Michael Hersch: SCARS PLUMMET TO THE CORNERS

Michael Hersch SCARS PLUMMET TO THE CORNERS (2020) for flute and piano

(NEW YORK PREMIERE)

Commissioned by the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC)

Emi Ferguson, flute

Jacob Rhodebeck, piano

Five years after its completion in 2020, AMOC presents the New York premiere of Michael Hersch's pandemic-era meditation in its entirety. The work, Hersch's unflinching and virtuosic engagement with an event unprecedented in the modern era, is performed by two of the most gifted musicians working today.

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"music of introverted intensity" - The New Yorker

"... that evening’s high point came in the form of two movements from Michael Hersch’s moving 'scars plummet to the corners,' for piano and flute. The musical trajectory moves from tender to tough to chillingly still and mysterious in its slow, lingering final section. This late-night juncture was one of those magical Ojai moments, when the ambient cricket chorus in Libbey Bowl and a beaming moon overhead seem like interactive elements with the music." - San Francisco Classical Voice
"A highlight of Thursday night’s program — and the festival ... Michael Hersch’s profound, mind-altering flute-piano piece 'Scars Plummet to the Corners'"- The Santa Barbara Independent

About the Musicians:

EMI FERGUSON
Hailed by critics for her “tonal bloom” and “hauntingly beautiful performances,” English-American performer and composer Emi Ferguson stretches the boundaries of what is expected of modern-day musicians. A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Emi can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society, AMOC*, Ruckus, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Players, and as the music director of Camerata Pacifica Baroque. Her recordings Amour Cruel and Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present and have been called “blindingly impressive ... a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by The New York Times. Emi has spoken and performed at TEDx events and has been featured on the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series “This Composer is SICK!” with Max Fine, exploring the impact of Syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedřich Smetana, and Scott Joplin, is a new host of WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. Her book, “Iconic Composers”, co-written with Nicholas Csicsko with artwork by David Lee Csicsko, was released in 2023. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York.

JACOB RHODEBECKJacob Rhodebeck is a pianist known for his tremendous command of the instrument and his enthusiasm for performing new and little known music. Jacob's performance of Michael Hersch’s 3-hour solo piano work, The Vanishing Pavilions was described as "astounding" by The Philadelphia Inquirer and “searing” by The New York Times. Highly active in the world of new music, Jacob has recently worked with the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble in performances of music by John Luther Adams and Per Nørgård, and has collaborated with composers such as Mason Bates, Christopher Bailey, and Lukas Ligeti, amongst many others. He was a member of the contemporary piano/percussion ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and has worked with many other contemporary music ensembles including Wet Ink, Composers Concordance, and counter)induction. Jacob has given performances, lectures, and masterclasses at many universities, including Hamilton College, Vanderbilt University, and the Peabody Institute. He can also be heard on numerous recordings including Lost Dog New Music Ensemble's “Chamber Music of Philippe Bodin”, Yarn/Wire's debut recording Tonebuilders, Stony Brook Soundings Vol. 1 with the Escher String Quartet, and Christopher Bailey's album of piano works, "Glimmering Webs".

MICHAEL HERSCH
A composer of “uncompromising brilliance” (The Washington Post) whose work has been described by The New York Times as “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music ... claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity,” Michael Hersch is widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation. Composer Georg Friedrich Haas has written that Hersch “is the explorer of an unconditional, radical expressivity that reveals the human abyss without any palliation.” Recent events include his Violin Concerto at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris, and the Avanti Festival in Helsinki; productions of his two-act monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter in New York, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C., and his elegy I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals. Other premieres include his 11-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves, at the 2019 Wien Modern Festival and in 2023 at National Sawdust in NYC. In 2021, the composer’s opera, Poppaea, premiered in Vienna and Basel in a co-production of the ZeitRäume Basel and Wien Modern Festivals. He has been the Composer-in-Residence with the Camerata Bern, his work Agatha premiering in Bern and Geneva. Other major projects include those for Ensemble Phoenix Basel and a new opera, Medea, for Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg and Ensemble Musikfabrik. In 2024/25, his most recent opera, and we, each, written for Ah Young Hong after texts by Shane McCrae, premiered in Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York. Hersch came to international attention at age twenty-five, when he was awarded First Prize in the Concordia American Composers Awards. The award resulted in a performance of his Elegy, conducted by Marin Alsop in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Later that year he became one of the youngest recipients ever of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. He has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Host or Publisher American Modern Opera Company