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New York-based musicians with Alaska connections are bringing contemporary chamber music to Fairbanks this weekend.
Katie Cox, Andie Tanning and Conrad Winslow started Wild Shore New Music 12 years ago to bring contemporary chamber music to Alaska. The musicians foster collaborations between living composers, musicians worldwide, and Alaska’s artists and residents. Cox, executive director, said that Wild Shore New Music wants to introduce people to contemporary music and make them ask questions like, “what is composing?,” “what is sound?,” “what is music?”
Wild Shore New Music is performing concerts in Homer, Kenai, Anchorage and Fairbanks this month. This is Wild Shore New Music’s first time performing in Fairbanks. “We’re really excited to finally be bringing this project up to Fairbanks. We’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” Cox said.
The program is built around the Alaskan premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon’s “For Zitkála-Šá.”
Raven Chacon, an Indigenous composer from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, composed “For Zitkála-Šá” with each movement dedicated to a different indigenous female musician. One of those movements is dedicated to Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, a violinist and ethnomusicologist at Emory University who is joining Wild Shore New Music on their tour. Senugetuk is Inupiaq with family roots in Wales, and she grew up in Fairbanks.
Cox met Senungetuk years ago in Homer after she started Wild Shore New Music. She saw Senungetuk play some of Chacon’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2021 and thought “we have to bring this to Alaska.”
Senungetuk will perform a deeply personal and introspective interpretation of George Rochberg’s “Caprice Variations” for solo violin. Senungetuk narrates the piece alongside a slideshow of indigenous art.
Senungetuk will be joined by Miriam English Ward (viola), Charles Akert (cello), Katie Cox (Flute), Conrad Winslow (piano) and Andie Tanning (violin). All artists have an Alaskan connection to Fairbanks, Homer or Anchorage. “It’s a real Alaskan crew,” Cox said.
Cox said that Chacon’s pieces are very graphic scores. She said the non-traditional notations are “a lot for the musicians to interpret.”
“It can be dots and lines and squiggles,” Cox said. “I feel like that’s something very new and a young audience is very excited by that.”
Wild Shore New Music is performing live in KUAC’s Alaska Live at 2 p.m. Friday.
Wild Shore New Music is performing at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Davis Concert Hall with special guests Dorli McWayne and the Fairbanks Flutists. The concert is in connection with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Circumpolar Music Series.
The performance features Emerson Eade’s “Summer Tern for flute choir,” George Rochberg “Caprice Variations for solo violin” (1973), Leilahua Lanzilotti’s “we began this quilt there” (2021) for string quartet and flute, Timo Andres’ “Agita” (2020) for cello and piano and Raven Chacon’s “For Zitkála-Šá” (2022).
Tickets cost $5 for non-UAF students, senior, and military members and $10 general admission. Admission is free for UAF students and children 12-years-old and younger.
Wild Shore New Music will finish their tour with a free concert at 1 p.m. Saturday at Raven Landing. The performance features Timo Andres “Agita” (2020) for cello and piano, Meredith Monk “Except from Indra’s Net” (2021), Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “A Boy and a Makeshift Toy” (2015) for piano and viola, and Aaron Copland “Duo for Flute and Piano” (1971).
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