Electric Earth Concerts

Great Music All Year Round for the Monadnock Region

Jonathan Bagg & Laura Gilbert, Artistic Directors

News

Jesse Mills and Rieko Aizawa spread magic in Temple

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Rieko Aizaw and Jesse Mills, who have appeared as “Duo Prism” often in NH under the EEC banner, gave yet another magical performance at the Lukas Community in Temple, one of EEC’s partners in our Open Doors program (made possible by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts). The residents of Lukas have been sharing their wonderful performance space with Electric Earth since 2012, our very first year. Mills and Aizawa come from New York at least once a year to perform at EEC, and rarely miss the chance to perform on one of our Open Doors concerts. They are truly a wonderful pair!

Building community at the Root

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On August 11, EEC musicians Stacey Shames, harp and Artistic Directors Laura Gilbert & Jonathan Bagg performed a free concert at the Root Cafe in Temple. The Root has become an impromptu community-building space for Temple and residents of surrounding towns through its commitment to hosting music-making of all sorts. EEC’s “Open Doors” concerts are sponsored by the NH State Council on the Arts.

Electric Earth receives Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

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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.

Canceled: Spiritual Voices

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.

Videocast: American Mavericks

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.

Videocast: Ladies on the Move

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.

Videocast: Catalyst Quartet, Uncovered

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.

EEC receives NH State Arts Council Grant

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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.

Danika the Rose

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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!

Supported by

The Putnam Foundation  |  The Gilbert Verney Foundation  |  The National Endowment for the Arts  |  The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation  |  The JWK Trust  |  Terra Nova Trust