Bowerbird is pleased to present Trio Nebbia at University Lutheran Church.

Trio Nebbia—saxophonist Geoffrey Diebel, percussionist Ji Hye Jung, and pianist Winston Choi—embarks on its first-ever tour this fall to four East Coast cities: Philadelphia, Hartford, New York, and Boston. The centerpiece of the program is the world premiere of a new work, commissioned by the trio, from MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize recipient composer Tyshawn Sorey. Works by Georges Aperghis, Keiko Devaux, Dai Fujikura, and Tristan Murail are also featured.

Sorey’s commissioned piece for Trio Nebbia has been a collaborative project since before the pandemic, and one that neither wanted to lose. This year’s tour seemed to be the perfect opportunity to premiere the work in Philadelphia, where Sorey now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. In his signature style of pushing boundaries and extending cultural norms, Sorey takes his recent Pulitzer Prize-winning saxophone concerto “Adagio: For Wadada Leo Smith” as a point of departure for his new work. With a mood that is even darker and more brooding, his one-movement trio seeks to restore a nuanced, reverent, and inquisitive relationship with sound and music.

“Tyshawn Sorey’s compositional style demands that the listener drop any expectations in favor of meeting the music on its own terms,” says Geoffrey Deibel, saxophonist of Trio Nebbia. “He writes music that offers listeners the opportunity to intentionally engage with his prismatic sound world, which is presented to the audience in place of the banal virtuosity that often dominates the contemporary music landscape. In our modern world that is both overstimulating and seems hell-bent on reducing every relationship to one of transaction, Sorey’s music provides an antidote via a multi-layered, complex work that requires patience and active listening. We can’t wait to premiere this piece.”

PROGRAM

Georges Aperghis: Trio Funambule
Dai Fujikura: Ueno Bueno
Tristan Murail: Cailkoux dans l’eau
Tyshawn Sorey: NEW WORK
Keiko Devaux: Kintsukuori

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Trio Nebbia consists of Ji Hye Jung (percussion), Winston Choi (piano), and Geoffrey Deibel (saxophone). These three internationally acclaimed soloists combine three instruments less commonly heard together in the concert hall than in the jazz club, offering a stunning array of sound worlds from the subtly nuanced to the unbridled and radical, and providing a comprehensive sonic palate that can adapt to the vision of any composer. The trio met and began performing together regularly at the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy (one of the premiere summer programs for contemporary music in the world) and decided to begin concertizing regularly in 2019. The trio members are all also active educators in the United States, teaching at Vanderbilt University, Roosevelt University, and Florida State University respectively. Jung is regarded as the world’s finest marimba player, winning the world’s top two competitions for the instrument. Praised as “spectacular” by the Los Angeles Times and “extraordinary” by the Ventura County Star, the Times describes her as “a centered player who can give the impression of being very still yet at all places at once.” Choi is chair of the piano department at Roosevelt University. For over twenty-five years, he has been one of the most in-demand pianists in contemporary music and has won the prestigious Orleans Piano Competition; a recent recording by Choi was given five stars by BBC Music Magazine. Deibel was a first prize winner in both the Fischoff and the NASA Quartet competitions with the h2 quartet, and has premiered hundreds of works for his instrument by both established and emerging composers. Trio Nebbia has premiered music by Georges Aperghis and Jean-Patrick Besingrand, and will give the premiere of a new work written for the ensemble by Pulitzer Prize winner and McArthur Genius Grant winner Tyshawn Sorey in 2025.