Event - Face the Music presents “€œNew Voices (Part 2)”€ a Concert of Contemporary Composers

Face the Music presents “€œNew Voices (Part 2)”€ a Concert of Contemporary Composers

01.12.14, 2:00 pm

The second in a series of four concerts by the band Time Out New York described as a “€œteenage-riot new music group,”€ New Voices (part 2) bring Face the Music back to Queens Museum with three ambitious recent works. Huang Ruo’s The Lost Garden is a “€œconcerto not just for musicians, but for performers,”€ according to the composer. Evoking the feel of an Eastern monastery with a battery of percussion instruments and sound effects, the performers have to sing, chant, and speak as well as play. This piece will be followed by Daniel Bernard Roumain’s epic King for string quartet – a four-movement meditation on the man Martin Luther King, not the public figure. The program will close with an amazing piece of theatrical music by a twelve-year-old FTM player/composer. Titled This is Not Spartacus, it combines elements of Stravinsky, Karl Marx, and Groucho Marx in one noisy ten-minute romp. This concert will be well worth the trip on a snowy Sunday afternoon!

Concerts will take place at 2pm and again at 4pm.

Called “€œa force in the new music world”€ by The New York Times, Face the Music is the country’s only ensemble for 18-and-under that is solely devoted to the music of living composers. In the space of nine years Face the Music has grown from an after-school club of eight kids to a massive group of over 135 students from all over the tri-state area who convene every week to write, rehearse, and perform music together. The ensemble advances Kaufman Music Center’s commitment to contemporary music and provides unparalleled performance and education experiences for the next generation of musical leaders.

Under the direction of Dr. Jenny Undercofler, Face the Music performs nearly 35 concerts each season in venues around the city ranging from schools to museums to concert halls. Highlights from recent seasons include performances at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Bang On A Can Marathon, the Ecstatic Music Festival, and the River to River Festival, where Face the Music opened for the Philip Glass Ensemble. Face the Music has collaborated with many professional artists, including the JACK Quartet, with whom they performed Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet at the Baryshnikov Arts Center last spring. Recently, Face the Music launched “€œKronos at Kaufman,”€ a major collaboration with the Kronos Quartet for the 2013-14 season.