APERIO, Music of the Americas PRESENTS a special streaming event,
SEVEN LIMBS By Douglas J. CUomo, featuring guitarist
nels cline (wilco) & the grammy-nominated aizuri quartet

Douglas J. Cuomo’s Seven Limbs is a virtuosic tour de force for string quartet and the guitar, shot through with melodic beauty and rhythmic urgency, celebration and serenity, solemnity, and unbridled joy. Juxtaposing the wildly inventive guitar playing of Nels Cline - lead guitar for the acclaimed indie band Wilco - with the Aizuri Quartet’s classically-based, forward-thinking musical outlook, Seven Limbs sets these five expert musicians in a landscape that is slightly unfamiliar - where the ground under their feet is always shifting in unexpected ways. Based on the Tibetan Buddhist fundamental practice of purification, Seven Limbs is a musical ritual in seven movements. The limbs are Prostration; Offering; Confession; Rejoicing; Requesting the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma; Beseeching the Buddhas not to pass away; and Dedication.

PROGRAM

Seven Limbs by Douglas J. Cuomo

PERFORMERS
Nels Cline, guitar
The Aizuri Quartet
Emma Frucht, violin 1 | Miho Saegusa, violin 2
Ayane Kozosa, viola | Karen Ouzounian, cello

TICKETS
$10 General Admission

Artist Bios:

Nels Cline (guitar):
Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career — spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental — is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods”; and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Beyond Wilco, Cline performs in a duo project with guitarist Julian Lage in addition to a quartet, The Nels Cline 4 (featuring Lage plus bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Tom Rainey), collaborates with his partner Yuka Honda as the duo CUP, performs as Stretch Woven with percussionist Scott Amendola, leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Amendola plus bassist Trevor Dunn and percussionist Cyro Baptista) and plays with Stained Radiance (an improvisational live project with performance painter Norton Wisdom). Cline also periodically presents concerts of his concept album Lovers, which involves a 17-person ensemble and collaborates with dozens of composers/improvisers.

Aizuri Quartet:
Praised by The Washington Post for “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique, and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was awarded the Grand Prize and the CAG Management Prize at the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, along with top prizes at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan, and the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London. The Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, featuring new works written for the Aizuri Quartet by five American composers, was released by New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY Award. Through its engaging and thought-provoking programs, branded by The New York Times as “genuinely exciting” and “imaginative,” the Quartet has garnered critical acclaim for bringing “a technical bravado and emotional power” to bold new commissions, and for its “flawless” (San Diego Union-Tribune) performances of the great masterpieces of the past. In the 2019-20 season the group will tour extensively across North America giving both debut appearances at Lincoln Center and at Carnegie Hall as part of CAG Winner’s Series.

Douglas J Cuomo (composer):
Douglas J. Cuomo has composed for concert and theatrical stages, television, and film. His music, with influences from jazz, world music, classical, and popular sources, is as personal, distinctive, and recognizable as it is wide-ranging. His compositions range from evening-length works for theater, including the opera Doubt, (premiere at Minnesota Opera in 2013); Arjuna’s Dilemma, a chamber opera based on the story of the Bhagavad Gita, (premiere at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 2008); Black Diamond Express Train to Hell, (premiere 2010 at Carnegie Hall by American Composers Orchestra) a single movement concerto featuring cellist Maya Beiser and a sampled recording of a 1927 preacher’s sermon; and Savage Winter, (premiere 2018 at Pittsburgh Opera) a staged interpretation of Wilhelm Mueller’s Winterreise poems for tenor, electronics, loops, and electric guitar, keyboards and trumpet. His concerto for saxophone and orchestra will be premiered in London in 2022 with further performances planned in the US. Cuomo composed the music for Sex in the City and seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street as well as over twenty feature films. His last film score was for the award-winning film The Pollinators. Douglas J Cuomo is published by Schott Music.