The free admission concert features new music by MunirBeken, Harry Bulow, Andrea Clearfield and Max Lifchitz
NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, January 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The North/South Chamber Orchestra will celebrate the New Year with a free-admission concert on Monday evening, January 12, featuring recent compositions by Munir Beken, Harry Bulow, Andrea Clearfield, and Max Lifchitz.
The event will begin at 7:00 PM and is expected to conclude around 8:30 PM.
It will take place 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.
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC
Munir Beken is a faculty member at the Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the State Turkish Music Ensemble in Istanbul and a leading ud soloist, performing concerts throughout the United States. Beken’s Bachianas Turcas merges Turkish modal music (makam) with Bach’s contrapuntal style. The composer beautifully imagines what the German Baroque genius would have created had he been born and lived in 18th-century Turkey, blending cultures in an inspiring way.
Harry Bulow, a composer and saxophonist, has received grants and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, and the Trieste International Composers Competition in Italy. He is currently a professor at Purdue University and studied under renowned figures Aaron Copland and Henry Lazarof at the University of California, Los Angeles. Bulow’s Chaconne for Strings is a contemplative piece built around an eight-measure harmonic progression in ternary time. Like the well-known Baroque Chaconne, this work showcases lyrical melodic figures that lend it a free-flowing quality, interspersed with clear points of resolution. The opening theme recurs at the end of the piece.
Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning American composer known for her work in opera, orchestral music, choral arrangements, chamber ensembles, dance, and multimedia collaborations. The New York Times has praised her for her “graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has highlighted her “compositional wizardry,” “mastery with large choral and instrumental forces,” and “stunning premieres.” Opera News has described her work as “vivid and galvanizing,” while the L.A. Times has commended her for her “fluid and glistening orchestration.” Clearfield’s “If Each Day Falls Inside Each Night” was inspired by a poem and a work of art that deeply resonated with her. Both explore the idea of retrieving and reaching for points of light from a place of darkness. The poem, from which the work takes its name, is by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. In it, Neruda describes a well, formed by the descent of day into the embrace of night. He encourages us to sit at the edge of this well of darkness, where clarity is trapped, and to fish for the fallen light patiently. In 2020, Mia Bosna created evocative artwork titled “Reaching Through” that complements this theme. The composer states that as she was writing this piece, she “felt a deep, almost aching compassion for humanity and this world– and always the possibility of light.”
Max Lifchitz is the founder and director of the North/South Chamber Orchestra. He has performed as a pianist on concert stages across Europe and the Americas. 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.
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 City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as grants from the Music Performance Fund, the Zethus 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/
North South Consonance
North/South Consonance, Inc
nsinfo@northsouthmusic.org
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