Simic Colors at Salmagundi: baritone Joseph Keckler, soprano Sharon Harms

The Village Trip planned to host the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic, along with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov for the premiere of Vrebalov’s “Simic Settings”. Sadly, Charles Simic died early in 2023. Vrebalov’s settings were commissioned by the American Society of Composers and Publishers’ The ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund. The songs were conceived for baritone Joseph Keckler, “a major talent with a trickster’s dark humor and a range that shatters the conventional boundaries” — Stephen Holden, New York Times. As to Composer Aleksandra Vrebalov: “Her musical language, inflected with Balkan and klezmer idioms, is vivid and free of clichés” — Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times.

Gene Pritsker, multifaceted composer, guitarist and world renowned orchestrator of major motion pictures contributes “Simic Colors” — settings for guitar, mandolin and soprano Sharon Harms -- “The White Room”, “Green Lampshade”, and “Black Butterfly.

Another commission from The ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund & the Roger Shapiro Fund, especially for The Village Trip, facilitated the creation of a new work by Carman Moore. James R. Oestereich of the New York Times described Carman Moore as a composer who not only defies categories, but “treats them with disdain,” and goes on to say that he is a composer with "a lot of music in his head, the product of his upbringing in black culture, his classical training and his voracious curiosity…” Moore’s latest work,“A Village Triptych”, sets poems by Djuna Barnes, Gamel Woolsey and Carman Moore’s dear friend and colleague Lennox Raphael. Raphael is remembered for the scandal surrounding his play, *Che!”. Moore and Raphael were both journalists active in Greenwich Village in the 60s and 70s. Moore wrote for The Village Voice, Raphael wrote for the underground East Village Other.

Baritone Joseph Keckler will select some of his work relating to Greenwich Village. Keckler often zeroes in on moments from daily life and transforms them into affecting, at times absurd underworld voyages.

Composers

• Aleksandra Vrebalov
• Carman Moore
• Gene Pritsker
• Joseph Keckler

Performers

• Joseph Keckler, baritone
• Sharon Harms, soprano
• Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion
• Djordje Nesic, keyboard
• Greg Chudzik, bass
• Changhyun Cha, trumpet
• Matthew Dean Marsh, piano
• Lavinia Pavlish, violin

Poets

• Charles Simic
• Gamel Woolsey
• Djuna Barnes
• Lennox Rafael