Ensemble ACJW returning to campus

Ensemble ACJW returns to Skidmore College as guest artists in the Carnegie Premieres Series on Friday, Feb. 6, with a group that will feature a number of new faces and more brass instrumentation than in previous visits. The concert features the upstate New York premiere of a Carnegie Hall commission by a major French composer, Marc-Andr Dalbavie.

Admission is free to the event, which will be in Filene Recital Hall. A pre-concert discussion by the composer and musicians will begin at 7 p.m., moderated by Skidmore Professor of Music Charles M. Joseph. The concert gets under way at 8 p.m. The program includes ?Fragments? by Hans Werner Henze, written for brass quintet; the First Piano Quartet by Johannes Brahms; and the First Piano Trio by Dalbavie.

The Henze pieces feature horn, two trumpets, and two trombones, which will be performed by Alana Vegter, Paul Murphy, William Day, Alexander Reicher and Louis Bremer. Bremer, playing bass trombone, is a guest with the ensemble. The Brahms Piano Quartet will be performed by Sacunn Thorsteinsdottir, cello; William Harvey, violin; Angelina Gadeliya, piano; and Brenton Caldwell, viola. Dalbavie?s Piano Trio No. 1 will be played by Thorsteinsdottir, Harvey and Gadeliya.

Musicians of Ensemble ACJW are fellows of 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 two-year program provides the finest young musicians with performance opportunities at both Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School, advanced musical training, intensive teaching instruction, and the skills necessary for careers combining musical excellence with education, community engagement, and advocacy.

A partnership with Skidmore College that began in the 2007?08 season brings performances and educational events to the Saratoga Springs community.

Since the first Ensemble ACJW performance at Skidmore in the fall of 2007, many ensemble musicians have completed their two-year participation, while others have joined. Considering that each concert features a different number of players of various instruments, dependent on the music being played, audiences might see all of the fellows over a range of performances, or might see just a few of the Academy fellows. At Skidmore in the past two years, about 15 Academy musicians performed in one or more of four residency performances, plus one performance with Saratoga ArtsFest.

At the upcoming Skidmore concert, most of the ensemble?s musicians will be performing for the first time at the college. In addition each of the Carnegie Premieres events features music commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

Marc-Andr Dalbavie, whose First Piano Trio will have its upstate New York premiere at Skidmore, is considered a leading voice among a new generation of French composers working on the international scene. Born in 1961 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, he began his musical training at the age of six. He is currently professor of orchestration at the National Conservatory in Paris and recently finished a term as composer-in-residence at the Orchestre de Paris?a position he held since 2000.

During the summer of 2006, Dalbavie participated in two of America?s important music festivals as composer-in-residence: the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. His large-scale orchestral work Concertate il suono, commissioned jointly by the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in honor of Pierre Boulez?s 75th birthday, received its Carnegie Hall premiere in 2004 with Boulez conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. In 2004, Dalbavie?s work Axioms, commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of Emanuel Ax?s ?Perspectives? series, received its world premiere, with Ax and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performing in the new Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.

In 1998 Dalbavie was named USA Today?s ?best new composer? of the year. His compositional style of the 1980s was largely characterized by his use of timbre and color, based on the spectral tradition developed in the 1970s. Since the 1990s his music has been concerned with space, and he composes works specifically designed to be played in certain performance spaces. He often writes music for performers to play in places other than on the concert stage, such as around the audience.

Academy fellows work in partnership with a specific New York City public school music teacher in a variety of grade levels in areas such as interactive performance, instrumental teaching, creative learning projects, and general music knowledge, depending on the specific needs of each school. A partnership with Skidmore College that began in the 2007-08 season also brings performances and educational events to the Saratoga Springs community.