Present Music presents

In the Key of Now

Cory Smythe, piano

Friday, April 16, 2021 | 7:30 pm CDT
Present Music Digital Stage

Program

Nicole Mitchell: Interdimensional Interplay (2016)

Nicole Mitchell — flute
Video by Chantal Eyong and Nicole Mitchell

Cory Smythe / Jerome Kern: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (2021)

Anthony Braxton: Composition No. 1 (1968)

Smythe / Kern: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Felix Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words (1829-1845)

Opus 85, No. 2 in A Minor — Allegro agitato
Opus 67, No. 1 in E-flat Major — Andante
Opus 30, No. 2 in B-flat Minor — Allegro di molto
Opus 19b, No. 5 in F-sharp Minor — Poco agitato
Opus 62, No. 1 in G Major — Andante espressivo

Smythe / Kern: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

About the Guest Artists

Cory Smythe

Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn, and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record was praised by Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni, and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, where he was recently invited to premiere new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn. He has received commissions from Milwaukee’s Present Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, of which he is a longtime member, and the Shifting Foundation. Smythe received a GRAMMY award for his work with Ms. Hahn and plays regularly in the critically acclaimed Tyshawn Sorey Trio.

Nicole Mitchell

Nicole M. Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator. Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, and her music celebrates contemporary African American culture. She is the founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections and Ice Crystal, and she composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size, while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. As a composer, Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, The Stone, Chamber Music America, Chicago Jazz Festival, ICE, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. She is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), the Chicago 3Arts Award (2011) and the Doris Duke Artist Award (2012). Mitchell Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh's Deitrich School and was a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Chantal Eyong

Chantal Eyong is a writer and media producer, born and raised in New Jersey. Her passions include education, storytelling, and exploring the mysteries of her identity as a first-generation West-African. Chantal received a BA in English with Concentrations in Geography and Creative Writing at Rutgers University in 2009. She also received a certificate in E-Learning and Instructional Design from the University of California Extension in 2019. Chantal also graduated from the 2018-2019 Creative Lab Hawaii Writers Program. As a media producer, Chantal has collaborated on documentaries and short films featured on PBS and national/international film festivals. The documentary short she co-produced, Thailand Untapped received an Emmy nomination in 2013. Chantal currently resides in Southern California and is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside.

About the Composers

Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern was one of the most important American theater and popular music composers of the early 20th century, penning more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works. Among his collaborators were Ira Gershwin and Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he wrote the Broadway musical Show Boat (which features the song Ol’ Man River). His songs are frequently performed and adapted, and some have become standard jazz tunes.

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years, highly esteemed in the creative music community for the revolutionary quality of his work and for the mentorship and inspiration he has provided to generations of younger musicians. Drawing upon a disparate mix of influences from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen to Native American music, Braxton has created a unique musical system that celebrates the concept of global creativity and our shared humanity. His work examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation and ritual engagement-innovation, spirituality and intellectual investigation. His many accolades include a 1981 Guggenhiem Fellowship, a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a 2014 NEA Jazz Master Award.

Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn was among the leading voices in German music of the Romantic period. His oratorios, orchestral works, and chamber music are performed frequently today, but perhaps his best known music include his Wedding March and the melody for the Christmas carol Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. His solo piano compositions Songs Without Words are series of short, lyrical works to which he added throughout his career. These pieces started a tradition that many composers have followed, writing their own “songs without words,” including his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn.