AGO Live: Kollwitz-Konnex ...im Frieden seiner Hände
Käthe Kollwitz. Self Portrait, 1924. Lithograph on laid paper, Sheet: 60.9 × 44.7 cm. Promised Gift of Dr. Brian McCrindle. Image © Art Gallery of Ontario; Steven Thachuk courtesy of the artist; Anne Harley courtesy of the artist.
AGO Live: Kollwitz-Konnex ...im Frieden seiner Hände
Join soprano Anne Harley and guitarist Steve Thachuk for the Canadian premiere of this powerful multi-faceted song-cycle composed by Ralf Yusuf Gawlick in 2013. Based on passages selected from Käthe Kollwitz’s diary and letters, the performance is linked to nine of the artist‘s self-portraits and spans her entire creative career.
Original artworks by Kollwitz that inspired the song-cycle will be on view. The performance complements the current AGO exhibition: Becoming Käthe Kollwitz
Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts
About the Performers:
Canadian scholar-performer, director, and educator, Anne Harley specializes in new music performance, and has premiered, performed, and recorded works by contemporary composers Ziporyn, Adams, Gawlick, Andriessen, Eotvös, Harbison, and recorded for Hänssler Profil, Naxos, Sony Classics, Canteloupe, Musica Omnia, einKlang, and BMOP/sound. Harley is associate professor at Scripps College, California, where she teaches interdisciplinary humanities and voice performance. In 2012, she founded the commissioning project, Voices of the Pearl. The project creates new musical settings of texts by and about female esoteric practitioners from all traditions. www.anneharley.com
Steven Thachuk is known as one of Canada’s most adventurous and versatile guitarists and has an international reputation as a leading teacher, arranger and pedagogue of the instrument. He performs with the Meyer/Thachuk Guitar Duo and is Professor of Guitar and Chair of Guitar Studies at California State University, Northridge
About the Composer:
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick, of Romani-Kurdish descent, was born in Germany in 1969. His works include solo, chamber, orchestral and choral music, traversing a wide range of styles and often exploring aspects of his complex international heritage. His music, published by several firms, has been performed internationally (in venues including Vienna’s Musikverein, New York’s Carnegie Hall) and is recorded on the Musica Omnia label in composer-supervised performances by the works’ dedicatees. A professor at Boston College, Ralf Gawlick lives in Newton, MA, with his wife and fellow musician, Basia.
