Summer Serenades in New York City

North/South Consonance, Inc. continues its 29th consecutive season with a special concert featuring premieres of five chamber orchestra works especially written for the occasion by composers hailing from Canada, Japan, Mexico and the US.

The Grammy nominated North/South Chamber Orchestra under the direction of conductor Max Lifchitz will be joined by guest artists Setsuko Otake, oboe; Patricia Morehead, English horn; and accordionist William Schimmel.

The event will be held on Tuesday, June 9 at 8 PM at the auditorium of Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St) in Manhattan. Admission is free.

The composers will be on hand to introduce their works and meet with the audience during intermission and after the concert. All participants in the event are available to the press for interviews and may be contacted through our office at

North/South Consonance’s 2008-09 season is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as well as grants from the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University; the Keene Family Foundation; and the Music Performance Funds. For further information about its activities, including concerts and recordings, please visit <http://www.northsouthmusic.org/>
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The program will open with the premiere of Convergences for strings and winds by Dwight Banks, the Los Angeles-based based composer. Born in the Bronx, , Banks earned a doctorate in composition at the University of California, Berkeley studying with Olly Wilson and John Thow. Also active as a jazz trumpeter, Banks has worked with John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner and Kenny Burrell. He is affiliated with the Center for Black Music Research and the National Association of Composers, USA. Convergences is an impressive and virtuosic composition in three contrasting but interrelated movements. The composer explains that the work was “conceived as an interplay of thematic ideas and the various ways they can interact with each other.”

The program will continue with the first performance of Disquieted Souls for English horn and chamber orchestra by Patricia Morehead, the Canadian-American composer and oboist. Born in 1940, Morehead earned a PH. D. in composition from the University of Chicago and has taught at Columbia College and through the online Vermont MIDI program for young musicians. She is one of the founders of the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop. As an oboist, Morehead has performed throughout Brazil, Canada, Europe and the US. According to its composer, Disquieted Souls is a single-movement concerto for English horn inspired by pre-Christian Celtic legends of goddesses and the supernatural. It contains Celtic dance tunes with the English horn playing mysterious melodies evoking the twilight of the dense forest. The dance-like ending explores deep sadness and lost love, the essence of many ancient Celtic myths. Patricia Morehead will be the featured soloist.

The first half of the program will conclude with the first performance of Harold is Alive and doing Seemingly OK Somewhere in Lison for accordion and chamber orchestra by William Schimmel. The much-sought-after William Schimmel has been described by the NY Times as “a virtuoso accordionist whose performances and recordings can be both entertaining and provocative.” A graduate of The Juilliard School where his teachers included Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, Schimmel is a proponent of the philosophy of “Musical Reality” (composition with pre-existing music). In addition to his many concert appearances, he is well-known for his recordings with the Tango Project and for his work in many popular movies and television series including Sesame Street , Scent of a Woman and Sex and the City.

Schimmel explains that the unusually long and somewhat humorous title of his recently completed work is the result of the “automatic writing” style employed while composing the piece. Unlike the 19th century masterpiece -- Berlioz’s Harold in Italy -- Schimmel’s Harold finds himself in Lisbon playing accordion instead of viola. And the music Harold begins playing is built around a traditional Lisbon Fado melody (somewhat like a Portuguese Blues). And it morphs into other genres including tango! William Schimmel himself will play the solo part in the premiere of this delightful new piece.

The second half of the program will open with the premiere of Water Leaf IV for oboe and chamber orchestra by the brilliant Japanese composer Yoshihiro Kanno. Born in Tokyo in 1953, Kanno trained at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music eventually winning the 1979 Price Pierre of Monaco Musical Composition Award. His compositional style is informed by Western orchestral thinking, Japanese traditional instrumental music and contemporary computer technology. Written especially to showcase the talents of Japanese-American oboist Setsuko Otake, Water Leaf IV is the musical story of a leaf tossed in a current of spring water. While the leaf moves right and left, it manages to swim in the flow even while sometimes going under the stream. This dramatic journey is reflected in the way the solo oboe and xhamber orchestra interact throughout this colorful and sensitive work.

The concert will close with the premiere of Serenata: Imaginary Legacies by Brian Banks, the American composer now residing in the city of Puebla, Mexico. A native of Seattle, Banks studied at the Peabody and San Francisco Conservatories, and the University of California, Berkeley. Banks was invited to join the humanities faculty of the Universidad de las Americas in 1996 after spending a year there teaching as a Fulbright Scholar. His works have been performed throughout Mexico and appear on various recordings made by Mexican performers. Most recently, pianist Geoffrey Burleson released a CD on the Centaur label devoted entirely to Banks’ piano compositions. Banks says that in composing Serenata he thought of the traditional meaning of the Italian term: a nocturnal piece, performed as an intimate means of communication between composer, performer and listener. The subtitle Imaginary Legacies refers to four musicians the composer has always admired: George Harrison and Lou Harrison, Henry Spoznik and Arturo Marquez. The exciting three movement work gives all of the instrumentalists the opportunity for technical display. Somewhat eclectic in style, each of the three movements of the work is based on different traditions. While the first is somewhat improvisatory and uses a Hindustani raga, the second movement makes use of a klezmer tune. And the third is inspired by the Caribbean dance rhythms of the Danzon.