Image: Georgia O’Keeffe, “Starlight Night”

COSMOS

Winter 2026

The universe is simultaneously vast and intricate, as are our creative efforts to find order and meaning within it. A collection of four songs by Tania León, Alma Mahler, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Dora Pejaçević outlines different experiences of microscopic and macroscopic wonder under a night sky. Béla Bartók’s Mikrokosmos and George Crumb’s Makrokosmos sets are musical foils of each other, the former capturing sound worlds in miniature, and the latter extending piano technique beyond the keys in search of new expanses of timbre. Finally, William Bolcom’s song cycle “I Will Breathe A Mountain” comprises a galaxy with eleven evocative, unique sonic planets that spring from poems by eleven women.

Program:

Tania León: “Mood 3” from To and Fro

Alma Mahler: “Die stille Stadt”

Ruth Crawford Seeger: “White Moon”

Dora Pejaçević: “Venedig (Venice)”

George Crumb: Makrokosmos IV (“Celestial Mechanics”)

Intermission

Béla Bartók: 6 Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos Book VI

William Bolcom: I Will Breathe A Mountain