Atlas 2011-2012 Season Calendar

Boogie Babes

Boodie Babes
Fridays at 10:30 AM

Fridays 10:30am
$5 per child
(siblings under 6 months free!)
Boogie Babes was created by two moms, Amanda Clarke and Kara Morrissey when they decided they didn’t want to drive super far for quality kid’s music. In the Spring of 2008, they got in touch with some local children’s musicians, a local coffee shop, and Boogie Babes was born!  They have had almost weekly shows on Capitol Hill ever since then! Amanda and Kara live on Capitol Hill and are both moms to three adorable kids under 5 – two boys and a girl each!

Out of the Cool: Gil Evans at 100

Jazz at the Atlas

Gil Evans - Rounded Corners 3
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 8:00 PM

Composer/arranger Gil Evans was influential in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, working with icon Miles Davis on a series of highly praised albums including “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain” and working with his own groups.  His early career includes work with Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra, the Miles Davis Nonet and after 1957, a series of projects under his own name, featuring Steve Lacy, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Cleveland, and Kenny Burrell as featured soloists.  He worked with artists outside jazz, most notably David Bowie, Sting and the Police, and a recording of music by Jimi Hendrix. From 1984 until his death in 1988, Evans led a Monday night big band at New York City jazz club Sweet Basil.  ATLAS presents Evans’ music with several ensembles including nonet, tentet, big band, and jazz orchestra.

Get Tickets to Out of the Cool: Gil Evans at 100

Batavia Madrigal Singers

BMS BMS Rounded
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 8:00 PM

The award-winning Batavia Madrigal Singers, an outstanding vocal ensemble from Indonesia, comes to the Atlas Performing Arts Center in partnership with Capital Hill Arts Workshop. Avip Priatna serves as Music Director and conducts this internationally known ensemble. The ensemble has performed in many prestigious international festivals and competitions in France, China, and Taiwan.  The ensemble has also toured Europe, appearing in Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain.

Get Tickets to Batavia Madrigal Singers.

Watch the Batavia Madrigal Singers performing Gabriel Faure’s “Les Djinns.”

 

Read the interview from Modern Luxury

 

International Contemporary Ensemble

New Music at the Atlas

ICE Rounded Corner - 200 px
Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 8:00 PM

Presented in partnership with Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival

International Contemporary Ensemble has been receiving rave reviews for its innovative and inventive approaches to crafting new music and engaging audiences.  With a flexible roster of 33 leading instrumentalists performing in forces ranging from solos to large ensembles, ICE functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time. Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered over 500 compositions, the bulk of them by emerging composers, in venues ranging from New York’s Lincoln Center and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art to galleries, bars, clubs, and schools around the world. www.iceorg.org
Click here to read more.

Program Highlights

Nathan Davis: H Street Bells, for winds, percussion and many bells

“Bells,” by Nathan Davis is a site-specific piece that ICE first performed at Lincoln Center last season.  As a site specific work, it has been updated for H Street.  “Bells” examines and explores various forms of communication.  It is a dynamic and engaging piece that also incorporates the use of technology, specifically cell phones.  As bells were a method of mass communication, the piece examines how cell phones are influencing communication and the environment. It uses audience’s cell phones as a decentralized PA system to transmit processed sound from live instruments.

 

Additional program highlights include:

John Cage: Telephones and Birds, for three performers (1977)

Cage 6’23″ (arr. ICE from 45″ for a speakerVariations IIAtlas Eclipticalis)

Steve Reich: Vermont Counterpoint, for flute and tape (1982)

Mario Diaz de Leon: Altar of Two Serpents, for two flutes (2010)

Nathan Davis: On Speaking One Hundred Names, for bassoon with electronics (2011)
Phyllis Chen: Mobius, for music box (2011), toy piano

John Cage: Credo in US, for two percussionists, piano, and radio (1942)

Get tickets to International Contemporary Ensemble.

Dan Tepfer Trio

Jazz at the Atlas

danpianothum
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 8:00 PM

Dan Tepfer is a New York-based pianist and composer and one of the most formidable jazz musicians on the international stage — hailed as “brilliant” by The Boston Globe, “remarkable” by The Washington Post.  Dan has developed a rare improvisational gift and a complex yet deeply melodic approach to music. He has performed the world over as a soloist and in a full orchestra, exploring a a personal aesthetic, a unif­ed artistic identity. After graduating in 2005 from Boston’s New England Conservatory, where he completed his masters under the guidance of Danilo Perez, Dan moved to New York and quickly became an in-demand player and composer.

Dan has also had the extraordinary privilege of an ongoing partnership with alto saxophonist and jazz luminary Lee Konitz. The two documented their rapport on the acclaimed 2009 Sunnyside CD Duos With Lee. They have appeared together live at the Village Vanguard and many other leading jazz venues.

Dan’s numerous awards include ­first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, fi­rst prize at the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and fi­rst prize at the 2007 competition of the American Pianists Association.  Dan has also been named a Cultural Envoy of the U.S. State Department, with recent travels to Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Czech Republic.

Get Tickets to Dan Tepfer Trio

Mark Turner Quartet

Jazz at the Atlas

Mark Turner Rounded Corner
Sunday, June 3, 2012 at 8:00 PM

presented as Jazz in the ‘Hoods as part of the DC Jazz Festival

Mark Turner’s elegant, abstract and thoughtful playing has been much remarked on by his contemporaries. Brad Meldau has noted that Mark “doesn’t court the theatrics associated with his instrument… (He is) playing with a direct candor usually reserved for older players.” And the older players, too, have been taking note.  Lee Konitz noted,  “I think Mark is a very serious contender. He’s really playing lines up there as Warne Marsh could do – and Mark uses that register much more than Warne did.”

 

Get Tickets to Mark Turner Quartet.

Rodney Richardson Trio with Lena Seikaly

Rodney Richardson Rounded Corner Lena Seikaly Rounded Corner
Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 8:00 PM

presented as Jazz in the ‘Hoods as part of the DC Jazz Festival

The Rodney Richardson Trio is one of the few organ trios in Washington DC, featuring original compositions, jazz standards and adaptations of modern jazz and rock songs. With Will Rast on organ and Larry Ferguson on drums, 2 of DC’s top players, the guitar-led trio has a truly unique sound. Vocalist Lena Seikaly has been dubbed “one of the local jazz scene’s most promising performers” and “brightest voices in jazz” byThe Washington Post.  Lena is already making her mark as both a revivalist of traditional jazz vocals, as well as an innovator in contemporary vocal jazz styles.

Masterclass with Rodney Richardson and Lena Seikaly at 6:00 PM.

 

Get tickets to Rodney Richardson Trio with vocalist Lena Seikaly.

Deviant Septet

New Music at the Atlas

Deviant Septet
Saturday, June 2, 2012 at 8:00 PM

The mission of the Deviant Septet is to fulfill the vision Igor Stravinsky had for his “L’histoire du Soldat” ensemble.   By commissioning modern composers, the Deviant Septet will complete its primary goal of creating a repertoire for this unique ensemble which is otherwise nearly non-existent.  With a roster of highly versatile and experienced chamber musicians, who are also some of America’s foremost contemporary and avant-garde classical music interpreters, the ensemble hopes to attract a renewed interest in the modern chamber music idiom.  Through the use of multi-media performances, audience interaction, unique venues, and unusual repertoire and programming choices, the Deviant Septet aims to redefine the modern concert experience.

 

Get tickets to Deviant Septet

Idomeneo

The In Series

IdomeneoBG
June 9, 2012 - June 17, 2012

Written when Mozart was only twenty-five, “Idomeneo” reflects classic Enlightenment ideals and Mozart’s profound humanity, in glorious music.

The Story- King Idomeneo and his soldiers are returning home from years of war when their ship is engulfed by a storm. Idomeneo offers the gods the sacrifice of the first human being they encounter on shore, in exchange for survival. That person in Idamante, the king’s son, who has meanwhile become a promising leader and is loved by both the Trojan princess Illia and the Greek Princess Electra.

Director: Tom Mallan
Music Director: Carlos Cesar Rodriguez
English Adaptation and Lyrics: Charlotte Stoudt
Choreography and Dancers: The Washington Ballet

Saturday, June 9, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Sunday, June 10, 2012 at  3:00 PM
Saturday, June 16, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Sunday, June 17, 2012 at 3:00 PM

Get Tickets to Idomeneo

Joe Chambers Moving Pictures Orchestra

Jazz at the Atlas

Joe Chambers Rounded
Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 8:00 PM

Joe Chambers has been described as one of the great drummers to come out of the ’60s — a master of dynamics and  percussive color.  Also a master of all mallet instruments, piano and a composer, he has performed with  jazz giants, including Freddie Hubbard,Donald Byrd, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and the Max Roach M’Boom Ensemble. With the Moving Pictures Orchestra, Joe Chambers displays a passion for jazz that reaches far beyond the confines of the studio or bandstand, beyond genre and characterization, beyond even the music and extends into the culture itself.

 

Get tickets to Joe Chambers Moving Pictures Orchestra