Electric Earth Concerts
Great Music All Year Round for the Monadnock Region
Jonathan Bagg & Laura Gilbert, Artistic Directors
On November 20 violinist Jesse Mills & a large cast of EEC musicians performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for our long-time partner community at Plowshare Farm. A large group of residents was able to hear this brilliant baroque masterpiece in its entirety with their community surroundings.
Growing out of our response to COVID in 2021, many of our concerts are broadcast free of charge via an excellent sound system to listeners outside of the venue. This allows families with children and others who choose not to purchase indoor tickets to experience our music in a low-key, outdoor setting that welcomes newcomers to the world of live classical music. The audience is encouraged to bring chairs, blankets, and refreshments.
These concerts are funded in part by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.
Electric Earth Concerts has received an Art Works award of $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, for its project titled Changing the Conversation.
Changing the Conversation presents great and rarely heard works in a series of four concerts exploring the interplay of gender, race, politics, and aesthetics that has helped to shape the language of American music during the last 100 years.
We will highlight the voices of women composers who struggled to be heard in the early decades of the 20th century, black and brown composers who brought their identity to the classical music of their day, and “maverick” composers who worked outside European aesthetic parameters.
We look forward to bringing you Changing the Conversation over the course of this season and next, as conditions allow.
Saturday, July 25, 2020,
Olly Wilson’s “A City Called Heaven” for large ensemble, Ben Johnston’s classic “Amazing Grace” quartet, a setting of spirituals by Mark Kuss, and a work by Anthony Kelly touch on the underlying theme of Changing the Conversation: how the interplay of gender, race, politics, and aesthetics has helped to shape the language of American music.
Sunday, August 2, 2020,
American Mavericks—New Morse Code + Thomas Kotcheff, in a Videocast of contemporary works by Philip Glass, Frederic Rzewski, David Lang, Tonia Ko and Thomas Kotcheff.
Saturday, August 15, 2020,
Four women, two of them African American, cover a huge stylistic range despite all being born prior to 1920, when the 19th amendment gave the vote to women. Music of Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Undine Smith Moore, and Margaret Bonds. Part of a three-day commemoration of the suffrage centennial with events hosted by the Amos Fortune Forum, the Monadnock Lyceum, and Electric Earth Concerts. Featuring soprano Marlissa Hudson, and pianist Marvin Mills.
Saturday, December 5, 2020, 4:00 pm
Florence B. Price and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson contributed beautifully crafted work to the twentieth century repertoire but have not been widely celebrated; the Catalyst’s own Jessie Montgomery and Mexican composer Javier Álvarez complete this dynamic and eye-opening program.
Vocalist Jazimina MacNeil and violinist Marji Gere offered four Cranky Chamber Music! workshops for kids and adults. They took place at the Jaffrey Grade School (November 15), the Keene Community Kitchen (November 15); the Monadnock Academy of Movement Arts (November 16), and the Keene Public Library (November 16).
Cranky Chamber Music! is designed:
We’ve just been notified that our “Open Doors” project will receive funding from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, in their General Projects category. This is the third year that Open Doors has been honored by this support, which goes toward free concerts at community learning spaces that are targeted specifically to family audiences. These concerts are for families to experience together and are meant to evoke in new listeners the excitement, appreciation, and even reverence, that can accompany hearing powerful music-making in a concert setting. We believe that early experiences such as these can be crucial to developing a young person’s desire to seek out live music as a form of artistic engagement later in life.
Vocalist Jazimina MacNeil and storyteller Odds Bodkin brought their unique collaboration to three EEC partners on October 4 & 5. Danika the Rose weaves an original story created by master raconteur Odds, (Bradford NH), between the songs of a mesmerizing song cycle by Antonin Dvorak. Jazimina (who resides in Chesham, NH) along with soprano Sarah Schaefer and pianist Emely Phelps performed the full version with Odds at Plowshare Farm in Greenfield on Friday Oct 4; the next day they did the shorter children’s version at Lukas Community in Temple and the Harris Center in Hancock. The piece is a truly gripping experience that seamlessly melds two art forms! Many thanks to the New Hampshire State Council on the arts for supporting Electric Earth’s “Open Doors” programming!
The Putnam Foundation | The Gilbert Verney Foundation | The National Endowment for the Arts | The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation | The JWK Trust | Terra Nova Trust