October 10, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. @ The Sheen Center, NYC
Eleanor Cory: Rikers Island (World Premiere)
Frederic Rzewski: Attica
Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Excerpt from Joseph Assadourian’s theatrical piece, The Bullpen
For the 10th anniversary of its annual Peace Concerts series, the socially conscious music collective Ensemble Pi presents a program of contemporary chamber works written in response to imprisonment, its politics, and the emotional toil it takes on inmates.
The concert’s highlight is the world premiere of Rikers Island (2015) by veteran New York composer Eleanor Cory. Scored for clarinet, piano, cello, violin, and a narrator, the work draws mostly from the newly published These Are Hard Times for Dreamers – the fruit of a two-year workshop at Rikers Island, led by NY Writers Coalition. Written by women inmates, the texts and poems mine with great pathos family tragedies and the pain of raising children while being incarcerated.
The program also includes Frederic Rzewski’s minimalist masterpiece, Attica (1972), composed in the wake of the 1971 upstate New York prison rebellion, and the sublime Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941), composed and first performed in the prisoner-of-war camp of Görlitz, Germany.
The evening will also include an excerpt from Joseph Assadourian’s The Bullpen, an acclaimed multi-character, tragi-comic play based on Assadourian’s experience of being arrested and thrown in a cell with an outrageous collection of races, nationalities and sexual orientations.
Performers: Idith Meshulam, piano; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Katie Schlaikjer, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Bill Trigg, percussion; and Sycil Mathai, trumpet guest player.
Guest: Joseph Assadourian, actor
Music and Captivity will take place at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, located at 18 Bleecker St. in New York City, on Saturday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and seniors). To order tickets, visit www.sheencenter.org For more information about the ensemble, visit www.ensemble-pi.org.