Merkin Concert Hall Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 7:30 pm Kaufman Music Center presents Ecstatic Music Festival® Clogs, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Orchestra for the Next Century, Gary M. Schneider, conductor New Sounds Live co-presentation WNYC’s John Schaefer, host PADMA NEWSOME Overtures to the Public from 2 Moon Smile (2012) CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, VOCALISTS and CLOGS Pink Lycra - Only Friend (2012) CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, VOCALISTS and CLOGS Selections from Shady Gully (2012) CLOGS Song of the Bees (2011) CLOGS and SHARA WORDEN Loev Song (2007) STRING ORCHESTRA and CLOGS DM STITH Mountains of Mind (2012) Arr. Judd Greenstein DM STITH and CHAMBER ORCHESTRA SHARA WORDEN Looking at the Sun (2012) CHAMBER ORCHESTRA and SHARA WORDEN That Point When (2012) CHAMBER ORCHESTRA and SHARA WORDEN Whoever You Are (2012) CHAMBER ORCHESTRA and SHARA WORDEN Originally commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus Intermission SARAH KIRKLAND SNIDER Unremembered (2012) World Premiere Words: Nathaniel Bellows for chamber orchestra and vocalists 1. Prelude 2. The Estate 3. The Guest 4. The Girl 5. The Swan 6. The Witch 7. The River 8. The Orchard 9. The Speakers 10. The Song Commissioned by Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center for the Ecstatic Music Festival About the Ecstatic Music Festival® The Ecstatic Music Festival was inaugurated in 2011 by Kaufman Music Center (KaufmanMusicCenter.org). Deeply committed to music education and performance that incorporate the ideas and trends of the 21st century, the Center seeks to put truly modern music on its stage—redefining music for the post-classical generation, and serving it up to new audiences. Under the inspired direction of curator Judd Greenstein, co-director of New Amsterdam Records, the Festival brings together innovative artists for adventurous collaborations between musicians from the indie/pop/and classical realms. At the nexus of New York City’s vibrant “indie classical” scene, the festival shines a bright light on one of the most intriguing areas of contemporary music, in which lines between genres are blurred and the concert environment combines the elegance of a traditional concert hall setting with the energy of a nightclub. The Ecstatic Music Festival’s programs give true meaning to the notion of “Ecstatic Music” as a joyful and adventurous collaboration between composers and performers from the indie/pop and classical realms. This year’s Ecstatic Music includes three New Sounds Live concerts hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer, which are webcast live on Q2 Music and taped for future broadcast on WNYC. Q2 Music is the festival’s digital venue and the center for on-demand artist interviews and concert audio. The festival is presented in association with New Amsterdam Presents. About the Artists Padma Newsome is a composer, arranger and performer on violin, viola, voice, keyboards and various lutes. Born in Alice Springs, Central Australia, he has a broad musical palette, composing for traditional small and large ensemble, electro-acoustic media, song writing and improvised chamber ensemble. His works have been performed by ensembles such as the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orche-stra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Academy of Melbourne, Locrian Chamber Players and Da Capo Chamber Players. Padma is a founding member and composer of Clogs, and has also performed with the Seymour Group, Fresh Air, Eggplant, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with conductors such as Sir Christopher Hogwood, Sir Charles Makkerras and Stuart Challender. For the past decade, Padma has collaborated with rock bands as composer/orchestrator, performer and recording artist. These include The National, the Devastations, and Belgium singer-songwriter Daniel Hélin. Recent commissions and grants include an Artists Fellowship from the Fromm Music Foundation, Brooklyn Rider string quartet, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Vermont Arts Council, Fulbright Post-graduate Award, Symphony Australia, Arts SA, Helpmann Academy and numerous private commissions. He holds an MMA and an MM from Yale University and an MMus and BMus(Honors) from the University of Adelaide. Recently deemed “a potentially significant voice on the American music landscape” (Philadelphia Inquirer), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “strikingly beautiful” (Time Out New York), and “bear[ing] profound rewards” (Pitchfork). Her music has been commissioned and performed internationally by artists including ACME, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Colin Currie, Hebrides Ensemble, the Knights, NOW Ensemble, Psappha, Roomful of Teeth, Signal and yMusic, among others. Her first album, Penelope (Shara Worden and Signal, 2010, New Amsterdam Records) was named to dozens of top-ten lists internationally, including Time Out New York (#1), NPR (#5), textura (#3), WNYC and The Huffington Post, and drew high praise from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, The Believer, and many others. Highlights of the 2012-2013 season include eight performances of Penelope with Shara Worden and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and yMusic as presented by The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Walker Art Center, the world premiere of The Currents, a solo piano work commissioned by the American Pianists Association and the recording of her second album, Unremembered, an orchestral 15-song cycle featuring vocalists Shara Worden, Padma Newsome and D.M. Stith. Upcoming projects include works for Cantus, violist Nadia Sirota, pianist Michael Mizrahi and a new orchestral song cycle for the Orchestra Engagement Lab. Snider has an MM and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a BA from Wesleyan University. In addition to her work as a composer, she is Co-Director of New Amsterdam Presents and New Amsterdam Records. Shara Worden received a BA in Opera from the University of North Texas. After moving to New York, she began studying composition with composer/performer Padma Newsome. During this time she composed music for several Off-Broadway theater productions. In 2004, she assembled a band, My Brightest Diamond, and released Bring Me The Workhorse (2006), A Thousand Shark’s Teeth (2008) and All Things Will Unwind (2011) on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Recent years have found Worden in the role of composer as much as songwriter. She has received commissions from the chamber ensemble yMusic, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and violist Nadia Sirota. Currently, she is composing an operetta with playwright and director Andrew Ondrejcak which will premiere at deSingel in Antwerp, Belgium in September 2013. In addition to Sarah Kirkland Snider and Padma Newsome, many other composers, songwriters and filmmakers have sought out Worden’s distinctive voice, including Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim as well as Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler. In 2012, Worden was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the performing arts. DM Stith’s songs trace themselves into existence, growing organically, but fossilizing into the work of a serious and singular poetic voice. Stith’s preoccupation with voice and sound has motivated a critically lauded album of songs called Heavy Ghost, released in 2009 on Asthmatic Kitty Records, as well as performances at the Sydney Opera House, Beacon Theatre in New York, Royal Festival Hall in London, and hundreds of shows in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Stith, with his clear-as-a-bell voice, was incorporated into Sufjan Stevens’ live show that took the pair to more than 25 countries playing in front of many thousands of people. 2012 saw DM touring Europe as lead singer of his band, The Revival Hour, and preparing two albums of original material for release in 2013. Gary M. Schneider is a multi-faceted musician whose musical interests cross all stylistic boundaries. He first gained attention as music director of The Hudson Chamber Symphony, an award-winning ensemble he founded in 1981 and led for10 years. A prizewinner in the Leopold Stokowski Competition for American Conductors, he has distinguished himself conducting symphony, opera, new music, ballet and music theater in Europe and the United States. Mr. Schneider maintains an active guest conducting schedule that has included performances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, National Philharmonic (Bethesda, MD), International Zelt Musik Festival Orchestra (Germany), Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Savannah Symphony, Plainfield Symphony, Chamber Symphony of Princeton, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra (Hungary), Cumberland Valley Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Ballet, Jungen Virtuosen Leningrad and the Internationale Festpiele Baden-Wurttemberg. Also active as a composer, Schneider is a member of American Composers Alliance, an affiliate writer of Broadcast Music, Inc., and has works published with Peer Music, Berben edizione musicale and American Composers Editions. His compositions span a variety of concert music as well as music for theater, dance and film. Orchestra for the Next Century performs a blend of music from all time periods, with a special emphasis on the most compelling scores being written by today’s very fertile crop of genre defying composers. The ensemble’s aim is to present concerts that are virtuosic in execution, heartfelt in presentation and enthusiastic in performance.