New Years Celebration -- January 9 @ 8 PM

The North/South Chamber Orchestra celebrates the New Year performing a free-admission concert in New York City.

NEW YORK, NY, USA, December 13, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The North/South Chamber Orchestra welcomes the New Year on Tuesday
evening January 9, 2018 performing optimistic and vibrant works by
four living American composers.

Violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Maria Asteriadou will appear as
soloists in the first New York performance of Encore II by Dinos
Constantinides -- the Greek-American composer celebrating his 90th
birthday next year.

Other works also receiving their first hearing in New York include
the American Elegy by Richard Brooks; Hextet by Paul Reale; and Fire
Within by the ensemble's conductor, Max Lifchitz.

The concert will take place at the intimate and acoustically superior
auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th Street) on
Manhattan's Upper West Side. The free-admission event will start at 8
PM and end around 9:30 PM. The auditorium is ADA accessible. No
tickets or reservations needed.

The composers will be in attendance and will introduce their works to
the audience. Composers and performers are available for interviews
and media events. They may be contacted via <ns.concerts@att.net>.

Since its inception in 1980, the North/South Consonance, Inc. has
brought to the attention of the New York City public over 1,000 works
by composers hailing from the Americas and elsewhere representing a
wide spectrum of aesthetic views. Its activities are made possible in
part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts
and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as well as by
the generosity of numerous individual donors.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC

Brooklyn-based Richard Brooks has received grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the NYS Music Teachers National
Association. A graduate of the Crane School of Music and New York
University, Brooks was elected President of the American Composers
Alliance in 1993. His opera Rapunzel -- commissioned by Binghamton's
Tri-Cities Opera -- has also been mounted by the Cincinnati Opera,
the Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia and Denver's Central City
Singers. His compositions appear on recordings issued by the Capstone
and Ravello labels.

Brooks' American Elegy for string orchestra was written in response
to the horrific events of September 11. The composer states that the
work's musical fabric "incorporates fragments from the melody of
America the Beautiful generating a type of reverie and reverent
homage to the memory of all that was lost as a result of the 9/11
attack on America."

The New York Time, described Dinos Constantinides as a composer whose
"music speaks simply, often combining Greek modes with an attractive
quality of ritual mystery." Born in 1928 in Ioannina, Constantinides
began his musical studies in his native Greece before moving to the
US to train at Indiana University and The Juilliard School. As a
violinist, Constantinides played with the Indianapolis Symphony
before serving as concertmaster for the Baton Rouge Symphony. He is
the current Music Director of the Louisiana Sinfonietta.

Constantinides' Encore II -- a double concerto for violin, piano and
string orchestra in one movement -- is a vivacious and rhythmically
exciting composition. Its simple formal structure features a hasty
opening, a lyrical interlude and a fast concluding section. The
soloists for the occasion, violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Maria
Asteriadou, premiered the work in Baton Rouge last September.

Max Lifchitz began his musical training in his native Mexico City
before relocating to NYC to attend The Juilliard School. Active as
composer, pianist and conductor, he earned first prize in the 1976
International Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Twentieth
Century Music held in Holland. He has appeared on concert stages
throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. His recently
completed Fire Within was written as a reaction to the tragic passing
of Heather Heyer in the midst of the distressing events that
transpired in Charlottsville, VA last August.

Los Angeles-based Paul Reale studied at Columbia University and The
University of Pennsylvania. His mentors included Otto Luening, George
Crumb and Edgar Varese. Between 1969 and 2004 he was professor of
music at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the
recipient of six awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Luckmann Prize and Beeler Prizes and commissions from the Jerome
Foundation and the Ahmanson Organ Trust. Commercial recordings of his
works are available from Music & Arts and Naxos.

Reale writes that the music of Hextet "summons up images of witches,
zombies, and other dark world creatures, as is revealed in the names
of the three movements: I: Tarantella, II: Zombies, III:
Walpurgisnacht. Throughout the movements are all kinds of scary
effects made out of collisions of ragged dissonances, overlapping
glissandi, and harmonic surprises."

MEET THE PERFORMERS

American violinist Kurt Nikkanen made his Carnegie Hall debut,
performing with the New York Symphony before being invited by Zubin
Mehta to perform the Paganini Concerto No.1 with the New York
Philharmonic for a Young People's Concert. The Concertmaster of the
New York City Ballet Orchestra, Nikkanen has given numerous
performances of the John Adams Violin Concerto, with orchestras such
as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Deutsches
Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Oregon Symphony, HallÉ Orchestra and
Cincinnati Symphony (all under the composer's direction).

The New York Times described pianist Maria Asteriadou's palying as
"showing unusual poise, confident technique and an intimate contact
with style usually reserved for mature professionals and very few of
them." A graduate of Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music,
Asteriadou has performed in major halls through the United States,
Canada, and Europe, including Carnegie Hall.

Embarking on its 38th consecutive season, the North/South Chamber
Orchestra presents a yearly concert series in New York City while
maintaining an active recording schedule. The ensemble's recents
release features five fascinating compositions inspired by Arshile
Gorky's abstract expressionist paintings by New York based composer
Robert Martin.

For the complete Winter/Spring concert series schedule please visit

http://www.northsouthmusic.org/calendar.asp

To stream, download and/or purchase the more than 60 compact discs
released by the North/South Recordings label please go to

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Label?&label_id=1297
______________________________________________________________________

Max Lifchitz
North/South Consonance, Inc
212-663-7566
email us here

North/South Chamber Orchestra: Sound Paintings