New York, NY- February 28th, 2008
Greenwich House Arts is pleased to announce
an extraordinary North River Music presentation entitled
Keys to the Future: SPOTLIGHT on Rzewski
featuring pianist LISA MOORE
Thursday, February 28th, 8pm at Renee Weiler Concert Hall
In honor of the world-renowned composer’s 70th birthday, the masterful and
engaging Moore presents an entire concert of Frederic Rzewski’s works on Thursday, FEBRUARY 28 at 8pm, culminating in the theatrical tour de force De Profundis (1992), which includes a spoken text drawn from the prison letters of Oscar Wilde. The Rzewski birthday celebration, curated by composer/pianist Joseph Rubenstein, also features Moore as the inaugural soloist of Keys to the Future’s latest SPOTLIGHT concert series.
* Admission for this event is payable at the door from 7:30pm and costs $15 general, $10 for students and seniors.
* This performance will be held at Renee Weiler Concert Hall, which is located at 46 Barrow Street, NYC (between Seventh Ave. South and Bedford Street).
The evening’s program is set to include Piano Piece No. 4 (1979); The Prodigal Parents (from The Road) (2000); Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1978); De Profundis for speaking pianist (1991); and the New York premiere of To His Coy Mistress for singing pianist (1988).
For decades, Frederic Rzewski has contributed his own special mix of theatricality, boldness, and intellectual energy to the world of contemporary piano music, and we are proud to honor this unique composer. Lisa has recorded his music and performed it numerous times to great acclaim – most recently at Merkin Recital Hall, where Allan Kozinn of The New York Times praised her “explosive, muscular performance” of Rzewski’s Piano Piece No. 4.
Described by The New York Times as “lustrous at the keyboard, and at once engaging and challenging” and “the phenomenal pianist” in The Village Voice, Australian Lisa Moore enjoys one of the most diverse musical careers experienced by pianists today. Based in New York City (but originally from Canberra) and with a background in music and drama Moore has dedicated much of her life to creating new ways of experiencing the piano live in concert and as a recording artist.
Combining powerful technique with vivid theatricality, her solo concerts are more than ordinary piano recitals. Moore sings, acts and plays, creating thematic programs focusing on a single idea or composer. Through her vast experience
working with living composers she has developed a unique and unforgettable piano repertoire.
Lisa Moore was recently appointed Artistic Curator of the ‘Sounds Alive 08’ series, (part the 2008 Canberra International Chamber Music Festival) which will draw global artists to the Australian capital for two weeks of experimental and new music. Current solo artistic ventures include concerts with dramatic text recitation in ‘Wilde’s World’ celebrating the late 19th Century, screening visual images by Toulouse Lautrec, Monet and Beardsley, interspersed with Wilde witticisms and Frederic Rzewski’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘De Profundis’. ‘The Totally Wired Piano’ highlights the piano with samplers, keyboards, voice and video. ‘Janácek from the street’ contains the composer’s evocative dark works from Moore’s acclaimed all-Janacek recording. ‘The Pianist Speaks’ features her own arrangements of songs by Brian Eno and Randy Newman and DVD image projection in Martin Bresnick’s ‘For The Sexes: The Gates of Paradise’ (text and images by William Blake). ‘ipiano: my brilliant career’ features works based on
folklore, dance and popular song, ranging from Scriabin to Ligeti and Wolfe.
Moore has recorded 4 solo discs and over 25 collaborative recordings. Her solo discs include ‘Which Side Are You On?’ music by Frederic Rzewski (Cantaloupe), and three on the Tall poppies label: ‘Purple, Black and Blues’, a collection of piano works by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, the complete piano works of ‘Leos Janacek’ and ‘Stroke’ new Australian music. Moore’s collaborative and chamber music discs are for Sony Classical, Tall Poppies, BMG, Deutsche Grammophon, Point, Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, New Albion, New World and CRI. Future solo discs scheduled for release on Cantaloupe Music include works by
Evan Ziporyn, John Halle, Don Byron, Annie Gosfield and Phil Kline.
At home in the masterworks of past and present music, and in a diverse range of musical styles, Lisa Moore has collaborated with a huge range of musicians. She is the founding pianist for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, the New-York based electro-acoustic sextet and winner of Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award. Moore has been touring worldwide with them since their
inception in 1992. Recent highlights include the world premiere of Mysterium Cosmographicum, a piano concerto by Australian Michael Smetanin with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Reinbert De Leeuw in 2005 (and winner of the 2006 APRA Award for the Best Australian Work), the world premiere of Steve Reich’s Daniel Variations at the Barbican with the Steve Reich
Ensemble and performing in Henrik Ibsen’s ‘A Dollhouse’ in Oslo and Paris, directed by Lee Breuer and Mabou Mines Theatre.
Besides her intensive work with Bang on a Can over the years, Lisa Moore has also performed with the New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, BargeMusic, St. Lukes Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Steve Reich Ensemble, Don Byron Adventurers Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, Paul Dresher Ensemble, Mabou Mines Theater, Susan Marshall Dance Co, Sequitur, Newband, Music at the Anthology, The Crosstown Ensemble, Australia Ensemble, Westchester Philharmonic, New York League of Composers ISCM, Newband, Alpha Centauri Ensemble, Terra Australis, Essential Music,
and the John Jasperse Dance Co. As a concerto soloist she has played with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Albany, Sydney, Tasmania, Thai, Canberra Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi and Queensland Philharmonic, and with conductors Reinbert de Leeuw, Pierre Boulez, Jorge Mester and Edo de Waart.
Lisa Moore’s festival appearances include Holland, Lincoln Center, Schleswig-Holstein, BBC Proms, Israel, Warsaw, Uzbekistan, Musica Ficta Lithuania, Prague Spring, Istanbul, Athens, Taormina, Southbank’s Meltdown, Dublin’s Crash, Graz, Huddersfield, Scotia, Paris d’Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Turin, Palermo, Barcelona, Heidelberg, Berlin, Perugia, Tanglewood, Houston Da Camera, Jacob’s Pillow, Aspen, Yale/Norfolk, Sandpoint, Saratoga, Victoriaville, NY’s Sonic Boom, BAM Next Wave, MassMoca, Adelaide, Perth, Queensland, Canberra, Sydney, Sydney’s Olympic Arts, Sydney Spring and Mostly Mozart, Brisbane Biennale, and the Darwin International Guitar Festival. Moore has collaborated with composers such as David Lang, Ornette Coleman, Don Byron, Iva Bittova, Cecil Taylor, Gunther Schuller, Milton Babbitt, Michael Gordon, Elena Kats-Chernin, Martin Bresnick, Alvin Lucier, Gerald Barry, Giovanni Sollima, Julia Wolfe, Michael Torke, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Terry Riley, Gerard
Brophy, Peter Sculthorpe, Michael Smetanin, Iannis Xenakis and Meredith Monk among many others.
Raised in Sydney, Canberra and London, Lisa Moore had visited over a dozen countries by age 13. At 20 she moved to the USA for 2 years and following a year in Paris settled in New York City in 1985. As the recipient of many awards in 1981 Lisa Moore won silver medal in the International American Music Competition at Carnegie Hall. In 1992 she was awarded the APRA ‘Sounds Australian Award’ for ‘best performance of an Australian work’, and the Thayer Fellowship from the State University of New York. She has also received two Australia Council International Fellowships and the Australian Music Foundation in London Award.
In 1993 Lisa Moore won “Best Australian Recording” in the ABC Fine Music Awards for her Wild Russians disc with cellist David Pereira (TP018). Lisa Moore teaches at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and the Yale/Norfolk Contemporary Music Festival. She was a Visiting Associate Professor at Eastman School of Music during 2002-3 and taught at the Bang on a Can Summer
Institute, Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp, Australian National Music Academy and has been Artist-in-Residence at the Sydney Conservatorium and the School of Creative Arts in Wollongong. For more Moore please visit http://lisamoore.org
For program notes, recordings, and other detailed information about this series, visit http://www.myspace.com/northrivermusic
!All programs and concert dates are subject to change.
!!Contact Greenwich House Arts for artist interviews and press materials.
Fundingforthisseriesisprovided,inpart,bytheNewYorkStateCouncilontheArts,theFoundationforContemporaryPerformance
Arts, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Amphion Foundation and MEET THE COMPOSER
