Town Music presents: Talea Ensemble

The Talea Ensemble is known for presenting a wide range of bold creative performances with precision and superior performance quality. They continue their risk-taking tradition as part of Town Hall’s Town Music season with their theatrical chamber music piece Sideshow, based on the dark sideshows of Coney Island’s amusement parks in the early 20th century.

Sideshow is a meditation on virtuosity, freak shows, entertainment, spectacle, and the sacrifices that must be made to survive in the world. The performers style themselves as characters in a sideshow – the Sideshow Giant saxophonist, the Sword Swallower violinist, the eight-handed Human Spider pianist. Experience this acclaimed, surreal performance that pushes the boundaries of chamber music.

“Sideshow is first and foremost a work of music theater framed in a chamber music performance suggesting a circus sideshow (freak show) […] Comical, strange, or grotesque elicitations may result from various acts performed on stage, still these are never approached by a performer’s attempt to be silly, cute, melodramatic, or histrionical.” – Steven Kazuo Takasugi, composer of Sideshow

About Talea Ensemble

The Talea Ensemble's mission is to champion musical creativity, cultivate curious listeners, and bring visionary new works to life with vibrant performances that remain in the audience's imagination long after a concert. Recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the New York based Talea Ensemble has premiered more than 45 commissions since it was founded in 2008. Festival engagements have included performances at Lincoln Center Festival, Donaueschingen Musiktage, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Resonant Bodies Festival, TIME:SPANS, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Time of Music Finland, Wien Modern, Vancouver New Music, Festival Musica, and many more. The ensemble has also partnered with institutions across disciplines, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the City of Ideas Festival in Mexico, and the Storm King Art Center, and has undertaken residencies in music departments around the country to support a new generation of musicians.

About Town Music Series

http://www.townhallseattle.org