The Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H Street NE
Washington, D.C.

On May 11th, Great Noise Ensemble takes its place as the Resident New Music Ensemble at one of Washington, D.C.’s most exciting venues, The Atlas Performing Arts Center in the burgeoning H Street Arts & Entertainment District. Featured on this program are premieres of new works by Randall Woolf, Andrew Earle Simpson, David Smooke, and the Washington premiere of Stefan Freund’s Three Urban Images.

The pieces featured on this concert highlight not only locales and characters that make life in an urban setting so vibrant, but also the concepts and ideals that contribute to the diversity and fascinating rhythms of life among dense humanity. Stefan Freund’s Three Urban Images features the cast and setting of his first year after returning to living in Rochester, New York after living in a small town, drawing its portraits from the very street corner where Freund lived in that first year. David Smooke’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death springs from a collection of 18 sculptures by Frances Glessner Lee of the same name, each depicting in minute detail the death scene of a particular unexplained demise, now housed in the Office of the Medical Examiner in Baltimore, here translated into a concerto for toy piano and orchestra. Urban Legends is a setting of rhymes by four rap MCs, each of whom was asked by Randall Woolf to create a modern day myth. Andrew Earle Simpson’s Double Concerto for Guitar, Violin, and Chamber Orchestra mixes classical and folk musical styles into each other, creating a distinctive sound-world in which pentatonic melodies, blue notes, extended techniques, fiddling and strumming patterns, tone clusters, open-string drones and other elements create a concerto that is alternately lyrical, melancholy, and joyful.

Tickets: $25 General / $15 Students
Tickets are available via the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s website.

Information and Directions To The Atlas Performing Arts Center

Symphony Space
2537 Broadway
New York, NY 10025-6990

In “Philosphy II,” Great Noise Ensemble explores the beauty and complexity of ideas and the intermingling of thoughts, images, memories and concepts to become art. In the five chamber works featured on the lineup for this concert, GNE spotlights the talents of a compact core of its member instrumentalists on works by Alexandra Gardner, Cornelius Dufallo, Victoria Bond, Carlos Carillo, Matt van Brink and Marc Mellits.

Alexandra Gardner’s The Way of Ideas evokes a “musical landscape that evokes the everyday machinations of the human mind – an environment in which chattering thoughts suddenly fly away or are pulled slowly apart, return again, and change and develop into new forms which travel along different pathways” while Marc Mellits’s Five Machines uses the musicians as the cogs of a musical machine, working together in sync to form a cohesive, grooving whole. Victoria Bond’s Coqui paints a soundscape highlighting the voice of the Puerto Rican Coqui frog, using the instruments of the ensemble to recall and imitate the constant chirping of the rain forest. Neil Dufallo’s Paranoid Symmetry creates music that mimics the lightning-fast synapses of the brain, interspersed with the haunting fragmented melodies of memory and remembrance.

Find out more about the concert and buy tickets at the Symphony Space website: www.symphonyspace.org

Information and Directions To Symphony Space

Ward Hall, The Catholic University of America
3976 Harewood Rd NE
Washington, DC

In “Philosphy I,” Great Noise Ensemble explores the beauty and complexity of ideas and the intermingling of thoughts, images, memories and concepts to become art. In the five chamber works featured on the lineup for this concert, GNE spotlights the talents of a compact core of its member instrumentalists on works by Alexandra Gardner, Victoria Bond, Carlos Carillo, Matt van Brink and Marc Mellits.

Alexandra Gardner’s The Way of Ideas evokes a “musical landscape that evokes the everyday machinations of the human mind – an environment in which chattering thoughts suddenly fly away or are pulled slowly apart, return again, and change and develop into new forms which travel along different pathways” while Marc Mellits’s Five Machines uses the musicians as the cogs of a musical machine, working together in sync to form a cohesive, grooving whole. Victoria Bond’s Coqui paints a soundscape highlighting the voice of the Puerto Rican Coqui frog, using the instruments of the ensemble to recall and imitate the constant chirping of the rain forest.

Tickets for this event are FREE for students 17 and younger.

Tickets are available via OvationTix online or at the door:
$15 General / $10 Students & Seniors / Free for CUA students, faculty and staff with CUA ID

Information and Directions To Ward Hall, The Catholic University of America

The Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H Street NE
Washington, D.C.

Be the first to hear the lineup for GNE’s upcoming debut CD! In fulfillment of our successful Kickstarter project from last year, GNE will be going into the recording studio immediately following our appearance at the Intersections Festival to record exciting works by up-and-coming composers D.J. Sparr, Rob Paterson and Marc Mellits.

In this concert, Great Noise Ensemble will explore the intersection of machine communication and music. How do we as humans connect via internet dating, as cogs in a musical machine, and through the common experience of musical language? Find out when conductor Armando Bayolo brings GNE to the Atlas Center for the Performing Arts.

Find out more about the festival and purchase tickets at the Intersections Festival website.

Information and Directions To The Atlas Performing Arts Center

Ward Hall, The Catholic University of America
3976 Harewood Rd NE
Washington, DC

Great Noise Ensemble returns to Catholic University’s 2012 New Voices @ CUA Festival on January 20th and 21st to present brand new works for voice and ensemble.

On Friday night’s concert, GNE presents works by composers from Catholic’s composition program, featuring composers Jay Parotta, Sarah Horick, Brian Rice, and Joseph Taylor as well as premieres of new works commissioned for GNE by composers Sean Doyle and Cornelius Dufallo.

Dufallo joins the group to perform his work Paranoid Symmetry, bringing a marriage of technology and live instruments to depict the disintegration of the human mind. Sean Doyle’s Letters from Zelda sets texts of letters written to F. Scott Fitzgerald by his wife Zelda to lush orchestrations that evoke the jazz age and the dramatic swings of Zelda’s mental instability.

Tickets are available at the door:
Free for CUA students/faculty/staff with ID
$15 General Admission
$10 Seniors (60 and up) and Students with ID
Free admission for students 17 and under when accompanied by a ticketed adult
Festival Pass (good for admission to all concerts):
$50 General Admission
$30 Seniors and Students with ID

Information and Directions To Ward Hall, The Catholic University of America

Hartke Theater, The Catholic University of America
4120 Harewood Road NE
Washington, DC

In 1883 Carlo Collodi published his completed work, Pinocchio, which has gone on to become one of the classics of children’s literature. On December 9th, Great Noise Ensemble presents a retelling of this favorite story, featuring narrator Pamela Witcher and Great Noise Ensemble members Molly Orlando Palmiero, Katherine Kellert, Chris DeChiara and guest percussionist David Wolf in a tour-de-force evening of music composed by Martin Bresnick. This rarely-performed completed version of the piece features not only the original four scenes featured in Bresnick’s Musica Povera but also the rest of the story, culminating in the marionette’s transformation into a real boy, accompanied by a fascinating range of music from a chamber quartet of clarinets, piano, and a percussion setup that has to be seen to be believed.

This concert is free to children 17 and younger with the paid admission of an accompanying adult. (No limit on number of free childrens’ tickets with each admission– you’re welcome! Bring the whole family! Enjoythe concert!) Free tickets may be requested at Will Call. Groups may reserve free childrens’ tickets by contacting the box office at tickets@greatnoiseensemble.com.

Tickets are available through Ovationtix: General $15 / College students & Seniors $10 / CUA Students faculty and staff free with CUA ID

Information and Directions To Hartke Theater, The Catholic University of America

The Mansion At Strathmore
10701 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD

Great Noise Ensemble is on a mission: to fight for the performance of new works and promote emerging talent in contemporary music. Since its first concert in January 2006, Great Noise Ensemble has become one of the most important players in D.C.’s burgeoning new music scene, winning the Washington Area Music Association’s “WAMMIE” Award. In this concert, GNE explores American music from the turn of the 21st century, including works by Armando Bayolo, David Lang, Carlos Carillo, Angelica Negron, Eve Beglarian and Pierre Jalbert.

Tickets are available for sale via Strathmore’s website: $10 General Admission.

Information and Directions To The Mansion At Strathmore

GNE is starting a great new program– this year at the following concerts, Great Noise Ensemble will be offering FREE ADMISSION to students 17 & younger as long as they’re accompanied by a ticketed adult. All you need to do is show up to the concert to pick up your regular ticket and let the box office know you have young attendees with you, and they’ll get in free!

Free 17 & Younger tickets are available for the following concerts this year:

September 9. 2011: Lullaby, Eulogy, Homage (The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring)
December 9, 2011: Fairy Tale (Ward Hall, Catholic University)
January 20 & 21, 2012: Poems I & II: New Voices Festival (Ward Hall, Catholic University)
April 13, 2012: Philosophy (Ward Hall, Catholic University)

There may be other concerts with this offer, so stay tuned, and see you at the concerts!

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring
10309 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903

Great Noise Ensemble opens its seventh season with a concert featuring a world premiere, a remembrance September 11th, and a birthday wish to composer Steve Reich.

GNE is proud to open this performance with the world premiere of a brand new work written for us by up-and-coming composer Hannah Lash, entitled Hush. We are also proud to present, as a remembrance near the 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Stephen Hartke’s Beyond Words, composed in the aftermath of the attacks. We also take time to celebrate the upcoming 75th birthday of composer Steve Reich with his epic piece Music for 18 Musicians.

This concert is special occasion for Great Noise Ensemble as well, as this concert marks the official debut of conductor David Vickerman in his new role as GNE’s Assistant Conductor, and will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring.

Tickets are available through OvationTix or at the door: $15 General Admission / $10 Students & Seniors / 17 & under free with a regular adult admission.

Information and Directions To The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring

GNE: “What inspired you to become a composer?”

Mellits: “I never really thought about anything else. In fact, I think being a composer is not really something you choose, it chooses you. It is not like one day I woke up and thought, “Yea, a composer, that is what I want to be.” Rather, it is just something I have always done, for as long as I can remember. I am constantly creating, there is always music in my head, even right now. The trick is to learn to be able to take the ideas that we are always thinking of and create beautiful sound that works from beginning to end.”

GNE: “What type, style, or genre of music being created right now (be it classical, pop, country, Broadway, whatever) inspires you or interests you the most? In other words, what artists and composers are speaking to you most with their new work?”

Mellits: “I tend to listen to music across multiples styles and genres. So if it is beautiful, well written music, I would like it regardless of the type or style. I rarely listen to ‘style’ and usually focus on craft instead. Right now, I am absorbed with the music of an American composer whom I admire, Bill Ryan, and a Dutch composer I am fascinated with, Douwe Eisenga. Vivaldi I listen to more than anyone else and own multiple performances of his complete works. Lately, I am also back on the first record of Sigur Ros a lot, can’t stop listening to this one. The guitar work of Jimmy Page of Led Zepplin continues to get my attention these days.”

GNE: “What was your inspiration for composing the piece we’re featuring on the CD and what kind of process do/did you go through when composing it or similar pieces?”

Mellits: “I was living in New York City at the time. I got a call from Michael Gordon of Bang On a Can, out of the blue, asking me if I would be interested in writing for the Bang On A Can All-Stars. I remember it very clearly. I started writing this piece that very same day and did not stop until I reached the end. So, I guess you could say that I was inspired my the group itself. I am also fascinated by machinery. I wanted to write music that had the musicians rely on each other much like they were all parts of a giant musical machine. The Guitar line fits into the Cello, which fits into the Piano, and so on. Each player represents a cog, a belt, a gear in the machine. The music is formed by the combination of sounds of the entire group working together. This was a very important piece of music for me. BOAC took a chance on me, and I will always be grateful. This music that I wrote for them was one of the sparks that led to many more and I will always have BOAC to thank for that!”

To learn more about Marc Mellits, visit his website or check out his interview with New Music Detroit on YouTube.

Once again, THANK YOU to all of the donors who helped get our Kickstarter funded. If you haven’t donated yet but would like to, please visit our Kickstarter project page before June 2 and pitch in!