Anansi and the Great Light, produced by The Curtis Institute of Music’s Family Concert Series, explored a new model for community involvement in the creative process. As the composer of the opera and a Community Artist Fellow at Curtis, Nick designed a series of residency workshops that involved students at Girard College in North Philadelphia in every phase of the work’s creation. Girard students directly contributed to the libretto and to the score for Anansi through fun, interactive activities. High school students at Girard designed and created the set for the opera, and elementary school students experienced the opera firsthand, performing as a children’s choir in the role of Nyame, the god of all things. Nick detailed the collaborative creative process for this opera in an article for Curtis’ magazine, Overtones. If you’d like to read more, explore Nick’s article, “Doing Opera.”

Synopsis:

Esi and Afia, daughters of Anansi the Spider, worked together to save their father from an unfortunate mishap. Anansi wants to reward the daughter who saved him; only he can’t decide which one was more heroic than the other. The god of all things, Nyame, tries to help Anansi see that his daughters saved him through teamwork and should share the prize; the great light. As Anansi and his daughters argue about who deserves the light, Nyame decides that none of them deserve it since they cannot see the value of sharing. Nyame takes the light to live in the sky for all the world’s creatures to remember how important it is to share. This great light in the sky is the one we call moon.

-Kanika Ambrose, librettist

Cityscaping is the culmination of years of effort by Nick and The Brass Project to bring engaging, adventurous new music to a wide audience. Nick initiated this commissioning and performance project with a desire to amplify many different composers’ voices, bringing their music to new listeners outside the concert hall. True to that vision, The Brass Project has performed these thirty-two new works in dozens of public concerts across New Mexico and Philadelphia in a variety of non-traditional spaces—public parks, schools, markets, and the like—and premiered twenty-six of these works in an art gallery concert hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "superb."​

Nick asked the composers for Cityscaping to write music they imagined might be performed in a public space, perhaps even outdoors. This imagined scenario of outdoor performances in civic spaces hearkens back to an era when participation in town bands and other forms of civic music was a central part of American culture. Nick also asked that they keep their works short – roughly three minutes in length - in order to showcase today’s wide range of compelling genres in an approachable way. Nick hopes this program can encourage a fresh mode of engagement with new music; you may even think of it as a kind of sonic tasting menu.

The composers who contributed works to this project are all very accomplished and write with beautifully distinct voices. We’re confident you’ll thoroughly enjoy these brief musical offerings. They may even inspire you, encouraging you to further explore the fascinating worlds of chamber brass and contemporary music. To listen, check out The Brass Project’s debut album Cityscaping on CDBaby or your favorite streaming platform.

Composer Contributors

Suite Talk is a project aimed at engaging a wide audience with new music for solo cello by telling the stories of its creation and its relationship to music of the past. Nick and cellist Zachary Mowitz lead audiences through a program specifically curated to demystify two new works: Nick’s Oracle, and Ira J. Mowitz’s Suite for Solo Cello. Produced in collaboration with the Free Library of Philadelphia, this lecture recital series invited participants to discover how this new music connects to the rich legacy of the cello's past. During each interactive performance, Zachary played excerpts by Bach, Gabrielli, Britten, Saariaho, and others that illuminated connections and innovations across many musical eras. Listeners were invited to talk, dance, and clap along, clarifying musical concepts in their own bodies.

In 2019, Suite Talk was presented in various forms at a diverse range of venues, including shows in Philadelphia at the Free Library, Old City Coffee, Dhyana Yoga, Andrea Clearfield’s Music Salon, and in a special presentation for Penn Memory Center community members in Curtis’ Field Concert Hall. Outside Philly, the program was presented on a segment at Indianapolis’ Chatterbox Jazz Club and at the Colorado Music Festival. Nick and Zachary share the goal of reaching many new listeners, exploring how informed listening can enrich our experience of music and its connections to broader culture and contemporary society. 

Zachary and Nick have bold ideas about expanding the impact of new music beyond the concert hall. To better extend the project’s reach, they are in the process of producing a multi-part Suite Talk podcast, to air next season. The podcast will feature performance demonstrations, historical discussions, and insight from Zachary and Nick, as well as interviews with experts from around the world. The podcast will conclude by broadcasting studio recordings of the new works by Nick and Ira. Also look out for a full album, to be released later in the season!