NYC Keyboard Fest 2021

December 18th 4pm

@ Gallery MC

549 W 52nd st

ground floor

New York 10019

Sound engineer: Adrian Martinez

Executive producer: George Del Barrio

Kids on Synths + Contemporary Kids

4pm

Kids ages 6-11 performing their own electronic and electroacoustic music and/or contemporary piano repertoire

Apart from learning electronic music, composition and improvisation at early age, Kids on Synths/Contemporary Kids is a research into children’s creativity and music making ability. It’s an experimental venture into the new fields of early music education and creative processes in musically gifted children, as well as becoming familiar with contemporary music repertoire at the early stages of education and performance.

Contemporary Piano: Past 1950.

5:30pm

Adam Tendler, piano

Tentative program:

Talib Rasul Hakim: Sound-gone

Ann Southam: Simple Lines of Enquiry

Julius Eastman: Piano 2

Philip Glass: How Now

A recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times), and “relentlessly adventurous pianist” (Washington Post) “joyfully rocking out at his keyboard” (New York Times), Adam Tendler is an internationally recognized interpreter of living, modern and classical composers. A pioneer of DIY culture in concert music who has commissioned and premiered major works by Christian Wolff and Devonté Hynes alike, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty United States as part of a grassroots tour he called America 88×50, which became the subject of his memoir, 88×50, a Kirkus Indie Book of the Month and Lambda Literary Award nominee. He has gone on to become one of classical and contemporary music’s most recognized and celebrated artists, active as a soloist, recording artist, composer, speaker and educator. Tendler recently released an album of Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on the Steinway Label, Robert Palmer: Piano Music on New World Records, and published his second book, tidepools. Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist.

Electroacoustic and Beyond

7pm

Vessels to Motherland

Bridging the ancient with the new, electroacoustic duo Vessels to Motherland create a music of its own category, steering between heavy industrial and evocative ambient, navigating through seas of psychedelia, journeying with humans and robots alike.

VTM consists of award-winning composer and pianist Danica Borisavljevic, and Juilliard-graduate violinist Nikita Morozov.

The union of the two classically-trained musicians coincided with a mutual calling for electronic music, psychedelic soundscapes, and otherworldly sound treatments. With decades of concert hall performances behind them, Borisavljevic and Morozov have synthesized a new chapter, a reminiscence from the future, with sails reaching to Roedelius’ piano tones, chains tied to Nine Inch Nails’ raw distortion, and anchors extending to spectralism.

For more than a decade, Morozov and Borisavljevic have been regularly performing on the NYC classical and contemporary music scene, playing in venues ranging from Stern Auditorium Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, and Alice Tully Hall, to more adventurous ones such as Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, Shapeshifter Lab, Secret Theater, and Goethe Institute, sharing stage with artists such as Olafur Arnalds, Rita Moreno, The Callithumpian Consort, Alan Gilbert, Tristan Murail, etc.

NYC Keyboard Fest is a 1-day festival containing music performances for any keyboard instrument, electronic and acoustic (synthesizers, piano, piano+electronics, toy piano), with a program ranging from contemporary piano works past 1950 to original electronic music and improvisation.

Objectives of the festival are to erase the boundaries between musical styles in keyboard/piano music, usually kept contained in its own venues, crowd, audiences and performers. NYC Keyboard Fest will attempt to attract performers of varied musical and cultural backgrounds and ages, and provide experience that reflects the complexity of time and space we all equally occupy today.
Together we intend to dismantle the barriers between what is usually considered a professional composer and a self taught/non academic composer. NYC Keyboard Fest will purposely disobey the usual requirements of formal composional education/higher degree in accepting submissions and look for innovation and personal musical language.

Official call for submissions for NYC Keyboard Fest 2022 will open February 2022

Yours,

Danica Borisavljevic

Director and Founder

Tickets per set are $10 if reserved/ purchased online and $15 at the door.

Venue is wheelchair accessible.

New York Institute for the Humanities and Social studies in collaboration with Vessels to Motherland and MIDHEAVEN Network presents: