‘Ceaseless Beauty’ A Full-Sensory Chamber Music Experience

Juraj Kojš at The Gates performance for Miami Light Project. The composer performs Wednesday, May 13 in a concert in Coconut Grove. (Photo by Linda Phelps)

Miami-based composer Juraj Kojš has a reputation for pushing musical boundaries with his use of electronics and multimedia.  Yet, for his upcoming concert, “Ceaseless Beauty,” he returns to his classical beginnings with original compositions for cello, piano, viola, and piano.

For Kojš, the concert is a deeply personal one, featuring works that explore memory, emotion, and Kojš’s Slovak identity. The music draws on textures inspired by Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt, and blends romantic influences with North American minimalism.  Kojš applies recurring melodic gestures that  create a meditative atmosphere for what he describes as “music that carries the residue of a 19th-century, suffering artist, deep in a forest.”

Kojš’s formal training in classical piano and composition at the Bratislava State Conservatory became the foundation of his work. Later on, while studying under the influential composer, Judith Shatin, founder of the Computer Music Center at the University of Virginia, and Stafania Serafin, at Florida International University,  he expanded into electronic media. Today Kojš is as much at home with the classical chamber music form as he is with a synthesizer and he embraces this plurality without hierarchy.

This concert will not only bridge these different musical structures, it will include new musical formats. Pieces from his album of the same name, “Ceaseless Beauty,” developed during an artist residency at the Deering Estate, return in a new, live context with an ensemble that features violinist Scott Flavin, violist Jodi Levitz, cellist Ross Harbaugh, and pianist Jacob Mason. Each musician brings a wealth of experience and talent to the stage.

Jodi Levitz is currently Professor of Viola at the Frost School of Music and Artistic Director of the Stamps Ensembles. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Scott Flavin, a professor of violin and chamber music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, has a multi-faceted violin career as chamber musician, orchestral concertmaster and soloist. He is a member of the Bergonzi Piano Trio and PULSE Trio. He currently is concertmaster of the Symphony of the Americas, and was long-time concertmaster for Florida Grand Opera and Miami City Ballet.

Jodi Levitz is an internationally acclaimed violist, renowned for her advocacy of contemporary viola repertoire and her dynamic career as both performer and educator. A former principal violist and soloist with I Solisti Veneti, she is currently Professor of Viola at the Frost School of Music and Artistic Director of the Stamps Ensembles.

Ross Harbaugh is professor of cello at the Frost School of Music and a member of the Bergonzi String Quartet. (Photo by Scott Flavin)

Ross Harbaugh is professor of cello at the Frost School of Music and a member of the Bergonzi String Quartet with a distinguished career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He is also a founding member of the New World Quartet and winner of the Naumburg Prize.

Jacob Mason is an American pianist known for his virtuosic technique and adventurous repertoire, gained early recognition with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and the New World Symphony. A graduate of the Frost School of Music and the Hochschule für Musik Basel, he is co-founder of the ensemble Ex-Sentia.

Kojš designed the performance to provide a full sensory experience for audiences.  He has enlisted transdisciplinary artist, Dimitry Saïd Chamy, to create video works based on footage captured in his native, mountainous, Liptov region, by Kojš’s sister, Mariana Kojšová.  Additionally, each piece of music will be accompanied by Kojš’s original poetry that echoes his Slovakian homeland.

WHAT:  “Ceaseless Beauty”

WHERE: St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church  2750 McFarlane Road, Coconut Grove

WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 13

COST: $10 at  www.eventbrite.com

INFORMATION: kojs.net/

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