The Church: Reflections in Music: Blue-Tinged Classics w/ Bruce Wolosoff, Nov 23rd

REFLECTIONS IN MUSIC: Blue-Tinged Classics

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23rd, 2024 6 PM

TICKETS: $25

The innovative Reflections in Music series returns with artistic director Bruce Wolosoff and a group of all-star musicians inviting audiences to explore the influence of blues in classical music with Blue-Tinged Classics. This program features composer and pianist Bruce Wolosoff, clarinetist Narek Arutyunian, and violinist Deborah Buck performing music by George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Aaron Copland, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

The evening will also include two premieres: a new work by renowned film composer Carter Burwell, and Blue Mantra, the latest composition by Bruce Wolosoff, inspired by a painting by Margaret Garrett.

Throughout history, classical music has revitalized itself by embracing fresh ideas and exploring diverse influences. Blue-Tinged Classics celebrates this tradition, highlighting how the soulful, emotive qualities of the blues have inspired classical compositions, creating music that is both innovative and deeply rooted in tradition.

Beginning with George Gershwin’s pioneering fusion of blues and jazz into classical forms, this influence traveled to Paris with composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy incorporating the blues into some of their music, then it reflected back stateside to America in the work of composers like Aaron Copland. It continues to resonate today with composers like Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, who infuses blues into his violin music. 

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REFLECTIONS IN MUSIC

Reflections is a 501(c)3 nonprofit which hopes to bring the appreciation of classical music to new audiences and to spark new ways of thinking about and engaging with the classical music experience to those who are already music lovers. For more information visit reflectionsinmusic.org.

BRUCE WOLOSOFF is a formidable pianist and composer” (Gramophone) known for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences. He often composes in response to visual art and through collaborations with leading artists across a variety of disciplines.

It has been a busy season for Bruce, as composer, as pianist, and as artistic director of Reflections. On November 15th the UK based Avie Records label are releasing his Rising Sun Variations, a large-scale set of solo piano variations on House of the Rising Sun, which Bruce began composing during the pandemic lockdown and just completed this past May. A vinyl release of the album is scheduled for February ’25.

Bruce’s 2023 release on Avie Records, the solo piano recording Memento, received extensive airplay on radio stations worldwide, and his 2022 recording on the label, Paradise Found: Cello Music of Bruce Wolosoff featuring performances by Bruce with cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio of the Eroica Trio reached #6 on the Billboard Top 10 Classical chart.

Bruce’s previous collaboration with Ms. Sant’Ambrogio, a recording of his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, also a Billboard Top 10 best selling classical album, was described by critic Jerry Dubins of Fanfare Magazine as “a work of compelling beauty . . . that can be declared an instant masterpiece.” Other highlights of his discography include the internationally acclaimed Songs without Words (18 divertimenti for string quartet) on the Naxos American Classics label, and a highly regarded recording of piano music of Ferruccio Busoni for the Music & Arts label. Of this recording, Hannah Busoni, the composer’s daughter-in-law and head of the Busoni Society in the 1980s, wrote, “All those who love Busoni’s work owe it to themselves to hear Bruce Wolosoff’s compelling and beautiful interpretations. They are exemplary.”

Bruce collaborated with the late choreographer Ann Reinking on two ballets. The White City, based on Erik
Larsen’s The Devil in the White City and made in partnership with Melissa Thodos of Thodos Dance Chicago, enjoyed a two-season tour around the country and rave critical reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times naming it “Best Dance of 2011.” His A Light in the Dark, inspired by the lives of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan, was nominated for an Emmy Award in Outstanding Achievement for Arts Programming.

Born in New York City in 1955, Bruce played in a variety of rock bands as a teenager while pursuing studies in classical piano performance. He did his undergraduate studies at Bard College and his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory. His principal piano instructor was German Diez, who taught the technique of Claudio
Arrau. His main composition and orchestration teacher was Lawrence Widdoes. Other important teachers include classical pianists Evelyne Crochet, Richard Goode and Jorge Bolet, and jazz pianists Charlie Banacos and Jaki Byard.

Bruce had an active career as a concert pianist, performing as recitalist and soloist with orchestra before withdrawing from his activities as a concert pianist at the age of 30 to devote himself more fully to composing. After an absence of many years from the concert stage, Bruce returned to performing in 2011 with a recital program of his own music which was released as the cd Many Worlds.

Since 2020, Bruce has been the artistic director of Reflections in Music, curating and performing in an innovative series of programs that seek to spark new ways of thinking about and engaging with the classical musical experience.

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NAREK ARUTYUNIAN

Clarinetist Narek Arutyunian is an artist who “reaches passionate depths with seemingly effortless technical prowess and beguiling sensitivity” (The Washington Post). As soloist with orchestra, his performances include the Copland Clarinet Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall, Artie Shaw’s Concerto for Clarinet with The Boston Pops, the Mozart Concerto with Oregon’s Newport Symphony, the Rockford Symphony in Illinois, and New York’s St. Thomas Orchestra, appearances with Prague Radio Symphony, the Kaliningrad Philharmonic, the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and a recording of the Weber Concertino for clarinet with the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra.

As First Prize Winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Narek was presented in debut recitals in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center. He has also performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and for the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, Lied Center of Kansas, Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota, Weis Center for the Performing Arts, and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. In recent seasons he has performed as soloist with the Riverside Symphony at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Bard Festival Orchestra at Fisher Center and in recital at the Harvard Club, Ithaca College in New York, and Evergreen Museum and Library in Baltimore. This season, Narek will perform the Mozart Concerto as soloist with the Edmonton Symphony in Canada and in recital at Brownville Concert Series in Nebraska.

Narek has performed extensively in Australia, Asia, and in Europe, including at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Palazzo del Principe in Genoa. He has appeared at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Juilliard’s ChamberFest, the New York Festival of Song, Bard Music Festival, Bridgehampton Music Festival, Krzyzowa Music Festival in Poland, and Germany’s Usedomer Musikfestival. He has also performed as both a clarinetist and Klezmer soloist for the Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish off-Broadway production. In addition, Narek recently performed and spoke at the House of Representatives in Boston, Massachusetts for the 104th Anniversary Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.

Born in Armenia, Narek’s family moved to Moscow when he was three. As a teenager, he won First Prizes in the International Young Musicians Competition in Prague and the Musical Youth of the Planet Competition in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory as a student of Evgeny Petrov, received a Bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Charles Neidich, and then earned a Master’s Degree with Mr. Neidich at the Manhattan School of Music on a Leon Russianoff Memorial Scholarship.

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DEBORAH BUCK

Praised by The Strad for her “surpassing degree of imagination and vibrant sound,” violinist Deborah Buck has built a rich and varied musical career as a chamber musician–including 17 years with the celebrated Lark Quartet, as well as a concertmaster, pedagogue, soloist, recording artist, and artistic director.

Highlights of recent performances and exciting projects include recitals with pianists Orli Shaham and Orion Weiss. Buck’s summer concerts have taken her to Telluride’s Chamber Music Festival (CO), Washington Friends of Music Summer Festival (CO), Sands Point: Four Seasons of Music (NYC) and Music off the Hook Arts Music Festival (CO). Other notable news includes the honor of having received two commissions written for her: John Harbison’s DeBut for solo violin, and Fantasia on Beethoven’s Spring Sonata for violin and piano by Bruce Adolphe.

For seventeen years, Buck was a member of the critically acclaimed Lark Quartet (2002-2019). The quartet was especially recognized for its extensive commissioning and boundary-pushing programming. They were one of the first quartets to offer programs featuring string quartet plus percussion, clarinet, voice, or piano, and recorded works by American composers such as John Harbison, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron J. Kernis, Daniel Bernard Romain (DBR), and Paul Moravec; many of which are included in their extensive discography found on Endeavor, Koch, Arabesque, and Bridge Record labels. Buck has also recorded the motion picture and television industry, including featured violin solos in the re-mastered American Silent Film classic, The Scarlet Letter (Turner Classic Movies). Her national television debut came by way of a featured guest spot on the Family Channel’s It Takes Two, hosted by Dick Clark.

Buck made her Lincoln Center concerto debut in 1997 with the Little Orchestra Society of New York. As a recitalist, she has performed at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago for WFMT; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and over the airways via “Sunday’s Live” on Los Angeles’s KKGO. Buck served as the tenured concertmaster of the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 2008-2013, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Opera Guild and St. Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra (L.A), and has just recently led the Phoenix, West Virginia, and Youngstown Symphony Orchestras as Guest Concertmaster. In 2022, Music Director, Michael Stern appointed Ms. Buck as Concertmaster of Orchestra Lumos (formerly Stamford Symphony).

Since 2014, Ms. Buck has held the positions of Head of Strings and Chamber Music and Assistant Professor of Violin at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. This year, Ms. Buck created a new student-run public chamber music series called, “Out & About!” that culminated in two days of student chamber music group performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Buck has served as Co-Executive Director and concert series curator of the Kinhaven Music School in Weston, Vermont since 2011.

A native of Los Angeles, Deborah Buck spent her primary years studying with Michael and Irina Tseitlin. She was a recipient of both a Starling scholarship and a Martin Kaltman Foundation scholarship while earning her Bachelor of Music degree at The Juilliard School, where she was a student of Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. Buck also holds a Master of Music Degree from the University of Southern California, where she studied with Robert Lipsett and was awarded the Jascha Heifetz Violin Scholarship. Her many awards also include a Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Corwin Foundation Grant, a Leni Fe Bland Career Grant, Winner of the National Contemporary Record Society Competition. Learn more at www.deborahbuck.net.

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CARTER BURWELL has composed the music for a number of feature films, including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Before Night Falls, Adaptation, In Bruges, Twilight, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and The Banshees of Inisherin. He also composed the music for the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show. 

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The Church was established in 2019 by artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik. Housed in a deconsecrated 19th-century church, its doors were opened in April 2021. Our mission is to foster creativity and to honor the living history of Sag Harbor as a maker village. The East End represents an exceptional artistic legacy, spanning the practices of Indigenous art of several centuries ago, Abstract Expressionists of the mid-20th Century, and the many celebrated writers, makers, musicians, and visual artists of the recent past and current moment. Core programming includes visual art exhibitions, concerts and events, educational programming, workshops, lectures, and an artist’s residency.

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