BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Music Center's EOS (Educate, Open, Strengthen) Project explores “Undreamed Shores” at the BMC on Thursday, May 25.
The 7 p.m. concert will include Michi Wiancko's To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, as well as Dr. Etan Nasreddin-Longo's String Quartet for Benzaiten and Yoshi Campbell, and Jose Lezcano's Tango Overture for String Quartet.
This EOS concert features and celebrates the talent and artistry of BIPOC composers from the tri-state region of southern Vermont, western New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts. Performing will be Kathy Andrew and Heather Sommerlad, violin; Emily Packard, viola; and Zon Eastes, cello.
As Andrew explains: “The program created by Heather Sommerlad is a wonderful mixture of the interesting, the beautiful, the challenging, and, ultimately, the very satisfying.”
Wiancko, a resident of Gill, Massachusetts, is an internationally acclaimed violinist and composer whose work spans an impressively wide spectrum of style and influence. As artistic director of Antenna Cloud Farm, a grassroots arts organization and music festival, she is focused on “the power of music as a catalyst for societal change and community resilience.”
Nasreddin-Longo is a composer and ethnomusicologist raised in Newfane. He is currently a co-director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs for the Vermont State Police, and also serves as the Chair of the Vermont Attorney General's Advisory Panel on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Juvenile Justice Systems. His String Quartet for Benzaiten and Yoshi Campbell rethink traditional forms from several different music-cultures, in this case, Euro-American art music, and Central Javanese Gamelan.
Lezcano, a professor of music at Keene State College, is a twice Grammy-Nominated Cuban American Guitarist and Composer. Fanfare magazine describes Tango-Overture for String Orchestra (performed as a string quartet for this concert) as “a dance in a dream that sweeps away restrictions and sweeps away the dreamer.”
Created at the BMC in the spring of 2020, the EOS Project seeks “to open new doors and allow our community to explore what and who we've been missing - namely, composers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as those who identify as anything other than cis male,” according to the BMC website.
Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door, and are available online at bmcvt.org, by calling the BMC at 802-257-4523, or emailing [email protected].