Lucy Dhegrae
"More Beautiful Than Words Can Tell"
6pm doors • 7pm show
About
The Processing Series, from vocalist and 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence Lucy Dhegrae, was sprung from a prompt to four composers: write a piece for voice that deals with an aspect of trauma recovery. This four-part concert series features works by Eve Beglarian, Angélica Negrón, Osnat Netzer, and Katherine Young, written for and performed by Lucy Dhegrae.
Lucy has been praised for her “vocal versatility and an omnivorous curiosity” (New York Times). In addition to her work as the founder and director of the Resonant Bodies Festival, an international presenter of boundary-pushing contemporary music vocalists, Lucy is an active advocate for the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN.
The first concert in The Processing Series, More Beautiful Than Words Can Tell, addresses the struggle to articulate an experience after trauma. It features the world premiere of Osnat Netzer’s Philomelos, which explores the “unspeakable” residual effects of trauma through the lens of Shakespeare’s character Lavinia, from Titus Andronicus. This premiere is accompanied by a collection of works that speak to these themes of communicative paralysis and explore the body’s ability to communicate beyond language: Jason Eckardt’s Dithyramb, Bethany Younge’s Her Disappearance, Maria Stankova’s Rapana, Vinko Globokar’s ?Corporel, and Caleb Burhans’ No.
Join Lucy Dhegrae for the first of four performances exploring how music — and the human voice — can transcend language to jumpstart the process of untangling that is trauma recovery. She shares the stage with percussionist Amy Garapic, violinist Pala Garcia, pianist Nathaniel LaNasa, and composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist Jerome Ellis.
Tickets
The Artists
Mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae is “everywhere new music is being sung” (New York Classical Review): she has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Talea Ensemble, and the Albany Symphony, among others, at venues such as Miller Theatre, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center.
Lucy regularly premieres new vocal works and operas, and has worked closely with composers such as Unsuk Chin, Jason Eckardt, Susan Botti, Alexandra Vrebalov, and Sky Macklay. Her opera premieres include Trillium J by Anthony Braxton, Andy: A Popera (Bearded Ladies Cabaret), A Marvelous Order by Judd Greenstein, and Ashley Fure’s The Force of Things. Lucy’s festival appearances include Darmstadt (Germany), Klangspuren (Austria), Mostly Mozart, Bard Music Festival, Gesher Music Festival (St. Louis), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (as a Britten-Pears Young Artist).
Lucy is the 2018 recipient of University of Michigan School of Music’s Emerging Artist Award, and among the first cohort of fellows with Turn the Spotlight, a new mentorship program for young professionals. As “adventurous mezzo-soprano” and “raconteur” (New Yorker) she directs Resonant Bodies Festival, an international presenter of boundary-pushing contemporary music vocalists, which she founded in 2013. She has taught at SoundSCAPE (Cesena, Italy), Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), and Bard College Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and has been invited to present lectures at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, CUNY’s Graduate Center, NYU, and William Paterson University. She graduated from the Bard College Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program (MM ’12) as well as the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (BM ’08), and is a core member of the new music ensemble Contemporaneous.
Percussionist Amy Garapic is an energetic soloist, chamber musician, educator, and adventurous producer who explores the role of percussion in today’s music and culture. With a passion for the creation of new work, her performing is split between the new music powerhouse Contemporaneous and the Brooklyn-based avant-pop percussion trio TIGUE. She has worked closely generating new sounds with composers Robert Honstein, Jason Treuting, and John Luther Adams; has performed alongside So Percussion, NEXUS, Bang on Can’s Asphalt Orchestra, and pop icon David Byrne; and has traveled to make music in Jordan, Mexico, Paris, and most recently India, alongside Grammy Award winner AR Rahman.
Pala Garcia is a critically acclaimed violinist, balancing a full performance schedule with her work as an educator and advocate of community engagement. As the co-founder of Longleash, an “expert young trio” (Strad) specializing in contemporary music, she also co-leads the Loretto Project, a graduate-level composition seminar and concert series in Kentucky. Garcia has performed as a guest on numerous occasions in some of the world’s finest ensembles, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Ensemble Modern. Garcia has been active in community engagement projects led by Carnegie Hall and the Weill Music Institute since 2010, working with a diverse group of New Yorkers to create music in environments that need music the most, including prisons, shelters, and hospitals.
Osnat Netzer /osˈnat ˈnɛtsɛʁ/ is a multi-faceted musician based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Born in Haifa, Israel, she developed a love of music at a very young age, and trained intensively as a composer, pianist, and singer-songwriter throughout her high school years, military service, and undergraduate studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. She came to the United States in 2003 for graduate studies in composition, music theory, and piano at Mannes, and continued her studies in composition at New England Conservatory, where she earned her doctorate in 2011. Her highly theatrical and engaging compositions have been performed in Israel, France, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Performers of her music include Firebird Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Kaprizma Ensemble (Israel), Ensemble Consart (Germany), saxophonist Geoffrey Landman, and bass David Salsbery Fry.
Jerome Ellis is an Afro-Caribbean composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and theater artist originally from Virginia Beach and based in New York City. His concerts, performances, and texts are invitations to healing, transcendence, communion, and deep listening. Through an interdisciplinary practice that focuses on oral storytelling, improvisation, and the interrelations between speech, silence, disability, and religion, he’s collaborated with choreographers, rappers, playwrights, booksellers, typographers, podcasters, toddlers, and filmmakers. Mr Ellis’ work has been presented or developed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Lincoln Center, and WKCR. He’s a 2019 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a writer-in-residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and a 2015 Fulbright Fellow. Together with childhood friend James Harrison Monaco, he forms one half of the musician-storyteller duo James & Jerome. Their show Ink: A Piece for Museums (co-created with media designer Shawn Duan) was presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival 2019 — the first ever collaboration between the Met and Under the Radar. He’s also a piano tuner and teacher, as well as a translator from Portuguese.
Pianist Nathaniel LaNasa discovers fresh possibilities of sonority and gesture in music — especially in music being written now. He has premiered works for quarter-tone pianos by Dimitri Tymoczko at Princeton, made first recordings of chamber works by Tobias Picker for Tzadik, and workshopped Hannah Lash’s most recent opera at Columbia’s Miller Theatre. Works written for him include Tyler Harrison’s piano concerto, a protest song by Shawn Jaeger, and Molly Joyce’s YouSaidHeSaidSheSaid for voice and singing keyboardist. A consummate collaborator, he has been praised for his “stormy lyricism” (New York Times), his “poise and elegance,” and “deft sense of precision” (Feast of Music).
Exploring intersections of storytelling, speech, and movement, Nate frequently partners with vocalist Lucy Dhegrae. The duo is committed to building a new repertoire that challenges conventions of the voice and piano partnership. They have performed in the crypt of NYC’s Church of the Intercession, at LA ArtShare, and on the Resonant Bodies Festival at Roulette (Brooklyn). Nate also performs regularly with baritone Gregory Feldmann. Together, they took First Prize in the 2019 Joy in Singing International Art Song Competition and will make their Weill Hall debut in February 2020. “The magic,” Nate says, “lies in expanding the spaces of our shared inspiration. For me, it’s all about dancing with the tension and flow of musical dialogue.”
In demand as as opera and vocal coach, Nate accompanied the first performance of William Antoniou’s opera about Alan Turing, Anathema. A staff pianist at the Juilliard School, he plays for a wide range of the voice department’s activities, from the mainstage opera rehearsals to classes in the Artist Diploma of Opera Studies program.
NYC credits include Alice Tully Hall, MoMA, and (le) Poisson Rouge. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, Nate was awarded fellowships at Tanglewood, Music Academy of the West, and Stephanie Blythe’s Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar. This summer he joined the coaching staff at Berlin Opera Academy.
