Flutist Melissa Ngan, a member of the Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble, tells Cara Lieurance about the innovative directions this modern chamber group has taken to give audiences visceral experiences with live music. Fifth House Ensemble will perform a program called "Degenerate Art" at the Connecting Chords Music Festival on Sunday at 7:30 pm, in the Dalton Theater of the Light Fine Arts Center at Kalamazoo College.
Delving into music that was censored, banned, and propagandized as “degenerate,” Fifth House Ensemble will shed new light on works by artists facing oppression under three different oppressive regimes: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the dark days of McCarthyism right here in the United States where individuals, ideas, and art were deemed un-American. Ngan discusses works of Schulhoff and Messiaen, Shostakovich, and Harold Arlen.
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