May 31st ZALON Program

Rebecca Cypess

Rebecca Cypess is Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Department of Music, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Her current research and performance projects deal with women and musical salons between 1760 and 1800. Her book-in-progress, Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Her past work includes a book co-edited with historian Nancy Sinkoff, Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin. With the period-instrument performance group that she founded, the Raritan Players, she has released two recordings, with a third due out in 2020: In Sara Levy’s Salon (Acis, 2017), Sisters, Face to Face: the Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands (Acis, 2019), and In the Salon of Madame Brillon (Acis, forthcoming this summer). Her contributions to historical performance have been recognized with the 2018 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society.

The website of the ensemble that she directs, the Raritan Players, is https://raritanplayers.org. Their recordings are In Sara Levy’s Salon and Sisters, Face to Face: The Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands. Their next release, due out this year, is In the Salon of Madame Brillon. 

Donations for the Raritan Players’ performance and recording projects can be sent via paypal to rebecca.cypess@gmail.com. Rebecca is also very happy to receive inquiries there about music, performance practice, and research!

Benjamin P. Wenzelberg

Benjamin P. Wenzelberg is a US Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a junior at Harvard University. In February 2020, the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra presented the Japan premiere of his orchestral composition, Heroic Dreamscape Fantasy – inspired by a theme of L. van Beethoven, in their Beethoven 250th Birthday Celebration concerts. He was honored to perform as the countertenor soloist in the world premiere of a commissioned composition of his, Ultrathing, with Orchestra 2001 (Philadelphia), make his conducting debut with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, and attend the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Seminar. As Music Director of Harvard College Opera, he conducted Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (2020) and Massenet’s Cendrillon (2019). Benjy made his European composition and conducting debut with the Tonkünstler-Orchester at the Grafenegg Festival (Austria), and had a composition performed by them at the Vienna Musikverein’s Golden Hall. He was recently commissioned to compose a piano work for a video project by a Steinway Artist about climate change, and recently played and sang his compositions as part of the Concert for One community engagement initiative in Boston.

Website (www.benjaminwenzelberg.com)

YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/benjysworld)

Tatyana Tenenbaum

Choreographer/composer Tatyana Tenenbaum’s work employs breath, voice, fascia and musculature to excavates spaces of memory, power and transformation. Her work sits at the juncture of experimental music and dance has been described as “rich polyphony” (The New Yorker) and “transcending the fraught history between utterance and stance through an exacting inquiry” (Critical Correspondence).  Her Jewish ancestors wove their voices, literally and metaphorically, into the tuneful stories of the Broadway stage. Tenenbaum interdisciplinary work speaks within this lineage, and has been commissioned and presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Temple University, Dance Theater Workshop Fresh Tracks, Center for Performance Research, Roulette Intermedium, Temple University, Mount Tremper Arts and AUNTS, among others. She is honored to have performed and collaborated with Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik, Jennifer Monson, Levi Gonzalez, Emily Johnson/CATALYST, Andy Luo & lily bo shapiro, Juliana May, DOING AND UNDOING collective, and Hadar Ahuvia. More information: www.tatyanatenenbaum.com

Bandcamp https://tatyanatenenbaum.bandcamp.com

Venmo @Tatyana-Tenenbaum

Terry Eder

Pianist Terry Eder has performed in in France, Italy, Germany, Canada, the U.S., China and Singapore, as well as major halls in NYC, including Zankel Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, to critical acclaim. The critics described her recital at Alice Tully Hall as a “fascinating performance full of life and risk.” Ms. Eder was further described as “a big pianist with big ideas and a warmly engaging rapport.” She has given master classes and lecture/recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Oberlin Conservatory and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore, among other places. She has released three CDs, including a Bartók disc that was featured in Gramophone Magazine and on David Dubal’s radio show: The Piano Matters. She is the founder and artistic director of Key Pianists, a concert series at Carnegie Hall., where she presents seasoned and inspiring performers.  At her website, you may listen to and purchase her CDs and find out more. Please visit www.terryeder.com.

Talie

Talie is a Philly based Haitian American singer-songwriter. Her music is a blend of Haitian folk and acoustic soul. Talie recently released a studio project entitled ‘Soley Midi” which is Haitian Creole for “midday sun”. This project is available on most major platforms at http://album.link/soleymidi 

You can support Talie’s artistry through Venmo: TalieMusic, CashApp: $TalieMusic, and Paypal: talili87@gmail.com

Peter Kline & Andrea Clearfield

Peter Kline

Peter Kline is the author of two collections of poetry, Mirrorforms (Parlor Press, 2019) and Deviants (SFASU Press, 2013).  A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he currently teaches writing at Stanford and the University of San Francisco.

Here’s a link to his website: www.peterklinepoetry.com

Here’s a link to the publisher, where the book can be purchased: http://www.parlorpress.com/freeverse/mirrorforms

Peter’s PayPal is linked through his email address: balanoid@gmail.com

Andrea Clearfield

Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer who has written more than 160 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance and multimedia collaborations. Clearfield creates deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges. As a pianist, Andrea was a student of Susan Starr, and has performed and recorded with numerous ensembles in classical and experimental chamber settings, with vocal and instrumental soloists, orchestras, folk/rock/world bands, dancers and improvisation ensembles. She was keyboardist in the Relâche Ensemble for contemporary music for 25 years and has had the honor of performing with the Court of the Dalai Lama. 

More information at www.andreaclearfield.com

Recordings: http://www.andreaclearfield.com/recordings/

Upcoming performances: http://www.andreaclearfield.com/performances/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Oi8JMX5cGutwO4HGcwc7Q

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andreaclearfieldcomposer/

Instagram: @andreaclearfield

Jessye DeSilva

Jessye DeSilva is a singer songwriter and “piano-wielding folk rock witch” currently living in Boston, MA. Jessye’s lyrically-sophisticated songs stare issues of mental health, religion, queer love, and gender identity in the face, offering listeners a candid look inside in the hopes of connecting with their own experiences. The Ark of Music called DeSilva’s first EP Release Hoarfrost and Crocus Shoots “Utterly tender-hearted. Warm and sincere. At times, uncomfortably honest,” going further to say that the EP “… will approach you softly, stare you squarely in the eyes, and demand your attention.” Armed with a piano and a suitcase kickdrum, Jessye will sing your feelings and enchant you with their musical storytelling.

Venmo is Jessye’s preferred method of payment (@Jessye-DeSilva)

Paul Fejko

Conductor/Composer/Percussionist/Keyboardist Paul Fejko plies his trade mostly in the universe of theatre and dance in many parts of Europe and the US. In Europe, he was a musician with Maurice Béjart’s Ballet of the Twentieth Century,Music Director of The Ballet of Lyon, and a resident composer at the ‘Theatre les Ateliers’ also in Lyon. Here in the US, He worked with Convergence-Dancers & Musicians, Gloria McClean, and Blue Wing Dance Company. Presently he is Music Director of Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church in Philadelphia and works with the Drama and Dance Department of Mulenberg College. He owns, lives in and currently broadcasts daily (!!) 30 minute “Covid Sequestration MiniConzerts” from his André Café Acoustique in Chester, PA LIVE on FaceBook – facebook.com/paul.fejko. Several MiniConzerts (there have been more than 40!) remain posted…. Many varying styles and instruments – organ, piano, percussion, classical, jazz-ish, new age, all out crazy….!

You can find out much info at fejko.com, youtube.com/paulfejko, soundcloud.com/fejko and facebook.com/paul.fejko.

Contributions would be delightfully accepted with glee (!!) at: paypal.me/PaulFejko