Zeitgeist with Quince!
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October 12, 4:00 p.m The Anderson Center
163 Tower View Drive, Red Wing, MN 55066 |
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Zeitgeist and the treble vocal ensemble, Quince, will share the stage in a performance featuring music from throughout the country. Program will include works by Wisconsin composer Brent Michael Davids (Stockbridge Munsee Mohican), David Lang (NYC), Carrie Henneman Shaw (WA), Gilda Lyons (CT), Kari Besharse (LA), and Ravi Kittappa (OR).
Zeitgeist and Quince have never shared the stage before, but we've been in each other's "circle of admiration" for years. We share friendships amongst members and have collaborated with individuals on many occasions. So…imagine our excitement when the stars aligned and found three of the Quince members in easy distance to Zeitgeist's new home in Red Wing. Well…a concert was just bound to happen. Our repertoire will be varied, but will include composers from throughout our nation. Unlike Zeitgeist, Quince members live throughout the country, so their artistic influences and collaborative possibilities are dispersed as well. Their portion of the program will embrace both coasts, include a work by Carrie Henneman Shaw, now in Oregon but formerly of St. Paul. Zeitgeist has long championed works by Minnesota composers, and we will feature a tongue-in-cheek chamber work we developed with Brent Michael Davids before he moved from Minnesota to the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in Wisconsin. Quince and Zeitgeist will combine forces as well, in a haunting and lovely work by Ravi Kattappa. Quince will be performing as a trio for this concert. PROGRAM Zeitgeist Set The Last of James Fenimore Cooper by Brent Michael Davids (with Liz Pearce, narrator) Quince Set evening, morning, day by David Lang Bone Needles by Gilda Lyons Palus by Kari Besharse the smallest gap by Carrie Henneman Shaw Zeitgeist and Quince From Nothing by Ravi Kittapa About the WORKSThe Last of James Fenimore Cooper (2001)
By Brent Michael Davids For Zeitgeist When American composers are described as “native” the definition is not usually as accurate as when applied to Brent Michael Davids, an American Indian and enrolled citizen of the Mohican Nation. He has consciously and deliberately focused on his indigenous heritage, honoring its unique qualities in a contemporary setting. He blends Eurocentric techniques of classical music with Native musical traditions in a way that is never glib or facile, but rich in resonance. The Last of James Fenimore Cooper is a musical tale of forgiveness, transformation, and redemption. It combines the story of "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper with that of a much older Mohican story about the Snow Monster of the North. Here's a clip of Zeitgeist performing the work last year with Brent Michael Davids narrating. evening, morning, day (after Genesis, chapter 1) (2007)
By David Lang I wanted to make a piece about the creation story but I didn’t want to highlight one religion’s or culture’s narrative over another. It was important for me to try to find something universal, something present in all stories, or common to all cultures. I hit upon the idea of making a kind of checklist of everything that needed to be created to get the world to this point, without each individual culture’s stories or myths or exoticisms. I went back to the first chapter of Genesis, to see what I could get out of my own culture’s story, and I stripped away all the descriptions, adjectives, connectors and motivators. All that is left of Genesis in my text are the nouns, leaving a dispassionate list of everything created, in the order in which it is mentioned. — David Lang Bone Needles (2006)
By Gilda Lyons A collection of abstract vocal sounds, Bone Needles is fueled by the possibilities for direct communication between two voices even without words. Markings within the score (“summoning” “weaving” and “casting off”) guide an exchange that I imagined after watching a group of women in Nicaragua repairing nets on the beach with long needles made from fish bones. After a thin, sharp object – which might very well have been one of their bone needles – pierced my foot on that same trip, the image of their sewing took on a richer meaning: as they continued to mend their nets, I was at work mending in a different way. In Bone Needles, I explore the way in which two voices might mend together, working and weaving, driven by an inward focus that manifests itself in an outward musical expression. -Gilda Lyons Palus (2015)
By Kari Besharse Palus was written for the vocal trio Accordant Commons and draws inspiration from the cypress swamps of Louisiana—one of the most beautiful and mysterious ecosystems in the world. The piece seeks to capture the atmosphere of this landscape: its stillness and resonance, its layered sounds, and its sense of timelessness. By evoking the unique qualities of the swamp environment, Palus creates a musical reflection of both its natural beauty and its quiet, magical presence. the smallest gap (2015)
By Carrie Henneman Shaw the smallest gap is one of a set of works created by a number of composers for Quince's 2025 album, Dust Bowl. Dust Bowl weaves stories of the ensemble member's family histories into narratives surrounding the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, climate change, migration, family separation, folk ballads, the music of Woody Guthrie, and more. From Nothing
By Ravi Kattappa From Nothing is constructed of gradually-formed dissipating sound masses. Through shifts in dynamics, timbre, and color, distinct variations from each performer are revealed while still maintaining the cohesiveness of the group. About the artists
QUINCE ENSEMBLE is a treble voice quartet dedicated to changing the paradigm for contemporary vocal chamber music. Described as "the Anonymous 4 of new music" by Opera News, Quince continually pushes the boundaries of vocal ensemble literature. By performing almost exclusively the music of living composers, and actively commissioning works with a broad and curious aesthetic ear, we seek to create a landscape of contemporary vocal music that is embodied, complex, and expressive, with the musical boldness and virtuosity that is often reserved for instrumental groups.
As dedicated advocates of new music, Quince regularly commissions new works for voices, providing wider exposure for the music of living composers. In 2019, they launched the Quince New Music Commissioning Fund, a fund to grow the repertoire for women and treble voices. Through educational activities, Quince works to bring this music to a larger community of singers and listeners, offering new and empowering pathways to vocal excellence. Quince has released four studio albums, Realign the Time, Hushers, Motherland, and David Lang's love fail, all available on iTunes, CD Baby, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Amazon. Quince has been featured on many festivals and series like KODY Festival in Lublin, Poland in collaboration with David Lang and Beth Morrison Projects, the Outpost Concert Series, the Philip Glass: Music with Friends concert at Issue Project Room, University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium, and the SONiC Festival in New York, to name a few. Comprised of vocalists Liz Pearse (soprano), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano), Amanda DeBoer Bartlett (soprano), and Carrie Henneman Shaw (soprano), Quince thrives on unique musical challenges and genre-bending contemporary repertoire. Kayleigh Butcher is on leave for the 25-26 season. Quince will perform as a trio for this concert. 
BRENT MICHAEL DAVIDS (Mohican/Munsee-Lenape) is a professional composer, and a music warrior for native equity and parity, especially in concert music where there is little indigenous influence. Davids places Native voices front and center. He originated and co-founded the award-winning Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP), championing indigenous youth to compose their own written music. He uses indigenous instruments, including handmade quartz flutes, and pens performable notations that are themselves visual works of art. Davids is co-director of the Lenape Center in Manhattan, and is enrolled in the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. His composer career spans nearly five decades, with countless awards and commissions from America’s most celebrated organizations and ensembles.International ensembles have premiered his works globally in Austria, Bermuda, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall, Disney Concert Hall, Tanglewood Music Center’s Koussevitzky Shed and Ozawa Hall, Rothko Chapel, The Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Out-Of-Doors, and The Kennedy Center. Davids is in high demand as an Educator and Consultant for Films, Television, Schools, Festivals, Seminars and Workshops. In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts named Davids among the nation’s most celebrated choral composers in its project “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.” And In 2015, the prestigious Indian Summer Music Festival awarded Davids its “Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Davids’ most recent project is “Requiem for America: Singing for the Invisible People.” This major work tackles the genocidal founding of America, giving voice to America’s Indigenous People. “Requiem” exposes a specific genocide in each state, juxtaposing genocidal texts from America’s founding against historical letters from American Indians themselves. In addition to the Western singers and orchestra, each performance will feature Indigenous singers recruited from local tribal communities. Once completed, it is hoped that “Requiem” will tour every state in the country. 
DAVID LANG is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls.Lang’s the little match girl passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, was recently listed by The Guardian as “one of the top 25 works of classical music written in the 21st Century.” It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and the recording received a Grammy Award in 2010. simple song #3, written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino’s acclaimed film YOUTH, received many awards nominations in 2016, including the Academy Award and Golden Globe.
His opera prisoner of the state (with libretto by Lang) was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s De Doelen Concert Hall, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and Bruges’s Concertgebouw, and premiered June 2019 in New York (conducted by Jaap van Zweden). prisoner of the state received its UK premiere in January 2020 with the BBC Symphony (conducted by Ilan Volkov) and its EU premiere in May 2023 with the Bochum Sinfoniker (conducted by Steven Sloane). Lang is a Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music. He is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music and G. Ricordi & Co., New York (ASCAP) and is is distributed worldwide by the Universal Music Publishing Group. 
GILDA LYONS (b. 1975) is a composer, vocalist, and visual artist whose music blends renaissance, neo-baroque, spectral, folk, agitprop Music Theater, and extended vocalism to create works of emotional honesty and melodic beauty. Her mainstage opera A New Kind of Fallout, inspired by environmentalist Rachel Carson and commissioned by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, was hailed as “powerfully effective” (Pittsburgh Stage Magazine), “haunting” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), and “spot-on” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).
Her works and performances appear on AMP, Clarion, GPR, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, Roven, and Yarlung Records. Recent recordings include Momotombo for SATB Choir, praised in Gramophone as an “irresistible a cappella paean,” and the orchestral premiere of la flor más linda with the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, Miguel Harth Bedoya conducting. Other highlights include hush for solo alto saxophone (AMP), The Transcendence of Time (Makrokosmos 50 Project), and Laura Strickling’s Grammy-nominated release of Songs of Lament and Praise (Yarlung), described by Opera News as “plaintive… quietly devastating.” Her wind ensemble work Cenizas will be released by Naxos in 2026. An active performer, Lyons has commissioned, premiered, and workshopped dozens of new vocal works. For her starring role in Daron Hagen’s operafilm 9/10: Love Before the Fall (Amazon Prime), she won multiple international Best Actress awards, with her ensemble work recognized at festivals in Cannes, Albuquerque, and Toronto. Opera News lauded her “winning delivery, full of character,” and Opera (UK) described her soprano as “compelling.” Current compositional projects include Corazón de Esperanza for the Dalí Quartet, percussionist Ben Toth, and Lyons as vocalist; and commissions for 534 Productions, HAVEN Trio, Les Délices, soprano Catherine Goode, Resonance Works, UMKC Conservatory, and ASPIRE. Recent premieres include works for Lyric Fest, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Quince, Musica Viva NY, and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Lyons is Program Chair and Associate Professor of Composition at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, where she also directs the Richard P. Garmany Concert Series. She serves on the boards of Composers Now, the Steven R. Gerber Trust, and Sparks & Wiry Cries. Founding Director of The Phoenix Concerts (2005–2023), she has also served residencies with Chautauqua Opera and Quince Ensemble. Her music is published by Schott, E.C. Schirmer, and Burning Sled Media. 
KARI BESHARSE continuously looks to nature for artistic inspiration and compositional processes. Her music often incorporates themes of natural processes—erosion, migrations, tides, photosynthesis—as well as relationships of interdependence and the microscopic structures of organisms. She creates musical analogues of these phenomena, mapping information directly to musical parameters or drawing poetic responses. Her style also reflects a fascination with the inner structure of sound itself, treated as a living, organic entity.
Besharse’s works combine acoustic instruments, found objects, sounds from nature, and synthesis. Computers and electronic media are integral to her process, even when composing purely acoustic works. Timbre, texture, and sound are central, with pieces often shaped from sonic archetypes that undergo rupture, degradation, and transformation. Her influences also extend to visual art, literature, and the human experience. She has received recognition from the Bourges Residence Prize (Small Things), Quince Ensemble (Call for Scores winner), Tuscaloosa New Music Collective, Look and Listen Festival, ASCAP, and the INMC Competition. Recent projects include everyone…everything for toy piano trio Figmentum, Verklingend for haegeum and chamber ensemble (mise-en), Tabula 51 for tuba and electronics, and Embers for saxophone and piano, commissioned by Richard Schwartz and featured on Centaur Records. Her music has been presented worldwide by ensembles and organizations including Alarm Will Sound, Empyrean Ensemble, California Ear Unit, Loadbang, Accordant Commons, and festivals such as SEAMUS, ICMC, Bourges, mise-en, and soundON. Currently Lecturer in Music at the University of New Orleans, Besharse has also taught at Southeastern Louisiana University, Illinois Wesleyan, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds degrees from UMKC (B.M. 1998), the University of Texas at Austin (M.M. 2002), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (D.M.A. 2009). She is founder and director of Versipel New Music, now in its ninth season in New Orleans. 
Soprano CARRIE HENNEMAN SHAW Is known across the US as a singer who weaves style and emotion into vivid performances of Baroque and contemporary classical music. Praised in the New York Times “as graceful vocally as she was in her movements”, “consistently stylish” (Boston Globe), and as a “cool, precise soprano” (Chicago Tribune), Shaw is a member of Quince Ensemble, Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente, Pesedjet, and also appears with the Bach Society of Minnesota, Haymarket Opera Company, Newberry Consort, and Boston Early Music Festival. Carrie was a 2010 and 2017 McKnight Fellow for Performing Musicians and has earned arts entrepreneurship awards in her role as co-director of St. Paul’s Glorious Revolution Baroque.
Shaw seeks opportunities to bring rare performances of new works by American and international composers to an eclectic variety of venues – bars, churches, galleries, and concert halls - with collaborators around the country. In the Minnesota composer community, she has been privileged to commission and premiere works by such composers as Jocelyn Hagen, Noah Keesecker, and Abbie Betinis, whose annual Christmas carols are annually recorded for broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio. Shaw has also performed in a gala holiday concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Shaw earned degrees in English and Voice Performance from Lawrence University and completed a doctorate at the University of Minnesota. She currently teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle. 
RAVI KITTAPPA is a composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electronic music currently residing in Portland, OR. While continually drawing upon the various musics of his diverse background, his interests in embodiment and corporeality of sound have resulted in a recent focus on “situational music” – pieces that embrace the proclivities, propensities, and specificities of the performer in relation to the audience and space in which each work is presented.
His music has been heard across the US, Europe, and Asia. The New York Times described the “vivid soundscapes” of a recent performance of his work, Decantations III, as ”alluring” and “meditative”. He has been commissioned and performed by violist Garth Knox, Ensemble dal Niente, andPlay, Talea Ensemble, Ostravská Banda, The Janacek Philharmonia, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Color Field Ensemble, Concert Black, TIGUE, Dutch National Opera and Chorus, and Parias Ensemble, among others. He has had sound art works commissioned and installed by The Baltimore Museum of Art, The American Visionary Art Museum, The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, and the Columbia University Computer Music Center. He has been honored to be selected as a participant at international festivals like Ostrava Days, Bowling Green New Music Festival, Etchings Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, MATA Festival, World Saxophone Congress, New Music Gathering, The Darmstadt Summer Courses, and the Bang on a Can Summer Institute. Also active as a guitarist and improviser, Ravi has performed alongside artists such as Fred Frith, Myra Melford, J. A. Deane, Daniel Carter, and Ritwik Banerji, among many others. In the spring of 2012, Ravi founded the bicoastal (NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles) performance series, Permutations, which he currently curates along with pianist, Karl Larson. Ravi created the soundtrack for director Jake Boritt’s 2013 film, The Gettysburg Story, a documentary narrated by Stephen Lang, that aired on Public Broadcasting stations throughout the US to coincide with The 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Ravi holds a Ph.D in music composition from University of California, Berkeley. He studied philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University and music at Columbia University. His composition teachers include Tristan Murail, Arthur Kampela, Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, David Wessel, and Ken Ueno. He has lectured on his work at academic institutions such as The Janacek Conservatory (Ostrava, Czech Republic), Columbia University, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Akademie für Tonkunst (Darmstadt, Germany), Silpakorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), Mahidol University (Bangkok, Thailand), and KM College of Music and Technology (Chennai, India). In 2018/19, Ravi was a visiting composer at Arts Academy of Prague (HAMU) through a fellowship from the J. William Fulbright Commission. In September of 2022, Ravi joined the faculty of Portland Community College in the Department of Music and Sonic Arts. 
Violinist LAURA HARADA enjoys a diverse musical life, currently performing with a variety of groups including local classical Arab ensemble Amwaaj and the National Arab Orchestra in Detroit, local Brazilian band Samba Meu, and world music ensemble Caravan. Her explorations span western classical to eastern microtonal music from the Arab, Turkish, and Iranian worlds, free jazz, Brazilian forró and Argentine tango, new music, and creative music of many kinds. Her wide-ranging experience encompasses work with dance and theater companies, music making for silent film, free improvisation with the great Douglas Ewart for the Merce Cunningham Dance Group, playing for events celebrating Butch Morris, Henry Threadgill, and George Lewis, and touring the US with Senegalese giant Youssou N’dour. As a member of improvising composers group Cherry Spoon Collective, Modern Spark Trio, and Michelle Kinney’s What We Have Here, she has explored new compositions with numerous local composers and enjoys her rare opportunities to perform new music with Zeitgeist. Ever curious, Laura is currently studying Integrated Alexander Technique and its helpfulness for musicians pursuing healthy music making.
Vocalist LIZ PEARSE has alternately been described as a “badass”, having “a near-psychic understanding of what a composer is trying to accomplish”, and possessing “a voice made of arrows forged in a volcanic pit, transforming the didactic and mundanely intellectual into actual fire”. After a childhood spent playing every instrument she could find, Liz has focused her career on exploring the infinite possibilities of the human voice.
Liz enjoys work as a solo artist and as a chamber musician, and has performed all over North America (from Canada to Mexico and coast-to-coast in the USA) and in both Europe and the United Kingdom. Though solo performance and self-accompanying is a large part of her practice, Liz has a voracious appetite for the camaraderie of chamber music, mostly with ensembles Quince and Damselfly Trio. When she’s not performing, Liz lives and teaches in the beautiful Driftless region of Minnesota. lizpearse.com Tickets can be securely purchased by credit card or through your PayPal account in advance, or by cash, check, or credit card at the door. Tickets purchased online will be held at the door.
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