Lost Dog Music Ensemble Presents "The UK Commotion!"

Dec. 04, 2017

Lost Dog New Music Ensemble celebrates music from the United Kingdom with its concert series “The UK Commotion!” on January 12 and 13. Concerts take place at the Tenri Cultural Institute in Manhattan and will feature seven US and NY premieres. As the longest-running new music ensemble in Queens, New York, Lost Dog New Music Ensemble has presented over 35 world premiere performances of music by American composers. The ensemble is led by Artistic Director and composer Garth Edwin Sunderland.

Among the composers and works being featured in the two-day festival are Julian Anderson’s Seadrift, Tansy Davies's Grind Show, Colin Matthews's Moto Perpetuo and Visiones (after Goya) by Martin Suckling. Julian Anderson’s Seadrift for soprano, flute, clarinet and piano takes its name from a section of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which was also set by Frederick Delius. It was first performed by the London Sinfonietta and Oliver Knussen.

Tansy Davies notes that “Grind Show is a superimposition of two scenes: the foreground in a bawdy dance hall, and the background a rainy landscape at night. The acoustic instruments play out a drama with a dialogue of irregular dances, while the electronics depict a sinister outer world.”

(Tansy Davies' Grind Show, 2007/LSO St. Lukes at the UBS Soundscapes Scheme/Christopher Austin, conductor)

Moto Perpetuo by Colin Matthews is part of a series of four short pieces for violin and piano, composed for friends and colleagues. Moto Perpetuo was written for Helen Carter on the occasion of Elliott Carter’s 80th.

Commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival, Visiones (after Goya) by Martin Suckling was written as a response to a page in Francisco Goya’s “Witches and Old Women” sketchbook. The composer comments: “...there is an image captioned by a single word: ‘Visiones’. An elderly couple dance apparently suspended midair in an awkward embrace….Peeking out from behind a fold of the lady’s skirt or the man’s cloak is a grinning face, all sunken eyes and wrinkled skin, laughing at — what? The dancers, the viewer, the world?...As I drew together materials for this clarinet trio, Goya’s vision haunted my dreams.”

For more information on Lost Dog New Music, click here.

Julian Anderson

Seadrift (1993)

for soprano and chamber ensemble

10’

Tansy Davies

Grind Show (2008)

for mixed chamber ensemble

6’

Colin Matthews

Moto Perpetuo (1988)
for violin

6’