Made up of approximately twenty students, ages 11 to 17, FACE THE MUSIC was founded in the fall of 2005 by Special Music School Music Director Jenny Undercofler and composer Huang Ruo. In January of 2008, the group helped to re-open Merkin Hall with the premiere of Ira Mowitz's Kol Aharon for violin, digital soundtrack, and ensemble. Since then, Face the Music has performed at Roulette, Queens College, the Queens Museum of Art, and twice on the Wordless Music Series. This spring, they helped to open the Greene Space with a live broadcast on WNYC, and in May, gave the US premiere of Gérard Grisey’s Manifestations in Merkin Hall.
Listen to FTM play live at the Greene Space on WNYC!
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This is our review in the 1/30 Jewish Daily Forward:
The evening’s feel good hit may well have been Face the Music, an ensemble of two dozen members of Special Music School P.S. 859 — a New York City public school for 135 gifted children — that performed Ira Moskowitz’s “Kol Aharon” (“Aaron’s Voice”). Directed by Jennry Undercofler, “Kol Aharon” was commissioned by the Special Music School for this gala evening, and, along with trumpet, cello, bass, flute, horn and viola, included an intriguing digital soundtrack. As for the young virtuosos’ concert garb? They all wore T-shirts in yellow, aqua, blue, red and lilac! Adding to the ensemble’s charm and skill, two pint-sized piano artists — Brian Ge and Farrah Dupoux — managed to play the piano with verve while peering over the baby grands’ music stand to make eye contact with the conductor. Priceless.
Another NYT review! From 1/23 (Wednesday), Allan Kozinn:
"The program began away from the keyboard, when Face the Music, an ensemble of 15 students from the Kaufman Center’s music schools, performed — unleashed, really — Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Poème Symphonique” for 100 metronomes (1962) in the hall’s mezzanine. The work involves letting the metronomes (set to different tempos) tick until they all run down, a process that took about 25 minutes and yielded constantly changing rhythms and textures.
Later in the afternoon Farrah Dupoux and Brian Ge, students from the center’s Special Music School, gave a vigorous, clear-textured performance of John Adams’s part-mechanistic, part-whimsical piano duo “Hallelujah Junction” (1996). "
"But as was the case in the Niederhoffer/Unterberg foyer, the stars of the night were the child musicians. Violinist Haley Billia, 12, aced her solo in Ira Mowitz's "Kol Aharon," performed by the Face the Music ensemble.
"I really love the school. It's not competitive at all," Haley, who has studied violin since she was 4, said.
Ramin Abrams, 10, played the double bass in the ensemble. He attended the event with his parents and his brother, Justin, 15, who studies at the Special Music School while also enrolled at the Professional Children's School."
The program ended, appropriately, with a performance by Face the Music, an ensemble of two dozen students (strings, flutes, two pianos, a horn and a trumpet) from the Special Music School. Conducted by Jenny Undercofler, the young musicians presented the premiere of a new version of Ira J. Mowitz’s “Kol Aharon” (“Aaron’s Voice”). The solo violin part, ably played by Haley Gillia, is demanding: fidgety music that shifts from virtuosic flights to elegiac musings. Often the solo violin floats almost unperturbed over the atmospheric hum of the ensemble, enriched with a digital soundtrack that includes the mumbling voice of the composer’s young son.
