Gabriel Kahane: Magnificent Bird, with special guests Frequency

Considered by The New Yorker to be “one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day,” Gabriel Kahane reveals his most personal work in a decade. With his new album, Magnificent Bird, Gabriel Kahane chronicles the final month of a year spent off the internet. Shuttling between the quotidian mundane and overlapping global crises, he sings of grief, nostalgia, shame and salvation: a portrait of daily life in the roiling chaos of the 21st century. Kahane brings this fully realized set of songs back to Meany after a work-in-process performance in fall 2021. Co-commissioned by Meany Center. For this concert, Kahane will be joined by FREQUENCY..

Now available! Frequency performs on String Masks, the new album from Melia Watras om Planet M Records

Planet M Records presents String Masks, the new album of compositions by violist/composer Melia Watras. The titular work, String Masks, incorporates actors and Harry Partch instruments to dive into a fantastical vision of an underworld inhabited by string-playing legends from the past. The album also showcases solo works for viola, cello and voice, and her string trio, Kreutzer.

Gabriel Kahane: Book of Travelers, with special guests Frequency

The morning after the 2016 presidential election, composer, pianist and singer Gabriel Kahane packed a suitcase and boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for Chicago. Over the next thirteen days, he talked to dozens of strangers in dining cars aboard the six trains that would carry him some 8,980 miles around the country. The songs in Book of Travelers are a diary of that journey, and a portrait of America at a time of profound national turbulence.

Kahane will be accompanied by the chamber group Frequency, which includes Michael Jinsoo Lim (violinist and artistic director), Melia Watras (violist), Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir (cellist) and guest violinist Jennifer Caine Provine; plus Ted Poor on drums.

“[A] stunning portrait of a singular moment in America.” — Rolling Stone

Music of Melia Watras

Frequency presents a unique program of chamber music written by violist/composer Melia Watras, including selections from her most recent work, Firefly Songs, which Frequency will record for an upcoming album.

Program
All compositions by Melia Watras
From Firefly Songs (2015-2018):
Berceuse for violin and viola
Lontano for violin and viola
O. Reverie for narrator and violin
Remembrance of O. Reverie for violin
Firefly for voices and cello
Vetur öngum lánar lið for violin and cello
Wise Tentacles for violin and cello
William Wilson for voice and violin
(one) for voice(s), viola and cello
Lament for viola solo

Doppelgänger Dances for violin
Black wing, brown wing for viola solo
Vetur öngum lánar lið vocal melodies, or voice and cello
Vetur for cello solo
Kreutzer for violin, viola and cello

Sonata

Frequency (violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim, violist Melia Watras and cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir) presents Sonata, a program examining the venerable chamber music form from different angles as each Frequency member performs a work with keyboard. Lim and Watras perform sonatas by Prokofiev and Clarke with pianist Li-Tan Hsu, while Thorsteinsdóttir and School of Music faculty composer Richard Karpen present a new work by Karpen created for this concert.

Program
Rebecca Clarke: Sonata for viola and piano
Richard Karpen: Ad libitum
Sergei Prokofiev: Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano in D major, Op. 94a

Dialogues with violinist Yura Lee

Frequency welcomes special guest violinist Yura Lee, recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Lee performs duos with members of Frequency, before the trio sets its sights on Ernő Dohnányi’s Serenade.

Program
Luciano Berio: Selections from 34 Duetti
Bruno Maderna: Ständchen für Tini for violin and viola (1972)
Melia Watras: Selections from Firefly Songs (2015-2018)
Maurice Ravel: Allegro from Sonata for Violin and Cello, Op. 7
Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10