The North/South Chamber Orchestra's Season Finale - Tuesday, June 17 in New York City

The New York City-based North/South Chamber Orchestra, directed by Max Lifchitz, concludes its 45th season performing four works by American composers.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, June 13, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The North/South Chamber Orchestra will conclude its 45th consecutive season on Tuesday evening, June 17, with a free concert featuring the works of American composers Oliver Caplan, John David Earnest, Max Lifchitz, and Tyler Goodrich White.

The event will start at 7:00 PM and is expected to finish around 8:30 PM.

It will be held at the welcoming and acoustically superior Christ & St. Stephen's Church, located at 129 West 69th Street, New York, NY.

No tickets or reservations are required; admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.

This concert will showcase four works for string orchestra that will be heard in New York for the first time.

Award-winning composer Oliver Caplan embodies hope through music that highlights the resilience of the human spirit and the beauty of nature. His work, which addresses themes of social justice and conservation, reflects his New York roots and training at Dartmouth College and the Boston Conservatory. As the Artistic Director of the Juventas New Music Ensemble in Boston, Caplan drew inspiration from bird calls during a trip to Costa Rica to create Canciones de Monteverde (Songs from Monteverde).

John David Earnest is celebrated for his versatile compositions, which cater to a wide array of ensembles, both large and small, as well as vocal and instrumental performances. A proud alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin, he has enriched the musical community as the Composer-in-Residence at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and as a professor at Lehman College and Rutgers University. The E.C. Schirmer Music Company in Boston publishes his works. Composed for the occasion, Mr. Earnest's Suite for Strings features three contrasting yet interrelated movements following the classic fast-slow-fast structure. The music draws on the "Scotch snap" commonly found in traditional Scottish songs and dances. This rhythmic element also serves as an essential stylistic feature in jazz.

Max Lifchitz, the founder and director of the North/South Chamber Orchestra, has appeared as a pianist on concert stages throughout Europe and the Americas. As a composer, he has been awarded grants and fellowships from several prestigious organizations, including ASCAP, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the University of Michigan Society of Fellows, the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Recordings of his compositions and performances are available on most streaming platforms. Lifchitz's Brightness Aloft features variations on "Xicochi Conetzintle," a lilting lullaby dedicated to Jesus Christ, which was composed by Gaspar Fernández in 17th-century Mexico. The work's background includes a walking double bass line that evokes the role typically played by the vihuela (or guitar) in Renaissance and Baroque music. The music aims to convey uplifting feelings of rebirth and renewal, inspired by the gradual increase in daylight that inevitably follows the arrival of spring.

Tyler Goodrich White, originally from Atlanta, trained at Cornell University, the University of Copenhagen, and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. His primary composition teachers included Pulitzer Prize winners Steven Stucky and Karel Husa. He has received commissions from several notable organizations, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. He served as Composer-in-Residence with Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska from 2019 to 2023. White's Four Elements (Chamber Symphony No. 2) is a four-movement work for string orchestra that lasts about 20 minutes. Each movement represents one of the four elements proposed by the Greek philosopher Empedocles in the fifth century BCE: earth, water, air, and fire. Interestingly, this ancient concept has notable parallels with the modern understanding of the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. The symphony aims to evoke the beauty and vitality of the natural world while highlighting its threat from environmental destruction. The work was awarded two Silver Medals (Composer and Original Score) in the 2024 Global Music Awards.

Active since 1980, North/South Consonance, Inc. is devoted to the promotion of music by composers from the Americas and the world. Its activities are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; as well as grants from the Music Performance Fund, the BMI Foundation, and the generosity of numerous individual donors.

For further programming information, please visit the North/South Consonance website @ https://www.northsouthmusic.org/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvzI6jG3_TDqAfa3MO0eJJA

https://youtu.be/zATtNxWAka4?list=OLAK5uy_lv1BjS5EwWCUpxyw_ImPkaRGV6eVR0yZI

Max Lifchitz
North/South Consonance, Inc
ns.concerts@att.net
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Brightness Aloft

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