JUHI BANSAL: THIRTEEN MOONS (2021, COPLAND HOUSE CULTIVATE COMMISSION)
Wednesday, July 6, 2022 at 5pm EDT
Performed by Music from Copland House
(Pala Garcia, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Margaret Kampmeier, piano)
About Juhi Bansal
The music of Juhi Bansal weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, and strong female role models. Her work draws upon progressive metal, Hindustani music, spectralism, and musical theatre to create deeply expressive, evocative sound-worlds. As an Indian composer raised in Hong Kong, her work is inspired by both those cultures, entwining them closely with the gestures of Western classical music. Current projects include Waves of Change, a digital experience on womanhood, identity, and culture clashes inspired by the story of the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club; and Edge of a Dream, an opera commissioned by Los Angeles Opera about Ada Lovelace, daughter of infamous poet Lord Byron and a 19th century pioneer in computing. Recent seasons have featured commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Beth Morrison Projects, New York Virtuoso Singers, Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, and AIDS Quilt Songbook 20th Anniversary Project. She is a staunch proponent of bringing new audiences to contemporary music, and encouraging the creative impulses of musicians of all backgrounds.
About Music from Copland House
Hailed by The New Yorker as “bold,” “adventurous,” and “superb,” MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE offers ear-opening, mind-expanding experiences gathered from its journeys across 150 years of America’s vast musical landscape. Whether celebrating classic or forgotten voices from the nation’s past, or reveling in established or rising artists from the present, this wide-ranging American repertory ensemble creates memorable and richly diverse narratives in sound, linking music to the wider worlds from which these works emerged. “Illuminating essential truths about the music” (The New York Times), MCH has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, Euro-Radio, and other major media; and engaged by Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, University of Chicago, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, and the Caramoor, Bard, Ecstatic, Bowdoin, and SONiC Festivals. It also records for the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels. Called “one of the leading champions of contemporary music” (Louisville Weekly), the ensemble presents two mainstage concert series in Westchester County, NY (now in its 12th season), and at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (in its 2nd season). Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities. Launched in 1999 by flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, clarinetist Derek Bermel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, cellist Wilhelmina Smith, and pianist Michael Boriskin, MCH boasts a stellar roster of Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists, of whom, The Chicago Tribune raved, “Copland would have been proud of all of them.”
About Cultivate
CULTIVATE, now in its 11th season, is Copland House’s flagship annual emerging composers institute, directed by Grammy-nominated composer-clarinetist Derek Bermel. Embracing exploration, process, and community, this weeklong, all-scholarship creative workshop and mentoring program is an important destination on the early-career paths of gifted young composers of all artistic and personal backgrounds and identities. Linking creation, performance, and education, Copland House commissions six CULTIVATE Fellows to compose a short new chamber piece that is the heart of their work during an intensive week of rehearsals, workshops, discussions, and other individual and collective sessions with Bermel, the Music from Copland House ensemble, and prominent, visionary arts leaders. The institute concludes with public concerts where all the new works are premiered and filmed for delayed telecast. CULTIVATE is also a portal for additional performance, recording, commissioning, and other career-development opportunities.
Support for CULTIVATE 2021 and Cultivated Spaces 2.0 comes the ASCAP and BMI Foundations, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Friends of Copland House, Jandon Foundation, and NewMusicUSA. Additional program support comes from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Amphion Foundation, ArtsWestchester, the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts. Donate to CULTIVATE.
