join us for a pre-concert talk at 6:45 pm
Earplay is dedicated to the performance and recording of new chamber music. It’s an evolving genre where composers and musicians freely experiment with musical structure, rhythm, and sounds, challenging the audience to broaden its concept of music with new emotional and auditory experiences. Earplay concerts feature the Earplayers, a group of artists whose lyrical and ferocious style provides eloquent, vivid performances of today’s finest chamber music. Founded in 1985 by a consortium of composers and musicians, Earplay has performed over 600 works by more than 350 composers in its 38-year history, including 158 world premieres and 93 new works commissioned by the ensemble.
Their program New Conversations features a World Premiere for sextet and voice by composer/singer Erin Gee, who joins Earplay with her signature vocal style in her new work commissioned by the From Music Foundation at Harvard for Earplay. Sami Seif’s Syriac Fugato for violin and viola receives its San Francisco Premiere. Praised in the press as a distinctive creator of “intoxicating and fascinating soundscapes”, Sami Seif is the winner of this year’s Vibrant Shores competition. Earplay celebrates the life of George Walker (1922-2018), the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in music, with a performance of his 1966 work Perimeters. Finally, Earplay presents a World Premiere by Byron Au Yong, a composer of works described as “intimate and existential, personal and political all at once” by Variety Magazine.