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Event
The Art of Song
What: The Art of Song
When: Friday, June 5th, 2020 7:30PM
Where: Brooklyn Historical Society 128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Who: Justine Aronson, Gilda Lyons, soprano; Suzanne DuPlantis, Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano; James Reese, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Michael Brofman, Laura Ward, piano
Program: Daron Hagen: The Art of Song (World Premiere)
Tickets: $15/$25 available at brooklynartsongsociety.org
On Friday, June 5st, BASS concludes its mainstage series at the Brooklyn Historical Society with the world premiere of Daron Hagens The Art of Song, co-commissioned with Philadelphias LyricFest. An evening-length cornucopia of song for six singers and two pianists, this monumental work is a celebration of one of Americas most important living composers of song as well as a perfect culmination of BASSs first decade. The work includes settings of over a dozen poets, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Reuben Dario, and many more. The composer gives a pre-concert lecture at 7:00PM
About Daron Hagen: Critically-acclaimed composer, operatic polymath, and writer Daron Hagen (b. 1961, Milwaukee, WI) is the creator of five symphonies, a dozen concertos, 13 operas, reams of chamber music and more than 350 art songs. A composer born to write operas (Chicago Tribune) whose music is dazzling, unsettling, exuberant, and heroic (The New Yorker), Hagens music represents a considerable artistic achievement of uncompromising seriousness (Times Literary Supplement). His theatrical audacity, and gift for big, sweeping tunes (New York Times) underpin work that is both highly original and gripping; restless, questioning music that never loses its heart. (Opera Now Magazine). Opera News describes his opera Amelia as one of the 20 best operas of the 21st century; NATS Journal of Singing calls him the finest American composer of vocal music in his generation. To say that Daron Hagen is a remarkable musician is to underrate him. Daron is music, wrote Ned Rorem in Opera News. His ruthlessly honest and beautifully written memoir, Duet With the Past (McFarland, April 2019) takes him from his haunted childhood to the upper echelons of musical life in New York and Europe (Tim Page).
In fall 2018 Hagen wrote the score, story, libretto, filmed and edited three ninety-minute, simultaneously projected films, and directed the premiere of his Orson Welles-inspired multi-media opera Orson Rehearsed at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago featuring his own New Mercury Collective and the Fifth House Ensemble, produced by the Chicago College of the Performing Arts as part of an ongoing commitment to develop and produce Hagen-directed premieres of his operas9/10 (April 2020), The Deputy (April 2021) and beyond. Other recent highlights include his own productions of A Woman in Morocco for Kentucky Opera, and his musical I Hear America Singing for the Skylight Music Theater, as well as the premiere of his Symphony No. 5 for the Phoenix Symphony and new piano trios for the Horszowski and Prometheus Trios, among others.
Commissioned to commemorate the anniversaries of the founding of the New York Philharmonic (Philharmonia; 150th), Yaddo (Angels; 100th), ASCAP (Heliotrope; 75th), and the Curtis Institute (Much Ado; 75th), Hagen has created dozens of orchestral and theatrical works for the Seattle Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, and other major orchestras and opera companies (Seattle Opera, Princeton Atelier, Madison Opera, Sarasota Opera, Kentucky Opera, Opera Festival of Pittsburgh, Skylight Music Theater); concertos (Gary Graffman, Jeffrey Khaner, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson), five symphonies (Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Oakland, Albany, Phoenix), song cycles (Paul Kreider, Paul Sperry, the Kings Singers, Ashley Putnam); and dozens of chamber, band, and choral works. Hagen is a frequent conductor, collaborative pianist, librettist, and stage director of his own theatrical works who has worked with Leonard Bernstein, Ken Cazan, Michael Christie, Lara Downes, JoAnn Falletta, Nathan Gunn, Kate Lindsey, Michael Morgan, Robert Orth, Gerard Schwarz, Leonard Slatkin, and Stephen Wadsworth.
A Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a former Trustee of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, he serves as a Distinguished Mentor for Composers Now. He served as artistic director and chair of faculty for the Seasons Music Festival (2005-13), and as president of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation. Hagen made his debut as a stage director with Kentucky Opera and has directed productions at Symphony Space in New York City, the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the McCarter Theater in Princeton (New York Stories, The Antient Concert, A Woman in Morocco).
Hagen has received the prestigious Academy Award (2015) and the Charles Ives Fellowship (1983) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Guggenheim Prize; the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize; the Columbia University Bearns Prize; the ASCAP-Nissim Prize, and both the ASCAP Samuel Barber and Irving Berlin Scholarships; two Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residencies; the Camargo Foundation Residency; the Barlow Endowment Prize & Commission: the Gelin Tanglewood Fellowship; and development awards from ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, the Readers Digest Fund, and Opera America.
Born in Wisconsin, Hagen studied composition with Ned Rorem at the Curtis Institute and David Diamond at the Juilliard School, and then worked privately with Lukas Foss and Leonard Bernstein. During the 90s, he worked as a copyist and editor for numerous concert composers and Broadway shows, including Elliot Carter, Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Disney; he also taught for a decade at Bard College, and served on the faculties of the Curtis Institute, New York University, and the Princeton Atelier, among others. He now divides his time between composing, directing, and writing, co-chairs the composition program at the Wintergreen Music Festival, and serves as a member of the Artist Faculty at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Hagens music is recorded on Sony Classical, Naxos, Albany, CRI, Arsis, Klavier, Affetto, Sierra Classical, Bridge, and other labels. Scott Levine represents him as a stage director; and his music is published and / or licensed by Peermusic Classical, Burning Sled, Carl Fischer, Schott, and E.C. Schirmer. A Manhattanite for 28 years, he and his wife, composer Gilda Lyons, moved Upstate in 2011 to raise their sons.
About Brooklyn Art Song Society: The Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) will enter its 10th season of first-rate music making in the Fall of 2019, having earned a reputation as one of the preeminent organizations dedicated to the vast repertoire of poetry set to music. Its mission is to preserve art songs direct expressiveness and emotional honesty for todays audience and future generations.
The New York Times called BASS a company well worth watching and Voce di Meche hailed, as long as BASS is around we do not need to worry about the future of art song in the USA. New York Classical Review called BASS superb, and Opera News wrote, Brooklyn Art Song Society keeps the intimate recital alive with innovative programming. The New Yorker praised BASS as invaluable and uncompromisingly dedicated to continuing the traditions of classical art song, both old and new.
BASSs innovative and ambitious programming has reached thousands of audience members- lifelong classical music and first-time concert-goers alike. Past programs include performances of the complete songs of Charles Ives and Hugo Wolf, and multi-concert surveys of the art song canon including Britannica, Wien, and La France. Committed to keeping art song relevant in our time BASS has collaborated closely with and premiered works by important living composers such as Harrison Birtwistle, Tom Cipullo, Michael Djupstrom, Daniel Felsenfeld, Herschel Garfein, Daron Hagen, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, Lowell Liebermann, David Ludwig, James Matheson, Harold Meltzer, Kurt Rohde, Glen Roven, Andrew Staniland, and Scott Wheeler, In May 2015, BASS released its first album, New Voices on Roven Records, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard Traditional Classical charts.
Highlights from the 10th anniversary season include Home, a five-concert celebration of what it means to be from a place and of a people, a continuation of The Dichter Project featuring iconic settings of poetry by Friedrich Rückert, and the world-premiere of Daron Hagens The Art of Song, a joint project with Philadelphias LyricFest. In addition to monthly concerts in Brooklyn, BASS has traveled to Philadelphia, Kansas City, Portland, ME, San Francisco, and Seattle and has held residencies at University of Notre Dame, University of California-Davis, University of Chicago, and Ithaca College. Brooklyn Art Song Society is proud to make the Brooklyn Historical Society its primary venue and present a free annual concert at the Brooklyn Public Library. BASS also presents monthly outreach for seniors lacking cultural access through Heights and Hills Senior Services. BASSs artist roster features over 40 of the finest young interpreters of art song. For more information visit www.brooklynartsongsociety.org.
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LocationThe Brooklyn Historical Society (View)
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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