Juventas New Music Ensemble’s 15th-anniversary season “Emergence” will conclude with a livestreamed concert that will safely bring ensemble musicians back together for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ensemble bills its YouTube appearance in Alone Together [HERE] as, “…one of the first concerts of its kind in America.”
While social distancing live at Futura Productions in Roslindale, Julia Carey, piano; Minjin Chung, cello; Wolcott Humphrey, clarinet; Kelley Hollis, soprano; and Olga Patramanska-Bell, violin; will essay audience favorites by Emma Wine, Michael Gandolfi and Wei-Chieh Hu, plus Aaron Copland’s “Laurie’s Song” and the world premiere of Juventas Artistic Director Oliver Caplan’s Alone Together. An interactive pre-concert Composer Conversation moderated by horn player Anne Howarth begins at 7:00pm on Zoom [HERE].
Caplan wrote the program’s title piece Alone during the Massachusetts stay home advisory this spring. It reflects on the paradox of caring for each other by staying apart, and offers a hopeful vision of the day “the sun will shine again… somewhere beyond the bend.”
Two coming of age works, Emma Wine’s Gold Against the Gloom and Aaron Copland’s “Laurie’s Song” take on extra poignancy in the COVID era, as our children graduate into a newly changed world. Gold Against the Gloom sets poetry by Sara Teasdale, following a young girl’s journey leaving home, experiencing heartbreak and becoming a woman. “Laurie’s Song,” from the opera The Tenderland shares a girl’s reflections on the night before graduation “The time has grown so short. The world so wide”
Caplan’s In the Direction of Dreams pays homage to one of his favorite walks, which has been a source of solace during months of social distancing. His route travels along Walden Pond, through Adams Woods, and down to Fairhaven Bay.
Wei-Chieh Hu’s effervescent Dance of the Manakin offers uplifting music inspired by the mating dance of the Manakin, a type of bird that inhabits Central and South America.
Line Drawings, a playful work by Grammy-nominated composer Michael Gandolfi, derives its inspiration from Picasso’s line drawings, which deploy a single, continuous stroke with variety, immediacy, clarity, and concision.
Juventas New Music Ensemble is a contemporary chamber group with a special focus on emerging voices. The ensemble shares works of a vibrant, diverse array of composers who respond to our time.