Great Noise Ensemble presents:
Illusions & Hallucinations
Saturday, December 5, 2009, 7:30pm
Ward Recital Hall, The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music
The Catholic University of America
General $25 / Students & Seniors $15
CUA Students, Faculty & Staff Free with CUA ID

Inspiration can come from a myriad of places, and not all of them exist in the realm of the sane or the real or the tangible: GNE’s third concert of the season, Illusions & Hallucinations, features works by composers Armando Bayolo, Andrew Simpson and Geoffrey Gordon inspired by things both imagined and etheral.

Geoffrey Gordon’s Lux Solis Aeterna draws its inspiration from neutrinos and the creation of sunlight, while Andrew Simpson’s lotus and poppy springs from images and personifications of lotus eaters and opium addicts, applied to modern day issues of unjust warfare. Armando Bayolo’s Chamber Symphony: Illusory Airs springs from our increasing connection through the wireless and intangible pathways of the internet and mobile communication, in direct opposition to our ever increasing physical isolation.

Tickets are available at OvationTix: $25 Adults, $15 Students/Seniors, CUA Faculty and Staff free with valid CUA I.D.

Twilight Music
Friday, October 30, 2009, 8pm
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring
Silver Spring, Maryland

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring hosts GNE for Twilight Music, a program of works by David Smooke, John Harbison, Roberto Sierra, Masatoshi Mitsumoto and Blair Goins inspired by light, poetry and musical intervals.

David Smooke’s Stillness and Occurrence takes its inspiration from the reverie of a child in a photograph, contrasting the colors of the other subjects with the white space of the landscape between them. John Harbison’s Twilight Music highlights the differences between horn and violin, two instruments with “little in common” in a piece he says is the kind of music he is drawn to, where “the surface seems simplest and most familiar… but some purposeful, independent musical argument is at work.” Piezas Caracteristicas by Roberto Sierra uses different musical intervals as the basis for its five movements for small chamber ensemble, incorporating the bongos and congas of Latin and Caribbean music. In Songs of Innocence, Masatoshi Mitsumoto sets the poems of William Blake in a song cycle for soprano and piano.

Tickets are available through OvationTix or at the door: $25 Adults, $15 Students & Seniors.

Friday, September 25 2009, 7:30pm
Ward Recital Hall
The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music
The Catholic University of America
General $25 / Students & Seniors $15 / CUA Students, Faculty & Staff Free with CUA ID

Great Noise Ensemble’s fifth season opens with Urban Saloon, a program highlighting works inspired by scenes from evocative locales such as the Deep South and the historic American West, as well as music from the Balkans, India, jazz and John Cage.

Samuel Vriezen’s The Weather Riots opens GNE’s first concert of the season with a classic example of the thought and inspiration that go into live musical performance: the performers choose the sequence of the events individually, leading to a truly one-of-a-kind performance every time the piece is performed. Ned McGowan’s Urban Turban draws on “music from the Balkans and India, as well as John Cage, jazz, Loos, Rudiger Meyer, Musiquantics, serialism and the note E”, combined and re-imagined for saxophone, guitar and piano. Bruce Broughton’s Saloon Music for B-flat cornet and pit orchestra features guest artist Craig Taylor, performing a pyrotechnic suite of music inspired by the traveling musicians of the Wild West. Joel Puckett’s Southern Comforts, with guest violinist Scott Conklin, evokes the composer’s roots in the Deep South, from Faulkner to football to funerals to mint juleps.

This concert will mark the beginning of Great Noise Ensemble’s second year as Resident New Music Ensemble at Catholic University, and will be presented in Catholic’s historic Ward Recital Hall at The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music.

Tickets are available through the GNE website, via phone at 866-811-4111 or at the door.

Saturday, May 30, 2009 7:30 pm
The Terrace Theater, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

On Saturday, May 30, Great Noise Ensemble makes its official Kennedy Center debut, performing with one of D.C.’s best-loved choral groups, the Congressional Chorus! This concert features the world premiere of part of Revolutions of Ruin by Daniel Felsenfeld, co-commissioned by the Congressional Chorus and GNE for this performance, as well as Armando Bayolo’s concerto for violin and orchestra, Musica Concertante, performed by violinist Jameson Cooper, and many new and exciting works for chorus so fresh that the ink’s barely dry! Come out and hear this exciting collaboration between two of the most fun and cutting-edge groups in D.C.!!!

Tickets are on sale now at the Kennedy Center website: grab your tickets now, because this concert will almost certainly sell out!!

For more information, visit The Congressional Chorus’s website: http://www.congressionalchorus.org.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 8 PM
Ward Recital Hall
The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music
The Catholic University of America

Windows shape the way we view the world, whether through the subjects they frame looking out or looking in, the images they depict in lead and glass and color, or in the materials with which those images and frames are constructed. On March 27th, Great Noise Ensemble presents a concert showcasing the views afforded and colored by these prismatic portals: Tiffany Windows, featuring the music of Arlene Sierra, David Dzubay, Don Freund, Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen.

Arlene Sierra’s Tiffany Windows and David Dzubay’s Vision are carefully constructed reflections on the subjects of the windows of two churches in New York, celebrating their form, function and construction. Libby Larsen’s Holy Roller is a revival sermon captured in the sounds of the alto saxophone and piano, and Don Freund’s Hard Cells uses hard faceted blocks of sound to construct the ideas which it contains within its frame.

Join us for a concert which shines the light on new and established icons who can and will frame our perspectives for years to come: tickets are available at BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door: $20 General, $10 Students and Seniors, and free for Catholic University students, faculty and staff with valid CUA I.D.

Friday, February 13, 2009, 8 PM
Ward Recital Hall
The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music
The Catholic University of America

On February 13th, Great Noise Ensemble presents a concert highlighting the form, function and intersection of man and machine through works of Mallamud, Mellits Goins and Sparr. David Mallamud’s song cycle Spectorian Domination draws on James Bond, surf music, and the telenovela to present several different stories, with a couple of new songs written specifically for this performance. D.J. Sparr’s Carnal Node tells the story of a friend’s search for love through the internet, as told through emails to the composer. Blair Goin’s Concerto for Soprano Sax, String Quintet and Percussion combines both jazz and classical influences to showcase the spectacular playing of saxophonist Steven Leffue, and GNE reprises its acclaimed Fringe Festival performance of Marc Mellit’s Five Machines.

Tickets available at the door: $20 General, $10 Students and Seniors, and Free for Catholic University students, faculty and staff with valid CUA I.D.

John Cage, Frank Zappa, a world premiere and two bass clarinet soloists: on December 7th Great Noise Ensemble will present the third concert of its blockbuster fourth season and the second concert of its Catholic University residency, a program full of heavy-hitting new music legends and works on track to become legendary.

Great Noise Ensemble will present in concert two of the most famous works in the new music catalog, John Cage’s 4’33″ and Frank Zappa’s The Black Page, conceptualized and staged by GNE bassist Joel Ciaccio. Sharing the program are Jonathan Russell’s blockbuster Duo Bass Clarinet Concerto, Poul Ruders’s Four Dances In One Movement and the world premiere of Catholic University faculty member Steven Strunk’s References.

Tacit Dances will take place in Catholic University’s historic Ward Hall, at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music. Tickets

Tickets: $20 General / $10 Students & Seniors / Free for CUA Students and Faculty with CUA I.D. at BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door.

Great Noise Ensemble continues its fourth season with Autumnal Songs, a program highlighting the seasons and cycles of the human experience, from the shape of thoughts to the cycles of nature to the reflections, mirrors, and gray areas of the human life span.

Alexandra Gardner’s The Way of Ideas evokes the everyday machinations of the human mind through a soundscape portraying the constant transformation of thoughts. Jeremy Gill’s Dunn Songs set texts by Stephen Dunn as a “musical representation of the realistic thinker”. Andrea Reinkemeyer’s Half Moon Nocturne and Armando Bayolo’s St. Luke’s Summer set inspirations born from the beauty of nature. Vuelta del Fuego “mixes over-the-top romance with unabashed flair and swagger” in a fiery brass quintet by one of Great Noise Ensemble’s rising star composers, Kevin McKee.

Come join us for a night of beautiful song and intense music at one of our favorite venues, The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring.

Tickets: $20 General, $10 Students and Seniors at BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door.

Darkness comes in many forms: some are enlightening, some are peaceful, others are terrifying. Great Noise Ensemble presents a program exploring the darknesses of the human experience from loneliness to rejection to incarceration to dreams with works by Ryan Brown, JacobTV, James Leatherbarrow and Frederic Rzewski.

Ryan Brown’s Thick Skin opens Great Noise Ensemble’s fourth season, entitled Icons Old And New, with a rock-and-roll flavored bang, portraying the many facets of human interaction and its consequences. JacobTV’s Grab It! draws the listener into a duel between saxophone and soundtrack in the “no-man’s-land between language and music”. James Leatherbarrow portrays a more peaceful side of darkness in his Three Nocturnes for tuba and piano, evoking serene images from fireflies to dreamscapes. Finally, Frederic Rzewski’s epic bipartite works Attica and Coming Together! lay out the setting of one of the ultimate wastelands of the human condition on an epic scale through the letters of Attica prisoner Sam Melville, heard in the premiere of a new arrangement of the works by Great Noise Ensemble director Armando Bayolo.

The performance on September 19, 2008 marks not only the beginning of Great Noise Ensemble’s fourth season, but the inauguration of its residency at Catholic University’s Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, and will be presented in its historic Ward Recital Hall.

Admission is $20, $10 for students and seniors, and free for Catholic University students with a Catholic University I.D.

Great Noise Ensemble returns to the Capital Fringe Festival with a program of pieces which examine the complex system of relationships we share in the age of instant messaging, internet dating, and technological overload. In D.J. Sparr’s Carnal Node we journey along with one man’s internet dating experiences as told through the eyes of his friend. Marc Mellits’s Five Machines is a pure mechanical portrayal of the technology that shapes these relationships, and Ryan Brown’s Thick Skin reminds us of the defenses we need to survive in an ever changing world.

Great Noise Ensemble will be performing at the Forum in the Shakespeare Theatre’s new Harman Center for the Arts in downtown Washington, D.C. Tickets are $15, available through Capital Fringe’s website via TheaterMania.

Performances:
Saturday, July 12, 2008: 9 PM
Wednesday, July 23, 2008: 6:30 PM
Saturday, July 26, 2008: 9 PM
Sunday, July 27, 2008: 3 PM

Tickets: $15 on TheaterMania.com or at the door (cash only).

Presented as part of the 2008 Capital Fringe Festival: Unjuried, Risk-Taking, Independent Performing Arts.