SFNM Santa Fe New Music Presents “Endangered!”
Pianist Marthanne Verbit performs from her new CD Release on Albany Records

CD Signing also to take place at the Candyman

For More Information: Santa Fe New Music – 505-474-6601 • info@sfnm.org

(Santa Fe, NM: October 15, 2008) Santa Fe New Music (SFNM) presents Endangered! a solo piano recital by Marthanne Dorminy-Gardner (known professionally as Marthanne Verbit) on Sunday, November 16 at 3:00 p.m. in Santa Fe at the Scottish Rite Center. This concert celebrates the release of Verbit’s CD Endangered! on the Albany Records label, and will include music from 1997-2007 composed by five American composers, celebrating nature and bearing witness to our endangered environment.

Ms. Verbit will also sign copies of her CD on Saturday, November 1 at the Candyman (851 St. Michael’s Drive), from 4:00 – 5:30.

Featured composers include Joseph Fennimore (Five Rivers, a World Premiere); Peter Lieberson (The Ocean that has no West and no East); Hilary Tann (Light from the Cliffs); John Kennedy (Naturali Periclitati); and Steve Heitzeg (Sandhill Crane Migration Variations). These are all composers whose work is familiar to long-time SFNM audiences.

The timely compositional theme — concern for the environment — reflects a convergence of the artist’s personal and artistic convictions. The composers selected for the Endangered! CD share an environmental awareness and reverence, which served as a guiding force for the pieces they wrote. For example, Hilary Tann focused on the cliffs of an inland mountain range near her first home in Wales, while Steve Heitzeg chose to celebrate the beauty of the Sandhill Crane, in his native Minnesota.

SFNM’s Artistic Director John Kennedy, whose own contribution to the CD was a reflection upon endangered natures, and all that is being lost in the human/nature interface, describes Verbit as “a gifted, sensitive, and visionary artist,” with whom SFNM has collaborated in the past, including Verbit’s New Mexico debut, in 2002.

A native of Georgia, Ms. Verbit studied at Hollins University in Virginia, the Eastman School of Music, and Boston University.  Her penchant for off-beat repertoire has made her a favorite among piano buffs and the musically curious since her first recording of Cyril Scott and her early recitals of Scriabin. Works by Leo Ornstein, Karol Szymanowski, George Antheil were programmed at such distinguished venues as the Smithsonian Baird Theater, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

Imaginative programs presented in major American and European cities of lesser known music by late 19th and early 20th century composers and premieres of contemporary American composers earned her plaudits from critics and a reputation as a questing and committed artist. Marthanne Verbit’s recordings of works by George Antheil, John Diercks, Joseph Fennimore, Leo Ornstein and Cyril Scott are on Albany Records. The Antheil disc, Bad Boy of Music, was selected as a Critic’s Choice by Gramophone. Marthanne edited the first published collection of Antheil’s piano works, for G. Schirmer.

Scottish Rite Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at the door; tickets available at SFNM's Website or Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue.

Through concerts, commissions, and educational events, Santa Fe New Music promotes understanding of, enthusiasm for, and participation in the music of our time, serving as an advocate for new classical music and its future. SFNM was founded by Artistic Director John Kennedy in 2000. Santa Fe New Music is a 501(c)3 corporation.

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