Traditions Reimagined
Friday, October 4, 7:30pm
Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston
3400 Main Street, 77002
$30 general admission
About
Kinetic Ensemble opens their 10th concert season by featuring composers who have digested and transformed musical material from their immediate geographic and cultural contexts. Turkish-American composer Erberk Eryılmaz rewrites the mechanics of traditional Turkish percussion for an ensemble of piano and strings; Dutch composer Joey Roukens pulls material from old sea shanties and contemporary pop music alike; and American composer Alvin Singleton draws inspiration from the improvisations of his colleague Leroy Jenkins.
— curated by Bree Ahern, cellist, and Austin Lewellen, bassist
Program
Alvin Singleton: After Choice (2009)
Erberk Eryılmaz: Bolulu Ama Rasim (2021)
Joey Roukens: Visions at Sea for string orchestra (2016)
Joey Roukens: In Transit (2014)
for string quartet and percussion
Erberk Eryılmaz: Piyanomun Düğümü (2022/2024 — premiere of new version)
with Erberk Eryılmaz, piano soloist
Featured Composers
Turkish-American composer and performer Erberk Eryılmaz is recognized for bringing the energy of the folk music of his homeland to the concert stage with a creative and dramatic approach. His recent album of chamber works, "Dances of the Yogurt Maker" won a GRAMMY Award with producer Judith Sherman and received two gold medals at Global Music Awards in 2022. His compositions have been performed at some of the world’s most important concert venues such as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
As a composer, pianist, conductor, and folk percussionist, he has collaborated with many important ensembles including the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Turkey, Houston Symphony, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Apollo Chamber Players, as well as the Bowen McCauley Dance Company.
Joey Roukens (b. 1982) is an Amsterdam-based composer of contemporary classical music who has emerged as one of the most striking and most performed Dutch contemporary composers of his generation. In most of his works, Roukens seeks to organically integrate elements from highly diverse influences and aesthetics — including the orchestral vibrancy of early Stravinsky and Ravel, the late-Romantic gestures of Mahler and Sibelius, the pulsating rhythms of American minimalism, the serenity of Renaissance polyphony, as well as certain kinds of pop music and jazz. Not because Roukens cannot choose, but because he feels they are all part of the musical air he breathes.
His works have been performed by major ensembles and soloists at home and abroad, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, ASKO|Schönberg, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Britten Sinfonia, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Colin Currie and the pianist brothers Lucas & Arthur Jussen.
Alvin Singleton was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended New York University and Yale. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied with Goffredo Petrassi at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy. After living and working in Europe for fourteen years, Singleton returned to the United States to become Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (1985-88). He subsequently served as Resident Composer at Spelman College in Atlanta (1988-91) and as UNISYS Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1996-97). In addition, he has served as Visiting Professor of Composition at the Yale University School of Music.
Singleton has amassed numerous awards throughout his compositional life. He is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and was commissioned by The Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation and American Composers Orchestra for the orchestral work When Given a Choice, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 2004. His other awards include the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis by the city of Darmstadt, Germany, the Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts Award by the City of Atlanta, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His music has been published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music since 1977, and is recorded on the Albany Records, Elektra/Nonesuch, First Edition, Tzadik, and Innova labels.