Sarah Grace Graves’ Printempo concert, Sun / Circle, is an interdisciplinary end of year project inspired by the sun. This intimate concert brings together several artists in residence at the Fondation des Etats-Unis for a project combining music, sculpture, and film.
Sun / Circle celebrates the changing from spring into summer and the ephemerality of the body. Uniting the creative capacities of composer/vocalist Sarah Grace Graves, composer Simon Frisch, and visual artist Madison Van Der Ark, the program includes processional and recessional chants by Frisch on Sedulius’ A Solis Ortus Cardine coupled with scuplture by Van Der Ark. On the program will be Graves’ film Interim, finalist in the 2022 Guerrilla Underground call for videos, and her virtuosic solo voice piece embrace; Chaya Czernowin’s transcendent Adiantum Capillus-Veneris I (Maidenhair Fern I): Etude in Fragility for Voice and Breath; Erin Gee’s quietly effervescent Mouthpiece II; four of Giacinto Scelsi’s unpublished and rarely performed Canti del Capricorno; and a version of John Cage’s Two for self-accompanied vocalist.
Practical Information
Date: May 17 | Time: 7:30PM | Facebook event
COVID: wearing a mask is not mandatory, however it is strongly recommended. Please use the hydroalcoholic gel at your disposal.
Program
Simon Frisch (1990)
Processional – World premiere
Sarah Grace Graves (1995)
Interim
Chaya Czernowin (1957)
Adiantum Capillus-Veneris I (Maidenhair Fern I): Etude in Fragility for Voice and Breath
Erin Gee (1974)
Mouthpiece II
Giacinto Scelsi (1905 – 1988)
Selections from Canti del Capricorno (unpublished)
No. 1 for voice and gong
No. 13 and 14 for solo voice
No. 20 for voice and tenor recorder
Sarah Grace Graves (1995)
Embrace
John Cage (1912 – 1992)
Two
Simon Frisch (1990)
Recessional – World premiere
Resident Artists
Sarah Grace Graves is a singer and composer of experimental music living in Paris, France. She holds a master’s degree in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley, where she followed courses in electronic music with Ed Campion and improvisation with Myra Melford and conducted residencies as a composer, performer, and improviser at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). In 2020, she moved to Paris to study extended vocal techniques with Nicholas Isherwood at Conservatoire de Montbéliard while conducting an artistic residency at Fondation des États-Unis centered around interdisciplinary collaboration with the voice. Beyond performing her own music, Sarah Grace also composes person-specific and site specific music for other musicians. Notable collaborators include EXAUDI, Carol Robinson, Radical 2, Helēna Sorokina, and the Italian new vocal music ensemble Fragmente. She is a graduate of Voix Nouvelles Academy at Royaumont, Festival Mixtur, ilSUONO Academy, Westben Performer-Composer Residency, Estalagem da Ponta do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics, and the Divertimento Ensemble Call for Young Performers. From 2021-2022, Sarah Grace is a Harriet Hale Woolley Fellow at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris.
Simon Frisch is a composer and recipient of a 2020-2021 Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship. During his residency at the Fondation des États-Unis, he aims to compose a song cycle for period instruments that explores the cultural legacy of Anne de Bretagne, Queen of France from 1491 to 1514. He is also a resident scholar at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique where he is studying the politics of musical practice at the court of Anne de Bretagne. Some of his recent projects include The Body Untied for soloists and baroque chamber orchestra (presented in New York by, among others, Région Bretagne, and Lightbox Gallery in collaboration with multimedia artist Rachel Libeskind), and Sandglass Vespers for chamber orchestra presented at Alice Tully Hall (with Joel Sachs and the New Juilliard Ensemble), as part of residencies and studies at the Banff Arts Centre and Wildacres. An advocate for mediation and emerging creative voices in music, Simon has organized a series of summer chamber music concerts in the Ille-et-Vilaine/Côtes-d’Armor regions of Bretagne, programming dozens of European and world premieres by various young composers in collaboration with local non-profit organizations. These concerts, praised by Le Télégramme, Ouest France and Bretagne Actuelle, have promoted creative and cultural heritage projects in many disciplines, including architecture and sculpture. He is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he completed his graduate degree with Robert Beaser.
Madison Vander Ark is a painter and multi-disciplinary artist from central Pennsylvania. Through her interest in psycho-geography and the relationship between our bodies and structural environments, Madison’s work reveals the uncanny aspects of the various places she has lived. The inherent magical properties of ordinary life are the focus of her work as she investigates the seemingly banal spaces that permeate the landscape of daily walking. Madison was recently featured in the Area Code Art Fair of New England and is a 2020 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grantee. After receiving her BFA in painting in 2016, Madison resided at the Centre d’Art Marnay in Marnay-sur-Seine and has since been included in shows at Studio E Gallery, CIVA, and the Susquehanna Art Museum. She went on to pursue her MFA in painting at Boston University, where she continued to make paintings and installations that explore her encounters with the built world. After graduating in 2020, Madison participated in a virtual residency called CO-Residency, which connected 12 artists from around the globe making work in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. She looks forward to being included in shows at the Ortega y Gasset Projects in New York and Boston University’s Stone Gallery this fall. As a recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship for the 2020-2021 academic year, Madison is thrilled to be given the opportunity to make a series of paintings and installations that respond to her encounters with and study of Parisian architecture.