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Crosstown Arts presents The City of Tomorrow in The Green Room.
Tickets: $15 | $5 student tickets available
Featuring the premiere of a brand-new work for wind quintet by George Lewis, commissioned by the ensemble, the City of Tomorrow sets the audience inside a kaleidoscope of culture and memory. Composer, musicologist, and winner of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, George Lewis is currently the Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble and has written extensively on American experimental music, race, and the decolonization of contemporary music. His music is presented alongside another masterpiece for the modern quintet, De Memorias by Cuban-American composer Tania León. The City of Tomorrow’s specialty is creating immersive experiences, in which audiences are carried from one piece to the next in a transformative musical art installation.
The City of Tomorrow is an experimental wind quintet with a fearless aesthetic and a commitment to 21st-century music. Their U.S. tours have included concerts at Trinity Wall Street, Spectrum, and IN\TER/SECT, (co-presented by Bryant Park and Chamber Music America) as well as the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, and Red Note New Music Festival in Illinois. The quintet’s work has been supported by residencies at the Banff Center for the Arts & Creativity and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute.
Their 2021 release Blow on New Focus Recordings (FCR294) features music by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Franco Donatoni, and the world premiere recording of a work by Han Lash, which was supported by a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant. The City of Tomorrow’s first album, Nature, released on PARMA/Ravello in 2014, wrestled with questions of human involvement in the natural world and included music by David Lang, Luciano Berio, Nat Evans, and Denys Bouliane.
In 2015, the quintet began exploring physical movement and spatial relationships in their concert programming. Collaborating with lighting designer Alex Deahl, the quintet has experimented with an ensemble-controlled lighting setup and choreography to create a seamless and immersive musical experience.
The City of Tomorrow’s members are based in New York, Boston, Baton Rouge, and Memphis and are in demand as new music specialists, curators, collaborators, and teachers. As an ensemble, they have been in residence at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Berklee College of Music, Indiana University, Tufts, and Yale. Members of the ensemble can also be heard with some of the finest ensembles in New York and beyond, including Talea Ensemble and the International Contemporary Ensemble.
The City of Tomorrow is:
Elise Blatchford / Flute
Stuart Breczinski / Oboe
Rane Moore / Clarinet
Nanci Belmont / Bassoon
Leander Star / Horn
