Talea Ensemble will open its 2024-2025 season with a program titled Exploring Home, which will take place on Saturday, September 20, 2024, at 7:30 PM at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew.

Exploring Home celebrates the centenary of Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono, focusing on his work Guai ai gelidi mostri. The program explores the concept of home in our universe, our surroundings, and our bodies, as Nono’s work is performed alongside music by Chaya Czernowin, Claudia Jane Scroccaro, and Marcos Balter.

Talea executive director and bassoonist Adrian Morejon said, “In Talea’s ongoing search for a new home, we have been considering what “home” means to each of us. This program acknowledges the different aspects of “home” by exploring the ways in which sound deepens our awareness of ourselves and our bodies (Scroccaro and Balter), our awareness of sound in the space around us (Nono), and our awareness of the universe (Czernowin).”

Fast Darkness iii (moonwords) (2022) Chaya Czernowin for flute, clarinet, piano and string trio is part of a trilogy of pieces that capture a sense of bewilderment and the imagination of the worlds that exist between sleep and wakefulness. The composer calls it a “virtuosic, wild and overgrown exploration,” capturing the energy of the constant exploration of the universe around us.

Claudia Jane Scroccaro’s piece “I sing the body electric” (2020) for double bass and electronics is based on a poem by Walt Whitman, and is the result of research by composer and double bassist Florentino Ginot into the sensory interactions between the musician’s body, instrument, and electronics.

We Carry Our Homes Within Us That Enables Us to Fly (2015) by Marcos Balter for flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola and cello considers the practice of vocalization as a spiritual, communal and personal reflection. It includes Yoruba chant used in Umbanda and candomblé ceremonies in Brazil, passed on to the musicians of the ensemble.

Finally, in celebration of Luigi Nono’s centenary, Talea performs Guai Ai Gelidi Mostri for two contraltos, flute, clarinet, tuba, viola, cello, double bass and live electronics. The piece experiments with the relationship between sound and space, using loudspeakers to redistribute the sound of each musician in the room, giving rise to new combinations and ways of perceiving sound.

The concert comes just days before Talea debuts as part of the Talea Ambassadors initiative at the Pharos International Festival of Contemporary Music in Nicosia, Cyprus, in a program featuring world premieres by Cypriot composers George Christofi and Andreas Tsiartas. Throughout the season, Talea will continue its new Talea Ambassadors initiative, a hybrid residency that will highlight composers from a different country or region each season through performances, podcast interviews, discussions, and other content highlighting the work and creative processes of its partner composers. The Talea Ambassadors program debuted in June 2024 with a concert at New York’s West End Theatre titled Aux Étoiles, featuring works by French composers.

Talea returns to St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church on Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 7:30 PM for a holiday performance of Jon Deak’s “The Passion of Scrooge.”

Talea is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Talea Ensemble’s 2024-25 Season projects are supported in part by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Amphion Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, and generous donors like you. The Talea Season is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Concert Information
Discovering the house
Saturday, September 20, 2024 at 7:30 PM
Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew | 520 Clinton Ave | Brooklyn, NY 11238
Link: https://taleaexploringhome.eventbrite.com

Program:
Chaya Czernowin – Fast Dark III: Moonwords
Claudia Jane Scroccaro – I Sing With My Body Electric
Marcos Balter – We carry our homes within us, which allows us to fly
Luigi Nono – Guai ai gelidi mostri

About the Talea team

Hailed by The New York Times as “a key part of New York’s cultural ecosphere,” Talea Ensemble’s mission is to foster musical creativity, cultivate curious listeners, and bring visionary new works to life through vibrant performances that linger in audiences’ imaginations long after the concert. The ensemble, which received the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, has brought to life more than 50 commissions for important new works since its founding in 2008, including bold and imaginative productions spanning multiple genres that fuse music with other contemporary art forms, including theater and the visual arts. Talea has helped introduce New York audiences to important works by veteran composers such as Pierre Boulez, Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth, Unsuk Chin, and Hans Abrahamsen, and has regularly commissioned composers from across the generations.

The Talea Ensemble’s work encompasses imaginative performances, collaborations with composers, artist development projects, discussions, and reflections on music. Highlights from recent Talea seasons have included: world premieres by Wang Lu, Tyshawn Sorey, Sarah Hennies, Natacha Diels, Anthony Cheung, Agata Zubel, Mark Applebaum, and others; a production of Georg Friedrich Haas’s concert Solstices in total darkness; the U.S. premiere of Manos Tsangaris’ immersive theater work Love & Diversity; and a performance of Julius Eastman’s Femenine in the NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series.

Festival appearances include performances at Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, TIME:SPANS, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Festival Musica, and many others. The ensemble has also collaborated with institutions from various fields, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the City of Ideas Festival in Mexico, and the Storm King Art Center.

Talea undertakes residencies in music departments across the country to support early-career composers. Residencies this season include the Peabody Institute, Rice University, Hunter College, Brown University, Ithaca College, and Queens College. Since 2020, Talea has directed support to early-career composers through the Talea Access Project, which includes a commissioning program and a composer recording workshop. Talea is committed to continuing to build these artist development programs in the coming seasons.

Photo credit: Drew Bordeaux Photography

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