Cygnus Ensemble performs new commissions featuring works that relate to Hemingway and other writers and artists who were in Paris in the '20s. The program includes vocal and instrumental music inspired by the exhibition Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars, including composers Laura Kaminsky, Errollyn Wallen, Damon Ferrante, Frank Brickle, and Jessie Montgomery and works by George Anthiel, Ezra Pound, and Cole Porter. The evening will feature special appearances by the Sheer Pluck Guitar Orchestra and soprano Elizabeth Farnum.
Laura Kaminsky has composed a travelogue, Dreaming Absinthe, for the Cygnus tutti sextet, a work that takes us to some of Hemingway's haunts; UK based singer/composer Errollyn Wallen will set portions of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, singing as Hemingway; Damon Ferrante is composing an instrumental work based on Joan Miro's The Farm, the painting that Hemingway purchased at a time when he was not at all flush, and when Miro really needed the money; Jessie Montgomery is composing music to accompany a scene from Jean Cocteau's silent film, Blood of a Poet; and Frank Brickle is creating new arrangements of excerpts from two rarely heard operas: George Antheil's Transatlantique and Ezra Pound's Le Testament de Villon.
Supported in part by the Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music.
The exhibition Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars will open at 6:30 pm for concert attendees.