Through the Glass, the third concert cycle in NOCCO’s 2019-20 season, shines a light on important though often forgotten elements of our musical fabric: women composers and young performers.
Ethel Smyth (1858-2944) was a composer and suffragist whose music was not accepted in British society due to her gender, yet she received a damehood in recognition of her contribution to the musical canon. Her music was often panned as being “too masculine” for a female composer and at other times “too feminine” to be truly compared to a male composer. Her Serenade in D was her first orchestral work, written when she was 32 and yet it was the first of her works to be performed in London. Much of it hearkens to the music of Brahms in form while it evokes an emotional and sometimes violent sensibility.
Heather Bentley, one of the co-founders of NOCCO, is a new music violist, violinist, improviser, composer and teacher who lives and works in the Pacific NW. She is co-Artistic Director of Kin of the Moon, a trio of performer/improviser/composers, a member of Trio Pardalote, and currently Principal Viola of the Northwest Sinfonietta. In addition, she is Concertmaster of the improvising string orchestra “Scrape”, a faculty member at the Lakeside School in Seattle and Cornish College of the Arts' Viola Instructor. Hot Shop (2017) places you, sonically, amidst a glass-blowing team as they create. Imagine such a visually dramatic atmosphere translated into sound and you’ll have merely scratched the surface of this aural experience.
As part of its commitment to bringing music to community and community to music, Through the Glass features the winners of NOCCO’s Concerto Competition. Seattle native Carson Ling-Efird, a freshman at Ballard High School, began playing cello at age four and studies with Seattle Symphony cellist Nathan Chan and collaborative pianist Dr. Li-Tan Hsu. She will perform the first movement of Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in B-flat Major. Teddy Zhang is currently a Junior at South Salem High School in Salem, Oregon and currently studies bassoon with Carin Miller-Packwood, and piano with Irena Ivanitsky and Jean-David Coen. He will perform the first movement of Carl Maria von Weber’s Bassoon Concerto in F Major.
We invite you to look Through the Glass; please join us!
