Access Contemporary Music's Palomar Ensemble will perform music of singer/songwriter Beck and Brazilian composer Alexandre Lunsqui at Constellation, one of Chicago's newest concert venues, on Sunday, January 12 at 8 p.m.
Violist Michael Hall will join ACM for this program on Constellation's "Frequency" series, quickly becoming a prominent showcase for contemporary music in Chicago.
Tickets are available at Constellation, located at 3111 N. Western Avenue.
Hall will play music of Chicago composers, including ACM executive director Seth Boustead, and a new work by Missouri-based composer Mara Gibson. Palomar will perform the second installment of Lunsqui's TOY, a work that ACM is presenting in installments as it is composed.
This process is part of ACM's "Composer Alive" project. Each year, a composer from a different geographic region is invited to compose a piece and email sections of the work to ACM as they are completed. The installment is performed and recorded, giving audiences a rare glimpse of a work as it is being composed, allowing the composer to hear the music he or she has just written.
"We encourage the composers to take risks, to try things they wouldn't normally try," Boustead said. "They can always change what they have written from installment to installment."
ACM invites you to prepare for the Sunday performance by listening to Lunsqui's first installment here, recorded in July of 2013.
The final version of Lunsqui's TOY will receive its world premiere at "Composer Alive: Brazil" on March 11, with the composer in attendance. The event, held at Architectural Artifacts in Chicago, will also feature music by other contemporary Brazilian composers.
Boustead says he got the idea for the "Composer Alive" series from an exhibit of John Singer Sargent paintings at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. "On one wall there was a finished work, and on the other wall were 10 pencil drawing sketches that led up to that finished work. So you could see his creative process," Boustead said.
"I thought, 'I'd love to do that with music someday.'" His idea evolved into the Composer Alive project, launched in 2006 with a work by Chinese composer Xiaogang Ye.
ACM's Sunday program at Constellation will also include four songs by indie singer/songwriter Beck, arranged by four composers who are members of ACM.
The songs are from Beck's new sheet music "album," Song Reader.
This sampling of Beck songs, sung by jazz singer Christy Bennett with Palomar, is a preview of ACM's upcoming concert "Vanishing Point." This program of music at the intersection of classical and popular will take place at Architectural Artifacts on January 21.
