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Concerts News

Scenes from I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment (A Work-in-Progress)

Ensemble Decipher is headed to the Bay Area to present scenes in workshop from Joseph Bohigian’s work-in-progress, I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment with Lebanese-Armenian vocalist Khatchadour Khatchadourian. The free workshop performance, presented by Other Minds, will take place on Friday, July 25, 2025, at 7:30 pm at the Paul Dresher Ensemble Studio in Oakland, CA. The performance will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A with the ensemble, moderated by Charles Amirkhanian. Seating is limited. Register for free HERE.

I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment is an evening-length multimedia work for live electronics, solo voice, and video projection about the life of Georgian-born Soviet-Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov. Though he made significant contributions to film, Parajanov was repeatedly persecuted, censored, and imprisoned in his home country. The multiculturalism of his native South Caucasus region was essential to his work, which is reflected in the multilingual text for the piece by the 18th century bard Sayat Nova. The work combines Sayat Nova’s existing melodies with newly created ones by Khatchadourian and Bohigian, along with music by folk musicians from across the South Caucasus. The premiere will take place in 2026 at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco.

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Decipher in Illinois March 2025

Ensemble Decipher will perform two shows in Illinois in March 2025 with music by Erin Rogers, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Taylor Long and premieres by Eric Lemmon and Rob Cosgrove. The ensemble will be in residence at Knox College in Galesburg March 6–7, 2025, followed by a performance at Constellation’s Frequency Series in Chicago on Sunday, March 9, 2025, at 8:30 pm. Tickets for the performance at Constellation in Chicago AVAILABLE HERE.

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Concerts

Ensemble Decipher Performs in Maryland

Ensemble Decipher is excited to be a resident ensemble at the National Philharmonic’s Summer String Institute this week. We’ve had a blast the past two days working with the wonderful students at SSI!
 
We are teaching two groups of string students about music and technology. One younger group fittingly called the “Guarneri” group is learning how to play as an ensemble with live-looping and live processing through effects like delay, reverb, and distortion. The older group, the “Strad’s,” are working with Cycling ‘74’s Max/MSP and learning to both improvise and compose with computers!
 
We are performing this Thursday with the students, along with two works from our repertoire: Pamela Z’s Twenty Answers and Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s Of Breath and Feeding Back.
 
Our concert will be at 4:00 pm on July 25, 2024, at the River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation (6301 River Rd, Bethesda, MD 20817).

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Concerts

Ensemble Decipher Networked Fundraising Concert

Ensemble Decipher presents a concert of music written and adapted for networked performance on Thursday, May 9, 2024 at 5:30pm PT / 7:30pm CT / 8:30pm ET. The music will be performed live via the internet from six different locations and streamed on Decipher’s YouTube channel. The concert is being held to raise funds for Ensemble Decipher’s upcoming performances and ticketing will be Pay What You Can with a suggested donation of $25.

The concert will feature a series of works new to Decipher’s repertoire by some of our favorite composers. Magic 8 Balls, toy instruments, and machine listening abound in Pamela Z’s Twenty Answers in an arrangement by Paula Matthusen, Angélica Negrón’s The Little Things, Scott Miller’s Exit Velocity, Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s Speculating and Reflecting, and toy_5 by Decipher’s own Eric Lemmon.

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Concerts News

Ensemble Decipher @ Roulette Intermedium

Ensemble Decipher will perform at Roulette Intermedium (509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217) on October 23rd, 8:00PM. Doors open at 7:30PM. The program will include works by Bora Yoon, Erin Rogers, and Lyn Goeringer. It will also include a collaboration between choreographer and dancer Hiva Sedaghat and ensemble members Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Robert Cosgrove, and Taylor Long.

We are still raising funds to support this incredible project and would love your help! Please consider donating below!

We greatly appreciate the support of the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Copland Fund for New Music, the Amphion Foundation, the Fromm and Barlow Foundations, the Brooklyn Arts Council, Reed College, and the numerous individuals who have already donated. This project could not have been achieved without you!

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Concerts

Decipher Performs at New Music Gathering

Ensemble Decipher will perform at the 2023 New Music Gathering at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. The concert on Friday, June 23, 2023 at 1:00 pm will include music by Mari Kimura, Lyn Goeringer, and Joseph Bohigian.

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Concerts News

Decipher at the LoKo Festival

Ensemble Decipher will perform at the LoKo Arts Festival in Potsdam, New York. The concert on Friday, April 28 2023 will include music by Yaz Lancaster, Lyn Goeringer, Oliver Hickman, Joseph Bohigian, and the premiere of Jerod Sommerfeldt’s Plantronica.

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Concerts News

Performances in DC and Baltimore

Decipher will perform at Rhizome in Washington DC on March 31, 2023 alongside our friends Sideband and Warp Duo. A few days later on April 3, see us in Baltimore at the Peabody Institute, where we’ll perform music by Margaret Schedel, Oliver Hickman, Joseph Bohigian, and premiering newly commissioned works by Erin Rogers and Lyn Goeringer.

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Concerts News

Residency at Michigan State University

We are pleased to announce we will be in residence at Michigan State University in January, holding a workshop with student composers and presenting a concert on Friday, January 27, 2023 at 8:00 pm. We will be performing music by Mari Kimura, Sam Pluta, Oliver Hickman, Rob Cosgrove, and Joseph Bohigian.

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Concerts

Ensemble Decipher SUNY PACC Tour