2026 Kind of Blue Concert
Music is the electric earth in which the spirit lives, thinks, invents.— Beethoven
Electric Earth Concerts ushers in the summer with its second concert of 2026, “Kind of Blue” on Saturday, June 20 at 7pm at the First Church in Jaffrey.
This boundary-crossing, jazz-tinted program features some of the greats of 20th and 21st century music. Works by Leonard Bernstein, Joan Tower, Derek Bermel; AND newly composed music (premieres!) by Jamie Keesecker and Scott Lindroth. With Lisa Emenheiser, piano; Ari Streisfeld, violin; Thomas Kraines, cello; Derek Bermel, clarinet & composer; Jonathan Bagg, viola, and Laura Gilbert, flute.
The Program: Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata; Derek Bermel’s Thracian Sketches for solo clarinet; Jamie Keesecker’s The Peacocks (by Bill Evans), reimagined for flute and strings; Scott Lindroth’s Inner Voices for solo viola; and Joan Tower’s White Granite, for piano and strings.
Artistic Director Gilbert explains the genesis of the new piece “Peacocks”: Ever since I discovered Bill Evans’s late album You Must Believe in Spring I’ve been obsessed with Jimmy Rawls’s tune, The Peacocks–and Evans’s nocturn-esque solo on that recording. I’ve had a transcription of Evans’s solo on my iPad for years and I often find myself pulling the music up and playing around with the solo as a flutistic flight of fancy, a reminder, to a classical musician, of what it might feel like to range wherever your heart and imagination take you on your instrument. I finally found a way to incorporate this gorgeous, improvised composition into a new work that would shed a different light on what Rawls and Evans created, still preserving the freedom of the original but playable by a classical musician obsessed with jazz.
Jamie Keesecker, a wonderful composer based at Duke University and long-time musical friend of Electric Earth Concerts, and a
Bill Evans scholar, was the perfect partner for EEC in realizing this dream.
Over the course of his distinguished career, composer, conductor, pianist, author and humanitarian, Leonard Bernstein won sixteen Grammy awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement), seven Emmy awards, and two Tony awards. He was honored for both his conducting and his compositions. Bernstein has said, “Music can name the unnameable and know the unknowable.”
Composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel has been featured at major concert halls and festivals worldwide. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle writes “To listen to his music is to run across a wealth of influences, from Bartók and Stravinsky to big band, and from early-period rap to Bulgarian folk music to West African drumming. Also, it seems, to theoretical physics.” He has been nominated for three Grammy awards, for both composition and performance. He has scored several films and collaborated with a dizzying array of artists.
Scott Lindroth’s work as a composer has centered on instrumental and vocal media, including compositions for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the Ciompi Quartet and Electric Earth Concerts. He has also composed music for dance, theater, and video. His new work, Inner Voices, was written for Jonathan Bagg.
Joan Tower is an American composer, concert pianist, and conductor. Her works have been performed worldwide. She was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music, having been nominated for her virtuosic Concerto for Violin. Tower is widely celebrated as one of America’s most distinguished contemporary classical composers. Her other honors include three Grammy awards for her album Made in America (Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance).
General admission is $30, payable online (www.electricearthconcerts.org
Summary Info:
Concert: Kind of Blue
Date: Saturday, June 20, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm
Venue: First Church in Jaffrey, NH
General Admission: $30.
ElectricEarthConcerts.org
603-499-6216
Date and Time
Saturday Jun 20, 2026
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM EDT
