Decoda returns “home” to Carnegie Hall, where the collective met and received the shared training as fellows in Ensemble Connect. This year’s program celebrates influence, inspiration and imagination. Decoda is thrilled to collaborate with the new duo, Ringdown, featuring composers and vocalists Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee for a brand new Carnegie Hall commission written for and performed alongside Decoda.

Reverberations

COPLAND Midday Thoughts for Solo Piano. (1944/rev. 1982)
HANNAH KENDALL. Vera (2008)

HANNS EISLER. Septet (Suite) No. 1, Op. 92a, Variations on American Children’s Songs (1941)

WOODY GUTHRIE / BILLY BRAGG. Eisler on the Go (arr. Claire Bryant) (1949/1998) 

RINGDOWN New Work – World Premiere, commissioned by Carnegie Hall (2024)

AARON COPLAND Appalachian Spring Suite for 13 Instruments (1945/1970)

Catherine Gregory, flute; Moran Katz & Paul Cho, clarinets; Shelley Monroe Huang, bassoon; David Kaplan, piano; Clara Lyon, Mari Lee, George Meyer, Doori Na, violins; Dana Kelley & Caeli Smith, violas; Claire Bryant & Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, cellos; Evan Premo, bass

Reverberations is an exploration of the profound relationship between inspiration and imagination, presenting a series of musical escapades that reveal an interconnected web of influence. Central to the program is the work of Aaron Copland, whose Appalachian Spring and Midday Thoughts both celebrate an 80th Anniversary this year, and whose music sought to carve a place for American music on the concert stage. Copland uses American folk music as source material from which to craft a sonic language, borrowing from, amplifying, distorting, and subverting in the process. Tonight’s special guest collaborators – Ringdown – undertake a resonant composition process with their performance alongside Decoda, building a new multilayered work that refracts elements of Copland’s musical perspective. Hannah Kendall’s brilliant early work, Vera, suggests a kinship with folk music that is built from a rigorous musical architecture, with a nod to 20th Century iconoclast Arnold Schoenberg. Hanns Eisler, an Expressionist who studied the works of the great Romantics with Schoenberg, uses American children’s songs as a vehicle of inspiration in his charming Septet No.1. Finally, Decodan Claire Bryant borrows from folk legends Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg in her re-setting of “Eisler on the Go”.  An unfinished Guthrie song completed over thirty years later by another politically active singer-songwriter, this dark ballad depicts Eisler’s exile from America as a result of the anti-communist craze of the 1940s and 50s. Reverberations celebrates the life cycle of creativity - from inspiration to imagination, from ideas to action - through the art of making music.