The Reflections in Music series, whose mission is to bring classical music to new audiences and to inspire new ways for seasoned music lovers to engage with the classical music experience, will return to The Church in Sag Harbor with “Blue-Tinged Classics” on Saturday at 6 p.m.
The performance will feature Bruce Wolosoff, a composer, pianist, and the artistic director of Reflections in Music; Narek Arutyunian, a clarinetist, and Deborah Buck, a violinist, playing music by George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Aaron Copland, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. The evening will also include two premieres: a new work by Carter Burwell, a renowned film composer, and “Blue Mantra,” the most recent composition by Mr. Wolosoff, which was inspired by a painting by Margaret Garrett.
Throughout history, classical music has revitalized itself by exploring new ideas and influences. “Blue-Tinged Classics” highlights how the soulful, emotive qualities of the blues have inspired classical compositions, creating music that is at once innovative and rooted in tradition.
Beginning with Gershwin’s fusion of blues and jazz into classical forms, this influence migrated to Paris, where composers like Ravel and Debussy incorporated the blues into some of their music. Back in the United States, Copland merged blues into his compositions, and, more recently, Mr. Perkinson, a modern composer, infused blues into his violin music.
Mr. Wolosoff, known for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences, often composes in response to visual art and through collaboration with leading artists. Last week, Avie Records, a British independent classical music record company, released his “Rising Sun Variations,” a set of solo piano variations on “House of the Rising Sun,” which he began to compose during the pandemic.
As the first-prize winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Arutyunian performed debut recitals in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall and in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center. He has also performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Washington Center for the Performing Arts.
As a recitalist, Ms. Buck has appeared at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and over the airways via “Sunday’s Live” on Los Angeles’s KKGO. She served as the tenured concertmaster of the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 2008-2013, and in 2022 was appointed concertmaster of Orchestra Lumos in Stamford, Conn.
Mr. Burwell has composed the music for a number of feature films, including “Blood Simple,” “Raising Arizona,” “Miller’s Crossing,” “Fargo,” “Gods and Monsters,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.”
Tickets are $25.
