Full dectet
Fifth House Ensemble and Grammy-winning classical guitarist Jason Vieaux team up to create a sonic journey ranging from centuries-old music to modern day works. Inspired by the fact that every culture of the world has a version of the guitar, the program connects faraway times and places in over an hour of continuous music, using audio interludes to conjure vivid atmospheres that morph into each new composition. Dan Visconti’s guitar concerto, Living Language, serves as the centerpiece of the program and showcases a multitude of styles from Medieval plainchant to blues, rock, and Latin dance music. Fifth House and Jason Vieaux use the varied genres on display in Living Language as a jumping off point for a stunning program of chamber and solo works from all around the world, including works by Robert Beaser, Alonso Mudarra, Duke Ellington, Béla Bartòk, and Pat Metheny.
Program
Dan Visconti — Devil’s Strum
Robert Beaser — Mountain Songs, Barbara Allen and House Carpenter
Béla Bartók — Romanian Folk Dances
Alonso Mudarra — Pavana y Fantasia
Duke Ellington — In a Sentimental Mood
Franz Schubert — Quartet for Flute, Guitar, Viola, and Cello, Mvt. I
Pat Metheny — Always and Forever and Antonia
Traditional — Epitaph of Seikilos
Dan Visconti — Living Language
About Jason Vieaux
Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today's classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is the guitarist that goes beyond the classical. NPR describes Vieaux as, “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” His most recent solo album, Play, won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In June 2014, NPR named “Zapateado” from the album as one of its “50 Favorite Songs of 2014 (So Far).”
Vieaux has earned a reputation for putting his expressiveness and virtuosity at the service of a remarkably wide range of music, and his schedule of performing, teaching, and recording commitments is distinguished throughout the U.S. and abroad. His solo recitals have been a feature at every major guitar series in North America and at many of the important guitar festivals in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Mexico. Recent and future highlights include returns to the Caramoor Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and New York's 92Y, as well as his Ravinia Festival debut and performances at Argentina’s Teatro Colon and Oslo, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Norway’s Classical Music Fest. Vieaux’s appearances for Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bard Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Strings Music Festival, Grand Teton, and many others have forged his reputation as a first-rate chamber musician and programmer. Vieaux’s passion for new music has fostered premieres of works by Avner Dorman, Dan Visconti, Vivian Fung, Keith Fitch, Kinan Abou-Afach, David Ludwig, Jerod Tate, Eric Sessler, José Luis Merlin, Jeff Beal, Gary Schocker and more.
About Dan Visconti
Composer Dan Visconti’s music is rooted in the improvisational energy and maverick spirit of rock, folk music, and other vernacular performance traditions—elements that tend to collide in unexpected ways with Visconti’s classical training, resulting in a growing body of work the Plain Dealer describes as “both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted lyricism.”
For his ongoing initiatives to address social issues through music by reimagining the arts as a form of cultural and civic service, Visconti was awarded a 2014 TED Fellowship and delivered a TED talk at the conference’s thirtieth anniversary.
Commission credits include works written for the Kronos Quartet, Branford Marsalis, eighth blackbird, Opera Philadelphia, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Alarm Will Sound, Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, soprano Lucy Shelton, and many others. His music has been performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, London’s Barbican Theatre, and Sydney Opera House. He has also held composer residencies including those with the California Symphony, Arkansas Symphony, and Metropolitan Opera.
Visconti’s music has been recognized with the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, and awards from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, Fromm Foundation, Naumburg Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a contributing writer for the Huffington Post and serves as Artistic Director at Astral Artists, where he works to develop the next generation of classical music leaders.