TAK ensemble is a contemporary chamber ensemble based in New York City consisting of flute, clarinet, violin, percussion, and soprano voice.
TAK ensemble was founded in 2013 and performed their first concert in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on May 4, 2013.
TAK's debut album, Ecstatic Music: TAK plays Taylor Brook, was released on New Focus Recordings in 2016 and was featured as Q2 Music's Album of the Week by WQXR and listed in the Top 10 Classical Albums of 2016 by the Boston Globe . [1] Their second album, Sanctuary, with Mario Diaz de Leon, was released on Denovali Records. [2] Their third album, Oor—with works by Natacha Diels, Tyshawn Sorey, Ann Cleare, Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, and Erin Gee—was the inaugural release on their in-house media label, TAK editions. [3] The TAK editions Podcast was launched in fall 2019 and features interviews with guests with whom the ensemble collaborates. Ensemble Pamplemousse's four-volume Lost at Sea is the label's second release and came out in September 2019.
TAK ensemble has premiered over 150 works since their founding, collaborating with composers such as David Bird, Taylor Brook, Erin Gee, Ashkan Behzadi, Tyshawn Sorey, Natacha Diels, Jessie Marino, Brandon Lopez, Bethany Younge, Diana Marcela Rodriguez, Seth Cluett, Julien Malaussena, Michelle Lou, Eric Wubbels, and many others. The ensemble has recently performed at the Library of Congress, [4] Harpa, Miller Theater, [5] Look and Listen Festival, [6] Cluster Festival, [7] Grypario Cultural Center, [8] Roulette Intermedium, [9] Scandinavia House, [10] La Sala Rossa, [11] The Music Gallery, [12] Abrons Art Center, [13] Mount Tremper Arts, The Invisible Dog, [14] La Mama Experimental Theater Club, Issue Project Room, and others.
TAK often collaborates with composers and artists to produce large-scale events or concerts, including a recent collaboration with Qubit New Music entitled "21st Century Sound Stories" with theatrical works by Qubit composers, David Bird, Alec Hall, and Aaron Einbond. [15] From 2014 to 2016 TAK ensemble worked with TELE-violet, director Katherine Brook, writer Shonni Enelow, and composer Taylor Brook to produce "The Power of Emotion," an evening-length work of experimental music theater. [13]
TAK ensemble has collaborated with departments at Columbia University, [16] [17] [18] Stanford University, [19] University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, [20] New York University, [21] Williams College, [22] Saint Cloud State University, [23] McGill University, [24] Oberlin College and Conservatory, [25] [26] [27] the Delian Academy of New Music, [28] Boston University, [29] University of New Orleans, [30] Tulane University, [30] the New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers, and the Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program.
TAK is composed of five performers and two technical directors. All members of TAK are co-artistic directors.
Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" for more than 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell "qualifies as an iconoclast". In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cognition, rhythmic theory, pitch space, and cognitive constraints on compositional systems. He has written many orchestral and chamber works, three of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Time after Time in 2001, String Quartet No. 3 in 2010, and Arches in 2011.
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Chen Yi is a Chinese-American violinist and composer of contemporary classical music. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
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