Sympho + MAYA Resonating Light
Sunday January 29, 2012 @ 4:00 PM
Price: $25.00
A program featuring a new Rubin Museum of Art commission "The Green Lama." The visionary composer Paul Haas has created a synchronized work to accompany the panels of the 1940s cult comic book hero The Green Lama, in which the wealthy Jethro Dumont returns to take on the ills of a great American metropolis with the magic powers acquired during his ten year absence in Tibet. The composition is an extension of the exhibition: Hero, Villain, Yeti!: Tibet in Comics.
It's not a plane. It's not a bird. It's also not Superman. It's the Green Lama, who in the voice of Linus Roache (Law & Order) is flying into town to bring the compassionate teachings of Tibet to this great metropolis.
Part radio-play, part light-show, part silent film, part concert, this unique offering by Sympho and the trio MAYA provides a narrative score for the sequential projections of panels from Episode 2 of The Green Lama comic book series. WNYC host Elliott Forrest will narrate; Linus Roache will voice the wealthy playboy Jethro Dumont (aka The Green Lama); and Brian Cox, who opens in Coriolanus this week opposite Ralph Fiennes, plays the master crook Willie the Sleeper.
January 29, 4 p.m.
Sympho (Paul Haas, Artistic Director,
composer/laptop) with MAYA
$25
This Resonating Light concert reflects themes in the Rubin exhibition Hero, Villain, Yeti!: Tibet in Comics.
PROGRAM
Paul Haas/John Hadfield The Green Lama (World Premiere)
Followed by a discussion with the artists
Toru Takemitsu Toward the Sea (1981) (alto flute / harp)
Paul Haas Aggression
Kinan Azmeh It's About Time (2011) (solo harp)
Robert Paterson Xi Wang Mu (from The Book of Goddesses) (2010) (flute / harp)
Paul Haas Post-Trauma
Ravi Shankar L'Aube enchantée (1976)
John Hadfield Theoretical Walls
Sayat Nova Kamancha (arr. Alyssa Hess-Reit)
John Hadfield Sisters
About the Aritsts
MAYA, the trio of percussionist John Hadfield, harpist Bridget Kibbey, and flutist Sato Moughalian, was founded in 2005 and performs new music, music of different world cultures, and incorporates improvisations into its performances. MAYA commissions music from a broad variety of composers with a special emphasis on emerging composers, receiving grants and awards from American Composers Forum, Argosy Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture. MAYA In The Spirit (Perspectives Recordings) was released in December 2007. Of the trio's second recording featuring music of Neil Rolnick on his album The Economic Engine (Innova), The New York Times said: "The brightly spirited 'Uptown Jump' (2006), a study in rich, tactile textures and inventive variation, juxtaposes jazz moves with ragalike percussion patterns. MAYA, a trio of flute, harp and percussion, plays it with grace and energy." MAYA's third CD, includes Robert Paterson's The Book of Goddesses. MAYA has toured nationally and performs regularly in New York City.
Paul Haas
According to The New York Times, Paul Haas "is surely on the brink of a noteworthy career." Time Out New York calls him a "visionary." The New York Youth Symphony commissioned his "Matthew Says" for orchestra, chorus, and two violin soloists for a Carnegie Hall performance in 2007, and he has had nine other orchestral pieces premiered in New York City during recent seasons. San Francisco-based Hope Mohr Dance commissioned a large-scale score by Haas, premiering "The Unsayable" in March 2011. He also collaborated with video artist Tatjana Plitt to create "Forever", a multimedia piece that has been shown at the Chelsea Museum in New York and the Stills Gallery in Sydney, Australia. His works can also be heard on the soundtrack of a recently-released independent feature film, "Violent Blue".
Haas is the founder and Artistic Director of the critically-acclaimed Sympho, a groundbreaking company that creates concert events for unusual and nontraditional performance spaces. Paul Haas is a graduate of Yale University, where he was the recipient of the Selden Memorial Award and Friends of Music Composition Prize, and the Juilliard School, where he was a Bruno Walter Memorial Fellow.
Sympho is a trailblazing organization that creates powerful and emotional musical experiences, collaborating with leading artists and using unexpected performance methods and unorthodox venues. "Refits the Classical Experience for a New Century," proclaimed The New York Times headline for Sympho's first concert. "Something momentous has occurred," raved the San Francisco Chronicle. And Symphony Magazine declared, "Something important was happening, something with emotional stakes."
In February 2011, Sympho and Haas created a critically-acclaimed concert event for the opening night of the Park Avenue Armory's Tune-In Music Festival, ranked by New York's WQXR FM as the "Top New Music Event of 2011". Upcoming events include a site-specific concert commission for Ann Hamilton's Tower, an 80-foot sculpture and performance venue in Sonoma County, California, whose past performances have featured the likes of Kronos Quartet and Meredith Monk. For more information about Sympho, please visit www.SymphoConcerts.org.
