Volta Trio will be convening in Rochester tonight to rehearse for Friday's performance at Georgetown University.  
Our program includes the two trio movements of John Cage's "Amores," two movements of Eugene Novotney's "Intentions," Mark Applebaum's "Catfish," Toru Takemitsu's "Rain Tree," Rüdiger Pawassar's "Sculpture 3," J.S. Bach's "Fugue No. 24, BWV 893" and Baljinder Sekhon's "Sun."
Tomorrow (Thursday), we'll be making the drive down to the University of Maryland, where we will be rehearsing and borrowing some of their instruments for the performance (a big shout out to Lee Hinkle and the University of Maryland for letting us use their instruments!  Thanks so much!).  Our Georgetown University performance begins at 1:15pm at the McNeir Auditorium on Friday, 11/4/11.  Hope to see some of you there!

-Chris

What an event!  The University of Rochester has truly outdone themselves.  Tonight's celebration, part of Meliora Weekend at the University of Rochester, was held at Goergen Athletic Center.  But for tonight, the GAC was transformed into an elegant hall, complete with buffet tables, a creme brulee station with torch-wielding chefs, a huge stage with 3 cameramen and 2 big screens that flanked the stage.  
And what a pleasure it was to work with Hannah Weaver and Christian Covington!  Nice people and awesome players!  I'm proud to call them my friends.  
We performed Sculpture 3, two movements of Amores and Stubernic tonight.  Our performance was received well, and we had a blast!

Inuksuit at Morningside Park was a blast!  Click HERE to read more about the performance.

In other news, we finally uploaded our performance of "The Glory and the Grandeur" with the Eastman Wind Ensemble onto YouTube.

Just got back from rehearsals in New York City with Sean and Erik (and 96 other percussionists) for John Luther Adams's "Inuksuit."  We'll be performing the piece at Morningside Park (the piece is meant to be performed outdoors) as part of the Make Music New York festival tomorrow, June 21st, at 5:00pm.

Here's a short video about the upcoming performance:

Hey Volta fans, it's Chris Clarino.  Welcome to the Volta blog!  We'll keep you up-to-date with everything we're doing right here.

We've had a lot in the planning over the last few weeks:


•  Thanks to some much-needed funding from Dean Lowry at The Eastman School of Music, Volta Trio will be competing in the 2012 International Percussion Competition in Luxembourg.  We're very excited about this, and we'll be meeting up later this week to discuss repertoire.

•  Our commission with composer Baljinder Sekhon is finished!  Our new piece, SUN, is a 12-minute tour-de-force for percussion trio.  Each player has a keyboard instrument (marimba, vibraphone, and xylophone) as well as a skin, metal, wood and a few other things.  One of the most intriguing aspects of the piece is the "very large cymbal" in the center of the setup, shared by all players.  We will be working with Baljinder in early July to make an audio/video recording of the piece.  

•  The three of us will be traveling down to NYC to perform in John Luther Adams's "Inuksuit" in Morningside Park, as part of Make Music New York.  The piece is scored for 9 to 99 percussionists.  Last summer, we made the premiere recording of JLA's "Always Very Soft" and gave the New York premiere last March, so we're super excited to finally meet him in person.

•  We're working on a grant proposal through the Orange County (NY) Arts Council to present a 5-concert tour at various venues across the county.  So far, we've got the Up Front Exhibition Space and Valley Central High School on board as venues.

•  Have any recommendations for repertoire?  Let us know!


-Chris