George Crumb,
a celebration
Metamorphoses II, for solo piano
performed by Marcantonio Barone
Kronos – Kryptos, for percussion quintet
Area Premiere
Sunday
October 23, 7:30 PM
Swarthmore College
Lang Concert Hall
Swarthmore, PA
This concert is free and open to the public without ticket
Presented by The Swarthmore College of Music and Dance and Chamber Orchestra FIRST EDITIONS The program includes his two very last works:
REPERTOIRE
Presented by The Swarthmore College of Music and Dance and Chamber Orchestra FIRST EDITIONS The program includes his two very last works:
Metamorphoses II, for solo piano
performed by Marcantonio Barone
Kronos – Kryptos, for percussion quintet
Area Premiere
Our concert on Sunday evening Oct. 23, 7:30 PM, Lang Concert Hall, will be shared with Swarthmore College’s Dept of Music. Swarthnmore’s half features Marcantonio Barone playing Crumb’s Metamorphoses II for solo piano. The piece was written for Tony, and he has recorded it for Bridge Records. Like George’s Metamorphoses I, it is inspired by iconic 20th- and 21st-century paintings, including in this case works by Picasso, van Gogh, Chagall, and Dali.
COFE’s half of the concert will consist of Crumb’s Kronos-Kryptos in its area premiere, for five percussionists playing a stage-full of instruments from all over the world. James Freeman will be conducting the five percussionists who are: Angela Zator Nelson. William Kerrigan, David Nelson, Brenda Weckerly, and Phillip O’Banion.
The two works on this program are the very last ones Crumb wrote.
The concert will celebrate George’s long life (1929-2022), his extraordinary music, and his close relationships with these players and especially with Swarthmore College. We are all still grieving George’s passing – it is the end of an era for many of us – but it is time now to remember a great man, a great composer. and a great friend to so many of us.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
“Reminding you that all music was once new,” WRTI’s elegant catchphrase for its Composers Forum programs, was in the back of artistic director James Freeman’s mind when he founded Chamber Orchestra FIRST EDITIONS (COFE) in 2015.
After 27 years as founder and artistic director of Orchestra 2001, during which he conducted more than 300 concerts, recorded 18 commercial CDs, toured Russia, Denmark, England, Austria, and Cuba, and brought Orchestra 2001 to international prominence, Freeman resigned in April of 2015 to begin a new orchestra with a new mission: Chamber Orchestra FIRST EDITIONS.
In the six intervening years, COFE has commissioned and premiered twelve new works by Philadelphia-area composers, and featured some of this city’s most eminent artists as soloists in concertos by W.A. Mozart.
How do these two seemingly unrelated themes – Mozart and modern – intersect? As Freeman describes it, “The miracle of Mozart’s genius took place by leaps and bounds. We can see and hear this happening in our concerts, from his youth to the mastery of his adult years. So, too, can we see and hear the leaps and bounds of today’s composers, and that is what COFE is all about: magic and miracles by leaps and bounds, from Mozart to the 21st century.”
chamberorchestrafe.org 