Kinetic Ensemble presents a moving program curated in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month that draws on themes of collective grief and the power of community. Takashi Yoshimatsu’s poetic elegy, And Birds Are Still…, opens the program with other-worldly string textures inspired by an image of gathered birds around a fallen comrade. At the heart of this program is the world premiere of Nicky Sohn’s Cynthia for viola and string orchestra, featuring violist, Tonya Burton. Cynthia was written in the memory of Burton’s aunt, who passed away from metastatic breast cancer in 2022. Conversations between Sohn, Burton, and members of Cynthia’s patient support group inspired the composition, resulting in an intimate and profoundly moving work. In an exciting display of virtuosity, Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions closes the program with a powerful message: we are one people. The final movement, “Amandla!”, which means “power!” in Zulu, is an energetic and groovy Juba that celebrates the unity of all people.

— curated by Tonya Burton, viola

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 @ 7:30 PM

MATCHBOX 4

RUNTIME:
1 hour 45 minutes with 1 intermission

Reception to follow

TICKETS:

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On The Program:

Takashi Yoshimatsu: And Birds Are Still… (1998)
Nicky Sohn: Cynthia for viola and string orchestra (2026 — Premiere)
Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings (1936)

Ted Hearne: The Law of Mosaics (2013)
     iii. Climactic moments from "Adagio for Strings" and "The Four Seasons"
Valerie Coleman: Tracing Visions (2022)
     i. TILL.
     ii. Amandla!

Featured Composers:

Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, and entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, an honor bestowed to an individual who has made a significant contribution to classical music as a performer, composer or educator. Her works have garnered awards such as the MAPFund, ASCAP Honors Award, Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Program, Herb Alpert Ragdale Residency Award, and nominations from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and United States Artists. Umoja, Anthem for Unity was chosen by Chamber Music America as one of the “Top 101 Great American Ensemble Works” and is now a staple of woodwind literature.

Former flutist of the Imani Winds, Coleman is the creator and founder of this acclaimed ensemble whose 24-year legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Along with composer-harpist Hannah Lash, and composer-violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, she co-founded and currently performs as flutist of the performer-composer trio Umama Womama.

Coleman’s work as a recording artist includes an extensive discography. With Imani Winds, she has appeared on Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, Naxos, Cedille Records and eOne, and as a guest flutist on albums with Wayne Shorter Quartet, Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance, Chick Corea, Brubeck Brothers, Edward Simon, Bruce Adolphe, and Mohammed Fairouz. Her compositions and performances are regularly broadcast on NPR, WNYC, WQXR, Minnesota Public Radio, Sirius XM, Radio France, Australian Broadcast Company and Radio New Zealand.

Coleman’s compositions are published by Theodore Presser and her own company, Coleman Page Publishing. She studied composition with Martin Amlin and Randy Wolfe and flute with Julius Baker, Judith Mendenhall, Doriot Dwyer, Leone Buyse and Alan Weiss. She and her family are based in New York City.

Ted Hearne (b.1982, Chicago) is a composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist. Inspired by the overlay of different viewpoints and their sonic possibilities, he creates personal and multi-dimensional works that often explore unconventional interactions of text and music, and are rooted in a sense of inquiry.

The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory -- from any genre," and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne's music "holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact."

Hearne's Sound From the Bench, a cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate personhood, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Place, Hearne’s work written with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor, was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards and was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

Hearne’s piece Katrina Ballads, a modern-day oratorio with a primary source libretto, was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize in composition and was named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. His ongoing collaboration with legendary musician Erykah Badu pairs newly composed music with arrangements of Badu’s work for orchestra, most recently presented with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, whom Hearne also conducted.

Ted Hearne was awarded the 2014 New Voices Residency from Boosey and Hawkes, and is a member of the composition faculty at the University of Southern California.

Selected as one of the “Cool 100” by Houston CityBook Magazine alongside icons such as Simone Biles and Megan Thee Stallion, composer Nicky Sohn is a versatile and sought after voice in contemporary classical music. With a distinctive style characterized by jazz inspired, rhythmically driven themes, her work has been praised internationally as “undoubtedly the crowd pleaser of the evening” (YourObserver), “dynamic and full of vitality” (The Korea Defense Daily), showcasing “colorful orchestration” (NewsBrite), and evoking “elegant wonder” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In 2026, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected her to receive the Charles Ives Fellowship, a prestigious honor awarded annually to only two young professional composers of extraordinary gifts.

Sohn has received commissions and performances from major institutions, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Minnesota Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, and National Orchestra of Korea. Her work has also been featured by the New York Choreographic Institute, Stuttgart Ballet, and Dogs of Desire reflecting her broad artistic range across orchestral, vocal, ballet, and socially driven music projects.

Recent highlights include premieres of A Tale of the Turtle and the Bunny by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Is This the Happiest Place on Earth? by Orchestra Lumos, and A Tale of the Bunny and the Tiger by Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Looking ahead to the 2026-27 season, Sohn is collaborating with Amarillo Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Kinetic Ensemble, and piano soloist James Palmer.

Takashi Yoshimatsu was born in Tokyo in 1953, at a time when Japanese composers had embraced the trend towards avant-garde techniques. While absorbing these, Yoshimatsu opposed the general fashion, returning to popular rhythms and romantic melody and coming to be regarded as the standard-bearer of Neo-Romanticism in Japan.

He studied under Teizo Matsumura, a pupil of Ifukube, for some time, but acquired much of his craft by himself. He is a great admirer of Sibelius and his works include five symphonies, and concertos of piano, for saxophone, and for bassoon. Yoshimatsu is well-known for composing the score for the 2003 remake of Astro Boy.

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