TONE MADISON: Pianist Michael Mizrahi on NOW Ensemble’s persistent search for fresh interpretations
TONE MADISON: Pianist Michael Mizrahi on NOW Ensemble’s persistent search for fresh interpretations
BY GRANT PHIPPS
“For more than a decade, New York’s NOW Ensemble — Alex Sopp (flute), Alicia Lee (clarinet), Mark Dancigers (electric guitar), Logan Coale (double bass), and Michael Mizrahi (piano) — have been interpreting some of the most vividly creative and intricate voices in modern composition. Composers the group has worked with include Judd Greenstein, co-director of NOW's longtime label New Amsterdam Records, and Missy Mazzoli, who wrote 2012’s acclaimed classical opera, Songs From The Uproar: The Lives And Deaths Of Isabelle Eberhardt.
The group's latest release, 2019's Spare The Rod!, is an EP of pieces composed by Yevgeniy Sharlat on the subject of disciplinarianism and condemnation of the biblical proverb that asserts to “spare the rod” would ‘spoil the child.’ In addition to their usual quintet of instrumentation, their performances also include kazoos, recorders, and a series of music boxes lavishly hand-constructed music by Yuliya Lanina, which take inspiration from nursery rhymes, as does Spare The Rod!’s cover art.
For their show in Madison at Audio for the Arts on Monday, February 10, however, the quintet plans to forge ahead, performing three wide-ranging pieces with an emphasis on two presently unrecorded works. The first is a newly commissioned seven-movement chamber opus by award-winning Los Angeles-based composer Sean Friar, ‘Before And After,’ which runs about 50 minutes in length. Additionally, NOW will play the eight-minute ‘The Tide Is In Our Veins,’ by the equally renowned San Francisco-based composer Gabriella Smith. Their concluding performance of the night will be ‘Trust Fall,’ written by Andrea Mazzariello, which can be heard on NOW Ensemble’s 2015 record, Dreamfall.”