For Immediate Release – The NoHo/East Village based Sheen Center for Thought and Culture presents its concluding concert of its Spring Concert Series curated by Marc Kaplan of SubCulture, exploring the gamut of chamber music from classical to the contemporary eras. On June 5, Gregg Kallor rounds out the season with the world premiere performance of his piano quintet, performed by the composer and the acclaimed Attacca Quartet.
“We’re living in a golden age of string quartets…It’s hard to disagree when you hear the vibrant young players in New York’s Attacca Quartet.”
– NPR
Kallor’s new work was inspired by the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Kallor stated, “Every year on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I spend some time with his speeches. Dr. King’s birthday is a few days before mine, and this year I turned 39 – the same age that Dr. King was when he was assassinated. I’ve never felt more fear or uncertainty about the way we communicate with each other and what that means for our future than I have these past few months, and I find myself increasingly drawn to Dr. King’s message of compassion, and inclusiveness, and social and economic equality for everyone. My new composition for piano and string quartet is inspired by Dr. King’s singular faith in our capacity to love and to do better, and I hope the music conveys the impact that his words have had on me.”
“[Kallor] writes music of unaffected emotional directness. Leavened with flashes of oddball humor, his works succeed in drawing in the listener – not as consumer or worshipful celebrant, but in a spirit of easygoing camaraderie.”
– The New York Times
Some Not Too Distant Tomorrow is commissioned by The Classical Recording Foundation and funded by a gift from Linda and Stuart Nelson. This is one of a number of recent commissions for Kallor, including his acclaimed monodrama based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, as well as a new work for string orchestra commissioned by Town Hall Seattle.
GREGG KALLOR & THE ATTACCA QUARTET – WORLD PREMIERE
June 5, 2017 at 7:30PM
Gregg Kallor, piano
The Attacca Quartet
Tickets: $35
More Information
Some Not Too Distant Tomorrow
1. The fierce urgency of now
2. The road ahead
3. Into the hearts of humanity
4. Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars
5. Some not too distant tomorrow
1. The fierce urgency of now
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
–from MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech
delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
2. The road ahead
“And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”
–from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
(Harper & Row, 1967, reprinted by Beacon Press, 2010)
3. Into the hearts of humanity
“And here was a man of nonviolence [Gandhi], falling at the hand of a man of violence. Here was a man of love falling at the hands of a man of hate. This seems the way of history… And the man who shot Gandhi only shot him into the hearts of humanity. And just as when Abraham Lincoln was shot – mark you, for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi was shot, that is, the attempt to heal the wounds of a divided nation – when the great leader Abraham Lincoln was shot, Secretary Stanton stood by the body of this leader and said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” And that same thing can be said about Mahatma Gandhi now. He belongs to the ages, and he belongs especially to this age, an age drifting once more to its doom. And he has revealed to us that we must learn to go another way.”
–from MLK’s “Palm Sunday sermon on Mohandas K. Gandhi”
delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama on March 22, 1959
4. Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars
“The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars…
–from MLK’s “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech
delivered April 3, 1968 at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple Church in Memphis, TN
5. Some not too distant tomorrow
“Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”
–from Letter From Birmingham Jail
published in Why We Can’t Wait (Harper & Row, 1963, reprinted by Beacon Press, 2010)
For more information about the Spring season please visit:
http://sheencenter.org/music/classical/
ABOUT THE SHEEN CENTER FOR THOUGHT & CULTURE
Named after the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, best known for his popular radio and TV ministry in the 1950s and 60s, The Sheen Center is a project of the Archdiocese of New York and showcases works that affirm the highest values of the human spirit through the performing and visual arts, lectures and exhibits. The state-of-the-art complex has a 270-seat proscenium theater equipped with five-camera high-definition Livestream capability and a multi-track recording studio with thirty-two onstage inputs; an 80-seat black box theater; four rehearsal studios; and an art gallery.
ABOUT MARC KAPLAN
Marc Kaplan is a music entrepreneur, educator, conductor and composer. A lifelong lover of the arts, in 2013 he co-founded SubCulture, a music and performing arts venue in downtown Manhattan that has garnered praise from The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine and more. Marc has always believed that the arts have the ability to change lives, and he’s continuously used that passion — as both an entrepreneur and an educator — to support the emergence and growth of arts institutions.
After graduating from the George Washington University, Kaplan became a music educator, garnering numerous awards and accolades for ensembles under his direction. Additionally, he has been an artistic director and guest conductor at music festivals and with such established organizations as the West Hartford Summer Arts Festival, The Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). Kaplan lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife, Betsy, and their daughter, Zoe.
