
Rathaus Festival – 2nd edition
Rathaus Festival is returning to New York City!
The second edition of this unique chamber festival presents rare music by emigrant composers who, like Karol Rathaus, forged new artistic paths. Featuring five concerts showcasing the music of nearly 20 composers, whose works are deeply rooted in various cultures, trends, and historical contexts. The festival also presents pieces by contemporary composers, including Americans who are descendants of Rathaus’s creative and educational lineage. Discover fascinating biographies, a variety of styles, and performances by the finest musicians!
Concert No. 1
Monday, November 4, 2024, at 7 PM
Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York (Jan Karski Corner, 233 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016)
Performers:
Urszula Kryger – mezzo-soprano
Grzegorz Mania – piano
Program: works by S. Laks, W. Żeleński, F. Chopin, S. Moniuszko
free entrance, registration needed: https://forms.gle/
Concert No. 2
Wednesday, November 6, 2024, at 12:15 PM
Lefrak Concert Hall, Queens College, New York (65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367)
Performers:
Urszula Kryger – mezzo-soprano
Grzegorz Mania – piano
Piotr Różański – piano
Program: works by M. Kowalski, R. Ryterband, I. Friedman, A. Tansman, M. Moszkowski
Concert No. 3
Monday, November 11, 2024, at 7:00 PM
Flushing Town Hall, New York (137-35 Northern Blvd, Queens, NY 11354)
Performers:
Jakub Jakowicz – violin
Bartosz Koziak – cello
Monika Gardoń-Preinl – piano
Grzegorz Mania – piano
Program: works by L. Różycki, R. Ryterband, W. Lutosławski, H.M. Górecki
Concert No. 4
Tuesday, November 12, 2024, at 7:30 PM
Elebash Hall, New York (365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016)
Performers:
Steve Beck – piano
Carrie Frey – violin
Ford Fourqurean – clarinet
Monika Gardoń-Preinl – piano
Bartosz koziak – cello
Grzegorz mania – piano
Abay Saha – piano
Lydia Saylor – soprano
Program: works by E. Smaldone, B. Saylor, J. Nichols, K. Rathaus, A. Tansman, L. Kraft, T. Musgrave
Concert No. 5
Wednesday, November 13, 2024, a7 12:15 PM
Lefrak Concert Hall, Queens College, New York (65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367)
Performers:
Jakub Jakowicz – violin
Bartosz Koziak – cello
Monika Gardoń-Preinl – piano
Grzegorz Mania – piano
Program: works by S. Laks, W. Lutosławski, K. Szymanowski/P. Kochański
Presented by:
Additional support:

PERFORMERS:
Urszula Kryger – mezzosoprano
Urszula Kryger is one of the most distinguished Polish singers. She is a graduate of Music Academy in Łódź with degrees both in piano and vocal studies. She competed in many international music competitions winning the highest awards. Her greatest successes include the first prizes in the 1st Stanisław Moniuszko International Vocal Competition in Warsaw (1992), the 6th Johannes Brahms International Vocal Competition in Hamburg (1994) and the 43rd International ARD Music Competition in Munich (1994). Since then her career has been followed by music lovers and critics alike with unwavering interest. In 1995 she gave a recital of Frédéric Chopin’s songs at La Scala. A year later, she debuted with great success in the role of Angelina in Gioacchino Rossini’s La Cenerentola on the stage of the Semperoper in Dresden. Audiences in Poland and in many countries around the world have often had the opportunity to admire her highly acclaimed interpretations in oratorios performed under the baton of such outstanding maestros as Jan Krenz, Jerzy Semkow, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Sir Colin Davis and Armin Jordan. She pays particular attention to chamber music – her art of lied interpretation blends perfection with remarkable naturalness. This rare combination has been highly appreciated by outstanding musicians who have shared the stage with her such as the pianists Hartmut Höll, Charles Spencer, Melvyn Tan and Pascal Rogé, the clarinetist Paul Meyer, as well as Tokyo String Quartet and Petersen Quartet. Urszula Kryger has made several recordings for radio stations and record companies including Decca (Poulenc’s Polish Songs), Hyperion (Chopin’s Songs), CPO (Löwe’s Ballads), DUX (Russian Duets – Polish Music Industry Award – Fryderyk 2001, Songs by Moniuszko, Karłowicz and Szymanowski – Fryderyk 2002, Songs by Żeleński – Fryderyk 2012, Slavic Duets, German Duets, Górecki – Songs – Fryderyk 2021), BNL (Beethoven’s Arias), Naxos (Lutosławski’s Songs), Channel Classics (Szymanowski Complete Songs – Fryderyk 2004), the Polish Radio (Karol Szymanowski – Songs with Orchestra), NInA (Paweł Mykietyn – The Passion of St. Mark), Anaklasis (Aleksander Nowak Ahat-ilī – Sister of Gods – Fryderyk 2021). The artist has also received the Karol Szymanowski Foundation award in appreciation of her thoughtful and highly artistic interpretations of the composer’s songs. Urszula Kryger is also a teacher. She gives numerous masterclasses and is a professor at the Music Academy in Łódź.
Monika Gardoń-Preinl – piano
Pianist, outstanding specialist in the field of chamber music, long-term academic teacher and accompanist. In 1991, she graduated from the Academy of Music in Kraków in the class of prof. Stefan Wojtas. In 2013, she obtained a Habilitated Doctor Degree in Musical Arts. She has taken part in many competitions, initially for pupils and then students, winning them (including the prize at the Stendhall Foundation Competition, Chopin Competitions in Darmstadt and Göttingen) and in master classes for pianists (Rudolf Kehrer in Weimar and Rudolf Buchbinder in Zurich). She has given concerts in the country performing piano concertos with an orchestra and abroad (Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Estonia, Finland). As a chamber musician, she has performed with many outstanding artists from around the world in significant concert halls, also during the most important music festivals (maestro Peter Lukas Graf, Wolfgang Pfistermuller, Magnus Nilsson, Carlsten Svanberg, Robert Kozanek, Nicola Mazzanti, Carlo Colombo, Janos Balint, Wally Hasse, Foroug Karimi Diafar Zadar, Barbara Świątek-Żelazna, Tomasz Sosnowski, Marek Mleczko, Zdzisław Stolarczyk, Zdzisław Piernik, Maciej Łakomy, Grzegorz Mania, Piotr Różański, Maria Sławek, Jakub Jakowicz, Bartosz Koziak and others). After graduation, she joined her home university – the Academy of Music in Kraków. Currently, she is employed at the Department of Chamber Music as a university professor. She was the head of the Department of Accompaniment, head of the Department of Early Music, Vice Dean of the Instrumental Department, and currently she is a Vice Rector for Art and Science. She is a certified teacher at the W. Żeleński State Secondary Music School in Kraków. She is both a performer and a teacher. She is the co-author of an innovative, three-part sight-reading textbook for secondary music school students (PWM 2017-2022). She has participated in many concerts, master classes, auditions and competitions, and has been a lecturer during scientific sessions (devoted to both performance and educational problems). She has been repeatedly awarded with numerous diplomas and distinctions for outstanding accompaniment. Also, she is a laureate of state awards for her contribution to the development of art, including the Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis.
Jakub Jakowicz – violin
He learned violin with his father, Krzysztof, with whom he studied at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. He was also the last pupil of Tadeusz Wroński. He has appeared with many renowned orchestras, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Concerto Köln and Munich Philharmonic. He has worked with such conductors as Antoni Wit, Jacek Kaspszyk, Kazimierz Kord, Jan Krenz, Eiji Ōue, Agnieszka Duczmal and Marc Minkowski. As a chamber musician he has played with Heinz Holliger, Paul Gulda, Anna Maria Staśkiewicz, Katarzyna Budnik, Ryszard Groblewski, Avri Levitan, Daniel Möller- Schott, Andrzej Bauer, Marcin Zdunik and Paavali Jumppanen. He is a member of the Zehetmair Quartett, with which he recorded a Bartók and Hindemith disc awarded a Diapason d’Or (ECM). He has also recorded for ECM, Naxos, CD Accord, Dux. He has performed at the Berlin Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall in London, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and Konzerthaus in Vienna, and also at festivals in Salzburg, Lucerne and Lugano. Jakowicz won violin competitions in Lublin, Wattrelos, France and Takasaki (Japan), as well as an ‘Orpheus’ from the ‘Warsaw Autumn’. Since 2004, he has taught at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
Bartosz Koziak – cello
Described as a “visionary and poet of the cello”, Bartosz Koziak has gained the acclaim of music lovers and critics not only for his extraordinary interpretation of works by both classical and contemporary composers but also for his thoughtful and often daring program choices. As an established performer of contemporary music, Bartosz Koziak was a long time and regular guest participant in Krzysztof Penderecki’s concert projects. He participated in the first CD recording of the Concerto grosso conducted by the composer and has performed most of his cello works Bartosz Koziak has given first performances of a number of works including the “DoubleCello Concerto” by Hanna Kulenty, the Cello Concerto by Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz, “Sixth commandment” by Elżbieta Sikora, performed together with “Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco no.2″ by Luigi Nono as part of the Sikora/Nono project with Les Métaboles ensemble and SWR Experimentalstudio. His discography includes recordings of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Second Cello Concerto, Krzysztof Meyer’s Cello Concerto “Canti Amadei”, Bohuslav Martinů’s Cello Concerto No.2 and the premiere recording of Feliks Nowowiejski’s Cello Concerto (DUX), two CDs with Justyna Danczowska of cello and piano works by Schubert, Schumann, Franck and Shostakovich, and an album of Martinů, Kodály and Ravel, recorded with Anna Maria Staśkiewicz (Sarton). He has performed at the Konzerthaus, Berlin, Rudolfinum, Prague, Cité de la Musique, Paris, Teatro Politeama, Palermo, the Khachaturian Concert Hall, Yerevan and the National Philharmonic in Warsaw. The orchestras he has played with as a soloist include the Polish National Philharmonic, NOSPR, Sinfonia Varsovia, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Concerto Budapest, the Armenian State Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonic, the Radio Orchestras in Warsaw and Budapest, the National Orchestra of Ukraine, and has been conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki, Jan Krenz , Antoni Wit, Gabriel Chmura, Jacek Kaspszyk, András Keller, Volodymyr Sirenko and Sergey Smbatayan. He has been invited to leading festivals including Warsaw Autumn, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, Yerevan Music Perspectives, Young Euro Classic in Berlin, Musica Polonica Nova, Chopin i Jego Europa, Warsaw and East Meets West, Korea. Bartosz Koziak won the 3rd Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition in 2001 in Warsaw, the 2nd prize at the Isang Yun Competition in Tongyeong (Korea) and is a laureate of the Mikola Lysenko International Competition in Kiev. He was awarded a Special Prize at the Prague Spring Competition and was winner of the 1st prize at the 11th International Competition of Contemporary Chamber Music in Kraków. He has also received prizes at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and ARD in Munich. In 2003, he received a special award from the Polish Culture Foundation presented by Ewa Podleś. He graduated with distinction “Magna cum Laude” from the classes of Professor Kazimierz Michalik and Andrzej Bauer at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Warsaw, and from Philippe Muller’s class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris . Thanks to Kaja Danczowska, he plays a 19th-century copy of a J. Guadagnini instrument which the eminent Polish cellist Dezyderiusz Danczowski used for concerts.
Piotr Różański – piano
Piotr Różański graduated with distinction from the Academy of Music in Kraków, majoring in piano (in the class of Ewa Bukojemska and Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń) and chamber music. Following his Doctor of Arts degree in 2014 and a post-doctoral degree in 2019, Różański was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the Academy of Music in Kraków and is on the faculty of the Chopin Music School in Kraków. He is a top prize winner of international piano and chamber music competitions, including the 2006 Chopin National Piano Competition, the 2008 YAMAHA Foundation Scholarship Piano Competition, the 2010 Independent International Competition for Musical Individualities, as well as semi-finalist in competitions in the United States, Slovakia and Austria. He has performed throughout Poland, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, France, Great Britain, Lithuania, Ukraine, Israel and the United States. Piotr Różański’s CD albums include Schumann & Prokofiew and Mieczysław Weinberg: Sonatas for Violin and Piano (recorded with Maria Sławek), as well as Poland for 4 Hands (recorded with Grzegorz Mania). He has lectured at international conferences in Kraków, Katowice, Łódź, Gdańsk, Olsztyn, Poznań, Tallin, Moscow, Guimarães, and authored articles on piano literature in addition to serving as editor of collective publications. Różański’s interests include piano literature discoveries and pioneering performances of piano music for the left hand. He also collaborates with PWM Editions on new music publications, including editing piano works by Roman Ryterband, a selection of duets for piano four hands, and a selection of piano pieces for the left hand.
Grzegorz Mania – piano
GRZEGORZ MANIA graduated with distinction from the Academy of Music in Kraków (where he studied piano under Stefan Wojtas) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (where he was tutored by Martin Roscoe, Charles Owen and Caroline Palmer). He also read law at Jagiellonian University, and obtained his Ph.D. for a dissertation about music and copyright law. In 2019 he obtained a post-doctoral degree in the Academy of Music in Kraków. He works extensively as a recitalist, an orchestral soloist and a chamber musician, and is a member of the Piano Cooperative and the Extra Sounds Ensemble. Mania is a versatile pianist, regularly duetting with violist Katarzyna Budnik and pianist Piotr Różański. Mania has appeared at international festivals throughout Poland, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Finland, Austria, Italy, Norway, Iceland, Vietnam, Israel, the United States of America, Cyprus and Ukraine, and has been a finalist in a number of international solo and chamber competitions from 2002 to the present. A co-founder and president of the Polish Chamber Musicians’ Association, Mania also co-authored an innovative, 3-part sight-reading handbook for pianists. PWM Editions recently published Mania’s definitive volume on music and authors’ rights, as well as his selection of works for piano four hands for intermediate and advanced pianists. Currently, Mania divides his time between professorship at the Feliks Nowowiejski’s Music Academy in Bydgoszcz, lecturing copyright law and rehearsing chamber music programs all over Poland. He is also an artistic director of chamber music festivals in Kraków, Rzeszów, Zielona Góra and Gdańsk-Warsaw.
BRUCE SAYLOR studied at Juilliard, at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia with a Fulbright, and at the Graduate Center where he received his Ph.D. A long-time faculty member at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and at the Graduate Center, he has also taught at New York University. “Archangel” was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Symphony in Two Parts by the Houston, “Proud Music of the Storm” by the Nashville, “Turns
and Mordents” from the Yale Symphony, and his third of five operas, “Orpheus Descending,” by Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he served as Composer-in-Residence from 1992 to 1994. A series of “Platonic commissions” from the Queens College Conductors Workshop led to “Cantilena,” “Ritual,” and the 3-movement Violin Concerto being recorded by Alex Yu, David Valbuena, and Gil Morgenstern, soloists, conducted by Tong Chen and Maurice Peress. Mezzo soprano Constance Beavon has premiered twelve of his vocal-chamber pieces, and more than a half- dozen works for soloists and orchestra. In 1991, pianist Morey Ritt premiered his Quattro Passi, especially commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of the City University of New York Graduate Center.Frost and Snow began when the tenor Kyle Bielfield asked me to set Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Kyle made a fine recording, but Frost’s publisher nixed permission. To that song, however, I continued to build (partly during our family’s Covid- imposed exile in Frost’s town of Ripton, Vermont) a cycle of five, all set to the poet’s atmospheric, vividly colored, and deeply human responses to snowfall. Those responses move from existential loneliness, through terror at the personified power of Nature, self-revelation, and quiet, melancholic rumination, toward acceptance. My own experience of setting them to music is the poet’s unknowing, posthumous gift to me—a rewarding, if often humbling one. I am especially grateful to Morey Ritt for performing “Good Hours” and “Storm Fear” with Lydia Saylor, and to Lydia and Abhay Saha for their beautiful and generous musicality in bringing the whole cycle of five songs together for the first time this evening. (Bruce Saylor)
Frost and Snow by Bruce Saylor
poems by Robert Frost
1. My November Guest
2. Storm Fear
3. Afterflakes
4. Good Hours
5. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningJeff Nichols (b.1957) grew up in Colorado, Texas and Indiana. He began playing the piano and composing at the age of nine and within a few years was writing music inspired by the postwar European and American avant-garde. He studied composition, piano and theory at the Juilliard School and at Princeton, Indiana and Harvard Universities, studying principally with Milton Babbitt and Donald Martino. Nichols’ music has been performed by leading contemporary-music soloists and ensembles in the United States and in Korea, Italy, Belgium and Germany. His
music is published by Theodore Presser and C.F. Peters and is recorded on various labels, among them New World and Ablaze Records. Nichols has taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities and is currently Professor of music composition and theory at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.Capriccio was commissioned and premiered in 2000 by Anne Black (viola), Chester Brezniak (clarinet) and Elizabeth Skavich (piano), who had recently formed an ensemble they called Trio Capriccio (hence the title of my piece). In fact, all of my music is capricious – ephemeral, mercurial, unstable. If art is mimetic, what I am imitating is something more like the spontaneous interactions of people at a party than the grand narratives evoked by the large-scale forms of classical and romantic composers. There is a constant play of characters – timbral, harmonic, gestural interactions among the instruments, which sometimes unite to express a single idea but more often project different viewpoints in animated conversation with each other. Some passages are anchored by fixed pitches or harmonies that temporarily inhibit the individual instruments’ exuberance – but never for long. I try to sow the ever-shifting textures with subterranean associations that occasionally suggest longer-range strands of development, but there are virtually no explicit repetitions. The piece ends when I feel a kind of large-scale balance among characters has been reached, a sense that each instrument has had its say and the three together have formed a bond that transcends their differences.
Carrie Frey is a New York City-based violist, improviser, and composer who “conjures an inviting warmth that leaves her virtuosity on the margins, placing the focus on her humanity (Bandcamp Daily).” Frey is the violist of the Rhythm Method (“a group of individuals with distinct compositional voices and a collective vision for the future of the string quartet” – I Care If You Listen) and a founding member of string trio Chartreuse and string quartet Desdemona. She has performed with many of New York City’s notable contemporary ensembles, including Wet Ink Large Ensemble, AMOC*, Talea Ensemble, Wavefield, Cantata Profana, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her own compositions, described as “a moldering compost heap” (I Care if You Listen), have been performed by the Rhythm Method, RE:duo, Arco Belo, Adrianne Munden-Dixon, and Kal Sugatski. Her debut sonata album, The Grey Light of Day, with pianist Robert Fleitz, was released in 2016, and her first solo album, Seagrass, was
released on Gold Bolus in December 2023.Ford Fourqurean is an award-winning clarinetist and electronic musician based in Brooklyn. Ford strives to connect communities through adventurous performances and programming, bringing together the clarinet, multimedia technology, and years of self-produced concert experience to build new audiences for the concert experience. He serves as artistic director and clarinetist of Unheard-of//Ensemble, presenting unique multimedia concert experiences around the United States.
Known as “a unique force” (The Clarinet Journal), he has toured across the United States with Unheard-of//Ensemble presenting guest artist performances and residences at Northwestern, Manhattan School of Music, Cornell, and Oberlin with a repertoire of over 200 works written for the ensemble. In 2024-2025, he is performing on University of Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge series, will have a residency at University of Miami (FL) (a collaboration with the Association for the Promotion of New Music), a guest residency at REDNOTE New Music Festival, and tours of the Midwest with Unheard-of.
Ford has performed with Contemporaneous, Wordless Music Orchestra, Little Orchestra Society, Fresh Squeezed Opera, and the New Manhattan Sinfonietta, and performs regularly with ensemble mise-en. His group Spark Duo with trumpeter Kate Amrine has toured Puerto Rico in 2021 and New Mexico and Arizona visiting the Interference Series, University of New Mexico, Arizona State University, University of Northern Arizona, and University of Arizona. His
composer/performer duo with electronic musician and guitarist Erich Barganier recently performed in Dublin, Ireland at ClarinetFest and has won an Ensemble Forward Award from Chamber Music America to work with Todd Reynolds and William Brittelle in 2024.Pianist Steven Beck is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where his teachers were Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin and Bruce Brubaker. This season Mr. Beck appears with the orchestras of Princeton and Chattanooga, can be heard in chamber music in Chicago and Oklahoma City, and repeats his annual Christmas Eve performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Bargemusic, which has become a New York institution. He has performed as soloist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Library of Congress; summer appearances have been at the Aspen Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. As an orchestral musician he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Orpheus.
Mr. Beck is an experienced performer of new music. He has premiered works by Charles Wuorinen and Fred Lerdahl, and made the first complete recording of George Walker’s piano sonatas, for Bridge Records. He is a member of the Knights, the Talea Ensemble, Quattro Mani, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. Steven Beck is a Steinway Artist, and is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Sewanee Music Center, as well as teaching
orchestral piano at the Juilliard School.Leo Kraft (1922 – 2014) was a noted American composer, a graduate of Queens College, and a student of Karol Rathaus. He also studied with Randall Thompson at Princeton. He also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Kraft made contributions to the musical world with his compositions as well as through his work as an author and educator, notably through his textbooks on music including “A New Approach to Ear Training” and “Gradus,” a theory text.
Kraft Partita – This solo piano work marks the end of what Kraft referred to as hi “freely diatonic” period of composition. His music after this period is marked by an increased used of chromaticism and dissonance. The music of this Partita is marked by clean lines, elegant sonorities and clarity of expression.
Karol Rathaus (1895-1954): Zwei kleine Klavierstücke (1921)Two piano pieces come from the Album of Grotesques published in 1922, featuring works by Bartók, Grosz, Krenek, and Wellesz, among others. All of the pieces, including Rathaus’s compositions, reflect the artistic tendencies popular in post-war Europe. The end of old Europe and its ancien régime also marked the decline of traditional rules of tonality and form, creating space for experimentation. As the introductory remarks state: ‘In art, generally speaking, the grotesque effect is attained by means of strong lights, somewhat violently applied to characteristic lines, exaggerated by startling contrasts, thus bringing about a distortion of innate artistic harmony.’ In Rathaus’s miniatures, the grotesque effect is achieved through contrasting antagonistic themes, unexpected harmonic shifts, distinct articulation, and abrupt dynamic changes.Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) is a Scottish composer who has live in the US since 1972. She is a major figure in the world of opera, especially, though she has composed for orchestra and chamber ensembles and is widely performed throughout the world. Educated at the Paris Conservatoire (including work with Nadia Boulanger), Musgrave was Distinguished Professor of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music from 1987 – 2002. She has written more than a dozen operas and her achievements were recently celebrated on her 90th Birthday at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms.Musgrave – Excursions, for piano duet. These 8 short pieces, composed in 1965, were intended for children, or those who are learning to play the piano, though their technical and musical sophistication are clearly evident. The movement titles of these charming pieces (and the music) are clear evidence of a composer with both great skill and a well-developed sense of humor. The movements are entitled:
Driving in the highlandsThe Road HogLearner DriverThe Drunken DriverThe Sunday DriverRoadside RepairsFog on the MotorwayBackseat Driver
Edward Smaldone
Dr. Edward Smaldone’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and in Asia. He was Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the Copland School of Music from 1989-2024, and Director of the School from 2002 – 2016. A new clarinet concerto (Murmurations) was performed and recorded in Copenhagen in June 2021, by Søren-Filip Hansen and Den Kongelige Livgarde Musikkorps, the wind and brass orchestra of the Queen of Denmark. A piano concerto, (Prendendo Fuoco) was performed in NYC by the League of Composer Orchestra in 2023 with Niklas Sivelöv, pianist, and then recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, in Glasgow, in 2024. Both Concerti will be released (along with two more orchestral works and a Woodwind Quintet) on New Focus Recordings in December 2024.
His music appears on more than a dozen CDs, including three released in 2020. Reviews in Fanfare Magazine said, in part, “Smaldone has a gift for connecting one phrase with another, even one note with another, so that you get wrapped up in the music.” For more information see www.edwardsmaldone.com
Sareri Hovin Mernem is a song by V. Harootiunian and H. Badalian. The song expresses the intense longing of a lover for her partner. She “would die for the wind of the mountains” that would bring her lover back to her. The longing expressed in the song seems to evoke the intense longing of all Armenians, who have a long history of conflict, loss, suffering and perserverance. Despite their long history of suffering, the diaspora of the Armenian people are nonetheless fiercely unified in their longing for the return of their community which has thus sustained them throughout their long legacy. Suffering shared is suffering mitigated (a strategy in common with genres as diverse as American Blues and European Opera!). And the irrepressible joy that is also indemic of the Armenian spirit is expressed with a brief “dance.” The wind in the mountains brings hope in spite of hopelessness, and is therefore
representative of the shared humanity of us all.