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ASTORIA SYMPHONY: Transformaciones
    
Friday, October
10, 2008, 8:00 pm - open dress rehearsal
Good Shepherd Faith Church
152 West 66th Street, New York, NY, 10023
Saturday, October
11, 2008, 8:00 pm
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center - Main Stage
31-10 Thompson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101
The Astoria Symphony opens its 6th season with a remarkable
program. Miranda Cuckson performs Alban Berg's haunting Violin Concerto,
and we will hear the world premiere of Steve Horowitz's Mix/Remix. In
honor of Hispanic heritage month, we also feature a newly commissioned work by the young Puerto Rican composer
Angelica Negron, and Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas' bombastic tour de force La Noche de los
Mayas, featuring the Queens College Percussion Ensemble, directed by
Michael Lipsey, Professor of Percussion.
Steve Horowitz Mix/ReMix (world premiere)
Alban Berg Violin Concerto
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Angelica Negron
Pequeño Sueño en Rojo
("Small Dream in Red"
- world premiere)
Silvestre Revueltas La Noche de los Mayas
Queens College Percussion Ensemble
Silas Nathaniel Huff, conductor
STEVE
HOROWITZ is a
creator of odd but highly accessible sounds
and a diverse and prolific musician, with an
output spanning the worlds of concert music,
film, television, games, and recordings.
Steve wrote the score to the academy award
nominated film Super Size Me, and
served as music supervisor and lead composer
for the television shows I Bet You Will
(MTV) and Casino Cinema (Spike TV).
He won a Grammy award for engineering the
multi-artist True Life Blues: The Songs
of Bill Monroe, 1996's winner for best
bluegrass album. Steve also won a Webby
Award for his groundbreaking work writing
kids' music for Nickelodeon On-line.
Mr. Horowitz's recent musical activities
include writing music for the Anthology
Festival (MATA, executive producer Phillip
Glass), original dance work Signal
(which ran for three nights at the Joyce
Soho Theater in Manhattan), Vertical
Field Horizontal Field for String
Orchestra and Piano (performed by the
String Orchestra of New York City, Joel
Wizansky featured soloist), and his second
string quartet Pa Kua (recently
recorded by the FLUX String Quartet). In
addition, Steve’s large scale chamber work
The Re-Taking of Pelham 123 was
premiered at NYC’s The Kitchen; and a
marvelous studio recording has just been
released on compact disc and for digital
download (iTunes & Amazon).
Steve studied composition with Morton
Subotnik, Mel Powell, Stephen (Lucky) Mosko,
and Michael Jon Fink at the California
Institute of the Arts. He has received
performance underwriting as well as
commissions from The American Music Center,
Meet the Composer, Amsterdam Fund for the
Arts, Gravy Train Dance Company, the Flux
Quartet, The Alternate Currents Ensemble,
Ensemble Electra and MATA (Music at the
Anthology).
Year in and year out,
Mr. Horowitz can be found working and
touring with his group The Code Ensemble.
The band performs frequently and has
released ten compact discs to date. For a
live performance schedule and more
information see
http://www.thecodeinternational.com/
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ALBAN
BERG:
http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/berg.html
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Violinist
MIRANDA CUCKSON has a fast-growing
reputation as a soloist and chamber
musician. Acclaimed for her performances in
the United States, Europe, and the Far East,
she has appeared as soloist with orchestras
including, among others, the Indianapolis
Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Long Beach
Symphony, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Concerto
Soloists of Philadelphia, Shanghai Symphony,
Beijing Radio Orchestra, and on tour with
conductor Yakov Kreizberg in Germany and
Poland. She recently made her concerto debut
with the Jerusalem Symphony and Leon
Botstein.
Ms. Cuckson's recording with the Czech
National Symphony of concertos by Korngold
and Ponce was released by Centaur Records to
much critical praise. She subsequently made
three recital CDs of twentieth-century
American music for Centaur: a lauded disk of
music by Ross Lee Finney, a recently
released CD of solo and violin/piano works
by Ralph Shapey, and a forthcoming recording
of music by Donald Martino. For these disks,
she was awarded grants from the Copland and
Ditson Funds.
Ms. Cuckson made her recital debut at
Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall as winner of the
Presser Music Award. She has performed at
such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie,
Carnegie's Zankel Hall, Miller Theatre, the
92nd Street Y, Phillips
Collection, Guggenheim Museum, Austrian
Cultural Forum, Bargemusic, Museum of Modern
Art, and the Marlboro, Bridgehampton,
Bodensee (Switzerland), Kilkenny (Ireland),
Whynote (France), Salon des Arts Sofia
(Bulgaria), Roaring Hooves (Mongolia), and
Lincoln Center festivals. A passionate
champion of new music, she works often with
composers such as Elliott Carter, Salvatore
Sciarrino, John Adams, and Henri Dutilleux,
and she is involved in groups including the
Argento Ensemble, Sequitur, and her own
project Transit Circle. Her upcoming events
include all the Beethoven sonatas in three
concerts at Madison Avenue Presbyterian
Church with pianist Thomas Bagwell, and a
solo recital at the Italian Academy in New
York. She will also perform Elliott Carter's
Duo for violin and piano at the
Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Ms. Cuckson
studied at The Juilliard School, where she
recently received her doctorate. Her
teachers included Robert Mann, Dorothy DeLay,
and Felix Galimir. She teaches at the Mannes
College of Music. Her article "Ralph Shapey's Dotted Rhythms: A Violinist's Point
of View" will be published in 2008 in the
journal Contemporary Music Review.
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ANGELICA
NEGRON (b. 1981,
Puerto Rico) received an early foundation in
piano and violin at the Conservatory of
Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied
composition under the guidance of composer
Alfonso Fuentes. She was the winner of the
scholarship that the Amaury Veray Foundation
gives to an outstanding student in the music
composition department of the Conservatory
of Music of Puerto Rico as well as the
Phantomvox scholarship (2004) and the
Roberto I. Ferdman Award (2006). Her music
has been performed by the NYU Percussion
Ensemble, Lumina String Quartet, NYU
Symphony Orchestra and the Puerto Rico
Symphony Orchestra and she has written music
for documentaries, films, theater and modern
dance. She also holds a bachelor’s in
audiovisual communications from the
University of Puerto Rico, and is a founding
member of the Puerto Rican electro-acoustic
pop outfit Balun where she sings and plays
the accordion, violin and keyboard. With her
solo project, Arturo en el Barco, she
concentrates on working with lo-fi ambient
compositions and has released albums on
Observatory (Austria) and Carte Postale
Records (Belgium). Her recent work for toy
piano and electronics "Columpio" won second
prize on the UnCaged Toy Piano Competition.
She recently completed her master’s degree
in Music Composition at New York University
where she studied with Portuguese guitarist
and composer Pedro Da Silva and film
composer Ira Newborn. Website:
http://angelicanegron.com/
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 SILVESTRE
REVUELTAS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvestre_Revueltas
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