ESYO Symphony Orchestra and Rensselaer Orchestra Perform Side-by-Side in Back to Back Concerts on Saturday, April 13th and Sunday April 21, 2024.

Troy- NY Empire State Youth Orchestra, under the artistic direction of its Music Director Etienne Abelin, and the Rensselaer Orchestra, led by Dr. Robert Whalen, Director of Institute Ensembles at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, today announced two collaborative performances in April; the first will take place on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and the second on Sunday, April 21, 2024, at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, NY.

This joint venture, centered on the theme of breath, explores both the resonance and restraint of human nature. The first concert on April 13 features Empire State Youth Orchestra's Symphony Orchestra and Rensselaer Orchestra performing Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 side-by-side along with Hymn for Everyone by 2024 GRAMMY Award-winning Composer Jessie Montgomery. The concert also features the first movement of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto performed by Maya Johnson, the Rensselaer Concerto Competition Winner. At the second concert, on April 21, ESYO's Symphony Orchestra will be joined by members of the Rensselaer Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall where they will present a second performance of Schostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Montgomery's Hymn for Everyone, and feature ESYO's 2024 Lois Lyman Concerto Competition Winner, Kingston Czajkowski, performing Paul Creston's Marimba Concerto. 

ESYO Music Director and Symphony Orchestra conductor Etienne Abelin is thrilled about this side-by-side collaboration with the Rensselaer Orchestra and RPI conductor Dr. Robert Whalen. "It resonates with ESYO's commitment to enriching the musical journey of our young musicians, providing them the opportunity to perform alongside college peers while offering them a glimpse into the journey ahead," said Abelin. 

For the Rennselaer Orchestra, which represents students from 26 different majors, from Music and Electronic Arts to Nuclear engineering, this concert highlights the impact and relevance of the Arts in a STEM-oriented curriculum. "The arts act as a creative catalyst on campus and inspire community," said Whalen. "Our students are relishing the rare opportunity to perform this program in two world-class venues situated only blocks apart from each other in Troy."

The matchup also makes it possible for both orchestras to tackle a monumental masterpiece, like Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth, which will be enhanced by the unique strengths of each ensemble.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 carries a particular resonance with the world today. The symphony premiered in Leningrad during the Soviet Union's 1937 "Great Purge" and reflected the fraught relationship between Shostakovich and the artistic control exerted by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Hidden within the piece are echoes of the inner struggle between Shostakovich's desire for creative freedom and the choking realities of living behind the Iron Curtain and its oppressive political climate. Despite its clandestine revolutionary undertone, the work was well-received by the public and Soviet authorities.

As part of this collaboration, each orchestra will work with a guest conductor and learn from them in what Abelin calls a 'conductor share.' Abelin will conduct Jessie Montgomery's Hymn for Everyone at EMPAC, and Dr. Whalen will lead the Shostakovich. Then, a week later, at the legendary Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the conductors will switch roles, with Dr. Whalen conducting Montgomery's Hymn for Everyone and Abelin leading the Fifth Symphony by Shostakovich. 

Abelin believes the swap will help the musicians get a more imaginative experience. "By playing the same piece with different conductors and different interpretations, the young musicians will experience how differing perspectives and varying musical focus' can change a piece of music substantially," said Abelin.

Featured on the April 21st performance is ESYO's Concerto Winner, Kingston Czajkowski, performing the Concertino for Marimba by American composer Paul Creston. Czajkowski is excited to perform the Concertino, marking the Cairo-Durham High School Sophomore's solo debut with an orchestra. "This is one of my favorite pieces of music, featuring moments of great rhythmic excitement as well as many lyrical and sweet passages," said Czajkowski. "It's a good piece to introduce the audience to the world of marimba music," he continued. 

On March 27th, the two ensembles came together for the first of several combined rehearsals. "It has been inspiring to see the Rensselaer and ESYO students interact," said Dr. Robert Whalen. "What a remarkable sound emerges when those 155 student musicians unite. Both Etienne and I were struck by the richness and depth of sonority as well as the precision and clarity of this formidable group," he continued.  

For more information about both collaborative performances by the Empire State Youth Orchestra and the Rensselaer Orchestra or to purchase tickets to the ESYO performance on April 21, 2024, visit www.esyo.org/news-concerts.

On Saturday, April 6, RMA will be hosting our annual Pops Concert! It will be from 2-5pm in EMPAC Concert Hall. The theme this year is SPACE in honor of the solar eclipse! Symphonic Band, Percussion Ensemble, Flute Choir, Studio Orchestra, Experimental Music Quintet, and Sax Ensemble will all be performing. The livestream link will be available a few days before the concert.

Rensselaer Dance Club presents an evening full of dance, featuring guests from Gajjde Sher Bhangra, RPI Ballroom, and Eighth Wonder. Visit us at https://dance.union.rpi.edu/ for more information about ticket sales.

Brushing Improvisation – N°2 is the latest work in an ongoing brushing project that has utilized brushes in electronic music improvisation performances. While the previous performances of Brushing Improvisation focused on the nuanced materiality of the brush and translated brushing gestures into musical/sonic expression through specific mediated technology, a process formulated through continuous interaction between myself as both an instrument maker and performer, this particular piece also delves into the cultural universality inherent in the brush. This exploration fosters theatricality, gestural performance, and an organic integration between composition and improvisation.

If sound is a force, what is its edge? EMPAC’s four main performance venues—its concert hall, theater, and two studios—are designed as isolated acoustic environments that are structurally separated from each other as well as from the façades of the building. How much sonic energy can they contain? 

CONDICIÓN_1023 was conceived in response to EMPAC’s material, spatial, and conceptual scaffolding. Hugo Esquinca upends the acoustic divisions between the discrete sound chambers and EMPAC’s negative spaces—transitional areas such as lobbies, stairwells, hallways, atriums. In activating these in-between areas, the artist sonically excites a spatial field that lies inside the building but that normally remains outside its primary centers of sound amplification. He saturates the entire building with sound until the exterior layer turns into its own sonic architecture. 

Esquinca works with sound sources that originate from the concert hall, theater, the public address system, and an array of subwoofers. Two vinyl elements mark a diagonal axis on the surface of the building. Through interventions that originate from the unique acoustic profile of each sound source, the artist blurs and merges their sonic emissions, resulting in the dislocation of both the audio events themselves and the experience of listening. One loses track of the respective points of amplification until the building becomes dense with resonance.

Extrude [Part A]

An installation which runs every night of the exhibition after the building closes. For Extrude, the sounds play for no one. The excessive energy that is unleashed inside and that should not be experienced directly manifests a vibrational presence that rests on the edges of audibility. 

Irrupt [Part B], Saturday, November 18, 6–7PM

A performance which takes place when the exhibition ends but to which the audience is invited. The building’s glass skin pulsates inward, making the presentation spaces cites of extreme reverberation that resist audience access.

Elemental View is a musical work in six movements by pioneering composer Ellen Fullman for her Long String Instrument and the experimental music duo The Living Earth Show—guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson. The expansive installation inhabits EMPAC Concert Hall with its 136 strings, precisely tuned and configured for this multi-movement piece. Elemental View invites the listener to discover, as if with a magnifying glass, the details of the physics of string vibration itself. 

Invention and discovery are at the core of Fullman’s work. The artist brings her remarkable instrument to life using her fingertips, unfolding the physical sound spectrum of the strings as she walks, and producing undulating waves of continually shifting musical overtones. Additional tools developed and crafted by Fullman expand the possibilities of the instrument, allowing her to play three, six, or nine strings at once and to expand the timbre of the instrument while infusing its drone texture with rhythmic variation.

With their laser-focused precision and virtuosic ensemble playing, The Living Earth Show brilliantly executes the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of Fullman’s composition using specially-tuned instruments tailored to Andrews and Meyerson—a lap-steel guitar and hammered dulcimer.

Listening to the music of Fullman’s singular creation is akin to standing inside a giant musical instrument. The result is at once ancient and utterly new, environmental, and folk-like yet orchestral.

This presentation continues The Living Earth Show’s multi-season residency at EMPAC, offering engaging and exciting large-scale work from artists with whom they work closely. The Living Earth Show is a megaphone and canvas for the world’s most progressive artists, seeking to push the boundaries of technical and artistic possibility while amplifying voices, perspectives, and bodies that the classical music tradition has often excluded.

Salon Mondialité is an electro-acoustic musical performance and video installation by musician, producer, and vocalist Miho Hatori that explores themes of memory, identity, and colonialism through kaleidoscopic and expansive dream-pop atmospheres and hypnotic rhythms. Hatori combines composed and improvised music, experimenting with the structure of a “talk-show” to create a listening environment where nostalgia for the past and possibilities for the future co-exist. Hatori’s “talk show” substitutes traditional segments with “sound stories” and features onstage collaborations with Hatori's friends and invited guests.

For this performance at EMPAC, Hatori’s guests include musicians Patrick Higgins and Michael Beharie, and cross-media artists Steffani Jemison and Cole Lu.

A pre-show conversation between Miho Hatori and music curator Amadeus Julian Regucera begins at 7PM.

Inspired by the writing of Martinican poet-philosopher Édouard Glissant and his conception of an “interconnected identity,” Salon Mondialité ultimately takes on the mood of a funeral: laying to rest outdated and colonial ideas of “identity” and a “requiem” for those who died through forced or involuntary exile. 

Previously performed at venues such as The Broad in Los Angeles and The Kitchen in New York City, Hatori transforms the EMPAC Theater into the eponymous salon, welcoming audience members to a new version of this show.

Hatori is a Japanese-born and New York City-based vocalist, musician, and producer who performs widely and gained popularity in the 1990s with the legendary band Cibo Matto. Most recently, she released a solo album Between Isekai and Slice of Life and has recorded music under the pseudonyms New Optimism and Miss Information. Additionally, she produces music for soundtracks, films, commercials, and web content.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop with a love song set list spun by DJs from Collectiveffort.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

An intimate performance by composer and violinist DBR (Daniel Bernard Roumain), hailed by The New York Times as “about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets.”