Friday, January 30
1433 E 33rd St Cleveland
Doors 7:30, music 8PM
$15 suggested donation
No one will be turned away for lack of funds
Melanie Emig
Mortimore / Young
Melanie Emig performs Morton Feldman's "Three Voices" (1982), to commemorate Feldman's 100th birthday. "Three Voices" is a composition for voice and pre-recorded tracks. Written in memoriam to his friend and poet, Frank O’Hara. The work is mostly sung without text, however the few fragments of text are from O’Hara's 1957 poem "Wind."
WIND
to Morton Feldman
Who’d have thought
that snow falls
it always circled whirling
like a thought
in the glass ball
around me and my bear
Then it seemed beautiful
containment
snow whirled
nothing ever fell
nor my little bear
bad thoughts
imprisoned in crystal
beauty has replaced itself with evil
And the snow whirls only
in fatal winds
briefly
then falls
it always loathed containment
beasts
I love evil
(CP 269)
Melanie Emig is a performance curator, musician, and educator whose work blends music with visual storytelling. She is a 2025 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Interdisciplinary Art.
Melanie produces interdisciplinary music performances that integrate strong visual and narrative elements. As a curator, she has been awarded the Neighbor Up Action Grant and the Quire Cleveland Community Grant. Alongside frequent collaborator Naomi Columna, they received the Satellite Fund through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to create their original performance work What I Meant… [DANCINGBANANA_gif].
As a vocalist, Melanie has performed with Apollo’s Fire, Quire Cleveland, and the Trinity Cathedral Chamber Choir. She is also a Suzuki piano instructor and music educator, maintaining a studio at The Music Settlement in University Circle.
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J. Tracy Mortimore, double bass/composer
Lenny Young, oboe/English horn/composer
Double bassist J. Tracy Mortimore and oboist Lenny Young have been working together both as a duo and as collaborators in larger projects for two decades. On a technical level, they focus on conceptual structures to create improvised music and the implementation of the novel color possibilities of their instruments. On an esthetic level, they explore ways to sustain a musical dialog between two melodic instruments. The music they make ranges from delicate spectrally tinged textures to complex polyphony to theatric and absurdist gestures.
A native of Toronto, Canada, J. Tracy Mortimore has enjoyed an extensive career as a double bassist performing contemporary classical music and improvised music. In the Toronto new music scene, he worked regularly with many ensembles including Array Music, Fifth Species, L'Ensemble Denis Schingh, New Music Concerts and Continuum. During this period, he became increasingly interested in music that involved both improvised and/or electronic elements. In 2000, he moved to Pittsburgh PA and became involved with the improvising music scene in the city, performing regularly with the groups Syrinx Ensemble, Dust and Feathers and Comprov Group in addition to numerous special projects and since 2016, he has been the bassist for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, a new music ensemble based in north east Ohio focusing on presenting the music of composers living in the
region.
Lenny Young is a performer, improviser, teacher, arranger and conductor. As an oboist he has performed with the Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Youngstown, Altoona, Johnstown, Westmoreland and McKeesport Symphonies, as well as the American Wind Symphony, the Mendelssohn Choir or Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Resonance Works, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater, Point Park Conservatory, and Pennsylvania Dance Theater. Lenny has worked in a variety of chamber-music settings, including new music groups such as the Duquesne New Music Ensemble, Alia Musica Pittsburgh and Kamratōn. He was a co-leader for several Pittsburgh-based improvisational ensembles, including Ensemble Duchamp, Levendis Duo, Comprov Group, and Dust and Feathers and has curated their Music at Third concert series since 2017.