Exceptet Tree Lines Album Release Concert with Kyra Sims

DOORS 7PM | OPENING SET 8PM

Exceptet is thrilled to present the album release concert for their debut record, Tree Lines!

The concert will feature pieces from the album released on the New Focus Recordings label on January 17, 2025, and an opening solo set by Kyra Sims.

Featuring commissioned works by composers Katherine Balch, Paul Kerekes, and Sarah Goldfeather, Exceptet’s first record offers three different sonic explorations of the septet’s unique instrumentation, rooted in Stravinsky’s iconic L’Histoire du soldat.

“This recording is a statement for us,” said Goldfeather, Exceptet’s co-founder, Artistic Director violinist, and one of the featured composers. “While we maintain one foot in the classical tradition, paying homage to a seminal work of 20th-century music, we also aim to demonstrate just how much further there is to go. This album shows the wide scope of sound worlds and intricate tonal and timbral possibilities made possible with an ensemble like ours.” Goldfeather continued, “It’s also a culmination of our first ten years as a chamber group. The works on this disc span from one of our initial commissions through to our most recent. Tree Lines is a portrait album of who we were, who we’ve become, and a taste of what the next ten years will be.”

The album opens with Mouth Full of Ears, written by Goldfeather and featuring her as both violinist and singer. The piece explores the temptation to repeat the hollow words one hears from others and appeals to the listener to think independently. “You chew on the words/and tell us what you hear,” she sings over Exceptet’s carnivalesque, rock-inflected raucousness, “but it’s hard to understand you/when your mouth is full of ears.”

Paul Kerekes’s figment was written for Exceptet’s debut concert. “It has a very whimsical nature about it,” said Kerekes, “which partly came from the lightheartedness of the group, but also the quirkiness of this particular combination of instruments. As a composer, I found it hard not to think of the instrumentation’s roots in Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat.” Throughout the piece, Kerekes forms distinct, rustic connections between instruments to achieve layered sounds with bursts of color. “figment is a fantasy on the soul of this ensemble,” he said.

The album closes with Exceptet’s most ambitious piece to date, Tree Lines by Katherine Balch. Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, Tree Lines is an ode to old-growth trees. Each of its eleven short movements focuses on a different tree: Yew, Bristlecone, Oak, Foxtail, Cypress, Juniper, Jequitibá, Baobab, Larch, and Sequioa. About Tree Lines, Balch said, “I suppose the only way I can approach trying to capture the idea of something that lives so long is to write something very short—the duration of my lived experience in relation to theirs.” Balch, in contrast to the bombastic Mouth Full of Ears and playful figment, pushes Exceptet to its most sparse and focused playing, finding new colors and textures in a group she describes as “a miniature chamber orchestra.”

Exceptet is Chuck Furlong, Sarah Goldfeather, Evan Honse, Dan Linden, Allison Nicotera, Evan Runyon, and David Stevens.

Host or Publisher Littlefield