|
|
|
|
Pew Center Provides Lead Support for Generate Music
|
|
|
|
Helen Haynes co-curated Generate Music with PRISM Quartet.
|
|
We’re enormously grateful to The Pew Center For Arts & Heritage for awarding lead funding to PRISM Quartet for Generate Music, a new cycle of compositions exploring the ties between Black and Jewish Americans, co-curated with arts leader/visual artist Helen Haynes.
In 2018, PRISM members encountered an exhibition titled “Banned by the Nazis: Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music)” while on tour in Croatia. Its centerpiece was a Nazi poster: a racist caricature of a Black saxophonist wearing a Star of David. The image felt horrifyingly contemporary, as anti-Black and anti-Semitic propaganda proliferate online and white nationalism rises. Generate Music began as a response to the emotions evoked by this image, but grew into a larger framework. The project transforms the label “degenerate” into a call to generate a new body of music celebrating the endurance, contributions, and intersections of two diasporic peoples.
About the project, Helen writes: “Music is an emotion that binds all of us. In struggle, sorrow, and pain. In joy, and exaltation. Such is the bond between us, the African American and the Jewish people, and is the narrative of this work. There is a knowing of great suffering and of resolve to overcome. We dwell in the castle of our culture, ancient and modern, reaching for the future. As the musicians speak to each other, Generate Music heals wounds to celebrate our bond and tell our story.”
Generate Music features performances and new works by Tyshawn Sorey (percussion), David Krakauer (clarinet), and Pew Fellows Susan Lankin-Watts (trumpet/vocals), Diane Monroe (violin), and Ursula Rucker (spoken word), with additional commissions from Fred Wesley, Myra Melford, and Yotam Haber. The project includes panel discussions hosted by the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, a broadcast on WWFM, and an album on PRISM’s own XAS Records label, distributed worldwide by Symphonic and Naxos Music Library. Generate Music will premiere in Philly with a repeat performance in New York City in 2024, our 40th anniversary year!
|
|
|
Ursula Rucker, David Krakauer, Tyshawn Sorey, Myra Melford
|
|
|
Susan Lankin-Watts, Fred Wesley, Yotam Haber, Diane Monroe
|
|
Copland Fund Supports Roberto Sierra Recording
|
|
|
The Aaron Copland Fund has awarded a grant to PRISM Quartet in support of recording Graffiti II by Roberto Sierra on XAS Records. Graffiti II was commissioned by the Musical Fund Society for PRISM in celebration of the Society’s 200th anniversary, and premiered by the Quartet at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts last May, with upcoming performances in Ann Arbor and New York City. Sierra writes, “My work is evocative of graffiti, with the juxtaposition of highly contrasting gestures, rapidly shifting colors and dynamics, and swooping gestures. Graffiti II portrays graffiti’s immediacy and lyricism in some movements, but also its radical, aggressive, uncontained quality in others, a sense that the music, like the artwork, is spilling out of the frame.”
|
|
Support from the Amphion Foundation, Ditson Fund, and New Music USA
|
|
|
PRISM is honored to receive recent grants for general operations from the The Amphion Foundation, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the New Music USA Organizational Development Fund. Support from institutional funders and individual donors like you is vital to sustaining PRISM’s creative work. We are grateful for your consideration!
|
|
Indiana University Residency
48 Hours
|
|
|
PRISM Quartet will be in residence with the composition department of Indiana University Bloomington from November 4-6 for a weekend-long project called 48 Hours. Composition students will have an intense two-day period in which to create works for PRISM, which will be premiered on November 6 at 7:00 PM in a live-streamed concert. On November 5 at 1:00 PM, PRISM presents a recital of works previously commissioned by the Quartet from Melissa Aldana, Roshanne Etezady, Martin Bresnick, and Julia Wolfe. Aldana's work, Reflections, features guest saxophonist and IU Professor of Music Tom Walsh! Both performances are free and open to the public and will be held in the Recital Hall at Merrill Hall, located on the ground floor of 1201 E. Third Street in Bloomington.
|
|
|
Melissa Aldana, Roshanne Etezady, Julia Wolfe, Martin Bresnick
|
|
PRISM Quartet Meets Bang on a Can: Coming to NYC and Philly
|
|
|
We recently presented PRISM Quartet Meets Bang on a Can in Southeast Michigan. The program featured the world premiere of Michael Gordon’s In a delirium alongside Cha by Julia Wolfe (previously commissioned by PRISM), and Revolutionary Etudes by David Lang. Repeat performances are coming to Philly on Jan 22 @ 7 PM and NYC on January 23 @ 7:30 PM. Save the dates, and more info coming soon!
|
|
|
|
Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon.
|
|
PRISM Quartet is now booking engagements for the 2023-24 season. Touring programs include stand-alone recitals and collaborations with an astounding range of guest artists and ensembles. Click here to learn more.
“An eminent classical saxophone quartet with
an unquenchable thirst for intrigue and adventure.”
— Time Out New York
|
|
|
|
photo by Ara Howrani
|
|
The PRISM Quartet seeks to place the saxophone in unexpected contexts, chart fresh musical territory, and to challenge, inspire, and move audiences. “A bold ensemble that set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets” (The New York Times), PRISM has been presented by Carnegie Hall and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; appeared as soloists with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, and conducted residencies at the nation’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute and the Oberlin Conservatory. PRISM has commissioned hundreds of works by composers at all stages of their careers, from talented students to recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship. PRISM’s discography is extensive, with releases on Albany, BMOP/Sound, ECM, innova, Koch International, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, Orange Mountain, and its own label, XAS Records.
“PRISM has presided over what future music
history textbooks might just look back on as a
golden era for the sax quartet medium.”
— NewMusicBox
*
|
|
|
MEDIA INQUIRIES
For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews,
please contact Matt Browne at browne@prismquartet.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
