Last spring, the Voices Up! concert series, in collaboration with Poets Out Loud, celebrated its 10th Anniversary by pairing new musical compositions by members of the choral/composer collective C4 with poetry by Julia Bouwsma and Henk Rossouw. (see video)

Voices Up! will be back on Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m. in Lincoln Center’s 12th-Floor lounge with its fall installment, Cantabile Quartet—Music for Strings and Piano. The concert is free for Fordham students and faculty.

The program will feature the music of two vintage modernists, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) and Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), as well as contemporary pieces by Fordham’s very own Lawrence Kramer, Ph.D., distinguished professor of English, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec, D.M.A., university professor of music at Adelphi University. Also on the program are original pieces by composers Alexander Liebermann and Giovanni Sollima. Listeners will be treated to a rare variation of musical styles featuring violin, viola, cello, and piano.

“There’s a very audience-friendly dimension to these pieces, all have melody that comes from an almost infinite possibility of combining these four instruments to produce sound worlds,” said Kramer. “We’re exploring these different combinations, like violin and viola, to great effect. There’s something you can do with those two instruments that you can’t do with any others and it’s very rare.”

Kramer said that there is not a single atonal piece in the program. Less Schoenberg, more Debussy, he said.

“There will be a diversity of sound, style, and sensibilities.”

Voices Up! will return in the spring, teaming up again with Poets Out Loud.

 

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Tom Stoelker is senior staff writer and visual media coordinator for Fordham News. After fifteen years as a freelance designer, Tom shifted his focus to writing and photography. He graduated from Lehman College, CUNY where he majored in English literature and photography and he received his master's in journalism from Columbia University. His work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Wall Street Journal, and The Architect's Newspaper, where he was associate editor.