GatherNYC Announces April and May 2023 Concertsat Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in Columbus Circle
Every Other Sunday Morning at 11AM
Coming Up:
March 5: Kafka Fragments with soprano Ariadne Greif and violinist Alex Fortes
March 19: Brandee Younger, harpist
Just Announced:
April 2: Trio Fadolín
April 16: Blackbird IV – Lisa Kaplan, piano and Matthew Duvall, percussionApril 30: Mike Block, cello and Christylez Bacon, beatboxMay 14: The Overlook Quartet – New York StoriesMay 28: Musicians from the New York Philharmonic – Vivaldi and Verklärte Nacht
“thoughtful, intimate events curated with refreshing eclecticism by its founders, the cellist Laura Metcalf and the guitarist Rupert Boyd, complete with pastries and coffee – The New Yorker
“A sweet chamber music series” – The New York Times
“Impressive Aussie/American led concert series proves music can be a religion.” – Limelight Magazine
Museum of Arts and Design | The Theater at MAD | 2 Columbus Circle | NYC
Tickets & Information: www.gathernyc.org
New York, NY – GatherNYC, a revolutionary concert experience founded in 2017 by cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, continues its 2022-23 season at the series’ home venue at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) (2 Columbus Circle). The series has just announced five more concerts taking place this spring – Trio Fadolín with Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin on April 2, Blackbird IV with pianist Lisa Kaplan and percussionist Matthew Duvall on April 16, cellist Mike Block and beatboxer Christylez Bacon on April 30, the The Overlook Quartet on May 14, and Vivaldi and Verklärte Nacht with Musicians from the New York Philharmonic alongside artistic directors Metcalf and Boyd on May 28. The expanded season features concerts held every other Sunday at 11am in The Theater at MAD, which is fully restored to its original mid-century design.
Guests at GatherNYC are served exquisite live classical music by New York’s most celebrated artists, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour and evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service – but the religion is music, and all are welcome.
Metcalf and Boyd say, “We are thrilled to be returning to the beautiful Museum of Arts and Design, offering 16 concerts throughout our 2022-2023 season. We look forward to providing our audiences with world-class musical experiences in an intimate, unique setting, complete with spoken word, silence, coffee and a communal, welcoming environment.”
GatherNYC’s next concert is March 5, and features soprano Ariadne Greif and violinist Alex Fortes performing Kurtág’s seminal work, Kafka Fragments. On March 19, GatherNYC presents Grammy-nominated harpist Brandee Younger.
Upcoming Concert Details:
Sunday, March 5 at 11amKafka Fragments with Soprano Ariadne Greif and Violinist Alex FortesAriadne Greif and Alex Fortes perform Kurtág’s seminal work, Kafka Fragments from 1986, a setting of fragments of Kafka’s writing that the composer collected over several decades. The forty fragments, ranging from several seconds to several minutes long, catalog descriptions, emotions, diary entries and glimpses of the writer’s life. Critic Paul Griffiths wrote that the fragments, “are like those bits of crumpled paper which, when dropped into water (the music), unfold into flowers.”
More: www.ariadnegreifsoprano.com & https://theknightsnyc.com/musician/2021/2/24/alex-gonzalez-whc97
Sunday, March 19 at 11amHarpist Brandee YoungerBrandee Younger is a Grammy-nominated harpist making waves for becoming the first Black female solo artist nominated in the Best Instrumental Composition category for her song “Beautiful Is Black” at the 2022 ceremony. Ravi Coltrane of The New York Times praises Younger, saying, “No harpist thus far has been more capable of combining all of the modern harp traditions.” Collaborating with artists such as Beyonce, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, and more, [Younger] demonstrates her ability to seamlessly inject the harp into arrangements and venues where it has historically been overlooked. Younger’s achievements are a testament to her deep love for and exemplary command of the instrument.
More: www.brandeeyounger.com
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sunday, April 2 at 11amTrio FadolínTrio Fadolín is a new chamber group that performs new and old music from Ukraine, Russia, New York, and intervening lands, featuring the unique sonority of a new instrument, the fadolín, a six stringed instrument that encompasses in it the range of the violin, viola, and most of the cello. The ensemble includes Sabina Torosjan on violin, Valeriya Sholokhova on cello, and Ljova, performing on the fadolín. The trio formed during the COVID-19 pandemic and its first performances were in the summer of 2021, on a makeshift stage at the Javits Convention Center mass vaccination site, operated by the US Army and sponsored by Sing for Hope. Since that time, the group has made appearances at Bargemusic, Barbès, Symphony Space, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and continues to perform outreach events for Sing For Hope’s stage at the new Moynihan Train Terminal at Penn Station, where they frequently perform with special guests. As the trio’s opportunities to play together grew, their repertoire evolved steadily — it now includes works by Ukrainian composers Vasily Barvinsky, Mykola Kolessa, and Miroslav Skoryk, Spanish-American composer Andrea Casarrubios, folk music from Denmark, Sweden and Romania, in addition to original works by our fadolínist, Ljova. All three musicians are graduates of The Juilliard School.
More: www.ljova.com/trio-fadolin
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sunday, April 16 at 11am
Blackbird IV: Lisa Kaplan, piano and Matthew Duvall, percussion
Blackbird IV is a subset of the renowned sextet Eighth Blackbird, made up of two founding members of the ensemble – Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall. Their concert will feature solos and duos by David Lang, Chris Corrine, Andy Akiho and more.
Born in Motown, Lisa Kaplan is a pianist specializing in the performance of new work by living composers. Kaplan is the founding pianist and Executive Director of the four-time Grammy Award-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird. She has won numerous awards, performed all over the country and has premiered new pieces by hundreds of composers, including Andy Akiho, Jennifer Higdon, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, George Perle, and Pamela Z. She has had the great pleasure to collaborate and make music with an eclectic array of incredibly talented people – Laurie Anderson, Jeremy Denk, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Bon Iver, J. Ivy, Glenn Kotche, Shara Nova, Will Oldham, Natalie Portman, Gustavo Santaolalla, Robert Spano, Tarrey Torae, Dawn Upshaw and Michael Ward-Bergeman to name a few.
Matthew Duvall is a co-Artistic Director, founding member, and the percussionist of Eighth Blackbird, currently in its 20th season. Eighth Blackbird champions a performing aesthetic redefining the chamber music experience. Notable accomplishments include four Grammy awards, a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, competition wins with the Concert Artist Guild and the Naumburg Foundation, a catalog of studio recordings with Cedille records, and ensemble-in-residence positions with the University of Chicago, the University of Richmond, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Composers commissioned and premiered include Bryce Dessner, Stephen Hartke, Jennifer Higdon, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Lang and Steve Mackey, to name a few.
More: www.eighthblackbird.org
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sunday, April 30 at 11am
Mike Block, cello and Christylez Bacon, beatbox
Mike Block (Cello & Vocals) & Christylez Bacon (Beatboxing, Guitar, Rap) form a dynamic duo, blending original music with world fusion influences to form a fresh sound that highlights their improvisational spontaneity and high energy stage presentation.
Mike Block is a Grammy Award-winning cello player, singer and composer passionate about cross-cultural collaboration through music, and committed to inspiring individuals and connecting communities. Acclaimed by the New York Times for his “vital rich-hued solo playing, and by Salt Lake City Deseret News as “a true artist… a sight to behold,” Mike Block is one of the “bravest, most intriguing musicians on the American fusion scene” (Gramophone). Mike Blocks’ shows offer a rich mixture of classical repertoire, folk music, original compositions and songs that draw inspiration from his diverse collaborations.
Christylez Bacon was born and grew up in Washington, DC and attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. He has been featured on Morning Edition, National Public Radio, performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and founded the Washington Sound Museum, a regular concert series at the Atlas Performing Arts center in Washington’s H Street NE. The Washington Post notes that he is a beatboxer and progressive hip hop artist. He also played with the National Symphony Orchestra. Bacon classifies his largely diverse music as progressive hip hop.
More: www.MikeBlockMusic.com & www.christylez.com
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sunday, May 14 at 11am
The Overlook Quartet: New York Stories
The “breathtaking,” “paradigm-shifting” (New York Music Daily) string quartet The Overlook is a unifying, community-building force, whose dedication to a more representative musical tradition reverberates throughout their industry. The quartet has recently been heard live in New York City at Lincoln Center, Kaufman Music Center, Fotografiska New York and Wave Hill, in a virtual performance presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art that has been streamed nearly 70,000 times, further afield from Mass MoCa to Albuquerque, NM, and countless other performances since its inception in June 2020. In “New York Stories”, the quartet will be highlighting composers whose work has deep connections to New York City, including Shelley Washington, Jessie Montgomery and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
The Overlook formed from a simple need to make and share music with others during the pandemic shutdown. The longtime friends, some of New York’s most accomplished string players, gathered to play outdoors in parks and on street corners in upper Manhattan, and their community stopped to listen. In less than two years, the quartet has built a body of repertoire that includes both masterworks from the past by Florence Price, Samuel-Coleridge-Taylor, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as well as new works by living composers Trevor Weston (who re-dedicated his piece “Juba” to the ensemble), Eleanor Alberga, Carlos Simon, Jessie Montgomery, Shelley Washington, Leila Adu, Daniel Bernard Roumain and many more. The Overlook has enjoyed collaborations with such artists as New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, multi-Grammy nominee Curtis Stewart, and noted visual artist Linda Sormin. To support their work, the quartet has been awarded grants by the Eastman School of Music, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Bronx Council on the Arts and Local 802’s Music Performance Trust Fund.
More: www.theoverlookquartet.com
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sunday, May 28 at 11am
Musicians from the New York Philharmonic: Vivaldi and Verklärte Nacht
Some of New York City’s finest musicians from the New York Philharmonic come together with GatherNYC artistic directors cellist Laura Metcalf and guitarist Rupert Boyd, to perform a program of works by Antonio Vivaldi and Arnold Schoenberg. Pairing Schoenberg and Vivaldi may seem initially unconventional but between the inspiration behind Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht –– a poem of the same name by German poet and writer Richard Dehmel, who was known for writing poetry using many different rhythmic patterns –– and Vivaldi’s penchant for using repetition, clear form, and thematic inspiration in his music, the season’s finale presents two kindred composer spirits separated more by centuries than creative instinct.
For tickets and information, visit www.gathernyc.org.
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