APERIO, Music of the Americas in partnership with Stages Repertory Theatre presents Tangos & Provocations an evening of entertaining and irreverent contemporary works for chamber music ensemble and actors, featuring music by American composers Aaron Jay Kernis and Robert Xavier Rodriguez.

Aaron Jay Kernis’ Le Quattro Stagioni della Cucina Futurismo (The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine) is an outrageous work first performed in 1991. Scored for violin, cello, piano, and narrator, it's a setting of Italian artist F.T. Marinetti's "cookbook" cum artistic manifesto. In these texts, Marinetti seems to be asking, "What should our gleamingly efficient new art taste like?" The result is brilliantly surreal – a synesthetic banquet, if you will. Kernis leaps into the fray with both feet, composing music that is at times fiery, at times tender, but never far from nose-thumbing mockery. He has a great deal of fun quoting other composers – everyone from Bruckner to Chopin – but no matter how absurd it all seems, perhaps Kernis is saying that the right combination of familiar ingredients can give rise to the most wonderfully unfamiliar stews. - Raymond Tuttle, Classical.net

Robert X. Rodriguez’s Tango! (1985) is a one-act comic opera for tenor and chamber ensemble. The text was compiled by the composer from actual news clippings, letters and sermons from the height of the tango craze (1913–14). There are three short scenes played without pause. The central role, performed by tenor Tony Boutté, hilariously explores a variety of roles ranging from elegant tango dancers to radio newscasters and religious prelates, while chronicling social mores surrounding the dance. Wayne Lee Gay (Fort Worth Star- Telegram) wrote “Tango presents, with both musical and verbal humor, the triumph of sensuality and frivolity over clerical pomposity. It is a light-hearted piece by a very serious composer and, as such, may well prove to be one of the treasures of our time.” 

PROGRAM

WEILL - Youkali for soprano, piano trio, and percussion (arr. Suits)
KERNIS - Speed Limit Rag
BOLCOM - George
SCHOENFIELD - Cafe Music - Andante moderato for piano trio
KERNIS - Le Quattro Stagioni dalla Cucina Futurismo (The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine) for narrator, violin, cello, and piano
RODRIGUEZ - Tango! for tenor and chamber ensemble

PERFORMERS

MICHAEL ZURAW piano & artistic director | MARLON CHEN conductor
CAROLYN JOHNSON actor & mezzo-soprano
KIRSTEN YON violin | ARIANA NELSON cello | JESSICA XYLINA OSBORNE piano 
TONY BOUTTÉ tenor | JAYA VARMA violin | LANA KUSCER flute
JULIAN HERNANDEZ clarinet | DANIEL SAENZ cello | MARTINA LI accordion
BRIAN BANOWETZ piano | CRAIG HAUSCHILDT percussion

photo: Lynn Lane