Please join us on Sunday, 30 April from 2-4PM for a discussion of Sanctified Symbol: Pears in the Art of Samuel Bak with the artist, Professor of Religion Emeritus and Edgar H. Evans Chair in Religion at Wabash College, Dr. Gary A. Phillips, and Pucker Gallery director Bernard Pucker.
The Discussion Panel will open with a concert of At the still point of the turning world, composed by Ralf Yusuf Gawlick for solo violoncello and performed by Rafael Popper-Keizer.
Gawlick wrote that “‘At the still point of the turning world’ is a line from the second movement of ‘Burnt Norton,’ the first of T.S Eliot’s Quartets. In the Quartet, Eliot speculates on time and existence through the movement towards/around/away from the still point. This point is a perceived moment in time, an echo of choice, the one end that is itself timeless. Choice naturally harbors opposition; the road taken acknowledges the road not taken. Once on the former, frequent holographic self-similarities (of expression, reflection, events, experiences, etc…) emerge on the way. I came to associate circularity (around the still point), opposition, and self-similarity with ‘[t]he still point of the turning world.’”
Please email contactus@puckergallery.com to RSVP.
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick, of Romani-Kurdish descent, was born in Germany in 1969. His works include solo, chamber, orchestral, electro-acoustic, film and choral music, traversing a wide range of styles and often exploring aspects of his complex international heritage. His music has been commissioned and championed by a wide range of artists and organizations, attracting international acclaim from audiences and critics. In recent years his electro-acoustic work Herzliche Grüße Bruno ~ Briefe aus Stalingrad (recorded by Baritone Georg Gädker and pianists Moritz Ernst and Chi-Chen Wu), eight-voice Missa Gentis Humanæ (commissioned by the Choir of Trinity Church, Wall Street), song cycle Kollwitz-Konnex (…im Frieden seiner Hände) (dedicated to guitarist Eliot Fisk and soprano Anne Harley) and the autobiographical Imagined Memories (commissioned by the Vienna-based Hugo Wolf Quartet) have exemplified his remarkably diverse output, with its frequent references to the highlights of the Western musical canon and rigorous compositional standards. Gawlick’s most recent composition, O Lungo (D)rom, an oratorio commissioned by the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien and dedicated to Romani Rose, Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, will receive its world première in October 2022 in the Konzerthaus Berlin for the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin. His music, published by several firms, has been performed internationally (in venues including Vienna’s Musikverein, New York’s Carnegie Hall) and is recorded on the Musica Omnia and Perfect Noise labels in composer-supervised performances by the works’ dedicatees. Gawlick is currently working on Die Ursitory, an opera based on Matéo Maximoff’s novel of the same name. This opera contains many "firsts": Die Ursitory is the first novel written by a Rom, on a Romani theme, and now set to music by a Romani composer. In this way, Maximoff's seminal story receives a unique realization from within, rather than being viewed through the lens and stereotypes of non-Roma, as in all previous operas with Roma (G*psy) themes. A professor at Boston College, Ralf Gawlick lives in Newton, MA, with his wife and fellow musician, Basia.
Hailed by The New York Times as “imaginative and eloquent” and dubbed “a local hero” with “silken tone and subtle attention to each note” by the Boston Globe, cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer maintains a vibrant and diverse career as one of Boston’s most celebrated artists. He is principal cellist of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Emmanuel Music, and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and a core member of many notable chamber music organizations throughout New England, including the Chameleon Arts Ensemble and Winsor Music. His 2003 performance with the Boston Philharmonic of the Saint-Saëns Concerto in A minor was praised by the Globe for “melodic phrasing of melting tenderness” and “dazzling dispatch of every bravura challenge;” more recent solo appearances include Strauss' Don Quixote with the Boston Philharmonic, Beethoven's Triple Concerto with Emmanuel Music; and the North American premiere of Roger Reynolds' Thoughts, Places, Dreams with sound/icon.
In 2019, Mr. Popper-Keizer was appointed Artistic Director of Monadnock Music, where he has been in residence every summer since 2002. Mr. Popper-Keizer is currently on faculty at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, and has previously taught at Philips Exeter Academy, Brandeis University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With A Far Cry, he has participated in college and university residencies nationwide, including guest lectures and presentations at Baldwin Wallace University and Connecticut College, and masterclasses at Yale University.