American Composers Orchestra
Kedrick Armstrong, Conductor
Daniel Bernard Roumain, Electric Violin
Tracy Silverman, Electric Violin
Vân-Ánh Võ, Dan Bau
Andrzej Ciepliński, Clarinet

Program:
DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN America, To Us
for Electric Violins and Orchestra (New York Premiere)
OSWALD HUỲNH New Work
for Vietnamese Traditional Instruments and Orchestra (World Premiere)
ALEXANDER TIMOFEEV New Work (World Premiere)
MALI IRENE Deliverance
for Orchestra and Community Music Making (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
ALEX WEISER Tfiles
for Clarinet and Orchestra (U.S. Premiere)

On October 27 at Carnegie Hall, American Composers Orchestra, one of the country’s leading new-music ensembles, presents an evening of five new works by American composers, led by conductor Kedrick Armstrong. The program features electric violinists Daniel Bernard Roumain and Tracy Silverman, đàn bầu artist Vân-Ánh Võ, and Polish clarinetist Andrzej Ciepliński, who appears as soloist in the U.S. premiere of Alex Weiser’s “Tfiles (Prayers).”

These new works explore the ways in which music brings people together in specific settings, from memorials and weddings to town halls and street dances. By exploring music from these gatherings on the Zankel Hall concert stage, they reframe the idea of a “concert gathering” and offer a unique window into this nearly universal human experience.

Among the evening’s premieres is Alex Weiser’s “Tfiles (Prayers),” a clarinet concerto performed by Polish soloist Andrzej Ciepliński. Inspired by three Yiddish-language poems by Kadya Molodowsky, the work reimagines the concerto as a series of musical prayers, moving from a plea for vitality, through a search for the unknown divine, to a final hymn to nature. The piece was commissioned by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews for its Warsaw premiere with the Polish Radio Symphony

Orchestra, and co-funded by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage through the “Composers’ Commissions” program implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance.

Program Note:
Tfiles (Prayers) A concerto for clarinet and orchestra

1. “Don’t Let Me Go Under” | “Nit loz mikh untergeyn”
2. “I Still Don’t Know To Whom” | “Ikh veys nokh nit tsu vemen”
3. “I Lie on the Earth” | “Ikh lig ba dr’erd”

In her three Yiddish-language poems titled “Tfiles” (“Prayers”), Kadya Molodowsky reimagines what a Jewish prayer can be. Rather than presenting prayer as a collective ritual search for the divine, Molodowsky frames it as a personal, individual quest that moves beyond orthodox belief. Drawing on these poems, Alex Weiser’s concerto transforms the clarinet into a searching voice: intimate, lyrical, and expansive.

The first movement becomes a prayer for endurance and vitality; the second turns inward, yearning toward the unknown; and the final movement opens outward, finding spiritual resonance in the natural world.

Andrzej Ciepliński, Clarinet

Andrzej Ciepliński is a Polish clarinetist acclaimed for his original interpretations and exceptional musical sensitivity. As a soloist, he has performed with leading orchestras including Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia, the M. Karłowicz Philharmonic in Szczecin, and the Polish Radio Orchestra.

An active chamber musician, he has collaborated with artists such as Julian Rachlin, Claudio Bohórquez, Janusz Wawrowski, Sào Soulez Larivière, Tymoteusz Bies, Szymon Nehring, and Anastasia Kobekina. Continuing the legacy of his grandfather, the legendary Polish trombonist Juliusz Pietrachowicz, Ciepliński is committed to expanding the clarinet repertoire through collaborations with composers and new arrangements.

In 2024, he performed the world premiere of Alex Weiser’s clarinet concerto “Tfiles,” written for him and presented at the POLIN Music Festival. His debut album, “Irrberge” (DUX, 2022), featuring his own transcription of Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, was nominated for a 2023 Fryderyk Award.

A recipient of a Kościuszko Foundation scholarship, Ciepliński completed a residency at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, where he developed “Disturb the Silence,” a concert project exploring the history of Jewish musicians from Galicia, with mentorship from David Krakauer.

He graduated with honors from the Hochschule für Musik in Basel in the class of François Benda and studied with Arkadiusz Adamski at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he was awarded the title Primus Inter Pares.

Learn more: Andrzej Ciepliński

Alex Weiser, Composer

Alex Weiser is a New York–based composer praised for his “knack for crafting music that is at once historically rooted and of its moment” by The New Yorker. His work often reflects on cultural inheritance, Jewish history, Yiddish literature, sanctity, and the transience of life, combining expansive musical gestures with deeply expressive lyricism.

Weiser’s debut album, “and all the days were purple,” sets Yiddish and English poetry to music and was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Music. Released by Cantaloupe Music, the album has been praised for its meditative, spiritual, and emotionally direct musical language.

His second album, “in a dark blue night,” released in 2024, features two song cycles performed by mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen with instrumental ensemble. The works evoke New York City at night and the Jewish immigrant world of Coney Island in the 1930s and 1940s.

Active as an opera composer, Weiser recently premiered “The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language,” written with librettist Ben Kaplan. Set in post-war New York, the chamber opera follows Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark as he works to create the world’s first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary — an act of preservation, memory, and renewal.

Weiser is currently developing “Tevye’s Daughters” with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, a commission from American Lyric Theater based on Sholem Aleichem’s iconic stories.

Learn more: Alex Weiser

Andrzej Ciepliński’s appearance is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute New York.