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Come Down Angels is a program of song and folk music by women past and present. Composers include Florence Price, Rebecca Clarke, and Joni Mitchell with appearances by Noelle McMurtry, Caroline Miller, Elizabeth Smith, Mariel Mayz, Jesse Markowitz, and Nathan Siler.
TICKETS: General Admission $15 advance / $20 at the door. Seniors & Students with ID $12 advance / $14 at the door. For more info, please visit http://musefriends.org |
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Saturday
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Join the PLUSH NOCTURNE performance series for an intimate setting of new opera and art songs by The Pleiades Project, Bartok duets for violin from Marandi Hostetter, accompanied by live projections and drawings by interdisciplinary artist Sam Schanwald.
Richard Pearson Thomas's song cycle: Portraits of Imagined Love is the centerpiece of this creative evening. Set in a small café at the turn of the century, Café 1907 uses intimate portraits of women at many stages of life to offer a richer perspective on life, love, and making art. The central cycle is balanced with the voices of female composers from the period, including Amy Beach, Agathe Bäcker Grøndahl, Alma Mahler, Pauline Viardot, and Ethel Smyth. This performance of Café 1907 will feature Richard Pearson Thomas, Elizabeth Smith, Caroline Miller, and Kristin Reneé Young.(Kristin can also be seen in Pleiades|24, performing Che Fiero Costume). Also joining us: Jesse Markowitz and Mary Baron.
The PLUSH NOCTURNE Series, founded and curated by Avery Leigh's Night Palace, is an intimate and magical series of performances, with a distinct focus on women and non-binary performers. The series aims to shift our collective attention and resources to folks historically least centered in artistic spaces. PLUSH NOCTURNE performances range from classical chamber ensembles to interdisciplinary performance art; the series presents a colorful array of genres and mediums coalescing to create vibrant, cohesive, and shimmering evenings of art.
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Doors at 7:30, show at 8:00pm
Ticktes $10 in advance, $15 at the door 8:00pm: Marandi Hostetter with visuals by Sam Schanwald
9:00pm: The Pleiades Project New Woman Space 188 Woodpoint Road Brooklyn |
Friday
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Multicultural Sonic Evolution presents
SOUNDS OF ARTS FESTIVAL 2017 Music x Dance x Theatre x New Collaborations! A Week-long Festival with 7 Different Programs! Subway: Trains: 23rd St. - Ely Ave. Station Trains: Queensboro Plaza Station Train: Court Sq. Station (only 3 stops from Grand Central Station!) |
<Program C>
Fri. 11/17/2017 @8pm
"Café 1907"
This concert features the world premiere of Richard Pearson Thomas's song cycle: Portraits of Imagined Love as its centerpiece. The concert invites the audience back into a café at the turn of the century, first using Richard's music, and then using the music of female composers from the period, including Amy Beach, Agathe Bäcker Grøndahl, Alma Mahler, Pauline Viardot, and Ethel Smyth. These intimate portraits of women at many stages of life offer a richer perspective on life, love, and making art.
TICKETS: General Admission $15 advance / $20 at the door
Seniors & Students with ID $12 advance / $14 at the door
TICKETS: General Admission $15 advance / $20 at the door
Seniors & Students with ID $12 advance / $14 at the door
Featuring
Caroline Miller
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Recognized as an accomplished singer actor, Caroline has twice been a semi-finalist in the International Lotte Lenya Competition loves working with composers and is in demand with local opera companies such as Bard Summerscape, Fresh Squeezed Opera, Opera Company of Brooklyn, Encompass Opera, Utopia Opera and Chelsea Opera.
Caroline co-founded The Pleiades Project with the fabulous Elizabeth Smith, to creates new performance opportunities for female artists who wish to express the strength, unique vision, and individuality of their art. Caroline has also been responsible for conceiving of and directing the many videos that will be part of The Pleiades Project series, 24, which includes representations of all of the 24 Italian Songs and Arias. Caroline worked with the Ohio Light Opera for two years where she was heard as Phyllis in Iolanthe, Mascha in The Chocolate Soldier and Bellabruna in Blossom Time, which was released by Albany Records. In their recording review, “Opera News” praised Ms. Miller’s performance for “project[ing] all the confident insouciance of a pampered prima donna” and handling the recorded dialogue particularly well. Caroline holds a Masters Degree from the Eastman School of Music and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis where she learned her love of theater. While in undergrad, Caroline was trained extensively in straight theater, performed leads in musicals and operas such as Hope in Urinetown, Mary Turner in Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing Juliana in Argento’s The Aspern Papers and was even on the board of an experimental theater group called Thyrsus. |
elizabeth smith
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Praised for her affecting voice and committed performances, Elizabeth Smith is an emerging soprano based in New York City. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, her opera credits include Mařenka (The Bartered Bride), Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), and Fiordiligi (Cosi fan Tutte).
Accomplished in concert and choral work, Elizabeth sings with groups such as the Collegiate Chorale and the New York Virtuoso Singers, with solo work in Song of Norway, Yotam Haber’s I Am, and David Lang’s Battle Hymns. Other concert work includes Orff’s Carmina Burana, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and Stephen Albert's Flower of the Mountain. She enjoys collaborating with emerging composers, and her song repertoire reflects her interest in post-1900 music, with works by Rorem, Floyd, Schoenberg, Ives and more. In 2016, Elizabeth Smith and Caroline Miller co-founded The Pleiades Project, a non-profit production company dedicated to creating new performance opportunities for female artists who wish to express the strength, unique vision, and individuality of their art. These include short films of opera scenes, artist spotlights, and live events The first short film Cosi, is currently available on their website, and the second short film is currently in post-production. Ms. Smith holds a Master of Music from the Eastman School of Music and a Bachelor of Musical Arts from Brigham Young University Idaho |
Paulina Swierczek
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Praised by the Rochester City Newspaper for her "honeyed tone," and by the Boston Globe for “a rich voice that could go in a blink from speaking to soaring” - as well as her “killer side-eye” - soprano Paulina Swierczek is a vibrant story-teller, combining technical facility with a consuming passion for communication.
Recent concert highlights include Poulenc’s Gloria, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 of Villa-Lobos, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Favorite roles include The New Prioress (Les dialogues des Carmelites), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), and the Countess Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro.) She made her international operatic debut in November 2016 at the Teatro Diana in Mexico premiering Don’t Blame Anyone by Carlos Sanchez-Guttierez and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. A 2017 Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, she performed Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder with the TMC Orchestra, songs of Ella Fitzgerald alongside Dawn Upshaw and Stephanie Blythe, and works by J. S. Bach led by John Harbison. She also premiered Anthony Cheung’s All Thorn, but cousin to your rose, featuring the texts of Nabokov, Pushkin and Poe alongside curator Jacob Greenberg. 17/18 season highlights include a concert of the music of David Del Tredici, to celebrate the composer’s 80th birthday, her debut with the Albany Symphony singing Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor, and the Queen in John Harbison’s Full Moon in March at Bard College, directed by Alison Moritz. Paulina attended the Eastman School of Music under the tutelage of Rita Shane, Dr. Constance Haas and Anthony Dean Griffey, and currently studies with Sanford Sylvan. |
Richard Pearson Thomas
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Richard Pearson Thomas, composer and pianist, has had works performed by the Boston Pops, Covent Garden Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Chautauqua Opera, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Banff Centre, Portland Opera, Skylight Opera Theatre, and Riverside Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. His songs have been sung in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Merkin Concert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Joe’s Pub, Le Poisson Rouge, and before the U.S. Congress by artists such as Audra McDonald, Sanford Sylvan, Lauren Flanagan and Kurt Ollmann. He is a frequent collaborator with The Mirror Visions Ensemble which has performed his commissioned works in the United States and Europe.
He is a recipient of an American Composers’ Forum Continental Harmony commission for the Alabama Tri-State Orchestra as well as commissions from the Great Falls Symphony Orchestra, the Empire State Youth Orchestra, and the Riverside Philharmonic Orchestra. His work Race for the Sky, which was commissioned as a commemoration of the events of 9/11, has been performed by the Westchester Philharmonic Orchestra and in recitals nationwide. Chamber music by Mr. Thomas has been performed by Sybarite 5, The Music of the Spheres Society, South Country Concerts, and recorded by violinist Stephanie Chase at the National Arts Club for broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today. Mr. Thomas’s commissioned opera, A Wake or a Wedding, was premiered by the California State University at Fullerton Opera Theatre and produced by Encompass New Opera Theatre in New York City. His opera Parallel Lives was produced Off-Off Broadway by the Riverside Opera Ensemble, as was Ladies in a Maze, produced by Encompass New Opera Theatre. His musical Golden Gate, winner of the Michael Stewart Foundation Award, was presented in concert version by the Monmouth Civic Chorus. Original music for In Thinking of America: Songs of the Civil War has been heard in more than 140 cities. Mr. Thomas is currently on faculty at Teachers College/Columbia University. He has taught at Yale and the University of Central Florida. As pianist, Mr. Thomas has concertized with singers worldwide. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California, and is a native of Montana. For more info: richardpearsonthomas.com |
