The Center at West Park (NYC)

Presents

ENSEMBLE PI: REPARATIONS NOW! Thursday, October 29 at 7 p.m. Followed by a Q&A with the artists

“Reparations is a litmus test for whether a person is being a racist or anti-racist when it comes to one of the most damaging racial inequities of our time, of all American time—the racial wealth gap. To oppose reparations is to be racist. To support reparations is to be anti- racist.”—Ibram X. Xendi, The Atlantic, 2019

PROGRAM:

Allison Loggins-Hull: The Pattern (2020, World Premiere) With text from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Allison Loggins- Hull, flute; Idith Korman, piano; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Raquel Acevedo Klein, conductor

Courtney Bryan: Elegy (2018) Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Idith Korman, piano; Airi Yoshioka, violin Raquel Acevedo Klein, conductor

Requiem for Elijah (2020) Improvisation for any combination of instruments and/or voices, based on Elijah McClain’s last words. Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Allison Loggins- Hull, flute; Idith Korman, piano; Damian Norfleet, voice; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin

Georg Friedrich Haas: I can’t breathe (In memoriam Eric Garner) (2014) Wayne Dumaine Trumpet

Damian Norfleet: Kendi’s Secret (2020, World Premiere) Reading of an excerpt from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist Damian Norfleet, voice

Angélica Negrón: Conversación a distancia (2020, World Premiere) Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Idith Korman, piano; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Raquel Acevedo Klein, conductor

Trevor Weston: Pinkster Kings (2020, World Premiere) Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Allison Loggins- Hull, flute; Idith Korman, piano; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Trevor Weston conductor

PERFORMERS: Wayne Dumaine, trumpet; Alexis Gerlach, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Allison Loggins- Hull, flute; Idith Korman, piano; Bill Trigg, percussion; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Raquel Acevedo Klein, conductor; Trevor Weston, conductor

Bios:

Ensemble Pi, a socially conscious new-music group founded in 2002, features composers whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the world’s current and critical issues. For more than eighteen years, Ensemble Pi presented an annual Peace Project concert, commissioning new works and collaborating with visual artists, writers, actors and journalists such as William Kentridge, Naomi Wolf and David Riker. The ensemble was in residence for four American music festivals presented by the American Composers Alliance and now collaborates with the APNM. Symphony Space presented Ensemble Pi in birthday celebrations for composers Gunther Schuller and Krzysztof Penderecki. A multi-year collaboration with composer Elias Tanenbaum resulted in a CD of his chamber music, Keep Going, released by Parma Recordings in 2010 and reviewed by Gramophoneas “a touching tribute to Elias Tanenbaum that is played with conviction and verve.” It was followed by a second CD of the music Laura Kaminsky, “played with warmth and variety” (American Record Guide). Ensemble Pi is currently working on the third CD. www.ensemble-pi.org

Allison Loggins-Hull is a flutist, composer and producer with an active career performing and creating music of multiple genres. In 2009, she and Nathalie Joachim co-founded the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix. Loggins-Hull has performed at The Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Orchestra Hall (Chicago), World Cafe Live, and several other major venues and festivals around the world. She has performed or recorded with a wide-range of artists including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, Lizzo, The National Sawdust Ensemble and others. With Flutronix, she has released two full studio albums (Flutronix and 2.0), a live album (Live From the Attucks Theatre), an EP (City of Breath) and is signed to Village Again Records in Japan. As a member of The Re-Collective Orchestra, Allison was co-principal flutist on the soundtrack to Disney’s 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” working closely with Hans Zimmer. As a composer, Loggins-Hull has written for Flutronix, Julia Bullock and others and has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, Alarm Will Sound and The Library of Congress. She was a co-producer of Nathalie Joachim’s celebrated album “Fanm d’Ayiti,” which was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY for Best World Music Album. In support of her work, Allison has been awarded grants from New Music USA and a fellowship at The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida. She is on the flute faculty of The John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University and a teaching artist at The Juilliard School’s Global Ventures.

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, is a pianist and composer whose music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan's compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan’s work has been presented in a wide range of venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, The Stone, Roulette Intermedium, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Blue Note Jazz Club, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Bethany and Abyssinian Baptist Churches, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Ojai Music Festival. Her compositions have been performed by the Jacksonville Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Aperture Duo, Duo Noire, Ekmeles, Ensemble Pi, New York Jazzharmonic, Spektral String Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Quince Vocal Ensemble, Jennifer Koh, and Kelly Hall-Tompkins. She has two recordings, Quest for Freedom (2007) and This Little Light of Mine (2010) and has a third recording in progress, Sounds of Freedom (2020). Bryan is currently writing an opera, Awakening, a collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Charlotte Brathwaite, Helga Davis, Cauleen Smith, Sharan Strange, Sunder Ganglani, and Matthew Morrison, which will premiere in 2021. Bryan was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, and is currently a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow. She has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed an appointment as Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, and the Mary Carr Patton Composer-in-Residence with the Jacksonville Symphony.

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, loadbang, MATA Festival, Youth Chorus, Kronos Quartet, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Her music has been performed at the Kennedy Center, the Ecstatic Music Festival, EMPAC, Bang on a Can Marathon, and the 2016 New York Philharmonic Biennial, and her film scores have been heard numerous times at the Film Festival. A founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún, she is currently a doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center (CUNY), focusing on the work of Meredith Monk for her dissertation. She's a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program working with young learners on creative composition projects. Upcoming premieres include works for the LA Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.

Trevor Weston is a composer whose honors include the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, Berkeley; a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony. Carnegie Hall co-commissioned Weston’s Flying Fish, with the American Composers Orchestra, for its 125 Commissions Project. The Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered Weston’s Dig It, for the Ecstatic Music Festival in NYC earlier this year. Weston’s work Juba for Strings won the 2019 Sonori/New Orleans Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition. Weston co-authored with Olly Wilson, “Duke Ellington as a Cultural Icon” in the Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington, published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Weston is currently Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Drew University in Madison, NJ.

This concert was made possible in part by public funds from the Community Arts Fund, and the Fund for Creative Communities supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as through the generous support of individual donors, and in kind of Klavierhaus. Thank you!