Sound, Spirit, and Séance – Excursions in New Music, Concert by Flutist Peter H. Bloom

SOMERVILLE, Mass. - Aug. 28, 2023 - PRLog -- Flutist Peter H. Bloom, whose playing has been called "brightly gorgeous" (Gapplegate Music Review), "stirring and technically impressive (AllAboutJazz.com), and "a revelation for unforced sweetness and strength" (The Boston Globe), performs a Community Benefit Concert, free and open to the public, Saturday, Sept 23, 2023, at 7:30 pm, Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, 155 Powder House Boulevard, Somerville, MA  02144, via an Artist Fellowship from Somerville Arts Council and Mass Cultural Council.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sound-spirit-and-seance-excursions-in-new-music-peter-h-bloom-concert-tickets-702445071117

The concert – Sound, Spirit, and Séance – will showcase works written for Bloom by Elliott Schwartz, Karl Henning, John McDonald, Marianela Maduro-Lang, Timothy Bowlby, Len Detlor, and Sean Burns, plus the premiere of Meditation XI Shakuhachi Opus 143 by Avrohom Leichtling.

Hailed for "amazing versatility" (ArtsFuse) and "exquisite melody" (JazzImprov), Bloom will provide an engrossing tour of music for concert flute, alto flute, piccolo, bass flute, baroque flute, piano, voice, crotale and kickdrum (one performer).  The idea, says Bloom, "is to celebrate the singular sound of each piece, to evoke the spirit of each composer, and, for those composers who are no longer with us, to bring them to life through the medium of their music."

The program opens with the premiere of Leichtling's Meditation XI Shakuhachi (Opus 143, 2019, for alto flute).  In Aiko (1981), Maduro-Lang uses the traverso, nuanced and multi-hued, to create an imagined musical world, magnetic and ephemeral.

Bowlby's Laurels (2018) explores flute, alto flute and piccolo in a pointillistic soundscape, the line of music like glints on an ocean wave.   Ed (2015) by Sean Burns is a dramatic scena of a man in conflict with a parasitic face on the back of his head. The performer, Janus-like, faces in two directions as once, as multiple flutes, voice and kickdrum, convey the turmoil of the artist.

In Five Bloomers and Four Shoes (2011), McDonald offers lyrical scenes for flute alone.  Airy Distillates (2011) by Henning, exploits marvelous bass flute sonorities to conjure musical molecules bounding, bonding, evanescing.

Detlor's Song for Eric Dolphy (1977) is an evocation, séance-like, of the genius of composer and woodwind master Dolphy.  The concert finale is Soliloquy III by Schwartz, humorous and provocative, exploring relationships among composer, performer, instruments, and audience.

In a 50-year career, Bloom has toured North America, Europe and the Far East; is featured on 48 recordings; is contributing editor for Noteworthy Sheet Music; and is a winner of the American Musicological Society's Noah Greenberg Award.