Reflections on Sound & Spirit(s)

The innovative Reflections in Music series is back, with artistic director Bruce Wolosoff and a group of all-star musicians inviting audiences on a soul-stirring journey through classical music with Sound & Spirit(s). 

This program promises an exploration of sacred (and perhaps a touch of not-so-sacred) musical realms, featuring composer and pianist Bruce Wolosoff, violinist Michelle Ross, and cellist Clarice Jensen performing music by Arvo Pärt, Eric Satie, and Olivier Messiaen. What makes this program even more extraordinary is that the performers are all accomplished composers themselves and will be performing their own compositions in addition to the classics. 

A highlight of the evening will be the world premiere of a A Piano and a Cello Walk into a Bar, a new concert work by distinguished film composer Carter Burwell. 

Reflections is a 501(c)3 nonprofit which hopes to bring the appreciation of classical music to new audiences and to spark new ways of thinking about and engaging with the classical music experience to those who are already music lovers. 

https://www.reflectionsinmusic.org/ 

Artist Bios: 

Bruce Wolosoff 

“Bruce Wolosoff is a formidable pianist and composer” (Gramophone) who has been lauded as “an authentic American voice” for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences. Recent projects include the solo piano album “Memento” on Avie Records, which is currently in rotation on radios stations throughout the world. “Paradise Found,” a recent album of Wolosoff’s music for cello and piano that he recorded with cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio was a Billboard Top 10 bestselling classical album. Wolosoff has recently completed a double concerto “At the Still Point of the Turning World” for violinist Michael Guttman and cellist Jing Zhao. 

Upon its release in 2018, the Wolosoff concerto for cello & orchestra, performed by Sara Sant’Ambrogio with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Nowak was also a Billboard Top 10 classical album. Critic Jerry Dubins of Fanfare Magazine described the concerto as one of “compelling beauty” that “can be declared an instant masterpiece.” Wolosoff collaborated with the late choreographer Ann Reinking on two award winning ballets, “The White City” and “A Light in the Dark.” 

Bruce Wolosoff is the artistic director of Reflections in Music.  

Clarice Jensen 

Clarice Jensen is a composer and cellist based in Brooklyn, NYC who graduated with a BM and MM from the Juilliard School. As a solo artist, Clarice has developed a distinctive compositional approach, improvising and layering her cello through shifting loops and a chain of electronic effects to open out and explore a series of rich, drone-based sound fields. Pulsing, visceral and full of color, her work is deeply immersive, marked by a wonderful sense of restraint and an almost hallucinatory clarity. Meditative yet with a sculptural sharpness and rigor that sets it apart from the swathe of New Age / DIY droners, she has forged a very elegant and precise vision. 

Her music has been described by Self-Titled as “heavily processed, incredibly powerful neo-classical pieces that seem to come straight from another astral plane”; by Boomkat as “languorously void-touching ideas, scaling and sustaining a sublime tension”; whilst Bandcamp remarked upon “a kaleidoscope of pulsing movement rich in acoustic beating and charged with other psychoacoustic effects, constantly shifting in density and viscous timbre.” 

Jensen’s striking debut album For This From That Will Be Filled was released in April 2018 on the Berlin-based label Miasmah and followed in September 2019 with the “Drone Studies” EP, a cassette release via Geographic North. Signing to FatCat’s 130701 imprint (Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hauschka, Dustin O’Halloran, etc.) in late Summer 2019, her sophomore album The experience of repetition as death was released April 2020. Naming it among the top 50 albums of 2020, NPR remarked “This collection of requiems for a dying mother ranks among the great ambient albums of the 21st century.” Her new album Esthesis was released in October 2022. 

Jensen recently scored three feature films – Amber Sealey’s No Man of God premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival; Takeshi Fukunaga’s Ainu Mosir, premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival; Fernanda Valadez’s 2020 Sundance Film Festival award-winner Sin Señas Particulares (Identifying Features), for which Jensen was nominated for a 2021 Ariel Award for Best Original Music by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. 

A versatile collaborator, Jensen has recorded and performed with a host of stellar artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Björk, Stars of the Lid, Dustin O’Halloran, Nico Muhly, Taylor Swift, Michael Stipe, the National and many others. In her role as the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), she has helped bring to life some of the most revered works of modern classical music, including pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, and more. 

Michelle Barzel Ross 

Michelle Barzel Ross is a violinist, composer, and multi-instrumental improviser. A protege of Itzhak Perlman-turned-multidisciplinary artist, Michelle is known for her debut album, pop-up project and blog Discovering Bach: Complete Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach.  Michelle is featured on Movement 11’ of Jon Batiste’s GRAMMY winning Best Album of the Year: We Are.  Michelle was recently guest 1st violinist with the Juilliard String Quartet for US and European tours. Passionate about expanding the bounds of contemporary music as both a creator and performer, Michelle is a member of Ensemble Échappé, a guest with International Contemporary Ensemble, co-curator of Lucerne Festival Forward and faculty at Lucerne Festival Contemporary. Michelle was recently the soloist in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres with James Blachly and EXO at the Met’s Temple of Dendur celebration of Arvo Pärt.  Collaboration highlights also include Bach Double with Itzhak Perlman, Michael Tilson Thomas and San Francisco Symphony, and Musician from Marlboro tours. Michelle has been guest concertmaster all around the world, such as with Orchestre de Paris, Radio France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, and others. Recent compositional highlights include creating an electronic city-wide installation piece for Lucerne Festival. Recent album releases include “The Whale Song,” for cellist Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, “Haiku,” for cellist Arlen Hlusko, and featured performances on Samuel Adler: Chamber and Instrumental Music. Michelle is the recipient of the 2012 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund, and was recently Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Michelle holds degrees from the Juilliard School and Columbia University  

Carter Burwell 

Carter Burwell has composed the music for a number of feature films, including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Before Night Falls, Adaptation, In Bruges, Twilight, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and The Banshees of Inisherin.  He also composed the music for the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show.