November 5, 2021 @ Berliner Festspiele 

ON DEMAND

Nate Wooley: “Seven Storey Mountain VI”
​Trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley has been building the size and scope of this project through numerous iterations over the last decade, incorporating taped sections from previous versions into each successive installment. Last year he released the sixth and most impressive recording. The aim is always the same more or less, constructing a momentous structured improvisation that aspires to an ecstatic climax followed by a cathartic release, and “Seven Storey Mountain” achieves this goal brilliantly. Within the dramatic atmosphere of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Wooley presents the latest version of this epic with a knock-out line-up featuring some of his regular New York cohorts including violinist C. Spencer Yeh, and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, with an impressive bunch of European fellow travelers such as pianist Håvard Wiik and drummer Steve Heather. Through a series of time-blocked sequences, the music grows from ambient calm into cycling post-Terry Riley minimalism, careening and building into a dense wall of freely improvised, almost psychedelic mayhem. The piece features several female voices, including section leader Megan Schubert, interpolating the words and melody from the proto-feminist Peggy Seeger song “Reclaim the Night”, and offering the haunting, defiant coda, “You can’t scare me”, borrowed from the Bobbie McGhee folk tune “Union Maid”.

Nate Wooley, trumpet
Samara Lubelski, violin
C. Spencer Yeh, violin
Ryan Sawyer, drums
Teun Verbruggen, drums
Steve Heather, drums
Susan Alcorn, pedal steel guitar
Julien Desprez, guitar
Ava Mendoza, guitar
Bram de Looze, piano
Håvard Wiik, piano
Megan Schubert, voice
Ayşe Cansu Tanrıkulu, voice
Laura Winkler, voice
Dora Osterloh, voice
Friederike Merz, voice 
Christie Finn, voice

"The story tells how Pythagoras favors his power over truth, with fatal outcomes. Hailed as a god by his cult-like followers, he preaches that the universe is built in harmonious proportions. Yet, by applying the Pythagorean Theorem, his student finds irrational numbers, jeopardizing this theory. The opera is about speaking truth to power in a restless society, unsure about democracy and looking for a leader. These themes resonate today as much as they did 2,500 years ago."

https://www.rubennaeff.com/pythagoras

Music: Ruben Naeff
Libretto: Joep Stapel
Conductor: David Bloom
Hippasos: Megan Schubert
Pheme / Cylon: Mellissa Hughes
Narrator / Milo: Jeffrey Gavett
Pythagoras: Dashon Burton
All singers double as members of the chorus.
Flutes: Kelli Kathman
Clarinets 1+2: Ken Thomson
French Horn: David Byrd-Marrow
Percussion: Amy Garapic
Acoustic guitar: Taylor Levine
Piano: David Friend
Violin: Pauline Kim-Harris
Double bass: Pat Swoboda
Recording: Jascha Narveson
Sound effects: Ed RosenBerg III
Music engraving: Derek Johnson
Artwork by Sarah Jonker

​

Outdoor concert at the Brooklyn Public Library!
Central Library, Plaza ​
10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11238

Monday, Oct 4, 2021 (Rain Date October 5, 2021) UPDATE—will be on raindate!
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm    

Brooklyn Public Library will present short excerpts of A Marvelous Order—a highly anticipated forthcoming opera about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs—in concert, outdoors, in front of Central Library. The opera is composed by Judd Greenstein, with a libretto by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and is co-conceived with visual artist Joshua Frankel. Animation created by Frankel for the opera will be projected onto the building’s dramatic facade, synchronized to the live musical performance. 

"Kai Wright takes us on a bike tour across Brooklyn - alongside Streetsblog New York reporter Dave Colon - to survey the ways in which inequity is built into the blacktop. Former New York City Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz a.k.a. Gridlock Sam shares a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the city’s streets and how our relationship to public space has transformed - for better or worse. 
WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen talks about Vision Zero, the push for biking infrastructure and why mayoral candidates’ rhetoric about safe streets is revolutionary. Read Stephen's latest reporting on Gothamist, including 'Who Will Be The Next Vision Zero Mayor?'"
In the last five minutes of the episode: "...And we hear a clip of an artistic rendition of the battle for the city’s streets through “A Marvelous Order,” an opera conceived by three artists: composer Judd Greenstein, poet Tracy K. Smith, and visual artist and director Joshua Frankel. The selection features Megan Schubert as Jane Jacobs; with Eliza Bagg, Kelvin Chan, Marisa Clementi, Tomás Cruz, Lucy Dhegrae, Christopher Herbert, and Kamala Sankaram; conducted by David Bloom, and instrumentals by NOW Ensemble."

Direct link and transcript: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/episodes/robert-moses-lets-start-over​

Broadcast Thursday, April 8, 2021. 8:00 pm via ROULETTE

​The acclaimed electro-acoustic composer and harpist Zeena Parkins returns to Roulette to present a concert in two parts. Ekstasis I (Season 2) is the beginning of a series of public presentations inspired by the work of Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo. For this performance Megan Schubert (voice/objects) joins Parkins (electric harp, bells + bowls/environment sounds, fixed and dislodged media), to navigate a topography of erasure by accumulation, revealing clues of the Sisyphean tasks of a working artist: layered, carved, scraped, incised, molded: the between to be collapsed.

“…Hopefully, even the most literal works transcend the definition of the objects from which they are derived.” — Jay DeFeo

In Lace_Mvt IV, Parkins (acoustic harp/objects/feedback) joins the trio Green Dome with Ryan Sawyer (drums, feedback) and Ryan Ross Smith (piano/electronics/feedback). In the piece, eight lace pieces serve as scores for this new addition to LACE, a long-term project that started in 2008.

“Lace exposes the knot and loop as central refrains, congealing time in the mise en abyme of thread…transposing the non-transposable.” — Jenn Joy

Throughout this past year, I'd been involved in a number of projects, remotely. Here are a few.

A new work in response to the coronavirus crisis featuring contributions from the public
by Lisa Bielawa
with Kaufman Music Center in New York City as Lead Partner
"Begun on April 9, 2020, Broadcast from Home is a large-scale work open to contributions from people around the world."

CHAPTER 8: ”Who Knows?”
MAY 28, 2020 TEXT / CREDITS
"All of this week's testimonies are from teenagers, who are trying to look towards a future that is constantly shifting. Uncertainty is uncomfortable!"
CHAPTER 9: ”Hear me, hear me, hear me”
JUNE 4, 2020 TEXT / CREDITS
"At its core is a testimony from an Anonymous 15-year-old in Brooklyn, who writes, ''Justice,' for too long, has been a faint hum… Hear me, hear me, hear me.'"
CHAPTER 15: ”After-lives”
JULY 16, 2020 TEXT / CREDITS
"We are seeing our former lives through a new lens now, as we begin this new phase. This Chapter is dedicated, with love and gratitude, to the hundreds of you who participated in this collaboration."

FAPC virtual choir
"The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Chamber Choir is a select vocal ensemble of 18 to 24 of New York’s finest professional singers. ...this choir presents several concerts each season, of repertoire ranging from Renaissance polyphony through contemporary American."

Kitty Brazelton's choral project STORM

"STORM derives Latin text from Vulgate Psalm 103 about fire, flood and a great storm. Translated and set to music by Kitty Brazelton in 2012, after Hurricane Sandy flooded New York City, the piece won an Ossietzky KompositionPreis from the University of Oldenburg, Germany. In 2020, the overflow of anger, plague, fire, storm and flood brought the words and music renewed resonance, and Brazelton adapted it for the COVID Choirs Project, all the singers recording from home in quarantine. From homes all over the world."

The Vicksburg Project
Eve Beglarian, Karen Kandel, Mallory Catlett
To be staged at Mabou Mines, 2022
A staged song cycle of twelve interlocked songs that trace women’s experiences in Vicksburg Mississippi during four different eras: the Civil War 1860s, the Jim Crow/Great Migration 1910s, the Civil Rights 1960s, and the current decade.
I'll be playing Emilie Riley McKinley and have been involved in the development of her song, derived from her diary, these past few months.

A Marvelous Order (Judd Greenstein/Tracy K. Smith/Joshua Frankel) is a forthcoming multimedia opera about the battle between Robert Moses [played by Dashon Burton], the Master Builder, and Jane Jacobs [played by yours truly], the self-taught oracle of unparalleled urban insight, over the fate of New York City. When Moses plans to demolish Jacobs' home and neighborhood, Jacobs leads a revolt, igniting a conflict that continues to shape built environments around the world—from small towns to global cities—and the lives of all who call them home. 

What would have been September of 2020, then this week, the PSU residency was postponed again.
World Premiere slated for the fall!

Written and Directed by Amanda Turner Pohan
Composer: Charlie Looker
Choreographer: Dages Juvelier Keates, Amanda Turner Pohan
Performer: Katy Pinke
Vocalists: Daisy Press, Megan Schubert
Flautists: Kelley Barnett, Isabel Gleicher
Dancers: Dages Juvelier Keates, Amanda Turner Pohan

EMPAC presentation

Broadcast 5pm February, 4, 2021
Direct Youtube Link

Press Release
EMPAC and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College present Alexa Echoes, a film in the mode of a chamber opera by visual artist Amanda Turner Pohan in collaboration with composer Charlie Looker, choreographer Dages Juvelier Keates, and performer Katy Pinke.

The first iteration in a series of three performances, Alexa Echoes recasts the relationship between cultural movements and commercial technologies through the history of women’s devocalization and disembodiment. It begins with mythical Greek figures, such as Echo, and leads up to Amazon’s smart speaker and digital voice-based assistant for Alexa, also named Echo. Produced after travel restrictions and social distancing measures were implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film combines footage shot in the empty spaces of EMPAC with recordings from the collaborators’ homes and remote studios.

In this film, EMPAC is concurrently the site of production, the setting, and the subject that surround three manifestations of the voice: candid, staged, and disembodied. As in much of Pohan’s interdisciplinary oeuvre, the film looks at the body’s complicated relationship to technology as it relates to autonomy, animation, and the melismatic sound of breath. Alexa Echoes incorporates movement, speech, and an orchestral score to abstract the gendered decisions that frame new media technologies, gesturing to the corporate entities which choreograph them.
​
The film will be released on EMPAC’s website accompanied by a text version of the project’s script. Alexa Echoes was developed as part of a residency at EMPAC organized by Muheb Esmat, Marisa Espe, Bergen Hendrickson, Ciena Leshley, Ana Lopes, Liz Lorenz, Brooke Nicolas, Elizaveta Shneyderman, and Rachel Vera Steinberg from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies class of 2020, working with EMPAC curator Vic Brooks.

I waited to take the time to address the loss of my boss and mentor, Gershon Kingsley, and then I lost another elder and close friend of Gershon’s soon after: Anton Coppola.

After working so closely with Gershon for 10 years, and then showing up to an empty studio after his death, keeping the same routine but with nothing but reminders of a brilliant man who suffered in the aging process and the loss of his beloved wife, Lillian, a year prior, I may have had a head-start on a soul-searching quarantine of sorts. It was a battle to turn my energy outwards, after earnestly assuming a supporting role and serving as an extension of Gershon’s slowly failing memory, and trying to make his days tolerable but also not glazed-over with fake positivity. However, towards the end of Gershon’s life, I did start changing the channel to TCM so that he wouldn’t wake up to Donald Trump’s face staring down at him from the giant flat screen TV across from his favorite chair. What a waking nightmare Trump and his enablers have relentlessly sustained--and that's been the backdrop for profound losses only those in their "golden years" understand. Tony (as Gersh used to call Anton Coppola) used to joke about volunteering to assassinate Donald Trump, “because what’s a life sentence when you’re already over 100 years old?” Tony and Gersh lived very full lives, and are missed. I am honored to continue working for both their families. In Gershon's case, I'll be helping to preserve his legacy.

Here are their New York Times Obituaries:

Gershon Kingsley

Anton Coppola

Post COVID-19, public memorials will be planned for both.

​First photo from foreground to background: me, Gershon, and Caley Monahan Ward (Emily Manzo was playing piano)
Second photo, left to right: Gershon, Lillian Bozinoff Kingsley, and Anton Coppola
Third photo, left to right: Gershon, Anton
Fourth photo, Gershon and Lillian (taken by Jocelyn Barranco, the previous three were taken by me)

-Launched another production of QUARTET at Lady Fest at The Tank! With Anaïs Maviel's "Be" and my "Late Duck"  with Gelsey Bell and Yoon Sun Choi August 25th! (The pieces were premiered at Roulette earlier this year.)

-Began a new season with Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church as an alto. Concerts including early music, Mozart and Haydn, and the Verdi Requiem will be happening throughout the year.

-Participated in a residency at Penn State University for A Marvelous Order September 11-13. We worked on staging and movement (Patrick McCollum) that was gathered as footage for Josh Frankel to use as reference in his animations.

Upcoming highlights:

This weekend, September 21, from 4-6, I'm participating in an outdoor performance (free) of John Hasting's Passages | Pasajes in Dongan Lawn of Fort Tryon Park. 

October 28-31 in Washington D.C., Boston, and Brooklyn
Jonsi & Alex tour of Riceboy Sleeps

November 12, 8pm at Roulette
Neil Rolnick: Journey's End

November 23, 9:30pm at St. Peter's Episcopal Church as part of Blank Forms
Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain VI
(I also wrangled together 20 great singers for this performance)

December 9, 8pm at Roulette
James Ilgenfritz, Anagram Ensemble 

QUARTET
(Performances by Gelsey Bell, Anaïs Maviel, Megan Schubert, and Yoon Sun Choi)
All world premieres by Gelsey Bell, Anaïs Maviel, and Megan Schubert
Sunday, March 3, at 8pm
at Roulette

Tickets
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In other news, while it's still available, you can check out the livestream of the performance of Steve Reich's Tehillim conducted by George Manahan 2/19/19 with Tactus, and sopranos Amber Evans, Shannyn Rinker, countertenor Luke Paulino, and "mezzo soprano" Megan Schubert.