Elena Ruehr

November and December are always busy months for concerts! Here's a run-down of just some of what our composers have been up to.

The Boston-based chamber music group Radius Ensemble performed a concert with works by E. C. Schirmer composers Elena Ruehr and Libby Larsen. Both works were programmatic in nature, with Ruehr's Lucy titled after the famous Australopithecine. Larsen's work, Yellow Jersey, depicts racing through the Tour de France.

Acclaimed violinist Cecily Ward performed Elena Ruehr's Red (2007) on November 4, 2017. The concert took place at Massachusetts Insistent of Technology, where Ruehr teaches.

Cecily Ward

Elena Ruehr says of her music "the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex." An award winning faculty member at MIT, she is also a Guggenheim Fellow and has been a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Dr. Ruehr was a student of William Bolcom at the University of Michigan, and Vincent Persichetti and Bernard Rands at The Juilliard School. Her work has been described as "sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies" (The New York Times), and "unspeakably gorgeous" (Gramophone).

A Far Cry stands at the forefront of an exciting new generation in classical music. According to The New York Times, the self-conducted orchestra “brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied.” A Far Cry was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of 17 young professional musicians, and since the beginning has fostered those personalities. A Far Cry has developed an innovative process where decisions are made collectively and leadership rotates among the “Criers.” For each piece, a group of principals is elected by the members, and these five musicians guide the rehearsal process and shape the interpretation. Since each program includes multiple works, this multiplicity of leaders adds tremendous musical variety to the concerts.

Elena Ruehr collaborated with the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet to create her fifth string quartet. Named after the book which served as the work's inspiration, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, this 10-movement piece receives its world premieres September 20 (San Francisco) and 24 (Saratoga).

Cypress String Quartet

Bel Canto is based on the Japanese embassy hostage crisis (1996-1997) in Lima, Peru. The story focuses on both terrorists and the hostages, including business

Emmanuel Church of Boston's "Late Night at Emmanuel" series presents a cabaret-style concert, including the performance of A Supermarket in California by Elena Ruehr. Written for baritone and string quartet, text author Allen Ginsberg bases the words on thoughts by Walt Whitman. The poem describes an imaginary encounter between the poet and Walt Whitman, whom Ginsberg greatly admired, as Whitman wanders around a supermarket, then out into the night, and finally to the Greek underworld. The work, written in 2016, will be performed by the commissioning artists: David Kravitz, baritone, and the

Anne Midgette is Chief Classical Music Critic for The Washington Post. Her article, "The top 35 female composers in classical music," was written in response to National Public Radio's July 2017 article "The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women." The NPR article "was inspiring," Midgette writes,"but where were the composers? In the wake of much discussion about the chronic underrepresentation of female composers on American concert programs, I came up with my own best-of list."

Midgette narrowed her focus to artists in the recorded music era, naming historic greats like Hildegard von Bingen, Fanny Mendelssohn,

A delightful recording of Elena Ruher's Chamber Works.

Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, Elena Ruehr's music has been performed by the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2009 and she teaches in the music department at MIT.

Click here to learn more about Elena Ruehr and her music.

Source: Albany