EO PERSONNEL
Jennifer Choi - violin
Kal Sugatski - viola
Margaret Lancaster - flutes
Chris McIntyre - trombone
Richard Carrick - keyboard
Russell Greenberg - percussion
PROGRAM
Barbara Benary - Selections from System Pieces (1971/92)
tutti
Adrian Knight Dead In The Water (2014)
bass flute + fixed media
John King Selections from 11 Phasma (2018) solo viola
Leroy Jenkins Background to Life (1976)
violin
Leroy jenkins
by enrico romero
Either/Or completes its 2024-25 season with a rich program of solo and spontaneous ensemble works in the Parish Hall of The Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
The group continues its exploration of venerated violinist and AACM member Leroy Jenkins' (1932-2007) compositions by presenting his 1976 solo piece Background to Life for improvising violinist. EO's Jennifer Choi brings her singular experience to the work, which includes collaborations with Jenkins in his final years.
Adrian Knight
by Edgar Knight
Stellar ensemble flutist Margaret Lancaster revisits NYC-based Swedish composer Adrian Knight's Dead In The Water, a work for bass flute and fixed media written for and premiered by her in 2014 that evokes a"...feeling of stasis by tracing a meandering pathway along a straight line."
John King
by Jean Le Roi
The notation system used by esteemed New York composer and performer John King in his collection of works titled 11 Phasma engenders “openess and freedom” for the player or players involved. Performed solo on June 3rd by EO’s violist Kal Sugatski, the pieces use a system “similar to the tablature notation for guitar - indictions as to which string to play and where/how to play it. The non-traditional score is meant to bring the performer to a different starting point in interpretation.”
Barbara benary in 2018
Finally, EO steps into the sound world of ploymathic violinist and composer Barbara Benary's (1946-2019) System Pieces (1971/92). An early member of the Philip Glass Ensemble and co-founder of NYC's Gamelan Son of Lion, Benary began creating this set of instructional, improvisative works while a ethnomusicology student at Wesleyan. The contemporaneous connection between the conceptualism of Fluxus and the processes of early Minimalism are present in each intimate, relational structure. In the 1992 introductory note to the score she states that as "...both a composer and a performer, I have always liked compositions which strike a balance between specified and unspecified parameters, so that a share in the creative role is left to the performer."
On June 3rd, Either/Or will bring its acclaimed ensemble creativity to bear on each piece for its Brooklyn audience.