On November 30th, the teens and tweens of Face the Music kick off their “Roulette Kids” season with a spectacular new work for film and live music, called Heavenrunner. Written by a 16-year-old member of the ensemble, Heavenrunner brings together magnificent NASA footage and an inspiring score. Also on the program is Neil Rolnick’s Oceans Eat Cities, for string quartet, live electronics, and live video, which uses data from rising sea levels as the basis of a two-movement tone poem about climate change, and our potential to stop it.
Face the Music
Praised for “stunning performances” by The New York Times, Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music is the only youth ensemble in the country solely devoted to the music of living composers. Advancing Kaufman Music Center’s commitment to modern music, Face the Music draws over 200 students from all over the New York region.
Under the direction of conductor and founder Dr. Jenny Undercofler, Face the Music has played at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Roulette, BAM Café, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the Bang On A Can Marathon; and has worked with professional musicians such as the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, David Robertson, and Vijay Iyer. Now in its eleventh season, Face the Music has been featured on WQXR’s Young Artist Showcase, NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been the subject of feature stories in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Face the Music performs music for large groups (orchestra, jazz band, improvisation ensemble); cultivates, workshops and performs music by its own member-composers; and partners with the Kronos Quartet in a one-of-a-kind string quartet program devoted to contemporary music. Face the Music is the only youth group among the Legacy Partners for Kronos Quartet’s groundbreaking new commissioning initiative “Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire.”