fivebyfive presents

Friday, September 12, 2025
Payton Violins, 250 N. Goodman St.
Rochester, NY, 14607
7:00 PM

About the concert

As part of its milestone 10th anniversary season, fivebyfive is introducing something new - it’s the 4Now Series at Payton Violins, creating an intimate connection between audience and the ensemble.

Mark your calendars for
4Now #2: Sound, Sip, and Savor
Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:30 PM
New music meets fine wine in an evening of music and flavor, with an optional guided tasting at Carnegie Cellars with the musicians after the performance. Small ensembles from fivebyfive with music by Jennifer Higdon, Marc Mellits, Jon Russell, and more. 

about fivebyfive

Described as “classical turned loose in the toy store,” “top-flight,” and “imaginative,” fivebyfive is an award-winning, artist-led ensemble known for its impeccable musicianship, adventurous spirit that permeates innovative, cross-genre programming and community engagement. Based in Rochester, NY and formed in 2015, the group has a mission to engage audiences in the collaborative spirit and creativity of today’s dynamic chamber music. To realize its mission, fivebyfive presents innovative programs featuring today’s chamber music by commissioning, developing, and performing music by the most forward-thinking composers, advocating for creators who are underrepresented in the field and collaborating with a wide range of partners. 

fivebyfive receives organizational funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) since 2022 and has also been awarded artist support awards for new works by composers Jessica Meyer, Roberto Sierra, Emily Pinkerton, and Steven Danyew. The group has been chosen twice as a New Music USA Organizational Development Fund Recipient which recognizes outstanding organizations that work regularly with—and support the development of—music creators and artists, offering a critical community resource. In early 2023, fivebyfive presented a showcase performance as part of the national conference of Chamber Music America.

fivebyfive has appeared on WXXI Classical 91.5’s programs Backstage Pass and Live from Hochstein, was featured on Performance Rochester and Performance Upstate, and has also appeared nationally on American Public Media’s Performance Today with host Fred Child.

fivebyfive became a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in 2017, and has released three albums: Of and Between (2021), Breath & Fire (2023), and The Play Album (2023). Their fourth album, Eclipse, on the Grammy-nominated Bright Shiny Things label, debuted at #2 on the Traditional Classical Billboard chart for the week of November 8, 2024. fivebyfive’s fifth album release (2024) features a new work by Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy winner Roberto Sierra, "Sonidos de Tlön", commissioned by fivebyfive.

This year, the group celebrates its 10th anniversary season. Read more about it here.

FIVEBYFIVE

Laura Lentz - flute, Artistic Director
Marcy Bacon - clarinet
Ken Luk - electric guitar
Eric J. Polenik - bass
Haeyeun Jeun - piano
Marc Webster - audio and video artist, Executive Director

PROGRAM

Totality (2024) - Glenn McClure

“Totality opens and closes with musical images of the sun without an eclipse. The emergence of the triplet figure introduces the beginning of the eclipse and its movement across North America. This rhythm drives the voyage of the eclipse, not only through places on a map but also places in our souls. The melodic content of Totality is drawn from the sonification of “duration” data that shows the varying time intervals of totality at selected locations along its path. Sonification is the mathematical translation of numerical data points into musical pitches and rhythms. This melody, drawn from the data describing its path, provides the unifying motifs that recur throughout the piece. While the structural elements of the piece are driven by data sonification, its arrangement explores the varied human responses to the eclipse. The first section dramatizes fearful responses. The darkening of the sun has terrified human populations. In the absence of scientific explanations, this phenomenon has been interpreted as an omen for crop failure, for impending punishment for misdeeds, or for anger from the gods. The second section demonstrates an acceptance of the moving phenomenon as a part of our cosmic lives, linked to things much bigger in space and time. The third section celebrates the playful impulses that drive many folks to become “eclipse tourists,” traveling to places along the totality path with food, drink, and an unstoppable force of wonder.”

— Glenn McClure

Glenn McClure is an Eco-musician and scholar. He has served on the faculties of the Eastman School of Music, SUNY Geneseo, and Paul Smith’s College. He received the Chancellor’s Award for Adjunct Teaching from SUNY. His music has been performed on every continent including multiple performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, NY. “St, Francis in the Americas: A Caribbean Mass” has become a regular part of choral repertoire in the US and Germany. Mr. McClure was awarded the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Fellowship in which he traveled to Antarctica to compose music that dramatizes climate science. He received the National Teaching Artist Fellowship (2008-9) by the Kennedy Center/VSA program that supports art making by adults and children with disabilities around the world. He recently composed a work for choir and string quartet for the European Space Agency that transformed orbital data from the Rosetta Mission into melodies and harmonies. His music has been featured on several national broadcasts including the 2005 broadcast of Enter the Light, the CBS Christmas Special and a 2006 edition of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” McClure served as an artist-in-residence with the National Parks Arts Foundation at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and is currently directing a team of composers in sonifying data for the Lake Champlain Basin Program. His current project The Water is Me gives voice to bodies of water around the globe with partnering musicians and scientists.

Totality was commissioned by and written for fivebyfive in 2024 to commemorate the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. It appears on its Eclipse album, released in 2024, on the Bright Shiny Things Label.

Trust Fall (2008) -
andrea Mazzariello

“Trust Fall was written in 2008, after a long time away from composing concert music. I wanted to…make it about what I could really hear as opposed to creating material that felt out of reach or somehow unearned. The initial idea was to improvise at the piano, record the little discoveries I’d make into a software sequencer, then transcribe it all to make a score. The transcription part of the process, though, became something more akin to transformation of the material, and I started to appreciate anew the power of going to the page, the potential of that specific kind of canvas. I see the various metric modulations and changes in feel as requiring leaps of faith on the part of the performers, hence the title. It also refers to the hope that a sad summer would get better, telling myself to Trust the Fall.”

— Andrea Mazzariello

Andrea Mazzariello (he/him) is a composer, performer, writer, and teacher. His musical practices include writing songs, making electronic music, and working in notated traditions. His work explores spoken and sung treatments of his own original text, plays with computers and other kinds of electronics, and engages the physiology of performance in novel ways. He writes about listening, musical media, and pedagogy, and teaches and mentors music-makers working in a wide variety of genres and approaches. His concert music, created through commissions by and collaborations with Sō Percussion, fivebyfive, Mobius Percussion, Jason Treuting, Eric Cha-Beach, David Degge, Matthew McCright, and many others, has been performed widely in North America and Europe. His collaborators in film, visual, and site-specific work include filmmakers Mark DeChiazza and Emily Carmichael, director Stephan Koplowitz, and artist Holly Streekstra. He performs his own music frequently, in instrumentations ranging from one-person-band to piano and voice. The McKnight Foundation, New Music USA, ASCAP, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Southeast Minnesota ArtsCouncil have recognized and supported his work. New Amsterdam Records, SEAMUS, Proper Canary, and his own One More Revolution Records have recorded and released his music. The Operating System published his first book, One More Revolution: A Love Song, on Vinyl,in 2018. He currently teaches composition and music technology at Carleton College, and directs the composition program at the Sō Percussion Summer Institute. His ongoing collaborative work with young beatmakers, producers, and songwriters at The Key, a youth services organization in downtown Northfield, MN, has been supported by the Mellon Public Works grant at Carleton College as well as by Project Pericles. As an instructor in the Princeton Writing Program, Andrea developed several first-year writing seminars, including “Music and Power,” “The Sound of Subversion,” and “Found Sound.” He taught beginning and intermediate Electronic and Computer Music as Adjunct Professor in the Production Program at Ramapo College of New Jersey’s School of Contemporary Arts. He completed a Ph.D. in Music Composition at Princeton University, an M.M. at the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in music and English at Williams College.

…a tiny dream… (2010; 2020) - anthony r. green

“In Grey by Ani Difranco, she sings: “I smoke and I drink. And every time I blink, I have a tiny dream.” While this song is actually very depressing, this particular line stands out to me for many reasons. During summer 2010, I spent time in London, Greenwich, Frankfurt, Seoul, Daejeon, Busan, Fukuoka, Okayama, Naoshima, Tokyo, Kyoto, Leiden, Amsterdam, and Den Haag. After returning to the states, I started thinking about other places to where I’ve traveled. For me, the more time that passes between the end of a journey of an unknown place and the present, the more those memories seem like tiny dreams. In fact, after a while, you can blink and have mini-dreams about past experiences that are now so distant that they seem to have never existed, like a dream. This piece is music written to pay tribute to the existence of our past precious moments, as well as those future moments that will eventually become our tiny dreams. ... a tiny dream ... was composed in 2010, with a version commissioned by and specifically created for fivebyfive completed in 2020. It appears on fivebyfive’s debut album Of and Between (2021).

— Anthony R. Green

The creative output of Anthony R. Green (composer, performer, social justice; he/him/his, b. 1984) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original, contemporary, and repertoire works, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom. His compositions and projects have been presented in 25+ countries by various internationally acclaimed soloists and ensembles. He has performed as a pianist, experimental vocalist, movement artist, improvisor, and performance artist in over 10 countries across 4 continents. Green’s most important social justice work has been with Castle of our Skins: celebrating Black Artistry through Music. Green was born on Nacotchtank land (Arlington, VA) and raised on Narragansett and Pauquunaukit land (Providence, RI). He is currently a citizen of the world who will never stop seeking knowledge.

Constant (2011) - Julia Seeholzer

This is a work that won an early fivebyfive Call for Scores (2017), and taps into our group’s curiosity to play pieces that are open instrumentation or have some improvisatory elements as part of the work. With 10 “cells” of music, each player follows the other, changing the cell upon listening to the group as a whole or the musician they are following. The “constant” is the piano’s rhythmic 8th note figure that carries the piece along to its end.

Julia Seeholzer is an American composer currently living in Warsaw, Poland. Julia explores narration in her music, shaping timbral spaces around the personal meaning of words. Her vocal works involve engaging with, questioning, and responding to the writers with whom she collaborates without attempting to speak on their behalf. She is fascinated with the subtle complexities of minimal gestures and how those can be manipulated over time to form their own narrative bonds within larger structures. Outside of composition, Julia has been involved in the world of video game music. She often works on arrangements for various projects and collaborations. Julia regularly works with Videri String Quartet and has contributed to projects including Harmony of Heroes and Song Cycle: The History of Video Games. In 2009, she founded the Video Game Music Choir (now PXL8) – an internationally recognized chamber choir that performs video game scores arranged exclusively by and for the group; she directed the group until 2012.

Julia holds an M.M. in Composition from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and a B.M. in Composition from Berklee College of Music, where she graduated summa cum laude. She is the recipient of two consecutive Fulbright student research grants and received an Artist’s Diploma in Composition from the Chopin University of Music during that time.

Buffalo Jam (1982) -
Pauline oliveros

"Buffalo Jam" is a musical composition by the renowned experimental composer Pauline Oliveros. The notes to the musicians read like a recipe rather than a score. It uses a G Lydian with an added note (C), or a G Major scale with a C# as a basis for group improvisation. Audience members are welcome to join for this piece.

Buffalo Jam for ensemble
Pauline Oliveros
Mode: G A B C C# D E F# G 
Guidelines

1. Fast stepwise motion always present for at least one player. Groups of three to five notes weaving around a centering tone in patterns and permutations. Occasionally more compass or notes. Like a fast moving stream. Rushing, dwindling, but ceaseless. Most always hearing the other players. Sometimes leading, sometimes lagging. Dynamically generally play lightly, smoothly, quietly but intensely. Work for transparency.

2. Sometimes make hard accents, like rushing water hitting or smacking a rock. Listen for others’ accents. Sometimes an accent riff will develop as a group pattern. Play with it. Keep it going. Let it go.

3. Pedal tones always present. Join them, blend with them. Articulate them as rhythmic riffs, or as dynamic shapes.

4. Silence unless no one else is playing.

5. The dynamic level should be soft generally, but with intense dynamic development as players weave in and out of the four given possibilities.

6. When appropriate, players should be distributed throughout the space. Where possible, players should turn and move slowly, directing their sounds to different parts of the space. 
   February 15, 1982, Amtrak to Buffalo, New York

Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960's she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.

She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York, NY, The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and The John Cage award from from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.

Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. She founded "Deep Listening ®," which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. She described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds.

"Deep Listening is my life practice," Oliveros explained, simply. Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline Oliveros Trust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc at PoP+MoM Publications.

Eclipse (2023) - Marc mellits

“Eclipse was commissioned by fivebyfive to commemorate the total solar eclipse occurring on April 8, 2024. The music begins with the sun slowly being eclipsed by the moon. Once the eclipse is underway, a world of shifting rhythms and hidden melodies start to appear. The music slowly points out contours and lines that were once hidden in plain sight, but now in the shadow of the total solar eclipse, have their one and only chance to “shine.” The moon gleams in dancing rhythms and funky lines that together, with the shadowed sun, present an alternate role reversed musical universe.”

— Marc Mellits

Composer Marc Mellits is one of the leading American composers of his generation, enjoying hundreds of performances throughout the world every year, making him one of the most performed living composers in the United States. From Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, to prestigious music festivals in Europe and the US, Mellits’ music is a constant mainstay on programs throughout the world. His unique musical style is an eclectic combination of driving rhythms, soaring lyricism, and colorful orchestrations that all combine to communicate directly with the listener. Mellits’ music is often described as being visceral, making a deep connection with the audience. “This was music as sensual as it was intelligent; I saw audience members swaying, nodding, making little motions with their hands” (New York Press). He started composing very early, and was writing piano music long before he started formal piano lessons at age 6. He went on to study at the Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, Cornell University, and Tanglewood. Mellits often is a miniaturist, composing works that are comprised of short, contrasting movements or sections. His music is eclectic, all-encompassing, colorful, and always has a sense of forward motion. Mellits’ music has been played by major ensembles across the globe and he has been commissioned by groups such as the Kronos Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Holland), Duo Assad, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Eliot Fisk, Canadian Brass, Nexus Percussion, Debussy Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Real Quiet, New Music Detroit, Four-In-Correspondence (National Symphony Orchestra), Musique En Roue Libre (France), Fiarì Ensemble (Italy), Percussions Claviers de Lyon (France), Talujon, the Society for New Music, Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, and the Albany Symphony’s Dog’s Of Desire. Additionally, Mellits’ music has been performed, toured, and/or recorded by members of the Detroit Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Minneapolis Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, eighth blackbird, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New Millennium Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, and the American Modern Ensemble, among many others. On film, Mellits has composed numerous scores, including the PBS mini-series “Beyond The Light Switch” which won a 2012 Dupont-Columbia award, the most prestigious award in documentaries. Mellits also directs and plays keyboards in his own unique ensemble, the Mellits Consort. He was awarded the prestigious 2004 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award. On CD, there are over 50 recorded works of Mellits’ music that can be found on Black Box, Endeavor Classics, Cantaloupe, CRI/Emergency Music, Santa Fe New Music, Innova, & Dacia Music. Marc Mellits is an Associate Professor of music at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two daughters, and spends significant time in Romania.

Eclipse was commissioned by and written for fivebyfive in 2024 to commemorate the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. It appears on its Eclipse album, released in 2024, on the Bright Shiny Things Label.