C4: the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Concert Press Release

For Immediate Release
May 13, 2008
Contact: Jonathan David, (917) 596-9931
info@c4ensemble.org

C4 Presents Hit It!
New York’Äôs Premier New Music Chorus Offers up Voices + Crotales, Lion’Äôs Roar, Tam-tam, Spatulae, Marimba, Coffee Grinders, and a Plethora of Other Percussion

Saturday, June 7, 2008
St. Joseph’Äôs Church
404 East 87^th Street between 1st and York Avenues, NYC
8 PM
$10
Closest Subway: 4, 5 or 6 to 86^th St. Station

C4: the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective will present the third concert of its season on Saturday, June 7, offering a wide range of music by living composers in collaboration with percussionists Levy Lorenzo and Dennis Sullivan.

The concert will include five world premieres, by C4 composers Jonathan David, Asia Mei, Ian Moss, Malina Rauschenfels, and Karen Siegel. David’Äôs Kallyope Yell sets the ecstaticly deranged words of eccentric Amercian poet Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, complete with a whip-snapping reciter/ringmaster and a battery of circus percussion. Eine kleine morning music captures Rauschenfels’Äôs morning routine, from that first cup of coffee to her daily fried eggs. Siegel’Äôs Hellgate Beach, a mini-concerto for two percussionists and choral obbligato, is inspired by a moment in time at the deserted Queens beach. In Remember Eternity, Mei offers a sumptuous treatment of a mystical poem by Andres D.S. Wilson. Moss’Äôs She Didn’Äôt Mean To Do It represents a departure from his usual intricate and thickly-textured style, racing through a tale of deception with a cynical, hard-edged sheen.

The evening will also feature the East Coast premiere and second performance of Lisa Bielawa’Äôs The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In this multi-movement work for chorus and percussion, commissioned and premiered by the Dale Warland Singers, Bielawa sets excerpts from William Blake’Äôs monumental, Dante-inspired guidebook to Hell. She draws on musical techniques from the ancient to the modern to illuminate the texts that Blake himself illustrated with his remarkable copper-plate etchings. The concert will also include favorite choral works by Veljo Tormis and Eric Whitacre, both of which include prominent roles for percussion.

C4 is a unique chorus that is directed and operated collectively by its singing members, functioning not only as a presenting ensemble in its own right but also as an ongoing workshop and recital chorus for the emerging composers and conductors who form the core of the group. The ensemble exists in both 16-voice chamber choir and larger symphonic chorus formats, allowing for flexibility in presentation depending on the needs of each work. It is the first organization of its kind and one of the few choral groups in the nation to focus exclusively on the music of our time.

For booking, interviews and complimentary tickets for reviews, please contact:
Jonathan David, (917) 596-9931
info@c4ensemble.org
www.c4ensemble.org

Samuel D. McCoy
Litigation Paralegal
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
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