“The Global Salon: New Orleans, U.S.A. will be the climactic season finale where reflections from each previously imagined region offer up a magical, spiritual energy of renewal and empowerment. Host Eddie Robinson, a native of the Gulf region, will lead audience members on an explosive journey of music, culture, arts, and film as the city’s rebuilding, environmental initiatives, and recovery efforts become the foundation for the salon.

Conversation and Performance with Terence Blanchard, Golden Globe nominee/Grammy-winning film composer, musician — A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem For Katrina) (2007); Red Tails (2012) and The Terence Blanchard Quintet”

Terrance Blanchard

Tickets: $30.00
Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Venue: The Greene Space
44 Charlton Street, New York, NY
(corner of Varick Street)

Q2 is the 24/7 New Music Stream from New York Public Radio

“On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Q2 Music welcomes San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, composer John Adams and the St. Lawrence String Quartet to The Greene Space for an evening of music and conversation about America’s great iconoclastic composers. WQXR’s David Garland and Q2 Music’s Nadia Sirota host the event.

Michael Tilson Thomas

John Adams

David Garland

Nadia Sirota

Tilson Thomas’s appearance in The Greene Space comes during a four-city tour by the San Francisco Symphony, which focuses on American Mavericks, the orchestra’s ongoing multimedia initiative that started in 2000 with an acclaimed summer festival and later evolved into a public radio series and Web site. Composers covered in the series include John Cage, Steve Reich, Edgard Varèse, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, John Adams and others. The series has raised questions about what — and who — exactly defines the maverick spirit in American music throughout history.

Michael Tilson Thomas became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in September 1995; he’s received numerous accolades including 10 Grammy Awards, a Peabody for Radio Programming in 2008 for The MTT Files (a co-production with American Public Media), and in 2010, a National Medal of the Arts from President Obama.”

See the full article here.

Q2 is the 24/7 New Music Stream from New York Public Radio

An Evening of Musical Cross-Pollination at The Greene Space
Wednesday, February 01, 2012

“On Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 7 pm in The Greene Space, Q2 Music presents a live concert and videocast with a star-studded lineup of composer-performers from this season’s hotly-anticipated Ecstatic Music Festival 2012. Hosted by WQXR’s Terrance McKnight, the show includes performances by new-music polymaths Jason Treuting, Angélica Negron, Sxip Shirey and Jherek Bischoff, as well as a conversation with composer and Ecstatic Music Festival curator and founder, Judd Greenstein.

Terrance McKnight

At the nexus of the active, New York-centric indie-classical scene, The Ecstatic Music Festival made a name for itself in its inaugural year as a ground-breaking series emphasizing vibrant, adventurous ensembles and unlikely collaborations between composers from the pop and classical realms. In this its second year, the festival returns with an exciting new line-up of artists from diverse musical backgrounds and its signature emphasis on curiosity, risk and discovery.

See the full article here.

Pierre Colombet (violin), Gabriel Le Magadure (violin),
Mathieu Herzog (alto), Raphael Merlin (violoncello)

“April 4, 2011

It’s a rare ensemble that can play Haydn and Debussy with complete command and then shift gears to offer a jazz set of Miles Davis and Chick Corea with equal authority.

The Ebène Quartet, from Paris, has made that its trademark, adding spice to a traditionally fusty corner of classical music. Yet in doing so, it hasn’t been shunted to a dubious corner of the crossover market, but instead catapulted into major venues, including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and London’s Wigmore Hall.

The Ebène’s fluency in styles is born out of firsthand experience. At one point, all of the members played in non-classical bands: The cellist was a pianist in a jazz quartet, the first violin was a bass player, the second violin a drummer and the violist a funk guitarist….”

Visit the web page to see the whole article and stream the concert.

Ensemble ACJW.

Ensemble ACJW appears to be based on the acronym of “The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute. I could not find one nice neat description. Maybe that is by design? There is a web site.

Anyway, does anyone recognize the violist?

Here is what NPR says:

“Ensemble ACJW had a genesis quite unlike any that of any other chamber group. A collective of about 20 hand-selected graduates of major conservatories, the members receive mentorship and professional development while working as music teachers in New York City Public Schools. The two-year fellowship is a partnership of the Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall and the Weill Music Institute in association with the public school system. The ensemble varies in size and instrumentation, depending on the repertoire.

Since its launch in 2007, Ensemble ACJW has played in small clubs and schools as well as New York’s prominent venues. “The ability to really jump between [classical and contemporary] is something that’s unique to our ensemble,” violinist Joanna Frankel, a former member, is quoted as saying on the group’s website. Frankel will perform Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello as part of the chamber music series this week at WQXR’s Greene Space.

[I am going to be a pain here. It is not WQXR's Greene Space, it is New York Public Radio's Greene Space, presenting live programming by both WQXR and WNYC]

A quick review of the Ensemble’s most recent performances points to a balance that has kept listeners on their toes. At a recent gig at Le Poisson Rouge, a small downtown club in New York, members of the ensemble delivered works by Mozart, Jonathan Dawe, Gyorgy Kurtag and Charles Ives (The Unanswered Question and the Piano Trio). Another recent program mixed Rameau, Ligeti and Richard Strauss.

During a trip to Abu Dhabi in March, the Ensemble teamed up with Emirati opera singer Sara Al Qaiwani at the debut of the Zaha Hadid Pavilion for a program of Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio, Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello and Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major. The Emirates News Agency WAM called the night “a dazzling blend of Western and traditional Emirati culture.”

Also on the Greene Space bill is composer David Bruce’s Steampunk, a brand-new work commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the group. Bruce recently told reporter Jeff Lunden how the piece was inspired by the quirky science-fiction genre. ‘Steampunk is a kind of an alternative reality of Victorian sci-fi, if you like,’ Bruce said. ‘So people often are kind of dressed in Victorian garb, but have these futuristic things, but there’s no electricity there. It’s all kind of steam-powered. The music I love is classical and folk music. Both don’t usually involve electricity. It’s usually just the sound of, you know, people scraping bows or puffing on their instruments.’ “

So, I have to assume that the videocast will be at the Greene Space web page.