Past Performances

HOCKET revives the silent film era with their new project Photoplay Music: New works for the Silent Film Era, a cinematic concert experience. Featuring icons of French Surrealist Silent Film, Photoplay Music features newly commissioned works for three classic films by some of today's most innovative composers Ian Dicke, José Martínez, and Gemma Peacocke.

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Harkening back to the early days of Hollywood when a pianist accompanied every silent film screening, HOCKET will use two pianos and a myriad of other instruments including toy pianos, melodicas, electronics and more to highlight these new film scores. Known for their exuberant performance style, HOCKET members Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff breathe new life into classic works of cinema, creating a concert experience that will delight both film and music aficionados.

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Principal Oboe Mary Lynch VanderKolk leads a program of works that includes a new sonata by Sarah Gibson as well as two other pieces written for VanderKolk as part of Through Her Window, an ongoing commissioning and performance project that brings together some of the most eloquent female-identifying musical voices of our time to expand the canon, share stories and reflect on life in the world today. Inspired by the well-known quote attributed to Claudia Alta Johnson, “Art is a window to the soul,” Through Her Window works to undo the historic silencing of women by raising women’s voices through music.

The University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble celebrates the life of Don C. Gillespie (1936-2019). A graduate of the UGA School of Music (now Hugh Hodgson School of Music), Gillespie worked for the prestigious international music publishing house C. F. Peters for 31 years where he championed the work of 20th Century composers such as John Cage, George Crumb, John Becker, and countless others. CCE honors his life-long advocacy for new music with a concert of 20th-Century masterworks including Gibson's "I prefer living in color."

Ludwig van Beethoven’s influence was far-reaching and ushered in a movement of music that was picked up and further developed by composers like Wagner and Strauss. Beethoven’s one and only Violin Concerto has become an audience and performer favorite, filled with delicate melodies and stunning poignance. This concert opens with a premiere by Los Angeles-based composer Sarah Gibson, which the League of American Orchestras commissioned with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The concert scampers to an exciting finish with Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, a lively, comic work about the conflict between stern forces of repression and the irrepressible spirit of freedom.

On February’s Moxley Carmichael Masterworks program, the Knoxville Symphony paints a vivid landscape of jagged oceanside cliffs with Dame Ethel Smyth’s picturesque On the Cliffs of Cornwall, and the brilliance of the sea with Debussy’s mystifying and brilliant La Mer. Supported by the League of American Orchestra’s Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program, Sarah Gibson’s latest work, to make this mountain taller, makes its Tennessee premiere. Geneva Lewis makes her KSO debut with Beethoven’s lyrical Violin Concerto.

Manfred Honeck leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a program of Gibson's to make this mountain taller, a commission by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the cinematic Violin Concerto by Korngold with Randall Goosby (violin), and a selection of Strauss' Waltzes & Polkas.

Left Coast and the San Francisco Girls Chorus team up to present a program which centers the voices of Californian women composers.

This concert generously sponsored by Susan Shalit and Mary Logger.

The beautiful and varied program includes works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Lisa Mezzacappa, Reena Esmail, Jessie Montgomery, Gabriella Smith as well as a new work written for the occasion by Sarah Gibson. Themes explore environmental and social justice. Selections from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas frame the program.

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In the opening concert of their season, Lee Mills directs the Naples Philharmonic in a program of Gibson's warp & weft, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.”

The trailblazing conductor Gemma New leads the Orchestra in an inventive and dynamic program that spans centuries. The evening opens with Sarah Gibson's 2019 piece warp & weft, inspired by the art of weaving and celebrating the history and artistic viewpoints of women past, present, and future. Pianist Stewart Goodyear joins for Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, and Mozart's groundbreaking Symphony No. 38, popularly known as "The Prague Symphony", concludes the program.

Grossman Ensemble; Timothy Weiss, conductor

TBA (world premiere)

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Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Jerry Hou, conductor

HOCKET premieres a new fantasty for two pianos and orchestra

Can't Never Could (world premiere)

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New Jersey Symphony Orchestra performs warp & weft

Sarasota Orchestra concludes the Masterworks season with a program of heroic proportions. Internationally acclaimed violinist Gil Shaham shines in one of his signature works, Korngold’s sweeping, cinematic Violin Concerto. The orchestra is the real star of Richard Strauss’ virtuosic tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). The concert begins with a world premiere by Sarah Gibson, recipient of a commission from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and League of American Orchestras to champion promising female composers.

A feature of two LA performer / composers Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff (HOCKET), and the world premiere of a two piano concerto by Wild Up founder, Christopher Rountree.

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HOCKET explores the virtuosity of two prepared pianos with a wide variety of materials including coins, screws, nuts & bolts, and more in John Cage’s seminal work, Three Dances for two prepared pianos. Alongside this groundbreaking work, HOCKET will be premiering companion pieces by Sarah Gibson for the same instrumentation and Peter S. Shin for two prepared pianos and electronics as well as works by Yoko Ono and others.

OSSIA takes its name from the score marking that indicates a musical alternative. This ensemble provides alternatives for the performance of new music at the Eastman School of Music, throughout the Rochester area and beyond.

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The Eclipse Quartet consists of violinists Sarah Thornblade and Sara Parkins, violist Alma Fernandez and cellist Maggie Parkins.

​This program features female composers: Sarah Gibson, Gabriela Lena Frank, Zenobia Powell Perry, Chen Yi, Vivian Fung, Jessie Montgomery, Alisson Krusmma, Julia Wolfe.

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Departure Duo performs a concert of music by Sarah Gibson, Emily Koh, Mikhail Johnson, and Emily Praetorius.

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Gibson performs works of conference composers and CSULB Musicians

Departure Duo

MICHAEL FRAZIER blackportrait
STEPHEN HARTKE Meanwhile: Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays
SARAH GIBSON I prefer living in color
METTENS Hollows

Talented AMFS students play chamber music in the artful, open-air space on the roof of the Aspen Art Museum.

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"For LA: a celebration of resiliency"

Gibson: all ashore (performed by Eclipse Quartet)

​HOCKET performs

Perich: Duet

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Cutting edge piano duo HOCKET spent 2020 commissioning composers nationwide to write music about the pandemic experience. The result was the astounding #What2020SoundsLike. Now a celebratory 2-part program sees seven composers imagining #What2022SoundsLike — dedicated to a hopeful future emerging from the pandemic. This first concert takes place in Benaroya Hall's wildly innovative Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center. The program continues on the other side of the building with another concert at 10pm, [untitled] 2022.

Our new Octave 9 series stretches the boundaries of creative possibility, immersing you in new worlds through the fusion of music and technology.

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The iconic composer-pianist Frederic Rzewski was to have given a Piano Spheres recital this coming February in a rare US appearance. On Saturday Feb 5, 2022, pianists Ursula Oppens and Lisa Moore join Piano Spheres core artists, Emerging Artists, and Guest Artists from the last 20 years in a celebration of Rzewski’s music. An open air, four-hour concert/celebration of his life and legacy on the Colburn Plaza starting at 4:00, includes many of his works for piano.  

The following concert at Zipper Hall at 8:00 includes the world premiere of “Suite,” commissioned by Piano Spheres, the west coast premiere of “Amoramaro,” the two-piano version of “Winnsboro Cottonmill Blues” performed by HOCKET, and other works to be announced.

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Hot on the heels of the 8pm performance of #What2022SoundsLike in Benaroya Hall's innovative Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center, this celebratory program continues across the building in the Samuel & Althea Stroum Grand Lobby. Seattle Symphony musicians join cutting edge piano duo HOCKET for the second concert in this two-part program dedicated to a hopeful future emerging from the pandemic. [untitled] 2022 features hints of jazz with new works by “powerfully inventive” (LA Times) composer Hitomi Oba and Jazz- and pop-influenced composer Jonathan Richards. HOCKET soloists Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff add another unique twist with two original compositions inspired by #What2022SoundsLike.

Boston Court presents HOCKET: The Composer/Performer Initiative
October 30, 2021
8:00 PM

Boston Court Pasadena
70 N Mentor Ave
Pasadena, CA 91106

With guest composer/performers Alexander Elliott Miller and Nicholas Bentz.

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Featured pianists: Genevieve Feiwen Lee, Vicki Ray, Nelson Ojeda Valdés, Thomas Kotcheff, Aron Kallay, Steven Vanhauwaert, Yevgeniy Milyavskiy, Danny Holt, Mark Robson, Joanne Pearce Martin, Sarah Gibson, David Kaplan, Nadia Shpachenko.

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