Rising Tide

Performing Arts Center university at albany State University of New York

2023-24

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Cover photo: Tatiana Desardouin, Passion Fruit Dance Company | Photo by Loreto Jamlig Photo this page: UAlbany Performing Arts Center | Photo by Patrick Ferlo

The University at Albany sits at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers on the traditional lands of the Kanien’keháka and Muh-he-con-neok people, who stewarded this land for generations before the arrival of European colonists. The Kanien’keháka (People of the Flint) and Muh-he-con-neok (People of the Waters that are Never Still) are more commonly known today as the Mohawk Haudenosaunee and StockbridgeMunsee Band of Mohicans. Despite the similarity of their westernized names, the Mohawk and Mohican were culturally and linguistically distinct.

The UAlbany community recognizes that we live and work on the homelands of sovereign Indigenous nations with rich histories and cultures that continue today – both within New York and beyond.

As an institution devoted to teaching, scholarship, and service, we strive to understand and learn from our history and to affirm Indigenous rights and issues. To this end, we are committed to cultivating reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities focused on equity, social justice, and sustainability – and dismantling legacies of colonization.

Visit the UAlbany Performing Arts Center website at

www.albany.edu/pac

Photo: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

for a full listing of this season’s events.

THECROSSROADSPROJECT

risingtide

I. Prelude Overture ‧ Prelude (Haydn’s Op. 76, no. 4, Mvt. I)

II. The Elements H2O ‧ Bios ‧Forage (Kaminsky, Rising Tide, I, II, III) III. Societas Societas (Kaminsky, Rising Tide, IV)

IV. Re-Imagine Who are we?

(Janáček, String Quartet No. 1)

The Players

Robert Davies

Writer/Narrator

Fry Street Quartet: Robert Waters Rebecca McFaul Anne Francis Bayless Bradley Ottesen

Violin Violin Cello Viola

Production Manager Jeff Counts Original Music by LAURA KAMINSKY Featuring the photography of GARTH LENZ, LU GUANG and EDWARD BURTYNSKY and the paintings of REBECCA ALLAN

There will be a panel discussion immediately following the show.

The performers of Rising Tide will be joined by UAlbany experts: Mike Hill Professor of English Mary Ellen Mallia Director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability Paul Millard Director of New Program Development & Manager of the Engineering Laboratory for Health and Sustainability Professor of Practice in the Department of Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Matthias Vuille Professor of Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences

About The Crossroads Project The Crossroads Project (www.thecrossroadsproject.org) is a collection of artists committed to moving our communities, our society, our civilization toward a sustainable, just, vibrant destination - through powerful storytelling igniting informed response. We are one in a growing ecosystem of artistic collaborations bringing the many facets of human sustainability to the forefront of public consciousness.

Over the course of 75 minutes, we explore the wonder and the structure of the natural systems from which humans and human civilization have arisen, and contrast this structure with those of humanity’s modern, global civilization. Compelling information is transformed from intellectual to visceral through evocative imagery and powerful music.

Rising Tide is an original composition by New York composer Laura Kaminsky, commissioned specifically for The Crossroads Project by the Fry Street Quartet.

THE CROSSROADS PROJECT HAS BEEN MADE POSSIBLE BY SUPPORT FROM UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY’S CAINE COLLEGE OF THE ARTS • COLLEGE OF SCIENCE QUINNEY COLLEGE OF NATURAL RESOURCES EMMA ECCLES JONES COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC • DEPARTMENT OF ART + DESIGN

About The Creators Dr. Robert Davies is a physicist whose work focuses on global change, human vibrancy, and the science of systems. He has delivered hundreds of public lectures - to policymakers, business leaders, civic organizations, and faith communities - and his “performance science” theatrical collaboration Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project, co-created with the Fry Street Quartet, has been performed across the U.S. and in three countries. He has served as a scientific liaison for NASA; as a project scientist with Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory; and an officer and meteorologist in the United States Air Force. Dr. Davies has served on the faculty of three universities, is a past Associate of the Utah Climate Center, and is currently Associate Professor of Professional Practice with Utah State University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physics, USU’s Ecology Center, and the Caine College of the Arts.

The Fry Street Quartet, hailed as "a triumph of ensemble playing" by THE NEW YORK TIMES – is a multi-faceted ensemble taking chamber music in new directions.

Touring music of the masters as well as exciting original works from visionary composers of our time, the Fry Street Quartet (FSQ) has perfected a "blend of technical precision and scorching spontaneity" (The Strad). Since securing the Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the quartet has reached audiences from Carnegie Hall to London, Sarajevo, Jerusalem and a six-concert China tour culminating at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center. Throughout, the ensemble explores the medium of the string quartet and its life-affirming potential with "profound understanding...depth of expression, and stunning technical astuteness" (Deseret Morning News).

With a discography that includes a wide range of works from Haydn and Beethoven to Stravinsky, Janacek and Rorem, the quartet is known for being "equally at home in the classic repertoire of Mozart and Beethoven or contemporary music."

(Palm Beach Daily News). Navona records released The Crossroads Project, which features commissioned works by Laura Kaminsky and Libby Larsen. Kaminsky’s lauded new chamber opera As One debuted at #3 on the Billboard Classical Chart (Albany Records). Gramophone cites the “radiant performance” of all the artists, and the Fry Street Quartet’s “elegance and subtlety” while calling the CD “A remarkable achievement.” The FSQ premiered As One with mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Kelly Markgraff at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has gone on to perform the work with Hawaii Opera Theater, Lyric Opera Kansas City and Chautauqua Opera.

The FSQ's tour repertoire reaches many corners of the musical spectrum, including works of Britten, Schubert, Beethoven and Bartok, as well as programs of American women composers Amy Beach, Joan Tower, Libby Larsen and Brazilian-American Clarice Assad. The quartet’s innovative programming includes their pairing of Bela Bartok’s six quartets with Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 76, highlighting a juxtaposition of masterpieces by two great innovators for the string quartet. Eminent Bartok scholar Peter Laki has joined the Fry Street Quartet to give commentary on its recent Bartok Quartet Cycle at Utah State University.

In addition to collaborations with acclaimed instrumentalists (including Joseph Kalichstein, Wu Han, Paul Katz, Donald Weilerstein, Misha Dichter, Andres Cardenes and Roger Tapping, among others), the Fry Street Quartet has commissioned and toured new works including Canções da America by Clarice Assad, and Assad’s Pandemonium which received its premiere by the Fry Street Quartet and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. Michael Ellison's Fiddlin' was cocommissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music Series and the Salt Lake City based NOVA series; and both Laura Kaminsky's Rising Tide and Libby Larsen’s Emergence were commissioned especially for the quartet's global sustainability initiative, The Crossroads Project.

After dozens of performances in three different countries, The Crossroads Project: Rising Tide continues to resonate with audiences. This fresh approach to communicating society’s

sustainability challenges draws upon all the senses with a unique blend of science and art and has been featured on NPR's joe’s big idea (aired during All Things Considered), as well as in publications by YALE CLIMATE CONNECTIONS, REUTERS, and THE NEW YORK TIMES. The quartet's significant touring history includes performances at major venues, festivals, and for distinguished series in New York at Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller University and the New School, Guarneri Hall in Chicago, Chamber Music Columbus, the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, the DiBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame, the Theosophical Society in London, the Mozart Gemeinde in Klagenfurt, Austria, and the Moab and Chautauqua Festivals. The quartet also enjoys a continuing residency with the Salt Lake City-based NOVA series.

The Fry Street Quartet is pleased to hold the Dan C. and Manon Caine Russell Endowed String Quartet Residency at the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University.

Laura Kaminsky is a composer with "an ear for the new and interesting" whose works are "colorful and harmonically sharpedged" (THE NEW YORK TIMES) and whose "musical language is compounded of hymns, blues, and gestures not unlike Shostakovich's" (INTUNE). Social and political themes are common in her work, as is an abiding respect for and connection to the natural world. The visual is made manifest in sound, with color and image often serving as the underlying inspiration.

Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work centers on landscape and themes of music. Rivers, tributaries, and coastal regions of the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and northern England are the artist's primary sites of investigation and inspiration. Exhibited nationally and abroad for more than 25 years, Allan's work attempts to express, in abstract and painterly terms, the fragility of our ecosystems, and the unpredictability of nature’s cycles.

Garth Lenz is an internationally renowned environmental photographer who examines contrasts between the industrialized and natural landscape. The range of his photographic subjects has included the impacts of industrial logging on forests, and the world of modern fossil fuel production and its associated impacts on the landscape. Recent projects have addressed mountaintop removal coal mining, shale gas production, and the Alberta Tar Sands. His work has appeared in leading editorial publications including TIME, GEO, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR and THE NEW YORK TIMES. Production Manager Jeff Counts is General Manager of the Grand Tetons Music Festival, and past General Manager of the Utah Symphony. He has worked in performing arts planning and logistics for over 15 years and previously spent 6 years as an elementary school educator in his home state of Florida. Jeff speaks and writes about music frequently and provides concert annotation and program articles for orchestras and opera companies around the country. When not focused on music, Jeff enjoys a second life as a pop culture commentator and film critic and appears weekly on the regional television program "Big Movie Mouth-Off.”

Sponsors Today’s program is presented in association with UAlbany's Office of Sustainability.

Support provided by the University at Albany Foundation, Department of Music and Theatre, University Auxiliary Services, Office of Intercultural Student Engagement and the Alumni Association through the Grandma Moses Fund.

OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY Computing Services, 15 518-442- 2592 www.albany.edu/gogreen

UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY FOUNDATION University Administration Building, 226 518-437-5090 www.albany.edu/uafoundation

Department of Music and Theatre Performing Arts Center, 310 518-442-4187 www.albany.edu/musicandtheatre

UNIVERSITY AUXILIARY SERVICES University Administration Building, 232 518-442-5950 www.albany.edu/uas

INTERCULTURAL STUDENT ENGAGEMENT Campus Center, B91 518-442-5565 www.albany.edu/multicultural

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Alumni House 518-442-3080 www.albany.edu/alumni

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HOUSE POLICIES Latecomers will be seated at the discretion of the management and its staff. .

The use of photographic or recording devices of any kind during most performances is strictly prohibited. .

There is no food or drink allowed in the theatres, nor is smoking allowed in UAlbany buildings. .

To avoid disrupting the performance, kindly disable any noise making electronic devices you may have with you. .

Please take time to note the location of the fire exits nearest to you. In the event of an emergency, an announcement will be made from the stage. Please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion.

Created and produced by the University Art Museum, NYS Writers Institute and UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC Northeast Public Radio, this popular series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their craft and their careers. “Roundtable” host Joe Donahue conducts live on-stage interviews followed by a Q&A with the audience.

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See all of these performances for only $110!

Dayton Contemporary Dance Co October 20 Passion Fruit Dance Co November 4

Performing Arts Center university at albany State University of New York

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Co December 2 Photo: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

Mark Morris Dance Group January 25 Ellen Sinopoli Dance Co with Capital Trio - January 27 * Monica Bill Barnes & Co February 3 No Gravity Theatre February 9 Savion Glover April 13 Ellen Sinopoli Dance Co May 18 Packages also available for choice of five or three at 25% or 10% discounts, respectively.

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