HOUSE BLEND III
Miranda Cuckson / Conor Hanick

House Blend is PS21’s annual chamber music series exploring a full range of adventurous music and creative modes of expression, fostering new collaborations specific to our place, venue, and audiences.

August 20, 8 pm, PS21 Pavilion Theater

ABOUT HOUSE BLEND III:

PS21 favorites Violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Conor Hanick return with a program of contemporary works (program TBD)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Miranda Cuckson delights audiences with her playing of a great range of music and styles, from early classics to contemporary work. A distinctive, internationally acclaimed violin and viola soloist and collaborator, she performs at venues large and small, from casual spaces to concert halls. She has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonie and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among other ensembles, at venues including Suntory Hall, Casa da Musica Porto, Teatro Colón, Cleveland Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Strathmore, and National Sawdust, and at the Ojai, Bard, Marlboro, Portland, Music Mountain, West Cork, Grafenegg, Wien Modern, and LeGuessWho festivals.

Miranda made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Walter Piston’s Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra. She recently premiered Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2 with four orchestras in Japan and Europe, and the Violin Concerto by Marcela Rodriguez with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México. Upcoming concerts include the 92nd St Y, recitals at San Francisco Performances, a tour in Germany, and the Haas concerto with the Vienna Radio Symphony at the Musikverein.

Miranda is dedicated to music old and new, playing Western classical repertoire as well as innumerable performances of new music, helping to bring new works to the center of cultural life. Reflecting her deeply felt perspective as a multiethnic American, Miranda works with an array of artists from many backgrounds, from promising young musicians and composers to some of today’s most renowned figures, many of whom have written works for her. She is a member of the interdisciplinary collective AMOC* and founder/director of music non-profit Nunc, has guest-curated at National Sawdust and programmed chamber concerts for the Contempo series in Chicago and Miller Theater in New York, among others.

Miranda’s albums include Világ featuring the Bartok solo sonata along with new works; a live recording of the Ligeti Violin Concerto; the Korngold and Ponce concertos; several albums of solo and duo music by major American composers; Bartók, Schnittke and Lutoslawski on ECM; Melting the Darkness, an album of microtonal and electronic pieces; and Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, which was named a Best Recording of the Year by the New York Times.

Dr. Miranda Cuckson is an alumna of The Juilliard School, having studied there from Pre-College through her BM, MM, and DMA degrees, and she was awarded the school’s Presser Music Award.  She teaches violin and chamber music at the Mannes School of Music at the New School.

 

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has recently performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Park Avenue Armory, and worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert, and David Robertson.

A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Samuel Carl Adams, and Anthony Cheung. This season Hanick presents recitals in the US and Europe, including performances with Julia Bullock, Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, Seth Parker Woods, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), and the Takt Trio. Hanick also makes his San Francisco Performances debut at Herbst Theater, joins Sandbox Percussion at 92NY, returns to the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and, in Ojai as part of the California Festival, performs a new set of piano etudes by Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto No Such Spring Hanick premiered last year to wide acclaim with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Hanick is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Mannes College, and the CUNY Graduate Center, and is a founding member of AMOC*.

Reply
Your message has been sent
Subscribed
You have successfully subscribed to our newsletter