Performances + Events
Faculty Recital: Eden MacAdam-Somer featuring Gordon Beeferman
Jordan Hall
The program features Beeferman's works, drawing on a multitude of genres and influences, including songs, compositions and improvisations on solo piano, and scored improvisations for trio and large ensemble. Tonight's program also features The Sway, a piece commissioned by and written for Eden MacAdam-Somer in honor of the CMA department's 50th anniversary. This extraordinary work for solo performer on voice, violin, and percussive dance joins others on the program in blurring the lines between contemporary improvisation, classical virtuosity, and avant-jazz innovation.
The live stream of this event is available to NEC Community members only. To watch the stream, please click the “Streaming Access” button at the top of the page and enter the NEC Community streaming password on the video window labeled “NEC-Produced Stream” when prompted.
Artist(s)
Gordon Beeferman is a composer, pianist, and improviser based in New York City. He has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and numerous collaborations with choreographers, writers, and video artists. His varied projects include bands that perform his compositions: an organ trio; Other Life Forms, a quartet; Zero Gravity, a multi-stylistic song project, and Music for an Imaginary Band, a septet (“a commanding avant-jazz ensemble” —Time Out New York).
His music has been performed by the New York City Opera orchestra, Momenta Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, California EAR Unit, St. Urban Concerts, Talea Ensemble, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, and remarkable soloists like sopranos Sharon Harms and Alice Teyssier, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, pianist Steve Beck, and violinist/vocalist Eden MacAdam-Somer.
He has composed three operas with librettist Charlotte Jackson: The Rat Land, praised as “complex and daringly modern” by The New York Times, The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera, scenes of which have been performed to sold-out theater and nightclub audiences in downtown Manhattan, and The Ninth Floor, a one-act supported by the MAP Fund.
A versatile and eclectic musician, Beeferman has performed with numerous improvisers, ensembles, singers, and theatrical productions at venues from the Coney Island Museum to the Berlin Festspielhaus. Recent collaborators include dancer Susan Hefner, guitarist Chris Cochrane, saxophonist Yoni Kretzmer, and vocalists Shelley Hirsch and Carol Lipnik.
Beeferman has received commissioning grants from the Fromm Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, and the BMI Foundation, among others. He has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Copland House, and Ucross, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship.
A native of Cambridge, Mass., he studied privately with NEC’s Ran Blake and Hankus Netsky during his teenage years.
His recordings are available on a host of labels including Summit, zOaR, Minor Amusements, Different Track, Innova, Generate, Clang, and OutNow.
Gordon Beeferman, piano
Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin, voice, feet
Joe Morris, bass
CMA students
Alexis Ward, Hanei Cho, Chenjie Gu, Jackson Janis, Maggie Zang, Qiruo Zhang, Seungeun Lee, William Wei, Wilson Jiang, voice
Bella Navarro, Lio Itaya, violin
Julius Boxer-Cooper, flute
Jonas Miclisse, saxophone
Pang Yi Lee, pipa
Leah Liu, guzheng
Elfie Shi, vibraphone
Andy Messier, Tom Chiu, guitar
Wesley Stoker, Diana Reid, cello
Eva Paddock, bass
Malachi Turner, electric bass
Avi Randall, piano
Yilin Chen, percussion
All compositions by Gordon Beeferman
Solo Piano Improvisation
Wander and Weep
Do You?
Rink
The Sway
Excerpts from Apocalypscapades
New Wave
Path
Hey, Songs
