Symposium of Contemporary Music, 2002

GJttinois OOesleyan OUniveuity ptesents SYMPOSIUM OF

David Yayo, Director Guest Ensemble

PRESENT MUSIC Kevin Stalheim, Artistic Director Guest Composer

Elaine Angelino WInner. Illinois Weskyan High School Composers' Contest 2001 Sponsors: School of Music Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Delta Omicron Sigma Alpha Iota ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

April 6, 2002

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Presser Hall

e>'fJmposium 1-3

06 'fOontempOl:a'C'fJ �usic

2002

PM

MASTERCLASSES BY MEMBERS OF PRESENT MUSIC Presser Hall classrooms; a detailed schedule will be posted outside· ' Westbrook Auditorium

3

PM

PANEL DISCUSSION

BUILDING AUDIENCES FOR NEW MUSIC Westbrook Auditorium Mr. Stalheim Phillip Bush, pianist, Present Music and Assistant Professor of Piano and Chamber Music, University of Michigan Mario Pelusi, Associate Professor of Composition and Theory and Director, School of Music David Yayo, Professor of Composition and Theory

7:3 0

PM

CONCERT BY PRESENT MUSIC Westbrook Auditorium Architectonics II

(1986)

Erkki-Sven Tiiiir (b.

String Quartet No.4 ''Amazing Grace"

(1973)

Ben Johnston (b.

The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory

(1995)

1959) 1926)

Annie Gosfield (b. 1960)

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Interm ission

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. Blow W ind Blow (2001) (written for Carly Cassano)

Elaine Angelino (b. 1984)

Natalie Studwell, soprano Ben Weber, violin Tina Menken, harp Jimi Tarnowski, percussion Anthony Brent, piano ProE Mario Pelusi, conductor When the moon hits the sky and the sun falls to the sea all turns quiet except for the trees as the breeze blows through them like sand in your toes and the sullen words cease but still the wind blows and flows like the old

.

,�

'<: "

river next to the old mill as old frogman hops out of his hole in the hill when everything is still and nothing's moving the soothing cool mist of the lake water brewing in sparkles like wine as it falls to the ground in a clutter­ ing circle spiraling down to the sound of the crickets who play violin while the shadows charade the moon on a string being pulled up then down as the hushed nighttime goes vanishing without a trace and still the wind blows.

- Patrick B. Burke )C

Sonata for Bassoon and Piano (2000) (written for Carly Cassano) Rubato

Elaine Angefino

,�

Bright Sheng

,1

Dance!

Kathryn Bartel, bassoon ProE David Yayo, piano Four Movements for Piano Trio (1988)

(b. 1955) Garland Hirschi's Cows (1990, rev. 1992)

Phillip Kent Bimstein (b. 1947)

,}

1. A �itcle Bit About My Cows 2. Pasturale

,}

3. Moovement Sinatra Shag (1997)

Michael Daughtery (b.1954)

PRESENT MUSIC

Kevin Stalheim, conductor William Helmers, clarinet Eric Segnitz, violin Sharan Leventhal, violin Brek Renzelman, viola Karl Lavine, cello Terry Smirl, percussion Phillip Bush, keyboard

Prof. Willliam West, flute (on

Sinatra Shag)

cYollowing the conce'lt, the au!}.ience is co'l!}.iait'!l invite!}. to a 'leception.

� eJVote t'lom the e>ymposium 9Jitectot For most of its fifty-year history, Illinois Wesleyan's Symposium of Contem­ porary Music has hosted. composers, the creators of new music. W ith the exception of electronic music recorded in studios, however, the fruits of a composer's imagination will go unheard unless they are brought to life by skilled artists who create the actual sounds which move and intrigue us.

Today's Symposium guests represent this vital other half of the equation. . Present Music brings together a number of the Midwest's top chamber-music performers, all of whom share a dedication to bringing new music to light.

It is often lamented that people in the United States are more interested in contemporary developments in other arts- painting, theater, literature, dance, film, you name it- than in concert music. As a composer, I know how depressingly typical it

can

be to attend a ccncert of new music where

the number of people on stage and the number in the audience is about equal, even when the music is wonderful. The success of Present Music, under the leadership of its Artistic Director Kevin Stalheim, shows us clearly that this is not an inevitable situation and that there is a sizeable, appreciative audience out there for contemporary concert music; it only needs to be found and cultivated. Thinking globally in the expansiveness and adventurousness of its repertoire, Present Music has also chosen to act locally by rooting itself solidly and proudly in Milwaukee, seeking partner­ ships with organizations and local communities in its home city, and making a long-term commitment to cultivating its audience. The group's success has been nothing short of inspirational. I hope that ensembles around the country will emulate Present Music's model and gain for con­ temporary concert music the siginificant role in our cultural l:;'ndscape that it4eserves..

-David Vayo

PRES E N T Mus I C is one of the leading ensembles specializing in new

music in the United States. Founded and based in Milwaukee since 1982, Present Music has worked closely with many of the nation's most exciting and important composers, and has firmly established a sizeable and ' informed audience for new music in Milwaukee.

Composers who have worked in residence or have been commissioned by Present Music include John Adams, John Harbison, Michael Torke, Kruman Ince, Joan LaBarbara, Roberto Sierra, Bright Sheng, David Lang, Eleanor Hovda, Jerome Kitzke, Qu Xiaosong, Kimmo Hakola, Annie Gosfield, Scott Lindroth, Lois V. V ierk, Daron Hagen, Mary Ellen Childs, Daniel Lentz, Jack Vees, Jerome Kitzke, Juliet Palmer, Guy Klucevsek, and many others.

Present Music has toured extensively throughout the United States and has participated in several major international music festivals including the 1992 Interlink Festival of New American Music in Japan, the Bang on a

Can Festival in New York City, and, most recently, with the Istanbul Symphony at the 1999 Istanbul International Music Festival.

Present Music expands and contracts its ensemble to allow for a diversity of instrumental combinations. With the rich variety of new music available today, Present Music appeals to an unusually large and diverse audience.

Programs have been described as "crackling with wit and intelligence," "wildly varied," "fun," and "unpredictable." Present Music's main perfor­ mance facility is the new addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum designed by the Spanish Architect Santiago Calatrava.

Present Music has received numerous important grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Reader's Digest / Meet the Composer Commissioning Program, as well as winning the ASCAP Adventuresome Programming award twice. T he ensemble has been broadcast on National Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Currently, Present Music

can

be heard on seven compact disc recordings

that include the composers Kamran Ince, Michael Torke, Daniel Lentz and Joseph Koykkar on the Argo, Albany, and Northeastern labels. T he Present Music website is

.presentmusic.org.

www

1 1

T he title Architectonics is emblematic for Erkki-Sven Tiiiir: His starting­ point for a new composition is an idea about its overall shape that he con­ siders a vital factor of a work's expression. Architectonics II for clarinet, cello and piano (1986), written for an ensemble of orchestra soloists of the Estonia T heatre, was one of the first works in which Tliiir employed coloristic textures.

ErIdci-Sven Tililr, born in Kardla on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa in 1959, is one of the most remarkable composers of his generation. Largely self-taught, he studied percussion and flute at the Tallinn Music School, and later composition at the Tallinn Academy of Music. Among Tiitir's many awards is the Cultural Prize of the Republic of Estonia (1991 and 1996).

Today he is a freelance composer based in Tallinn.

T titir's music is being heard more and more frequently not only through­ out Europe but also in North America, Australia and Japan. His oeuvre comprises orchestral, concert and chamber music, oratorios, film scores and incidental music.

String Quartet No. 4 by Ben Johnston is a set of variations on the hymn tune Amazing Grace. The tune appealed to Ben Johnston for symbolic and musical reasons. Randall Shinn, a former student, compared Johnston's use of Amazing Grace to Ives' use of preexisting melodies, saying, "A connection with Ives seems particularly apt in that the texture of this quartet appears simultaneously to stem from the hymn and to transcend it-this transcen­ dental atmosphere ultimately transforming our perception of the hymn itself and making distinction among the substance, the transformation, and the transformed imagery difficult." T he result is a beautiful piece that can be . appreciated and understood on many levels. Frequently listeners react emo­ tionally, knowing that somehow this music moved them but not quite cer­ tain why it did. (Heidi von Gunden)

Ben Johnston was born in Macon, Georgia in 1926, and holds degrees from Wdliam and Mary College, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and Mills College. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1951, and served as Professor of Composition and T heory until his retirement in 1983.

"In 1995 I wrote The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory shortly after moving to New York. I was thinking of my grandmother, who had moved tQ New York from Poland 70 years earlier, and had worked in sweatshops and factories.

As to the title, 'The Manufacture' refers to my grandmother's factory days, 'Tangled' describes the detuning of the piano sounds and their displacement on the keyboard, and 'Ivory' refers to the piano keys themselves. I used a sampler (an instrument similar to a digital tape recorder connected to a piano keyboard) to reproduce piano and prepared piano sounds, and to alter their pitch, duration, and timbre. The sampled sounds vary in density and change within the piece from multiple layers of detuned piano sounds, for example, to a single piano harmonic or a lone snap of the sustain pedal. The piece incorporates some elements of improvisation, including solos for the guitar and bass." (Annie Gosfield) Annie Gosfield is a composer, keyboardist and improviser based in down­ town New York. She divides her time between composing for chamber ensemble and performing with her own group. Her music combines tradi­ tional and non-traditional techniques, and is often inspired by unorthodox· and non-musical sources. Gosfield's work with her own ensemble couples her unusual sampling methods with electric guitar and percussion to create music that incorporates samples of factory noise, detuned instruments and a wealth of unrecognizably altered sounds. Her music has been performed and commissioned by The Bang on a Can All Stars, The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Newbandlthe Harry Partch instruments, The West Australia Symphony Orchestra New Music Group, The Crosstown Ensemble, Agon Orchestra, Zeitgeist, Pearls Before Swine, Present Music, Relkhe and many others. Recenr works include Cranks and Cactus Needles, for flute, piano, violin and cello, which evokes the crackles, warps and surface noise of an old 78 RPM record, and Shoot the Player Piano, a video work for an imagi­ nary orchestra of aged mechanical instruments. Her discography includes recordings on Tzadik, Sony Classical, cru, Wergo, Harmonia Mundi, Staalplaat, Atavistic and EMF. Elaine Angelino is currently a senior at Williamsville East High School in East Amherst, NY. For the past two years, she has studied music composi­ tion with Mr. Stephen Shewan. She has had the opportunity of working with such composers as Leslie Bassett, Mir Ali, John Altieri, and Dan Reitz.

Elaine has played violin since she was four years old and piano since she was five. Her violin and piano· teachers are Mr. Louis Baroudi and Mrs. Marie Baroudi, respectively. She is co-concertmistress of the Williamsville District Orchestra, and is a member of both the Williamsville East Chorale and the Chromatic Club of Buffalo. She has played violin and piano exten­ sively in pit orchestras, and is often sought as a piano Elaine Angelino

accompanist. In January 2002, she performed the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, 1st movement, with

the Williamsville District Orchestra.

Besides her musical activities, Elaine is Captain of her school's Science Olympiad Team and the youngest graduate of the Gifted Math Program at the University at Buffalo. She is salutatorian of her class, an AP Distinguished Scholar, and scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT. In college, she plans to con­ tinue her music studies with a minor in composition, and will major in mathematics and engineering. She

can

be reached at ElaineAngelino@aol.com.

"Four Movements for Piano Trio is based on musical materials from My Song, a work for solo piano which I composed in 1988. In both works I sought to develop my own concept of 'tonality' by unifying my mother tongue (Oriental classical and folk music) and father tongue (Western classi­ cal music). The Peabody Trio's virtuosity also influenced the process of the composition.

"The folkloric style and prelude-like first movement of Four Movementfor Piano Trio is constructed through the use of heterophony, a device typical of Oriental music. The second movement of the work is based on a humorous and joyful folk song from Se-Tsuan. In the third movement, a savage dance, the melody grows through a series of 'Chinese sequences' (my own term to describe a type of melodic development each time the initial motive is repeated, consequently lengthening its duration and widening the tessitura).

The last movement evokes a lonely nostalgia." (Bright Sheng)

Bright Sheng, born in Shanghai, China on 6 December 1955, started piano studies with his mother at the age of four. After graduating from high school during the Cultural Revolution he was one of the first students

accepted by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he earned his undergraduate degree in music composition. In 1982, he moved to New York, where he attended Queens College, CUNY, and Columbia University.

Among his main teachers were Leonard Bernstein, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, George Perle, and Hugo Weisgall.

Sheng has received numerous awards and prizes, most recently from the MacArthur Foundation, as well as from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Illinois Council on the Arts, The Naumburg Foundation, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He also received a number of prizes in China including Chamber Music Composition and Art Song Competition. Bright Sheng's music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer.

Phillip Bimstein awoke one morning to the sounds of cows mooing in the pasture next to his home. Music to his ears, the moos became the inspiration for Garland Hirschi's Cows (1990), a "cowcerto" in three "moo-vements," for chamber ensemble and tape. The piece also includes the voice of the cows' owner, Garland C. Hirschi, who asks, "You wanna' know a little bit about my cows, huh?" and then goes on to tell stories about growing up with cows and what makes them moo. .

Garland Hirschi's Cows was commissioned by Another Languag�

Performing Arts Company and premiered at the Salt Lake Alternative Music Festival in 1990. It was featured at the 1991 Telluride Composer-to­ Composer Festival, awarded honors at Austria's Prix Ars Electronica '92, and featured at the Festival of Art, Technology and Society in Lim, Austria in

1992. In 1992 Present Music commissioned a live score which has been per­ formed in Milwaukee, Seattle, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Austin and other cities in the United States.

The music of environmentalist mayor and former MTV rocker Phillip Kent Bimstein has been performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Aspen Music Festival, American Dance Festival, and the Bang on a Can Festival. Bimstein was born in Chicago and is a graduate of Chicago Conservatory of Music, where he majored in theory & composition. A CD of Bimstein's music, Garland Hirschi's Cows, released by Starkland in 1997,

garnered rave reviews around the world. Bimstein has been featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, in Parade and Outside mag­ azines. In 1997 Bimstein was awarded Meet The Composer Inc.'s largest grant, the three-year New Residencies. Most recently, in 2001, he has been singing and writing songs for acoustic quartet blue haiku.

Sinatra Shag (1997) by Michael Daughtery is part of the series of compo­ sitions inspired by the seminal 1972 book on American architecture entitled "Learning From Las Vegas" by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott BrQwn, and Steven Izenour. For these authors Las Vegas was to the strip what Rome was to the piazza. Las Vegas was the final refutation of the "Either/Or" of tradi­ tional high culture. Architecturally "Learning From Las Vegas" revealed the strip as a complex neon landscape of symbol and iconography in space.

In Sin'atra Shag the seven members of the combo are divided into variou's

rhythmic groups to create layers of pulse and complexity. The performers

play chromatically ascending passageno the groove of a "col legno battuto" bass line in the cello. Swinging lounge instrumental riffs and swirling glisses are looped and layered virtuosically throughout the composition, like a multi-colored shag carpet. The composition evokes the Las Vegas era when leading American popular music entertainers of the 1960s such as Frank Sinatra, and his daughter Nancy, performed at the Sands Hotel, known for its luxurious shag carpeting.

Michael Daugherty has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by contemporary American popular culture. Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty i� the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. Daugherty grew up playing keyb�ards in jazz, rock, and funk bands in Iowa. Daugherty has received numerous awards for his music, including recognition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts and the Stoeger Prize from Lincoln Center. His music is published exclusively by Peermusic Classical, New York and represented in Europe by Faber Music, London.

eymposium

06 'TOontempO'l:a'lY �usic

Guest Composers

•

Performers Scholars •

1954-2001.

1954: 1955:

Normand Lockwood,

1976:

Donald Erb

Robert Palmer

1977:

Lou Harrison, Ezra Sims

Wallingford Riegger,

1978:

M. William Karlins

1979:

Leonard B. Meyer

1981:

Walter S. Hartley

1982:

David Ward-Steinman

1983:

George Crumb Concert

Peter Mennin

1956:

Hunter Johnson, Ulysses Kay

1957:

Ernst Krenek, William Bergsma

1958:

Aaron Copland

1959:

Paul Pisk, George Rochberg

1960:

Roy Harris

1962:

Robert Erickson,

1966:

1986:

Jean Eichelberger Ivey

1987:

Jan Bach

Alabama String Quartet

1988:

John Beall

Robert Wykes, E. J. Ulrich,

1989:

Hale Smith

Salvatore Martirano,

1990:

Karel Husa

Herbert Brlin, Ben Johnston

1991:

Alice Parker

Louis Coyner, Edwin Harkins,

1993:

(Spring) Alexander Aslamazov (Fall) Leslie Bassett,

Robert Wykes,

Philip Winsor, Edwin London

1967:

R. Bedford Watkins Michael Schelle

Glenn Glasow

1964:

Robert Bankert, Abram M. Plum,

1985:

George Rochberg,

1963:

1984:

Frederick Tillis,

1993:

John Crawford (Society of

George Crumb

Composers, Inc. Region 5

1968:

lain Hamilton

Conference)

1969:

The Loop Group,

1995:

David Diamond

DePaul University

1996:

Morton Gould Memorial Concert

1970:

Halim El-Dabh, Oily Wilson

1971:

Edward J. Miller

1997:

Joseph Schwantner

1972:

Stravinsky Memorial Concert

1998:

Arvo Part

1973:

Courtney Cox, Phil Wil�on

1999:

John Corigliano

1974:

Scott Huston

2000:

Libby Larsen

1975:

David Ward-Steinman

2001:

William Bolcom, Joan Morris

This program presented as part ofthe IWU New Music Series.