The World of György Kurtág

Now in its third season, Marlboro Music’s artist residency program brings exceptional chamber music ensembles to Marlboro’s southern Vermont campus throughout the year for deep creative work, intensive study, and collaboration. Each group contains at least one Marlboro artist and remains in residence for one to three weeks, enjoying concentrated time together in a retreat-like environment where they can rehearse new programming, develop engagement projects, learn new repertoire, prepare for recordings, and present a culminating performance for the community.

This Marlboro Music residency performance centers on Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s settings of naturalist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg for soprano and double bass, accompanied by a new animated film by composer and animator Lembit Beecher. Also on the program will be settings of James Joyce by John Cage and Amy Beth Kirsten alongside Beecher’s “With Grandchildren,” all scored for soprano and double bass.

About the Artists

Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano

Noted for her “dazzling, virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe), Lucy Fitz Gibbon is a dynamic musician whose repertoire spans the Renaissance to the present. She believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the multiplicity and diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. As such, Ms. Fitz Gibbon has given U.S. premieres of rediscovered works by Baroque composers Francesco Sacrati, Barbara Strozzi, and Agostino Agazzari, as well by 20th-century composers including Tadeusz Kassern, Roman Palester, and Jean Barraqué. She has also worked closely with numerous others, workshopping and premiering works by a wide range of composers including John Harbison, Kate Soper, Sheila Silver, David Hertzberg, Reena Esmail, Roberto Sierra, Anna Lindemann, and Pauline Oliveros. In helping to realize the complexities of music beyond written notes, the experience of working with these composers translates to all music: the commitment to faithfully communicate not only the score, but also the underlying intentions of its creator.

William Langlie-Miletch, double bass

William Langlie-Miletich joined the Seattle Symphony bass section in the fall of 2019. He studied with Harold Robinson and Edgar Meyer at the Curtis Institute of Music where he was admitted at age 16 as the Milton Levy Fellow. A Seattle native, Will also studied double bass with Todd Gowers of Seattle Pacific University and participated in the Seattle Symphony’s Merriman Young Composers workshop. An avid chamber musician, Will has participated at Marlboro and performed at festivals such as ChamberFest Cleveland and Music in the Vineyards in Napa, California. Will has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and has attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute, and the Domaine Forget International Music Academy in Quebec, Canada.

Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, piano, A/V, and documentation

Pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough has developed a rich musical life as soloist, vocal and instrumental collaborator, composer and arranger, and pedagogue. Ryan’s growing discography features many world premiere recordings, including solo piano works of Milosz Magin (Acte Prealable), Andrew McPherson (Secrets of Antikythera, Innova), John Liberatore (Line Drawings, Albany), Nicholas Vines (Hipster Zombies from Mars, Navona), art song and solo piano music of John Harbison and James Primosch (Descent/Return, Albany), and art song by Sheila Silver (Beauty Intolerable, Albany). He is also founder of False Azure Records, dedicated to recordings of new and unusual works, with a catalogue spanning from Handel to Stockhausen and beyond. Ryan has appeared on PBS’s Great Performances (Now Hear This, “The Schubert Generation”) and is an alumnus of NPR’s From the Top. He has also appeared as concerto soloist has appeared with major orchestras, including with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, is a frequent collaborator with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has performed at the Tanglewood Music Center, Kneisel Hall, and Marlboro Music Festival. Ryan is on the faculty at Bard College Conservatory.

Lembit Beecher, composer and animation

Estonian-American composer and animator Lembit Beecher writes “hauntingly lovely and deeply personal” music (San Francisco Chronicle) that stems from a fascination with the ways memories, histories, and stories permeate our contemporary lives. Threading together fragments of family lore, distantly experienced legends, imagery, and songs from Estonian folk culture, and explorations of place, migration, natural processes, and ecology, he has created an idiosyncratic and thoughtful musical language full of fragile lyricism, propulsive energy, and visceral emotions, which draws raves for its “astonishing musical invention” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and “exquisite touches” (San Francisco Chronicle). Noted for his collaborative spirit and “ingenious” interdisciplinary projects (Wall Street Journal), Lembit has served three-year terms as the Music Alive composer-in-residence of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the inaugural composer-in-residence of Opera Philadelphia. Recent premieres include “Tell Me Again” for cellist Karen Ouzounian and the Orlando Philharmonic, “A Year to the Day,” a song cycle with librettist Mark Campbell, written for tenor Nicholas Phan and violinist Augustin Hadelich, and string quartets for the Juilliard, Aizuri and Lydian quartets. Active also as a pianist and animator, Lembit has created stop-motion animations for the Experiential Orchestra, Aizuri Quartet, Decoda, Music on the Strait, and violinist/composer Michelle Ross.