Symposium of Contemporary Music, 2003

eJLlillois Q1Jesteyr:lJZ Gl1JliJJetsity presents

SYMPOSIUM OF

Featured Guests

Mario Lavista Mexico's foremost composer

Carmen Helena Tellez Director, Indiana University Latin American Music Center

February 24 Panel discussion on literary connections to Mario Lavista's music Westbrook Auditorium, 8 pm

February 25 Choral Music and the Polarization Between Modernism and Nationalism in Latin America Lecture by Carmen Helena Tellez School of Music Room 258, 4 pm

Concert of music by Mario Lavista Westbrook Auditorium, 8 pm

ILLI N O I S WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

Co-Sponsors International Studies Program, Latin American Studies, Phi Mu Alpha, Sigma Alpha Iota, Delta Omicron

Symposium of Contemporary Music 2003

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24

8PM Westbrook Auditorium

PANEL DISCUSSION Literary Connections to Mario Lavista's Music

Prof. Lavista Carmela Ferradans, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Hispanic Studies David Vayo, Professor of Composition and Theory

Y!;ues()ay, 0iJebruary

25

4PM School of Music room 258

GUEST LECTURE Choral Music and the Polarization between Modernism and Nationalism in Latin America

Carmen Helena Tellez; Associate Professor of Choral Conducting and Director, Latin American Music Center, Indiana University 8PM Westbrook Auditorium

Music of Mario Lavista and Stephen Cabell*

Remarks by Prof.Lavista Natarayah ........................................ Mario Lavista Angelo Favis, guitar Tres Bagatelas Invenci6n a dos voces Caja de musica Danza

*Winner, Illinois Wesleyan University High School Composers' Contest 2002

Robert Hopkins, violin Deanna Herman, viola April Guthrie, cello

Thanks to Prof Vadim Mazofor ensemble coaching Si m urg Prof: D:lVid Vayo, piano Danza de las Bailarinas de Degas Prof. William West, £lute

Prof R. Kent Cook, piano

Mind's Eye ......................................Stephen Cabell T he Interlochen Horn Quartet Sophia Goluses, Leelanee Sterrett, Andrew Peck, Lindsay Hanson

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Five-Minute Intermission

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Remarks by Prof. Lavista and Mr.Hernandez-Hidalgo Cuaderno de Viaje ........ .... ... ............... .. .Mario Lavista I II Omar Hernandez-Hidalgo, viola Una Jaula para Sirius (A Cage for Sirius) Prof. Eric Hollenbeck, percussion Prof. R.Kent Cook, prepared piano Tres Danzas Seculares Lento flessibile ed espressivo Allegro giocoso e leggiero Lentissimo Prof. Nina Gordon, cello Prof.Susan Brandon, piano

Following the concert, the audience is cordially invited to a reception in the Presser Hall reception room, courtesy ofDelta Omicron

A Note from the Symposium Director When I started work on my doctorate at the University of Michigan, I chose piano as one of my cognate fields.Attached to that choice was an agenda: having just returned from two years teaching in Costa Rica, and feeling a close bond with that part of the world, I wanted to play a recital of contemporary Latin American piano music.I ended up studying with a wonderfully game and open-minded mentor, Lynne Bartholomew, who wasn't at all threatened by never having heard of-much less playedany of the pieces her student brought to his lessons.Thanks to her priceless guidance I performed a successful concert, and afterwards I wrote to several of the composers. One of them, the creator of a hauntingly atmosph�ric piece which had become a favorite of mine, wrote back to thank me for the unexpected birthday present; it turned out that I had performed Simurg on the day he turned forty-three.

Seven years later, in 1993, I was invited to an international contemporary­ music festival in Mexico City, and I hoped that this would give me the chance to meet the composer of Simurg. Sure enough, after one of the con­ certs I introduced myself to the man I had deduced was Mario Lavista.He invited me to join him and a group of his friends for dinner, and since then I have treasured both a collegial relationship and a personal friendship with this warm and generous man who is also one of the world's most gifted composers.

The growing recognition of Mario Lavista's music in the United States and beyond is due in no small part to the efforts of guest lecturer Carmen Helena T eIlez.Her appearances as a conductor throughout the Americas, and her directorship of Indiana University's Latin American Music Center, have introduced thousands of the hemisphere's ears to the rich and wonder­ ful music being written by present-day Latin American composers.In the 1990's, this world-class musician of indefatigable energy organized two historic symposia for Latin American and North American composers at Indiana University; she also commissioned and recorded one of Mario Lavista's most important recent works, the Missa ad Consolationis Doniman Nostram. It is an honor to welcome this dear friend to the Symposium as well.

-David Vayo

Mario Lavista One of Mexico's most respected composers, Mario Lavista has made significant contributions to almost every aspect of that country's musical life and to the international new music scene. Born in Mexico City in 1943, he studied piano and later composition with the most prestigious teachers at home and abroad. After receiving his initial training from Carlos Chavez, Rodolfo Halffter, and Hector Quintanar at the National Conservatory, he won a schola�ship to work with Nadia Boulanger, Henri Pousseur, and Jean-Etienne Marie in Paris. He supplemented this by attending seminars and lectures in Germany with such figures as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Gyorgy Ligeti, thus gaining a remarkable breadth of exposure to the major trends of twentieth-century composition.

Upon his return to Mexico, Lavista took up a faculty position at the National Conservatory, and in 1970 he founded the influential improvisa­ tion group Quanta, which combined electronic and traditional instruments.

During this period, he was particularly interested in electroacoustic interac­ tion and in pieces written for tape or synthesizer such as Espaces trop habites ( 1969), Alme ( 197 1), and Contrapunto ( 1972), written after an invitation to work at the electronic music studio of Japanese radio and television in Tokyo.

Lavista's early work also show him experimenting with unusual sound sources, such as those found in Kronos ( 1969) for fifteen alarm clocks and Talea ( 1976) for music box, and contributing to many collaborative endeavors with other Mexican artists, especially film director Nicolas Echevarria.

Lavista's activity in multimedia projects and film music has continued, but his more recent works eschew electronics in favor of the intense explo­ ration of acoustic sonorities. For example, in the quartet, Reflejos de la Noche ( 1984) he uses only string harmonics to create a particularly lumi­ nous reflection of night noises. Many of Lavista's works for winds, including Madrigal ( 1985) for solo clarinet, continue his sonorous experiments by employing an extremely wide range of timbres, pitches, and special effects such as overblowing and mllitiphonics. This fascination with tone color has led to close collaborations with specific performers, including the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Kronos Quartet, bassist Bertram Turetzky, cellists David Tomatzand and Carlos Prieto, the Western Arts Trio, flutist Marielena Arizpe, recorder player Horacio Franco, and the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble at Indiana University.

Despite his obvious and audible commitment to new sounds, Lavista also allows himself to be influenced by the music and literature of the past. This is perhaps clearest in his Missa Brevis ad Consolationis Dominam Nostram ( 1995), which pays tribute to the stylistic vocabulary of medieval and Renaissance composers like Josquin des Prez and Guillaume de Machaut.

Even among his earlier, morďż˝ experimental works one can sometimes find a preoccupation with older music.His 1976 duo Quotations includes an epigraph from Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher ("His heart is a suspended lute that resounds the moment it is touched") and involves fleeting allusions to Debussy, Brahms, Webern, Bartok, Crumb, and others.

In this regard, Lavista has spoken eloquently about his commitment to finding the new in the old and admitting the old in the new: "After a while I realized that what was essential was not to forget, but to remember; to recover the memory. I learned then to look inside of myself, knowing that lowed much to the music of the past, and that I was a living part of this inexhaustible flow that is the history of music."

Numerous honors and awards attest to Lavista's place in the history of music. He has recently won Mexico's National Prize in Sciences and Arts, the Mozart Medal, and membership in the prestigious Colegio Nacional de Mexico.In 1987, he was named a member of the Mexican Academy of Arts and received a Guggenheim fellowship to compose an opera called Aura based on Carlos Fuentes' short story.Other recent commissions include works for the Kronos Quartet (Five Studies on Open Strings), the San Antonio Symphony (Clepsidra, commemorating the tricentennial of the discovery of the San Antonio River), the University of Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra, the percussion group Tambuco, the guitarist David Starobin, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. After serving as guest composer ar insriwrions throughout the Americas, he currently reaches ar rhe Narional Conservatory in Mexico City and serves as director of Pallta, a leading Larin American music journal.

-Beth Levy

Carmen Helena Tellez Carmen Helena Tellez was born in 1955 in Caracas, Venezuela, where she completed conservatory studies in piano and composition.She won an Ay acucho Foundation scholarship to pursue studies in the United States, where she earned her Doctor of Music degree at Indiana University in 1988.Her doctoral document "Musical Form and Dramatic Concept in Handel's Athalia" won the ACDA Julius Herford National Dissertation Award in 199 1.

Since the beginning of her professional career in 1985, she has been a reg­ ular guest conductor of professional and academic orchestras and choruses as well as in international music festivals in Latin America, Europe and the United States, and she has developed a special emphasis on contemporary repertoire, Latin American composers, and on genres that explore the rela­ tionship of music with other arts.She was the first foreign Music Director of the National Chorus of Spain during the 1987-88 season, and with this group she toured Spain and performed in the Casals Festival.She was also Visiting Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in 1990-9 1.

In 1992, she became Associate Professor of Choral Conducting at Indiana University, where she has been asked to conduct works as varied as Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Berlioz's Requiem with great success. She is also the Director of the Indiana University Latin American Music Center and of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. For these two organizations she has commissioned and recorded several new works, founded the Series of Publications and Recordings of the Latin American Music Center, and the Inter-American Composition Workshops. Her recording of Missa ad COllSolationis Dominalll NOstlillll of Mexican composer Mario Lavista, which she commissioned. has won two awards as the best disc of Mexican classical music given by the Journal Vic('v(,l"stl and the Circle of Music and Theater Critics of Mexico in 1998 and 1999. She has also commissioned Suite de Santa Fe for narrator, guitar and orchestra of Spanish composer Feliu Gasull I Altisent for the Santa Fe Sy mphony, a work she premiered in 1995.She also commissioned and premiered the Massfor Solo Voices and Instruments

by MacArthur Fellow John Eaton. She jus·t recorded a CD of unknown works of Carlos Chavez for solo voice, instruments and chorus for the Colegio Nacional de Mexico and Camerata de las Americas.

As a scholar and conductor Carmen Helena Tellez has won many grants and awards from the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, the Rockefeller

Foundation, and the United States Information Agency.She is a respected consultant with international organizations and American presenters on Latin American music and has written several articles for the New Grove Dictionary of Music.

Carmen Helena Tellez is also one of the founders and creative directors of Aguava New Music, a production company dedicated to the promotion of contemporary composers.She has toured Mexico, Colombia, and Israel with Aguava.Her first recording with this group entitled Itineraries of the night, was issued in 2000. The upcoming second CD, Canticum Novum, will include works by Mario Lavista, John Eaton, Cary Boyce and Menahem Zur.She continues to pursue a successful international guest conducting career.Next season she will conduct the Midwest premiere of John Adams' El Nino, and the premiere of John Eaton's opera Inasmuch in New York City.

Stephen Cabell Born on December 12, 1984 in Henderson, Kentucky, Mr.Cabell began his formal music training in piano at the age of ten with Mrs.Nancy Gordon, and in horn with Mr.Danny Humphreys. At age twelve he began taking horn lessons from Ms.Lorraine Fader, principle hornist for the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra.

From 1998-1999 he studied composition and theory with Dr.Emil Ahnell, a music professor at Kentucky Wesleyan College.For the past six summers Mr.Cabell has attended the Music at Maple Mount summer institute and has studied horn with Douglas Van Fleet, Marshal Sealy, and Jeff Scott, and composition with Kenji Bunch, Andrew Dionne, and David Dzubay.Since the fall of 2000 he has attended Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan.A senior in his third year, he is a composition student of Mr. Michael Albaugh and Dr.John Boyle and studies horn with Ms.Julie Schleif and piano with Mr.Thomas Bara.

By age fourteen Mr.Cabell had already composed over sixty pieces for various instruments and ensembles including piano, organ, string ensemble, and full and large orchestra. Mr. Cabell's compositional debut took place in January of 1999 with the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra performing his piece Titan at an Arts Teach Kids concert in front of over 2,000 students and teachers.Again, in August of 1999, the Owensboro Symphony pre­ formed Titan at their summer pops concert with Mr.Cabell at the baton

making his conducting debut. His pieces are regularly performed in Interlochen by the students of IAA. While at Interlochen Mr.Cabell has written pieces such as American Sketches: a tribute to Aaron Copland (for chamber orchestra), One 0 Three (for tenor solo, chamber orchestra, and organ), Fantasy (for Horn Octet), Music for Brass, Percussion, and Strings, Earbox Essay (for large orchestra and chorus), Hallucinations, a sonata for viola and piano, Mind's Eye, a quartet for horns, and Six or Seven Dedications (for woodwind quintet and piano) .Mr.Cabell is currently working on a piece for chamber orchestra, a piece for piano quartet, and a full orchestra piece entitled Fanfare for Owensboro commissioned by the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra to be performed in April 2004.

In 1999 Mr.Cabell received first prize in his division in the Kentucky Educators Technology Conference Digital Music Competition.Also in 1999 he received an Achievement Award from the Owensboro Board of Education in recognition of his outstanding accomplishment in composi­ tion.Mr.Cabell won the Kentucky and South-Eastern United States divi­ sion of the National Federation of Music Clubs Composition Competition with his piece Zukunftmusik in 1999. In 2002 he received an American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (AS CAP) Morton Gould Young Composers Award for his composition Earbox Essay. Also, in 2002, he received the Neil Rabaut Memorial Composition Scholarship from the Interlochen Arts Academy.In January of 2003 Mr. Cabell was invited and attended the National Federation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA) Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ART S) week.He was one of one hun­ dred American students chosen out of over 7,000 applicants.While there he received the highest award level possible.Also, in January, Mr. Cabell was one of several Michigan students to be featured on the Michigan Honors Composition Concert in Ann Arbor.While there his horn quartet Mind's Eye was performed by Interlochen students.Currently Mr. Cabell is a final­ ist in the Indiana University Composition Competition for High School Students and is one of forty-two American students to be nominated to · become a Presidential Scholar in the Arts.

Angelo L. Favis Dr. Angelo L. Favis earned borh rhe B.M. and M.M. degrees in Guitar Performance under Lawrence Ferrara and David Tanenbaum at the San Francisco Conserva足 tory of Music, and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he stud足 ied with Nicholas Goluses and David Starobin. He is a prizewinner in many competitions, most notably the 1990 American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition and the Eighth International Solo Competition sponsored by rhe Guitar Foundarion of America. Dr. Favis has been an active performer of solo and chamher music in rhe U. S. and abroad, giving recitals in New York City, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area, Europe, and the Philippines. He was fearured at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center with the Little Orchestra Society of New York, and in 1995 was one of six performers chosen to play in a special masterclass taught by Julian Bream in New York City.

A fan of new music for guitar, Dr. Favis has given the world premieres of several works, including Stephen Taylor's Seven Microworlds for Flute, Guitar & Electronics, Serra Hwang's Triforium for guitar, viola, and double bass, Laura Schwendinger's Petit Morceau, Douglas Johnson's Ten Miniatures for Guitar, and Matthew Halper's Sonatafor Flute & Guitar. Seven Microworlds was recently recorded by the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States for their annual CD. With the help of a grant from the D'Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts, Dr. Favis commissioned and conducted the world premiere of Dusan Bogdanovic's Codex XV 323a for guitar orches足 tra at the 1998 Mid-America Guitar Ensemble Festival held at Illinois State University.

Dr. Favis has participated in festivals both here and abroad, and has per足 formed in numerous masterclasses held by Oscar Ghiglia, Vladimir Mikulka, David Russell, Raphaella Smits, Hubert Kappel, Paul O' Dette, Nigel North, and others. He himself has given masterclasses at Roosevelt University, Harper College, and the Suzuki workshop at Illinois Valley College. He was also the featured artist at the 1997 Lake Guntersville Guitar Symposium in Alabama.

Dr. Favis has also been a juror in several competitions, such as the GFA International Solo Competition, Illinois ASTA Statewide Competition and the Society of American Musicians Competition. VGO Recordings recently released his debut CD, Philippine Treasures, featuring arrangements of love and folk songs.

Dr. Favis is Assistant Professor of Guitar at Illinois State University.

Omar Hernandez-Hidalgo Winner of the 2002 International Music Presser Award, an Indiana University Music Fellowship and Merit Award, and the FONCA Performers Award (Mexico), Omar Hernandez-Hidalgo is the first violist to have won first prizes in Mexico's National Viola contest as well as the National String Quartet Competition.

From 1997-99 he was a member of the ONIX New Music Ensemble and the Mexico City String Quartet, taking part in concert tours through Germany, Belgium, England, and part of the U .S.In July 2000; after his performance of Luciano Berio's Sequenza VI, he won the critic's first prize for best instrumentalist at the Academie Europeenne de Musique and the International Festival d'art Lyrique in Aix-en-Provence, France.T here he also collaborated with the Ensemble InterContemporain in the preparation and public presentation of Pierre Boulez' Eclat/Multiples conducted by the composer.His principal teachers include Atar Arad (USA), Kim Kashkashian and Aido Bennici (Academia Chigianna de Musica, Sienna, Italy) , Gerard Causse, Roberto Diaz (Verbier, Switzerland) and Christoph Desjardains (Paris, France).At present, with the support of the National Institute for the Arts (Mexico), Indiana University, and the Calcio Foundation, he is finishing work toward the degree of Doctor of Music in Viola at the Indiana University School of Music, under Atar Arad's tutelage.

Gi!5y11'zposium oj crJontemporrrcy �usic Guest Composers

•

Performers

•

Scholars

1954-2003 1954: 1955:

Normand Lockwood,

1978:

M. William Karlins

Robert Palmer

1979:

Leonard B. Meyer

Wallingford Riegger, Peter Mennin

1956:

Hunter Johnson, Ulysses Kay

1957:

Ernst Krenek, William Bergsma

1981:

Walter S. Hartley

1982:

David Ward-Steinman

1983:

George Crumb Concert

1984:

Robert Bankert, Abram M. Plum,

1958:

Aaron Copland

1959:

Paul Pisk, George Rochberg

1985:

Michael Schelle

1960:

Roy Harris

1986:

Jean Eichelberger Ivey

Robert Erickson,

1987:

Jan Bach

1988:

John Beall

1962:

George Rochberg, Glenn Glasow

1963: 1964:

R. Bedford Watkins

1989:

Hale Smith

Alabama String Quartet

1990:

Karel Husa

Robert Wykes, E. J. Ulrich,

1991:

Alice Parker

Salvatore Martirano,

1993:

(Spring) Alexander Aslamazov

Herbert Briin, Ben Johnston

1993:

Robert Wykes,

(Fall) Leslie Bassett, John Crawford (Society of

1966:

Louis Coyner, Edwin Harkins, Philip Winsor, Edwin London

Composers, Inc. Region 5

1967:

Frederick Tillis,

Conference)

George Crumb

1995:

David Diamond

1968:

lain Hamilton

1996:

Morton Gould Memorial

1969:

The Loop Group, DePaul Universiry

Concert

1997:

Joseph Schwantner

1970:

Halim El-Dabh, Oily Wilson

1998:

Arvo Part

1971:

Edward J. Miller

1999:

John Corigliano

1972:

Stravinsky Memorial Concert

2000:

Libby Larsen

1973:

Courtney Cox, Phil Wilson

2001:

William Bolcom, Joan Morris

1974:

Scott Huston

2002:

Present Music

1975:

David Ward-Steinman

2003:

Mario Lavista,

1976:

Donald Erb

1977:

Lou Harrison, Ezra Sims

Carmen Helena T dlez

This program presented as part ofthe IWU New Music Series.