About the Event

The first decades of the AIDS crisis (1980s-90s) profoundly impacted the artistic community, resulting in the tragic loss of hundreds of artists, among them many composers and musicians. Many of these composers’ works have languished in obscurity, neglected in favor of more mainstream narratives.

Violinist Giancarlo Latta – in partnership with ChamberQUEER and pianist Robert Fleitz – presents A Dance of Life, a recital program that revives and spotlights a remarkable but overlooked repertoire of violin and piano works by composers who died of AIDS during this time period.

The program brings into dialogue seven wide-ranging works written between 1975 and 1991. Most of these compositions have not been performed in several decades – and have never been commercially recorded – and thus represent a gap in the narrative of late-20th-century American classical music. This project serves as a vital form of musical advocacy, introducing contemporary audiences to works by queer artists of an earlier generation that risk being lost to history, and encouraging conversations about resilience, memory, and identity.

Program:

• Michael Seyfrit (1947-1994) - A Dance of Life (1989)

• Robert Savage (1951-1993) - Rhapsody and Meditation (1984-85)

• Charles Buel (1943-1994) - Tree-Lined Highways (1975)

• Yvar Mikhashoff (1941-1993) - No Daisies from Flowers for Joan Mitchell (1988)

• Robert Nofsinger (1963-1993) - For Robert (1988)

• Chris DeBlasio (1959-1993) - Serenade for Violin and Organ (1991) (transcription for violin and piano)

• Louis Weingarden (1943-1989) - Sonata: “Les Violons du Bal” (1989)