New England Conservatory Festival

About the Event

Schedule of Events:

10:30 am: Workshop with Suzy and Eric Thompson

Suzy and Eric Thompson have devoted their lives to the pursuit of weird and obscure old-time American music – warped fiddle tunes in odd tunings, cinematic ballads, country blues songs that contain mysterious metaphors, early Cajun music with incomprehensible French lyrics and backward chords. Using fiddle, mandolin, guitars, Cajun accordion, banjo (and the occasional odd instrument such as the ten-stringed cuatro), they bring these early 20th-century sounds right into the present day. This morning’s event begins with a workshop (bring your instruments!) followed by a lecture/demo with these two great artists.

Workshop: 10:30-11:30 am
Lecture/Demonstration: 12:00-1:20 pm

Location: Eben Jordan Ensemble Room, 255 St. Botolph Street, Boston, MA 02115

2 pm: Discussion: Ives in Jazz with Ken Schaphorst

Charles Ives was actively composing at the same time that jazz was first recognized as a uniquely American music. And Ives's music shares many of the same influences, including marches, ragtime, and American popular songs. Ives was also an experienced improviser and often included multiple options in his scores, reflecting the multiple directions in which he could imagine his music going. Recordings of Ives playing his own compositions were often at odds with the notated score. Ives’s music will be analyzed along with treatments of his music by jazz musicians.

Location: Room G-01

6 pm: NEC Opera Presents Later the Same Evening (Night 1)

New York City, 1932: Elaine plays piano while her husband ignores her. Jimmy is over the moon to see his first Broadway show. Estelle prepares for her first date since her husband’s death.

Figures from five Edward Hopper paintings come to life through intimate vignettes as imagined by John Musto and Mark Campbell in this chamber opera, based on "Room in New York," "Hotel Window," "Hotel Room," "Two on the Aisle," and "Automat.”

NEC’s Joshua Major is the stage director and Robert Tweten conducts the members of the NEC Philharmonia.

There will be no late seating for this production. Please make every effort to arrive on time, as we cannot accommodate late entry.

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)

Thursday cast:

Sydney Pexton - Elaine
Johan Hartman - Gus
Brianna Davies - Estelle
Dani Jingdan Zhang - Ruth
Carlos Arcos - Ronaldo
Maklyn Baley - Thelma
Sohyun Cho - Valentina
Alexis Reese - Rose
KaiLiang Wei - Sheldon
Suowei Wu - Jimmy
QingLin Liu - Joe

Location: Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, 255 St. Botolph Street, Boston, MA 02115

8 pm: Jazz Studies and Song Lab Present Ives in Song

NEC's Jazz Studies department collaborates with NEC's SongLab in a program exploring Charles Ives’s songs as originally scored, along with arrangements of some of them for jazz orchestra by Ken Schaphorst and Theo Bleckmann.

Songs include In the Mornin', Songs My Mother Taught Me, Serenity, Children's Hour, The Sideshow, The Things Our Fathers Loved, Down East, Tom Sails Away, In the Cage, The See'r, and The Housatonic at Stockbridge.

Location: Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, MA 02115

We want to hear from you if you have an event to share or updates to this event.