Cobalt Quartet

www.ColbaltQuartet.com

The past couple of years have not been easy for anybody.

We kept working through the waves of covid, waves of sadness,

waves of hope, and even waves of heat!

We are proud to present

a program of new music and poetry composed for

violin, piano, and saxophone.

2 performances only!

August 24, 2022 at 7:00 pm

August 25, 2022 at 7:00 pm

as part of the 246th Commemoration of the Battle of Brooklyn

The Old Stone House

Washington Park

336 3rd St.

(between 4th & 5th Avenues)

Brooklyn, NY

Original Music Composed by

Whitney George, Stephanie Greig, Jinhee Han,

Alice Jones, Jay Kauffman, Sandra Noble,

Milica Paranosic, Stephanie Singer, Ann Warren,

Anthony Izzo, Tom Blatt, Erland von Koch,

Kyoko Oyobe, and Manuela Lechler

Poems by

Sylvaine Hinglais, Benjamin Franklin

Projections by

Robert Morton

Performed by

Adam Von Housen - Violin

Kyoko Oyobe - Piano

Cobalt Quartet

Thomas Giles - Soprano Sax

Anthony Izzo - Alto Sax

Ryan Mantell - Tenor Sax

Josh Lang - Baritone Sax

with

Fedly Daniel - Narrator

Kyoko Oyobe is a gifted artist who explores different modes of expression conveyed within a subtext of intimacy or through original compositions inspiring and reflected in novels by the renowned Japanese novelist, Rui Kodemari. She travels through music instilling an essence and distinct color that borrow from Be-Bop to Brazilian and Free Jazz to French-Impressionist, early 20th century voicings, yet sealing her own inimitable style.

She was born in Japan but has been a mainstay in the New York Jazz scene since 2005. She started performing with her own group at New York CIty’s renowned jazz clubs such as The Blue Note, Smalls Jazz Club, Mezzrow, Jazz at Kitano, and Fat Cat. In Japan, she is also known for touring regularly with her Trio and Quartet at NHK concert hall (Japan’s National public broadcasting organization), Body and Soul (Tokyo), Left Alone (Kobe), Speak Low (Hiroshima), New Combo (Fukuoka), Renaiss Hall (Okayama) and many others.

In 2011, Kyoko had a special three-week French tour in which she was invited to share her music with French female artists throughout many Jazz clubs in Paris. In 2018, her trio was invited to perform at the Residence of the Ambassador of Japan in Washington D.C. Her prowess as a superlative jazz pianist is recognized internationally by musical peers who regularly invite her to accompany them.

Kyoko Oyobe

Adam Von Housen

Fedly Daniel is a Haitian-American actor, writer, and artist based in New York City. He studied at SUNY-Stony Brook where he became a founding member of the student-run Stony Brook Actors Conservatory and starred in the productions of An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein and Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Fedly also completed a 2 year Meisner Technique program at Ted Bardy Acting Studio, where he currently teaches an acting technique class. His theater credits include: The Bald Soprano (Diffractions Theatre); Home (Ma's Playhouse); Lost in Space (The WhiteListed Theatre Company); Blurred Lines of Justice  and White Sky, Black Sky (Price of Silence Theatre Company); and Bloodshot (Underlord).

Fedly was featured in the Concrete Timbre productions of Keys (Drawing Room), Voyage de Ouf (University Settlement), Un Lieu de Vie (Gallery MC), and in several of salon concerts.

Fedly Daniel

Composers & Poet

is comprised of four of the finest saxophonists from the New York metropolitan area, is particularly interested in presenting modern pieces by living composers alongside the very best of the repertoire and lesser-known contemporary works, whether written originally for saxophone or transcribed. Since its founding in the summer of 2017, the ensemble has presented highly varied and exciting programs with several partners including: AWCANYC, Concrete Timbre, Andrew Koss, MSO, LICA, and NYCC.

Tom Blatt is originally from Philadelphia, Pa. and is a multifaceted artist living and creating in New York. Tom’s artistic career spans a period of five decades.  As a musician, he is active as a composer, bass player and band leader. Particularly interested in jazz, world, and electronic music, along with contemporary classical music, Tom often incorporates those idioms into his original compositions.   He also frequently explores unusual and nontraditional ensembles, as well as a multidisciplinary approach to composition such as working with choreographers and dancers as well as film, video, and theater. Tom’s music theory studies started with private lessons from a composer at the London Royal College of Music in 1968. He then enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music - Evening Division (1971-73), where he studied electronic music and composition with Alden Jenks, along with acoustics and Japanese music, and continued his studies at  City College of San Francisco (1973-76), where he studied double bass, electronic music, and composition. In the early 70s (1971-73), Tom continued on, to study independently and compose electronic music at the Mills College Tape Center, exploring the synthesizer technologies, such as Buchla and Moog. From 1976 until 1978, as a recipient of a California state scholarship, Tom continues his composition studies and double bass with Charles Siani at San Francisco State University. He also played double bass with the San Francisco Community Orchestra during the same time period. Tom’s attraction to world music took him to The University of Hawaii, Manoa (1981-85) where he received a music scholarship and studied double bass, composition, world music, Shakuhachi with Riley Lee (along with sculpture and bronze casting with Sean Browne). More recently (2015-2018), Tom studied composition, orchestration, and film scoring at the Juilliard School’s evening division.

Tom has performed with two Gagaku ensembles: The Hawaii, Japan Gagaku Ensemble (1982-86) and The New York, Japan Gagaku Ensemble (1994-96) and has had his compositions performed in San Fransisco, Berkeley, Mexico and in New York City, at venues including I Beam, The National Opera Center, The Drawing Room, El Taller, The DiMenna Center, Drom NYC, Composers Concordance, and The Firehouse Space. Tom also actively participates in music research studies and explorations and continues to study privately with musicians locally and globally. These explorations included: John Chowning's music seminar at the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1970s, private composition studies with John Adams (1972), and composition and film scoring with Milica Paranosic (2016-2019).

More info at www.tomblatt.com

Tom Blatt

Whitney George creates music that traverses the affective terrain between tragedy and ecstasy, fragility and strength, bringing together romantically the delicate intimacy and spectacular darkness of the macabre. Her operas, staged multimedia works, and chamber music have been performed both internationally and domestically. Recently, George released two full-length albums of original work with Pinch Records (For You and Solitude & Secrecy) in 2021. Additionally she was commissioned by dell'Arte Opera to write Princess Maleine, an adaptation of a Grim fairytale in August 2019. She received the 2017 Elebash Award for her orchestration of Miriam Gideon’s opera Fortunato, which premiered in May 2019.

Whitney is the artistic director and conductor of The Curiosity Cabinet, a chamber orchestra formed in 2009. She was the Music Director and a Composer for the Concrete Timbre productions of Voyage de Ouf, Un Lieu de Vie, 4 Wars, A/K/A Benjamin (Franklin’s Women), 1776, A Fresh Start, and the salon concerts.

She holds an undergraduate degree from the California Institute of the Arts, a master’s degree from Brooklyn College, and DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center. In addition to her composing and conducting, George teaches at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, with ThinkOlio outside of the university walls, and privately.

For more information, visit: whitneygeorge.com

Whitney George

Stephanie Greig is the daughter of Las Vegas bassist Kenny Greig, Stephanie grew up listening to the musicians' union rehearsal bands playing Count Basie and Duke Ellington charts, and came to love the Great American Songbook as played by the veterans of the Las Vegas Strip. At fourteen, she was playing guitar in her father's pop quartet. She went on to study composition and theatrical applications of music at Smith College.

A New Yorker since 1991, she began playing upright bass in local jazz groups around 1998. Since then, she has played in a variety of settings in the US, Spain, Japan and Curacao, and has performed with the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra for 11 seasons. Her original music has been a regular feature of Concrete Timbre productions since 2015.

Stephanie Greig

Award-winning Korean-American musician, Jinhee Han is a NYC/BOSTON based composer from Seoul, South Korea. She holds a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree in composition from HanYang University and a Professional Studies Diploma from The New School, Mannes School of Music under the direction of Robert Cuckson.

As Han creates deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges, She serves as Founder/Director for Asian Women Composers Association in New York City, where she collaborates with a variety of talented musical projects such as Lilac94, The Half Moon Project, Concrete Timbre, Cobalt, and more from various countries. Her recent publications include We cry for solo clarinet by Diaphonia Edition in Italy, 2020, and To my daughter for Bb trumpet and Bass trombone on Women and Music, Volume 24, 2020 by University of Nebraska Press Journals. Selected collaborations include Habitat Home NYC 2019, Tokyo to New York The moments in this time 2020, and Han has been awarded for 'commission work', Bostonian Lab1 for Geo Mun Go ensemble, and has been premiere by LAMI ensemble, July 1, 2021 in Korea. 

Most recently, Han received School of Music Award for a winner of the Orchestra Composition Competition at Boston University alongside enjoying her study music composition under direction of Joshua Fineberg in the Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Music.

Photo: Moo Jae

Jinhee Han

Sylvaine Hinglais founded the Paris-based Compagnie Cosmopolite du Pierrot Lunaire to mount textual creations, but also to involve artists from different countries and different inspirations. Sylvaine invents characters with original forms of expression. The polycultural character of the ensemble enables her work to have a focused reflection on strangeness, relationships to one another and to places, with characters seeking the concept of home. On a larger scale, she explores notions of territory and borders by being sensitive to the variety and gestural language of her cosmopolitan actors. She is also inspired by her own theatrical and academic music training.

Sylvaine has a Doctor of Letters from the Sorbonne in Paris and was a professor at Columbia University for 8 years. Sylvaine regularly publishes the texts produced by the Pierrot Lunaire, as well as other theatrical monologues, dialogues, and sketches. She has published several books for youth, including Le Fabuleux Amour d’Aucassin & Nicolette.

Her past collaborations with Concrete Timbre include: Bach to Theater, Folie Pure, Le Bain de Mer en Point d’Orgue in Satie’s Birthday Party, Avec ou Sans Voix in Coq tôt, Un Lieu de Vie, and Voyage de Ouf.

Sylvaine Hinglais

Anthony Izzo received his masters in classical saxophone performance at the Aaron Copland School of Music. He has given world premieres of works by notable composers such as Leo Kraft, Saman Samadi and John Szto. He has performed all over the NYC area and in many venues in Long Island. In addition to performing, Anthony has written many solo and small ensemble works. He has written concert music, animation music and video game music. At ACSM, he was the president of the Composers Workshop, a notable group of student composers that hire professional ensembles and soloists to perform their music. Anthony studied saxophone with Dr. Paul Cohen and composition with Mikael Karlsson and John Wykoff. He is currently an elementary school music teacher in Corona, Queens and teaches grades Pre-K - 2

Anthony Izzo

Raised in Austin, TX, Alice Jones welcomes new listeners into the world of music through music creation, education, and collaboration. She was praised by Mario Davidovsky as “the flute player who could really play” and Fanfare Magazine called her 2017 album with Ensemble 365 “pretty music faultless... required listening.” Her composition projects include the #tinyefforts series, as well as recent commissions from Gaudete Brass, Decoda, Amity Trio, Millikin University, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, and the Phoenix Orchestra (Boston). In 2018 she was named to the inaugural CreateNYC Leadership Accelerator cohort by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

Alice teaches flute in Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program, Luzerne Music Center, and the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. In 2020, she became the Assistant Dean of Community Engagement and Career Services at The Juilliard School. Alice graduated from Yale University, SUNY Purchase, and the CUNY Graduate Center.

She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where, when she's not musicking, she’s likely walking her dogs or making ice cream.

For more info visit www.alicejones.com

Jay Kauffman

Jay Kauffman, a classical guitarist, has performed to critical acclaim on stages from New York to San Francisco to Shanghai, and is a published composer whose works have been featured on National Public Radio. He is a classically trained musician and teacher with graduate degrees from the Juilliard School of Music and the Cincinnati Conservatory. He’s been on the faculty of the prestigious Bowdoin Music Festival as well as the Western Connecticut State University. His compositions have been published by Tuscany Publications and L'Editions D'Oz. 

He lived in New York City for 30 years and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. where he can watch the sunrise every morning, make mesquite coffee, and commune with hummingbirds. He writes music because it's an adventure and is always surprised at what he discovers during his trips into that land, delighted by the sound souvenirs he is sometimes able to coax into returning home with him.fluid, expressive, and richly varied compositional technique. His music can be heard on his recording, Fingerprint, which contains music inspired by the traditions of Spain, Venezuela, Brazil, The United States, Japan, Mongolia, and Turkey. His music is published by Tuscany Publications and distributed by The Theodore Presser Company, as well as by Les Productions D’oz.

More info at www.JayKauffman.com

Alice Jones

Manuela Lechler was a saxophonist, violinist, and composer who worked with Concrete Timbre for many many years, leading us to explore the many wonders of jazz.

Manuela was a member of the Open Music Ensemble and performer her own repertory in her group Combo Azul. Manuela was featured on various recordings including: Cabbage Moon, a musical story based on a fairytale by Jan Wahl, her composition, The Bowery Suite, was recorded by the Open Music Ensemble and excerpts were used for Christopher Arcella’s motion picture Giver Taker Heartbreaker. Manuela performed as a mime in Der Zusammenstoss with the Tuebinger Zimmertheater at the Berliner Theater Festival.  Manuela graduated from the Steiner School and Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste  in Stuttgart and studied Jazz Saxophone at Manhattan School of Music.

Manuela Lechler

Sandra Noble I am a songwriter and dreamer.

My compositions are influenced by classical, pop, folk, and sound healing genres.

With a certificate in Arts in Therapy from Turtle Bay School of Music, I have used music with special needs preschoolers and their teachers with a vision to share joy and healing and self-expression through music. I have organized and performed at 5 singer/songwriter events "Love Celebration" and a fund raising musical event for the  organization Emergency.

Sandra Eber-Noble

Kyoko Oyobe is a gifted artist who explores different modes of expression conveyed within a subtext of intimacy or through original compositions inspiring and reflected in novels by the renowned Japanese novelist, Rui Kodemari. She travels through music instilling an essence and distinct color that borrow from Be-Bop to Brazilian and Free Jazz to French-Impressionist, early 20th century voicings, yet sealing her own inimitable style.

Kyoko Oyobe was born in Japan but has been a mainstay in the New York Jazz scene since 2005. She started performing with her own group at New York CIty’s renowned jazz clubs such as The Blue Note, Smalls Jazz Club, Mezzrow, Jazz at Kitano, and Fat Cat. In Japan, she is also known for touring regularly with her Trio and Quartet at NHK concert hall (Japan’s National public broadcasting organization), Body and Soul (Tokyo), Left Alone (Kobe), Speak Low (Hiroshima), New Combo (Fukuoka), Renaiss Hall (Okayama) and many others.

In 2011, Kyoko had a special three-week French tour in which she was invited to share her music with French female artists throughout many Jazz clubs in Paris. In 2018, her trio was invited to perform at the Residence of the Ambassador of Japan in Washington D.C. Her prowess as a superlative jazz pianist is recognized internationally by musical peers who regularly invite her to accompany them.

Kyoko Oyobe

“Amazing…astonishing,” (The New York Times), Milica Paranosic is a Serbian-born composer, designer and interdisciplinary artist who lives in Harlem, NYC. Her music has been described as “amazing and astonishing” by The New York Times, “like liquor-filled pralines,” by the Berliner Morgenpost and she herself as a “…free-wheeling performance-art-type cat“ by the Village Voice.

Her work was supported, commissioned, and presented by organizations such as LMCC, NYSCA, ASCAP, Whitney Museum, New Dramatists, HERE Arts Center, American Composers Orchestra, LVMH Moët Hennessy/Louis Vuitton, VisionIntoArt, Buglisi Dance Theater, Joyce Theater, Symphony Space, Zankel Hall/Carnegie, Lincoln Center, Bohemian National Hall among others. Intercontinental highlights include BEMUS (Serbia), EtnaFest (Italy) and UFBA (Brazil).

Milica has an MM in composition from The Juilliard School where she began the music tech department and co-founded the international festival Beyond the Machine. She is also the founder of the Harlem-based Paracademia – a non-profit for music and multimedia.

For more information, visit www.milicaparanosic.com and www.paracademia.org

Photo: Sibyl Kempson, 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens- Fall Equinox, September 21, 2018, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Photograph © Paula Court

Milica Paranosic

Stephanie Singer is a British composer and creative director. She founded BitterSuite, an immersive music company whose work has featured at The Royal Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Gulbenkian, The Science Gallery, Midlands Art Centre, Rich Mix, Roundhouse, Nesta, Bristol Arnolfini, TedX and Wilderness Festival. She trained in songwriting for musical theatre at BMI. And her original musical Simon and His Shoes is set to take to the stage at the Tank, NYC across October 2022.

Stephanie is currently developing a new identity 'Violet Disruption'. Violet is the hyper-deity for survival and creates ecstatic electronica experiences. Across 2021, Violet was in development with the Royal Opera House (ROH) and National Ballet of Canada (NBoC), Canadian digital tech innovators SIRT, and now Violet has her debut experience taking over the main stage of the Finnish Opera House October 2022-January 2023.

Stephanie was the British Council musician in residence in Russia, 2020 with producer Slow Shudder she produced her pop-electronica experience New Symmetry. New Symmetry showcased at Different Ever After, Moscow, and was selected as ‘Best Music Video’ Rome Prisma awards, ‘Best Experimental Film’ Red Movie Awards, ‘Best Music Video’ London International Monthly Film Festival.

Other credits include the score for immersive synth based disco horror installation Samuel (The Tank), the score for immersive ballet by the New York City Ballet, the original musical Simon and His Shoes, and the orchestral score for BitterSuite’s audio experience HELD.

For more information,

visit theStephanieExperience.com and BitterSuite.org.uk

Stephanie Singer

Ann Warren is the Producing Artistic Director of Concrete Timbre, a New York composer-driven performance collective that thrives on collaboration in all phases of the creative process to develop and produce contemporary music in theatrical settings. As a composer and sound designer, my compositions have been performed at many (many!) innovative performance spaces in New York, Paris, London, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, California, and Florida. I’ve been lucky to work with some really inspiring interdisciplinary artists with a flair for the contemporary (!)

So for now, I try to keep the music great, the story interesting, the visuals stimulating, and the movement fresh - and of course, then wind them into a spectacular melange. Merde!

For more information, visit www.AnnWarren.net

Ann Warren

Projections

Bob is a is a videographer and photographer.   A California native. He moved to New York after teaching elementary school for 33 years.

A true Canon fan, Bob is usually seen carrying a camera  and shoots photos at lightning speed. His photographs have been published in several books, publications, and internet sites. 

Bob coordinates the technical aspects of live performance projections, and works to provide contextual settings for all Concrete Timbre performances. He has worked creating videos, projections, and photo montages for productions by many innovators producing exciting music and theater in New York City.

Bob graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and has an M.A. from University of San Francisco.

Bob plays blues guitar and is a fan of Jerry Garcia, Jimmy Thackery and Richard Thompson.

For more information, visit www.RobertMorton.net.

Robert Morton

Erland Vogt von Koch (26 April 1910 – 31 January 2009) was a Swedish composer. He wrote symphonies, ballets, an opera, and other compositions, including music for film.

Erland Vogt von Koch

Received his masters in classical saxophone performance at the Aaron Copland School of Music. He has given world premieres of works by notable composers such as Leo Kraft, Saman Samadi and John Szto. He has performed all over the NYC area and in many venues in Long Island. In addition to performing, Anthony has written many solo and small ensemble works. He has written concert music, animation music and video game music. At ACSM, he was the president of the Composers Workshop, a notable group of student composers that hire professional ensembles and soloists to perform their music. Anthony studied saxophone with Dr. Paul Cohen and composition with Mikael Karlsson and John Wykoff. He is currently an elementary school music teacher in Corona, Queens and teaches grades Pre-K - 2.

Thomas Giles works at the intersection of contemporary performance, improvisation, and interdisciplinary collaborations as a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. To date Giles has premiered more than 200 new works, many of which are dedicated to him. Recent premieres have included works by Marc Mellits, Nicola LeFanu, Jay Schwartz, Philip Venables, Gleb Kanasevich, Joshua Mastel, and Cole Blouin. Giles has enjoyed close working relationships with some of today’s leading composers e.g., Meredith Monk, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Charles Wuorinen, Mika Pelo, Dan Becker, and the American indie-rock duo Wye Oak.

Giles is on faculty at the Aaron Copland School of Music - Queens College and has previously held teaching positions at SUNY Fredonia, Syracuse University, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He frequently gives masterclasses at institutions across the United States and Europe. Giles is a D’Addario Woodwinds Performing Artist and a graduate of the Florida State University (Doctor of Music, 2016).