“A Studio of Her Own-Shattering the Glass Ceiling” with Prize-Winning Composer Hannah Lash
(Hudson, NY…) Just a century ago, you could count on one hand the number of women composers whose works were heard in public. As recently as the mid-19th century, Fanny Mendelssohn’s father declared it unseemly for her to publish her music—just a few decades before Edith Wharton’s family compelled her to publish her literary works under the name of her father’s friend. On Sunday, November 20, at 3 PM, Yale composer Hannah Lash, who has been lauded hailed by the New York Times for music that is “striking and resourceful…handsomely brooding,” will provide first-hand insights into what has changed and what remains of this restrictive legacy.
Ms. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Lash obtained her Ph.D in Composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University, at Alfred University, and currently serves on the composition faculty at Yale University School of Music. Her works have been commissioned by orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra and has been presented in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is married to actor Stephen Routman, who has appeared in The Wolf of Wall Street and Inside Llewyn Davis, among many Broadway, TV and film productions.
“A Studio of Her Own” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season.
The spring program in the series presents lawyer, best-selling author and cultural historian Linda Hirshman and “The Feminine Mystique” 3 PM, Sunday, May 14 at The Mount in Lenox, MA. Conversations With… has presented such notable speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; baritone and actor Benjamin Luxon; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee filmmaker Daniel Anker; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine, and Metropolitan Museum curator of historic instruments Ken Moore.
Close Encounters Declares 2016-2017 “The Year of the Woman”
The Conversations With… talks are part of the CEWM’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in NY State, honoring women’s full assumption of place in the arts. The talks begin the three-season initiative, with a gala concert of commissions rounding out the year on June 10—a “quilt” of miniatures by Thea Musgrave, Tamar Muskal, Joan Tower, and Judith Zaimont, musical portraits of suffragettes and other women of valor—Ethel Smyth, Emma Lazarus, and Sojourner Truth—who advanced the causes of everyone with their steadfastness, ingenuity and idealism. On December 3 a light shines on the work and life of French composer Augusta Holmès and her relationship with Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck. For the season’s schedule of concerts see www.cewm.org.
“A STUDIO OF HER OWN—SHATTERING THE GLASS CEILING” WITH PRIZE-WINNING COMPOSER HANNAH LASH
Sunday, November 20, 3 PM
Hudson Opera House, Hudson, NY
Tickets: $15 includes light refreshment
Tickets for this event are available on the Close Encounters website— www.cewm.org , at 800-843-0778, or at the door. For more information please email [email protected]. Light refreshments, following the presentation, are included.
ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time: Paul Schoenfield, Robert Beaser, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Thea Musgrave among others to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists Adam Neiman, Roman Rabinovich, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Kelley O’Connor, and Lucille Beer; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.
ABOUT THE HUDSON OPERA HOUSE
The Hudson Opera House offers a year-round schedule of arts and cultural programming in the 1855 former Hudson City Hall which contains New York State’s oldest surviving theatre. Since opening the first restored room in December of 1997, five rooms on the first floor have been rehabilitated, and we have presented thousands of cultural and educational programs, more than 1,125 in the last year alone. Ongoing programs include concerts, readings, lectures, exhibitions, theatre and dance presentations, workshops, classes, and community arts events like the annual Winter Walk on Warren Street.
Close Encounters on the Radio/Podcast
Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and audiences are encouraged to tune in to the new weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” on WAMC Northeast Radio or visit www.wamc.org.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $25 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 7 concerts. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.
2016-2017 CALENDAR
Chamber Orchestra Kremlin—Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn
Saturday, October 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Passion of Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck—Cherchez la Femme!
Saturday, December 3, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
Mid-Winter Fireside Concert–The Intimate Bach
Saturday, February 18, 6PM
Saint James Place, Great Barrinton, MA
Beethoven Journey–Early, Middle and Late
Saturday, March 18, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, April 15, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, May 6, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman—Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage
Saturday, June 10, 6 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is at 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
Saint James Place is at 352 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.
Conversations With…
“Shattering the Glass Ceiling” with Prize-Winning Composer Hannah Lash at the Hudson Opera House (Hudson, NY) is on Sunday, November 20 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.
“Author Linda Hirshman and The Feminine Mystique” is at The Mount (Lenox, MA) on Sunday, May 14 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.
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“The Berkshires are home to distinguished cultural events, but none so brilliant, perhaps, as the chamber music series Close Encounters With Music.” —Berkshire Record
“…A stunning, majestic resolution, a brilliant ending to an unforgettable encounter with music. Bravi!” —The Berkshire Edge
“…To experience the finest music ever written, presented by leading musicians of the day, in the inviting atmosphere of the Berkshires, is the best of all possible worlds. . . The quality of Lincoln Center with an intimacy that exceeds it….”
—Yehuda Hanani, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
