Palomar performs final concert of the season: ACM's Spring Spectacular at the Green Mill

Palomar Ensemble is playing for Access Contemporary Music's final concert of the season next Sunday at the Green Mill:

Palomar Ensemble
Sunday, May 8
2:00pm
Green Mill
4802 N Broadway
Chicago, IL
$6

All the works featured on this program are scored for flute, violin, cello, and piano and were written between 1995 and 2010 by composers from the USA, Ukraine, and China. One piece will receive its world premiere, and was written especially for me by composer Daniel McCarthy. 


Program:

Plush Funk (2010 - World Premiere)....................Daniel McCarthy (b. 1955)

Phonium-Folk (1995)............................Julia Gomelskaya (b. 1964)

Firebrand (2003)....................................Libby Larsen (b. 1950)

Datura (2005)........................................Xiaogang Ye (b. 1955)

Unabashedly (2010)..............................Alex Shapiro (b. 1962)


Alicia Poot, flute/piccolo
Jeff Yang, violin
Alyson Berger, cello
Hulya Alpakin, piano


If you're on Facebook look for the invitation shortly from Access Contemporary Music. And don't forget to "like" Palomar Ensemble's new Facebook page, too. 

 

Palomar performs live music for Modern Silent Films

Upcoming performances:

Palomar Ensemble is playing live, newly-composed scores for modern silent films this weekend.

Friday, April 1 9:00pm
Saturday, April 2 9:00pm
Sunday, April 3 3:00pm

Chopin Theater
1543 W Division, Chicago, IL
free parking in the church lot at Division and Noble

Admission $20 at the door, $15 online, $8 students and seniors

www.acmusic.org

Artistic Director: Francesco Milioto
Executive Director/Producer: Seth Boustead

Directors: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Brian Kallies, Chris Mancini, Manoel de Oliveira, Osama Tezuka, Gus Van Sant

Composers: Brian Baxter, Mike Leghorn, Brian O'Hearn, Matthew Pakulski, Jason Seed, Amy Wurtz

Music Perfrormed by: Hulya Alpakin (piano), Seth Boustead (piano), Francesco Milioto (conductor), Alicia Poot (flute), KT Somero (clarinet), Jeff Yang (violin)

Folk and Classical Performances this week; Listen to Palomar on MySpace

Upcoming Performances

Friday, March 11

I’m performing with Canadian folk duo “Russell & Gray” at the Atlantic Bar & Grill on Friday. Free Guiness for anyone who can think up a nifty new name for the group as we dazzle you with Irish and Canadian folk music just in time for St. Patty’s Day. 
Group: Russell & Gray 
Genre: Folk 
Venue: Atlantic Bar & Grill, 5062 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago 
Time: 8:00 - ? 
Price: Free, but please pay for your own food and drink and tip your bartender!

Saturday, March 12

Palomar Ensemble has a busy day with back-to-back gigs! First we will perform a 45-minute program of duos for Merit School of Music’s Tuition-Free Conservatory. “Live from Gottlieb,” the noon-time concert series, is especially for the conservatory students, but if you’re in the West Loop neighborhood, there’s sure to be an empty seat for you. 
Group: Palomar Ensemble 
Genre: Classical – Living Composers, this program features duos 
Venue: Merit School of Music, 38 S. Peoria 
Time: Noon - 12:45 
Price: Free

Palomar packs up and speeds up to River North for a free, hour-long concert at 2:00pm for St. James Chapel’s “Second Saturday at Two” series.  This concert will actually feature two dead composers as well as three living composers! 
Group: Palomar Ensemble 
Genre: Classical – Living composers plus Villa-Lobos and Haydn 
Venue: St. James Chapel at Quigley Pastoral Center, 835 N. Rush Street, Chicago 
Time: 2:00-3:00pm 
Price: Free

Listen to Palomar Ensemble on MySpace!

Palomar Ensemble is now on MySpace! People still use MySpace? Yes, I guess so. Feel free to find us and “like” us on Facebook, but please proceed to MySpace if you want to listen to our music.

"whirl": New Music for Native American Flutes?

Upcoming performance of whirl:

MAVerick Ensemble

2:00pm

Sunday February 27, 2011

Flat Iron Building, Ste. 222

1579 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL

This past September I played on the premiere of whirl by Chicago composer William Jason Raynovich. We are repeating this performance this coming Sunday at the Flat Iron Building in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.

Scored for wooden flutes, viola, trumpet, and percussion, Jason says this about his piece:  “whirl was commissioned by Access Contemporary Music for a tour of Chicago architecture. This piece was written for the Marquette Building. This building’s entrance creates a striking mix of imagery that left me thinking about honor. whirl is an esoteric post-modernist powwow with bugle calls, a love song and an Eskimo song, a French modification of an Indian melody of a Ravel melody, an Ivesian celebration/conflict, Trumpet death call, and a Native American Indian Taps.

This past summer, Jason approached me and asked if I would be willing to play a Native American flute on this piece. I enthusiastically agreed, and we sat down with three flutes from my wooden flute collection to sketch out a pitch and fingering chart for each of them. With only five or six holes on each flute, the resulting cross fingerings meant that I would need to do lots of practicing to wire my brain for this performance.

A Native American flute works the way a recorder does; the player blows directly into an opening at the top of the instrument and the sound is produced when the air strikes a notch a few inches below the top of the flute. Full chromatic scales are not possible on these particular flutes, and neither is very much dynamic control. A three-plus octave range, full chromatic scale, and wide dynamic possibilities on my “normal” metal flute seemed like such far-away luxuries when I was entrenched in learning Jason’s piece!

The first flute featured in this piece is a bamboo flute I bought at an art fair from a flute maker in Michigan years ago. Pitched in F, the flute has four holes plus one for the thumb, and plays an octave and a fifth.  The next flute I play is a double-flute made of cedar. In rehearsals, we nicknamed this flute the “two-flute flute” since I didn’t know if there was a more official term for classifying the instrument. Both sides of the “two-flute flute” are pitched in D, though one side serves as a drone while I can play melodic passages using the five holes on the other side. I can play both sides at once or just one side at a time. Playing both sides of the flute at once uses a considerable amount of air, so long phrases had to be chopped up because of my frequent need to breathe. The final flute used is a fife-style flute. I bought this flute when I was 10 years old on an elementary school field trip to Michigan’s state capitol, Lansing. I have no idea what it is made from, and I probably paid $10 for it, but it has a very cutting sound and plays a mostly in-tune diatonic scale. It is pitched on a Bb and plays about two octaves.

Playing whirl was only the second time I have performed on any of my wooden flutes in a formal concert setting, and the first time I have combined a wooden flute any standard orchestral instruments. The resulting atypical timbres were haunting. We needed to mute the trumpet for balance purposes, but the blend with the muted trumpet and the double flute with the drone employed was simply otherworldly. The wooden flute with the viola made for an ethereal, gossamer timbre. This was one of the more unusual performances I have been involved with, and its success makes me hope to make more frequent use of these flutes in the future.

For more information about whirl, check out these links:

• whirl's premiere on 9/18/10 was well-received. You can read the review on Chicago Classical Review:

http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2010/09/five-premieres-in-great-chicago-buildings-illuminate-a-rainy-saturday/

• The event that encompassed the premiere was ACM’s season opener “Songs about Buildings and Moods.” This event was the first of its kind and obviously made an impression on its audience. Chicago Classical Review named this event one of the Top Ten Classical performances in Chicago for 2010! Read about it here:

http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2010/12/the-top-10-performances-of-2010/

• Also, Jason put together a nice recording of whirl on YouTube, accompanied by photos from the performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58c3CclPYek

 

Next performances.....

Hello hello!

We had a blast last night in post-blizzard folk music bliss at the Atlantic! If you missed us, or if you're curious about the classical music I play, here are my next appearances in chronological order, subject to change, to stay tuned.

Russell, Gray & Poot (Canadian and Irish folk music):

• Friday, March 11th at the Atlantic, 5062 N Lincoln

• Saturday, March 19th at Uncommon Ground (uh...not sure if we're on Devon or Clark St. but will update when I find out)

Palomar Ensemble (New classical music):

• Saturday, March 12, noon, Merit School of Music (45-minute free performance for the Conservatory students), 38 S Peoria Street, Chicago

• Saturday, March 12, 2pm, St. James Chapel at Quigley Pastoral Center (1 hour free performance for "Second Saturdays at Two" series), 835 N Rush Street, Chicago

Palomar plays for Access Contemporary Music's "Sound of Silent Film" at the Chopin Theatre! This is going to be exciting - we're playing live, newly-composed music for modern silent films. For more information, see ACM's website: http://www.acmusic.org. The Chopin Theatre is at 1543 W Division.

• Thursday, March 31, 7:30pm
• Friday, April 1, 7:30pm
• Saturday, April 2, 7:30pm

Palomar plays for ACM's final event of the season, at the Green Mill at Broadway & Lawrence. This program will feature works for  flute, violin, cello, and piano, and will feature some premieres! Composers featured will include Julia Gomelskaya (Ukraine), Xiaogang Ye (China), Daniel McCarthy (USA), Tristan Murail (France), Ursula Mamlok (German-American), and Seth Boustead (USA). 

• Sunday, May 8, 2:00pm 

Will keep you posted!
Thanks for reading,
Alicia

Plugged-in folk fluting at the Atlantic

I'm performing with Canadian folk duo Russell & Gray tonight at the Atlantic Bar & Grill in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood!

This is my "non-classical" gig, in which I can wear jeans or a short skirt if I want - instead of concert black - and I will be plugged in. Even though I have a Master's degree in flute performance and played the Nielsen concerto by memory in graduate school in front of an orchestra, nothing makes me nervous the way that having a microphone hooked on to my flute does. My academic training prepared me to be a great sight-reader and how to tune with a wind section in a chamber group or an orchestra, but playing with amplification is a test of different sorts. The microphone doesn't have a junk filter, so I feel a bit under a microscope like this. A boomy concert hall or a church can be acoustically forgiving. Will the microphone pick up the junky noise of my key pads, my breaths, the pulses in my vibrato?

And I'll be playing some dumbek as well. The dumbek is a Middle-Eastern drum which I feel in love with on my trip to Morocco last summer. I've been studying the rhythms of Arabic music since I came back from my trip, but won't be playing in that style this evening. And I don't dare call myself a percussionist yet.

The Atlantic is located in the heart of Lincoln Square at 5062 N Lincoln Avenue. Music will begin around 8pm.

Alicia Poot performs works by Elliot Carter and Brian Baxter, 1/23/11

New Music at the Green Mill - a once-a-month tradition started by Chicago composer George Flynn.

George Flynn hosts this month's New Music at the Green Mill, in an annual celebration of his birthday. This concert will feature a premiere by Flynn, "Howl," in homage to the Allen Ginsberg poem written in 1955, and various other works by composers from Chicago and elsewhere.

I will join clarinetist Cory Tiffin (principal clarinetist of the Green Bay Symphony and co-founder of Anaphora Ensemble) to perform Elliot Carter's "Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux," for flute and clarinet, then percussionist Rebecca Laurito will join the two of us on Chicago composer Brian Baxter's "Noise Pollution" for flute, clarinet, and percussion.

You'll have to show up to find out what else is on the program. If you opt out to watch the Bears vs. the Packers, of course we'll understand.

Cover is $5.
Show starts at 2:00

The Green Mill is at 4802 N Broadway.