Carnegie Hall Premieres to present new work by David Bruce

Skidmore College will present "Carnegie Hall Premieres featuring Ensemble ACWJ" performing the world premiere of a new Carnegie Hall commission at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, in Arthur Zankel Music Center's Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall. 

Admission is free and open to the public. Tickets are required and may be reserved online here. 

The ensemble will present the premiere performance of David Bruce's "Steampunk," a 22-minute octet featuring oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and bass. The program also will include Beethoven's Septet in E-flat Major, and Janacek's " Mladi" ("Youth" Sextet).

Ben Givan of the Skidmore music department will lead a pre-performance discussion with the featured composer and members of Ensemble ACJW beginning at 7 p.m., also in Ladd Concert Hall.

The program will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 7, in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Ensemble ACJW has performed at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs once each semester since 2007, often presenting the upstate premieres of Carnegie Hall commissions 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.

Ensemble ACJW has premiered two other well-received Carnegie Hall commissions by the British-American composer Bruce, including "Piosenki" in 2007 and "Gumboots" just a year ago.

Bruce says his inspiration for "Steampunk" came from listening to the Beethoven septet that will be on the program."The horn and bassoon immediately stood out to me as defining colours of the group and somehow a connection formed between them and the images of the steampunk world," the composer wrote in an email.

Steampunk itself is a futuristic design form dating to the 1980s, incorporating such technological items as lights, clocks, copper pipes and other scrap materials.

"I think above all it was the French horn with its crazy complicated brass plumbing, making it about as iconic a steampunk instrument as you could hope for; but similarly the bassoon, the bass clarinet and the cor anglais each have the distinct air of an eccentric Victorian gentleman, the product of a particular kind of obsession. It seemed like a line-up from a steampunk cartoon," Bruce writes in his program notes for the new work.

In his email sent last week, the dynamic and entertaining composer recalled "the amazing experience last year giving the first-ever concert in the new (Ladd) hall. I'm thrilled to be coming back to Skidmore again," he wrote.

The post-graduate-level Ensemble ACJW musicians also bring programs into area schools while they are at Skidmore, where their residency is presented by the Office of the Dean of Special Programs with the Department of Music.

The ensemble will give a musical presentation at Saratoga Bridges Thursday, Feb. 3, and will work with third through fifth-grade pupils at St. Clement's School in Saratoga Springs on Friday, Feb. 4.  There also will be a concert preview at 12:15 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, at Skidmore's Scribner Library.