WHCO MainStage Concert: The Places That Inspire Us
In The Places That Inspire Us, we explore music inspired by real-world settings and the emotional landscapes they evoke. The program begins with Anna Clyne’s Restless Oceans, a thrilling contemporary work for chamber orchestra that channels the turbulence and strength of the sea. This work draws inspiration and its title from A Woman Speaks – a poem by Audre Lorde, and uses rhythm, lyrical melodies, and the voices of the musicians themselves to equate the changes of the natural world with the emotional resilience of the human heart. Next on the program, WHCO is joined by Ariadne Greif for Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic meditation on childhood and place, set to the words of James Agee. Concluding our program is Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 “Scottish”, a sweeping tribute to the rugged romance of the Scottish Highlands.
Repertoire
- Anna Clyne: Restless Oceans
- Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
- Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, “Scottish”
This concert will be approximately 1hr, no intermission. Reception to follow.
About The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra
The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra was founded in August 2015 to serve the communities of Washington Heights and Upper Manhattan with affordable, outstanding neighborhood concert experiences. WHCO aims to be a place that connects great art across genres and cultures and reconnects people in the community, creating an experience that celebrates diversity and enriches the lives of uptown residents.
https://www.washingtonheightsorchestra.org/
About Ariadne Greif, soprano
Ariadne Greif, praised for her “luminous, expressive voice,” “searing top notes,” and “dusky depths,” (NYTimes), enjoyed a casual child career as a “boy” soprano at the LA Opera, eventually making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She starred in operas ranging from Donizetti’s Elixir of Love with The Orlando Philharmonic, to Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Aldeburgh Festival, and Atthis, by G.F. Haas, which The NY Times called “one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.”
She performed with William Kentridge in his production of Ursonate at the Luxembourg Philharmonie, the Performa Festival, CalPerformances, and the Ultima Festival in Oslo, where she was invited back for September 2020 and 2022 with two large pieces of her own. She stepped in at the last minute at the 2022 Ojai Festival with AMOC, and starred in a film for Opera Philadelphia of We Need To Talk, a new monodrama written for Ariadne by Caroline Shaw and Anne Carson, as well as an opera film called Table Manners by Sheree Clement. Ariadne has premiered upwards of twenty new operas and more than a hundred new chamber works.
Ariadne has performed at Resonant Bodies, Sydney Chamber Opera, Sarasota Opera House, The Meidan Festival, Den Norske Opera, with the Orlando Philharmonic, The Knights, and across the US, Canada, France, Finland, and the Middle East, including more than 200 concerts with Ensemble Mélange, and in appearances with Pekka Kuusisto, Gabriel Kahane, Lukas Ligeti, and JACK Quartet, among others.
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