As part of New York’s city-wide festival, Composers Now!, the American Composers Alliance collaborated with Lunatics at Large, to present recent works by Richard Brooks, Richard Cameron-Wolfe, Eleanor Cory, Brian Fennelly, Thomas Flaherty, Jan Gilbert, and Louis Karchin at Symphony Space, New York. Amongst the works performed was the premiere performance of Jan Gilbert’s The Indigo Rooftop of the Night for soprano, alto flute, viola, and piano performed by Jessika Kenney, voice; Laura Falzon, alto flute; Jen Herman, viola; and Michael Haas, cello.
The Indigo Rooftop of the Night, dedicated to soprano Jessika Kenney who has been the featured vocalist on several CD’s of classical Persian music with ney master Ostad Hossein Omoumi, is the second work Gilbert has written celebrating Persian poetry. She adds that “The first, Songs of Transformation, was written for choir and ney, and premiered by Professor Omoumi. In this new setting of the Persian contemporary poet and Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz [The Indigo Rooftop of the Night], I am exploring writing in melodic modes (although not the exact dastgahs of Persian music, which follow complex musical form). In working with Persian poetry, I am searching for musical structures that convey the beauty of the Farsi language and the poet’s expression of love.”
Jan Gilbert has been commissioned by many. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, Walker Art Center, American Composers Forum and the Otto Bremer Foundation. Gilbert’s interest in experimental and non-western music has led her to create many works centering on cross-cultural themes, including choral works such as Let that day be darkness (set in Krio) and Nightchants (Native American, African and Sanskrit poetry), and orchestral works such as Nine in One (a setting of a Hmong folktale) and Khoj.