New Music Chicago Presents: Ataraxia Duo

Description

Join us March 17 at ESS for a special evening presented by New Music Chicago. The Ataraxia Duo (Matthew Coley and Jennifer Ruggieri) present Emerging Resonance, a program of new works for cimbalom and harp featuring five Chicago premieres from their Composer LabFest initiative.

RSVP Required. Livestream here.

Program

Asphodel Meadows (2026) John Dorhauer

Song to Tsimbalyra (2024) Matthew Coley

Resonant Souls (2023) Alex Shapira

Nachtlied for harp, cimbalom, and two music boxes (2025) Logan Willis

Eli, Eli Sabacthani (2024) Arturo Fernandez

Dona Nobis Pacem (2024) Ian Wiese

Nautilus (2024) Yuta Tanaka

Notes from the Composers

John Dorhauer – Asphodel Meadows
“Asphodel Meadows” was written for Ataraxia Duo and was inspired by the music of the modern jazz trio GoGo Penguin. That group’s unique use of haunting, reverberating, and percussive piano timbres was a perfect complement to the sonic options available from harp and cimbalom, and this piece explores how those sounds might be adapted for this context. 

Matthew Coley – Songs to Tsimbalyra
“Songs to Tsimbalyra” is a collection of music for the never before existing combination of the concert harp and cimbalom. They are written for the Ataraxia Duo, and are dedicated to Tsimbalyra, the fictitious muse of the Ataraxia Duo. This goddess was completely conjured up by the members of the duo, Matthew Coley and Jennifer Ruggieri. The word is a portmanteau of tsimbal (a Hungarian spelling of cimbalom) and lyra (an early harp of the gods). Song No. 1: Borne of Rare Resonance is loosely inspired by the music of Erik Satie and explores the upper range of the cimbalom for carrying the melody, while also giving equal staging to both instruments by trading who has the lead and supporting roles. This piece was the first original work ever written for this instrument combination and sought to begin an inspirational path for future creations in the collection and by other composers.

Alex Shapira – Resonant Souls
When Alex first heard the Ataraxia Duo playing, he was fascinated by the rich, shimmery soundscape they produced. Resonant Souls invites the listener into a meditative sonic landscape, where time seems to slow, bringing up old memories from far away (growing up in Romania, Alex was familiar with the cimbalom, as a folkloric instrument). The music unfolds gently, making space for breath and contemplation, inviting the audience not only to listen to it, but to resonate from their souls with the penetrating vibrations of the cimbalom and harp.

Logan Willis – Nachtlied for harp, cimbalom, and two identical music boxes
I have always been fond of music boxes. Since they have allowed me to listen to the music boxes made by my grandparents and great-grandparents, they strike me as a potential precursor to musique concrete. Their common soporific association is another form of intrigue for me, as the fixed nature of the music box doesn’t seem to mesh well with my understanding of the liquidity of dream perception. They could represent two ends of a spectrum; on one end is the music box – static, as an image – and the other as the most degraded recollection in surreal space. I became fascinated by the sound of a music box traversing that distance, imitating itself and degrading in each copy until it bears no resemblance of the real thing – much like a dream’s relation to reality. The piece’s seven-part form explores this decay in mechanical and perceptual terms. 

Arturo Fernandez – Eli, Eli Sabacthani
The title of Eli, Eli Sabacthani is a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ; specifically, they are among Jesus’ words as he was dying on the cross according to the Gospel of Luke. The full quote (“Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani”) translates to “God, why have you forsaken me,” which, while not the original context, can be taken as a cry of hopelessness. This piece thus takes the material of the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee and tears it apart to reflect a state of abject hopelessness. The beginning section is rather turbulent, full of many sudden harmonic shifts and a sonic landscape that refuses to sit still, with tremolos and bisbigliandos when it is not arpeggiating frantically. This culminates in a statement of the opening theme quadrupled at the octave in harps, and with a final flourish, the piece moves on to its second, much more mournful section. Here, the melody of Nearer, My God, to Thee slowly begins to make itself apparent, until finally climaxing in a polytonal statement of both the original hymn and its inversion. It then slowly peters out into the bass register, fading away to nothing.

Ian Wiese – Dona Nobis Pacem
Dona nobis pacem was composed during the third Heartland Marimba online composition festival. Translating from Latin to “Grant us peace,” the duet of the harp and cimbalom expand upon the motifs of several elements of Roman Catholic plainchant inside newly composed music. None of the actual plainchant was set to the Dona nobis pacem text, but the idea of granting us peace fed into the tumultuous time we were in as the piece was composed. Instead of becoming a duet with long lyrical lines (though there are plenty of those in this piece!), Dona nobis pacem instead opts to take influence from Mediterranean and Balkan dance music on top of the Latin chant, combining the backgrounds of ostensibly Roman and Orthodox music and a reunification of the Five Fingers of God for a moment in a shared dance between the two now-percussive instruments. While the harpist wraps knuckles on the soundboard of the instrument, the cimbalom player clicks sticks together and knocks on the instrument as, one by one, the pair states themes in imitation to one another.

Yuta Tanaka – Nautilus
Often, I begin a piece with visual images or scenery in mind. This time, however, I planned the work without any specific imagery. Instead, I set out to write a through-composed piece in three stages, each defined by a distinct groove. A rhythmic anchor placed at the end of each bar serves to connect these stages. Another defining feature of the piece is the way its motives develop. The rhythmic motives seem eager to move forward, yet repeatedly turn back on themselves, almost like a retrograde. In retrospect, this process reflects aspects of our daily lives: even as we strive to progress, we are often required to confront and overcome obstacles. Finally, the title. I named the piece “Nautilus” after completing it. The title has a loose association with both the sea creature and the submarine of the same name from Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”.