Kati Agócs
Title: Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra
Commission: 2015
Completed: 2018
Instrumentation: violin and percussion
Premiere Location: Boston, MA
Premiere Ensemble: Nicholas Kitchen, violin, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, Frank Epstein, director
Notes:
The music of Kati Agócs is hailed for merging sensuous allure with lapidary rigor, and is performed by leading musicians worldwide. The Boston Globe has cited its elegance, praising “music of fluidity and austere beauty” which “disperses its energy in unexpected ways,” “combining great tensile strength with a gorgeous unfolding of luminous lyrical episodes, rich inventive counterpoint, and a feeling of deep, elusive mystery.” The New York Times has characterized her chamber music as “striking,” her orchestral music as “filled with attractive ideas,” and her vocal music as possessing “an almost nineteenth-century naturalness.” Kati Agócs received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a winner of the prestigious Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2014. In its award citations, The Academy said: “The music of Kati Agócs reveals a wonderfully accessible lyricism that unfolds with both drama and complexity . . . It is music that seems to come directly from nature. It has heart: it reaches the hearer through melody and clear design, with its soulful directness and its naturalness of dissonance.” Kati Agócs serves on the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory in Boston.