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Celebrates First Anniversary September 16, 2014 NEW YORK, NEW YORK: AUGUST 28, 2014 SubCulture, the music and performing arts venue in downtown Manhattan, approaches its one-year anniversary with a host of peaks and milestones from an inaugural concert season lauded by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine, among other publications. Highlights include acclaimed creative partnerships with 92nd Street Y and the New York Philharmonic; presentations by National Public Radio and the Aspen Music Festival and School; and performances by Jason Robert Brown, Yefim Bronfman, Ramin Karimloo, the King’s Singers, Mary Lambert, Richard Bona, Zoë Keating and Chelsea Peretti. In celebration of the venue’s one-year anniversary, SubCulture announces its Composer-In-Residence Program — a two-year residency designed to nurture the creation of new music and provide a platform for presenting it. Debuting in this role is Gregg Kallor, a multifaceted composer and pianist whose works showcase a dexterous ability to navigate traditional and modern music, often fusing multiple genres into a new and exciting whole. Composing, performing and curating a three-concert series, Kallor has selected four varying artists to join him for the world premiere of three works throughout his first season as Composer-In-Residence at the downtown venue. PIANO MUSIC Featuring Kallor’s remarkable piano suite based on his personal account of life in New York City , A Single Noon, and the world premiere of a work celebrating the first anniversary of SubCulture, this solo performance showcases Kallor’s virtuosity as a composer, pianist and improviser. SONGS Celebrating National Poetry Month and the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats, Kallor’s exquisite song settings of texts by this Irish bard and Kallor’s highly-lauded Emily Dickinson songs are performed by acclaimed singers, baritone Matthew Worth and mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala, in a program that also includes the world premiere of a new song cycle. CHAMBER MUSIC Cellist Joshua Roman and violinist Miranda Cuckson bring the perfect blend of soaring lyricism and heart-pounding drive by joining Kallor for the world premiere of a trio piece alongside performances of Short Stories (violin and piano) and Undercurrent (cello and piano). ABOUT GREGG KALLOR Gregg Kallor is a composer and pianist whose music fuses the classical and jazz traditions he loves into a new, deeply personal language. His recent solo recording, A Single Noon, is a musical tableau of life in New York City that evokes moments of caffeinated bliss, embarrassing subway mishaps, and the buzzing energy of a city driven by dynamic, thoughtful, talented, and slightly crazy people. Fred Hersch calls A Single Noon “the work of an extraordinary pianist, a composer of great distinction and a true conceptualist… This ambitious and unique suite takes us somewhere that is very deeply heartfelt and dazzlingly executed. This is 21st-century music that has clearly absorbed the past and looks to a bright and borderless musical future.” Kallor premiered A Single Noon at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2011, the same year he won an Aaron Copland Award for composition.
Kallor’s previous album, Exhilaration – Dickinson and Yeats Songs, features his song-settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, and Christina Rossetti sung by mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala. Opera News wrote: “Kallor knows how to make these words sing, and Zabala gives perfect flight to them.” His first album, There’s a Rhythm, is a trio recording with bassist Chris Van Voorst Van Beest and drummer Kendrick Scott. “Kallor can carry a poetic mood right to the edge of sorrow, always sounding lyrical and moving.” (The Hartford Courant) Kallor collaborated with filmmaker Alan McIntyre Smith to produce two music videos set to movements from A Single Noon: “Espresso Nirvana” and “Broken Sentences,” which features the 88 artist-designed pianos that Sing For Hope placed in parks and public spaces all around NYC from June 1-15, 2013, where anyone could play them. The Abby Whiteside Foundation presented Kallor’s Carnegie Hall debut in Weill Recital Hall in 2007. Harris Goldsmith wrote: “It took but a few impeccably shaped phrases to make it plain that Kallor is a formidably well-trained technician and a master of stylish proportion as well… This superb recital debut truly established a new, important voice in our musical annals.” Kallor received an Aaron Copland Award for composition in 2011; he wrote a concerto for piano and orchestra during his residency at the home of the late eminent American composer. Kallor (pronounced “KAY-ler”) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in West Hartford, Connecticut. He began improvising on the piano in his home as soon as he could walk over to it, started classical piano lessons when he was six, and added jazz lessons a few years later. He graduated from Tufts University with a degree in American Studies. Kallor lives in New York City. For more information, please visit: www.GreggKallor.com ABOUT SUBCULTURE SubCulture For tickets, please call 212-533-5470 or email [email protected]
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