ensembleNEWSRQ’s “Parisian Refraction” Explores New Music Compositions

May 1, 2024 | Sarasota

As part of The Ringling’s “Art of Performance Series,” ensembleNEWSRQ (enSRQ) presents “Parisian Refraction,” a four-part “micro festival” that explores new music compositions that embody or have been inspired by the City of Light. Violinist Samantha Bennett and percussionist George Nickson, enSRQ’s founders and co-artistic directors, explain that the festival is a collaboration with principal members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, ensembleNEWSRQ Core and guest artists, and “some of new music’s brightest stars.”  They add that the four-concert festival will be presented in both Dallas and Sarasota, with faculty and students of Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Meadows School of the Arts involved in the Dallas presentation. (The festival was presented at SMU in Dallas, April 23, 24, 25, and 28.) In Sarasota, the festival is May 9, 7:30 p.m.; May 10, 7:30 p.m.; and May 11, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., at the Historic Asolo Theatre, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota. Single tickets are $30-40. For more information on ticket packages and single tickets, including student ticket pricing, visit https://www.ringling.org/event/ensemblenewsrq/ or call 941-360-7399.

The festival contains four programs, starting with “Soloists and Sinfoniettas” with Maurice Cohn, conducting. This portion features works by Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho. Performers are Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano; Samantha Bennett, violin; Conor Hanick, piano; and George Nickson percussion. The second program features a solo piano recital by Conor Hanick of Hans Otte’s “Book of Sounds.” Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times). The third program, “Kafka Fragments,” features Samantha Bennett and Lucy Fitz Gibbon performing György Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments Op. 2.” The work features 40 excerpts of diary entries and writings from Franz Kafka. The fourth program, “Plucked and Stuck,” features work by two titans of musical thought and sonic invention: Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, each of whom changed the course of musical history in their own unique way. Emily Levin, principal harp of the Dallas Symphony and SMU faculty, leads a spellbinding account of “Freude” by Stockhausen (both singing and playing harp), while George Nickson, principal percussion of the Dallas Symphony and SMU faculty leads Boulez’ trail-blazing tour de force, “Sur Incises,” for three harps, three pianists and three percussionists.

“We are supremely excited to be presenting this festival at The Historic Asolo Theatre,” says Nickson. “These concerts mark enSRQ’s first return to the Ringling Museum since 2017. We’ve curated musical works with deep ties to the Parisian art scene to work in harmony with the museum’s exhibitions this season, so it will truly be a culmination of multiple disciplines.”

“Bringing acclaimed pianist Conor Hanick back to the Ringling caps off our season with some particularly special opportunities to hear new piano works,” says Bennett. “We’re excited for Sarasota audiences to hear him perform Hans Otte’s monumental ‘Book of Sounds.’” She adds that “Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments” is “one of the most important works ever conceived for violin and soprano. The text is taken from Kafka’s diaries and letters from his time in Paris. At times humorous, folkloric, profound and unhinged, it is a truly unique piece of sonic art.”