ALL THE WRONG NOTES: Charles Ives at 150

Name: ALL THE WRONG NOTES: Charles Ives at 150
Start: 2024-11-12T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Barnes Hall

Schedule

Tue Nov 12 2024 at 07:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Barnes Hall | Ithaca, NY

In four concerts, ALL THE WRONG NOTES: Charles Ives at 150 celebrates the 150th anniversary of composer, keyboardist, actuary, and businessman Charles Ives. Largely rejected in his youth, this native son of green New England famously gained renown only later in life and is today remembered as an iconoclast of American music. Ives’ musical agenda might best be summed up by the Connecticut minister who programmed Ives over the protests of his congregation: “God gets awfully tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.” Ives was a relentless visionary yet also a traditionalist, worshiping Beethoven and turning up his nose at Ravel and Schoenberg, whose music he claimed he never heard. Described variously as “gibberish,” “impossible,” like “awfully indigestible food,” Ives’ works draw directly from European techniques and suffuses them with the spirit and sounds of early 20th-century America, quoting popular tunes, band music, revival hymns, barn dances, and ragtime, invoking memories of holidays and parades alongside references to Transcendentalist philosophy.
ALL THE WRONG NOTES: Charles Ives at 150 concludes on Nov. 12 with Charles Ives’ rambunctious and devilish Piano Trio, performed by Boston-based Trio Gaia (Grant Houston, Yi-Mei Templeman, and Ariel Mo). Also on the program is Ives' Decoration Day, arranged for violin and piano (Xak Bjerken and Grant Houston), Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by Frederic Rzewski (Isaac William Dorio), “The Alcotts” from Ives’ Concord Sonata (Federico Ercoli), and a new premiere by doctoral composer Jasmine Morris (Ariel Mo).