Cornerstone Center presents
MOSA Concerts: Full Menu
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Open End - returning improvisation to classical music after years of neglect
Length: 1 hr 30 mins
Intermission: Yes
Seating: General Admission
You choose your seats when you get to the theater.
Tickets available at the door:
General Public - $15 | Students & Seniors - $10 | Kids under age 16 - $3
Andrew Waggoner, violin; Caroline Stinson, cello; Molly Morkoski, piano
Open End epitomizes a progressive musical 'cart du jour' by presenting a mix of contemporary works, 20th-century classics, and free improvisations in solo to piano quintet configurations. For the Sunday Series finale, the ensemble's Washington Heights-based piano trio (Andrew Waggoner, violin; Caroline Stinson, cello; Molly Morkoski, piano) serves up five programmed "specials" - Elliot Carter’s Cello Sonata, Andrew Waggoner’s Tales of Home and Livre, the New York premier of Judith Weir's Music for 247 Strings, and Ravel’s Duo for violin and cello - along with improvisational side orders.
The afternoon begins with a pre-concert talk at 2:30 p.m. as the ensemble discusses their approach to collaborative improvisation. A complimentary reception follows the concert.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Open End consists of players well-known in other group contexts whose collective experience spans the whole of Western instrumental literature, from the oldest to the newest.
Andrew Waggoner, violin and composer, was born in 1960 in New Orleans. He grew up there and in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University. He has received grants and prizes from ASCAP, Yaddo, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, New Music Delaware, the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University. He has also been awarded the Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award from Composers Inc., in San Francisco, has been nominated for two prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. His music has been commissioned and performed by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Denver Symphony, the Syracuse Symphony, the Cassatt, Corigliano, and Miro Quartets, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the California EAR Unit, pianist Gloria Cheng, violist Melia Watras, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic of Zlin, Czech Republic, Sequitur, Buglisi-Foreman Dance, the Athabasca Trio, CELLO, and Ensemble Accroche Note of France. He has two CD’s on CRI, both now available on the New World label, and can also be heard on the Vienna Modern Masters Music From Six Continents series. In addition to his concert works, Mr. Waggoner has also composed extensively for theatre and for film. He was a founding Director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine, and is currently Composer-in-Residence at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University.
A native of Edmonton, Canada, cellist Caroline Stinson performs regularly as a recitalist and as a member of the cello quartet, CELLO, the Athabasca String Trio, the new music and improvisation ensemble Open End, which she founded with her husband and composer Andrew Waggoner, and most recently as a new member of the Contrasts Quartet. She holds a B.M. from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Performance Diploma with Distinction from the Hochschule für Musik, Köln. While living in Cologne, she performed throughout Germany, France and Holland and was awarded first prize in the Hohnen Foundation Cello Competition in 1999. From 2000-2003, she joined the New York City based Cassatt String Quartet, performing across the United States and Canada and taking part in the commissioning and premiering of some two dozen new works for string quartet. Her collaborations have included performers Lynn Harrell, Paul Katz, Pinchas Zukerman, and composers Peter Eötvös, Steven Stucky, Joan Tower and George Rochberg. Ms. Stinson is currently building programs of new music for solo cello, the first of which she presented last season at the Winnipeg International New Music Festival in Canada. She has recorded solo and chamber works for Naxos, Koch International and Albany Records. Ms. Stinson is a coach for the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program and is on the faculty of Syracuse University and is Concert Artist faculty at Kean University in New Jersey.
Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. She regularly receives invitations to perform at Carnegie Hall, including her appearance in the inaugural concert of Zankel Hall in 2003 under the direction of John Adams. Ms. Morkoski has been a featured soloist on the Making Music Series at Carnegie Hall, and the Tanglewood, Bang-on-a-Can, and Pacific Rim Festivals, as well as appearing as soloist with the Raleigh and Asheville Symphony Orchestras. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with the NY Philharmonic Chamber Players, St. Louis Symphony Chamber Players, New World Symphony, Speculum Musicae, the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, as well as some of today’s leading composers, conductors, directors and solo artists, including Dawn Upshaw, David Robertson, James Conlon, Oliver Knussen, John Harbison, David Del Tredici, Louis Andriessen, and Peter Sellars. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Paris, France, she was apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain in1999 and 2000. She is also a recent recipient of the Teresa Sterne Career Grant. She holds a doctorate degree from SUNY- Stony Brook where she was a student of Gilbert Kalish. Her performances have been broadcast internationally, and she has recorded for Bridge Records and Indiana University labels.
MOSA Concerts are made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, both administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. |