2019/2020

"I finally heard both a Javanese and a Balinese gamelan. In collaboration with the Indonesian Embassy, the PostClassical Ensemble—one of the most innovative and stimulating groups around—traced the intricate connections between Java, Bali, and the West. . . . Lou Harrison’s colossal Piano Concerto from 1985 . . . was the piece I was most eager to hear, its opening movement as vast as a canyon, the second filled with nimble virtuosity, the slow movement an extended prayer that gives way to a fleet finale. . . . How could so magnificent a concerto be so woefully neglected?"

In the years preceding World War I, Arnold Schoenberg, Wasilly Kandinsky, and Ferruccio Busoni craved liberation. The result was non-tonal music and non-representational painting: a rare artistic revolution in which music and art were transformed at precisely the same moment.

Beginning in 1913, Harry Burleigh (a New York protégé of Antonin Dvorák) began to transform black spirituals into songs for the white concert stage. Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson triumphantly sang Burleigh’s “Deep River” – and it’s still sung today.

Our topic is the controversial relationship between Native America and American identity — then and now. Our participants include:— The Lakota Music Project of the South Dakota Symphony, in its first trip east.— Eminent Native American performers from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge and Sisseton reservations: flutist Bryan Akipa and singer Emmanuel Black Bear, also Oglala Lakota elder Chris Eagle Hawk.

Produced and premiered by PCE March 4, 2020, at the National Cathedral, “Armenian Odyssey” is a unique concert work featuring live animation by Kevork Mourad and music by Vache Sharafyan. The cellist was Narek Hakhnazarian, and Angel Gil-Ordóñez conducted PostClassical Ensemble. It tells a story of diaspora and redemption.