Over the weekend I sat down with Colin Sorgi, a superb violinist and artistic director of the Sonar New Ensemble. Sonar is Baltimore based new music ensemble that was founded in 2007 to promote modern chamber music of note that is otherwise lacking a consistent advocate in the concert hall. Our conversation centered around Sonar's upcoming concert entitled Darkness at the Baltimore Theatre Project this coming Friday, January 18th at 8:00 pm. The featured repertoire will be George Crumb's Black Angels as well as In Iij Noct. by George Friedrich Haas.
In the interview you will also hear how Sonar is expanding the normative concert program in order to showcase Baltimore's theatre talent, the work of local artist and MICA professor Trudi Ludwig-Johnson, as well as spatial disorientation of the quartet to amplify the emotional experience of the concert. In their own words:
The SONAR new music ensemble presents a hair-raising pairing of two of the most experimental string quartets of the past 50 years. George Crumb's famed Black Angels for electric string quartet is transformed into a dramatic reflection on life and death featuring local Baltimore actors and directed by SONAR veteran, Britt Olsen-Ecker.
The lights are turned off for a once-in-a-lifetime experience in Georg Friedrich Haas' In iij. noct. With performers seated in the four corners of the theatre, SONAR musicians will tackle the pitch-black string quartet that the New Yorker calls “a modern masterpiece that transforms the concert hall into a place of shuddering mystery.”
Tickets are available in advance here or at the door for ten dollars. You can also find Sonar via Facebook and Twitter.
Digcast Episode IX: Sonar New Music Ensemble – Colin Sorgi Interview