FORT WORTH, Texas, October 27, 2015—The Cliburn announces the 2015–2016 Cliburn Sessions—a concert series at Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge on Fort Worth’s Southside that launched in the spring of 2014. The Sessions, aimed at creating a classically alternative music scene, includes three concerts this season:
eighth blackbird
Thursday, November 19, 2015
A three-time Grammy® Award-winning sextet known for impeccable precision and collaborating with a variety of artists, eighth blackbird performs classical music with the passion and energy of a rock band.
SHUFFLE Concert
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Inspiring and energetic, New York-based chamber music ensemble SHUFFLE Concert changes the rules of performance as we know it by inviting audiences to select the songs that SHUFFLE plays.
Timo Andres + Gabriel Kahane
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Andres and Kahane offer audiences a concert varietal, juxtaposing solo piano music with songs for voice and piano. Hear Ives and Britten, as well as more mainstream classical music like Bach and Schumann. Those in attendance will enjoy modern representations of classical compositions.
Concerts begin at 8:00 p.m., with doors opening at 7:00 p.m. General admission tickets—which include first-come, first-served seating and also standing room—are $20 in advance at Cliburn.org or $25 at the door on the night of the concert. The Live Oak Music Hall and Lounge is located at 1311 Lipscomb Street, Fort Worth, Texas, 76104. Attendance is limited, so patrons are encouraged to get their tickets early.
“The concept behind Cliburn Sessions is to present classically-trained artists in a very relaxed environment, where they are free to be casual, to blend genres, to interact with the audience,” said Cliburn President and CEO Jacques Marquis. “It’s an intimate, cool environment—and will allow us to bring even more great talent to Fort Worth. Many of these musicians may venture outside of the classical idiom during the course of the concert—into jazz, pop, world, alternative. In the hands of exceptional artists, good music is good music.”
ABOUT EIGHTH BLACKBIRD
The Chicago-based, three-time Grammy Award-winning sextet has provoked and impressed audiences for 20 years across the country and around the world with impeccable precision and a signature style. One the industry’s most formidable ensembles, eighth blackbird (8bb) began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly became “a brand-name…defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality…known for performing from memory, employing choreography and collaborations with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists” (Detroit Free Press). 8bb’s mission extends beyond performance to curation and education. The ensemble served as music director of the Ojai Music Festival (2009), enjoyed a three-year residency at the Curtis Institute of Music, and holds ongoing ensemble-in-residence positions at the University of Richmond and the University of Chicago. The 2015–2016 season brings a lively residency at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art featuring open rehearsals, an interactive gallery installation, performances, and public talks. eighth blackbird’s members (Nathalie Joachim, flute; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinet; Yvonne Lam, violin & viola; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; Lisa Kaplan, piano) hail from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Empire, and the Bay States. The name “eighth blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’ evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). eighth blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists. www.eighthblackbird.org
ABOUT SHUFFLE CONCERT
SHUFFLE’s members are exceptionally accomplished chamber musicians; they are graduates of such schools as The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Oberlin, Manhattan School of Music, and Bard College; they have all individually won numerous prizes and have performed extensively as soloists and collaborative musicians throughout the world. Unique to SHUFFLE Concert performances is the manner in which the program is selected. The audience is invited to actively participate in the selection of works to be performed by choosing from a menu of over 30 works derived from 15 different styles, with works ranging from solos and duos, to trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets. Genres vary from Classical, Baroque, and Romantic, to Jazz, pop, and Broadway. The result is a highly engaged audience and a high-energy performance. The ensemble's debut eponymous CD was released in October 2013, and in 2014, to celebrate its fifth anniversary, SHUFFLE Concert announced its first Composition Competition, awarding prizes to composers Piotr Szewcyzk, Kevin Wilt, and Oran Eldor for their original compositions for the ensemble. Future projects include the launch of the SHUFFLE app, which will allow audiences to vote via a smart phone application. The ensemble was recently selected as one of five ensembles presenting at the prestigious YPCA showcase at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.
ABOUT TIMO ANDRES + GABRIEL KAHANE
This concert gives two friends the chance to throw caution to the wind in a free associative program that brings together four centuries of music, from J. S. Bach to world premieres written by Timo Andres and Gabriel Kahane for one another (which were co-commissioned by the Cliburn). At the center of the program is a call-and-response between the two composer-performers, juxtaposing solo piano music with songs for piano and voice that range from Schubert, Schumann, and Thomas Adès, to Jerome Kern and Andrew Norman. Framing this quasi-live mix tape are sets of Britten folk song settings and Ives songs, each nested in the lapidary elegance of Kurtág’s transcriptions of Bach chorale preludes.
TIMO ANDRES
Composer/pianist Timo Andres’ debut album, Shy and Mighty, which features 10 interrelated pieces for two pianos performed by himself and pianist David Kaplan, was released by Nonesuch Records in May 2010 to immediate critical acclaim. Of the disc, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that it “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene… more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.” Mr. Andres’ new works include a piano quintet for Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet, commissioned and presented by Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and San Francisco Performances; a solo piano work for Kirill Gerstein, commissioned by the Gilmore; and a new string quartet for the Library of Congress, premiered by the Attacca Quartet. Recent highlights include solo recitals at Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, and (le) Poisson Rouge; a weekend of concerts with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, featuring a new work and performance of his re-composition of the Mozart “Coronation” Concerto; and a world premiere performance of selected Philip Glass Études, alongside the composer, at the Barbican. Mr. Andres earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale, and in addition to music, has worked occasionally as a professional graphic and web designer. He is one sixth of the Sleeping Giant composers’ collective, and performs regularly with ACME. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI, and ASCAP, as well as grants from New Music USA and the Copland Fund. Raised in rural Connecticut, Mr. Andres now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
GABRIEL KAHANE
Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the year’s very best albums," Gabriel Kahane’s major label debut, The Ambassador, is a meditation on the underbelly of Los Angeles seen through the lens of 10 street addresses. Last season, Kahane appeared at BAM’s Harvey Theater in the critically-acclaimed New York premiere of the stage production of The Ambassador, directed by Tony Award-winner John Tiffany. The 2015–2016 season finds Mr. Kahane involved in a number of touring projects with friends and collaborators new and old. In addition to making solo appearances with the North Carolina and Colorado Symphonies, he will appear on separate tours with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, and with pianist/composer Timo Andres, the latter tour culminating in a duo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of that institution’s 125th anniversary season. In March, Mr. Kahane makes his European solo debut in a concert at the recently opened Paris Philharmonie. He has been commissioned by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Recent studio credits include a track on last year’s Beck Song Reader; appearances on Blake Mills’ Heigh Ho alongside Fiona Apple and Jon Brion; as well as performances and recordings with Chris Thile of Punch Brothers. Upcoming theater projects include commissions from the Public Theater in New York and Signature Theater in Arlington, VA, as well as a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker. A graduate of Brown University and two-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Mr. Kahane lives in Brooklyn, NY.
ABOUT LIVE OAK MUSIC HALL & LOUNGE
The Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge, located in the Historic Fairmount District of Fort Worth in the old Southside Lion’s club community building erected in 1952, is North Texas’ newest premier listening room and dining experience. The upscale pub cuisine is matched by 91 taps of domestic craft beers and award winning cocktails. The Live Oak has received many awards, including Fort Worth’s best rooftop patio—a favorite place for patrons to get a perfect view of downtown. The Live Oak provides both artist and concertgoers an intimate musical experience with a setting reminiscent of a 1950s lounge and hall, and has played host to many notable artists, including Kevin Eubanks, John Oates, Guy Clark, Darrell Scott, Jeff Coffin & The Mu’tet, BJ Thomas, as well as many up and coming local artists.
ABOUT THE CLIBURN
The Cliburn advances classical piano music throughout the world. Its international competitions, education programs, and concert series embody an enduring commitment to artistic excellence and the discovery of new artists. Established in 1962, the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is widely-recognized as “one of the world’s highest-visibility classical-music contests” (Dallas Morning News) and remains committed to its original ideals of supporting and launching the careers of young pianists, age 18 to 30 (fifteenth edition May 25–June 10, 2017). It shares the transformative powers of music with a wide global audience, through fully-produced webcasts and by providing commission-free, comprehensive career management and concert bookings to its winners. Rounding out its mission, the Cliburn also produces the Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition and Festival for exceptional 13 to 17-year-old pianists (inaugural edition June 21–28, 2015), and the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition for outstanding non-professional pianists age 35 and older (seventh edition June 19–25, 2016).
Over a four-year cycle, the Cliburn contributes to North Texas’ cultural landscape with over 170 classical music performances for 150,000 attendees, through competitions, free community concerts, and its signature Cliburn Concerts series at Bass Performance Hall, the Kimbell Art Museum Piano Pavilion, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. It presents 1,000 in-school, interactive music education programs for more than 200,000 area elementary students. During the same time period, it garners the world’s attention with over one million visits from 155 nations for live concert and competition webcasts; 300 concerts worldwide booked for competition winners; more than 5,000 news articles about the Cliburn and its winners; regular national radio broadcasts to 245 public radio stations; and a PBS documentary airing in a potential 105 million households. Detailed information about the Cliburn and its programs is available at Cliburn.org.
Cliburn Sponsors are:
Amon G. Carter Foundation
Arts Council of Fort Worth
Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust
The Pangburn Foundation, J.P. Morgan, Trustee
ExxonMobil / XTO Energy
Mercedes T. Bass Charitable Corporation
Sid W. Richardson Foundation
Exclusive Print Media Sponsor:
Star-Telegram
Official Piano of the Cliburn:
Steinway & Sons – North Texas / Houston
Official Hotel of the Cliburn:
Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel
