Announcing the Host of Stradivari Serenade

We're thrilled to announce that Terrance McKnight will host Stradivari Serenade on March 29th!
Radio host, commentator, curator, writer, and pianist, Terrance McKnight serves humanity and music by “bringing everyone’s culture to the table, by not putting one above the other, but rather by ensuring a big enough table with a place for all.”

 WQXR listeners may recall Terrance hosting the broadcast of our concert last summer at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell.  Read Terrance’s bio below, and get your tickets for next week's Stradivari Serenade!

Terrance is the author of the upcoming book “Concert Black,” anticipating a 2024 release by Abrams Press. McKnight is the weekday evening host for WQXR, New York’s only all-classical music station. In early 2023 in association with the station, his production company, Concert Black LLC, launched a podcast series. The first topic, representations of Blackness in opera, was captured in 16 weekly
episodes and distilled into 4-one hour radio documentaries.

Prior audio documentaries he has authored, voiced and produced for WQXR feature Langston Hughes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Hazel Scott, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Florence Beatrice Price, Leonard Bernstein and Harry Belafonte. Another of his radio shows for WQXR, All Ears with Terrance McKnight, a series about musical discovery, was honored with an ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award.

In June 2023, Terrance, Ron Carter, Clive Davis and the Reverend Al Sharpton were speakers at a New York City-based celebration of Harry Belafonte. Also in 2022-23, he hosted diverse offerings in music from the Han and Heung Festival exploring the stories and traditions of Korea at Louisiana State University, to the New York premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s chamber opera “Hometown to the World” at historic Town Hall, to facilitating a conversation around the Black Lives Matter movement and the creation of the first community-based mural in the Brooklyn neighborhood during the summer of 2020 in Bedford-Stuyvesant and lent his voice as narrator for performances of Peter & the Wolf.

In his latest creative offering, Langston & Beethoven: Black & Proud, McKnight gives voice to the poetry of Hughes paired with chamber music works of Beethoven, Gershwin and others, combined with storytelling, narrating vignettes from his childhood and current events. The show was a February 2023 presentation at Lincoln Center’s Sidewalk Studio.

Terrance has hosted concerts for Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s,
Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, the American Pianists
Association Competition, gave the keynote address for the diversity track of the 2022 Music Teachers National Association conference and participated in journalism symposium for the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, also in 2022. His is the voice of recent media campaigns for Carnegie Hall and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In association with the exhibition Charles White: A Retrospective at Museum of Modern Arts, Terrance curated a series of concerts and audio tours in 2019.

McKnight is a member of the Artistic Council, with Claire Chase and conductor Robert Spano, for The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida, serves on the board of MacDowell and is the Artistic Advisor for the Harlem Chamber Players. He has participated on panels for Chamber Music America, the Mellon Foundation, American Opera Projects, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, ASCAP and the New York State Council on the Arts. It is Terrance McKnight’s commentary that introduces the liner notes for the recent recording of Three Ife Songs by Phillip Glass, featuring singer Angelique Kidjo, Dennis Russell Davies and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz.

Curator Corner: What’s the meaning of Stonehenge?

Crier cellist and curator of Stonehenge, Michael Unterman, reflects on the inspiration behind the program.

I’m a fan of the gods of mischief, the traits of Gentle Guardian and Troublemaker being a particularly potent combination, held by many of my dearest people.

AFC’s Stonehenge is perhaps an attempt to channel that kind of spirit: not at all a serious program of serious music (at least not at face value), but more of a tap on your opposite shoulder, and hopefully one that draws your attention to something out there, maybe something simpler, and maybe also bigger.

The pieces of Stonehenge fit together a bit like a crude collage: that fifth grade art project where your teacher dropped a pile of magazines on the table and asked you to cut and paste images that, together, evoked something. 

Here, first, there’s a representation of a sunrise: Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Illumine; the piece is steely, cool, and arresting; the sunrise of a sun that always hangs close to the horizon. Next, is the monument of stone: Paul Wiancko’s Vox Petra (“the voice of the rock”); not a depiction of Stonehenge, but of the abstract basalt monoliths of renowned artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Then the program ends with a paean to the countryside: Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, arranged for string sextet, a version Beethoven may well have known and even played on viola, created by his contemporary Michael Fischer.

Together, the sunrise, the stone, and the landscape = a stonehenge.

Other traits in common: the music is awe-inspiring, all three pieces employing effects conjure goosebumps, and whose majestic power can elicit eye-misties. They are also all reverential, each pointing to something else that is beautiful.

I have some first hand experience of this with Paul Wiancko’s Vox Petra, as I was fortunate enough to assist in a video recording of it during my time working for Five Boroughs Music Festival in New York City. Vox Petra is a name shared by Paul Wiancko’s piece and an Isamu Noguchi sculpture, and Astoria, Queens is home to the Noguchi Museum, a converted warehouse that Noguchi himself designed to house his own artworks and the artworks of others. We recorded Vox Petra with members of the Argus Quartet and Paul himself, playing Cello 2, in a covered outdoor pavilion that houses Noguchi’s basalt giants. It was a chilly April day, chirping birds, gusts of wind, and passing cars providing both atmosphere and the occasional disruption. But we were all kids in a candy store, and nobody wanted to pass up the chance to record this piece with this backdrop. At one point, Paul walked us over to one of the sculptures and showed us how the progressive changes in texture that Noguchi’s sculptures employ served as a sort of form diagram for the piece: when the sculpture was smooth, so was the music, as when the sculpture was jagged, etc.

It was also April of 2021. We were in the process of receiving our first COVID vaccines, and digital concerts were still largely taking the place of live events. The Noguchi Museum was also operating at a heavily reduced capacity, which meant that we were able to have free run of the place (with two museum curators) for a full day and a half; a true silver lining moment of the pandemic.

Vox Petra ends with the most gentle and playful of touches: asking the players to use their bows as hammers and chisels, gently tapping on their instruments’ tailpieces, then to swipe the string gently crosswise, creating the sound of sweeping up dust. It brought the sounds of Noguchi’s one-time studio back to the now-museum, sweetly conjuring up old ghosts. I doubt any of us had ever been shattered so gently or felt so close to an artist we never knew.

Watch the performance of Vox Petra above. The video opens with an extended walk-through of the Noguchi Museum, and Paul Wiancko’s piece begins at 36:41]

3 Albums, 3 Grammy Nominations

We're celebrating THREE Grammy nominations! Each of the three eligible albums A Far Cry worked on have received nominations for the 2024 GRAMMY’s and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have each one recognized in some way!

And in case you weren’t aware, you can hear Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds”, 2024 Grammy nominee for Best Contemporary Composition, performed by AFC and Awadagin Pratt alongside works by Paola Prestini, Alvin Singleton, and Beethoven LIVE this Friday, November 17 at 8PM at Four Quartets!

For Your GRAMMY® Consideration

It’s GRAMMY® FYC season and we’ve been BUSY!

A Far Cry has THREE albums eligible in multiple categories! Click the images below to listen to each album now!

New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records released The Blue Hour, a song cycle written collaboratively by the female composers Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova , Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider; featuring excerpts from Carolyn Forché’s epic poem On Earth.

Released October 2022 The Blue Hour is eligible in the following categories:

> Best Contemporary Classical Composition
> Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
> Best Engineered (Classical)
> Producer of the Year (Classical)

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Vocals: Shara Nova
Additional vocals: members of A Far Cry, Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Sarah Kirkland Snider
Strings: A Far Cry
Sound design: Michael Hammond, with Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider
Produced by Rachel Grimes and Shara Nova
Artistic Production team: Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Andrew Scheps, Alex Fortes, and Jesse Lewis
Mixed by Andrew Scheps, Tonequake
Mastering by Helge Sten, Sten Audio Virus Lab
Strings recorded at Futura Productions, Roslindale, MA

Chief Recording Engineer and String Producer for A Far Cry: Jesse Lewis, Immersive Music Project
Recording and editing engineer: Kyle Pyke
Additional string editing: Shauna Barravecchio, Christopher Moretti, Karl Doty
Chief Recording Engineer for Futura: John Weston
Assistant Engineers for Futura: Travis Karpak, Jacob Steingart
Lead Vocal Engineer: Patrick Dillett at Reservoir Studios, New York City
Assistant Engineer: James Yost
Second Engineer: Peter Jensen
Additional vocal engineering: Shara Nova at Blue Sword Studios, Detroit
Lead vocal editor: Casey Foubert
Vocal pre-production mixing: Mitchell Graham
Album design & layout: DM Stith

A Gentleman of Istanbul: Symphony for Strings, Percussion, Piano, Oud, Ney & Tenor featuring Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol and George Lernis was recorded at Futura Productions back in June 2021 and released April 2023 on Crier Records. It is eligible in the following categories:

> Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
> Best Contemporary Classical Composition

“A Gentleman of Istanbul is an exceptional work — deeply moving, authentically multicultural, and instantly re-listenable. A Far Cry and Sanlıkol have nailed it with this collaboration ...” – San Francisco Classical Voice

——————————————
A Far Cry, strings
George Lernis, percussion
Jesse Lewis, producer
Christopher Moretti and John Weston, recording engineers
Travis Karpak and Jacob Steingart, assistant engineers
Christopher Moretti, mixing engineer
Jesse Lewis and Shauna Barravecchio mastering engineers
Album cover collage design by DM Stith
Studio footage filmed by Dan Schwartz
Animation by Jeff Claassen
Video edited and directed by Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol

Awadagin Pratt’s STILLPOINT was released August 2023 via New Amsterdam and features six newly-commissioned works by Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Judd Greenstein, Paola Prestini, Pēteris Vasks, Tyshawn Sorey; performed by Pratt, A Far Cry, and vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.

STILLPOINT is eligible in the following categories:

> Best Classical Instrumental Solo
> Best Contemporary Classical Composition
> Best Album Notes
> Best Engineered (Classical)

Executive Producer: Mark Rabideau
Producers: Mark Rabideau, Judd Greenstein, Jesse Lewis
Recording Engineer: Francisco Gonzalez Navarro
Engineering Assistant: Christopher Moretti
Editing Engineers: Christopher Moretti, Shauna Barravecchio
Mixing Engineer: Jesse Lewis
Mastering Engineers: Christopher Moretti, Shauna Barravecchio

Piano: Awadagin Pratt
Composers: Alvin Singleton, Jessie Montgomery, Judd Greenstein, Paola Prestini, Pēteris Vasks, Tyshawn Sorey

Sponsors: ArtsWave Cincinnati, Art of the Piano Foundation, Yamaha
License agreement for use of T.S. Eliot poetry: Faber & Faber Limited
Vocals: Roomful of Teeth
Strings: A Far Cry

Curator Corner: Sunrise

AFC’s program “Sunrise,” coming up this weekend, was originally slated for our 2019-20 season, a year where we were experimenting with pairing chamber music programs with full-group orchestral counterparts. Some explored similar music and concepts; in this case, riffing off of Sarah Darling’s program “Sunset” (which will close out this season in May), the temptation to offer a contrasting opposite was too hard to resist.

“Sunset” features some pretty gnarly and epic music: Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy, in his avant garde element, Ottorino Respighi’s heart-wrenching song “Il Tramonto,” Witold Lutosławski’s high-modernist Musique Funèbre, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ iconic Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. There’s a bit of a death (Respighi / Lutoslwski) and transfiguration (Eastman / Vaughan Williams) theme going on, the sort of deep thoughts and images that crop up later in the day. With “Sunrise,” then, I tried to evoke a freshness, a sort of ideal morning (as in the one described in this Billy Collins poem); perhaps even a longing for an early spring, if last weekend’s nor’easter didn’t render that wish a bit too ironic.

The one limitation I set for myself was to not program Josef Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet, as much as I love it; noses would’ve wrinkled, there’s only enough room for one “Sunrise” in this town, etc. In its place there’s Luigi Boccherini’s quintet “L’ucceliera,” “the Aviary,” a piece chock full of notated bird calls, plus a brief cameo by some shepherds and hunters, who are clearly lost. Boccherini’s music is so often pictorial, describing a scene or a slice of life, even when that image isn’t as explicit as it is here or in pieces like his famous Night Music of Madrid. This programmatic quality gives Boccherini license to mess around with form, and to ground his music in a realness that still manages to coexist with its inherent lightness. “L’ucceliera” also skirts the edges of the ridiculous, a quality that I love and which, speaking from past experience, makes it rather a gas to prepare and perform.

Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation for string quartet is also pictorial, in its own way, simultaneously taking a more objective stance – from the landscape architect’s point of view – while also delving into a deeper emotional space. The piece was commissioned by Dumbarton Oaks – a friend and frequent presenter of AFC (including this coming April) – and is inspired by the gardens that surround the museum. Caroline writes: “Plan & Elevation, refers to two standard ways of representing architecture — essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor — often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.”

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet is in some ways a bit of a stretch for the Sunrise theme, full-bodied in scale and grounded in the crepuscular key of F-sharp minor—although it isn’t rooted there, and uses that platform to jump off into sunnier A major and glowing B major. Its slow movement in particular elicits all of the feelings I associate with an idealized morning: a sense of serenity and coziness, as though taking in a breathtaking view with the perfect cup of coffee clasped between one's hands (again, that Billy Collins poem). The other movements could also be said to be a bit caffeine-fueled: allegros energico and agitato for the first and fourth, and a vital scherzo for the third.

The other way in which the image of a sunrise applies, if you’ll excuse the extension of the metaphor, is in the shedding of some light on this brilliant yet little known piece and composer. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was of mixed race, his father from Sierra Leone and his mother English, and although he died quite young, at the age of 37, he was very prolific. Describing a composer’s style or vouching for their greatness is something I suppose I shy away from, for the sake of avoiding clunky and inapt comparisons; Coleridge-Taylor’s music sounds like nobody else's. All I’d say is if clarinet quintets were whiskeys, I’d reach for this one at least as often, if not more, than the other more mainstream malts.

—Michael Unterman, AFC cellist and curator of Sunrise

Curator Corner: Emergence

Zenas Hsu has been busy over the last months, weeks, days and hours - designing “Emergence” and arranging the Britten First String Quartet for the group, as well as all of the preparation that goes into any A Far Cry week! We caught up with him for just long enough to get some insight into his vision.

Was there a particular piece or concept that inspired this program?

I think the concept has evolved over time, but it began as a personification of how we emerge from a tumultuous time of isolation and struggle. In contrast to where we are, the three pieces on this program are filled with optimism, but in the flavor of quiet, earnest, and unassuming optimism. I was heavily inspired by the way Lei Liang describes his take on his Mongolian influences in his music as music that plays with the relationship of convergence and divergence, of voices and roles that interchange at different times, yet meld together somehow by inspired chance. In this current world we are struggling to find consensus, struggling to be heard as individuals, while struggling to understand inclusivity and equity. In my mind this program acoustically reflects the aspirations and idealization of aspiring towards achieving that, in an optimistic way.

How did you get to know Lei Liang's music?

Liang was the resident composer of Yellow Barn in 2014, during which I had the pleasure to hear and play his music. I was immediately fascinated by not only his work but the way he viewed his work - a constant re-exploration of the music tradition and how music inevitably touches and is touched by his reality, from striving to write freely his own melodies from folk traditions instead of simply inserting existing ones (like the ones in "Verge" inspired by his childhood experiences of listening to traditional Mongolian song), to transforming the beauty of the natural world into music in pursuit of recognizing the fragility of it, to exploring the relationship of tradition, history, and re-invention. I remember vividly being transfixed by the first notes of a piece by Liang for solo harpsichord, "Some Empty Thoughts of a Person from Edo", which transformed the sounds of the baroque instrument into the reflective plucking of a koto or kayagum, and the magical nature of an evening featuring the contrapuntal evolution between interchanging attacca movements of Bach's Musical Offering and Liang's Garden Eight.

What was it like to arrange the Britten?

When I was a guest Crier, I inevitably learned about the way A Far Cry operates - democratically, each Crier having the opportunity to not only voice their opinions and aspirations, but from ground up the way A Far Cry operates. One thing that was so inspiring to learn was that every single AFC program originated from the hands of a Crier curator.

I run an annual pre-K and K-12 educational festival called Chamber Music by the Bay in the San Francisco bay area in California with some musician friends. One year we programmed Britten String Quartet No. 1. In the second movement, we shared how we passed the fortissimo outbursts in the beginning around the four instruments, and demonstrated this by hopping out of our seats whenever we had the surprise interjections. I think later that week I began to toy with the idea that this piece would be a wonderful string orchestra arrangement, from the shimmering kaleidoscope of sounds in the first movement, the grandness of open harmonies in the third, to the playful hockets found in the fast movements. It represents in my mind the very process that defines A Far Cry - a collective that shares and passes to each individual empowerment.

Embedding Justice & Equity at A Far Cry

Embedding Justice & Equity at A Far Cry

We grieve for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who lost their lives to overt police brutality. We grieve for Ahmaud Arbery, who lost his life to an act of senseless, unjust violence. We grieve for their families and communities. We grieve for the countless Black Americans whose lives, liberty, and happiness have been denied by systemic racism. It is time, it is hundreds of years past time, to make changes. In our world, this also means addressing systemic racism in classical music.

A Far Cry was founded on the belief that things work best when every voice is heard and treated with love, trust, and respect. This must include Black voices. Embedding justice and equity is forever work, and we recognize that there is hard and urgent work for us to do.

With this statement, every member of our organization commits to becoming actively anti-racist and to holding ourselves accountable for keeping justice and equity front and center in our pursuits. This means always examining and challenging our policies and practices through this lens, and defining explicit goals for how we will translate our commitments to embedding justice and equity throughout every layer of our institutional culture. We pledge to listen, educate ourselves, ask the hard questions, take action, learn from our mistakes, try again, and find ways to make true change from within.

As we continue on this road, we follow the example of artists and arts organizations who have long dedicated themselves to this work and are effecting change in our field. A few who we know directly are listed below—please take a look and join us in support of their missions:

Project STEP

Castle of Our Skins

Code Listen

Sphinx

~A Far Cry 
Criers, Board, Staff

Updates from AFC on COVID-19 Response

UPDATE March 19, 2020

Dear A Far Cry Family,

For the health of our community, A Far Cry has ceased rehearsing and performing during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, due to ongoing closures at our performance venues, we have to cancel our Memory Tour, March 28 concert at St. John's Church, "Memory," and May 29 concert at Jordan Hall, "Mexico, Lindo y Querido." Please know that we will keep you closely informed about any future events this Spring (including the STL GLD Project at the Gardner Museum and our annual Spring Soirée). For now, we are taking things one step at a time.

Regarding Ticket Policies:
To be totally honest - we've never had to develop a Pandemic Ticket Policy before! We say this not to make light of the situation, but to let you know that we are working hard to adapt as new information dictates and provide the best options possible for your purchase. With our season finale canceled as of yesterday afternoon, we are unfortunately no longer able to offer exchanges per our usual ticket policy. We are grateful to those of you who have inquired about donating your tickets for a tax-deductible donation, which goes a long way in supporting our organization. 

With that, we understand that these are extenuating circumstances, so please be in touch with us at boxoffice@afarcry.org or 617-553-4887 to discuss ticketing options. Given the high volume of incoming communications, it may take us longer than usual to respond, and we thank you for your patience!

In this time of uncertainty, social distancing, and illness, we need a sense of place and community now more than ever. Our audience, we musicians, and folks we've never even met are hungry for connection, beauty, and healing, so we will be with you, every step of the way, doing our darnedest to make sure that every one of us has music in our lives and no one has to feel alone. 

To this end, we Criers have gotten together and pledged to keep the music alive, whether it's a live-streamed solo concert from one of our living rooms, an individually curated playlist, a behind-the-scenes Q&A, or a brand new youtube video. We welcome your requests as our collaborators in this venture.

Here are a few treats to get things started:

1. The livestream of our recent concert, "A Stradivari Serenade," which features two pieces from our canceled "Memory" program. Catch the Elgar at minute 4:55 and the memorized Tchaikovsky at 1:18:25. Did you know that we played these pieces on $90 Million worth of instruments this past February?!

2. Our first "A Far Cry Sessions" on Facebook featuring Criers Jesse Irons and Sarah Darling. Even our Executive Director Grace Kennerly got in the game! 

Follow us on social media for regular content, keep an eye out here for e-news featuring your weekly digest of A Far Cry offerings, and visit our website for the full cumulative listing of your "Daily Dose" of AFC! Next up on Facebook Live, we have appearances by the Lewis Family (tune in TONIGHT!), and Michael Unterman (tune in on Saturday). 

Thank you for continuing to make music with us and we can't wait to share our music with you in person during better times ahead.

With Love and Music,
The Criers

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UPDATE March 11, 2020

Dear A Far Cry Family,

After carefully monitoring the developments of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and in light of New England Conservatory's recent COVID-19 Health Alert, it has become clear that we must cancel Friday's production of "Sunset" entirely.

Our one and only rehearsal of this music reinforced our conviction that this beautiful program and repertoire must be performed. We are determined to feature "Sunset" on a future season, and hope to make it a reality. This morning, we recorded a portion of "Il Tramonto" featuring mezzo-soprano Krista River. We share it with you now as a token of our appreciation and love during this challenging and uncertain time. And, keep an eye out on social media for some musical treats from our Criers over the coming weeks. In this time of "social distancing," we feel that music is more important than ever!

Under our usual ticket policies, we are offering all subscribers and single ticket buyers the option to exchange their "Sunset" tickets to another concert of the same or lesser value this season. We are grateful to those of you who have inquired about donating your tickets for a tax-deductible donation, which is also an option.

On that note, we understand that these are extenuating circumstances so please do not hesitate to be in touch with us at (617) 553-4887 or email boxoffice@afarcry.org and we'll be happy to talk through ticketing options with you.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding. Shared experiences are fundamental to the performing arts, and we will continue finding ways to share our music and gratitude in the midst of this evolving situation.

With Love and Music,
A Far Cry

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UPDATE March 9, 2020

Dear A Far Cry Family,

We have recently learned from New England Conservatory that effective today, NEC is temporarily suspending access to Jordan Hall concerts for all visitors from outside their campus community due to a COVID-19 health alert. During this time, only NEC undergraduates and graduate students, faculty, and staff may attend scheduled concerts. 

What this means:  
As of now, we are proceeding with our upcoming concert, "Sunset," on Friday, March 13 at NEC's Jordan Hall. However, unless you are a member of the NEC campus community as outlined above, you will not be permitted to attend this concert in person.

We remain in close contact with NEC and are hopeful that a livestream of the concert will still be possible. We will continue to keep you closely updated with plans. Should Friday’s performance be cancelled entirely, we will notify all ticket holders by email at least 2 hours prior to the performance. Updates will also be posted to our website, social media, and outgoing voicemail. 

Additional Information and Ticket Policies

General Health and Safety Tips: For the health and wellbeing of everyone, please follow the guidelines as outlined by the CDC (visit the CDC website for more information on health safety practices) to determine risk, prevent exposure, and enhance hygiene. If you are feeling unwell, exhibiting symptoms, or have been in contact with someone exhibiting symptoms, we encourage you to take care and please stay home.

Livestream: A Far Cry is proud to offer a livestream of its Jordan Hall productions, and we are hoping this will remain a possibility for "Sunset." Be on the lookout for further updates as soon as we have more information.

Ticket Policies: Subscribers and single ticket buyers may exchange tickets to another concert of the same value within a given season. All exchanges must be made 48 hours in advance of the concert for which you are exchanging tickets. You may also donate your tickets for a tax deductible donation. Please call us at (617) 553-4887 or email boxoffice@afarcry.org to discuss exchange and donation options.

Support AFC: As a cancellation or stall in ticket sales will have a dire financial impact on A Far Cry and all arts organizations, we encourage you to consider donating your tickets if you cannot attend. If you have not yet purchased a ticket and we are able to livestream the concert, we hope you will consider tuning in and purchasing a ticket anyway (or making a donation) to support AFC.

We appreciate your understanding and support, and wish you and the entire performing arts community good health and well being.

Sincerely,
A Far Cry

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CANCELED EVENTS

Friday, March 13, 2020 | “Sunset” at NEC’s Jordan Hall

Tuesday, March 24, 2020 | AFC at Thomasville Entertainment Foundation (Tour)

Thursday, March 26, 2020 | AFC at Wake Forest University (Tour)

Saturday, March 28, 2020 | “Memory” at St. John’s Church

Tuesday, March 31, 2020 | AFC at the Kennedy Center (Tour)

Friday, May 29, 2020 | “Mexico, Lindo y Querido” at NEC’s Jordan Hall

Through the night

A note from Sarah Darling, who curated last week’s canceled “Sunset.” We wish you all health and strength in this challenging time.

-

Hello, from interesting times.

The picture you're seeing is the view right in front of me as I write. My two lovely cats cuddling with each other - they've now moved on to some extreme grooming. One grabs the other's head with its paws as an invitation, the other gets right in there with that raspy tongue and starts to work. I've been spending the last few days in their company pretty much all of the time. At times I also feel like I'm a cat; lethargic at moments, adrenaline-filled at others. Predictably, it seems to have a lot to do with the news cycle. 

We're all resting at home now; the hatches are battened, and it feels like we're just waiting, with as much hope as we can muster. Like every musician, my immediate employment was canceled days ago, and now I'm using the time to re-think, re-organize (there is still so much to do) and try to strike the right balance between apprehension and preparedness. It's been incredibly heart-warming to see communities springing up online in conjunction with the new reality. So many folks are there for each other in so many different ways, and all of those efforts are really just getting started. 

Yesterday night, I went for a walk on Metropolitan Hill in Roslindale. Once you get up the hill, you can look out and see the city glistening in the distance like a tiny, multifaceted jewel. The night was calm and clear and quiet; the silence was shared. And the inestimable value of that jewel, the thousands and thousands of unique lives that illuminated it, was impossible to miss. It felt like all around me a slow hibernation was in process; folks drawing their doors shut one by one to protect themselves and especially each other. 

I found myself thinking, again, about the A Far Cry program that was supposed to go up on Friday night. I'd started dreaming up this program years ago and it had finally come to fruition - well, almost. I'd fallen in love with Respighi's incandescent "Il Tramonto" - a work for mezzo and string quartet based on a Shelley poem that follows a loving couple through tragedy and a long grief that follows. I'd never heard a composer explore that space before and Respighi just made it impossible to turn away. So, I thought - maybe run with this, and make a program that follows this arc all the way. I started with the tragedy of Tramonto and followed it with the darkness of Lutoslawski's "Musique Funebre." The idea was to head into intermission wrestling with that darkness.

After we returned to the stage, it would be time for a change. The next work was going to be a short one by Thomas Tallis: "O Sacrum Convivium" - and from there, to transition into Vaughan Williams' infinitely comforting, transcendent, "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis." We'd emerge from the long night into a more complete understanding, a more compassionate vision, and see the first rays of the sunrise. 

Man, nerd that I was and still am, I used to love putting the Tallis Fantasia on my Walkman back in high school (the mid-90s!) and walk down the busy hallways between classes listening to it. It felt equal parts ecstatic and illicit. There's something about the piece that embraces whatever your present reality is and deepens it. A little bit of extra vision. 

Well, Friday has come and gone, and instead of moving forward with that sweet sound in our ears, instead it feels like we're entering the long night. On Friday night, instead of A Far Cry playing a stream from Jordan Hall, I played some Bach from my living room instead. We'd already said our farewell to the program by releasing some rehearsal footage of Tramonto from a couple of days before. 

There's uncertainty and fear about what comes next, as much as we're resolved to do what we can to help. I just don't know what the next days will bring. I can't offer much, but I hope that in some small way the trajectory of this crazy program might just help a little. We're in the tough part, and we don't know how much tougher it's going to get, but there is no doubt that the sun is waiting on the other side of it to shine again. 

Ahhhh, what the heck, Trevor Noah said it better. <3

Sending love to you all. And please stay home! 

Sarah 

We wind the clock back to 1929, Berlin...

We wind the clock back to 1929, Berlin, right before the Nazis would fully control the Weimar Republic. At the turn of the century and after the end of the first World War, the city of Berlin established itself as one of the cultural epicenters of Europe during a golden age that brought together writers, architects, painters, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, playwrights, thinkers, and of course, composers and musicians. By this juncture, the young and charismatic Wilhelm Furtwangler was leading the Berlin Philharmonic, Erich Kleiber was conducting at the Opera House, and bright minds such as Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, and Alexander Zemlinsky arrived to a city already brimming with great composers such as Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Juon and Paul Hindemith. Anyone who wanted a career in music would spend time in Berlin during those years, as Carl Flesch was teaching violin and Artur Schnabel was the piano professor at the Berlin Academy Music, which housed every young virtuoso from Bronislaw Huberman, Igor Stravinsky, and Vladimir Horowitz to Fritz Kreisler, Claudio Arrau and Nathan Milstein.

The energy was bustling, and ideas abounded. A young composer named Kurt Weill and his librettist, Bertold Brecht, would write a piece called the Three Penny Opera that would take Berlin by storm. In the early part of the 1920's, Weill's Quartet No. 1, Op. 8 would get its premiere by the Amar Quartet, of which Paul Hindemith was the violist. In between composing, Kurt Weill would privately tutor composition students both at the Academy and the University, who were often disciples of his friend, Paul Juon. We say that the music world is small now, but the musical community in Berlin then was even more tight knit. Everyone who was someone knew one another. 

I imagined this program as a house concert that the Amar quartet would have put together during Hindemith's last season as its violist. They would play Hindemith’s own works as well as Weill's, and give homage to Paul Juon, who came before them and was the composition professor at the Academy of Music for over 20 years in Berlin. 

When the Nazis finally made their imprint on Berlin in the 1930's, Hindemith and Weill fled to the US, and Juon eventually retired to Switzerland. Kurt Weill's heritage was Jewish, and Hindemith's wife was Jewish. Although Paul Juon was a Russian born of Swiss heritage and his music was not labeled as degenerate by the Nazis, he left Germany after witnessing the demise and death of his friend and colleague, the composer Franz Schreker.

During the first two installments of A Far Cry’s “Entartete Musik” chamber series, we honored composers who perished in Terezin and Auschwitz for being Jewish, along with others whose music was considered “degenerate” by the Nazis. During this third and final installment, we examine German composers whose works were labeled “degenerate” (Hindemith and Weill), and a Swiss-Russian (Juon) who defended his Jewish friend, as well as the ways in which all of their works helped cement Berlin as a musical capital during the 1920s.

-Jae Cosmos Lee, AFC Violinist and program curator of Berlin