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$15 – $25
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Bowerbird is pleased to bring back Julian Calv, Sarah Penna, and Alex Stewart to perform the music of Moondog at University Lutheran. Also on the program will be organist Gavin Black, who collaborated with Moondog on his organ and harpsichord works.
The concert features piano works, vocal canons, and other songs by the maverick composer Moondog performed by trimbist/vocalist Julian Calv, pianist Alex Stewart, and vocalist/percussionist Sarah Penna joined by two guest vocalists for the vocal rounds – Emma Bockrath, and Liam Mulligan. Louis Hardin AKA Moondog composed music creating an unexpected link between the resurgent science of counterpoint, Arapaho, Navajo, Blackfoot, and Sioux rhythms and song forms, the art of jazz improvisation, and the beginnings of a repetitive and minimalist aesthetic. The concert spans Moondog’s career with selections from The Last Concert, Moondog: Piano Trimba, In Europe, A New Sound Of An Old Instrument, Moondog (1956); and includes background about the music from Julian- who studied with Moondog’s only student, Stefan Lakatos.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Louis T. Hardin AKA Moondog was an American composer, musician, performer, music theoretician, poet and inventor of musical instruments. Largely self-taught as a composer he composed music with an unexpected link between the resurgent science of counterpoint, Arapaho, Navajo, Blackfoot, and Sioux rhythms and song forms, the art of jazz improvisation, and the beginnings of a repetitive and minimalist aesthetic. His strongly rhythmic, contrapuntal pieces and arrangements were recognized by Igor Stravinsky and other contemporaries; and influenced American minimalist composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Due to an accident, Moondog was blind from the age of 16. He lived in New York City from the late 1940s until 1974, during which time he was often found on Sixth Avenue, between 52nd and 55th Streets, selling records, composing, and performing poetry. He briefly appeared in a cloak and horned helmet during the 1960s and was hence recognized as “the Viking of Sixth Avenue” by passersby and residents who were not aware of his musical career.
Julian Calv is an American composer, singer, and trimbist. Born February 18 1999 in New Brunswick, NJ, Julian grew up in Bethlehem Township, NJ. He graduated from Moravian University in 2021 with a Bachelor’s of Music focusing on composition, education, and classical piano. While there he studied piano with Barbara Thompson and Dan DeChellis. In 2021 he completed an independent study of 20th c. American composer Louis T. Hardin, AKA Moondog’s, creative life. Throughout the course of this impactful project he established an apprenticeship with Stefan Lakatos. Self proclaimed as Moondog’s grand-student, Julian is the sole prodigy of Stefan Lakatos– who is “the leading [and only] exponent of the Moondog method of drumming.” Quote Moondog himself. Calv traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, in 2022 to meet Stefan and understand this tradition first hand. Through both this mentorship and dedicated study of Moondog’s creative life, he upholds Louis’ dying wish to “please take care of my music.” Following Stefan’s death in 2023, Julian continued through 2024 with projects featuring solely the music of Moondog and himself.
Alex Stewart is a musician, architect, and man about town. This year’s musical projects include: Darkness to Light, a recital in January with violinist Charlotte Perkins. In April 2024, he led the Kearsarge Community Band in regional premieres of Carmen Fantasy for Symphonic Band (Bizet/Suzuki) and Howl’s Moving Castle Fantasy (Hisaishi/Kojima). He’s played in “MOONDOG: On The Keys” since November 2024.
Sarah Penna is a dynamic artist who feels most at home deep in the intersection of education, the arts, and the natural world. She synergizes her love of Nature, Music, and Community in all corners of her life, professionally and personally. With her heart and eyes wide open, she savors every new experience, collecting them each like tiles in the game of Life. Sarah is many things; a New Englander, lover, daughter, poet, singer, park ranger, Girl Scout, forest bather, herbalist, gardener, and more, but above all she is unabashedly herself.
Gavin Black is best known for his recordings of seventeenth-century keyboard music on the PGM label. He studied organ and harpsichord with Paul Jordan and Eugene Roan, and conducting with Jahja Ling and Otto-Werner Mueller, and attended Princeton University and Westminster Choir College. He served as Associate University Organist at Princeton from 1977 to1979, while a student there, and was Organist and Senior Choir Director at Hillsborough Reformed Church, Millstone, New Jersey, from 1988 until 1994. He has been a teacher of organ, harpsichord, clavichord and continuo-playing since 1979, teaching from time to time at Westminster Choir College and at the Westminster Conservatory of Music. He currently writes a monthly column on organ and harpsichord teaching for The Diapason.
As a performer, Gavin Black has focused on 17th-century keyboard music, especially music of Dutch, German, or Italian origin, and on the organ music of Bach, which he has performed in its entirety. In the year 2002 he performed Bach’s Art of the Fugue on the new organ at the Princeton Theological Seminary, and elsewhere. His recording of harpsichord music of Sweelinck, played on a Philip Tyre copy of a Ruckers transposing double was released in 2006 by Centaur Records and his recording of music of Frescobaldi played on a 17th century Italian harpsichord will be released soon. Gavin Black has also specialized in the music of the 20th-century American composer Moondog, recording a selection of his harpsichord music for the Musical Heritage Society in 1978. He has made a specialty of Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and has recently recorded that work in a version for two harpsichords, with George Hazelrigg (see The Art of the Fugue.com). In 2023 and beyond Gavin will be performing The Art of the Fugue in concert as a solo harpsichord work.
Gavin Black has also been a founding member of several chamber ensembles, including the Princeton Baroque Ensemble, Whitechapel Baroque, Channel Crossings, and Col Legno.
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