LutosAir Quintet invites you to an evening of chamber music inspired by the culture of the New World. This American themed concert will include Polish highlights, including the work of Kazimierz Macala. Macala is a French horn player, composer, and lecturer at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. He graduated from the Juilliard School in New York and has worked as a lecturer at a number of American universities. In his piece, American Folk Suite, he makes use of many popular traditional American tunes. Another Polish work that will be performed is Mini-Quintetto by Józef Świder, an artist associated with the Academy of Music. K. Szymanowski in Katowice. This seven-part wind quintet was revised in 2016 when after twenty-two years the composer decided to review the work and add two additional parts.
In Addition to the works by Polish composers, the program will include the premiere of the latest work by Paul Preusser. A native of Denver, Colorado, the artist has lived in Wrocław for years and graduated from the Academy of Music. K. Lipinski. He currently he serves as a lecturer specializing in American music of the 20th and 21st centuries. The composer, fascinated with the sound of the wind quintet, associates each instrument with their extremely distinctive timbres. In his latest work, Preusser emphasizes the individual sound of wind instruments, entrusting them with different parts in terms of pace and rhythm. The distinct rhythmic patterns at times coincide and then gradually develop into very complex rhythmic structures, creating a composition of a meditative character. The work aims to get the listener to experience music as a moment of sound, much like the impressionist Mark Rothko, wanted observers to focus on the depth and intensity of his colours.
La Nouvelle Orleans, a tribute to jazz music, written by Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin takes listeners on an amazing journey to the home city of Louis Armstrong, New Orleans, the cradle of jazz. In the work, Schifrin references dance music from bossa nova, through jazz and rock. The composer is also known, among others, as the creator of music for the series Mission: Impossible. He is the winner of four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations.
The finale of the evening will feature the music of Kurt Weill, a German artist, who settled in the United States in the mid-1930s. The artist eagerly drew inspiration from jazz music and presents a great deal of irony, parody, and exaggerates well-known patterns of European traditions. The work featured is his most famous piece, The Three Penny Opera.