2011

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2011 Season:

With Fulcrum Point, you're among cultural adventurers, exploring the pulse of music today, sharing endless surprises for each of your senses.

Mischa ZupkoExperience music that can't quite be captured–pieces that embrace chance, silence, improvisation and technology. Fulcrum Point has its finger on the pulse of it all. With composer-in-residence Mischa Zupko on hand at every performance, you're in good company.

Spring & Summer calendar:

Season at Harris Theater for Music and Dance: 
Other concerts:
Concert Reviews:

International Beethoven Project

Friday, September 16, 2011, between 4-6 PM
Chicago Urban Art Society, 2229 S. Halsted – Buy tickets here (Festival Passes from $20 - $180)

We are proud to be part of the International Beethoven Project! Includes performances by Stephen Burns and Jeremy Ruthrauff representing Fulcrum Point New Music Project.

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Benefit Concert and Celebration!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011, concert 6:30 PM, reception 7:30
Claudia Cassidy Theater, Cultural Center, Chicago

$100 admission - visit our Ticket page for concert+reception tickets and donation options.

(All prepaid guests will be checked in via their names at the registration table.)

Jacob TVMusic, Video and Fluxus Redux
featuring Fulcrum Point Ensemble conducted by Stephen Burns
with Guest Artists Simon Anderson, Hannah Higgins, Kuang-Hao Huang, David Jackson, Jeremy Ruthrauff, and Julianne Skones.

Watch promotional videos of JacobTV's music & find out more about our educational program Sound Tracks!

Host Committee
Bronwyn Poole, Chair
Jennifer Aubrey, Sophia Wong Boccio,
Stephen Burns, Barbara Englebert, John Jones,
Margreth Trumpi Martin, & Genevieve Thiers

Net proceeds benefit SOUND TRACKS, Fulcrum Point's innovative music education program for Chicago Public Schools.

FP_benefit_eblast

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9/11

9/11: 10 Years & Beyond - Annual Concert for Peace

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 3 PM
Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph Drive
$10 / $5 (students & seniors)
TO ORDER TICKETS: PLEASE CLICK HERE or call: 312-334-7777 Harris Theater Box office
JPMorgan Chase sponsors broadcast and free tickets for Chicago police and fire department members

9/11“Our peace concerts were initially annual holiday concerts, which sought to resolve an inherent conflict: what is the most effective and inclusive way a new art music organization can celebrate the yearend holidays in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society? The answer was found in the common ground of the peace, kindness, compassion, and generosity espoused by the great religions and peace activists in the world. This year as we commemorate the horrific atrocity that was 9/11, we find solace in the music and inspiration in the relevant texts of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions," said Burns. “Audiences can expect a meditative, yet optimistic, afternoon."

"Thanks to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for providing four tickets for all Chicago firefighters and police officers so they can bring their families to the performance at no charge. All they need to do is make advance reservations by emailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (reference "JPMCtix" in the subject line) or call 312-726-3846," said Sophia Wong Boccio, Fulcrum Point's Executive Director.

The uplifting, inclusive program will feature the Fulcrum Point ensemble conducted by Stephen Burns with traditional songs and prayers from various faiths.

Guest artists joining Fulcrum Point on stage will be the New Classic Singers, conducted by Lee Kesselman, along with Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, soloists Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi (tenor), Kathleen Supové (piano), Saalik Ahmad Ziyad (Gospel tradition) and Zeshan Bagewadi (Islamic Ghazal).

The program and featured works:

Read the full press release here.

jpm_logoThis concert’s live broadcast on 98.7WFMT is generously supported by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

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Speaking In Tongues

Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 7:30 PM
Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph Drive
$20/$15 for students and seniors; Buy tickets

ComposersDiscover what Ezra Pound called “the spiritual food” in the musical ritual and lore of the minority tribes poetry of Yunnan China. This program celebrates through music, words and electronics the power and inspiration in the poetry of the dying aboriginal language in Australia, British poetry titan Ted Hughes and music alluding to the ascendant & transcendent energies of Pentecostal speaking in tongues.
  • Vivian Fung – Yunnan Folk Songs (World Premiere; commissioned by MAP Fund*)
  • Geoffrey Gordon – Tiger Psalms (World Premiere; commissioned by Fulcrum Point New Music Project)
  • Kevin James – Jawoyn Dreamscapes (World Premiere; commissioned by NEA)
  • Mischa Zupko, Composer-In-Residence – Rising
Read program notes on Vivian Fung and Kevin James on our Notes page, and hear them talk about their compositions on our Video page!

Featured artists: Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano; Katherine Calcamuggio, soprano; Brad Jungwirth, baritone; Matthias Tacke, violin and Alan Pang Hong-Tai, sheng, from Hong Kong.

*The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Speaking In Tongues


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Fanfare For An Uncommon Woman: Celebrating Joan Harris On Her Birthday

Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 East Randolph Drive
March 9, 2011, 6:30 PM

We are honored to have been invited to be part of the March 9, 2011 celebration "Fanfare for an Uncommon Woman" performing Joan Tower's signature work.  Performers will be frequent collaborators from the Chicago Symphony and Civic Orchestras trumpeters Christopher Martin, Tage Larsen, and Jessica Striano, led by Stephen Burns.

More information visit the Harris Theater website here.

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Windows to the Soul

Sunday, March 13, 3 PM – FREE admission!
St. James Episcopal Church
65 East Huron Street, Chicago

A program of neo-classical music for trumpet and organ, highlighting Mischa Zupko's World Premiere based on Mario Vargas Llosa's novel "The War of the End of the World".
  • Mischa Zupko – Parables of Zion (World Premiere)
  • Aaron Copland – Quiet City
  • Plus other works by Decker and Eben
Featured artists: Stephen Burns (trumpet) and Bruce Barber (organ)

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"Impromptu" live at WFMT

March 15, 2011, 4-5 PM
Live broadcast on 98.7 FM, Chicago or WFMT.com

Music by Mischa Zupko, Steve Reich, and previews of Speaking in Tongues.

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Open rehearsal

March 19, 2011, 4:30-6:30 PM
Lutheran Church of the Ascension
460 Sunset Ridge Rd, Northfield, IL

Composers Kevin James and Vivian Fung will attend.

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Musicians Club of Women

March 21, 2011, 11 AM, follwed by luncheon
A members-only event, Union League Club of Chicago

"Chanted Rituals" by Vivian Fung, featuring Stephen Burns (trumpet solo) and percussionists Jeff Handley & Rich Janicki.

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Fulcrum Point BrassCabaret with Fulcrum Point Brass

Tuesday, April 26, 7:30 PM
Evanston SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave, Evanston
$10 / $5 students – Buy tickets

A funky new music cabaret with Stephen Burns and the Fulcrum Point Brass will provide a showcase for some of the most talented horn players in town.  Works inspired by Blues, Jazz and Heavy Metal by Freund, Becker, Woolf, Maresz and Zappa, featuring special guest, pianist and Fulcrum Point composer-in-Residence, Mischa Zupko!

Featuring videos by Luftwerk and John Pobojewski.

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ECLIPSE MASTER CLASS: Man, Woman & the Beast Within

Presented by Columbia College Chicago & Fulcrum Point New Music Project
In association with Fujitsu Ten
Wednesday, May 18, 7:30 PM – Admission FREE.  RSVP is required.
Columbia College Media Production Center
1600 S State Chicago

Columbia College Chicago and Fulcrum Point New Music Project in association with FUJITSU TEN present ECLIPSE MASTER CLASS A one-time-only concert of live film scores featuring the 55-piece Fulcrum Point orchestra conducted by Stephen Burns.  Visit the archive website here.

Man, Woman, and the Beast Within will feature Fujistsu Ten Eclipse Time Domain Speaker Systems with the Fulcrum Point orchestra performing live film scores accompanying classic film scenes from:

*Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (composer: Bernard Herrmann)
*Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (composer: Krysztof Penderecki)
*Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (composer: Jonny Greenwood)

as well as a special screening of two short films shot and scored by Columbia College Chicago 2010 graduates:

*Marilyn's Dress (composer: Yigit K. Güc)
*Beast (composer: Luke Wieting)

CCC EMC

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Book Sounds

Saturday, June 4, 2011, 3 PM - FREE! Reservation required, click here.
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street, Chicago

Co-presented by Fulcrum Point New Music Project & Open Books
in partnership with Chicago Tribune Printers Row LIT Fest.  Read press release here.

A family concert featuring musical composition inspired by award-winning children's literature from today's celebrated composers.  The concert will be performed with projected videos/slides shows/illustrations and live readings excerpts of the books.  Length of concert is approximately 50 minutes.
  • "Dot and Line" written by Norton Juster and music by Robert Rodriguez 20'
  • "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat" written by Simms Taback and music by David Stock 20'
The Event is FREE, RSVP is required.  More info:  www.printersrowlitfest.org

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Make Music Chicago

Tuesday, June 21, between 6:30 - 9 pm
St. James Cathedral, 65 E Huron St., Chicago
FREE

Mischa ZupkoFulcrum Point New Music Project will debut the World Premiere of Mischa Zupko's God Has Gone Up, kicking off the Grand Finale of the inaugural MAKE MUSIC CHICAGO festival, presented by Rush Hour Concerts at St. James Cathedral.

God Has Gone Up will be performed by members of the St. James Cathedral Choir, the New Classic Singers, Soprano Kelsey Williams, Cellist Sophie Webber, Percussionist Jeff Handley and the composer on piano, under the direction of guest conductor Lee Kesselman.

Don't miss it!

Make Music

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Tubist Rex Martin and Fulcrum Point Brass AT Rush Hour Concerts

Tuesday, July 5, 2011, 5:15 PM pre-concert reception / 5:45 PM concert
St. James Cathedral, 65 E Huron, Chicago – FREE

artists_martinContemporary Brass will be performed by Rex Martin and Fulcrum Point Brass.  The program will include:
  • G.B. Pergolesi:  Sinfonia in F major
  • Sofia Gubaidulina:  Lamento for tuba and piano
  • Ravel: Piece en forme de Habanera
  • Enrico Lavarini: Toggenburgerli
  • Cyrill Schürch: Scherzo for Brass Quintet

Fulcrum Point Brass

Featuring Rex Martin, tuba and Yoko Yamada-Selvaggio, piano and Fulcrum Point New Music Project Brass Quintet (Stephen Burns, trumpet; Kevin Hartman, trumpet; Eric Ruske, horn; Andy Baker, trombone; Rex Martin, tuba)

This program is presented by RUSH HOUR CONCERTS, sponsored in part by the Consulate General of Switzerland in Chicago and the Swiss Benevolent Society.

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JacobTV’s multimedia works spark Fulcrum Point benefit concert

Gerald Fisher, Chicago Classical Review, 11-17-11

For their benefit concert this year in support of their valuable educational outreach program “Sound Tracks,” Chicago’s ever-intriguing Fulcrum Point New Music Project staged a one-hour mini-festival devoted to the prolific Dutch avant-pop composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, better known by the moniker JacobTV.

Born in Holland in 1951, JacobTV is inspired by American media and pop culture. His music is a personal extension of the early tape-loop works of Steve Reich, where voices and phases are integrated into the rhythm and structure of the piece. In JacobTV’s compositions this is supplemented by live musicians and projected visuals which freeze and unfreeze pulsating images, bending faces, voices, words and music into a unified concept that makes satirical or lyrical statements about contemporary social concerns.

His work has been compared to that of Jeff Koons or Andy Warhol in the visual arena, with his appropriation of kitsch objects and iconic celebrities as subjects to be reworked into a musical aesthetic that comments in sometimes serious, sometimes mocking ways on the foibles and follies of our times. Unlike these artists, however, JacobTV seems to be taking an emotional position concerning the deeper implications of his material. He also employs a lush classical tonality when the context is appropriate.

Of the six short pieces performed at the intimate Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Cultural Center, the first, I was like, WOW! was the most moving, dealing as it does with returning wounded vets of the Iraq wars and their reminiscences of the horrors they experienced. The video cuts are taken from Roel van Broekhoven’s documentary Purple Hearts and proved both disturbing and poignant. The live trombone played by David Jackson was almost comforting, with an ironic reminiscence of Copland’s Quiet City, a commentary on the vast destruction of the war.

The evening’s most lyrical piece, for oboe solo, The Garden of Love, reflects the deep ambivalence of the poem by Blake with a surreal and hauntingly beautiful video by Amber Boardman and a pastoral soundscape, performed by Julianne Skones, that matches the poem’s deceptive simplicity.

Body of Your Dreams cuts and splices video of television hucksters selling grotesque promises of the body beautiful. The music featured the piano virtuosity of Kuang-Hao Huang mirroring the rhythms of the jagged dialogue and turning the whole piece into a keyboard feast.

Pimpin, with Jeremy Ruthrauff, is a jazzy baritone sax score performed to vintage videos of some over-the-top real-life pimps and their girls, and made a compassionate yet ultimately disquieting tribute to the victims of sex trafficking.

JacobTV’s current project, The News, is an ambitious work-in-progress employing an augmented brass ensemble which will be premiered by Fulcrum Point in the spring of 2012.
An excerpt from the piece, Corrotto, was particularly timely as it shows former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denying corruption charges in videos which are altered into brilliant operatic arias that play off the man’s flamboyance and seeming culpability. Another excerpt from this “reality opera” is a reworking of a TV dialogue between Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as a duet, which proved surprisingly sympathetic to these two frequently reviled personalities.

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Finding Peace at the Fulcrum Point

By Devin Hurd, New Music Box, 9-22-11

Music can be a force for healing in the face of devastating tragedy.  Composers who seek to confront the scars of loss and human suffering face the challenge of expressing qualities that transcend our differences and appeal to our shared humanity.

Chicago’s Fulcrum Point New Music Project addresses the need for healing after the painful events of 9/11 by programming an annual concert for peace.  The featured music consciously embraces every conceivable quality that runs counter to the violence and hate that flared up on that terrible day.  This year’s concert, performed at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance (and as a live broadcast on Chicago’s WMFT radio station), was offered as an extended meditation and as a humble sanctuary from the anger and sadness reawakened on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  The afternoon featured works by nine different composers searching for that expression of shared humanity through a plurality of traditions and beliefs.  The gift of free tickets for police, fire fighters, first responders, and their families was a gesture that kept the occasion grounded within a sense of connectedness to the brave actions that were also a part of 9/11.

The music included as part of 9/11: Ten Years and Beyond offered three distinct paths toward healing from the wounds of that day.  Some composers approached music as an introspective expression of prayer that took the form of an elongated crescendo.  Others chose to compose music that turned toward long-standing cultural traditions as a spiritual foundation for regaining one’s emotional bearings.  Only one piece on the program confronted the subject of 9/11 directly.

Music in the form of a crescendo creates an aural image of prayer rising toward a benevolent hope; sound in the shape of increasing resolve to build upon what is good.  Much of this was a music that focused upon simple materials and a sonic language of lyrical lines modeled after plainchant. This was the case with Musica Celestis for string orchestra by Aaron Jay Kernis, which began the afternoon set like a benediction.  This form was then echoed in Sensoo by Lee R. Kesselman as the New Classic Singers provided a choral texture over the pure-tone qualities of bowed crotales.  This same crescendo appeared again in Fratres by Arvo Pärt.  The piece features tintinnabulation (Arvo Pärt’s word for his technique of composing two simultaneous voices as one line) and triadic resonance that rings through a sparse texture assembled from materials carefully stripped of ornamentation and excess.

Lamentation on the Disasters of War by Karim Al-Zand straddled the dual aesthetics of form and tradition by building its crescendo within a neo-Romantic language.  This proved the musical durability of both approaches.  The Traditional Buddhist Chant performed by Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche was an audible manifestation of the kind of faith we turn to in the face of events we cannot comprehend.  Lord Give Me Hope by Saalik Ahmad Ziyad was performed as a gospel lament for voice and contrabass.  Ziyad proved to be a talented vocalist with enormous range.  Kya Toota Hai, Andhar Andhar by Shehzad and Zeshan Bagewadi for acoustic guitar, voice, and contrabass is an Islamic prayer set to instrumental accompaniment.  And the world premiere of 3 Yiddish Songs by David Stock for voice and string orchestra offered an expression drawn from the Jewish faith.  The inclusion of each of the world’s major religions was an important part of reinforcing the universal desire for peace.

Buddha Girl for piano and electronics by Marita Bolles was the only work that took on 9/11 directly.  The electronic portion uses an interview with Debby Borza recounting the day she lost her daughter on United Flight 93 and how that loss became a catalyst   for making a life transformation and becoming a peace activist.  Kathleen Supové gave an outstanding performance on the piano.  She remained composed even as technical difficulties forced a re-start of one of the movements.  The   electronic part was mixed to a 5.1 system that surrounded the audience with a mix of recorded and altered sounds and speech  while the piano part provided both accompaniment and live reactive presence within the overall texture of the piece.  The stationary position of the piano on stage providing a counterbalance to the dynamic spatialization of the electronic material.  Transformation was the theme running through multiple layers of this composition: feedback became voice; voice became the sound of sirens.  Then the voice returned to describe the personal and spiritual transformation brought about by personal loss.  The transformation toward believing that peace is worth working for, even if we believe we will not know peace within our own lifetime.  Buddha Girl confronts the senselessness of 9/11 with a quiet persistence.  Programmed at the mid-point of the concert, it was the one piece that sliced at the heart of both the pain and the healing that made such a concert necessary.

Prior to the concert I was personally struck by how strong the waves of emotion were on the occasion of remembering the upsetting events of ten years ago.  The television programming that replayed the violent images and recounted the interweaving stories of loss grated against an emotional wound that runs surprisingly deep.  Much has changed over ten years, but the jarring cognitive dissonance of what happened seems not to have softened.  One cannot expect an afternoon concert to change this or bring more than temporary comfort.  But Fulcrum Point did provide more than a distraction from difficult feelings and memories.  In many ways, it suggested a multiplicity of paths toward peace that can be more vivid than the replayed video images seared into our collective consciousness.

Violence and loss challenge our comprehension and demand an exhausting effort to make sense of the senseless.  Approaching the emotion and meaning of such an event through music involves reaching toward extra-musical values that are held as sacred.  Whether those are inward looking or outward reaching toward the comfort of community and faith, this subject will continue to drive composers to examine our core values.  Stephen Burns, the artistic director of Fulcrum Point, made the conscious decision to build a program of music that serves as an extended prayer.  It was a prayer that emphasized inclusiveness and culminated in Kaddish, traditional prayer for the dead—a setting that incorporated every voice and performer from the day’s concert within a single piece.  It was a performance that offered an expression and a hope that the human desire for peace will eventually be stronger than the forces that divide us.  The standing ovation at the conclusion of this performance indicated that it was received in that spirit. (Source)

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Fulcrum Point's peaceful concert a very good idea

By Alan G. Artner, Special to the Tribune, 9-12-11

Fulcrum Point New Music Project's annual "Concert for Peace" usually takes place at year's end, but the 10th anniversary of 9/11 prompted artistic director Stephen Burns to schedule the event on Sunday afternoon, and a good idea it was.

Listeners at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance heard consolatory selections in varying styles interleaved with invocations, prayers and lessons from the Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths.

This meant a long afternoon. But each Fulcrum Point program is as much ritual as concert, and this one built persuasively toward a "Kaddish," the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, which incorporated phrases from each of the faiths in an unexpected, singularly poignant expression of unity.

The most memorable scores were the oldest, Aaron Jay Kernis' "Musica Celestis" (1990) and Arvo Part's "Fratres" (1977, heard in Part's 1992 string-orchestra version). Burns found the right tone quality for each, tender for Kernis' serene Americanisms, cool and glassily impersonal for Part's spiritual mathematics.

As is often the case, the program contained world premieres, this time of two arrangements: Karim Al-Zand's neo-romantic "Lamentation on the Disasters of War" and David Stock's post-modern "Three Yiddish Songs."

The former, originally a string sextet, took off from Francisco Goya's famous prints, achieving a meditation that Burns brought to a superheated climax. The latter, bouncy and lulling settings of songs about children, became affecting in its closing pages, as tenor Alberto Mizrahi circled above cello and fluttering high strings. Both pieces deserve to be heard again.

Part of Marita Bolles' "Buddha Girl" for piano — played ardently by Kathleen Supove — and recorded soundtrack was, in fact, repeated, owing to a faulty electronic connection. No matter. Scratchy dips in volume persisted. But the work foundered more seriously on its words from the mother of a girl who died on 9/11, painful sincerity proving far from universal distillation.

The program included Lee R. Kesselman's "Sensoo," performed cleanly, plaintively by the New Classic Singers, who returned in the closing "Kaddish." (Source)

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Fulcrum Point marks September 11 with a diverse meditation on loss

By Gerald Fisher, Chicago Classical Review, 9-12-11

September 11 has become the most fraught anniversary of our time and ceremonies of remembrance everywhere vie to put into words the meaning of the events that shook us to our foundations.

It was refreshing on the tenth anniversary of that tragic event to be present at a memorial that mostly did away with words and simply let music try to express the inexpressible. Fulcrum Point’s concert Sunday afternoon at the Harris Theater thankfully omitted commentary and even applause between the works of their moving program. The audience was quietly caught up in the unfolding display of a richly varied multicultural experience.

Not to say that words weren‘t part of the musical fabric of many of the pieces. Perhaps the most affecting composition of the afternoon was Buddha Girl by Chicagoan Marita Bolles. This is a recorded commentary by the mother of a victim of Flight 93 which is accompanied by a live piano performance by Kathleen Supove and a fully realized computer-generated sound design which serves to underline and enrich the context of the often unbearably tragic personal experience.

The performance also illustrated the pitfalls of trying to mesh a live artist with pre-recorded electronics as it broke down during the fourth section which had to be started over. The problem fixed, the gripping narrative resumed its hold on the audience.

Aaron J. Kernis’s Musica Celestis is a deeply conservative work inspired as much by Vaughan Williams as by medieval models. It is one of the composer’s most frequently played, and like the Barber Adagio it is a transcribed movement from a string quartet. It is also a masterpiece of string composition and fitting for the day with its otherworldly transcendence.

Of a similar quality and also performed with superb string playing was Arvo Pärt’s Fratres I, in the version for string ensemble and percussion. The piece is a prime example of the composer’s mixture of the mathematical and the spiritual bell-like tones he termed tintinnabulation. Some performances of this piece can be cool and uninvolved yet Fulcrum Point’s was warm and emotional.

The expansive Lamentation on the Disasters of War by Canadian-American composer Karim al-Zand in a world premiere was the largest string composition of the afternoon. A transcription of a movement from a string sextet, its keening harmonics and romantic swirls of sound were emotively transmitted by the ensemble under artistic director Stephen Burns who was the tactful and thoughtful coordinator of the entire program.

Chicago-area composer and conductor Lee Kesselman conducted his choral work Sensoo on Japanese and Latin texts voiced with clarity by the impressive New Classic Singers. In short but deeply felt segments several musicians performed music in idiomatically contrasting styles. A traditional Tibetan Buddhist chant voiced by Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche and Norbu Samphell was pitted against the Gospel-inflected Lord Give Me Hope, performed effectively by Saalik Ahmad Ziyad.

The beautiful voice of Zeshan Bagewadi, accompanied by guitar and double bass, gave meaning to the Arabic text of a moving lament concluding with the words “So much is lost, and so little is gained.” The young Chicago native is a talent to watch.

The great Chicago cantor Alberto Mizrahi performed Three Yiddish Songs in quasi-operatic orchestrations by Pittsburgh-based composer-conductor David Stock. The program concluded with a performance of the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning, with Mizrahi joined by all of the evening’s soloists.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Go to The Classical Review to read a review of Christopher Theofanidis' new opera Heart of a Soldier, which received its world premiere Saturday night in San Francisco. The opera is based on the life of Rick Rescorla, the Morgan Stanley security chief who perished in the World Trade Center on September 11.] (Source)

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9/11: Ten Years & Beyond Concert for Peace Review - The Healing Process

Sandra Schwartz, Splash Magazines, 9-13-11

As part of Fulcrum Point’s ongoing Concert for Peace Series, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, commemorated the horrific atrocity of 9/11 with an inspirational, multi-cultural, multi-religious concert at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park on September 11th. Through text and music espousing the peace, kindness, compassion, and generosity of the great religions and peace activists in the world, the audience was able to heal and join together in aspiring to achieve brotherhood in the world.

Conductor and trumpet virtuoso Stephen Burns formed the Fulcrum Point New Music Project in 1988 championing new classical music and contemporary composers inspired and influenced by popular culture. Through multi-disciplinary concert performances and educational programs, the Fulcrum Point ensemble seeks to encourage audiences to make cross-cultural connections between new music, art, technology and literature, gaining greater insight into today’s diverse world.

Concert highlights included works by top contemporary composers Aaron Jay Kernis (“Musica Celestis”) Arvo Part (“Fratres”), and Chicagoan Marita Bolles (“Buddha Girl”), along with the World Premiere of orchestral versions of works by David Stock (“3 Yiddish Songs) and Karim Al-Zand (“Lamentation on the Disasters of War”).

“Musica Celestic Is inspired by the medieval conception of that phrase which refers to the singing of the angels in heaven in praise of God without end. I found this to be a potent image that has been reinforced by listening to a good deal of medieval music, especially the soaring work of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).” Aaron Jay Kernis

Arvo Park was born in Estonia on September 11, 1935. He lived under the occupation of the Soviet Union for over 50 years which profoundly affected his life and music. “Fratres is one of his seminal works from the 1970’s. Both spiritual and mathematical it is composed based upon an algorithmic variation on a drone of the notes A and E, with various harmonies that hover between the modalities of major and minor. “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me." Arvo Part

“Budda Girl” for piano by Maritza Bolles with text based on interviews with Debby Borza, who became a peace activist after her daughter, Deora, was killed on Flight 93 on 9/11/01. Deora was nicknamed “Budda” by her friends in recognition of her inherent wisdom and maturity and because of her sweet, cheeky smile. She was wearing a T-shirt with a decal message saying, “Rub my belly, I’m Buddha,” while on Flight 93. As the text narrates a mother’s journey from denial, to shock, to anger, to peace and resolution, the words are amplified by the contemporary piano skills of Kathleen Supove.

Three Yiddish songs composed by David Stock brought back memories of Fiddler on the Roof. Sung by tenor Alberto Mizrahi, Hazaan of Chicagos’ historic Anshe Emet Synagogue, the rhythmical and inspiring songs uplifted the audience. The program ended with the Kaddish,the traditional prayer for the dead, lead by Mr. Mizrahi with joining segments of traditional Buddist chanting, Hindustani Classical Music , and jazz/gospel, a fitting closure to the concert and an inspiration to the audience.

For further information on the Concerts of Peace , visit www.fulcrumpoint.org. (Source)

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Balancing act of complexity, accessibility for Fulcrum Point

Alan G. Artner, Chicago Tribune, 3-24, 2011

You have to hand it to conductor Stephen Burns and his Fulcrum Point New Music Project.

"Speaking in Tongues," Tuesday night's concert at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, had three world premieres, introductions by the composers, committed performances, accompanying visuals and enough overriding themes to make whole a program presenting radically different styles.

Those who took in everything might well have felt so much was done to make the music available and comprehensible that any judgment of it would be superfluous.

Still, Vivian Fung's "Yunnan Folk Songs" stood out from the premieres for how its complexity was put at the service of high-level entertainment. The seven short pieces, each an interpretation of recordings sung by members of ethnic minorities in southwest China, conveyed a winning rawness that went beyond exoticism. Soprano Katherine Calcamuggio and baritone Brad Jungwirth admirably conveyed the emotions of love, work and dance songs. Burns' ensemble, which included Alan Pang Hong-Tai's sheng (a Chinese reed instrument) as well as jew's-harp, clarified the pungent contemporary responses to words that seemed timeless.

Kevin James' "Jawoyn Dreamscapes," another premiere, extended spiritual exploration to the Australian outback. Scored for 5.1 surround audio and chamber orchestra, the work combines voices of the last remaining speakers of the Jawoyn language with natural sounds and music derived from the speech patterns. Frequent repetitions of the recorded material made one too aware of the piece's length, and this was not offset by music alternately serene and loping. Tighter construction might have achieved greater wonder.

Geoffrey Gordon's "Tiger Psalms," also given a first performance, were settings of three unrelated poems by Ted Hughes that examine the human experience through a mythic bird and animals. The somber colors of Gordon's 12-tone score certainly gave added drama, in which mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley reveled, though careful division of the seven instrumentalists did not strongly project Gordon's "three distinct sound worlds."

The program opened with Mischa Zupko's neo-Romantic "Rising" (2009), here seeming out of place but devotedly played by violinist Mathias Tacke and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang.

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Fulcrum Point serves up an evening of ritual with two substantial new works

Lawrence A. Johnson, chicagoclassicalreview.com, 3-24, 2011

If sometimes Fulcrum Point’s programs seem more focused on thematic linkage then discovering genuinely worthy new music, Tuesday night’s concert at the Harris Theater gave their audience the best of both worlds.

The program titled “Speaking in Tongues,” offered three world premieres, two of which provided the most impressive and substantial new music heard in this series in recent seasons.

The thematic connective tissue of the four selections was ritual and language in this third and last concert in the ensemble’s “Movies, Myths and Machines” series.

The main event of the night—and the clear audience favorite—was the world premiere of Yunnan Folk Songs by Vivian Fung. The composer has mined several folksongs from various dialects in the Yunnan province in southwestern China, home to more than 25 nationalities and languages.

Scored for chamber orchestra, soprano and baritone, Fung’s work uses seven songs (from Yi, Hani, Lisu and Jingpo nationalities) with Fung keeping the main melodic line and rustic flavor while recomposing the music surrounding it. The soloists perform each song together rather than alternating settings, Mahler style.

Wushan Mountain Song opens the work in strikingly imaginative fashion with soprano Katherine Calcamuggio and baritone Brad Jungwirth stationed on far sides of the Harris Theater main floor, their antiphonal voices painting two people calling to each other from a vast distance.

A lively non-vocal Overture based on a courtship song is followed by the antic Pig Herding Song, both singers employing a range of calls and nonsense words to collect their respective swine. The ardent Love Song While Planting the Rice Fields is followed by a starkly rhythmic Rice Pounding Song. Calcamuggio brought jarring intensity to her part in the traditional Wedding Lament (insert your own joke here) and the boisterous Youth Dance Song caps the cycle in exhilarating fashion.

Yunnan Folk Songs is an engaging and delightful work crafted with great flair, with Fung’s skillful writing and scoring for voices and orchestra avoiding both pastiche and the stolid, overly respectful treatment of so many world-music inspired works.

Give great credit to the two hard-working young soloists whose energetic and evocative singing brought these atmospheric settings to life. Stephen Burns drew playing of great vitality from the chamber orchestra with notable contributions from sheng player, Alan Pang Hong-tai.

In an era of reflexive Neo-Romanticism and vacuous pop-influences, there are not many young composers today who dare to write uncompromising 12-tone music.

Not only does Geoffrey Gordon adhere to a fairly tough and astringent serial style in his Tiger Psalms, but the composer also makes the music sing magnificently. Like Alban Berg, Gordon’s modified serialism brings an individual and communicative style to his tone rows.

These three songs for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra, written to (slightly reordered) poems by Ted Hughes, are bracing and pungent stuff, scored with a striking ear for colors and unusual timbral contrasts and combinations.

Julia Bentley was a fearless soloist delivering a tour de force performance of this intensely challenging score with its restless, angular vocal line and stratopsheric leaps. Gordon may want to lighten the orchestration a bit, which buried his soloist at times but this is a very impressive and significant world premiere by a composer we should be hearing more from.

Kevin James’ Jawoyn Dreamscapes was the third world premiere of the evening. The composer has created a series of works focused on endangered languages. Like Bartok, James has spent extensive time researching and recording indigenous peoples, in this case, the aborigines of Australia. The result is a work written for chamber ensemble and electronics with James’ loops of the native voices speaking the Jawoyn language in a 5.1 surround system.

If only the music performed by the live musicians was half as compelling as the expressive, gently rhapsodic Jawoyn voices, the work would be a lot more interesting. With a few rustic wooden sounds, the music lopes along aimlessly in tandem with the electronic voices. The overlong work closing unconvincingly in a sudden lush, lyrical theme with rising trumpet in John Williams-esque fashion.

The evening began more intimately with Mischa Zupko’s Rising. Written for violin and piano, the music simply reflects Jesus’s ascent into heaven, as taken from St. Luke. Beginning in gentle introspection the music becomes more impassioned and ecstatic as the violin, representing Jesus, ascends to the highest register, then falls silent as the piano (the disciples) continues playing in a searching elevated calm.

Zupko, Fulcrum Point’s composer in residence, is a gifted and individual voice, and his simple and affecting work was given a dedicated, poignant performance by violinist Matthias Tacke and pianist Kuang Hao Huang.

The evening was enhanced by some striking photographs displayed on a large screen over the stage. While many music organizations make the mistake of flashing changing images during the performances—creating a distracting cognitive dissonance for the audience—Fulcrum Point wisely let a single photo for each work or setting evocatively set the stage by itself.

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