Art in Conversation: Presenting the Continuum Chamber Collective and the NYC Premiere of Jie Yang Duo Sonata

The Continuum Chamber Collective is excited to return for the 3rd annual Art in Conversation concert at James Cohan Gallery with this year’s program titled “Postcards from Home”. This concert comprises multiple American stories about how migration affects the ritual of homecoming through works by Rebecca Clarke, Jessie Montgomery, Jie Yang, and Zhou Long. Each member of the collective will shine in different pairings of string duos and finish off as a quartet with Eight Chinese Folk Songs. Alongside the gallery’s exhibition, “From One Place to Another”, this concert reflects on how the idea of home has affected the development of American art and culture.

All composers on this program have once called New York City home, despite living many places through their lifetimes. This makes Yun-Fei Ji’s exhibit a natural setting for this concert; his art expands on issues of migration and labor practices across the US and China. The Zhou Long quartet and Jie Yang sonata reflect these artworks as both Chinese-Americans were displaced from their families at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Dr. Zhou won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for music and has been jointly Grammy nominated for a piece co-written by him and his wife. Zhou is currently a Distinguished Research Professor of Composition at University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Jessie Montgomery and Rebecca Clarke are two violinist-violist-composers whose voices also emerged through major historical events on both ends of the 20th century. Clarke identified as Anglo-American and was visiting the US at the outbreak of World War II, remaining in New York City until she passed away at 93. The Rebecca Clarke Society was founded in 2000 and serves to uncover and perform her unpublished works. Montgomery grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to a family of artist-activists during the political movements of the 1980s. She has continued to call NYC home while maintaining residencies with orchestras across the country. Montgomery is this year’s 2024 Grammy Award Winner for Best Classical Composition.

Taken from Yun-Fei Ji’s biography, we perform this program in resonance with his artistic statement: “Each work is an act of resistance, insisting that narratives of displacement and environmental destruction are worth preserving.”