Skidmore launches second season of Carnegie Hall Premieres

Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor will solo in his own composition with Ensemble ACJW, as Skidmore College kicks off the second season of its Carnegie Hall Premieres concert series at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, in Filene Recital Hall.

Kalhor's Silent City commemorates the Kurdish village of Hallabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was destroyed by Saddam Hussein, and features the kamancheh, an upright, four-stringed Persian fiddle. The work was a 2006 Carnegie Hall commission for the internationally renowned Silk Road Project, founded in 1998 by cellist Yo-Yo Ma as a means of fostering international understanding.

The composition requires extensive improvisation based on ethnic motifs and melodies. For the Skidmore performance, Kalhor will bring along the versatile and accomplished guest violist Nicholas Cords, whom he met at Tanglewood when they first participated in the Silk Road Project. Cords later visited Iran, where he studied the improvisational technique.

Kalhor began playing kamancheh at age 7 and played with the Iran National Orchestra of Radio and Television at 13. He studied composition at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Kalhor and Cords will be joined in Silent City by Owen Dalby and Joanna Frankel, violins; Caitlin Sullivan, cello; and Evan Premo, double bass. They are among the eight Academy Fellows who will perform in various ensembles for this concert.

Ensemble ACJW comes to Skidmore through a partnership between the college and The Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. The Academy presents a "Carnegie Hall Premieres" event each semester at Skidmore, with additional performances in June at SaratogaArtsFest. The program's musicians, mostly post-master's level students, continue their musical training while also teaching and performing in New York City schools.

Two other contemporary works are on the Ensemble ACJW October 3 program, as well as one romantic gem by Schubert.

Celebrating composer Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, flutist Erin Lesser and clarinetist Romie deGuise-Langlois will play his Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux.

An unusual instrumentation of flute, violin, clarinet, and piano will be featured in George Crumb's Eleven Echoes of Autumn (Echoes 1). Performing will be Lesser, Dalby, Frankel and Gabriela Martinez.

Schubert's well-loved B-flat piano trio will be played by Martinez, Frankel and Sullivan.

Professor Thomas Denny, chair of the Music Department at Skidmore, will moderate a pre-concert talk with the musicians beginning at 7 p.m., also in Filene Hall.

Both the concert and the pre-concert talk are free and open to the public.