Ensemble Connect
Performers
Ensemble Connect
- Amir Farsi, Flute
- Stuart Breczinski, Oboe (Alum)
- Yasmina Spiegelberg, Clarinet
- Nanci Belmont, Bassoon (Alum)
- Cort Roberts, French Horn
- Joanne Kang, Piano
- Rubén Rengel, Violin
- Stephanie Zyzak, Violin
- Halam Kim, Viola
- Laura Andrade, Cello
- Ha Young Jung, Bass (Alum)
Program
TRAD. "Deep River" (arr. Gabriel Chakarji; World Premiere, commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
CHERYL FRANCES-HOAD "The Forgiveness Machine"
RAMEAU Gavotte and Six Doubles (arr. Ryohei Nakagawa)
BEETHOVEN Serenade in D Major, Op. 25
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Nonet in F Minor, Op. 2
Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.
Lead funding has been provided by Marina Kellen French and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Max H. Gluck Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, Hearst Foundations, The Kovner Foundation, Phyllis and Charles Rosenthal, The Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, Beatrice Santo Domingo, and Hope and Robert F. Smith.
Global Ambassadors: Hope and Robert F. Smith, and Maggie and Richard Tsai.
Additional support has been provided by the Arnow Family Fund, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, E.H.A. Foundation, Barbara G. Fleischman, Leslie and Tom Maheras, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, Sarah Billinghurst Solomon and Howard Solomon, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Joyce and George Wein Foundation, Inc.
Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
Ensemble Connect is also supported, in part, by endowment grants from The Kovner Foundation.
At a Glance
TRADITIONAL “Deep River”
Popularized by Harry T. Burleigh in his 1916 collection Jubilee Songs of the USA, this beloved spiritual has since been performed by everyone from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Denyce Graves. It has also been arranged for chamber ensemble by a variety of composers, including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Venezuelan pianist Gabriel Chakarji.
CHERYL FRANCES-HOAD The Forgiveness Machine
For the past two decades, Frances-Hoad has built an extensive and varied catalogue that ranges from chamber music and art songs to large-scale operas, orchestral, and choral works. Much of her music is inspired by extramusical stimuli, which can be as prosaic as a kitchen sponge, or—in the case of the piano trio titled The Forgiveness Machine—as deeply personal as the death of a loved one.
RAMEAU Gavotte and Six Doubles
The greatest figure in early 18th-century French music, Rameau was equally renowned as a composer and theorist. In this arrangement for woodwind quintet by bassoonist Ryohei Nakagawa, one of Rameau’s stately harpsichord gavottes is followed by six doubles, or variations, that feature each of the instruments in turn.
BEETHOVEN Serenade in D Major, Op. 25
In the early Classical period, “serenade” generally connoted a multi-movement orchestral work. By the late 1700s, however, serenades and divertimenti for small chamber ensembles were common, filling the public’s demand for lighter works. An early review of Op. 25 suggests that the composer hit the mark: “Beethoven’s name itself recommends this very beautiful serenade, which is not hard to play and consists of seven major movements of a very agreeable romantic character.”
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Nonet in F Minor, Op. 2
Coleridge-Taylor is one of few Black composers of classical music whose remarkable talents were recognized in his time, earning the respect and support of such titans of British music as Charles Villiers Stanford, George Grove, and Edward Elgar. The Nonet is one of several chamber works Coleridge-Taylor wrote under Stanford’s tutelage at the Royal College in the early 1890s. Its Brahmsian flavor shows the same deep affinity for the German Romantic as many contemporaneous composers at the time.