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

Natalie has performed as a soloist with Graham Reynolds in The Kennedy Center’s presentation of The Difference Engine, with the University of Maryland Percussion Ensemble and with the Canton Symphony Orchestra and has also been awarded several scholarship prizes, including the Canton MacDowell Club Scholarship and the Howard Hanson Scholarship toward her studies at the Eastman School of Music. In summer 2009, she was one of five American performers selected to participate in Northeastern University’s Fusion Arts Exchange, a program and concert tour funded by the U.S. Department of State that featured young musicians from six countries. Natalie has also enjoyed several exciting studio recording projects and has recently composed and recorded the soundtrack for the short animated film, Test Anxiety, that has been featured since at international film festivals in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.

Natalie holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Cello Performance as well as a Certificate in Arts Leadership from Eastman School of Music, and is pursuing a Masters in Cello Performance from the University of Maryland. An avid supporter of music outreach, Natalie has recently served as an Arts & Learning Intern for Young Audiences, Inc., an educator for Music For Life, and a performing member of the MacDowell Music Club, all national organizations dedicated to encouraging and providing community music education.

A fervent advocate for contemporary music, Mr. Vickerman has conducted numerous premieres including four premieres with Great Noise Ensemble last season, a ballet with Ballet Fantastique and two separate pieces that he commissioned for winds and electronics. In the fall of 2010, he was the conductor for the Louis Andriessen Concert at The Peabody Institute during the composer’s week-long residency. He has participated in numerous conducting workshops and symposiums, working with conductors such as H. Robert Reynolds, Michael Haithcock, Robert Carnochan and Jerry Junkin. His primary conducting instructors include Dr. Edward C. Harris, Stuart Sims, Robert Ponto and Harlan Parker.

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!