Matthew Aucoin and ensemble

PROGRAM

MATTHEW AUCOIN “Are we [extinct yet]” (2024)
CASSANDRA MILLER Warblework (2011, rev. 2017)
MATTHEW AUCOIN Revelations of Divine Love, Ch. III (2020)
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI “Dormo ancora,” from Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
FRANZ SCHUBERT “Des Fischers Liebesglück” and “Der Doppelgänger”
W.A. MOZART Quintet for piano and winds, K. 452 (arr. for piano and strings)

PERFORMERS

John Brancy: baritone
Matthew Aucoin: piano
Miranda Cuckson: violin
Keir GoGwilt: violin
Carrie Frey: viola
Coleman Itzkoff: cello

Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), and was the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020.

As a composer, Aucoin is committed to expanding the possibilities of opera as a genre. His own operas, which include Eurydice and Crossing, have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Boston Lyric Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Eurydice was nominated for a Grammy in 2023.

Aucoin’s most recent work of music-theater, Music for New Bodies, is a collaboration with the legendary director Peter Sellars, based on the poetry of Jorie Graham. The piece has so far been performed in Houston (co-presented by DACAMERA and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music) and at the Aspen Music Festival, and will travel to New York and Los Angeles in future seasons.

Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by such leading artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the pianists Conor Hanick and Kirill Gerstein, the Brentano Quartet, and singers including Anthony Roth Costanzo, Julia Bullock, Erin Morley, Davóne Tines, Danielle de Niese, Paul Appleby, and many others.

Last year, the MET Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featured Aucoin’s orchestral work Heath on its first European tour in several decades. Aucoin has also received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Ojai Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Chicago’s Symphony Center, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and other leading musical organizations.

His recent conducting engagements include appearances with the Los Angeles Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, the San Diego Symphony, Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Rome Opera Orchestra, and many other ensembles.

Aucoin’s book about opera, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, was published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. He has taught at Harvard University, and is a regular contributor to leading publications such as The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.

Carrie Frey is a Brooklyn-based violist, improviser, and composer who “conjures an inviting warmth that leaves her virtuosity on the margins, placing the focus on her humanity (Bandcamp Daily).” Frey is the violist of the Rhythm Method (“a group of individuals with distinct compositional voices and a collective vision for the future of the string quartet” – I Care If You Listen) and a founding member of chamber ensembles Chartreuse and Desdemona. She has performed with many of New York City’s notable contemporary ensembles, including Wet Ink Large Ensemble, AMOC*, Talea Ensemble, Wavefield, Cantata Profana, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her own compositions, described as “an agonizingly beautiful meditation on the Romantic style” (I Care if You Listen), have been performed by the Rhythm Method, RE:duo, Arco Belo, Adrianne Munden-Dixon, and Kal Sugatski. Following on her debut sonata album, The Grey Light of Day, with pianist Robert Fleitz (2016), and her first solo album, Seagrass (2023), Frey’s first portrait album, Seaglass, features The Rhythm Method in performances of her four string quartets to date, and will be released on Gold Bolus in October 2025.

Cellist and performer Coleman Itzkoff stands at the intersection of baroque/classical/new music, contemporary dance, and experimental theater. Whether premiering works by living composers and performing baroque music on historical instruments in the same concert, delivering enigmatic monologues in a piece of avant-garde dance theater (as well as dancing in said piece), composing, arranging, and recording music for the Amazon film ‘Le Bal des Folles’, or simply playing a piece of solo Bach for hospital patients in the time of COVID, Coleman continues to push the boundaries of what it means to be a musician of the 21st century, bringing his diverse range of interests and shape-shifting presence to every room and stage he occupies.

Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker for his “flawless technique and keen musicality,” Coleman has performed in the great halls and festivals of America and abroad. As a soloist, he has had the privilege of being the featured soloist with many great orchestras, including recent

appearances with the Houston, San Diego, and Cincinnati Symphonies. As a recitalist, he is allowed to express his eclectic taste and inventive programming, and is constantly experimenting with the form and format of a solo concert, playing with unique lighting, unconventional spaces, and often with an accompaniment of dance or text.

Collaboration is the heart of Coleman’s art making. To that end, he is a dedicated member of several ensembles, including the early music ensembles Ruckus and Twelfth Night, and is a founding member of AMOC, the American Modern Opera Company. Coleman holds a Bachelors in Music from Rice University, a Masters in Music from USC, and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School. For more information, please visit  colemanitzkoff.com

Keir GoGwilt is a violinist, composer, and musicologist who was born in Edinburgh and grew up in New York City. His work combines historical research and collaborative experimentation. As a violinist he has been described as a “formidable performer” (New York Times) with an “evocative sound” (London Jazz News) and “finger-busting virtuosity” (San Diego Union Tribune). In past seasons he has soloed with groups including the Sinfonieorchester Basel, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Chinese National Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Santiago, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the La Jolla Symphony. A founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), he has composed and performed original, collaboratively-devised music, dance, and theater works at 92NY, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Luminato Festival, PS 122 COIL, Stanford Live, American Repertory Theater, Carolina Performing Arts, Momentary, Monday Evening Concerts, and the Ojai Music Festival.

This year he released “The Edinburgh Rollick,” with Ruckus Early Music, featuring Scottish fiddle music from the Niel Gow collections. The album has been noted for its “dynamic, improvisatory spirit” (The Strad), and his playing for its “deep stylistic understanding of the Scottish trad sound” (Early Music America). Other current projects include the “Zarabanda Variations”: a co-authored collection of songs and dances reflecting Baroque histories and futurisms of New Spain, including performances this season at the Peabody Essex Museum and Lincoln Center. As composer-in-residence with the JACK quartet he is working on a modular series of pieces exploring counterpoint and tuning called “A Treatise on Limited Freedoms,” premiering at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in August. Recent past projects include creating and performing a stage role for Bobbi Jene Smith’s “Marie & Pierre,” with original music by Celeste Oram at Theater Basel. His duo with bassist Kyle Motl features their original compositions and has been noted for its “rhapsodic gestures” (The New Yorker) and “keen musical intellects” (The Wire). His compositions with violinist Johnny Chang have been praised for their “patience, poise, and consummate balance” (Night After Night) and “mystical ecstasy” (Esoteros).

He has worked closely with composers including Matthew Aucoin, Carolyn Chen, Tan Dun, Malcolm Goldstein, George Lewis, Tobias Picker, and Celeste Oram, appearing on records put out by Another Timbre, Tzadik, Clean Feed, 577 Records, and BMOP. He has also worked extensively with bassist Mark Dresser, percussionist/conductor Steve Schick, and choreographer/dancer Bobbi Jene Smith.

GoGwilt earned his PhD in Music from UC San Diego in 2022, where he was advised by Amy Cimini and Anthony Burr, and was awarded the Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal for the Division of Arts & Humanities. His research on histories and philosophies of performance, pedagogy, and embodiment has been published in the Bach Journal, Current Musicology, Naxos Musicology, and the Orpheus Institute Series.

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