Thursday October 1 | doors at 7:30pm | performance at 8:00pm
$15 ADVANCE tickets | $20 DAY OF SHOW | $10 STUDENT tickets with ID | always pay what you can
New York-based BlackBox Ensemble honors the centennial of pioneering American composer Morton Feldman
In honor of the centennial year of pioneering American composer Morton Feldman, the New-York based BlackBox Ensemble presents a program exploring time, perception, and process. The program includes three works by Feldman: the early chamber work "Four Songs to E.E. Cummings;" "Projection 2," one of his explorations in graphic notation; and "I Met Heine on the Rue FΓΌrstenberg," a mid-career work for ensemble and vocalist in which Feldman begins to explore the expansive temporal and timbral properties that will define his later work.
Alongside these works by Feldman, the ensemble will present a preview of "Through the Doors," a new chamber opera by Los Angeles-based composer Ania Vu. The opera explores existential questions about time and free will through the journey of a young girl who travels through a series of surreal universes on a journey to find her father, a metronome maker. Finally, the program includes a new work by Kai Kubota-Enright. Titled "spatial communication of dripstone," the piece is inspired by the slow process of stalactites forming in caves, with the slow drip of water marking time, creating, in the composer's words, "a woven map drawn in pulses and pattern."
P R O G R AM
Morton Feldman: Four Songs to E.E. Cummings
Morton Feldman: Projection 2
Kai Kubota-Enright: spatial communication of dripstone
Ania Vu: Odessa's House from "Through the Doors"
Morton Feldman: I Met Heine on the Rue FΓΌrstenberg
BlackBox Ensemble
Named as βambitiousβ by The New Yorker, the NYC-based BlackBox Ensemble is a collective of contemporary music performers dedicated to exploring the wide-ranging world of the music of our time. Founded in 2018, BlackBox has presented work at leading museums, festivals, and performance spaces across the U.S., including the Whitney Museum, National Sawdust, Roulette Intermedium, PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance, Bang on a Can Long Play Festival, Noguchi Museum, and MATA Festival. The ensemble has toured nationally and held residencies at universities including the University of Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of Richmond, and UC Santa Cruz. Recent projects include Speculative Listening: The Sonic World of Julius Eastman, curated by Eastman scholar Isaac Jean-FranΓ§ois; performances of Eastman's Femenine with Kyle Marshall Choreography; the staged premiere of Borrowed Landscape, a radio drama with original music by Dai Fujikura; and performances of music by Morton Feldman at the MATA Festival and Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
Leonard Bopp
A passionate champion of classical and contemporary repertoire, Leonard is the Conductor and Director of Artistic Planning of the BlackBox Ensemble, with whom he has presented concert programs and multidisciplinary performances at major venues in NYC and beyond, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Sawdust, Roulette Intermedium, the Noguchi Museum, and the Bang on a Can Long Play Festival. Leonard is currently pursuing a Graduate Diploma in Orchestral Conducting at the New England Conservatory, where he studies with Stefan Asbury. He has participated in the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Seminar, Cabrillo Festival Conductors Workshop, and the Pierre Boulez Centennial Conducting Masterclass at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, and held the American Austrian Foundation Conductors Fellowship at the Salzburg Festival. He has appeared twice as a guest conductor for the Divertimento Ensemble in Milan, Italy, and has served as an assistant conductor for the Orlando Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Virginia Symphony.