New York Moments - OB(EH)/CL/VC/PN

New York Moments was commissioned in 2008 by the CSU Mike Curb College of the Arts, Media and Communication in Northridge, CA for the Tapestry Ensemble. When I learned that the premiere of the piece was going to be at Bargemusic in Brooklyn, the good times that I had spent over the years in New York City immediately came to mind. As I started writing, locations and memories of certain events became the inspiration for the three individual movements. 

East River Funk is a tribute to the waterway on which the venue of the premiere, Bargemusic, is located. Its musical backbone is a steady funk rhythm, which forms the base for a virtuosic oboe solo. The movement proceeds through a quieter groove into a contemplative, contrapuntal section featuring the winds and the cello. Nearing its conclusion, the original theme reappears.

After Hours reminds of the wee hours of the morning in Manhattan, when most businesses and restaurants are closed, when traffic is light and the city is not quite awake yet. The clarinet paints the picture of a relaxed late-night-feel in this jazzy ballad.

Avenue A & 2nd is the location where I have stayed during most of my visits to New York. The apartment at this address was bustling with life at all times - 3 jazz musicians were living there, one of them in the living room - and the movement reflects on the energy and sometimes insanity (in the good sense of the word) of things going on there.  The piano is clearly the solo instrument in this movement, romping through a quasi-swing groove and accompanied  - or disrupted - by percussive woodwind accents.

Gernot Wolfgang

Santa Fe, June 2025

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Critics describe GRAMMY® nominated Gernot Wolfgang as a “master composer with important things to communicate to his listeners” (David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare) and a composer with a “winning sonic arsenal” (Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone), while jazz legend Dave Brubeck characterized Gernot’s music as being of “unconventional beauty”. In his review on icareifyoulisten.com, Don Clark portrays the compositions on Gernot’s 2016 CD Passing Through as “substantial, provocative, entertaining examples of the now and future of chamber music.”

Born in Bad Gastein, Austria in 1957, Gernot Wolfgang currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the program “Scoring for Motion Pictures and TV” at USC, and holds degrees from Berklee College of Music in Boston and the University of Music in Graz, Austria.

Gernot has so far received more than 50 commissions from individuals and organizations such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (2006 and 2015), the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Jazz Festival of the European Broadcasting Union, Los Angeles Philharmonic members Joanne Pearce Martin (principal keyboard) as well as former principals Michele Zukovsky (clarinet) and David Breidenthal (bassoon), the Verdehr Trio & Michigan State University, the Tiroler Kammerorchester InnStrumenti (Austria), the Debussy Trio, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Cal State Northridge and the Los Angeles based chamber music series Chamber Music Palisades, Pacific Serenades and South Bay Chamber Music Society.

His concert works, which are published by Doblinger, TrevCo, Fatrock Ink and Vine Street International Publishing, have been presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra (Canada), Kyushu Symphony (Japan), Sydney Symphony (Australia), Münchner Rundfunkorchester (Germany) and the Symponieorchester Vorarlberg (Austria). They have received over 1,000 performances worldwide so far, including at notable venues such as Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) in New York, National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Prinzregententheater in Munich (Germany), Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna and at festivals such as the New York Chamber Music Festival, the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato (Mexico), the Wiener Festwochen and Wien Modern.

Albany Records has released four CDs of Gernot’s chamber music: VIENNA AND THE WEST (2019),  PASSING THROUGH (2016) which was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in the category Best Classical Compendium, SHORT STORIES (2011) and COMMON GROUND (2006) . His music can also be heard on the Polygram, Universal, Koch, Navona, Crystal Records, Yarlung, Capstone, Centaur and Extraplatte labels.

As a guitarist with the Austrian jazz ensemble “The QuARTet” he has recorded two critically acclaimed CDs for Extraplatte and toured extensively throughout Europe in the 1990s.

From 1990-93 Gernot was a lecturer for Jazz Composition and Harmony at the University of Music in Graz. He has guest lectured and held masterclasses at UCLA, Penn State University, Texas Tech University, JAM Music Lab University (Vienna), the University of Music in Vienna and the festival Instrumenta Verano in Oaxaca, Mexico. Gernot has received awards, grants and scholarships from the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the Austrian Ministry for Education and the Arts, the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research, Austro Mechana, Berklee College of Music, Billboard Magazine, BMI, the Fulbright Commission and the State of Tyrol, Austria.

Gernot Wolfgang also works as an orchestrator in the Los Angeles film and TV music industry.  He is a former associate artistic director of “HEAR NOW – A Festival of New Music by Contemporary Los Angeles Composers”.