Weekend of new music

Here is an invitation from Steven Stucky about this weekend's three new music concerts in Barnes Hall.

Barnes Hall will be the scene of a rich offering of contemporary music this weekend. Please mark your calendars now for all three concerts:

IMAGES, ETUDES, AND FANTASY
February 24, 8 p.m.

An "Ensemble-X-style" concert with guest composer Fred Lerdahl and many of our favorite Cornell and IC performers. In addition to Lerdahl's classic sextet from 1985, Fantasy Etudes, the program includes Stephen Hartke's violin-duo showpiece Oh Them Rats Is Mean in My Kitchen delivered with panache by Steven Miahky and Rebecca Ansel, and the world premiere of Xi Wang's Three Images (winner of last year's Ensemble X Competition). Rounding out the concert are two folk-influenced works by Lutoslawski from the 1950s: Dance Preludes in the nonet version, and the piano suite Bucolics in the world premiere of a new arrangement for the same nonet complement.

CORNELL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Chris Younghoon Kim, conductor
February 25, 3 p.m.

Chris Kim will have reminded most of you of this concert already; let me just stress that the program includes Berio's rarely heard Concertino (1949) with soloists Rick Faria and Steven Miahky.

LANDSCAPE WITH BUTTERFLIES AND CRANES
February 25, 8 p.m.
guest artists:
Daria Binkowski, flute
Elinor Frey, cello

This beautiful program of (mostly) recent music for flute and cello, singly and together, will include the chance to hear a complete performance of Kaija Saariaho's stunning Sept Papillons for solo cello, and of Shirish Korde's celebrated solo flute piece Tenderness of Cranes. Works by Cornell composers Stephen Gorbos and Xi Wang will also be featured, as will Cornell's own Emily Green as pianist. These young musicians are rising stars, and their recital is sure to be a memorable occasion. (I have appended the guest artists' biographies below.)

Hope to see you there,
Steven Stucky

Daria Binkowski, flute, is currently pursuing her master's degree at McGill University in Montreal, where she studies with Timothy Hutchins and performs with the Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Denys Bouliane. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2005 at the Eastman School of Music with Bonita Boyd and also had post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Daria was a member of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 2004 to 2006, working with Sydney Hodkinson, Steven Stucky, Marc-André Dalbavie, and Robert Spano. She is currently performing with the East Coast Composers' Ensemble (ECCE), a new ensemble based in New York. Daria has performed at the Heidelberg College New Music Festival (Tiffin, OH), the Women in New Music Festival (Rochester, NY), and the Music of Japan Today Festival (College Park, MD). In March 2006, she performed with members of the St. Louis Symphony in their Pulitzer Foundation contemporary music series. She has also appeared with members of the St. Louis Symphony at the Pulitzer Foundation for Contemporary Art with conductor Pascal Rophe. An avid devotee of contemporary music, Daria performed extensively with Eastman's new-music ensembles and has premiered works of faculty and students in Rochester, New York, and Aspen. In addition to her contemporary music activities, Daria was a member of the 2006 Spoleto Festival Orchestra and has soloed with the New Jersey Symphony, the Brockport Symphony, and the New Amsterdam Symphony. She was also on the administrative board of Eastman's student-run new-music ensemble, OSSIA, and was recently an intern with National Public Radio's Performance Today in Washington, DC.

Cellist Elinor Frey joined the eclectic virtuoso ensemble Quartetto Gelato in December 2005 after receiving a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School the previous May. A native of Seattle, she has studied in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago with renowned teachers including Bonnie Hampton, Hans Jensen, Orlando Cole, and Barbara Mallow. An active recitalist, chamber musician, and teacher, and an advocate of new music, she served as cellist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2004 and 2005. With the New Juilliard Ensemble, she gave the New York premiere of Betsy Jolas' cello concerto Wanderlied in April 2005, and she recorded a CD in London of new chamber works. As winner of the 2006 Contemporary Record Society Competition, she will record Lutoslawski's Sacher-Variation, a work she also played at the Cornell University Lutoslawski conference. in November 2005.
Elinor has attended the Kneisel Hall Music Festival, Yale University's Norfolk Contemporary Session, and the Fontainebleau Music Festival in France, and she was a participant in the July 2006 London master classes of Ralph Kirshbaum. Elinor performs on 115-year-old French cello on loan to her as the winner of the Virtu Foundation competition. After winning the prestigious 2004 Ladies Musical Club of Seattle competition, she gave a concert tour of western Washington State in September 2004. As a fully accredited Suzuki cello teacher, Elinor has been on faculty at the Music Institute of Long Island and the Hudson River School of Music and guest faculty at the Suzuki String School of Guelph. She now lives in Toronto.