Summer 2014
SOURCE Song Festival presents
Friday, August 1st, 8pm
Antonello Recital Hall at MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, MN
OPEN SOURCE: An Evening of Song Hosted and Curated by Libby Larsen
Featuring The Peculiar Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes, a song cycle and animated video: Commissioned by Florestan Recital Project in 2010;
Music and libretto by Libby Larsen.
This performance features an original animated video, designed by Florestan in collaboration with graphic artist Rick Geary and Goldlust Design.
Saturday, August 2nd, 7pm
Antonello Recital Hall at MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, MN WordSong and Florestan Recital Project: “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
WordSong reconnects musicians and listeners through shared experience and conversation. In this program, four musical settings of “Harlem” are heard and discussed in this new, highly interactive concert format.
Florestan Recital Project and the Portland Conservatory of Music present
Two Concerts to introduce the newly-established Academy for Collaborative Performance*
Tuesday, August 12th, 7pm
Woodford’s Congregational Church Sanctuary, Portland, ME
WordSong and Florestan Recital Project: “Harlem” by Langston Hughes (see description above)
Wednesday, August 13th, 7pm
Woodford’s Congregational Church Sanctuary, Portland, ME
Song Recital, Three Ways
Let Us Garlands Bring: Music by Gerald Finzi, texts by William Shakespeare.
A new dance collaboration, choreographed by Portland Ballet’s Colleen Edwards and featuring dancers Erica Diesl, Kaitlyn Hayes, Kaleigh Natale.
Dichterliebe: Music by Robert Schumann, poems by Heinrich Heine.
Schumann’s masterpiece of love and rejection is one of the most beloved of all Romantic song-cycles.
The Peculiar Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes, a song cycle and animated video: Music and libretto by Libby Larsen.
Commissioned by Florestan Recital Project in 2010, the piece is a personal account of America's first-known serial killer, drawn from his memoirs and court transcripts.
* The Academy for Collaborative Performance is a new young artist program that cultivates a range of multi-disciplinary work, traditional song recital performance, and new approaches to the performer-audience relationship.
Florestan at VISI: In June 2013, Florestan Recital Project joined the faculty of the Art Song Lab, as part of the Vancouver International Song Institute.
Florestan is proud to announce that we have been awarded the first American Song Initiative grant by the Hampsong Foundation. This award will support the recording and release of our World Premiere recording project “The Early Songs of Samuel Barber.”
For details, please visit: hampsongfoundation.org
Panic: A new song cycle for baritone, piano, and electronic playback by composer Andy Vores and poet Todd Boss.
World Premiere performance: Sunday, May 18, 2014
Macalester Plymouth United Church, St. Paul, MN
www.macalester-plymouth.org
$20 General Admission
$10 Students/Seniors
7:00pm
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Carleton College Concert Hall
1 N College St, Northfield, MN 55057
https://apps.carleton.edu
7:00pm
In his 1894 breakthrough novel, Pan, the Nobel-winning Norwegian author Knut Hamsun provides a lyrical yet disturbing look at love and the dark recesses of the human psyche. Set to a new libretto by Todd Boss, Vores’s Panic combines a vivid contemporary soundscape with a pillar of vocal music tradition, the narrative solo song cycle. Florestan is developing the piece in collaboration with director David Walsh (University of Minnesota), using multi-media and theatrical resources.
Courtroom Concerts at The Schubert Club:
The Music of Libby Larsen, featuring Larsen's
The Peculiar Case of Dr. H. H. Holmes
Courtroom 317, Landmark Center
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Time: 12pm-1pm
At the height of the Gilded Age, during Chicago's finest moment of international glory, a man known as H.H. Holmes quietly and secretively carried out one of the most horrifically perverse and murderous crime sprees in American history. Against the ornate backdrop of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Holmes built an elaborate chamber of horrors in which he staged the methodical and grisly murders of up to 200 people, becoming America's first known serial killer. The adventurous Florestan Recital Project presents Libby Larsen's 2010 song cycle The Peculiar Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes. The work explores the unfathomable impulses that drove Holmes to commit his crimes, interweaving passages of period parlour music with texts from Holmes' own confessions.
In this unique presentation, Florestan will perform the piece twice; first in a traditional recital format (baritone and piano), then accompanied by an original animated video featuring illustrations from artist Rick Geary's acclaimed graphic novel, The Beast of Chicago (NBM/ComicsLit). An interactive discussion with Larsen and Florestan will take place between the performances.
Guest recital, MacPhail Center for Music
Antonello Hall
Wednesday, February 5th, 2014
Time: 7:00pm
A program of Florestan favorites with soprano Elisa Doughty, baritone Aaron Engebreth, and pianist Gail Olszewski. Works include Robert Schumann's beloved Myrthen lieder (1840), Samuel Barber's Despite and Still (1968), and Dominic Argento's Six Elizabethan Songs (1958).
For more information, visit: www.macphail.org
Samuel Barber in Words and Song
The Farrell Auditorium of the St. Louis Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)
Friday Oct. 4, 2013
Time: 7pm.
This program presents a biographical look at Barber through his songs, from his boyhood and student works—recently premiered and recorded by Florestan Recital Project—to his last set, Three Songs Op. 45. In between the song groups, correspondence and other written records will be read, providing a concise audio-biographical experience of Barber’s style and musical expression in song. This concert, a collaboration between Florestan Recital Project and American Century Music, includes a sneak preview of Florestan's freshly minted World Premiere recordings of several early Barber compositions (Oct 2013 release).
