Carnegie Hill Concerts Presents:
Catherine Brookman
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2024 Season
Join us for our 2024 season, "Intersections,” as we explore together how music intertwines with key dimensions of our world–technology, mental health, and identity.
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Musicians
Aaron Beaumont, Synth/Piano
Gideon Crevoshay, Vocals
Lester St. Louis, Cello
Matt Evans, Drums/Percussion
Michelle Farah, Oboe
Nicholas Zork, Guitar
Sam George, Trombone
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Program
“I Woke Up in the Sky”
Mourning Dove
If a song fades out
Thursday
Swimming Pool
Shambles
I Woke Up in the Sky
Montreal
Fire Moves Fast
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“I Woke Up in the Sky" is a chamber concert featuring selections from Catherine Brookman's debut album “If a Song Fades Out, It's Playing Forever Somewhere.” The album deals with the experience of time passing, collapsing, unfinished business, heartbreak, loneliness, and depression. When walking alone around mountains, canyons, and woods, painful things would transmute into beauty unexpectedly. The river became a mirror. The music makes a case for admitting how much we need each other for unapologetic vulnerability. It was made to make us feel less alone.
Catherine Brookman is a Brooklyn-based performer and composer. She will release her debut album If a song fades out, it’s playing forever somewhere this year. Along with making her own work, Brookman is an active performer in experimental music and theatre projects, including Julius Eastman’s Stay On It with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Meredith Monk's ATLAS with the LA Philharmonic (Walt Disney Concert Hall), the 2020 Vanguard Gala Honoring Laurie Anderson, as a soloist with Alarm Will Sound at LA Philharmonic (GenX Festival), with jazz and pop acts Esperanza Spalding and Lorde, in Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 off-Broadway, and Hair on Broadway. She recently performed at LA’s popular ambient series, floating, in Bronson Canyon. She contributed vocals to the Grammy-nominated records Eastman: Vol. 2 & 3 with LA-ensemble Wild Up and will be touring with them on the west coast this year. She is part of the maximal multidisciplinary ensemble CHILD, which recently completed a residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Brookman created the original music for the upcoming podcast Very Unbecoming (Audible) featuring Amy Sedaris. She is excited to present her album this summer as part of Saratoga Opera's Concert Series. She received a 2022 MacDowell Fellowship.
Aaron Beaumont is a composer, producer, and mix engineer. Songs he’s produced and mixed have collected over a billion streams and a gold record. Aaron was a finalist for the Roundabout Theatre Fred Ebb Award as a composer and lyricist for his first original musical, and currently serves as co-chair of the Carnegie Hill Concert Series. He’s obsessed with pop music from Chopin to Nirvana and Tin Pan to Madonna.
Gideon Crevoshay is a vocalist, teacher, composer, and facilitator from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He works with the countless dimensions that sound, improvisation, and deep listening can touch upon. Gideon has studied myriad forms of vocal music from around the world, finding inspiration from the wisdom contained within these traditions and how they can inform ideas of music-making, community, ritual, and explorations of consciousness. He has toured, performed, and recorded extensively around the world with many projects, including Bread and Puppet Theater, David Cieri, Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, Tenores de Aterúe, Starry Mountain Singers, Found Sound Nation, Briars of North America, Devin Greenwood, Sandunes, and Meredith Monk. He has been an artistic facilitator with the international music fellowship OneBeat since its inception in 2012, having co-led projects in the Balkans, Republic of Georgia, Turkey, and Russia. Gideon is a recording artist on the Brooklyn-based Brassland label. He is excited to be performing and intertwining voices with the inimitable Catherine Brookman.
Lester St. Louis (b.1993) is a New York-born and based Composer, Improviser, Cellist, Sound Designer, and Curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research, and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation, both sonically and socially, ecstatic sound worlds, flow, and interaction. He has performed internationally throughout The U.S., The EU, Canada, China, and South America. He collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams [under the moniker HxH], Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Pheroan Aklaff, Superblue, ICE, Speaker Music, Terence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as The JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble, among others.
Matt Evans is a Brooklyn-based drummer, composer, producer, and collaborator known for his unique blend of "chill complexity" (New York Times). His work draws inspiration from millennial esoterica, natural phenomena, and science fiction, resulting in hypnotic soundscapes and surreal sonic worlds that are "hyperreal and phantasmal" (Wire Magazine). Matt has presented solo projects at the Guggenheim, The Kitchen, Roulette, and 2220 Art+Archives, toured with projects Neti-Neti, Tigue, and piano trio Bearthoven performing music by composers Lea Bertucci, Shelley Washington, Sarah Hennies, and Scott Wollschleger, and created music for dance projects with choreographer Ayano Elson. You can find his recordings on Moon Glyph, Whatever’s Clever, Dinzu Artefacts, NNA Tapes, Deathbomb Arc, New Amsterdam, Cantaloupe, Perfect Wave, and Thrill Jockey.
Oboist Michelle Farah is a well-established orchestral, chamber musician, and recording artist based in New York City. In addition to performances with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Santa Fe Opera, American Ballet Theatre, New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Knights, A Far Cry, Talea Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and International Contemporary Ensemble, her solo playing has been described as "uniformly excellent" by the New York Times. Most recently, she was an Artist Mentor at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM), where she coached and collaborated with several composers and recorded new chamber works.
Born and raised in Miami, FL, Ms. Farah earned degrees from the Yale School of Music and The Manhattan School of Music. Her primary teachers include Stephen Taylor and Joseph Robinson. While in New Haven, Ms. Farah worked under Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve at the Oral History of American Music, an archive of historic and contemporary interviews with American composers.
Nicholas Zork is a singer-songwriter, composer, music director, and collaborative artist. His songs, writing, teaching, and music practices explore ways that music can resonate, embody meaning, cultivate diverse and inclusive communities, and overcome social barriers.
As a musical director, he has created collaborative concerts at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, Apollo Music Cafe, and Rockwood Music Hall. He co-curates, with Pauline Kim Harris, the Carnegie Hill Concerts series, a chamber music series that features artists of different genres and disciplines in curated, shared programs, bringing people together to participate in the celebration and cultivation of New York City’s diverse community. His portfolio also includes an annual Holiday Benefit Concert, which brings together an eclectic array of New York City artists and has raised over $300,000 for charitable partners.
Nicholas’ classical compositions have been performed by university and festival choirs, and his music has appeared in numerous television programs. He has written songs with and for Grammy-winning R&B vocalist Grace Weber, Lynette Williams, Akie Bermiss of Lake Street Dive, Grammy-nominated soul singer Wayna, rising talents like Jack Fanselau, and many other outstanding artists. He wrote and arranged songs for Gil McKinney’s debut album (#1 iTunes jazz, #8 Billboard jazz) and wrote a song for the feature film Permission (Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Jason Sudeikis, Tribeca Film Festival). And he can be heard on recordings with Jon Foreman and Sufjan Stevens. In addition to writing and recording with other artists, Nicholas also performs his own folk-oriented pop songs. His EPs, “Questions I Can’t Answer,” “All We Own,” and “Promises I Can’t Keep” explore questions of love, loss, doubt and hope through stories—both autobiographical and imagined.
Samuel George, a New York City based trombonist, has performed in groups such as the New World Symphony, New England Symphonic Ensemble, Heartbeat Opera Company, and on Broadway in the shows “Camelot” and “Spamalot.” His career has taken him to prestigious stages, including those of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea. Sam's dedication to the craft also extends to chamber music, collaborating with groups like Parallel Brass, The Brass Project, and the Juilliard Trombone Choir.
Sam George's journey is marked by a strong educational foundation, having earned a Master's degree in Orchestral Trombone Performance from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor's degree in Trombone Performance from the New England Conservatory.
In addition to his remarkable performance journey, Sam is deeply committed to music education. He shares his expertise currently as the director of Brass Bands at Saint Hilda's and Saint Hugh's School on the upper west side. He has also served as a low brass instructor at the Green Vale School and maintains a private studio.
When Sam isn’t playing trombone, he loves to try new restaurants in the city and create techno dance music with recorded trombone on his computer. With a passion for performance, a commitment to education, and a growing wealth of experience, Sam continues to shape the world of music with his passion for the art form and unwavering dedication to craftsmanship on the trombone.