Ives: Three Quarter-Tone Pieces / Five Take-Offs / Hallowe'En / Sunrise

Featuring

Victoria Villamil
Joel Sachs
Cheryl Seltzer
Eva Gruesser
Mia Wu
Rachel Evans

Beverly Lauridsen
Sheila Schonbrun
Continuum
Charles Ives

Did you know?

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Compositional Technique

Ives's Three Quarter-Tone Pieces were originally conceived for a double keyboard microtonal piano but were scored for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart for practical performance.

Performer Biography

Joel Sachs, co-director of Continuum, is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he conducts the New Juilliard Ensemble and directs the annual Focus! festival of new music.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Ives, an heir to New England Transcendentalism, revered the individual and mystical unity of humanity and nature, and detested conventional musical traditions.

Composer Biography

Charles Ives chose a career in the insurance business, where he achieved significant financial success, because he believed earning a living in music would compromise his artistic vision.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Ives believed that ordinary people singing from the soul, even if out of tune, understood music better than those with flawless vocal technique, leading him to embrace spontaneous, untrained creativity.

Composer Biography

Charles Ives's father, George Ives, was a musician who led a band in the Northern army during the American Civil War and conducted musical experiments that influenced his son.

Performer Biography

Continuum, directed by Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs, is a New York-based ensemble founded in 1966 that performs new music and 20th-century classics, known for its Retrospective Concert format.