Culture, arts descend on Troy this weekend
American Music Festival runs this weekend
TROY, N.Y. » The Albany Symphony’s nationally acclaimed American Music Festival returns to the city of Troy this week for its tenth year featuring rich streams of music and culture flowing through the city.
This year, with a theme of Musical Tributaries, the American Music Festival includes more than 15 concerts and events between Thursday, May 31 and Sunday, June 3 across Troy. Performances will take place at the The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Perform- ing Arts Center (EMPAC) on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and Troy’s Riverfront Park.
This year’s Festival will showcase more than 28 new or recent works, including compositions by acclaimed composer-activist David Del Tredici, 2018 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist, Reena Esmail, and Skidmore professor Evan Mack.
Also featured at the American Music Festival are 14 world premieres by emerging composers Carlos Simon, Derrick Spiva and Water Music NY composers Annika Socolofsky, Benjamin Wallace, and Loren Loiacono.
New to the 2018 Festival is a First Draughts Composer Reading Session and Beer Tasting and a free waterfront concert and collaborative arts project called The River Sings.
Musical Tributaries explores the rich and diverse steams of music and culture that connect communities and influence American concert music. Flowing through the Festival are works by David Del Tredici, an influential America vanguard and close friend of Aaron Copland. On Friday, June 1, the Dogs of Desire, the Albany Symphony’s inventive new music ensemble, will perform Del Tredici’s melodrom Dracula, while NYCbased pianist Marc Peloquin performs Del Tredici’s most popular works for solo piano at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
The anchor of the Festival is the Albany Symphony’s performance of Del Tredici’s “Adventures Underground” with Grammy award winning soprano and actress, Hila Plitmann on Saturday, June 2 at EMPAC.
“This year’s festival surely is our most ambitious, impressive, and multifaceted yet,” Said Heinrich Medicus music director David Alan Miller, in a press release. When asked about Del Tredici’s “Adventures Underground” Miller added, “This magical work is a magnificent and extravagant orchestral tour- de-force based on
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We are thrilled to perform this work before the Albany Symphony makes the first- ever recording of this work.” Del Tredici’s “Adventures Underground” will be recorded for commercial release, further solidifying New York’s Capital Region’s status as a capital for new music in America.
Other festival highlights include a vocal kaleidoscope with Resonant Body Festival curator Lucy Deghrae, powerhouse soprano Nancy Alan Lundy, and Dogs of Desire vocalist Lucy Fitzgibbons at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, an electric performance with percussion/piano quartet YARN/WIRE at EMPAC, Late Night Lounge performances on Friday and Saturday night and a Mad Hatter Tea Party at the Arts Center of the Capital Region.
On Sunday, Carol Wincenc, the Philadelphia- based Jasper Quartet and the Empire State Youth Orchestra Percussion Ensemble will celebrate Joan Tower’s 80th Birthday featuring music of Joan Tower and two world premieres by stu- dents of Joan Tower.
The Festival will conclude later Sunday evening at 7:30 p.m. in Riverfront Park with The River Sings, a free waterfront concert and collaborative arts project designed to engage the community in the creation of new art, while celebrating the unique story of upstate New York and the Hudson River watershed.
“It’s in the Albany Symphony’s DNA to boldly go where no one has gone before and the American Music Festival is our final frontier each season,” executive director Anna Kuwabara said in the release. “Music has the tremendous power to celebrate and unite us; new music in particular expresses what it means to be human right here, right now.”
The River Sings program includes familiar favorites and new works in collaboration with the Albany-Berkshire Ballet, the Finger Lakes Guitar Quartet, choristers from Bard College Conservatory, Schenectady County Community College, The College of Rose, the Troy City Public Schools, and a guitar mob. Following the performance will be a waterfront fireworks display.