Momenta Festival 2025: Tutti Flutey

For several years, Music of the Americas has collaborated with the adventurous Momenta Quartet in their annual festival, during which each member of the ensemble curates one program. Violist Stephanie Griffin curated the program for this concert and invited flutist Roberta Michel and dancers Chelsea Enjer Hecht and Paulina Meneses of MeenMoves to join Momenta in music spanning centuries. 

Program

• W. A. Mozart: Flute Quartet in D major
  1. Allegro
  2. Adagio
  3. Rondo
• Elizabeth Brown: Blue Minor
• Stephanie Griffin: For Joni (with choreography by Sameena Mitta)
• Kaikhosru Sorabji: Il tessuto d'arabeschi (NY premiere)

Momenta Quartet

• Emilie-Anne Gendron and Alex Shiozaki, violins
• Stephanie Griffin, viola
• Michael Haas, cello
  with Roberta Michel, flute

For Joni:

Dance company: MeenMoves 
Choreographer: Sameena Mitta 
Dancers: Chelsea Enjer Hecht & Paulina Meneses 
Costumes: Sarah Timberlake

About the Artists

Momenta: the plural of momentum—four individuals in motion towards a common goal. This is the idea behind the Momenta Quartet, whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the recent and distant past. The New York City-based quartet has premiered over 200 works, collaborated with over 250 living composers and was praised by The New York Times for its “diligence, curiosity and excellence.” In the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “few American players assume Haydn’s idiom with such ease.” 

The quartet came into being in November 2004, when composer Matthew Greenbaum invited violist Stephanie Griffin to perform Mario Davidovsky’s String Trio for events celebrating Judaism and culture at New York’s Symphony Space and Temple University in Philadelphia. A residency through the composition department at Temple University ensued, and the rehearsals and performances were so satisfying that the players decided to form a quartet. Through this residency, Momenta gave two annual concerts highlighting the talents of Temple University student composers alongside 20th-century masterworks and works from the classical canon, repeating the programs at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture. From the outset, Momenta treated all music equally, devoting as much time, care, and commitment to the student works as to the imposing musical monuments. 

Brooklyn-based flutist Roberta Michel is dedicated to the music of our time. She has commissioned and premiered hundreds of new works and has worked with many notable composers of our day. Michel is the flutist and Co-Director of Wavefield Ensemble and is a member of Da Capo Chamber Players, PinkNoise, and Duo RoMi. She is also the Assistant Teaching Professor of Flute at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Michel plays a Brannen flute with a Mancke headjoint.

Originally from Maine, Michel attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and SUNY-Purchase College and has studied with Robert Dick, Tara O’Connor, Alexa Still, and Jean Rosenblum. She holds a doctorate in music performance from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is a winner of the NFA Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation on the flute music of Salvatore Sciarrino. 

Funders

The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concert series is made possible by the generous support of Presenting Sponsor MetLife Foundation. 

The 2025–2026 series is also supported, in part, by the Howard Gilman Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.