The word “echo” multiplies in meanings. Reverberations. Resonances. Or in Italian, ecco: Here it is. Now something new: Eko Nova. Here is resonance. A chamber music series featuring compositions with ink barely dry. The first concert in the Monday series, Night Visions, is intended to “evoke the wonder, mourning, danger, mystery, and magic of darkness” says artistic director John Klinghammer, Omaha Symphony’s bass clarinetist.
Three of his colleagues perform works by six composers, among whom are a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Robert Rauschenberg Award winner and a Grammy Award nominee. Witness:
34-year old Hanah Lash created Stalk for solo harp in 2008 after being stirred by a nightmare in which she saw herself trapped in a garden of flowers, led along a path into a maze of “fragrant but dangerous beauty.”
The Eye of Night (2010) for Indian bansuri flute, sees David Bruce invoking night sky with a giant eye, “unblinking”, observing us here below.
Grammy nominee Anna Clyne wrote Beware of when she was 27, blending her music with the recorded voice of her mother reading her own poem..
A different flute merges with electronics in I will not be sad in this world. Post minimalist Eve Beglarian wrote it in her mid-40s, and this year garnered the Robert Rauschenberg Award.
Andrew Norman got a Rome Prize in 2007 and was inspired by that immortal city’s church of Santa Sabina to evoke it in Sabina for solo viola. Five years later he reached the Pulitzer Prize finals.
And Robert Paterson yearns to create “musical zephyrs” as a vision of an Olympic athlete competing with nature in Embracing the Wind (1999).
The versatile artists who interpret at Kaneko are flutist Maria Harding, Brian Sherwood playing viola and Kathleen Wychulis at the harp in this collaboration between Kaneko and Omaha Chamber Music Society.
Klinghammer came up with this concept because he seeks “to bridge the gap” between our city’s art community and the classical music world. Sounds and sights merge in the light and shadows.
Night Visions is at Kaneko, 1111 Jones St, Mon. Sept. 21, 7 p.m. Tickets: $10-$15. http://thekaneko.org/kaneko-programs/eko-nova/