This concert spotlights five thrilling works by Brazilian-American composer Felipe Lara, offering a vivid journey through more than a decade of his distinctive musical voice. Spanning intimate solo writing to expansive large-ensemble works, the program reveals Lara’s fascination with structures and ideas drawn from musical fractals, mirrors, mosaics, and labyrinths. Influences from electronic music are translated into purely instrumental contexts, creatively expanding the expressive and sonic possibilities of acoustic forces. Together, these works trace Lara’s evolving artistic vision that is at once rigorously constructed and richly immersive.
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The evening also features the New York premiere of Mosaic Maze for ensemble, and celebrates the release of Lara’s recent album, Portals. Featuring longtime collaborators, the stellar pianist Conrad Tao and the fearless Talea Ensemble, this program exemplifies Lara’s ability to forge music that is intellectually engaging, viscerally charged, and unmistakably contemporary.
Program:
Mosaic Maze (2024), 13 minutes, NY Premiere
For ensemble of 13 instruments
Talea Ensemble, James Baker
Injust Intonations (2017), 13 minutes
For solo piano
Conrad Tao
Ventos Uivantes (2014), 12 minutes
For ensemble of 6 instruments
Talea Ensemble, James Baker
Chambered Spirals (2020), 30 minutes
For ensemble of 13 instruments
Talea Ensemble, James Baker
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
// This performance is made possible thanks to the generous support of Kathryn and Emmanuel Morlet and the Wescustogo Foundation.
ABOUT FELIPE LARA
Felipe Lara (b.1979) is hailed as a gifted Brazilian-American modernist by The New York Times, with his works being described as sensational, exuberant, vivid, brilliantly realized, excellent, technically formidable, wildly varied, and possessing voluptuous, elemental lyricism. He is known for creating unique musical contexts by reinterpreting and translating acoustical and extra-musical properties of familiar source sonorities into project-specific forces. His compositions aim to establish self-similar relationships between the macro and micro-articulation of the musical experience. Recently, Lara has been commissioned by leading soloists and institutions, including the Arditti Quartet, Brentano Quartet, Claire Chase, Conrad Tao, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, Helsinki Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Los Angeles Philharmonic, São Paulo Symphony, and Talea Ensemble. His works have been performed by esteemed conductors such as Dirk Kaftan, Ilan Volkov, Peter Eötvös, Susanna Mälkki, Steven Schick, Thomas Adès, and Vimbayi Kaziboni. Lara's compositions have been featured in prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, including the Aspen Music Festival, Acht Brücken, Aldeburgh, Berliner Festspiele's MaerzMusik, Carnegie Hall, Darmstadt, David Geffen Hall, Donaueschingen, Huddersfield, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, Miller Theatre Composer Portraits, Musikfest Frankfurt, New York Philharmonic Biennial, Philharmonie de Paris, Sala São Paulo, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Tanglewood, Teatro Amazonas, Teatro La Fenice, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Currently, Felipe Lara serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Composition Department at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. He has previously held teaching positions at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University. He has also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Music, where he was recognized with two Harvard Excellence in Teaching Awards. Having been honored with a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship from Harvard University, Lara holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from New York University (GSAS), where he was a distinguished Henry M. MacCracken Fellow. He also obtained a Master’s of Music degree from Tufts University and a Bachelor's degree from Berklee College of Music.
https://felipelara.com
ABOUT TALEA ENSEMBLE
Heralded as “a crucial part of the New York cultural ecosphere” by The New York Times, the Talea Ensemble commissions, premieres and performs bold and inventive productions that span multiple genres, bringing together music and other contemporary art forms such as theater and visual art. Highlights from Talea’s recent performance seasons have included world premieres by Steven Takasugi, Wang Lu, Tyshawn Sorey, Sarah Hennies, Natacha Diels, Anthony Cheung, Agata Zubel, Evis Sammoutis, Sanae Ishida and more, as well as numerous US and New York premieres.
In addition to its monthly series at St. Bartholomew Hall in Brooklyn, Talea performs at festivals around the world. Since Talea was founded in 2008, engagement have included performances at Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Time of Music Finland, TIME:SPANS, NY Philharmonic Artist Spotlight Series, and many more. Talea’s recordings have been distributed worldwide on the Kairos, Wergo, Gravina Musica, Tzadik, Innova, and New World Records labels, and been broadcast on ORF (Austria), HRF (Germany), and WQXR’s Q2.
Talea assumes an ongoing role in supporting a new generation of composers, and has undertaken residencies in music departments around the country. Since 2020, Talea has targeted support to early career composers through our Early Career Commissioning Program–which has awarded three commissions to date and introduced many newer voices to the ensemble’s programming–and our free week-long Recording Workshop, which offers participating composers professional recordings of recent works.
www.taleaensemble.org
ABOUT CONRAD TAO
Conrad Tao is a pianist and composer celebrated for his boundary-defying artistry as well as his powerful performances of traditional repertoire. Described by New York Magazine as “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music,” and praised by The New York Times for his “probing intellect and open-hearted vision,” Tao appears regularly as a soloist with leading orchestras and at major venues across the world. Tao is also a cross-genre performer whose recent collaborators include dancer Caleb Teicher, vocalist Charmaine Lee, artist Avram Finkelstein, choreographer Miguel Gutierrez and The Westerlies. He is also a member of the Junction Trio alongside Stefan Jackiw and Jay Campbell. Tao is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gilmore Young Artist Award, and a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for his collaboration with Caleb Teicher on More Forever. https://www.conradtao.com
ABOUT ADRIAN MOREJON
Praised by TheNew York Times for his "teeming energy" and "precise control," bassoonist Adrian Morejon has established himself as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and arts leader. As a soloist, Morejon has appeared throughout North America and Europe with the Talea Ensemble, IRIS Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and the Miami Symphony. An active chamber musician, he is a member of the Dorian Wind Quintet and Talea Ensemble, and has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Boston Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest, the Portland Chamber Music Festival, Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival and others. Morejon is a member of Orchestra Lumos and has performed with several ensembles such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He was a recipient of the Theodore Presser Foundation Grant, 2nd prize of the Fox-Gillet International Competition, and a shared top prize at the Moscow Conservatory International Competition. An alum of the Curtis Institute and Yale School of Music, Morejon is currently on faculty at the Mannes School of Music at the New School. He is also the Executive Director of the Talea Ensemble and the Composers Conference.
http://www.adrianmorejon.com