A Liminal Space
Asher Armstrong, pianoInstrumental Series
This program is an act of advocacy for a group of "outcast" works written by women between the two World Wars.
Each of these women's lives was filled with tragedy and hardship: as a queer Dutch-Jewish female composer during the Second World War, Henriëtte Bosmans experienced a brutal “unperson-ing” during her artistic activities; Russian composer Varvara Gaigerova among the subversive individuals “re-habilitated” by the Soviet regime; and Ilse Fromm-Michaels was blacklisted by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party due of her Jewish husband. Yet, under duress and in some of the most fraught circumstances imaginable, these women created expressively lucid, and at times overwhelmingly beautiful piano music, some of which you will hear in its North American premiere by American pianist Asher Armstrong.