Ketty Nez: through the light Ketty Nez feat. Gabriela Diaz, Lilit Hartunian, Samuel Kelder, David Russell, Jennifer Bill, Daniel Doña

• Ketty Nez (b. 1965): through the light:
• 1 Nez: through the light: turn me this way, turn me that way 15:23
• 2 Nez: through the light: looking out the window, a duet 09:13
• 3 Nez: through the light: calling out 09:59
• 5 fragments in 3:
• 4 Nez: 5 fragments in 3: in the rain, an introduction 02:21
• 5 Nez: 5 fragments in 3: organum, and a dance 05:11
• 6 Nez: 5 fragments in 3: calling lost sheep 03:35
• 7 Nez: 5 fragments in 3: dance steps 04:44
• 8 Nez: 5 fragments in 3: postlude, a horn call 04:35
• Total Runtime 55:01

Info for Ketty Nez: through the light

Crossing folk music and modern serious music has a long tradition. American musical scholar Ketty Nez ventures a fresh take on this concept: Inspired by her own family’s heritage, she artfully blends folk music of Central Europe and Turkey with her own modern compositional language. The result is THROUGH THE LIGHT.

The Album’s titular work is a multi-faceted, emotionally fast-paced string quartet, drawing on fragments of folk music recorded by Béla Bartók in the early 20th century. The subsequent piece, 5 fragments in 3 is similarly inspired, but the setup changes to an unorthodox trio of soprano saxophone, viola and piano. THROUGH THE LIGHT is an impressive demonstration that a recentering into tradition need not be boring; in fact, it can be rather daring.

Ketty Nez, piano
Gabriela Diaz, violin
Lilit Hartunian, violin
Samuel Kelder, viola
David Russell, cello
Jennifer Bill, soprano saxophone
Daniel Doña, viola

Catherine (Ketty) Nez
joined the Boston University School of Music in 2005, after teaching for two years at the University of Iowa. “Listen to a Wonder Never Heard Before!,” her portrait CD as composer/pianist, was released in 2010 by Albany Records. Her folk opera, “The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia,” was premiered in a staged version in May 2012, by Juventas New Music Ensemble. Her piano concerto “thresholds,” performed by Ketty and the Boston University Wind Ensemble, was released in July 2013 by Ravello Records. BUWE also recorded “four scenes for Juliet,” released February 2019 by Summit Records. “double images” was released by Albany Records in May 2020. During the fall of 2021, Ketty was a guest teacher at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary, as a Fulbright scholar.

Ketty completed, in 2002-3, a residence of several months at the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Montbeliard, France, prior to the premiere of her chamber opera “An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds,” at the 2003 Seventh Festival A*Devantgarde in Munich. In 2001, she spent several months as visiting composer/scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and in 1998 participated in the year-long computer music course at the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM). Before computer music studies, Ketty worked for two years with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam, and co-founded the international contemporary music collective Concerten Tot and Met. She spent a year studying with composer Michio Mamiya in Tokyo before her graduate work, and her music has been performed in festivals in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Ketty holds a Ph.D in composition from the University of California at Berkeley, a master’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music, and bachelor’s degrees in piano performance from the Curtis Institute of Music, and in psychology from Bryn Mawr College.

This album contains no booklet.