Arts & Events

Press Release: Sonic Harvest Spotlights New Work

From Allen Shearer
Friday October 09, 2015 - 09:18:00 AM

Join us at 7:30 Sunday evening, Oct. 18 at Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley for the latest crop of new music from the East Bay. Visit http://sonicharvest.org for details. 

Our performers this year include mezzo soprano Christine Abraham, who will join flutist Tod Brody, cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau, and pianist Jeffrey Sykes in the premiere of Allen Shearer’s Stories Wind Told to Grass on poems of Mekeel McBride. 

Emily Onderdonk and Jeffrey Sykes will play Allan Crossman’s lyrical Frequent Flyer for viola and piano. Crossman also contributes three songs to the program, performed by basso Richard Mix and pianist Kate Campbell

There’s more! Claudia Stevens will premiere her own Teaching Moments for piano solo, and will accompany baritone Allen Shearer in a Neruda setting No estés lejos de mí. Finally Anne Hege will conduct Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble in her setting of words of St. Francis of Assisi, from her larger work The Body is NOT a Machine. Voci will also perform Ann Callaway’s Henry Purcell on the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

The tantalizing program begins with Peter Josheff’s Big Brother, a brief piccolo solo played by Tod Brody. After the program you will have a chance to dialog with the composers in a Q and A. Don’t miss it!