Ensemble ATL does Schönberg with soprano Lindsay Kesselman

Georgia State University’s Ensemble ATL, a relative newcomer to the Atlanta chamber music scene, presents its fourth season in 2024 with a pair of performances to be held at Georgia State University’s Kopleff Recital Hall. Both performances will feature members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, as well as freelance performers.

The ensemble’s season will commence September 9 with an evening of works by Arnold Schönberg to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday. Outstanding among the pieces performed will be Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21. An arrangement of 21 poems by Belgian poet Albert Giraud into German opera, the composition is among Schönberg’s most widely revered and performed works, but it is also close to the heart of Ensemble ATL conductor and Musical Director Robert J. Ambrose.

“It is a piece that has pulled at me for most of my career,” explained Ambrose. “This will be my fifth time conducting the piece, and each time I revisit it, it seems to be more beguiling, more compelling, more insistent in what it is trying to say.” 

Additionally, the performance will feature soprano Lindsay Kesselman. “Lindsay is an absolute superstar and especially well-versed in modern music,” says Ambrose. He is quick to note that while Pierrot Lunaire was written in 1912 and thus not quite in the modern era, it makes use of vocal techniques that were revolutionary for the time period. Kesselman is outstanding at interpreting such nontraditional concepts, he adds.

The ensemble’s January 21 performance, titled Entente Cordiale, offers a diverse array of performances and compositional explorations with works by Henry Tomasi, George Onslow and Joseph Bologne, the latter of which is experiencing a renewed interest following the release of the 2022 biopic Chevalier. Additional works performed will include Anna Clyne’s Hopscotch for solo flute performed by Sarah Kruser Ambrose and Dani Howard’s Add Oil for solo cello performed by Brad Ritchie. 

According to Ambrose, the program’s title is “a reference to a series of agreements signed by France and the United Kingdom in 1904 to improve relations between the two nations.” It was a natural fit given the program’s pairing of French and British composers, with work by composer George Onslow tying it all together. “I knew I wanted the concert to be created around Onslow’s magnificent Nonet, Op. 77,” he explained. “Onslow’s father was British and mother was French, so I had the idea to build a program that would alternate between pieces by French and British composers and culminate in Nonet.”

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer. He is currently the lead guitarist for the jazz group Other Strangers, the power metal band Axis of Empires and the melodic death/thrash metal band Century Spawn.