green: Thread and Pull

  • Nina Shekhar: Vocalise

  • Kaija Saariaho: Cendres

  • Lucy McKnight: fated joy

Design by Pat Swoboda

View Event →
Nov
11
8:00 PM20:00

InfraSound: Portals Between Worlds

InfraSound is excited to welcome you to our 2023-24 season opener “Portals Between Worlds,” an immersive concert experience that explores how musical compositions can act as a portal between a composer’s internal environment and an audience. Works include Nico Muhly’s riveting and energetic “doublespeak,” the world premiere of a new piccolo trio by Paul Novak called “Ornithology of Desire,” Yaz Lancaster’s enigmatic “yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the next day,” Rajna Swaminathan’s “fleet/hold,” Mario Diaz de Leon’s transcendental “Portals Before Dawn,” and a new arrangement of Sinnead O’Connor’s sorrowful and powerful rock ballad “Troy.”

View Event →
Oct
6
7:30 PM19:30

Aqueeressence Debut Recital: Finite Things

Aqueeressence (flutist Yoshi Weinberg and pianist Daniel Schreiner) presents their debut recital “Finite Things” at the beautiful Elebash Recital Hall at CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, October 6th, 7:30 PM! Free and open to the public, this concert presents new music exploring the unconventional possibilities for grieving, healing, and empowerment through fragmented, wordless expression. Featuring the world premiere of Brian Simalchik’s “Finite Things” and Camila Agosto’s “Just Enough to Breath” as well as Amy Williams’ “First Lines” and Nina Shekhar’s “Vocalise”

View Event →
May
20
8:00 PM20:00

Contemporaneous: Stranger Love

6 hours long, scored for 28 musicians (including three microtonal pianos), 8 singers, and 6 dancers with music by composer Dylan Mattingly and text by Thomas Bartscherer, Stranger Love is a grand celebration of being alive. It follows two lovers whose romance unfolds to the rhythm of the seasons. Set on a vast time-scale against the ever-expanding universe, it broadens in scope and frame over the course of three acts, moving from the personal to the archetypal to a vision of the divine — a love supreme. Stranger Love evokes the visceral thrill of a gospel revival, the ethereal calm of watching snow fall, the wonder of staring into the night sky. Stranger Love reaches for the impossible. Breathtaking in scale, with burning intensity, the music dances from moments of manic energy to stretches of unearthly serenity. At six hours long, Stranger Love is deliberately countercultural. Stranger Love offers an epic celebration that embraces complexity and abstraction and aspires to total joy. Neither denying the world as it is, nor imprisoned by it, Stranger Love envisions the world we might hope to inhabit.

The creative production team for Stranger Love features Lileana Blain-Cruz as director, Matt Saunders as set designer, Chris Emile as choreographer, Hannah Wasileski as projection designer, Yi Zhao as lighting designer, and Kaye Voyce as costume designer. Contemporaneous performed a concert version of Act I of Stranger Love on the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2018, concert versions of Act II and Act III on Day of Imagination in 2021. May 20, 2023 will see the world premiere of the full production after 11 years of development, produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and featuring Contemporaneous as the performing ensemble at Disney Hall in Los Angeles.

View Event →
Jan
28
7:30 PM19:30

InfraSound: MIRROR|RORRIM

What did Alice find when she went down the rabbit hole? What did the Evil Queen see when she asked “Mirror, Mirror on the wall?” What will you discover in this journey through childhood stories, fantasy, and the dark depths of imagination? 


InfraSound presents Mirror | rorriM as an investigation of childhood fairytales and fantasy. This concert features the world premiere of Austin Philemon’s immersive electronic monodrama “Curiouser and Curiouser” based on Lewis Carroll’s well-known fairytale “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Familiar and foreign characters show themselves and attempt to guide Alice as she explores and discovers an electronic wonderland built by Philemon. Using motion tracking technology, the soundscape changes based on the actions and decisions of Alice, and that of Alice’s object of curiosity: The White Rabbit. This performance will also feature compositions by composers similarly fascinated by fairytales, including Unsuk Chin’s Advice from a Caterpillar, Susan Botti’s The Jabberwockey, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), Yoshi Weinberg’s Some people are flowers, Xingzimin Pan’s Kaidan, and Kaija Saariaho’s From the Grammar of Dreams.

View Event →
Jan
21
7:00 PM19:00

HUM by Julie Piñero

Brooklyn Comedy Collective presents

HUM

A workshop by Julie Piñero

At 10 years old, Julie became consumed with the question ‘what will happen next?’. When she couldn’t find an answer in her uncertain world, her body gave her one: a hum. But when her hum was diagnosed as mild Tourette’s syndrome, medication took it away. She was left with a question, no answer, and a quest to find something – or someone – to reunite her with that mysterious good feeling.

“Hum” explores the complicated role of shame in treating mental illness, and the humor that exists at the intersection of clinical neurodivergence and everyday anxiety. Rather than getting rid of our tics, what if we imagine a world where tic-ing wasn’t wrong?

Featuring and opening stand-up performance by Ali Levin and Daniel Schreiner accompanying on piano

View Event →
Nov
19
7:30 PM19:30

InfraSound: Words & Music

  • The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

This performance investigates the combination of spoken text with sound, featuring Samuel Beckett’s short radio play, “Words and Music,” with music composed by Morton Feldman. The program explores composition as composition and sets the characters named “Words” and “Music” against each other, highlighting how each generates meaning in different ways. Additionally, this program will include a performance of Brittany J. Green’s “R_upture” and a new work by artistic director Yoshi Weinberg, setting part of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” InfraSound will be joined by theatre/opera director Madeleine Whitesell.

View Event →
Jul
5
7:00 PM19:00

Printempo Recital

I am so excited for the opportunity to return to Paris and perform at the Fondation des États-Unis after a two-year hiatus. All the pieces on this program draw inspiration from one (or more) of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. While living a more confined existence during the pandemic, I took refuge in learning solo piano repertoire that describes the vastness of the natural world and its processes, recalls faraway places, and represents an escape from the limits of human perspective and imagination. The order I present these pieces is designed to tell a story with no defined narrative – simply relinquishing the illusion of control over nature and going with the current. — Daniel Schreiner

Program

Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)
Barcarolle No. 3 in G-flat Major, Op. 42

Amy Williams (1969)
Falling

Luciano Leite Barbosa (1982)
Chords II, III, and VIII (a tribute to Joan Mitchell)
World premiere, written for Daniel Schreiner (2021)

Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)
Barcarolle No. 7 in D minor, Op. 90

Amy Williams (1969)
Brigid’s Flame

Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)
Barcarolle No. 8 in D-flat Major, Op. 96

Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992)
Le Traquet Rieur from Catalogues d’Oiseaux, Livre VII

Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)
Barcarolle No. 10 in A minor, Op. 104, No. 2

Sato Matsui (1991)
Oiseau Lunaire
Oiseau Solaire

View Event →
Jun
24
7:00 PM19:00

Beth Morrison Projects: Next Gen, Cycle 2 Round 2

Responsible for “changing the face of opera” (The Wall Street Journal), BMP: NEXT GEN returns for the final round of its second cycle, as Beth Morrison Projects’ leaders set out to discover the next generation of boundary-pushing composers. Chosen from a group of ten finalists during Round 1 in 2021 for their “haunting” (Christopher Koelsch, President & CEO at LA Opera) and “stunningly beautiful” (Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Du Yun) work, composers Elizabeth Gartman and Niloufar Nourbakhsh return with their BMP commissioned 30-minute vocal-theatre works, It is a Comfort to Know and Threshold of Brightnessrespectively. Following the concert, one of the composers will receive a commission for the development and world premiere of a full-length opera. The winner will be announced immediately following the concert on June 24.

More info: https://bethmorrisonprojects.org/current-season/new-york/bmp-next-gen-2022-round-2/

View Event →
Jun
18
7:00 PM19:00

Lavender Nights: A Queer Cabaret

Lavender Nights is a celebration of queer history and culture through the art of cabaret and art song. This production will be a musical tour of pivotal moments in cabaret’s history, experienced through a queer lens.

Lavender Nights opens with songs from 1920’s Berlin during the height of the Weimar Republic’s queer revolution including selections from Kurt Weil’s “Three Penny Opera,” Mischa Spoliansky’s “Its All a Swindle” and “The Lavender Song,” and more! Transitioning to 1950s Paris, the audience will hear love songs of Le Chat Noir including “Padam Padam” by Edith Piaf, “Je te veux” by Erik Satie, and “On n’oublie rien” by Jacques Brel. An intimate ending with just voices and piano, we reflect on our current socio-political climate with 19th-century English art songs by Charles Ives, Margaret Bonds, and Ethyl Smith.

With a fresh, young cast of talented singers and a vivacious pit band, this 90-minute show will be an extravagant, emotional, and moving piece of music theater. For one night only, you won’t want to miss it!

For more info and to purchase tickets visit:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/infrasound-presents-lavender-nights-tickets-327693830067

View Event →
Bluedreams: an interdisciplinary piano recital
May
18
7:30 PM19:30

Bluedreams: an interdisciplinary piano recital

Concert duration: 70 min (without intermission)

 

PROGRAM

 

3/1-mist (2022)*

Daniel Schreiner (b. 1991): piano, electronics

Connie Fu (b. 1992): modular synthesizers, video

Jesse Humes (b. 1992): modular synthesizers

 

Brouillards from Préludes, Book II (1913)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

 

Falling (2012)

Amy Williams (b. 1969)

 

Cailloux dans l’eau (2018)

Tristan Murail (b. 1947)

 

---

 

5/10-ripple (2022)*

Daniel Schreiner: piano, electronics, video

 

Nocturne No. 3 (1919)

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

 

Cordes à vide from Études, Book I (1985)

György Ligeti (1923-2006)

 

bluedream (2019)†

Brittany J. Green (b. 1991)

 

---

 

8/9-pool (2022)*

Daniel Schreiner: piano, electronics, video

Caio de Souza (b. 1989): viola caipira (10-string guitar), electronics

 

Ondine from Préludes, Book II (1913)

Claude Debussy

 

Brigid’s Flame (2009)

Amy Williams

 

Étude 21 from Études Australes, Book III (1975)

John Cage (1912-1992)

 

---

 

0/0-surge (2022)*

Daniel Schreiner: piano, electronics, video

Caio de Souza: viola caipira

Vishnu R: navtar (self-invented instrument)

 

Three Short Dreams (2021) †

Ramin Roshandel (b. 1987)

 

Entrelacs from Études, Book II (1994)

György Ligeti

 

Feux d’artifice from Préludes, Book II (1913)

Claude Debussy

 

*denotes a world premiere

denotes a West coast premiere

 

NOTES

This eclectic program is comprised mainly of solo piano pieces I’ve learned over the past three years, both while living in Paris from September 2019 - July 2020, and in Brooklyn since July 2020. Associated with a state of isolation and quarantine, these pieces - even the couple that are fast and extroverted - feel intimate to me, intricately bound to my disoriented, insular, and often anguished state of mind during these difficult years. This got me thinking about the relationship between sound, memory, and time, and how for many of us, time has seemed highly subjective: some moments seem to last forever, emblazoned in our memory, and others simply have slipped by like water through fingers, making it a challenge to form a coherent narrative to our lives since 2020.

Bluedreams, then, attempts to draw connections between our collectively disjointed experiences of reality and the “logic” of dreams - and the way these seemingly paradoxical states of mind can intermingle and blur with one another. I feel that this tension between dreams and reality is compellingly represented by sound and resonance, which, when perceived in a live setting, can both ground us in our physicality and, at the same time, induce fluctuating (or even trance-like) states of consciousness. I’ve always been fascinated with this juxtaposition, and tried to harness a kind of oblique sense of “narrative” with the curation of these works of piano repertoire interspersed with video/sound art projections (dream 1, dream 2, and dream 4 on the program), which serve as synesthetic “interludes” of sorts, commenting on the sound worlds of the piano works preceding and succeeding them.

My goal with “Bluedreams” is to immerse you in a sensory experience, to give you a different take on the Piano Recital as a societal construct, and to posit sound as a powerful, enveloping modality for healing and introspection.

Thank you so much for coming with an open mind and curious spirit, and to Art Share LA for presenting tonight’s concert!

View Event →
Feb
12
7:00 PM19:00

Contemporary Sounds: An NMOP Alumni Concert

Join us for a concert of newly composed electronic and acoustic music featuring composers Zachery Meier, Christine Burke, Ramin Roshandel, Lilac Atassi, and Erin Rogers!

WHEN: Saturday, February 12, 2022 from 7-8 PM ET

WHERE: Burke Recital Hall at The Eisner Center for the Performing Arts, Denison University, Granville, OH

Funding for this concert generously provided by New Music on the Point. Check out their website: https://pointcp.com/new-music-on-the-point/

This event is free and open to the public. ADVANCE TICKETS REQUIRED. For COVID guidelines and ticket information, please visit denison.edu/events/arts

https://www.eventbrite.com/.../the-department-of-music...

Can't wait to see you there!

View Event →
Dec
18
5:00 PM17:00

Holiday Piano Recital

  • Music Academy of North Carolina (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Many thanks to the Music Academy of North Carolina for having me!

This event will also be live-streamed, via Facebook - stay on the lookout for the link!

Program:

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Barcarolle No. 8 in D-flat Major, Op. 96

William Grant Still (1895-1978): Three Visions (1935)

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849): Nocturne No. 6 in G minor, Op. 15 No. 3

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Préludes, Book II (1913)

  • Ondine

  • La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

  • Feux d’artifice

View Event →
Mar
25
7:30 PM19:30

Visions: Sophia Zhou and Daniel Schreiner perform works by Chopin, Price, Rachmaninoff, and Still

groupmuse concert flyer photo.jpeg

Pianists Sophia Zhou and Daniel Schreiner are excited to welcome you to their Groupmuse virtual debut! Tune in to hear an interesting and beautiful program of solo piano works exploring images, impressions, and visions translated into sound...

This online event will be hosted by Groupmuse - please RSVP at the link below to find out how to gain access to the event. Suggested donation: $10. Limited spots available!

http://grpm.us/-daknw


PROGRAM

Daniel Schreiner, piano:
William Grant Still (1895-1978): Three Visions
I. Dark Horsemen
II. Summerland
III. Radiant Pinnacle

Florence Price (1887-1953): Snapshots
I. Lake Mirror
II. Moon behind a Cloud
III. Flame

Sophia Zhou, piano:
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849): Three Mazurkas, Op. 59
I. Mazurka in A minor, No. 1
II. Mazurka in A-flat major, No. 2
III. Mazurka in F-sharp minor, No. 3

Chopin: selections from Preludes, Op. 28

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Prelude in E-flat major, Op. 23, No. 6

View Event →
Jan
22
8:00 PM20:00

(un)masked Episode #2: Weird Tweets

In this second episode of (un)masked, Daniel will be performing and talking about Olivier Messiaen's "Le Traquet Rieur" from Catalogue d'Oiseaux, discussing Messiaen's motivation in writing 3+ hours of birdsong "transcriptions" for solo piano, how they represent a new kind of modernistic musical impressionism, and why birdsong is resonating (pun intended) for me in these current times.

View Event →
(un)masked Episode #1: Bachocracy
Dec
11
8:00 PM20:00

(un)masked Episode #1: Bachocracy

To unmask is to “expose the true character of or hidden truth about.” In this new virtual concert series, pianist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist Daniel Schreiner will explore works for piano that you may not know about, or may not be immediately accessible/understandable. Offering dedicated performances of “off the beaten track” repertoire accompanied by short explanations/demonstrations, Daniel will illuminate qualities that make these works extraordinary and worth diving into further...

In this first episode of "(un)masked," Daniel explores possible parallels between J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue No. 24 in B Minor (WTC I) and aspects of democracy.

View Event →
Les cailloux dans l’eau : l’infinité de la musique française pour piano
Jun
30
5:00 PM17:00

Les cailloux dans l’eau : l’infinité de la musique française pour piano

American pianist Daniel Schreiner presents a solo recital celebrating the experimental dynamism of French piano music, the result of a year of study at Paris’s La Schola Cantorum and the Fondation des États-Unis. Featuring a panoramic selection of Préludes by Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Henri Dutilleux, and Guy Sacre, Schreiner’s concert includes short film collaborations with visual artists from the Fondation des États-Unis, responding to French piano music’s vibrancy and creative freedom.

“As part of my studies this year in Paris, I have been exploring the development of 20th century French piano music from different angles. A chief focus has been examining the prelude as a site for musical experimentation. Defined as a short piece of music with a variable, open-ended form, the prelude first appeared in the keyboard compositions of French 17th-century composers like François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau. By the beginning of the 20th century, two masterful sets of preludes by Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy helped to expand and redefine the genre. Fauré’s preludes are among the least known of Fauré’s piano works, marked by dense, contrapuntal textures, long melodic lines, and subtle, mysterious restraint. By contrast, Debussy’s two books of preludes represent the pinnacle of his innovative writing for the piano: with descriptive titles appearing at the end of each piece rather than the beginning, these 24 pieces test the boundaries of the piano’s technical and expressive capabilities.

Later in the 20th century, Henri Dutilleux’s Trois Préludes reflect Debussy’s experimental treatment of the genre, exploring extreme contrasts of dynamics and articulation, as well as exploiting the effects of each of the piano’s three pedals. Contrastingly, Guy Sacre’s Vingt-Quatre Préludes follow the Chopin model of shorter studies in all keys, yet nevertheless reflect Sacre’s unique, free treatment of harmony and dissonance. In the spirit of eclectic creative freedom that I feel the prelude represents, I am performing selected preludes by Fauré, Debussy, Dutilleux and Sacre in a different, rearranged format, interspersed with five “interludes” featuring music composed by myself and visual animations/video by students at the Fondation des États-Unis.

The second half of the program focuses on French composers’ obsession with the depiction of water in piano music. In 2018, Tristan Murail composed Cailloux dans l’eau as an homage to Debussy: with a formal structure is almost identically based on Debussy’s seminal Reflets dans l’eau of 1905, Murail’s piece is nonetheless distinctly contemporary, reflecting his own harmonic language derived from the analysis of a fundamental tone and its overtones. Next, following the success of Maurice Ravel’s “Ondine,” the first movement of his Gaspard de la nuit, Debussy composed his own version of “Ondine” in his second book of preludes. Ondine refers to the ancient Greek story of a water nymph who lures seafarers into the depths of her underwater kingdom; as such, both Ravel and Debussy create beguilingly beautiful, yet capriciously sinister, depictions of cascading water and the creatures within it.” ~Daniel Schreiner

The Program

Hope Curran (n. 1994), Daniel Schreiner (n. 1991) – Interlude 1
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) – Préludes: No. IV in Fa majeur
Guy Sacre (n. 1948) – Préludes: III. Rapide
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) – Préludes, Premier livre: Les collines d’Anacapri

Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 2
Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: Brouillards
Sacre – Préludes: IX. Lent, recueilli
Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) – Préludes: II. Sur un même accord

Mallory Mayhew (n. 1993), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 3
Fauré – Préludes: No. V in Ré mineur
Debussy – Préludes, Premier livre: Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest
 
Sylvie Mayer (n. 1996), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 4
Debussy – Préludes, Premier livre: Des pas sur la neige
Sacre – Préludes: X. Lent et triste
Fauré – Préludes: No. VII in La majeur
 
Rebecca Arthur (n. 1996), Daniel Schreiner – Interlude 5
Dutilleux – Préludes: I. D’ombre et de silence
Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

Debussy – Images, Première série: Reflets dans l’eau
Tristan Murail (n. 1947) – Cailloux dans l’eau (2018)

Debussy – Préludes, Deuxième livre: Ondine
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) – Gaspard de la nuit: Ondine

Event link here

View Event →
Benefit Concert for Black Lives Matter
Jun
21
5:00 PM17:00

Benefit Concert for Black Lives Matter

On the day of “World Music Day” (June 21st), the musicians in residence at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris will present a virtual concert in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and across the globe. Our hope is to offer a healing space for music and reflection, while connecting a musical response to direct action.

The participating musicians have included links to donate to relevant foundations and initiatives dedicated to fighting racism and injustice (see below). In addition, we would like to showcase the work of three African-American musicians: Duke Ellington, Robert Nathaniel Dett, and Betty Jackson King.

The Program

Betty Jackson King (1928-1994) “In The Springtime”
Solange Adamson, soprano and Daniel Schreiner, piano

Duke Ellington (1889-1974) “In a Sentimental Mood” Elias Rodriguez, clarinet and Daniel Schreiner, piano

Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) “Adagio Cantabile” from Cinnamon Grove
Daniel Schreiner, piano

Selected Organizations to Donate To

National Bail Fund Network COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund: secure.actblue.com/donate/bailfundscovid
Starting May 30th, the Emergency Response Fund is prioritizing supporting bail for protest support across the National Bail Fund Network. Every day, community bail & bond funds raise money to free our friends and neighbors from local and county jails as well as immigration jails. This is always urgent work as jails, prisons, and immigration jails have always been sites of violence and death. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this public health crisis.

The National Police Accountability Project: nlg-npap.org/donate/
This organization seeks to educate and inform the public about issues relating to police misconduct, provide information resources for non-profit and community groups who work with victims of police abuse, support legislative reform efforts aimed at raising the level of police accountability, and create a forum for legal professionals and community organizations to come together and creatively work to end police misconduct.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project: srlp.org/donate/
All Lives don’t Matter until Black Lives Matter. Black Lives don’t Matter until Black LGBTQ+ Lives Matter. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence. SRLP is a collective organization founded on the understanding that gender self-determination is inextricably intertwined with racial, social and economic justice. Therefore, we seek to increase the political voice and visibility of low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming. SRLP works to improve access to respectful and affirming social, health, and legal services for our communities. We believe that in order to create meaningful political participation and leadership, we must have access to basic means of survival and safety from violence.

View Event →