Tickets
About the Show
Theo Bleckmann presents a collaboration between the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and celebrated composer and vocalist Lisa Bielawa to perform a selection of her works.
About the Artists
ACME has been performing and interpreting new music for over 10 years, and at National Sawdust will begin exploring the world of creating original music as well. A number of musicians in ACME also identify as composers, and an equal number identify as primarily performers. During their National Sawdust residency, ACME members will work together in making new music – individually and collaboratively, those who compose for public performance, those who compose privately, and those who have never composed. On December 20, they will present their new works and works-in-progress – a mix of composition and improvisation incorporating percussion, electric guitar, bass, and electronics – to the public for the first time.
Players include Timo Andres, piano/keys; Chris Thompson, electronics/percussion; Yuki Numata Resnick, violin; ACME artistic director Clarice Jensen, cello/bass; Aaron Roche, guitar/electronics/synths; and Grey Mcmurray, guitar.
Other Spring Highlights
Josh Green & The Cyborg Orchestra
March 2, 2017 - 10:00pm Josh Green & The Cyborg Orchestra will take on full-blooded human form for the live debut and release of their irreverent album, Telepathy & Bop — a quirky, colorful, approach to melding modern jazz and contemporary classical music.
Doug Fitch’s Art Gallery Variety Show
March 3, 2017 - 10:00pm This being the first edition of Doug Fitch’s Art Gallery Variety Show, we begin in the bubble of comfort of our own little room – so nice to come home to – only to find certain outside influences more pernicious and pugnacious than one might have envisioned. The demons of disingenuity are swarming about, filling the void with fallacious authenticity and threatening our exceptionalist contentment. Following a story-esque through-line presented in songful vignettes and other musical vehicles, some of the city’s most talented performers and cultural barometers inhabit National Sawdust, offering uplift in this downful time.
The New American Songbook
January 11, 2017 - 7:00pm The quarterly web magazine for experimental music, Sound American, moves from the text to the sonic in order to answer the question: “What does a truly modern American Songbook sound like?”
Sxip Shirey presents: Trevor Wishart
March 25, 2017 - 6:30pm Encounters is an 8-channel sound-surround piece based on speaking voices recorded in the North East of England where Trevor Wishart was A.C.E. Composer-in-Residence from October 1st, 2006 to September 2009, based at the University of Durham. The piece is constructed in 4 Acts of approximately 20 minutes each, combining portraits of individual speakers (accompanied by sounds and imaginary instruments derived from the voices themselves) with computer animation of the entire community of voices - speech that waltzes, speech that locks in harmony, clouds of speech that circle the audience, culminating with speech that transforms into song. The piece was finally completed on January 1st 2011.
ETHEL’s HomeBaked Round III
March 8, 2017 - 7:00pm The musically omnivorous string quartet ETHEL, whom The New York Times has described as “indefatigable and eclectic” and The New Yorker has deemed “vital and brilliant,” returns to National Sawdust to present the third chapter of ETHEL’s HomeBaked project. With its focus on emerging NYC-based composers, the project, which began in 2010, has already produced eight compositions, many of which have entered the quartet’s repertoire.
Bridging the Gap IV
April 30, 2017 - 7:00pm Composers from the Yale School of Music: William Gardiner, Paul Kerekes, David Lang, Hannah Lash, Daniel Schlosberg, and Christopher Theofanidis.
Bluegrass Situation: Michael Daves Plays Orchids and Violence
March 23, 2017 - 7:00pm The Bluegrass Situation is thrilled to partner with National Sawdust for a series of intimate performances featuring some of today's best modern roots acts. The first concert in this series will feature Grammy-nominated guitarist and singer Michael Daves.
Women in Music: A Tribute to Mercedes Sosa
March 2, 2017 - 7:00pm Magos Herrera brings together an international line up to celebrate the life and music of the iconic Latin American singer Mercedes Sosa.
Glass @ 80: Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso with Jeffrey Zeigler
March 12, 2017 - 7:00pm Known for his hypnotic performances of traditional Kora (Harp/Lute) music, as well as his cutting edge musical encounters, Kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso is a direct descendent of Jalimadi Wulen Suso, the inventor of the Kora.
Prototype Presents: Funeral Doom Spiritual
January 14, 2017 - 7:00pm Funeral Doom Spiritual is a song of mourning for what Anthony Paul Farley calls “the motionless movement of death through slavery, segregation, and neo-segregation.” This new monodrama composed by M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix draws on themes of apocalypse, end times, and rapture found in Negro Spirituals, what Lamar calls “Doom Spirituals.”
Ferus Festival: Sxip Shirey’s A Bottle of Whiskey and a Handful of Bees
January 9, 2017 - 7:00pm National Sawdust’s in-house record label VIA Records celebrates its release of the new album by composer, producer, interdisciplinary performer, and NS curator Sxip Shirey.
Attacca Quartet: Recently Added
February 19, 2017 - 7:00pm First Prize winners of the 7th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2011, top prizewinners and Listeners’ Choice Award recipients in the 2011 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and winners of the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the 60th annual Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 2006, the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet has become one of America’s premier young performing ensembles.
