Free! Reserve seats for one of three concert dates:
8:00pm Friday October 29, 2021 (“Sold” out!)
5:00pm Saturday October 30, 2021
8:00pm Saturday October 30, 2021
Strings of the WHCO
Linda Collazo, Mezzo-soprano
Chris Whittaker, Music Director
Fort Washington Collegiate Church
729 W. 181st St. New York, NY 10033
Free! Seating is limited and reservations are highly recommended. Masks are required as well as proof of COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older. Note, Saturday’s 5pm concert will also be livestreamed. Reserve your seats below.
Music from the top of the world | A musical snapshot of a time and place: classical composers living and writing in our communities of Washington Heights, Inwood and Harlem. From Jessica Meyer’s lyrical meditation on quantum mechanics to Peter Gordon’s whimsical post-minimalism reimagining the words of Lou Reed; Jorge Sosa’s enchanting dance rhythms to Brent Sawyer’s buoyant melodies, we bring together a collection of compelling voices from our community for a concert you’ll only find above 96th street! Join the strings of the WHCO and special guest vocalist Linda Collazo led by composer/conductor Chris Whittaker.
Program
W. Brent Sawyer: Of Heavenly Joy
Jorge Sosa: Son de Harlem
Peter Gordon: Magic and Transformation featuring Linda Collazo, Mezzo-soprano
Joel Hoffman: Crossing Points
Chris Whittaker: Waking Beside You featuring Linda Collazo, Mezzo-soprano
Jessica Meyer: Through Which We Flow
This program is made possible in part by the New York City Artist Corps.
In Detail
Hailed as having a voice that is “elastic and luxurious” (Ars Raving Mad), Bronx native Mezzo-Soprano LINDA COLLAZO has performed at Carnegie Hall, the United Palace Theater, the United Nations, Lincoln Center, and with the Metropolitan Opera Guild. Future engagements include performing as Armelinde in Viardot’s Cendrillon with City Lyric Opera and singing as a soloist with Ars Musica Chorale. Her roles include Lola (cover) in Cavalleria Rusticana with New Camerata Opera, Vera Boronel in The Consul with Encompass New Opera Theater, Orlofsky (cover) in Die Fledermaus and Meg Page (cover) in Falstaff with Martina Arroyo’s Prelude to Performance, Mary Magdalene from Grullon’s El Caminante de Nazaret with the Mimesis Ensemble, Solo Handmaiden in Turandot with Sarasota Opera, Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti, Cherubino and Dorabella (cover) in Le Nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte, La Cesca and Zita in Gianni Schicchi, and Hansel in Hansel & Gretel with the New York Lyric Opera theater. Her concert work includes Yarmolinsky’s The Constitution with the Vertical Player Repertory Theater, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Bernsteins’ Jeremiah Symphony and Songfest, and Vivaldi’s Gloria. She is the winner of the Woodmere and Bronx Arts Ensemble Competitions and won an encouragement award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Additionally, Linda has frequently done educational concerts for schools such as Princeton University, and has done interviews with the Live From the Bronx Podcast and BronxNet TV.
Along with performing, Linda also teaches and holds a private teaching studio in her home in the South Bronx. She is a graduate of the Macaulay Honors College at Queens College and the Aaron Copland School of Music. Linda discovered she could sing opera after attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School as a voice major. To learn more visit: www.lindacollazo.com
Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1953, JOEL HOFFMAN received degrees from the University of Wales and the Juilliard School. He is a member of a distinguished musical family that includes brothers Gary and Toby, cellist and conductor, and Deborah, harpist. Honors include a major prize from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bearns Prize of Columbia University, a BMI Award, ASCAP awards since 1977, and three American Music Center grants. Hoffman’s works draw from such diverse sources as Eastern European folk musics, Chinese traditional music and bebop, and are pervaded by a sense of lyricism and rhythmic vitality. They have been performed by many ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Brass, the BBC Orchestra of Wales, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, members of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, the Brentano Quartet and the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio. “Self-Portrait with Gebirtig”, for cello and orchestra, has been performed in New York, Paris, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, San Jose (Costa Rica), Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Santa Barbara, Kronberg (Germany), and has been recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony, the Kiev Chamber Orchestra as well as by the Slovenian Radio Symphony in Lubliana.
JORGE SOSA is a Mexican-born composer, and sound artist currently residing in New York. Jorge has worked in a wide range of styles and media, covering everything from electronic music to opera. In Jorge’s music you can often find a purposeful use of extended techniques, and a colorful palette of textures and effects that interact with atomic motives and pounding rhythms. The juxtaposition of noise and lyrical melodies make for a style that is both forward-looking and rooted in tradition.
Opera News described his telematic opera “Alice in the Pandemic” as “wildly imaginative, musically powerful and technically courageous” and commended “Sosa’s broad stylistic palette (which) incorporated lyrical impassioned melodies, kooky carnival music, and efficient recitative”. The Music Blog “I Care if You Listen” described Sosa’s opera “I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams” as “well-balanced to the story’s narrative, and his vocal writing aroused strong emotional peaks and valleys, magnified by the characters’ impassioned performances”. ICON Magazine described Sosa’s work “Enchantment” for Tárogató and Electronics as Eerie, haunting, dreamlike, at times nightmarish—and highly recommended."
Jorge has been commissioned by Little Orchestra Society to write “The Monarch of Uxmal” a new work for orchestra and narrator to premiere in May. Jorge is currently developing a new puppet-opera “Monkey” commissioned by White Snake Projects. “Monkey” will receive a workshop performance in 2022, and is scheduled to premiere in Boston in 2023. Jorge has recently been commissioned by American Lyric Theater to develop the new opera The Opposable Thumb with libretto by Julian Crouch with a workshop date in 2021. In 2019 Jorge was commissioned by Albany Symphony to write his work “I Dissent”, based on three iconic dissenting opinions by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I Dissent” was premiered in the Albany Symphony’s “Voices of America Festival” in 2019.His piece “Punto y Línea” for solo flute was featured in the 2019 London Festival of American Music, and his work “Cells” for ensemble and electronics was recently performed at the Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival in Italy, and in the International Computer Music Conference in New York City. In 2019 Jorge was a guest artist with New Music Detroit during their 2019 Strange Beautiful Music Festival. Jorge’s first full-length opera, “La Reina,” commissioned by American Lyric Theater, was performed in the 2016 “PROTOTYPE” festival in NY. In 2020 the NYU New Music Ensemble will release a new album dedicated to Jorge’s improvisation works with electronics. Jorge is currently an Associate Professor at Molloy College. Jorge’s music is available on all the major music download sites and through the website www.jorgesosa.com.
With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), JESSICA MEYER is a versatile composer and violist whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility, generosity, and emotional clarity. Jessica has premiered pieces for solo viola internationally – expanding the repertoire for viola by championing new works while also composing her own. On her appearance at The TANK Center for Sonic Arts, where she wrote a solo piece on site for this destination concert venue that boasts a 20-second reverb, Alex Ross of the New Yorker says, “Meyer’s fierce-edged playing activated the Tank’s awe-inspiring properties.” Meyer’s compositions viscerally explore the wide palette of emotionally expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Since embarking on her composition career only 5 years ago, past premieres include performances by the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, cellist Amanda Gookin for her Forward Music Project at National Sawdust, soprano Melissa Wimbish for her Carnegie Hall debut, Sybarite 5, PUBLIQuartet, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street under the direction of Julian Wachner, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, and a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. As part of the residency, Ms. Meyer lived in the museum itself for a week to immerse herself in the creatively curated life and collected art of Mrs. Gardner in order to find inspiration for the work.
After graduating from SMU with a degree in Music Theory and Composition, BRENT SAWYER moved to NYC. He has performed on the keyboard in the pit of several Broadway Shows including Annie Get Your Gun and A Chorus Line. He has music directed a dozen Off-Broadway musicals. And conducted over a 100 musicals at the most prestigious theaters around the country. He has vocal coached and conducted some of the top Broadway talents. During the recent pandemic Brent has renewed his love of writing concert music and is grateful to have them now performed and premiered.
PETER GORDON is known for the clarity and wit of his compositions. Gordon first gained attention with his Love of Life Orchestra (LOLO), which he founded in New York in 1977. Working with LOLO-which has ranged in size from a trio to over a dozen of New York's top musicians-Gordon has performed hundreds of concerts internationally at venues as diverse as concert halls (Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall), opera houses (Brooklyn Academy of Music, Amsterdam's Het Musiktheater), festivals, nightclubs (Bottom Line, Knitting Factory, CBGB) and theaters (DTW, La Mama). Gordon has composed music for many plays and music-theater works, winning an Obie award in 1985 for his score Falso Movimento's Otello. Gordon's music has also been featured in the work of leading dance companies, including those of Alvin Ailey, Stephen Petronio, Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Molissa Fenley. Gordon received a Bessie Award in 1985 for his score for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane's Secret Pastures, which premiered at BAM/Next Wave. His opera, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, with librettist Constance Congdon and Lawrence Sacharow, premiered at La Mama in April 1994. Gordon has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Inter-Arts and Opera-Music Theater programs), the New York State Council on the Arts (Music and Media programs), the Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace Commissioning Grant and Arts International. Gordon was a 1988 fellow of the DAAD Berlin Artists Program and a Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artists Fellow in 1991. Peter Gordon was born in 1951 in New York City and spent his childhood in Virginia. He began playing piano at the age of seven and switched to clarinet at nine. His parents' record collection included New Orleans jazz, Broadway shows and classical music. In addition, he listened to D.C.'s R&B radio stations. At the age of thirteen, Gordon moved with his family to Munich, Germany, where his father was stationed as a radio-journalist for the Voice of America. In Munich, Gordon was exposed to a wide range of European classical and contemporary music, as well as jazz and R&B brought over by American servicemen and touring performers. In the mid-sixties, Munich was on the touring circuit for the up-and-coming British bands of the time, and Gordon spent much time in the clubs where he heard groups such as The Animals, Kinks, Yardbirds and Rolling Stones. Gordon's compositions reflect this early exposure to a wide variety of cultures and music.