HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS

HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS

FRIDAY, JUNE 3 | 7:00 PM

BROADWAY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
601 W 114th ST. | MANHATTAN

SATURDAY, JUNE 4 | 3:00 PM

BRONX HOUSE
990 PELHAM PARKWAY SOUTH | BRONX

5BMF’s 2021-2022 Season closes with two performances by members of the Harlem Chamber Players, true pillars of the Uptown music scene whose brilliant, innovative programs have served a loyal following of music lovers in Harlem and beyond for nearly 15 years.

Join us this June as we present members of the HCP in two thrilling concerts: at Broadway Presbyterian Church — one of the ensemble’s home venues — and at Bronx House, marking their borough debut! Additionally, Friday’s performance will be hosted by historian and frequent HCP guest Eric K. Washington, author of Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal.

The members of HCP’s string quartet will perform a program of works by two musical omnivores: Tania León and Antonín Dvořák. About Esencia, León describes the piece as a reflection of some of the ways in which her “personal musical language has syncretized [her] cultural experiences” through a “myriad of syncopated gestures indigenous of: son, danzon, guajiras, montunos; […] a melody that hearkens the sound of the quena, the traditional flute of the Andes; [and] a crossover of Coplandesque harmonic overtones.”

Dvořák was himself a vociferous synthesizer of influences; known especially in the US for his works that blend various American musics, he naturally did the same with the folk music of his native Czech homeland. His String Quartet No. 11 has the feel and scale of a grand tone poem: a glorious and epic opening movement, a scherzo that adopts the classic Czech furiant dance rhythm, and one of the finest slow movements in the quartet repertory, a wistful hidden gem.

BUY TICKETS

Fri 6.3.22 | Broadway Presbyterian Church
$20 General Admission
$15 Seniors
$15 Students w/ID

This event is in the past.

Sat 6.4.22 | Bronx House
$10 Suggested Donation

Proceeds from this event will be donated to Bronx House’s community programs.

PROGRAM

TANIA LEÓN (b. 1943)
Esencia

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
String Quartet No. 11 in C major, Op. 61, B. 121

ARTISTS

HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS
Harlem Chamber Players
HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS

MEMBERS OF THE HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS
Ashley Horne › violin
Claire Chan › violin
William Frampton › viola
Wayne Smith › cello

The Harlem Chamber Players is an ethnically diverse collective of professional musicians dedicated to bringing high caliber, affordable, accessible live music to people in the Harlem community and beyond. Founded in 2008, The Harlem Chamber Players annually presents a rich season of formal live concerts, indoors, outdoors, and online. They also promote arts inclusion and equal access to the arts, bringing live music to underserved communities and promoting shared community arts and cultural engagement. The group was first inspired by the late Janet Wolfe, a long-time patron of minority musicians and founder of the NYC Housing Authority Symphony Orchestra. The Harlem Chamber Players have presented culturally relevant programs at numerous venues throughout the city and collaborated with many other arts organizations. The Harlem Chamber Players are also Artists-in-residence at the Harlem School for the Arts.

They have been featured on national radio at WQXR/WNYC at The Greene Space. The Harlem Chamber Players have also been mentioned in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Musical America, and on NPR, NBC, and Here and Now on ABC.

ERIC K. WASHINGTON
Eric K. Washington
ERIC K. WASHINGTON

HOST

Eric K. Washington, a longtime regular season host for The Harlem Chamber Players, is an independent historian and author. His book, Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal, published by Liveright in 2019 — the biography of a once influential Black railway labor figure and his Harlem-based workforce — won the New York Academy of History’s Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History, the Guides Association of New York City’s GANYC Apple Award, and received special recognition as a finalist for the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Prize. Last summer Eric scripted and narrated On Site Opera’s The Road We Came, a suite of virtual, self-guided walking tours featuring baritone Kenneth Overton, that explored African Americans and Black music history in New York City. His various fellowships include being an A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholar (Columbia University); a Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellow (CUNY Graduate Center) and a Dora Maar House Residency (France). A board member of the Biographers International Organization (BIO), Eric spearheaded the Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship, which annually awards an African American biography in progress.

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