We are so pleased to welcome back Pique Collective for an evening of new musical works inspired by time-keeping devices, environmentalism, and revelatory ecstasy.
Debuting on Thursday and Friday of October 13th and 14th, The Resonance of Time ions by Richard Belcastro, Samantha Wolf, and Bobby Ge. You can learn more about the artists performing over these two evenings and grab tickets below!
FEATURING
LISA PERRY
Soprano/keyboards
Lisa Perry is a contemporary chamber music specialist hailing from Baltimore, Maryland. She is a founding member of the Pique Collective and of REXDuo, a contemporary voice duo with fellow soprano Danielle Buonaiuto. She has held fellowships with Bang on a Can “Banglewood” (2016), Opera from Scratch (2015-16), SongFest (2014), and the Thompson Street Opera Company (2014). Recent guest artist performances include: Bowling Green State University (2016), SALT New Music Festival (2015), Parma Festival (2015), and SUNY Fredonia (2013). Recent solo performances of note include Gyorgi Ligeti’s “Mysteries of the Macabre” with the SUNY Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players in Stony Brook, NY, and “NO one To kNOW one” by Andy Akiho, performed with the Atlantic Reed Consort at the National Gallery of Art and Carnegie Hall.
STEPHANIE RAY Flutes
Flautist Stephanie Ray, is an enthusiastic promoter of new music in the Baltimore area. She has performed with local groups such as the Lunar Ensemble, Pique Collective, Mind on Fire as well as with the D.C. based group, Great Noise Ensemble. Stephanie co-organizes the Classical Revolution Baltimore Chapter, whose mission is to cultivate social musical experiences throughout Baltimore and beyond. Through Classical Revolution, Stephanie has had the opportunity to collaborate with artists of varying styles including the Baltimore Boom Bap Society, EMBODY, ORCHkids, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Tuvan throat-singing group ALASH. Equally at home with orchestral literature, Stephanie regularly performs with the Maryland Symphony Orchestra, the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, and the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Stephanie is an avid flute teacher around the greater Baltimore area and enjoys a busy freelance schedule.
JEREMY LYONS Guitar
Guitarist Jeremy Lyons has been performing in the Baltimore area and beyond for more than ten years. He regularly gives solo recitals and has collaborated with orchestras and chamber ensembles. In addition to solo endeavors, Jeremy is a member of two Baltimore-based contemporary music ensembles: Mind on Fire and the Pique Collective, and he regularly performs with his duo partner soprano, Lisa Perry. Additionally, Jeremy applies his extensive background in Renaissance and Baroque music by performing on period instruments such as the Renaissance lute, Baroque guitar, and viola da gamba.
PETER KIBBE Cello
Cellist Peter Kibbe, son of Los Angeles and proud citizen of Baltimore, was raised in a family of musicians and composers, and in addition to having had the pleasure of studying and playing with some of the finest teachers and performers on both coasts of the US, he currently enjoys a career as an orchestral and chamber musician in and around Baltimore. He has enjoyed finding himself in many varied and eclectic performance settings during his career, including symphony halls, historic cathedrals, coffee houses, summer festivals, recording studios, night clubs, libraries, grassy fields, cruise ships, kindergartens and amphitheaters, and is always glad to play for open ears. Peter happily plays on a 2004 Cremonese instrument made by Roberto Collini.
NONOKA MIZUKAMI
Percussion Nonoka Mizukami, born in Fukui Japan, is an internationally active marimbist and percussionist who has received acclaim for her solo, chamber, orchestral, and concerto interpreting. She is professionally committed to performing contemporary music and recording projects with young composers, in addition to her solo marimba performances and her chamber and orchestral engagements both in Japan and the United States. In 2017 Nonoka founded duet project Cellimba alongside cellist Peter Kibbe. Cellimba has performed many contemporary works, including "Furtive Movements" by Ted Hearne, and the duet is currently working on commissions and collaborations to fill out the repertoire for their ensemble. Nonoka enjoys making crashing percussion noises just as much as she loves the warm wooden sound of the marimba, and is always looking for more new sounds to make.
ABOUT PIQUE COLLECTIVE
Pique Collective is a group of classically trained musicians making modern sounds. Pique performs original compositions, works by living composers, arrangements of older pieces, and improvised creations. The group also collaborates with painters, sculptors, video artists, poets to produce multimedia performances.
THE COMPOSERS
ABOUT RICHARD BELCASTRO
Richard Belcastro (b. 1976) is an active composer and musical activist in the Philadelphia area. His music has been called "an eclectic blend of melodic and rhythmic elements of Jazz and Rock and Roll with a uniquely contemporary harmonic vocabulary" - The NY Concert Review. His music is composed for a variety of instrumental combinations ranging from the very traditional to the distinctly odd as well as ventures into electro-acoustic music and purely electronic explorations.
Belcastro has enjoyed commissions and performances from the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, The NakedEye Ensemble, pianists Marilyn Nonken, Kathleen Supové and Ju-Ping Song, Network for New Music, The Serafin and The Amernet String Quartets, saxophonist Brian Sacawa, the Avian Orchestra, the AUROS Group for New Music and numerous others as well as having his music heard in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the DiMenna Center and Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. His music has been included on the URUK contemporary music series in Västerås, Sweden, Spectrum NYC, Boston’s COAXIAL festival for Electro-Acoustic Music & the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. He has also received grants and awards from The Meet the Composer Foundation, ASCAP/SEAMUS, The American Composers Forum, The Philadelphia Cultural Alliance & New Sounds Music Inc.Belcastro studied music composition at the University of California in Davis, Brandeis University and the University of Pennsylvania under composers Ross Bauer, Eric Chasalow, Andrew Frank, Maria Niederberger, Pablo Ortiz, Haim Permont, David Rakowski, Jay Reise and Anna Weisner.
As a sitarist, Belcastro is pursuing unorthodox means of utilizing the instrument in a vareity of musical contexts for which the sitar is not typically considered to be suited. Belcastro is currently working on a textbook outlining the issues of the instrument and its notation for composers and performers from eastern adn western backgrounds alike. The text includes a collection of solo works for sitar titled "Tattered Ragas". Belcastro has also composed works pairing sitar with chamber ensemble for The NakedEye Ensemble, The Amernet String Quartet, Ensemble 54 and Melomanie.
In addition to his work as a composer he is also the Artistic Director of the DCCC Performing Arts Concert Series (www.dccc.edu/performingArts) where he is focused on bringing the most talented and entertaining performers from around the world to the eyes and ears of the Philadelphia area community in unique musical productions and collaborative projects between a variety of arts and media. He formerly held positions as Assistant Director of Education and Community Partnerships for the Philadelphia Orchestra and Executive Director of the Chamber Music NOW! Annual Concert Series in Philadelphia. He also serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Delaware County Community College in Media, PA and is a board member for the NakedEye Ensemble. His work serves to better connect diverse artistic communities and most importantly to excite and revitalize the classical music audience in and outside of Philadelphia.
ABOUT SAMANTHA WOLF
Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, and “inspired”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition. Although she specializes in instrumental and electroacoustic music, her diverse catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, dramatic, electronic, radio, and multimedia works, and theatrical sound design.
Samantha has worked with many of Australia’s leading new music ensembles, including the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Offspring, The Song Company, Ensemble Liaison, the Horsley Williams Duo, Rubiks Collective, and Kupka’s Piano. Her music has been featured internationally at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (Germany), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Impuls Academy (Austria), Bang on a Can (USA), and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (USA), and locally at the Tilde New Music Festival, 2high Festival, the ANAM Set, and the Metropolis New Music Festival. Her music has been broadcast on ABC Classic FM, 3MBS, PBS and 4MBS, and featured by Making Waves, Partial Durations, Collective Soundwaves, and ABC’s New Waves podcast. As a sound designer, her work has been featured by Elm Shakespeare Company and the Yale Cabaret.
Current and future projects include scores for two upcoming feature films, major new works for the Brisbane Music Festival and Ensemble Offspring, and her first full-length opera.
Samantha holds undergraduate degrees from the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Melbourne, and two Masters degrees from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Chris Theofanidis, and Aaron Jay Kernis. From 2022-2024, Samantha is one of three inaugural Artists in Residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
Samantha is represented by the Australian Music Centre and APRA in Australia, and ASCAP in the United States.
ABOUT BOBBY GE
Bobby Ge (b. 1996) is a Chinese-American composer and avid collaborator who seeks to create vivid emotional journeys that navigate boundaries between genre and medium. He has created multimedia projects with the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Scattered Players Theater Company, painters collective Art10Baltimore, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
Current/recent projects include an orchestral work commissioned by the Barlow Prize for the youth symphonies of Atlanta, Seattle, New York, and Guangzhou, a First Music commission for the New York Youth Symphony, a song for soprano Ariana Wyatt and chamber ensemble commissioned by the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts, and a multimedia work for Mind on Fire supported by New Music USA.
Ge’s works have been programmed by groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, the Pacific Chamber Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra, the Bergamot Quartet, Music from Copland House, Hila Plitmann and the Boss Street Brass Band, Kamratōn, the Student Symphony Orchestra of USC, the Canberra Sinfonia, Pique Collective, pianist Stephen Ai, and the Future Symphony Competition Orchestra. His work has received recognition from various competitions and organizations including the Barlow Endowment Fund, ASCAP, the Minnesota Orchestra, Khemia Ensemble, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, New Music USA, the Society of Composers, Inc., Score Follower, Music from Copland House, the Chelsea Symphony Orchestra, Calliope, the International Music Competition of Harbin, the RED NOTE Composition Competition, Deus Ex Musica, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Future Symphony Competition. Ge has received fellowships from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Millay Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Copland House.
A dedicated educator, Ge believes firmly in the value of the arts as an expressive and uniting force, and is eager to share this vision with others around him. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D at Princeton University as a Naumburg Fellow, and holds degrees from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (M.M.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.), studying with Kevin Puts, Harold Meltzer, and Cindy Cox.