Neighbors, Composers, and Birds February 21, 2007

What a Neighborhood! and Rabi-Warner Concerts present an intimate, quirky, and instructive meeting of Morningside Heights composers and people studying birds, featuring composers Sarah Dawson and Fernando Otero, Sara Alderson, a 12-year-old bird-watcher in the Riverside Bird Sanctuary, and Olga Feher, a graduate student at City College researching how Zebra finches learn to sing. The concert will be on Wednesday, 21 February, at 12:15 pm at the Columbia Faculty House, which is entered through the courtyard on the north side of 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. (Take the #1 train or the M104 or M4 buses to Broadway and 116th Street). The event is free and a reception will follow the performance. For more information please call 212-222-2101.
The program, performed by the Orfeo Duo (Vita Wallace, violin, and Ishmael Wallace, piano), will consist of:
• Contacto Final, by Fernando Otero,
• A discussion between Sarah Dawson, Olga Feher, and Sara Alderson, about their work and the inspiration behind the following piece, and
• Two Lyric Impulses: Chant and Hymn with Pop Song, by Sarah Dawson.
Brother and sister Ishmael Wallace, pianist, and Vita Wallace, violinist, have performed together as the Orfeo Duo since childhood. Reviewers have praised their “magnificent performances,” saying “this kind of rapport is rare indeed” (Classics Today), and “Their interpretations are daring and fresh. These are performers I would pay good money to hear” (National Post).
Fernando Otero’s avant-garde tango-inspired work thrill audiences around the world. “This music … leaps into every corner of the room at once, exhilarating but also bewildering – it’s not tango, jazz, or classical, but some brand-new combination of all three.” (Jazziz)
According to Peter Sculthorpe, Sarah Dawson’s music “is as strong as it is beautiful, a music that transcends labels of any kind.”
What a Neighborhood! celebrates Morningside Heights and West Harlem primarily through the music of living local composers. This is its fifth season.

Official Website: http://www.orfeoduo.com/neighborhood.html