In their U.S. debut as a duo, American trombonist and countertenor David Whitwell and Irish pianist Cliodna Shanahan bring a program of premieres to NYC. The London-based Shanahan will give the U.S. premieres of two solo piano works: Hannah Kendall’s ‘On the Chequer’d Field Array’d’ and Richard Causton’s ‘Night Piece (after Mozart)’ to represent the London crowd, as well as a performance of Irish composer Gerald Barry’s ‘Triorchic Blues’. Whitwell and Shanahan will premiere their own trombone and piano version of selections from Messaien’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’, as well as the epic ‘Eight Songs for a Drag Queen’ by Italian composer Girolamo Deraco. The latter was written especially for Whitwell, incorporating his voice and trombone to tell the story of Esther, a drag performer grappling with danger and her own identity in a formative night in NYC. The Duo will also premiere Gene Pritsker’s ‘The Immense Distances Between Thought And Speech’, as well as new compositions by Dan Cooper and Mark Kostabi.

Opening for the Clíodna Shanahan / David Whitwell Duo is the San Diego-based group SWARMIUS, as well as a set of piano compositions by Mark Kostabi. SWARMIUS will perform two vocal works with the Boston-based countertenor Rudolfo Giron as a guest artist. The first work, entitled ‘Seven Inches’, is a driving rock throwdown from the in-progress opera ‘Saint Francis De Los Barrios’, a contemporary retelling that envisions Francis as a charismatic, bisexual cross-dresser living in Tijuana, working miracles among the HIV and TB afflicted community of transgender sex workers living in danger and squalor in the shadow of the border wall. The second work: ‘Things’, is a mystical ballad.