The EOS Project explores “Undreamed Shores” at the BMC Thursday, May 25. The 7 p.m. concert will include Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, as well as Etan Nasreddin-Longo’s String Quartet for Benzaiten and Yoshi Campbell and Jose Lezcano’s Tango Overture for String Quartet.

This EOS concert features and celebrates the talent and artistry of BIPOC composers from the tri-state region of southern Vermont, western New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts. Performing will be Kathy Andrew and Heather Sommerlad, violin; Emily Packard, viola; and Zon Eastes, cello.

As Andrew explains: “The program created by Heather Sommerlad is a wonderful mixture of the interesting, the beautiful,  the challenging, and, ultimately, the very satisfying.”

About the Composers
Michi Wiancko, a resident of Gill, Massachusetts, is an internationally acclaimed violinist and composer whose work spans an impressively wide spectrum of style and influence. As Artistic Director of Antenna Cloud Farm (a grassroots arts organization and music festival in Western, MA) she is focused on “the power of music as a catalyst for societal change and community resilience.”

Dr. Etan Nasreddin-Longo is a composer and ethnomusicologist raised in Newfane, VT. He is currently a co-director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs for the Vermont State Police, and also serves as the Chair of the Vermont Attorney General’s Advisory Panel on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Juvenile Justice Systems. His String Quartet for Benzaiten and Yoshi Campbell rethinks traditional forms from several different music-cultures, in this case, Euro-American art music, and Central Javanese Gamelan.

Jose Lezcano, Professor of Music at Keene State College, is a twice Grammy-Nominated Cuban American Guitarist and Composer. Fanfare Magazine describes Tango-Overture for String Orchestra (performed as a string quartet for this concert) as “a dance in a dream that sweeps away restrictions and sweeps away the dreamer.”

About the EOS Project
What do great composers look like? Where do they come from? How we answer these questions is the focus of the EOS (Educate • Open • Strengthen) Project. Created at the BMC in the spring of 2020, the Project’s mission is to open new doors and allow our community to explore what and who we’ve been missing—namely, composers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as those who identify as anything other than cis male.

The ability to write complex, evocative musical works belongs to no one race or gender, a fact that has long been obscured by the traditional canon. But there is an extensive list of gifted composers—from contemporaries of the acknowledged “great composers” to living, emerging artists today—who have created powerful works of depth and grace for as long as music has existed. EOS, under the direction of Heather Sommerlad, and with the participation of BMC faculty and area musicians, seeks out this unjustly neglected music to study and perform in a spirit of social justice and a desire to add to our understanding of great art.