Program Book - CSO MusicNOW: Jimmy López: Inner Dialogues

TWENTY-SEVENTH SEASON

CSO MusicNOW

Jimmy López Mead Composer-Curator

Sunday, March 23, 2025, at 3:00

JIMMY LÓPEZ: INNER DIALOGUES

Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

John Bruce Yeh Clarinet

Stephanie Jeong Violin

Karen Basrak Cello

BOULEZ Domaines

John Bruce Yeh, clarinet

MASON Weapon Wheel

Patricia Dash, bass drum

Douglas Waddell, bass drum

Ian Ding, bass drum

LÓPEZ La Caresse du Couteau

Gabriela Lara, violin

Jesús Linárez, violin

Pédro Mendez, viola

Tahirah Whittington, cello

SCHOENBERG Reflecting Light

Sean Whitworth, trumpet

Abner Wong, trumpet

Loren Ho, horn

Dustin Nguyen, trombone

Joe Maiocco, bass trombone

LÓPEZ Guardian of the Horizon Riddle

Crossing the Threshold Into the Effulgent Light

Stephanie Jeong, violin

Karen Basrak, cello

Matous Michal, Gabriela Lara, Emily Nebel, first violins

Mihaela Ionescu, Jesús Linárez, Yin Shen, second violins

Carol Cook, Pedro Méndez, Patrick Miller, violas

Tahirah Whittington, Eran Meir, Paula Kosower, cellos

Robert Kassinger, Andrew Sommer, basses

There will be no intermission.

Leadership support for CSO MusicNOW is provided by Zell Family Foundation, Sargent Family Foundation, Sally Mead Hands Foundation, the Julian Family Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.

Cookies for this event are generously provided by Sugar Bliss.

Designing the program, we were trying to really show the diversity and variety of instrumental forces within the CSO. I came up with my works, these two works for strings. Then I started to think: why don’t we have other composers bring other instrumental families into the mix? Each section of the orchestra is having a dialogue with itself. That is one meaning.

The other meaning, of course, is the reflective nature of each piece. Two works are particularly poignant in that sense: Adam Schoenberg’s Reflecting Light and my Guardian of the Horizon because both were written to pay homage to someone who passed—a father figure in each case. It’s all about the process of mourning, of moving on, of letting go. That is the dialogue that’s going on inside.

The Boulez work was written in the 1960s, a solo piece that really has different sections within itself. It not only reflects on the possibilities of the clarinet but also on what it means to be a solo performer, in a way. Then, of course, there is Quinn Mason’s piece, which is fabulous. You have these three percussion players—it requires a lot of precision and communication. But also, with Quinn being a percussion player himself—it’s written from within, I would say.

JIMMY LÓPEZ, MEAD COMPOSER-CURATOR

For full interview, visit cso.org/experience.

by Richard E. Rodda and

PIERRE BOULEZ

Domaines for Solo Clarinet (1961–68)

Among the casualties of World War I was musical romanticism. The inclination to temper, or even purge, music’s opulent emotionalism of the late 1800s had begun to make itself felt during the first decade of the twentieth century in the works of Debussy, Satie, Ives, and others, and the cataclysm of the war seemed to require of composers a deliberate search for a new musical speech suited to a new world order. All manner of avant-garde idioms gestated or came to fruition during the 1920s—the jazz experiments of Copland, Gershwin, and Ravel; the folklorism of Bartók and Vaughan Williams; the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Les Six; the mathematical order of Schoenberg’s serialism (twelve-tone music). The next generation of composers further explored new means of musical structure (John Cage’s chance works, in which musicians cocreate the piece in live performance within parameters established by the composer) and new sound sources, both electronic (edited magnetic tapes of recorded live sounds [musique concrète]; Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach of 1968, generated entirely on a Moog synthesizer, sold a million copies) and acoustic (the altered strings of Cage’s prepared piano; American maverick Harry Partch’s octave scale of forty-three microtones and large assemblage of “adapted” strings and percussion cobbled from cannibalized instrument parts and found objects).

In the 1950s, Pierre Boulez, France’s most brilliant and combatively outspoken young composer, extended Schoenberg’s systematic ordering of pitches to every musical element (total serialization), and in 1961, with Domaines for Solo Clarinet, he combined a limited version of Cage’s chance methods with unconventional extended playing techniques that demand a “modern virtuosity” from the performer—breathing through the instrument, harmonics (producing a higher, sometimes grating, secondary note inherent in the clarinet’s acoustical properties), tremolo, vibrato, flutter-tongue, and extremes of range, dynamics and angularity. Domaines comprises six cahiers, or notebooks, labeled A through F, each with six discrete “cells.” After the cahiers have been heard in an order chosen by the performer, they are followed by six miroirs (mirrors), reverse versions (retrogrades) of the six original cells. The first to accept the challenge of Domaines was Hans Deinzer, clarinetist of the Nuremberg Symphony and North German Radio Symphony, who premiered the work in Ulm, Germany, on September 20, 1968.

Domaines, an unusual and, perhaps, challenging listening experience, has elicited varied responses. British clarinetist Roger Heaton, who recorded the piece in 2013, commented, “The writing for clarinet is fascinating,

COMMENTS wonderfully colorful, and detailed in notation.” Where as master Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter commented, “Domaines is a work that’s both very unsophisticated (for me) and very likeable. [But] I can’t make up my mind if this music has any real substance or whether it’s totally hollow.” One thing on which all listeners can agree, however, is the remarkable skill that today’s finest performers must perfect

Pierre Boulez @ 100

to bring alive the sound worlds evoked by such an adventuresome composer as Pierre Boulez.

—Richard E. Rodda

Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.

In 2025, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra family honors the centenary of the birth of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. Visit cso.org/boulez100 for more on his rich relationship with the CSO.

QUINN MASON

Weapon Wheel (2018; 2019)

As a percussionist, I’ve played a lot of unusual repertoire and thought I would add to it by composing this piece for three bass drums. It was a true exercise in keeping the music interesting with unpitched instruments by creating rhythms that reinvent themselves in different ways throughout the composition

and utilizing melodic style trade-offs between the three performers. A theatrical element was added in the cadenza, in which the music pushes itself over the edge, inviting the percussionists to take free rein of what happens next.

JIMMY LÓPEZ

La Caresse du Couteau (The Caress of the Knife) (2004)

It is nowadays extremely difficult to approach the string quartet considering the great amount of works that have been written for this ensemble. Its versatility and flexibility have made it a favorite means of expression for many composers, and still today its almost unlimited resources are being explored. That is why I decided to confront this ensemble from a different starting point.

This work is based on a graphic called the enneagram, which was popularized in the West by Georges Gurdjieff (ca. 1866–1949) and his follower Piotr D. Ouspensky. Gurdjieff traveled extensively and claimed he discovered the teachings of the Sarmoung Brotherhood, reputedly founded in ancient Babylon. According to Gurdjieff, “all knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with its aid, all knowledge can be interpreted. And in this connection, man knows, that is understands, only what he is capable of putting in the enneagram.”

Apart from the fact that this symbol could have an authentic metaphysical meaning, I was intrigued to know in which way I could relay this image with sounds. The enneagram consists of nine lines organized in a specific way inside a circle. I decided to divide the lines into twelve parts, and then I proceeded to associate each one of those parts with the chromatic scale. The intersections

resulted in a series of chords. The enneagram is a symbol that must be analyzed in motion. In its static state, it can only be appreciated partially. Music, a temporal art par excellence, allows an observation of this graphic in motion, and when we do, a new element arises: rhythm. The enneagram consists of infinite cycles. Each one of these cycles extends through an octave and is completed with the closing of the circumference in point nine, repeating itself ad infinitum in successive ascending or descending octaves.

All these procedures give, as a result, a musical map of the enneagram which, when seen in its static state, reveals six clearly defined sections. This work is divided into six parts without interruption and each of them explores a different aspect of the graphic. The first section contrasts dry chords and rapid figurations. The second section explores the highest pitch regions of the quartet in combination with recurring tremolos. The third section makes extensive use of glissandi, which draws, with precision, the play of ascending and descending melodic lines when the enneagram is perceived in motion. The fourth consists of chord successions in permanent harmonic and dynamic motion, while the fifth presents a brief melody in the first violin, whose quick development contrasts with the static

lines of the other instruments. Finally, the sixth section sets rapid figurations in the cello and first violin against a scholastic counterpoint in two parts played by the second violin and viola. In this final section, these contrasting but nevertheless coexisting worlds

ADAM SCHOENBERG

Reflecting Light (2006)

In November 2005 my former teacher’s father passed away over Thanksgiving. It was a very difficult time for him, and even though I did not know his father, I was affected by the pain and sadness that he was going through. I wasn’t able to articulate my thoughts to him in great detail, but I wanted to do something for him to let him know that I was really sorry for the loss of his father. In its essence, Reflecting Light is a conversation that I imagined having with my teacher.

The piece is a series of reflective moments: the first section, the opening chorale, represents the loss of life. A surge of energy emerges from the chorale and signifies the pain and frustration that one must go through when accepting another’s death. Just as

create an anachronism that leaves us with a sensation of instability and perpetual search. The work, we could say, does not end, but stops at a certain moment in time, leaving the development of the other cycles to the listener’s imagination.

it is necessary to move on after losing a loved one, the second section pays homage to the lost life and honors him with a meditative moment.

In this section, the trumpets play a long overlapping descending scale, while the trombones play open fifths. From this moment, a somber ostinato evolves from the horn and two trumpets, while the tenor trombone plays a short hymn-like melody. The music momentarily returns to the meditative fifths in the trombones and falling scales in the trumpets before moving on to the last section, which is a celebration of life.

In this final section, an ostinato emerges from the horn, and the music gradually becomes more uplifting, until the end, where a series of fanfare-like gestures come to light.

JIMMY LÓPEZ

Guardian of the Horizon, Concerto Grosso for Violin, Cello,

and Strings (2016–17)

In honor of the twentieth anniversary of the Sphinx Organization, I composed Guardian of the Horizon as a homage to the symbolism behind its name. The Sphinx Organization is focused on increasing representation in classical music and celebrating excellence by addressing the systemic lack of access within Black and Latino communities.

Guardian of the Horizon is a metaphor for Sphinx, which is associated with strength, wisdom, and resilience. It seemed to me like the most logical choice, albeit the most challenging. As I was about to embark on the composition of this piece, tragedy struck me in a way which turned this into one—if not the most—personal piece I had written to date. My father Javier, a staunch supporter of my music since my early childhood and the most loving and generous man one could ask for a father, passed away on December 4, 2016. In light of this enormous loss, the figure of the sphinx gained an even greater significance. I began to think of Greek mythology and Oedipus (hence the title of the first movement) but then I started to think of it the way ancient Egyptians did, as a manifestation of Hathor, goddess of birth and death, or “Horus in the Horizon” guarding the rising and setting sun and holding the keys to the gates of wisdom. In my work, the sphinx guards the passage to the afterlife, but the aspiring soul must first

answer a Riddle and only then can it be allowed into Crossing the Threshold. As I got to work, it felt more and more like I was writing a companion piece to my father’s transcendental journey, a journey that we will all have to undertake someday.

As its subtitle suggests, this piece pays homage to a type of baroque musical composition called the concerto grosso, and what could be more appropriate to honor this form than an ensemble of strings: the family of instruments which reached perfection during the baroque era, well in advance of all the others (woodwinds, brass, percussion, etc.). The violin and cello are treated as equals—at times joining forces in order to become a super instrument and at others behaving like rivals in a competition of dexterity and endurance. The string ensemble does not limit itself to the role of accompanist; it is an active participant, constantly interacting and challenging the soloists, while soaring to ever greater heights.

This piece is a labor of love. Few things in life have the power to touch us so deeply, the loss of a parent being one of them. But this piece is also meant to celebrate life, the life and talent of those young artists for whom the work was written. We must remember that no matter how dark the time may seem our path will always lead us Into the Effulgent Light.

PROFILES

Pierre Boulez Composer

Born in Montbrison, France, on March 26, 1925, Pierre Boulez was a composer, conductor, thinker, a motor of international musical life, and an emblematic figure in postwar European, indeed, in world culture.

He was a living classic. Since the 1950s, composers around the world followed with curiosity what he was writing, to see if they could adapt his ideas in their own music or to reject them in their search for an idiom they could call their own. His music was a conscious act of rebellion against tradition as represented not only by Schoenberg or Stravinsky, but also his teacher, Messiaen, whose influence nevertheless left its mark on Boulez’s music.

In his compositions and in his writings, Boulez was initially an angry and recalcitrant young man (see his scathing obituary, Schoenberg est mort). He became an established figure, with France inviting him back to found IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the 1970s, and his career as a conductor took off. With less to rebel against, Boulez mellowed and broadened his horizons to conduct a wide range of repertoire, including works by Bruckner and Mahler. Boulez also was a highly influential teacher. In Lucerne, he passed on his immense knowledge to young conductors at the Festival Academy.

Maestro Boulez first conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in February 1969. In 1995, he was named the Orchestra’s third principal guest conductor, and he became Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus in 2006. He most recently led the Orchestra and Chorus in December 2010. Pierre Boulez died on January 5, 2016, in Baden-Baden.

Quinn Mason Composer

Composer and conductor Quinn Mason (b. 1996) has distinguished himself as an artist of international renown. He served as artistin-residence of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra for the 2022–23 season. He also served as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Classical Roots composer-in-residence in 2022 (the youngest composer appointed to that role).

His music has been performed and commissioned by over 180 renowned orchestras, including the San Francisco, National, Cincinnati, Detroit, Seattle, Utah, Dallas, Fort Worth, Vermont, Kansas City, Memphis, and Amarillo symphonies; Minnesota Orchestra; Rochester Philharmonic; Buffalo Philharmonic; Italy’s Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI; the U.K.’s Sheffield Philharmonic; and numerous others. Recent performances have included the Phoenix Symphony

Orchestra, Spokane Symphony Orchestra, Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Plano Symphony Orchestra, and Northwest Sinfonietta.

As a conductor, Quinn Mason worked with Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marin Alsop, James Ross, Gerard Schwarz, Carl Topilow, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Christopher Zimmerman and served as assistant conductor at the PRISMA Music Festival. At the age of twenty-seven, he made his major orchestra debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. He has also appeared as a guest conductor with many orchestras around the country, including the Houston Ballet Orchestra, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Syracuse Orchestra, and more.

Quinn Mason has worked closely with renowned composers David Maslanka, Jake Heggie, Christopher Theofanidis, Libby Larsen, David Dzubay, and Robert X. Rodriguez.

Jimmy López Composer

Jimmy López’s works have been performed by leading orchestras around the world, including all major American orchestras, and in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall (BBC

Proms), the Concertgebouw, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Konzerthaus Berlin, and the Aspen, Tanglewood, and Grant Park music festivals.

In January 2025 his Symphony no. 5, Fantastica, dedicated to conductor Christian Reif, received its premiere with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Other notable highlights this season include performances by the orchestras of Toronto, Melbourne, Tampere, Naples, Oregon, and Sarasota. His violin concerto Aurora, which was recorded by Leticia Moreno, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, and the Houston Symphony, where he was composer-in-residence from 2017 to 2020, was nominated for a 2022 Latin Grammy in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category. His work Fiesta! has received over one hundred and fifty performances worldwide. Dreamers, an oratorio written in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, was premiered by Ana María Martínez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2019. Bel Canto, an opera commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago as part of the Renée Fleming Initiative and based on Ann Patchett’s bestselling novel, premiered in December 2015 to wide critical acclaim and was broadcast nationwide on PBS’s Great Performances.

A native of Lima, Peru, Jimmy López studied at the city’s National Conservatory of Music prior to graduating from the Sibelius Academy in

PHOTO

Helsinki with a master of music degree. López completed his doctorate in music at the University of California-Berkeley. He is published by Filarmonika and Birdsong.

Adam Schoenberg Composer

Emmy Award–winning and Grammy Award–nominated

Adam Schoenberg has twice been named among the top 10 most performed living composers by orchestras in the United States. With more than 200 performances worldwide, his works have been featured by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, and Hollywood Bowl, among others. His numerous achievements include the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the MacDowell Fellowship in both 2009 and 2010.

Recent commissions include his percussion concerto Losing Earth for the San Francisco Symphony; his violin concerto Orchard in Fog for Anne Akiko Meyers and the San Diego Symphony; cello concerto Automation for Yves Dhar and the Louisville Orchestra; and

a concerto for orchestra for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Schoenberg’s orchestral debut album Adam Schoenberg: American Symphony, Finding Rothko & Picture Studies with Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony was nominated for three Grammy awards, including Best Contemporary Classical.

Schoenberg received his doctorate from the Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano. He is a tenured professor at Occidental College, where he teaches composition and film scoring. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, playwright and TV writer Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and their sons Luca and Leo.

John Bruce Yeh Clarinet

John Bruce Yeh was appointed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s bass clarinet by Sir Georg Solti in 1977 at the age of nineteen, the first Asian musician appointed to the Orchestra. Two years later, he was named assistant principal and E-flat clarinet. The longest-serving clarinetist in CSO history, he also served as acting principal clarinet from 2008 to 2011. He has performed as guest principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic in Korea, and the Guangzhou Symphony in China. He was a prizewinner at both the 1982 Munich International Music

PHOTOS BY SAM ZAUSCHER, TODD ROSENBERG

Competition and the 1985 Naumburg Clarinet Competition in New York. Yeh has performed as a soloist with the CSO several times, including in Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto with Neeme Järvi and in the U.S. premiere of Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Concerto with Pierre Boulez. He continues to solo with orchestras around the globe.

An enthusiastic champion of new music, Yeh is the dedicatee of new works for clarinet by numerous composers, ranging from Ralph Shapey to John Williams. He appears at festivals and on chamber music series worldwide, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Taipei Music Academy Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His more than a dozen solo and chamber music recordings have earned worldwide critical acclaim.

John Bruce Yeh is director and cofounder of Chicago Pro Musica, which received the 1985 Grammy Award for Best New Classical Artist.

John Bruce Yeh holds the Governing Members Chair.

Stephanie Jeong Violin

Stephanie Jeong was appointed associate concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2011 by Music Director Riccardo Muti. Prior to joining the Orchestra, she was a member of the New York Philharmonic from 2010 to

2011. She is a top-prize winner and recipient of the Best Paganini Concerto Prize of the 2008 Paganini Violin Competition in Italy. Jeong made solo debuts at the age of twelve with the CSO and the Philadelphia Orchestra, respectively, as winner of the Feinberg Competition.

Since joining the CSO, Jeong has appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside Assistant Principal Cello Kenneth Olsen and pianist Jonathan Biss in the 2014–15 season, and joined Pinchas Zukerman for the Orchestra’s performances of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in the following season.

A native of East Rutherford, New Jersey, Stephanie Jeong began her studies in New York with Nicole DiCecco at the Suzuki Program Music School. At the age of three, she moved to Chicago, where she studied with Betty Haag-Kuhnke at the Betty Haag Academy of Music. In 1997, at nine, she became one of the youngest students ever accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Aaron Rosand. She received a master’s degree from the Juilliard School as a student of Cho-Liang Lin and Ronald Copes.

Stephanie Joeng holds the Cathy and Bill Osborn Chair.

PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG

Karen Basrak Cello

Karen Basrak joined the cello section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012. A native of Arlington Heights, Illinois, Basrak began her studies with Adele O’Dwyer, Gilda Barston, and Richard Hirschl. She received a bachelor of music degree in cello performance from the University of Southern California, where she studied with Eleonore Schoenfeld. While at USC, Basrak received several honors, most notably the Gregor Piatigorsky Award. Before returning to Illinois, Basrak was a member of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 2001 as

PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG

associate principal cello; she served as acting principal from 2002 to 2005 and principal from 2005 to 2012. Basrak has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe and has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Northwest, Harper, Kishwaukee, Elmhurst, Skokie Valley, and Greenville symphony orchestras; Winnetka Chamber Orchestra; Marina del Rey–Westchester Symphony; and American Youth Symphony. As an advocate of music education, she has performed in schools throughout the nation. In recognition of her efforts, she was awarded the key to the city of Greenville, South Carolina. Basrak is on the faculty of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Karen Basrak holds the Joseph A. and Cecile Renaud Gorno Chair.

Leadership support for CSO MusicNOW is provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Sargent Family Foundation, Sally Mead Hands Foundation, the Julian Family Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.