For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Leslie Weddell
(719) 389-6038
Leslie.Weddell@ColoradoCollege.edu
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Jan. 30, 2009 – The Bowed Piano Ensemble, Colorado College’s internationally recognized experimental music group, will be joined by soprano 
soloist Victoria Hansen in a preview concert of their 2009 international tour at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 10 in Packard Hall, 5 W. Cache La Poudre St., located on the Colorado College campus. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required and available at the information desk at the Worner Campus Center, 902 N. Cascade Ave.
Bowed Piano Ensemble Director Stephen Scott was recently named the USA Simon Fellow by the United States Artists foundation. He will lead the ensemble on a 2009 tour that includes concerts in New York State, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania and Germany.
The program will feature Scott’s new work, “Aurora Ficta,” his “New York Drones,” a work celebrating the 70th birthday of composer Steve Reich and premiered by the ensemble at The Allen Room (Jazz at Lincoln Center) in 2006, and excerpts from his song cycle “The Deep Spaces,” premiered by Hansen and the ensemble in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2005 and released on New Albion Records in 2007.
Scott, Hansen and the Bowed Piano Ensemble have toured and broadcast widely in Europe, Australia and North America, and earned many favorable reviews in such publications as Gramophone, The American Record Guide, Wired Magazine, Fanfare, High Fidelity, The New York Times, The Independent (London), The Financial Times of London, The Los Angeles Times and Keyboard. They also have performed on National Public Radio and PBS, and on film and network television. Major festival performances include Spoleto Festival USA, Berliner Festspiele, Almeida Opera Festival (London), ppIANISSIMO (Sofia, Bulgaria), the Visual Music Festival (Canary Islands) and Other Minds (San Francisco).
Craig Smith of the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote in his review of the recording of “The Deep Spaces,” “The effect is magical and the performance compelling, conveying the wonder and sense of place that inspires all Scott’s work and that yields note spinning in the best sense of the term. Soprano Victoria Hansen delivers the texts by Pliny, Wordsworth, Byron, Mary Shelley and contemporary New York poet Pablo Medina with admirable diction and an apt sense of mysticism.”
Alan Rich, writing in L.A. Weekly, said of “The Deep Spaces” recording, “The haunting, powerful and very beautiful sound is that of an idealized ensemble of supercellos, intensely resonant and richly harmonized… ‘The Deep Spaces’ is an utterly charming selection of songs…”
Scott joined Colorado College music faculty in 1969. He previously taught at The Evergreen State College and served as visiting composer at Eastman School of Music, Aspen Music School, New England Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Southern California and at festivals and conservatories in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ireland, Norway, England, Canary Islands and Australia.
Awards include a Rockefeller composer residency at Como, Italy, commissions from
The Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation, the New England Conservatory/Rockefeller Foundation Chamber Music Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Composer's Fellowship. Entries on his music appear in the major biographical dictionaries of music and his work is discussed in several books and articles on contemporary composition.
Hansen, who joined the faculty of Colorado College in 2000 as principal instructor of voice, often appears as a recitalist and in theatrical works. Opera audiences have heard her perform featured roles in “Gianni Schicchi,” “La Traviata,” “Suor Angelica,” “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” “The Merry Widow,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Old Maid and the Thief,” “Boris Godunov,” “Semele,” “Dido and Aeneas,” “Noye’s Fludde” and “The Stoned Guest.” Music theater, her guilty pleasure, has given her the opportunity to perform leading roles in “Phantom,” “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Ruddigore,” “Hello Dolly!” and, most recently, “Three Penny Opera.”
As a recitalist, Hansen frequently performs new-music compositions, including those of her colleagues at Colorado College, as well as composers showcased at CC’s annual New Music Symposium. She performs as vocalist with The Bowed Piano Ensemble throughout the USA and Europe, and is featured on two of the ensemble’s CDs, “Paisajes Audibles/Sounding Landscapes” and “The Deep Spaces.”
For information, directions or disability accommodation at the event, members of the public may call (719) 389-6607.
About Colorado College
Colorado College is a nationally prominent, four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The college operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 1,985 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive 3½-week blocks. The college also offers a master of arts in teaching degree. For more information, visit www.ColoradoCollege.edu <http://www.ColoradoCollege.edu>.