Metropolis Ensemble travels to The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), as part of their 75th Anniversary Season
Metropolis Ensemble travels to D.C. on May 8 to one of America’s most venerable and long-standing concert series, Phillips Music, as part of their 75th Anniversary Season.
The concert takes place on Sunday, May 8 at 4pm at 1600 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. Tickets here.
Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra Metropolis Ensemble, led by conductor Andrew Cyr, “a prominent influence in the world of newly emerging music” (The Washington Post), presents another iteration of its ongoing, site-specific project Brownstone. This ground-breaking “concert-installation” will feature three electro-acoustic works where audience members leave their chairs behind to experience The Phillips Collection from new perspectives, including the World Premiere of a work by composer Paula Matthusen (2014 Elliot Carter Rome Prize winner).
Commissioned in honor of the 75th Anniversary Season of Phillips Music, between the smell of dust and moonlight will engage with the idea of the gradual evolution of space and the multiple roles it may serve. Written specifically for museum, the piece draws on its present incarnation as renowned art museum as well as the traces of its domestic past, as evidenced by its unique doorways and fireplaces.
This concert will also feature music by Polish-American composer Jakub Ciupinski (Brownstone, (2010)with violin soloist and Metropolis concertmaster Kristin Lee) and music by Pulitzer-Prize finalist Christopher Cerrone (Memory Palace (2012) featuring solo percussionist Ian Rosenbaum), transporting audience members throughout many of the museum’s galleries and spaces.
About Paula Matthusen
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing.” Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.!!Her music has been performed by Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Brooklyn Rider, the Scharoun Ensemble, orchest de ereprijs, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the Estonian National Ballet, James Moore, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster, Nina de Heney and Jody Redhage.
Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ecstatic Music Festival, the ACO SONiC Festival, Other Minds, the MATA Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, International Computer Music Conference and Dither’s Invisible Dog Extravaganza. She performs live-electronics frequently with Object Collection, OZET, and through the theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts.!!Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship, the “New Genre Prize” from the IAWM Search for New Music, and recently the 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Her album “Pieces for People” (Innova) was recently listed by Alex Ross as one of the best classical albums of 2015. Her work is also available through New Amsterdam, Quiet Design, and C.F. Peters.!!Matthusen completed her Ph.D. at New York University – GSAS. She was Director of Music Technology at Florida International University for four years, where she founded the FLEA Laptop Ensemble. Matthusen is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology.
About Music at The Phillips Collection
Audiences and artists have been coming together at The Phillips Collection well before 1941, when Phillips Music became a series of 30+ concerts per year. Throughout 2015/2016, Phillips Music Series commemorates its 75th season of presenting enthralling performances in the Music Room’s idyllic chamber music environment. Highlights include, notwithstanding a reenactment of the iconic 1955 US debut of Glenn Gould and several World Premieres, Phillips Music pays special tribute to the outstanding musicians of the US military for their role in keeping Phillips Music continually running during World War II.