Evening Concert Series
2023 – 2024 Season
Sara M. Snell Music Theater Wednesday, March 27th at 7:30 PM
Drs. Ivette Herryman Rodríguez and Phil Salathé, COMPOSITION
The Nameless and Bounded Waters (2021) World premiere Phil Salathé
Lauren Becker, Ryan Eckl, Tyler Kraft, Michael Shipps, horns
Siruin in theAir (2022)
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Ji Hyun Kim, violin
The Poise, The Hover (2023) Phil Salathé
Keenan Zach, double bass (with fixed media)
Advent Overture (2012)
Oboe and piano version (2023)
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Anna Hendrickson, oboe; Ivette Herryman Rodríguez, piano
DE OTRO MUNDO (2022) Movement 3.
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Deborah Massell, soprano; Christine Hoerning, clarinet; Keilor Kastella, piano
Intermission
On the Beach (2008, rev. 2010)
Abandoned Beach (2005)
Robert Docker, cello (with fixed media)
By the Rhythm of Your Truth, Set us Free (2015)
Woodwind quintet and piano version (2021)
Phil Salathé
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Anna Hendrickson, oboe; Julianne Kirk Doyle, clarinet; Casey Grev, alto saxophone; Max Grube, bassoon; Ivette Herryman Rodríguez, piano
Three Street Pieces (2006)
Christine Hoerning, clarinet; John Geggie, double bass
In the Presence of Beauty (2016)
Cello and piano version (2024)
Phil Salathé
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Marie-Elaine Gagnon, cello; Ivette Herryman Rodríguez, piano
String Quartet No. 1 (2023)
World premiere
Mov. 1: Chorale and Variation
Mov. 2: Nostalgia: una mirada al pasado
Mov. 3: Montuno: una mirada a mi tierra
Ivette Herryman Rodríguez
Ji Hyun Kim, violin; Sarah Patterson, violin; Christine Beamer, viola; Jinhyun Kim, celloProgram notes to pieces by Phil Salathé:
The Nameless and Bounded Waters, which opens tonight’s concert in its world premiere performance, takes its title from two sources. The first is Ulysses’s speech fromAct I, Scene III of Troilus and Cressida:
...the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself.
Though often glossed as a straightforward paean to monarchy, this text is laden with ambiguity and irony, both from the wily Ulysses (who may or may not mean anything he says) and on the part of Shakespeare himself. Regardless, the imagery of a flooded world in which “might makes right” and the appetite for power devours all things – until, ultimately, it devours even itself – seemed all too timely.
The second source is my experience of hiking the state forests and nature preserves of New York’s North Country. Even on the least-traveled paths, evidence of our alarming indifference to the environment can be found. Venture a bit off the trail, and one can find countless streams, ponds, and wetlands, teeming with life and paying no mind to human folly.
Many state forests were planted in the last century, after the land’s original topography had been changed by agriculture (and subsequently deeded to the state). Some of these bodies of water will have had names now lost; others are new, and may never have been named.
The act of naming transforms a place into something discrete, labeled, demystified. To me, there is something rare and special about coming across waters yet to be named – a place that simply is, bounded yet without boundaries, timeless and indifferent.
The title of The Poise, The Hover alludes to the poem “The End of the World” byArchibald MacLeish. It is a fixed media piece that provides an improvisational framework for double bass.
The electronic part is a kind of passacaglia in two halves, each about 40 seconds long, with the main theme repeated 4.5 times. For most of the piece, new textural elements are added with each repetition, while the final half-repetition decreases in density.
The tuning system used in The Poise, The Hover is microtonal and loosely derived from Javanese slendro tuning. The audio is a mixture of sampled and synthesized sounds (plus a feedback-generating process), all of which generally occupy a high tessitura, leaving ample room for the double bass.
The Poise, The Hover was written for Keenan Zach, who premiered the piece in February 2024 as part of the inaugural concert of the SEAMUS 2024 National Conference. Tonight is its second-ever performance.
On the Beach takes its title from the eponymous novel by Nevil Shute, which details the grim effects of nuclear war on a small town in Australia as a cloud of radioactive material slowly envelops and annihilates the Earth's biosphere. As one might expect, the mood of the piece reflects its subject, and the compositional language is bleak, cryptic, and at times violent.
Another inspiration, however, comes from the composer's memories of growing up in rural New Hampshire in the early 1980s. As a child I lived near the end of a dirt road, with no next-door neighbors except for a Revolutionary War-era graveyard that adjoined our property. My family's connection to the larger world was a slender electronic thread that, in winding its way through the backwoods, was often distorted or attenuated by the journey. I remember tuning into faraway radio stations and being fascinated by the uncanny, fragmented, overlapping narratives which permeated the AM dial.
In those years we knew that, should the unthinkable happen, our sole warning would come from these distant, haunted voices. And in fact, most of the sounds heard in On the Beach are transformations and derivations of the human voice (specifically that of a friend and colleague who passed away in 2022), including the veiled, murmuring timbre with which the piece begins and concludes – leaving only silence in its wake.
Abandoned Beach, a far more optimistic and nostalgic work, was written in 2005 using the Metasynth compositional environment. Like On the Beach, it was originally conceived as a piece for fixed media alone, only adding cello several years later. However, whereas the cello part to On the Beach is fully notated in all details, Abandoned Beach instead asks the cellist to improvise.
Note: On the Beach and Abandoned Beach will be played continuously, with no pause in between.
The Three Street Pieces were written in 2005-2006 at the request of clarinetist Ed Nishimura and double bassist Ryan Ford, classmates of mine at the Hartt School, who were planning to spend the summer in Canada busking – that is, performing as street musicians. I was immediately attracted to the instrumental combination, which seemed to me both underexploited and eminently natural, as well as to the unique performance opportunity.
Once I set to work, I found myself returning over and over again to the rhythmic and melodic language of Latin American music as my inspiration. I'm not sure if I knew it at the time, but as I listen now, I perceive in these pieces the influence of two musicians above all: Cuban jazz clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera, andArgentinian composerAstor Piazzolla. (I’ve also come to notice the influence of the great German bassist/composer Eberhard Weber, one of my musical heroes.)
Ultimately summertime plans were changed, and the Three Street Pieces received their premiere not in the Canadian street, but in a Connecticut concert hall in 2006. Since then, they have traveled the world, with performances in Bulgaria, Ecuador, Italy, Luxembourg, Taiwan, and Turkey, among others.
To my knowledge no one has ever used these pieces to busk, but in 2020, one movement was performed in a “socially distanced” virtual setting, with one musician playing outdoors in England and the other in the streets of The Hague.
Though not quite how I expected it to happen, I was still pleased to see the Pieces make it to the street at last.
- Phil SalathéProgram notes to pieces by Ivette Herryman Rodríguez:
I wrote Siruin in the Air in memory of violinist Niuris Dorta Naranjo. Niuris was a friend of mine in college and the best violinist of our generation. She was truly gifted, practiced the violin without end, and had the most genuine smile and gentle soul. She died tragically at age 25 due to a car accident, but her memory and legacy still remain.
For the creation of this piece I used the letters of her full name and the numbers of the date of composition and premiere of the last piece she recorded, José White’s Violin Concerto in F# minor, to generate the pitch material of the composition. Character wise, I had three images in mind: lyricism, virtuosic playing, and echoes produced by humming while playing, which the violinist does at certain moments in the piece. This last image was inspired by a phrase I read in an article about Niuris that reads, “Niuris no ha muerto, ella está en el aire”(“Niuris has not died, she is in the air”).
The piece is also written for violinist Tiani Butts, and it is composed for the occasion of the first Virtual Artist Partnerships Program created by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.
Advent Overture, for oboe, piano and string orchestra, was commissioned to be the opening piece of an advent service celebrated at Baylor University in 2012.
After an introduction played by the piano, the oboe presents the main theme, which is restated by the first violins later in the work. The climax of the work takes place after a modulation occurs. In this second section, the main theme comes back alternating between oboe and piano. The piece ends with a last presentation of the theme.An overall sense of longing pervades the work.
The oboe and piano version was created in the summer of 2023 for oboist Anna Hendrickson.
DE OTRO MUNDO is a song cycle composed for HAVEN Trio with the generous support of a Chamber Music America Grant (2021). The three songs in the cycle use text from the poem Domingo Triste (Sad Sunday) by José Julián Martí Pérez, a Cuban author from the 19th century. There is a deep sadness in the text that is related to being far from home. Personally, the music I wrote for this cycle is inspired by my memories of Cuba, and what it has felt like for me to not live there anymore.
The first song portrays through music the pain that the poet carries and is rooted on the theme of home. I use two musical devices: minor sixths, inspired by a memory of learning the song La tarde by Sindo Garay very early in my musical studies. Minor sixths are a taste of home for me. As the song develops, the minor sixths change to other intervals, but remain an essential building block of the music. The second device is what I consider to be a hallmark of Cuban music, which is a turn figure: E-F-E-D#-E (up a minor second and down a minor second with a return to the starting note). I have heard this gesture in many songs and jazz-like improvisations and compositions by Cuban artists.
The second song is inspired by the line in the poem that reads: “ya en mi no queda más que un reflejo mío” (“there is no longer in me more than a reflection of me”). Two musical motives from the first song are recreated in this song, and a progression of chords which roots move by thirds are at the core of this music. The character of the music is somewhat lighter, although the sadness of the poem remains present.
The third song is inspired by two contrasting images in the text: “miro a los hombres como paisajes de otro mundo” (“I look at men as landscapes from another world”) and “el…teatro ardiente de la vida en mi torno”(the…fiery theater of life around me”). The song is also portraying the feelings evoked by the lines: “ya no
soy vivo…¡las anclas que me arrancaron de la tierra mía!” (I am no longer alive…the anchors that ripped me off my land!).
I use in this song three E-Bows that are placed on the strings of the piano and produce a sustained sound. This for me represents “another world,” which is paired with chords that move by thirds in the piano to create polytonality. The motion by thirds comes from the previous song in the cycle. Polytonality portrays the presence of two worlds as well as the sound of the E-Bows against the sound of the piano, that is the sound of the piano strings versus the sound of the piano keys.
The music that portrays “the…fiery theater of life around me” is faster and charged with more angular sounds. This section ends in a sort of operatic fashion, when the singer sings: “mis pedazos palpo” (“I can feel my pieces” (as in pieces of his flesh), which is also the climax of the music.
The song ends with the return of the E-Bow sound. In this section, three E-Bows are used to form a chorale texture. The singer sings a lament over the chorale and the clarinet joins the chord progression by playing trills on the notes that change from chord to chord. The ending is a surprise element meant to communicate heaviness and shock.
DE OTRO MUNDO
I. En los ojos llevo un dolor
Las campanas, el sol, el cielo claro
FROM ANOTHER WORLD
I. In My Eyes I Carry Pain
The bells, the sun, the clear sky me llenan de tristeza, y en los ojos fill me with sadness, and in my eyes llevo un dolor que el verso compasivo mira, I carry a pain that the compassionate un rebelde dolor que el verso rompe v erse looks at, a rebel pain that the ¡y es, oh mar, la gaviota pasajera verse breaks and it is, oh sea, the que rumbo a Cuba va sobre tus olas! passing seagull that heading to Cuba goes on your waves!
II. Un reflejo mío
Vino a verme un amigo, y a mi mismo
II. A Reflection of Me
A friend came to see me, and myself me preguntó por mi; ya en mi no queda he asked about me: there is no longer más que un reflejo mío, como guarda in me more than a reflection of me, la sal del mar la concha de la orilla. how it keeps the salt of the sea the Cáscara soy de mi, que en tierra ajena shell of the shore. I am a shell of me, gira, a la voluntad del viento huraño, that in a foreign land turns, at the vacía, sin fruta, desgarrada, rota. will of the sullen wind, empty, no fruit, torn, broken.
III. Paisajes de otro mundo
III. Landscapes From Another World
Miro a los hombres como montes; miro I look at men as mountains; I look como paisajes de otro mundo, el bravo like landscapes from another world codear, el mugir, el teatro ardiente the brave elbow, the moo, the fiery de la vida en mi torno: ni un gusano theater of life around me: not a worm es ya más infeliz: ¡suyo es el aire, is already more unhappy: his is the y el lodo en que muere es suyo! air, and the mud in which he dies is Siento la coz de los caballos, siento his! I feel the kick of horses, I feel las ruedas de los carros; mis pedazos chariot wheels; my pieces I can feel: palpo: ya no soy vivo: ¡ni lo era I am no longer alive: nor was I
cuando el barco fatal levó las anclas when the fatal ship lifted the anchors que me arrancaron de la tierra mía! that ripped me off my land!
Text sources
I. En los ojos llevo un dolor (first stanza from the poem Domingo triste (Sad Sunday), written by José Julián Martí Pérez).
II. Un reflejo mío (second stanza from the poem Domingo triste (Sad Sunday), written by José Julián Martí Pérez).
III. Paisajes de otro mundo (third and fourth stanzas from the poem Domingo triste (Sad Sunday), written by José Julián Martí Pérez).
By the Rhythm of Your Truth, Set us Free, commissioned by flutist Chelsea Koziatek, grows out of a motif that comprises two measures, which is introduced by the bassoon at the beginning of the work. As the piece unfolds, one purpose is pursued: to deliver the motif from its confines in terms of rhythm, range, and pitches.
The version that you will hear tonight was created for the Aria Reed Trio from the Crane School of Music in 2021.
En presencia de lo bello (In the Presence of Beauty) is a calm and soulful first movement of a two-movement Rapsodie, commissioned by saxophonist Joe Lulloff.
The music takes its inspiration from a jazz tune I had previously composed. With the composition of this movement, my main task was to transform the jazz tune into concert music of a rhapsodic nature. Influences of the Cuban songs from the La Nueva Trova movement can be perceived.
The piece was first created for tenor saxophone and chamber ensemble, with a subsequent version for tenor saxophone andpiano.Tonight you are going tohearthe first performanceoftheversion for cello and piano,which was created for cellist Marie-Elaine Gagnon in the spring of 2024.
String Quartet No.1 was commissioned by the ConTempus String Quartet. It was completed in the spring of 2023.
For this piece, I was asked to write “a new chamber work in dialogue with the idea of dance, particularly responding to Fernande Decruck’s Dance Suite and Florence Price’s Quartet No. 2.” I composed three movements, which explore “the idea of dance,” the lyrical capabilities of the string quartet, the physicality in the gestures written by Florence Price in her Quartet No.2, and respond to Fernande Decrucks’s use of the baroque suite in her own string quartet.
Tonight you will hear the world premiere of the work.
- Ivette Herryman Rodríguez