PS21’s 2022 Fall Season

PS21’s flexible theater, which collapses to an intimate Black Box configuration, allows for year-round programming. Our Fall 2022 season ranged across multiple genres, from 1970s punk to contemporary experimental and classical music, in two live concerts and one film screening, including three world premieres.

**OCT 30, 5 PM | WORLD PREMIERE: Inside Spaces by Amir ElSaffar and Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch**

Inside Spaces blends microtonal harmonies, maqam (melodic modes unique to Arabic music), and jazz improvisation in a modular marvel of cross-cultural music-making. ElSaffar and Bianchi-Hoesch create an immersive sound that transcends notions of form, musical language, and categorization. ElSaffar and Bianchi-Hoesch’s modular work interfuses composed elements with improvisation. Inside Spaces explores electro-acoustics and microtonality that embraces multiple musical languages to create a sonic environment that draws on the richness, complexity, and idiomatic expression of jazz, contemporary classical music, maqam, raga, and other musical backgrounds, without compromise or oversimplification, achieving a boundaryless space of music.

NOV 18, 7 PM | Resonant Mechanisms: The Experimental Music Tradition in Upstate New York – [Switch~ Ensemble]

Featuring two world premieres of newly commissioned works by composers Victoria Cheah and Jen Kutler, alongside works from Sarah Hennies and Julius Eastman, Resonant Mechanisms comprised a feast of musical modalities for quintet and electronics, engaging with and drawing on the rich tradition of experimental music in Upstate New York. Jen Kutler’s Chatter Marks, the first of the evening’s two premieres, featured pitch-tracking musical sewing machines, engineered by Kutler to digitally activate and respond to the live musicians. Another highlight was the premiere of Victoria Cheah’s Hard columns you within, which, operating in the “residue of resonance,” amplified both the live musicians and found objects from Cheah’s personal history. The ensemble also presented a performance of Julius Eastman’s late period work Buddha. The music of Eastman, who spent much of his life and career in the Hudson Valley, has been experiencing a recent flowering of interest due to the discovery of previously lost recordings and manuscripts, and has cemented the idea that “the canon of American contemporary music cannot be considered complete without the inclusion of Julius Eastman’s compositions.” The ensemble’s musicians brought a spirit of discovery to their performance and followed the concert with a lively Q&A with the audience.

NOV 12, 6 PM | This is National Wake – Mirissa Neff

Chatham-based international filmmaker Mirissa Neff screened This is National Wake, her documentary tracing the rise and fall of the multiracial South African punk group, “the band that defied apartheid,” whose members risked everything to taste freedom and documented their courageous performances in Super 8. The band’s “brilliant archival footage” forms the basis of Neff’s revelatory film. The Independent applauded the film as “powerfully resonant,” and Africa is a Country called it “electrifying and a powerful excavation of South Africa’s rich musical past.” The screening was followed by a Q&A and DJ set of vintage African dance grooves spun by director Mirissa Neff.

WORKSHOPS AND NATURE WALKS

Both music programs were preceded by nature walks through PS21’s 100-acre campus, exploring hidden corners and unmarked trails, and stopping at various points of interest including Alison McNulty’s art installation Hudson Valley Ghost Column #7 and James Casebere’s Solo Pavilion for Two or Three. PS21’s rolling landscape provides a pristine, contemplative environment that prepares the explorers for deep listening at the concerts.”

Preceding the premiere of Inside Spaces, composers Amir ElSaffar and Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch offered a free hands-on jazz improvisation, Arabic maqam, and cross-cultural music-making workshop to the community. Similarly, [Switch~ Ensemble] musicians with guest composers Victoria Cheah and Jen Kutler explored composition, experimental practices, and analog technology in a free pre-performance community workshop.