Hub New Music with Special Guest Kojiro Umezaki

** THIS SHOW WAS POSTPONED FROM ITS ORIGINAL DATE OF JAN 22.2022. ALL TICKETS WITH THE SAME SEATS WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY TRANSFERRED TO THE NEW DATE. PLEASE CONTACT THE BOX OFFICE FOR ANY QUESTIONS OR TO REQUEST A REFUND OR ACCOUNT CREDIT AT TICKETS@SOKA.EDU OR 949.480.4278

“go, listen, and be changed” - The Boston Globe

Michael Avitabile, flutes
Gleb Kanasevich, clarinets 
Meg Rohrer, violin 
Jesse Christeson, cello

Special guest Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi
 

HUB NEW MUSIC

Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music is a “nimble quartet of winds and strings” (NPR) forging new paths in 21st-century repertoire. The ensemble’s ambitious commissioning projects and “appealing programs” (New Yorker) celebrate the rich diversity of today’s classical music landscape.

Founded in 2013, Hub New Music has grown into a formidable touring ensemble driven by an unwavering dedication to building community through new art. Across its career, Hub has commissioned dozens of new works and continues to usher in a fresh and culturally relevant body of work for its distinct combination of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello. Hub is proud to collaborate with today’s most celebrated emerging and established composers, and is equally proud to count many of them as friends.

Highlights in 2022-23 include concerts throughout the U.S. with presenters such as Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Soka Performing Art Center, Celebrity Series of Boston, and Brigham Young University. The group also has upcoming residencies at the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, and Brown University.

Hub New Music is a group of passionate educators whose approach to teaching melds the artistic and entrepreneurial facets of modern musicianship. The ensemble was recently in residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry Sanders Composer Fellowship program, working with 10 outstanding high school aged composers. Other residency activities include those at New England Conservatory, Princeton, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Texas-Austin, UC Irvine, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2020, Hub launched its K-12 program HubLab, using storytelling and improvisation to create original pieces with students of any musical level.

The ensemble’s name is inspired by its founding city of Boston’s reputation as a hub of innovation. Hub splits its base of operations between Boston and Ann Arbor, MI. Hub New Music is exclusively represented by Unfinished Side.

KOJIRO UMEZAKI

Noted by The New York Times as a “virtuosic, deeply expressive shakuhachi player and composer” and the LA Times as one of the “better kept secrets of Southern California music,” Kojiro Umezaki (梅崎康二郎) has performed regularly with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2001 with whom he appears on multiple recordings including the Grammy Award-winning Sing Me Home, A Playlist Without Borders, Off the Map, and the Grammy-nominated 2015 documentary film, The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville. In a Circle Records released Cycles, an album of original work, in 2014, and 流芳 Flow, a duo album with Wu Man, in 2021. Other notable recordings as performer, composer, and/or producer include Brooklyn Rider’s Dominant Curve, Yo-Yo Ma’s Appassionato, Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening II, Kei Akagi’s Aqua Puzzle, The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan (Smithsonian Folkways), and Huun Huur Tu’s Ancestors Call. Born to a Japanese father and Danish mother, Umezaki grew up in Tokyo, and continues to explore global and hybrid practices in music.

PROGRAM:

Dai Wei How the Stars Vanish…
Chad Cannon Death Masks
Sun-Young Park 月光 Moonlight
Angel Lam River Whispers
Kojiro Umezaki Tied Together by Twilight
Takuma Itoh Faded Aura