Charlotte Mundy, soprano | Zach Finkelstein, tenor
Michael Brofman and Miori Sugiyama, piano
A program of collaborative new works by participants in the UC
Davis Music and Creative Writing Graduate Programs—
Chris Castro:AERIAL
Text by Joy Ding
Addie Camsuzou:Opens Lark in its
Constellation
Text by Luke Munson
Ryan Suleiman:Moon, Bride,
Dogs
Story and Text by Cristina Fries
Kurt Rohde:Three Scented
Candles
Text by Scott Hunter
Sam Clark-McHale:Left Hand
Method
Text by Madeline Gobbo,
with Emily Clark-Kramer, MFA in Art Studio
Sarah Wald:Pat on the Back
Text by Brendan Higginbottom
Free (a Shinkoskey Noon Concert)
The Brooklyn Art
Song Society (BASS) has earned a reputation as one of the
preeminent organizations dedicated to the vast repertoire of
poetry set to music.
The New York Times called BASS “a company well worth watching”
and Voce di Meche hailed, “as long as BASS is around we do not
need to worry about the future of art song in the USA.” Opera
News writes, “Brooklyn Art Song Society keeps the intimate
recital alive with innovative programming,” and the New Yorker
praised BASS as “uncompromisingly dedicated to continuing the
traditions of classical art song, both old and new.”
Past highlights have included performances of the complete songs
of Charles Ives and Henri Duparc, a festival of works from Franz
Schubert’s last year, a five-concert survey of the songs of Les
Six, and the complete output of Hugo Wolf over six seasons.
Committed to keeping art song relevant in our time BASS has
collaborated closely with important living composers such as Tom
Cipullo, Michael Djupstrom, Daron Hagen, Jake Heggie, Libby
Larsen, Lowell Liebermann, James Matheson, Glen Roven, Andrew
Staniland, Scott Wheeler and Yehudi Wyner, and many others.
In May 2015 BASS released its first album, New Voices on Roven
Records, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard Traditional
Classical charts.
Highlights from this season include the five-concert series La
France, two world premiere commissions by acclaimed composers
Harold Meltzer and Kurt Rohde, a west coast tour, including
performances on KING FM 98.1, Seattle’s classical radio station,
and an artist residency at University of California- Davis. In
addition to monthly concerts in Brooklyn, BASS has traveled to
Philadelphia, Kansas City, Portland, ME and held residencies at
University of Notre Dame and University of Chicago.
Brooklyn Art Song Society is proud to make the Brooklyn
Historical Society its primary venue, and also has lasting
relationships with National Sawdust and the Brooklyn Public
Library. BASS’s artist roster features over 40 of the finest
young interpreters of art song.
Writing It wasn’t a dream made Rohde
realize that a similar collaborative project would likely be
fruitful for graduate students in both departments. On
Saturday, the musicians presented two new works from this
project.
Fries and Sulieman are one of six duos from the College of
Letters and Science music and English departments that have
collaborated on works for voice, piano and some electronics.
The pieces will be premiered by the Brooklyn Art Song Society
at the “Creative
Writing” concert May 10.
Addie Camsuzou is a composer and violinist from
the central coast of California. She holds a Bachelor of Music
degree in music theory/composition from Sacramento State
University, where she studied composition with Dr. Stephen
Blumberg, and violin with Ian Swensen and Anna Presler. She is
currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music composition.
Samuel Clark-McHale (b. 1992) is an American
composer currently residing in Davis, CA. His works have been
performed by, among others, Ensemble Signal, Quartetto Indaco,
and the Illinois Modern Ensemble at venues and festivals
including June in Buffalo and the highSCORE New Music Festival.
His piece metallic cocaine bebop for Pierrot ensemble
was a 2015 ASCAP Morton Gould Award Finalist.
Sarah Wald was born in Chicago. She
attended Columbia University in the City of New York for her
bachelor’s degree in music with a focus in
composition. While at Columbia, Sarah studied composition
with Tristan Murail and Arthur Kampela, as well as with Robert
Lombardo in Chicago. She also studied flute with Sue Ann
Kahn. Sarah then studied with Conrad Susa and David Garner
at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for her master’s
degree in composition. For her master’s thesis, she composed
and produced Elegy for a Lady: a Music Drama in One A
Ryan Suleiman was born to Lebanese and Mid-Western parents in
California. His music engages with dreaming, the natural world,
and the understated beauty of everyday life. His one-act chamber
opera, Moon, Bride, Dogs, was described by the San
Francisco Chronicle as “a gem” with “an aesthetic that is at once
so strange and so accessible.” While his artistic interests vary,
he seeks ways of conveying the simultaneity of beauty and dread
that characterizes our times.
Ph.D. in composition and theory from UC Davis Bachelor's in Music from the Juilliard School
Chris Castro is a composer and double bassist from Brooklyn, New
York. His music has been described as “on par with Varèse,”
giving him the nickname “The New Colossus of Sound.” He is a
recipient of Chamber Music America’s 2021 Classical Commissioning
Award. His new work, Canções dos Desassossego (Songs of
Disquiet), will be written for the Lyris Quartet and soprano
Sharon Harms and premiered in 2023. His music has been performed
by Sharon Harms and the Composers Conference Ensemble under James
Baker (Two Songs from Brooklyn Narcissus), the St. Louis Symphony
under David Robertson (Choruses III), pianists Sarah Cahill and
Eric Zivian (IV-I), piano duo HereNowHear (Beethausenstro -
Castockhoven) and the Lydian String Quartet (Choruses IV). He is
the 2022 Guest Composer for the James Tenney Memorial Symposium,
composing and collaborating with the New Mexico Contemporary
Ensemble. He has lectured at UC Davis and Sacramento State
University and is currently faculty at Chapman University in
California. He has a Ph.D. in composition and theory from UC
Davis and a bachelor’s in music from the Juilliard School in both
double bass and composition.
B.F.A. University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 2015
Emily Clark-Kramer hails from North Carolina where she graduated
with a BFA in Painting from UNC-Greensboro in 2015.
Before arriving as an artist, Emily studied textiles and
Spanish. She studied abroad in Prague, the Dominican
Republic and Siena, Italy. She is primarily a painter and
installation artist, and her work often investigates the
intersection of the two. She explores the
organization of bright colors into maps or systems.
