On Friday, February 3rd, soprano Susan Narucki joins the reknowned Birmhingham Contemporary Music Group and conductor Clement Power for a performance of Gerard Grisey's masterwork Quatre Chants Pour Franchir Le Seuil and the world premiere of BCMG's composer in residence, irish composer Sean Clancy's Findentotenlieder.   For more details www.bcmg.org.uk/default.php

Soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Christopher Oldfather present the world premiere of Hayes Bigg's song cycle on sacred texts 'Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs' at the Manhattan School of Music on January 15, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.   For more information on the work susannarucki.net/calendar.php

Congratulations to Philadelphia composer Jan Krzywicki on his recent release, 'Alchemy' on Albany Records, which features Krzywicki's elegant chamber music.   The recording includes In Evening's Shadow, a song cycle for soprano, guitar and string trio, featuring soprano Susan Narucki, guitarist Jason Vieaux, violinist Hirono Oka, violist Rachel Ku and cellist Yumi Kendall.   For more information:

www.amazon.com/Jan-Krzywicki-Alchemy-Lynn-Klock/dp/B00631LU6I/ref=sr_1_1

Soprano Susan Narucki was included in the San Diego Reader's "Top 15 San Diego Jazz Concerts for 2011", singing the music of American composer Anthony Davis at Davis' 60th Birthday celebration at Dizzy's in downtown San Diego.  

www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/jam-session/2011/dec/20/top-15-sd-jazz-concerts-for-2011/

Susan will be performing the role of Nora Lear in scenes from Anthony Davis's new opera Lear on the Second Floor in March, 2012, at the Berlind Theater, Princeton University, with conductor Michael Pratt and director Mark DeChiazza.

Soprano Susan Narucki joins the New York New Music Ensemble for the opening concert of the 35th Season for performances of American composers Stephen Dembski "The Show" and David Glaser - "Of Twilight" (world premiere)  at the Center for Jewish History in New York.   (15 West 16th Street, NY, NY) on November 28, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.

The text of Glaser's "Of Twilight" (for soprano, violin, piano, percussion and projected images) is drawn from Charles Simic's Dime Store Alchemy, prose poems which find their inspiration in the strange and magical boxes of American artist Joseph Cornell.  

Steven Dembski's "The Show" (for soprano, percussion, violin, clarinet and piano) is a tour-de-force setting of the Donald Barthelme prose poem.   Alternating between sprechstimme and sung material, the work is imbued with fantasy, humor and violence - in its circus of sadness, we hear a fascinating comment on life in the performing arts.  

www.nynme.org

www.cjh.org/m/11/y/2011.

Rozalie Hirs' new work for soprano Susan Narucki, ASKO/Schoenberg and conductor Pierre-André Valade had its world premiere on November 10, 2011, at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw.  

Hear it on Netherlands Radio 4!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21845454/Arbre-genealogique.mp3

During Season 2011-12,  soprano Susan Narucki will be present the world premiere of four works, written by friends old and new - beginining with celebrated Dutch composers Rozalie Hirs' Arbre gènèalogique, with ASKO/Schoenberg Ensemble and conductor Pierre-Andrè Vallade.   Performances on November 10 (PROMS -Amsterdam Muziekgebouw) and with a repeat on November 13 (Den Bosch Festival November Music) .   For more information:

www.askoschoenberg.nl/

Kudos to Arlene Sierra for her stunning new release, named WQXR's Pick of the Week, which includes "Two Neruda Odes: for soprano, cello and voice, sung by Susan Narucki 

www.wqxr.org/articles/album-week/2011/aug/09/stunning-menagerie-arlene-sierra/

Kudos also to Eric Ewazen, Marya Martin, soprano Susan Narucki  and the musicians of the  Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival for their recording of SeaSkye Songs:

newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2011/07/a-golden-age-of-classical-recording-recent-recommended-acquisitions.html

Soprano Susan Narucki joins Alarm Will Sound for the world premiere of Roger Reynolds' Seasons: Cycle 2 at Mizzou New Music Festival.   Read more in the Missourian:  

www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/07/07/mizzou-new-music-summer-festival-continues-make-columbia-center-new-music-composition/

"The performance itself was alive to the music’s extremes of ecstasy and despondency: Susan Narucki (who replaced an indisposed Claire Booth at short notice) evincing all of the technical acuity and expressive sensitivity which have made her so doughty an advocate of contemporary vocal repertoire, while the pool of musicians drawn largely from the Philharmonia Orchestra ensured that the ‘ensemble of soloists’ called for by the composer’s often unsparing demands was more than equal to the task. This is not the place to consider the semantic implications of Rimma Dalos’s verse or Kurtág’s inimitable response to it; better to note that the work’s desperate intensity was palpably conveyed in a fine account directed by Baldur Brönnimann."  -  From the review by Richard Whitehouse, Classicalsource.com   

To read the entire review:  www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php

Soprano Susan Narucki joins members of London's Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Baldur Brönnimann for a performance of Kurtág's masterwork "Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova".   June 23, 2011, 6 p.m  Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Center.  

www.philharmonia.co.uk/

A lovely article about composer Lisa Bielawa's work and process - including the Chance Encouter project, co-conceived with Susan Narucki. 

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/in-berlin-moved-by-music-place-and-memory/

In the opening concert of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival's special series "Celebrating Charles Ives", soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Donald Berman present Ives and his influences, an evening of songs and works for solo piano.   The program explores Ives' relationship to the American landscape  and to European lieder which he heard and responded, as well as songs that reflect Ives' spirituality and his relationship to family.

Ives and his Influences includes selections from Narucki and Berman's critically acclaimed recording The Light That is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives on New World Records, as well as lieder by Johannes Brahms and works for solo piano by Frederic Chopin and Charles Ives.    

For more information: 

music.yale.edu/norfolk/concerts/lectures_etc.htm

D Magazine's Daily review of the Arts on Kurtag's Kafka Fragments, performed by Soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Violaine Melancon:

frontrow.dmagazine.com/2011/06/hungarian-masterwork-proves-perfect-capstone-to-magnificent-first-season-of-soundings/

Soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Violaine Melancon collaborate on a performance of Kurtag's Kafka Fragments at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, this Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.  For tickets and more information:   www.nashersculpturecenter.org/Soundings

Susan Narucki joins Holland's acclaimed Ives Ensemble for a performance of George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children and Madrigals, Book IV,  Saturday, May 28 at 8:15 in Rotterdam (De Doelen).  

For more information and tickets:  www.dedoelen.nl/concertgebouw/index.php

A sound, vast and summerlike - an original music-theater work featuring the music Erik Satie and Morton Feldman, conceived and directed by Susan Narucki, will be presented at the Black Box Theater of the Conrad Prebys Music Center this week on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.   The hour long presentation juxtaposes concert works by Satie and Feldman in a fully staged production.  The cornerstone of the production is Satie's Socrate for voices and chamber orchestra.   The cast is comprised of members of UCSD's gradualte vocal ensemble  kallisti.  Aleck Karis conducts palimpsest, UCSD's new music ensemble.  For more information seemusic.ucsd.edu

SD.Com on the West Coast premiere of David Bruce's The North Wind Was a Woman, with soprano Susan Narucki and the musicians of the Art of Elan.  www.sandiego.com/arts/art-of-elan-gives-local-premiere-of-david-bruce-song-cycle

Listen to the concert on Instant Encore:

www.instantencore.com/music/details.aspx

Soprano Susan Narucki and the musicians of the Art of Elan chamber music series present the West Coast Premiere of David Bruce's song cycle "The North Wind Was a Woman" at the San Diego Museum of Art tonight at 7 p.m. 

Gramophone - The world's authority on classical music since 1923, has reviewed Lisa Bielawa's Chance Encounters. read the review here

In the frontpage edition of the today's NY Times, A.O.Scott of the New York Times profiles Carl Dreyer's classic masterwork The Passion of Joan of Arc. The video profile features the SONY Classical soundtrack by Richard Einhorn, featuring Anonymous 4 and soprano Susan Narucki. 

video.nytimes.com/video/2011/04/11/movies/100000000769791/critics-picks-passion-of-joan-of-arc.html

“Une seule femme endormie” (a lone woman asleep) is an almost surreal setting of a poem by David Gascoyne involving obsession and love gone wrong. The musical effect is almost a post-Schoenberg sound, like perhaps Berio or Lutaslwaski and the vocalizations by the cellist, sparing but unsettling, do provide for a very beautiful, but eerie, experience.  The performance by cellist Paul York and modern music specialist Susan Narucki is stunning. "

To read the entire review:

www.audaud.com/article

Audiophile Audition's lovely review of Lisa Bielawa's CD recording "Chance Encounter" featuring soprano Susan Narucki and The Knights Chamber Orchestra on Orange Mountain.

www.audaud.com/article.php

Soprano Susan Narucki joins members of Ensemble ACJW for George Crumb's Madrigals, Book 1.   The performance takes place at Julliard School's Paul Hall on March 10, 2011.   The Academy is a program of the Julliard School, Carnegie Hall, and The Weill Music Institute.  

For more information and tickets:  www.carnegiehall.org/article/box_office/events/evt_16241.html

Sarah Rothenberg's visionary concert assemblage, The Blue Rider in Concert, will be performed on the Da Camera of Houston chamber music series on Saturday, January 29th.   Soprano Susan Narucki joins Sarah Rothenberg in songs by Webern, Schoenberg, Berg and de Hartmann. 

Read more in a preview article in the Houston Chronicle:

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/7390383.html

SD.com's Christian Herzog on the Art of Elan series's recent concert,  which included The Myriad Trio with soprano Susan Narucki in a performance of Nicholas Maw's Two in the Campagna.  

www.sandiego.com/arts/the-eye-of-night-gorgeous-melodies

Listen to the concert  on Instant Encore:  www.instantencore.com/music/details.aspx

Chance Encounter, which was released on the Orange Mountain Music label on December 14, earns praise from the contemporary music website Sequenza 21:  www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/2010/12/lisa-bielawa-chance-encounter/

At 4pm on Sunday, December 19, soprano Susan Narucki and composer Lisa Bielawa will celebrate the release of Chance Encounter (December 14, Orange Mountain Music) with a concert and screening at Galapagos Art Space (16 Main Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn). The performance will feature selections from Chance Encounter, peformed by Susan Narucki and members of the The Knights.

 In addition, two films about Chance Encounter will be screened. Director Lisa Guidetti’s short was created during the world premiere of Chance Encounter in New York in 2007, and in 2008 won a Gold Medal at the Park City Film Music Festival and was honored by the Cannes Short Film Corner. Director Renato Chiocca’s film documents Chance Encounter as it was presented in partnership with urban placemaker Robert Hammond (co-founder of the High Line in New York) and produced in collaboration with the organization Tevereterno on the Tiber River in Italy in 2010. This is the film’s first screening in the U.S.

 On December 14, Orange Mountain Music will release the world premiere recording of Chance Encounter, produced by Grammy Award-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse. A project of Creative Capital, and co-conceived by Bielawa and Narucki, Chance Encounter has captivated audiences in Manhattan parks, at New York's Whitney Museum, outside the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome, on the banks of the Tiber River, in Vancouver, and at the Venice Architectural Biennale. The work comprises songs and arias constructed of speech overheard by Bielawa and Narucki in transient public spaces. These spaces included airports around the world, sidewalks and streets, parks and cafes, and public transportation. It is written for Narucki and a migrating ensemble of 12 instruments and is meant to be performed in a public space.

Album Release Concert & Screening

Chance Encounter (Orange Mountain Music)
Galapagos Art Space
Sunday, December 19, 4-6pm
16 Main Street in Dumbo | Brooklyn, NY | 11201
Tickets: $15 at 718.222.8500 or www.galapagosartspace.com

Performances by Susan Narucki, Carla Kihlstedt, Colin Jacobsen, Eric Jacobsen, members of The Knights, & Boston Modern Orchestra Project members Sarah Bob, Robert Schulz & Ina Zdorovetchi 

U.S. premiere screening of Italian director Renato Chiocca’s film documenting Chance Encounter on the Tiber River in Italy.  Screening of American director Lisa Guidetti’s award-winning film of the world premiere of Chance Encounter on NYC’s Lower East Side.

Sequenza 21, the new music website, review Susan Narucki and Donald Berman's solo CD of Ives songs "The Light That is Felt".  www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/2010/11/an-american-voice/

On Thursday, November 18, Soprano Susan Narucki joins pianist Aleck Karis, percussionist Steven Schick and the members of the redfishbluefish percussion ensemble in George Crumb's forty five minute cycle, "Winds of Destiny".  8 p.m. in the Concert Hall at UC San Diego.  

On Friday, November 19, the kallisti project "Instant Operas" comes to the Black Box Theater in the Conrad Prebys Music Center at UC San Diego.   Six world premiere operas with duration of 15 minutes or less, written for and performed by members of the project will be presented.   8 p.m.  music.ucsd.edu

Soprano Susan Narucki joins the American Composer's Orchestra with music director, conductor  George Manahan, in the N.Y. Premiere of Claude Vivier's Lonely Child at Zankel Hall,  this coming Friday, October 15, 2010.  

For more information www.americancomposers.org/

Soprano Susan Narucki is featured in three concerts at Vancouver's  innovative Music on Main - Modulus Festival.   On Friday night, October 1, she presents Kurtag's unaccompanied Attila Jozsef Fragments as part of an evening devoted to vocalists across genres.   On Saturday afternoon, she sings Ravel (Chanson Madecasses) and Lisa Bielawa's Hurry, with members of the Vancouver Symphony.   Sunday afternoon sees the Canadian premiere of Chance Encounter, a 35 minute work for soprano and instrument, by Lisa Bielawa.  

musiconmain.ca

Soprano Susan Narucki and St. Louis Symphony concertmaster David Halen perform Gyorgy Kurtag's Kafka Fragments, a seventy minute song cycle for voice and violin on September 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m.   The concerts are part of a series presented by the Saint Louis Symphony and curated by its music director, David Robertson, presented at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

For more information     pulitzerarts.org  

Soprano Susan Narucki joins flutist Marya Martin and musicians of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival for Eric Erwazen's SeaSkye Songs.  August 4, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.

bcmf.org

Soprano Susan Narucki joins pianist Roger Braun for performances at Holland's Orlando Festival.   The duo will collaborate on songs of Hugo Wolf (July 26), Anton Webern (July 29), Gyorgy Kurtag  (July 30) and Johannes Brahms (July 31) in Kerkrade, The Netherlands.  In addition, the soprano will sing Kurtag's Attila Jozsef Fragments in Heerlen on July 28. 

Soprano Susan Narucki presents the American premiere of Arlene Sierra's Two Neruda Odes for voice, cello and piano at the Yellow Barn Music Festival and School.   yellowbarn.org

Soprano Susan Narucki joins Yellow Barn faculty colleagues Gil Kalish and young artists in U.S. premiere of Alexander Raskatov's "Circle of Singing" at the opening concert of the 2010 Yellow Barn Music Festival.

yellowbarn.org

Two opportunities to hear Chance Encounter in Rome on May 30 and 31!
chance-encounter.org/news.html

Soprano Susan Narucki, conductor Julian Pellicano and ASL interpreter BillieAnne McLellan talk about Pascal Dusapin's To Be Sung on San Diego Public Radio KPBS morning talk show "These Days". 

www.kpbs.org/news/2010/may/26/pascal-dusapins-opera-be-sung-performed-ucsd/

Photos at  www.facebook.com/home.php

Pascal Dusapin's haunting chamber opera opens at UCSD tonight at 7 p.m.  We are proud to be part of the Sound + Vision Project, sponsored by the Capita Foundation.   www.capitafoundation.com/SoundVision.html

www.sequenza21.com/

www.performingartslive.com/

Soprano Susan Narucki, Professor of Music at UC San Diego, has established Kallisti, an ensemble for new and experimental vocal music.

Kallisti makes its debut in the West Coast premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s chamber opera To Be Sung on May 26, 27 and 28, 2010 at 7 p.m. in the Black Box Theater at the Conrad Prebys Music Center on the UC San Diego campus.

Guest conductor Julian Pellicano will lead Kallisti, joined by guest artist and UCSD Professor baritone Philip Larson and the instrumentalists of Palimpsest. Narucki (one of the works' original cast members) serves as stage director.

To Be Sung has been described as an exquisite interplay between Dusapin’s tightly woven vocal chamber music (at times, reminiscent of Monteverdi) and Stein’s evocative texts in which “shifting atmospheres and sound and create moments of concentrated emotion, which are constantly transformed, disappearing and melting, over and over again.”

To Be Sung, Conrad Prebys Music Center
UC San Diego, May 26, 27 and 28 at 7 p.m.
Tickets $25 general, $20 for UCSD faculty, staff; $1 student rush tickets available one hour before the concert. Other tickets available at UCSD Box Office (858.534.TIXS) or at the door.

http://kallisti.ucsd.edu/home.html

Facebook Event Page;

www.facebook.com/home.php

Philomela by James Dillon (2CD Aeon) has been awarded "l'Orphée d'Or du meilleur enregistrement de musique lyrique du XXIème siècle de l'Académie du Disque Lyrique 2010" (best lyric music recording 2010).  

The recording features Anu Komsi and Susan Narucki sopranos, and Lionel Peintre, baritone, Jurjen Hempel conductor and the Remix Ensemble. 

www.concertonet.com/scripts/cd.php   Concerto Net Review

"Narucki gives Kurtág's aphorisms expressive form.

.... The American soprano Susan Narucki, known here for, amongst other things, Louis Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer, was able to give exceptionally sensitive and expressive form to the musical riches ..... the subtle theatrical ensemble with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya was also splendid - for example the way they challenged each other in the whirlwind movements of 'Die Weissnäherinnen'.

The musical pinnacle was the first fragment 'Zu Spät' from Part IV. Seldom have two people played and sung with such perfect coordination, tenderly and just slightly out of focus, as if they - to use an image from one of the other fragments - were not walking on the ground, but balancing on a thin cord just above it."

**** (Four stars)

Soprano Susan Narucki is interviewed in the April 2010 issue of Preludium, the monthly magazine of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, ('Vechten voor wat je lief is" ), in anticipation of her performance at the Kleine Zaal on April 22. 

Soprano Susan Narucki, Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskayja perform Kurtag's monumental song cycle, Kafka Fragments, in collaboration with video artist Lynette Wallworth.   Performances take place in the Rotterdam Schouwburg on April 18,  in Muziekcentrum Frits Phillips (Eindhoven) April 20, at the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) April 22 and at the Muziekcentrum (Enschede) on April 23. 

Soprano Susan Narucki and Violinist Violaine Melancon, faculty members at the Yellow Barn Music School and Festival, give a week long workshop to singers and violinists on Gyorgy Kurtag's Kafka Fragments.  Co-sponsored by the New England Conservatory of Music, partcipants present two performances of the work in Brattleboro Vermont (March 13) and in Boston's Jordan Hall (March 14) 

Recent news and reviews: James Dillon: Philomela CD Review from U.K. Guardian/Andrew Clements www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/27/james-dillon-philomela 

Thomas Ades "Life Story" on San Diego's acclaimed Art of Elan series. www.sandiego.com/arts/bold-and-clever-new-sounds-at-the-museum-of-art

Sushi:  Fresh Sounds

www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jan/04/fresh-sound-margaret-noble-susan-narucki/

Soprano Susan Narucki, guitarist Jason Vieux and members of the Philadelphia Orchestra present the world premiere of Jan Krzywicki's In Evening's Shadow, at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.  The 17 minute work is a tribute to the late guitarist Peter Segal. 

Soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Donald Berman present a program of songs of Charles Ives, at UC San Diego's new series Weds@7.  The program features a range of Ives's songs from early works to his masterpieces, including Like a Sick Eagle, The Housatonic At Stockbridge, and Tom Sails Away.   In addition, Mr. Berman will present works for solo piano and celeste by Ives, Eric Moe and David Rakowski. 

The recital will be given in the superb new Conrad Prebys Music Center on the UC Campus.  Ms. Narucki is on the faculty of the music department at UC San Diego. 

Soprano Susan Narucki joins UCSD colleague and La Jolla Symphony conductor Steven Schick in Golijov's haunting Three Songs for soprano and orchestra.  For more information see:

lajollasymphony.com

Anthony Tommasini of the NY Times on  "The Blue Rider in Performance:"

www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/arts/25blue.html

Bruce Hodges of Artcritical.com:

artcritical.com/hodges/BHBlueRider.htm

 OperaNews Online

www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/review/review.aspx

The Blue Rider In Performance explores the dynamic interaction of music, light, and visual imagery using materials from Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc's seminal Blue Rider Almanac of 1912. Rooted in Kandinsky's connections to artists in both Russia and Germany, the Blue Rider Almanac brought together art, music, and writing from avant-garde movements across Europe, capturing a short-lived moment of international experimentalism that was abruptly halted by the outbreak of World War I.

Pianist Sarah Rothenberg and soprano Susan Narucki perform music from the era by such composers as Scriabin, Webern, and Berg under a rich blanket of light and projection; world premiere choreography by Karole Armitage further illuminate movements from Arnold Schoenberg’s ground-breaking Second String Quartet, performed by The Brentano String Quartet with Ms. Narucki.

Sarah Rothenberg, concept, direction, and piano
Marcus Doshi, lighting and set designer
Sven Ortel, projection designer
Brentano String Quartet
Susan Narucki, soprano
Karole Armitage, choreographer
with dancers from Armitage Gone! Dance

millertheater.com/Events/EventDetails.aspx
 

Co-produced with Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Mary Sharp Cronson, Producer,
In conjunction with Kandinsky, on view at the Guggenheim Museum starting September 18.

Composer Martin Bresnick and soprano Susan Narucki are featured in an interview in the June/July issue of Chamber Music Magazine, which details the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival's Virgil Thomson Project.  This two week program. led by Brenick and Narucki, along with pianists Lisa Moore and J.J. Penna, brings together composers, singers and instrumentalists, to discuss the influence of Thomson's music,  and the fine art of text setting in English.  The workshop will culminate in two programs of new works for voice and ensemble, and American Art Songs.   As well, Narucki and Penna present a program of American song on June 27, including Thomson's cycle Mostly About Love.

www.chamber-music.org/pdf/magazine/2009/VirgilAM.pdf

Soprano Susan Narucki joins esteemed colleagues conductor  Reinbert de Leeuw and members of the Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble for one of Claude Vivier's most complex and beautiful works:  Trois Air Pour Un Opera Imaginaire.  At Amsterdam's Concertgebouw on 3/24 and De Singel in Antwerp  on 3/25.  For complete details see Calendar section fo this website.

Arlene Sierra's beguiling music received praise from the NY Times. Included in the Composer's Portrait program at Miller Theater, was Neruda Settings,  for voice and ensemble, sung by Susan Narucki with members of ICE.

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/arts/music/17sier.html

The Light That Is Felt:  Songs of Charles Ives,  has earned more critical acclaim with reviews in The Wire, Diverdi and Fanfare.  For complete text go to:  susannarucki.net/blog/

Americans In Rome, a four CD set honoring American composers who won the Rome Prize, has received praise from Gramophone magazine:  soprano Susan Narucki's contributions were singled out. Go to:

susannarucki.net/blog/

ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) presents a composer's portrait of young American composer, Arlene Sierra, at Columbia University's Miller Theater.  Soprano Susan Narucki joins the group for Sierra's Neruda Settings, for voice and chamber ensemble.  The 25 minute work is a setting of four of Neruda's beloved Elemental Odes.  

Miller Theater, 116th and Broadway, NYC, 8 p.m.

Alex Ross of The New Yorker on last week's performance of Lisa Bielawa's Chance Encounter, by soprano Susan Narucki and the Knights at the Whitney Museum:

www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2009/03/02/090302gonb_GOAT_notebook_ross

For more info on Chance Encounter:  susannarucki.net/news-projects.php

The Light that is Felt:  Songs of Charles Ives has been chosen as the BBC Music Magazine's North American pick of the month for February 2009.  For the complete review, go to

susannarucki.net/news-latest.php

Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe reviews the January 26, 2009 Collage concert, with guest artist soprano Susan Narucki.

www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/01/28/collage_new_music_attends_to_works_of_the_recent_past/

Conductor Lionel Bringuier, soprano Susan Narucki, and members of the LA Master Chorale, earned high praise from Mark Swed, music critic of the LA Times for the Jan 20 performance of  Louis Andriessen's De Stilj at  Disney Hall in Los Angeles, as part of the LA Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series. 

latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/01/post.html

The New Yorker's Russell Platt on the best classical CD's of late including "The Light That is Felt" by Soprano Susan Narucki and Pianist Donald Berman

www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/recordings/2009/01/19/090119gore_GOAT_recordings_platt

The New York Times Review  January 16, 2009

THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT: SONGS OF CHARLES IVES

Susan Narucki, soprano; Donald Berman, pianist. New World Records 80680-2; CD.

MOST artists crave the limelight, but Charles Ives often worked in isolation, his day job in insurance providing the financial means to indulge his passion. He wrote nearly 200 songs and published 114 of them privately in 1922, describing their publication as “a kind of house cleaning.”

The painterly details of Ives’s songs are vividly conveyed by the bright-voiced Susan Narucki and the pianist Donald Berman on a new disc whose 27 diverse selections (most from H. Wiley Hitchcock’s 2004 critical edition) highlight Ives’s multiple influences. Those included European Romanticism and religious and secular American tunes, which he meshed with his own inventive, radical harmonies. Like Bartok, Ives used both simple folk melodies and dissonance, sometimes blending them.

Gentle, melodic songs are interspersed here with more tumultuous works, demonstrating the wide spectrum of Ives’s emotional and musical palette. The spare and evocative “Where the Eagle Cannot See” is followed by the theatrical, astringent intensity of “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven.” The heavy weariness of “Like a Sick Eagle” is aptly conveyed by Ms. Narucki and Mr. Berman, before they plunge into the violent waters of “Swimmers,” whose wildly turbulent piano part underpins a soaring vocal line.

The disc opens with the wistful, tonal “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and concludes with the Romantic “Romanzo (di Central Park).” Also included are the pictorial “Tom Sails Away,” with its lively evocations of town and family life, and “The Housatonic at Stockbridge.”

Romantic, Brahmsian songs like “Du Bist wie Eine Blume” (“You Are Like a Flower”), “Feldeinsamkeit” (“In Summer Fields”) and “Minnelied” (“Love Song”) reflect Ives’s interest in German lieder. His less familiar, moody settings of translations of poems by the medieval Italian poet Folgore da San Gimignano are more harmonically imaginative.

VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

At Amsterdam's Muziekbgebouw, at 20:30 , as part of worldwide concerts celebrating the 100th birthday of the great American composer Elliott Carter,   the Nieuw Ensemble performs a program of Carter's chamber music, including the Oboe Quartet and the song cycle Tempo e Tempi, with soprano Susan Narucki as soloist.   Garry Walker conducts. 

A world premiere recording of Ernst Krenek's comic opera "What Price Confidence?" featuring sopranos Ilana Davidson and Susan Narucki, tenor Richard Clement, bartione Christopheren Nomura and pianist Linda Hall has been released on the  Phoenix Edition label.   Presented in a series of sold out performances at the NYC Austrian Cultural Forum's Mostly Modern Series, "What Price Confidence?" is an amusing and poignant look at two couples, their loves, and their betrayals.  Krenek's music portrays  the characters inner lives and outward foibles with equal measures of depth, dash and wit.  

For more information:  www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_m

This four disc collection on Bridge Records contains works by thirty-seven composers who composed these pieces while in residence at the American Academy in Rome.  The earliest work dates from 1920, the most recent from 2003.  Composers include the well known: Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Roger Sessions; the largely forgotten: Charles Naginski, Alexander Lang Steinert, Walter Helfer; and many of today's most active voices: Robert Beaser, David Rakowski, Aaron Jay Kernis, Paul Moravec, Stephen Hartke,  and David Lang.  Curated by Donald Berman, the disc features  performances by many of today's leading performers of contemporary music, including  Richard Stoltzman, Yehudi Wyner, Susan Narucki, Tony Arnold, Fred Sherry, Daniel Druckman, and Curtis Macomber. 

www.bridgerecords.com/pages/catalog/9271.htm

The Light That is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives is now available on New World Records.  www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi 

The disc by soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Donald Berman contains 27 songs of Charles Ives, ranging from his early days as a student at Yale to the works of his maturity, including his masterwork General William Booth Enter  Into Heaven.    For more information on the disc, please go to the  News-Latest Release page. 

Welcome to Susan Narucki.net!  The new website, designed by Ian Loew of LForm Design www.lform.com   contains news, soundclips, and  information about the award-winning soprano, as well as a comprehensive discography section.   The site also features a blog, which will go live in two weeks. 

Soprano Susan Narucki, a leading interpreter of contemporary music, joins the faculty at UC San Diego as Professor of Voice.   Narucki's repertoire ranges from Stravinsky to Oliver Messiaen, Gerard Grisey, Pierre Boulez and Elliott Carter. She earned a Grammy for her recording of George Crumb's "Star-Child", and she has presented more than one hundred world premieres. 

UCSD's Department of Music is internationally recognized as the West Coast's premiere center for education and innovation in new music. Founded in 1966 by composers Robert Erickson and Will Ogdon, it was designed to provide a unique environment in which composers, performers and scholars could collaborate and engage with the most vital ideas and newest technologies in order to push the boundaries of contemporary music.

Narucki joins the performance faculty that also includes saxophonist David Borgo, clarinetist Anthony Burr, pianist Anthony Davis, contrabassist Mark Dresser, flutist John Fonville, bass-baritone Philip Larson, cellist Charles Curtis, pianist Aleck Karis, violinist János Négyesy and percussionist Steven Schick,

To read more,  please see: 

music.ucsd.edu/media/news.php