Susan Narucki Soprano

next

Gorgeous Nothings
april 28, 3 p.m.
Experimental THEATER UC San DIego Department of Music

Soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Donald Berman, continue their longtime collaboration in a concert of music that celebrates music by women composers.  The program features one of Mexico's most distinctive composers, Georgina Derbez.  whose evocative settings of the late poems of Emily Dickinson bring the listener into an incandescent musical world.  In addition, a beautifully crafted work by post-minimalist Eve Beglarian and songs by Dutch composer Henriette Bosmans will complete the program.

recent

kafka fragments
susan narucki soprano curtis macomber violin

University of buffalo
March 27, 2024 7:30 p.m.

At the Center for 21st Century Music, Slee Hall, University of Buffalo. Hungarian composer György Kurtág's seventy-five-minute multi-movement work uses fragments of texts from the diaries of Franz Kafka, to create a kaleidoscopic world of sound, sense and expression.  Each fragment – some lasting less than a minute –is singular and potent; each movement offers a glimpse of a distinct viewpoint, and each gain in meaning through juxtapositions throughout the work as a whole.

tenri cultural institute
43A West 13th Street, New York, NY
march 30, 2024 8 p.m.

Tickets on sale January 15, 2024. Hungarian composer György Kurtág's seventy-five-minute multi-movement work uses fragments of texts from the diaries of Franz Kafka, to create a kaleidoscopic world of sound, sense and expression.  Each fragment – some lasting less than a minute –is singular and potent; each movement offers a glimpse of a distinct viewpoint, and each gain in meaning through juxtapositions throughout the work as a whole.

Changing light: Music for international Women’s Day

Weds@7 Uc San Diego
March 6, 2024 7 p.M.

Department of Music, UC San Diego Conrad Prebys Concert Hall

Changing Light is a special celebration of International Women's Day, honoring remarkable composers from across the globe. Curated by UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Music Susan Narucki, the hour-long program is a constellation of exquisitely crafted vocal chamber music rarely heard in the United States. Narucki is joined on the program by superb guest artists Kirsten Ashley Wiest, coloratura soprano, Alex Greenbaum, cello, and Alexander Ishov, flute, which takes place at the UC San Diego Department of Music's Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on Wednesday, March 6, 2024 at 7 p.m.

Changing Light explores the expressivity of the singing voice, through the fusion of poetry and music and the unique perspective of four extraordinary composers. Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, now in her nineties, has written an astonishing array of powerful works, from large scale symphonies to intimate, eclectic chamber music. Her Letter to Rimma Dalos for voice and cello is a tribute to the great Russian poet.

Ursula Mamlok, an essential voice in the modernist New York scene of the mid 20th century as well as an important teacher of composition is represented by Stray Birds, for coloratura soprano, flute and cello. The jewel-like settings of poems of Tagore show exquisite attention to balance in form and attuned to fine gradations of instrumental and vocal color.

Colombian born composer Alba Potes' distinctive music combines beautifully defined formal structures, with a subtle underpinning of traditional music of Latin America. Potes' moving TRINOS, set to poems by Javier Tafur Gonzalez, and commissioned by Narucki, will be given its world premiere performance.

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho one of the most important contemporary composers was known for operas and vocal works of extraordinary emotional depth. We honor her by presenting two of her works: Changing Light, for soprano and cellos, as well as the iconic From the Grammar of Dreams for two acapella voices.

Join us for an evening of remarkable music created by exceptional women.

*world premiere

concerts at El colegio nacional

october 10, 2023 6 p.M.
El colegio nacional Main hall
Centro historico mexico city

Susan Narucki, soprano
Gonzalo Gutiérrez Ortega,  piano

Written on Air, with works of Hungarian composer György Kurtág including Requiem for the Beloved, Three Old Inscriptions, and József Attila – Töredékek. and the world premiere of new works for soprano and piano by the remarkable Georgina Derbez, on the series curated by esteemed composer Gabriella Ortiz. T

Preceded by conversation about the ways in which poetry is transformed through the imagination of a composer, Written on Air is an exploration of the unique transformation that occurs when poetry is set to music. It includes the work of two singular composers, Georgina Derbez and György Kurtág. Their compositional languages are distinctive, but each sets text to music with exquisite attention to detail and awareness of the whole. Through using the singing voice in all of its expressive potential in combination with the extensive timbral possibilities of the piano, each of the composers illuminates layers of meaning in the texts, framed by seemingly inexhaustible imagination.

Works of Hungarian composer György Kurtág including Requiem for the Beloved, Three Old Inscriptions, and József Attila – Töredékek. and the world premiere of two new songs for soprano and piano by the esteemed Mexican composer Georgina Derbez, L’alphabet, taken from Belgian poet Albert Giraud's cycle of poems, and A821a, a setting of one of American poet Emily Dickinson's late poems, translated into Spanish by J.C. Calvillo. Written on the interior of an envelope, the poem is among Dickinson's most potent and luminous.

Quinto Coloquio de Poesía Iberoamerican Elsa Cross

October 6 2023 7 p.m.
Auditorio Divino Narciso Mexico City

Written on air
Susan Narucki, soprano
Gonzalo Gutiérrez Ortega,  piano

Written on Air, with works of Hungarian composer György Kurtág including Requiem for the Beloved, Three Old Inscriptions, and József Attila – Töredékek. and the world premiere of new works for soprano and piano by the remarkable Georgina Derbez,

approaching kurtág

kafka fragments
susan narucki soprano
curtis macomber violin

Performance: august 11, 2023 8 P.M. Art Around books 5 Canal St, Bellows Falls, VT 05101

exhibit through September 22, 2023

Hungarian composer György Kurtág's seventy-five-minute multi-movement work uses fragments of texts from the diaries of Franz Kafka, to create a kaleidoscopic world of sound, sense and expression.  Each fragment – some lasting less than a minute –is singular and potent; each movement offers a glimpse of a distinct viewpoint, and each gain in meaning through juxtapositions throughout the work as a whole.  The performance takes place in Art Around Books, a gallery and bookstore and idea space in Bellows Falls, Vermont.

The performance is the opening event around the exhibit Approaching Kurtág, curated by Susan Narucki, on view at Art Around Books from August 11 through September 9, 2023.

“ Each of the five artists in the exhibit, Jinane Abbadi, Michele Burgess, Bill Kelly, Olda Procházka and Jim Renner, have, contained within the borders of each print, a unique language. These images, which themselves have been created in conversation with poetry, prose, frameworks of language and broader ideas, resonate with recurring themes of the Kafka Fragments. The beauty and chaos of cities; the abyss of the divine, the unending complexities of human relationships, the loneliness of the outsider, the joyous heartbreak of living. Approaching Kurtag offers another space for the imagination of the listener and viewer to inhabit, wander and explore.”     - Susan Narucki

past events