Bang on a Can Presents the
Artists at Noguchi Series
Featuring Violinist/Vocalist Iva Bittová
and Pianist Antonin Fajt
Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 3pm
The Noguchi Museum
9-01 33rd Rd | Long Island City, NY
Performances are free with Museum admission, and
seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. More
information available at www.noguchi.org.
Bang on a Can: www.bangonacan.org
Iva Bittová: www.bittova.com
New York, NY — On Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 3pm, Bang on a Can and The Noguchi Museum continue their monthly summer concert series with renowned Czech violinist/singer/composer Iva Bittová and her son, pianist Antonin Fajt, performing in The Noguchi Museum’s outdoor sculpture garden (9-01 33rd Rd). Bittová is recognized worldwide for her unique solo style, displaying a musical worldview and visionary creativity unlike any other. New York Magazine describes her sound as, “invigorating, urgent, and also soothing; it is a fusion of Old World and new-music sensibilities.” The duo will perform their own compositions, improvisations, plus Moravian and Slovakian songs by Leos Janáček and Bela Bartók, arranged by Bittová and Fajt. All concerts are free with museum admission.
The next concerts of the Artists at Noguchi Series feature the American Contemporary Music Ensemble in works by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and the world premiere of ACME violinist/violist and composer Caleb Burhans’ brand new solo cello piece, written for ACME Artistic Director and cellist Clarice Jensen (August 14); and the Argus String Quartet in a concert of the music of Martin Bresnick, in honor of the composer’s 70th birthday (September 11).
About Iva Bittová
Iva Bittová’s countryman Milan Kundera wrote how Europe’s “small nations” form another Europe. The violinist-vocalist may be a “small nation” Czech, but her musical worldview and visionary creativity acknowledge no borders. Her powers of spontaneous creativity are more bountiful than it is fair to confer on one person. Witness and marvel.
Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntál in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – now the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Her mother Ludmila was a pre-school teacher who spent most of her life with her family; her father Koloman Bitto – Bittová is the surname’s female form – was a musician strongly influenced by the land of his birth – southern Slovakia. His main instruments were string bass, cimbalom, guitar, and trumpet. This exceptional ability to play almost any instrument he laid his hands on, whether performing in classical or folk music styles, proved a major influence on his three daughters as they grew up. Both of Iva’s sisters – her older sister Ida and her younger sister Regina – are professional drama and music performers.
During Iva’s studies at the Music Conservatory in Brno, Iva took part-time engagements as an actress and musician at Brno’s Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose On A String Theater) and acted in radio, TV and movie productions. Later on, while working full time in theater, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her father’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an instrumentalist and by composing her own music.
In 1982, Iva started studying with Professor Rudolf Šťastný, the primarius (first violin) of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years the violin has become her life’s passion and the most inspiring musical instrument in her professional life. Iva firmly believes that, as playing the violin places extreme demands on musicians, the composer’s work depends utterly on commitment and diligence.
After living in the countryside near Brno for 17 years, Iva relocated her personal and professional life in 2007 to upstate New York.
About Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can is dedicated to making music new. Since its first Marathon concert in 1987, Bang on a Can has been creating an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found. With adventurous programs, it commissions new composers, performs, presents, and records new work, develops new audiences, and educates the musicians of the future. Bang on a Can is building a world in which powerful new musical ideas flow freely across all genres and borders. Bang on a Can plays “a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn’t concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come” (The New York Times).
“When we started Bang on a Can in 1987, in an art gallery in SoHo, we never imagined that our one-day, 12-hour marathon festival of mostly unknown music would morph into a giant international organization dedicated to the support of experimental music, wherever we would find it,” write Bang on a Can Co-Founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. “But it has, and we are so gratified to be still hard at work, all these years later. The reason is really clear to us – we started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act—that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context. Our commitment to changing the environment for this music has kept us busy and growing for the last 27 years, and we are not done yet.”
Current projects include the annual Bang on a Can Marathon; The People’s Commissioning Fund, a membership program to commission emerging composers; the Bang on a Can All-Stars, who tour to major festivals and concert venues around the world every year; recording projects; the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, a professional development program for young composers and performers led by today’s pioneers of experimental music; Asphalt Orchestra, Bang on a Can’s extreme street band that offers mobile performances re-contextualizing unusual music; Found Sound Nation, a new technology-based musical outreach program now partnering with the State Department of the United States of America to create OneBeat, a revolutionary, post-political residency program that uses music to bridge the gulf between young American musicians and young musicians from developing countries; cross-disciplinary collaborations and projects with DJs, visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and more. Each new program has evolved to answer specific challenges faced by today’s musicians, composers and audiences, in order to make innovative music widely accessible and wildly received. Bang on a Can’s inventive and aggressive approach to programming and presentation has created a large and vibrant international audience made up of people of all ages who are rediscovering the value of contemporary music.
# # #
