On Sunday, July 12 and Monday, July 13, Margaret Brouwer's Blue Streak Ensemble will blaze into New York City for its debut concerts in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Brouwer (b. 1940) & Co. make for an impressive team of modern chamber music, with works both instrumental and vocal. Regarding that new disc on Naxos, well, we echo the sentiments of one of our favorite Google blogspots, The Classical Reviewer: "...an incredible tapestry of sounds from this small ensemble that does the utmost justice to Margaret Brouwer's music."
And as Gail Wein's Classical Music Communications notes, too, on Sunday, July 12 at 3 p.m, Blue Streak performs at St. John's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn (139 St. John's Place) as part of their "Concerts on the Slope" series.
Did you dig Robert Sirota's showcase there in Park Slope back in April? Yes? Then you'll indubitably do the same this weekend.
Best of all, this performance is free AND no tickets are required. On Monday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m., BSE performs at the Marc A. Scorca Hall at the National Opera Center in Manhattan. Tickets are $15 in advance at Eventbrite, $20 at the door. Student tickets, of course, are half-priced.
(For you non-native New Yorkers, the National Opera Center is located at 330 Seventh Avenue at 29th Street.)
And for Classicalites unaware of Ms. Brouwer and her work, she is an award-winning composer who has earned numerous accolades. Noted for her music's lyricism, imagery and emotional power, she is in constant demand. Recent commissions have come from all across the country: Dallas, Detroit, Rochester, Cleveland Chamber, American Composer's Orchestra.
The Blue Streak Ensemble was founded in 2011 in Cleveland, Ohio, and it features a chamber group of young professional musicians who, themselves, have impressive careers. So much so, Ms. Brouwer quickly expanded their concerts to include tours beyond Ohio's borders. Notably, the ensemble performed its New York debut on the Cutting Edge Concerts series at Symphony Space in 2014.
The performances, programmed by Brouwer, feature composers like Mario Davidovsky, John Harbison, Clint Needham, Andrew Rindfleisch, Chen Yi, Huang Ruo. The ensemble includes mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty, percussionist Haruka Fujii, pianist Erika Dohi and violinist Kimia Ghaderi.
Additionally, Ms. Brouwer has composed an exciting new piece which will be performed for the first time at these New York performances. The Blue Streak Ensemble will perform the east coast premiere of Brouwer's song cycle, Declaration. Using poetry by Alice Walker, David Adams and Ann Woodward, the piece examines the inhumanity of war and the common threads between all human beings.
For a little taste of the beauty of what Ms. Brouwer's Blue Streak Ensemble is capable of providing, listen to the transcript clip provided below.
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