Le Petit Salon de Musique: Solo Recital "SILENCED"
Jan
28
3:00 PM15:00

Le Petit Salon de Musique: Solo Recital "SILENCED"

Rachel returns to Long Island to perform on the concert series Le Petit Salon de Musique. She’ll be joined by Andrea Christie on piano and the two will perform a recital focused on the many ways that people’s voices and artistic expressions can be inhibited, excluded, muted, and restricted.

The first half of the program features songs by two female Welsh composers – Morfydd Owen and Grace Williams – almost completely unknown outside of Wales. Despite the high quality of their work, their songs have not made it into the main-stream canon of British music, in part due to still-existing cultural prejudices within the UK. The second half of the program explores other methods of suppression: racism, incarceration, and conflict. Until recently and certainly during their lifetimes, African American composers such as Margaret Bonds did not receive the recognition or performance opportunities that they deserved within the US music industry due to longstanding racism and exclusion. Ethnicity, paired with religion, is also the reason that Abduquadir Jalalidin, a well-known Uyghur poet, is being held in captivity in China. This poem escaped its confinement through oral transmission from prisoner to prisoner, eventually being translated into English by Joshua Freeman and set to music by Thomas Osborne. But countless other works of art and their artists remain trapped. And though he lived for many years after completing his Op. 38 songs, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was forced to flee his native Russia during the Revolution of 1917, never wrote another song. What had been a prolific career in composition was silenced by his displacement and emigration. If these artists’ voices had been allowed to fully flourish and their works fully welcomed into our canon, our artistic landscape may be even richer.

Le Petit Salon de Musique

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Le Petit Salon de Musique: Solo Recital "SILENCED"
Mar
19
2:00 PM14:00

Le Petit Salon de Musique: Solo Recital "SILENCED"

Rachel returns to Long Island to perform on the concert series Le Petit Salon de Musique. She’ll be joined by Andrea Christie on piano and the two will perform a recital focused on the many ways that people’s voices and artistic expressions can be inhibited, excluded, muted, and restricted.

The first half of the program features songs by two female Welsh composers – Morfydd Owen and Grace Williams – almost completely unknown outside of Wales. Despite the high quality of their work, their songs have not made it into the main-stream canon of British music, in part due to still-existing cultural prejudices within the UK. The second half of the program explores other methods of suppression: racism, incarceration, and conflict. Until recently and certainly during their lifetimes, African American composers such as Margaret Bonds did not receive the recognition or performance opportunities that they deserved within the US music industry due to longstanding racism and exclusion. Ethnicity, paired with religion, is also the reason that Abduquadir Jalalidin, a well-known Uyghur poet, is being held in captivity in China. This poem escaped its confinement through oral transmission from prisoner to prisoner, eventually being translated into English by Joshua Freeman and set to music by Thomas Osborne. But countless other works of art and their artists remain trapped. And though he lived for many years after completing his Op. 38 songs, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was forced to flee his native Russia during the Revolution of 1917, never wrote another song. What had been a prolific career in composition was silenced by his displacement and emigration. If these artists’ voices had been allowed to fully flourish and their works fully welcomed into our canon, our artistic landscape may be even richer.

Le Petit Salon de Musique

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Ithaca College: Solo Recital: SILENCED
Mar
2
8:15 PM20:15

Ithaca College: Solo Recital: SILENCED

  • Ithaca College Hockett Recital Hall (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Returning to Ithaca College, I’ll be joined by the incredible Xak Bjeerken on piano. We’ll be performing a program that explores the many ways that people’s voices and artistic expressions can be inhibited, excluded, muted, and restricted. The first half of the program features songs by three Welsh composers – Morfydd Owen, William Mathias, and Grace Williams – almost completely unknown outside of Wales. Despite the high quality of their work, their songs have not made it into the main-stream canon of British music, in part due to still-existing cultural prejudices within the UK. The second half of the program explores other methods of suppression: racism, incarceration, and conflict. Until recently and certainly during their lifetimes, African American composers such as Harry T. Burleigh, William Grant Still, and Margaret Bonds did not receive the recognition or performance opportunities that they deserved within the US music industry due to longstanding racism and exclusion. Ethnicity, paired with religion, is also the reason that Abduquadir Jalalidin, a well-known Uyghur poet, is being held in captivity in China. This poem escaped its confinement through oral transmission from prisoner to prisoner, eventually being translated into English by Joshua Freeman and set to music by Thomas Osborne. But countless other works of art and their artists remain trapped. And though he lived for many years after completing his Op. 38 songs, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was forced to flee his native Russia during the Revolution of 1917, never wrote another song. What had been a prolific career in composition was silenced by his displacement and emigration. If these artists’ voices had been allowed to fully flourish and their works fully welcomed into our canon, our artistic landscape may be even richer.

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Recital and Masterclass, SUNY Schenectady
Nov
2
12:30 PM12:30

Recital and Masterclass, SUNY Schenectady

I’ll be presenting a recital featuring the music of underrepresented voices including Welsh female composer Morfydd Owen, immigrants’ stories in the form of Vignettes: Ellis Island by Alan Smith, and a set of songs by Black composers Harry T. Burleigh, William Grant Still, and Florence Price. Following the recital, I’ll offer a masterclass to current SUNY Schenectady students and a Q&A session.

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Oneonta Concert Association: Solo Recital
Apr
8
8:00 PM20:00

Oneonta Concert Association: Solo Recital

Rachel will return to the Oneonta Concert Association recital series to offer a solo recital of American music with pianist extraordinaire Xak Bjerken. They’ll be performing a program of American music including Stephen Foster, Amy Beach, Charles Ives, Florence Price, William Grant Still, Harry Burleigh, Alan Smith, Thomas Osborne, Chen Yi, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ira Gershwin and Stephen Sondheim.

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Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall: Debut Solo Recital
Nov
8
7:30 PM19:30

Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall: Debut Solo Recital

Rachel will make her debut solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, sponsored by the Pro Musicis Foundation. She’ll be joined by long-time collaborator Timothy Long at the piano and they’ll perform a program based around the theme of resilience. The two will perform Margaret Bond’s Songs of the Seasons, Libby Larsen’s Songs from Letters, excerpts from Alan Smith’s Vignettes: Ellis Island, Rachmaninoff’s Op. 38 songs, and will give the world premier of a newly commissioned piece by Thomas Osborne based on a poem by the incarcerated Uighur poet Abduqadir Jalalidin (translated by Joshua Freeman).

Carnegie Hall

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Yellow Barn - Bach: Jauchzet Gott Cantata & Renqvist: David's Nimm
Aug
7
8:00 PM20:00

Yellow Barn - Bach: Jauchzet Gott Cantata & Renqvist: David's Nimm

Rachel will perform Bach’s iconic Jauchzet Gott cantata (#51) and Karin Renqvist’s David’s Nimm on the closing concert of this summer’s season. For the Bach, she’ll join Ansel Norris on trumpet; Leonard Fu, Yiliang Jiang on violin; Maria Lambros on viola; Aaron Wolff on cello; and Pete Walsh and Stephen Coxe, continuo and will collaborate with sopranos Kristina Bachrach and Lucy Shelton on the Renqvist.

Yellow Barn

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