MUSIC: Premiere of Gregory W. Brown's Rural Hours

Description

Join us for the premiere of Gregory W. Brown's 'Rural Hours,' a multi-movement work for tenor and string quartet featuring texts by Susan Fenimore Cooper.

Her amazing and under-appreciated nature diary (also titled 'Rural Hours') gives a delightful first-hand account of living in rural New York state in the mid 19th century. Her witty and insightful writings are here excerpted into a song-cycle for tenor. The composer will give a brief introduction to the piece, including background information on the author and the publication of her works. ----

About composer Gregory W. Brown: Composer Gregory W. Brown’s works have been performed across the United States and Europe — most notably in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Cadogan Hall in London, and the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

His commissions for vocal ensemble New York Polyphony have been heard on American Public Media’s Performance Today, BBC Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Kansas Public Radio, and Danish National Radio; his Missa Charles Darwin received its European debut in March 2013 at the Dinosaur Hall of Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde.

Brown’s cantata — un/bodying/s — was premiered by two-time Grammy-winning Philadelphia choir The Crossing in June 2017 and released on Innova Records in 2018. This 35-minute cantata for 24 voices uses new texts by poet Todd Hearon and focuses on issues of displacement and ecology around the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir. Gramophone’s review of un/bodying/s remarked that “[Brown's] writing is lively and affecting, full of exhilarating lines amid pungent details.” Voces Tallin’s recent disc A Black Birch in Winter features three pieces by Brown; This disc won the Annual Music Award of the Estonian Culture Endowment for 2019. Other recordings include releases on the Innova, Parma/Navona, Acis, and Albany labels.

For the 400th anniversary of the city’s founding, The Music Hall and Portsmouth (NH) Symphony Orchestra commissioned Brown to write a major cantata for orchestra, chorus, soprano soloist, and narrator. The piece, titled At This Point, utilized new texts by Todd Hearon and premiered in November 2023. Art song has become a big part of Brown’s output, with performances at Lyric Fest, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Calliope’s Call.