Kickstarter

Sunday January 30th, 3pm
Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th St.
New York, NY 10016
$10 at the door

We performed at the Gershwin Hotel a little over a year ago, with Rhymes With Opera, and had a great time - the space is eclectic and intimate. The program will feature Lori Laitman's I Never Saw Another Butterfly and other great works for saxophone and voice.

We are excited to celebrate the successful funding of our project (and then some). Many thanks to all of our supporters!

Greetings from Elisabeth -

We're thrilled to announce that, having surpassed the $3500 goal, we've asked the amazing Amy Beth Kirsten to write a piece for us - and she's agreed!

Amy was a graduate student at the Peabody Conservatory when Zach and I were wee sophomores, and I've been a huge fan of her work ever since.

Below is a photo and brief bio. Check her out!

Amy Beth Kirsten (b. 8/21/1972 in Belleville, Illinois) was recently a finalist for the Rome Prize in Music Composition and was the recipient of a 2009 Artist Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. She has been a Composition Fellow at Norfolk New Music Festival, Bang on a Can, Mizzou New Music Festival, Music10, and at École Normale de Musique in Paris. Most recently, Ms. Kirsten held the position of Missouri Composer Laureate (2009-10). Recent performances include those by Vicki Ray, Alarm Will Sound, Tim Munro (of eighth blackbird), American Composers Orchestra – 16th Annual Underwood Reading, l’Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, Harbor Opera Company, San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Missouri Verses and Voices, the CAGE Ensemble, Volti, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in a reading session with Marin Alsop.
Raised in the suburbs of Kansas City and Chicago, Ms. Kirsten received degrees from Benedictine University (BA), the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University (MM), and from Peabody Conservatory (DMA). She has taught on the faculties of Peabody Conservatory, Towson University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. Currently a freelance composer, she currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.
www.amybethkirsten.com

We have passed the $3,000 mark! To celebrate, enjoy the attached video from our Plymouth kick-off concert. It's three short pieces by Jason Belcher. He's a cool composer from Boston whose music is open ended and folksong inspired. My apologies for the camera focus issues, just consider it artsy.

Elisabeth and I have been blown away by everyone's response and generosity. Really. It means so much to us to have your support and we can't wait to create the CD this summer! We're also excited for (and terrified of) those "choose a song" pledges, haha.

Now, having met our goal doesn't mean that our fund drive is over. Elisabeth and I would love to add another composer to the project (we are still considering who). We also want to expand our plans for a CD release tour (so that all of you can take part!). Here's our new goals:

$3,500 - we'll add another composer (TBA)
$4,000 - we'll expand our planned CD release tour (NYC and Boston) to include additional cities (Philly, Baltimore, DC, or request a place!)

We've got 16 days left so help spread the word, and thanks for the support!

Greetings from Elisabeth -

I wanted to send out a heartfelt thank-you once we hit $2000, and it turns out we not only hit it, we smashed it!

At 78% funded, and with 18 days to go, we are feeling extremely optimistic. This outpouring of support has been wonderful.

I hope you've all been enjoying our photos. Our photographer is the wonderful Catherine Halliday, full-time sister, student and "America's Next Top Model" enthusiast. In other words, the perfect person to help us capture both our Serious Musician side, and our Youthful Exuberance side.

Catherine took over 1,000 photos in Central Park, NYC, and then parsed those down to "merely" 200. We hope to release a good number of them with the CD.

I had some photoshop fun with a bunch of them, and to celebrate being over two-thirds funded, I've attached the "Subway" series. Enjoy!

Love,
Elisabeth Halliday

We broke the $1,000 mark this week! Elisabeth and I have been blown away by your generosity. We're going to keep the momentum going up to our NYC concert on Jan 30 (details at our project page). Hopefully we can celebrating reaching our goal then!

In the mean time enjoy another press photo. This one is from our "serious new music people" collection.