Bennardo-Larson Duo

Indexical is pleased to present the Bennardo-Larson Duo (violin and piano) at Wind River performing works by Anthony Vine and Maya Bennardo.

Sat., Mar. 29, 2025

Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm

Wind River
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$20 General / FREE or discounted for Members

Indexical is pleased to present the Bennardo-Larson Duo (violin and piano) at our favorite mountainside venue – Wind River. Join us in the redwoods for an evening-length program featuring works by Anthony Vine and Maya Bennardo.

Bennardo-Larson Duo

Name: Bennardo-Larson Duo
Start: 2025-03-29 19:30:00 -0700
End: 2025-03-29 21:30:00 -0700
Location: Wind River

The Bennardo-Larson Duo is an NYC/Stockholm- based contemporary classical duo committed to the performance and promotion of forward- thinking works for violin and piano. Comprised of Maya Bennardo (violin) and Karl Larson (piano), the duo is dedicated to aesthetically diverse programming that illuminates new repertoire for their instrumentation alongside intrepid works from the past. The Bennardo-Larson Duo was formed in 2016 when they undertook the task of learning and performing Charles Ives’s complete works for violin and piano, which they presented on their annual ‘Ives of March’ concerts from 2017-2019. Since then, the duo has steadily built a repertoire of pre-existing and newly-commissioned works for violin and piano.

The Bennardo-Larson duo has been featured on the MATA Festival at the Kitchen in New York, NY, the Bowerbird Series in Philadelphia, PA, the Toledo Museum of Art’s ‘Great Performances Series’ in Toledo, OH, the Music Mansion in Providence, RI, and Khimaira in Stockholm, Sweden. Their programming features the complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Charles Ives, Morton Feldman’s monumental ‘For John Cage,’ and ‘a wind's whisper,’ a program featuring works by John Cage, Michael Pisaro, Eva Maria Houben, and two commissions by Adrian Knight and Kristofer Svensson. In April of 2024, the duo will present the world premiere of two substantial new commissions by Anthony Vine and Maya Bennardo on the Bowerbird Series in Philadelphia, PA. These two new works will be the focal point of the upcoming 2024-2025 season and two new albums, which will be released in 2025.

Anthony Vine: Worshipful Company

Chorales are elemental. They are formed from a single melody, traditionally taken from a hymn or song, and supported by other voices which all move uniformly together. Due to their simple and rudimentary design, chorales are often used as pedagogical tools for young students to study part writing, harmony, and form. But the chorales written by Bach and other composers of the past were not conceived as exercises, but rather to communicate biblical texts, like psalms, in vernacular settings that were simple enough for large congregations of amateur musicians to sing. Chorales interest me because they are functional yet deeply aesthetic. They have what the potter and writer Alison Britton might call a “double presence.”

I have written a book of chorales called "Worshipful Company." Expressions range from the solemnity of ancient liturgical music to the sentimentality of modern Catholic hymns to the innocence of music theory homework. Like the first chorales written by Martin Luther, they are structurally simple and immediate in expression. But they are without words, and not sung but rather bowed and hammered. Why this music for violin and piano registers as "sung" to me is a reminder that the voice is the substance of so many things.

Maya Bennardo: dormant gardens ii.

dormant gardens is an ongoing series of works and explorations based on winter walks that Bennardo takes around her home in Stockholm, Sweden. They are meditations on the waning light, crisp sea air, and the neighboring gardens and forests, dormant but vibrating with soft energy.