Evening Concert Series 2024 – 2025 Season
Helen H. Hosmer Concert Hall Tuesday, March 25th at 7:30 PM
The Crane Wind Ensemble
Brian K. Doyle, conductor
The Winds of Change
Deciduous (2022)
Hidden Currents (2020)
Beneath
January Thaw Between Bluffs
Enigma (2024)
Dr. Anna Hendrickson, oboe
Brief Intermission
Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943/1945)
Allegro Turandot, scherzo
Andantino
March
Viet Cuong (b.1990)
Catherine Bergman (b.1985)
David Biedenbender (b.1984)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Orch. Keith Wilson
Piccolo
Stephen Buff
Flute
Sabrina Clubine *
Renee Rivers *
Liz Combs
Elsie Munsterteiger
Margo Neth
Oboe
Kayla Outman *
Mariana Morales
Connor Martin
English Horn
Mariana Morales
Bassoon
Maddie Garcia
Melissa Mitchell
Contra Bassoon
Liam Hill
E-flat Clarinet
Brandon McLaughlin
Clarinet
Michael Ducorsky *
Paige Krebs *
Jessica Schaller
Nicholas Derderian
Tommy Rock
Katie Pullaro
Elliot Brock
Emma Marsillo
THE CRANE WIND ENSEMBLE PERSONNEL
Bass Clarinets
Jovany Rivers
Jessica Puleo
Julia Saxby
Alto Saxophone
Nathaniel Cobb *
Kevin Malone
Sara Ward
Tenor Saxophone
Alex Brown
Baritone Saxophone
Ryan Panzarino
Trumpet
Brian McNamara *
Edward Karron *
Trey Grant
Nick Bedell
Daniel Maldonado
Ethan Cobey
JuliaAvdoulos
IsaacAviles
Horn
Dario Longobardi
David Nesbitt
Moriah Clendenin
Will Hallenbeck
Noah Garland
Trombone
Ethan Keesler *
Julien Hershkowitz
Bass Trombone
Victor Mainetti
Vivian Redmond
Euphonium
Josh Coldren *
Casey DeJesus-Webb
Tuba
Zach Barstow *
Liam Yusko
Mason Wiedeman
Percussion
Wyatt Calcote *
Bailey Yerdon
Elizabeth Skalski
John McGrath
Drew Spina
Piano
Jack Jiang
Harp
Harper Foley
Librarians
Kayla Outman
Bailey Yerdon
* Section Principal
PROGRAM NOTES
Deciduous Viet Cuong
Viet holds the Curtis Institute of Music’s Daniel W. Dietrich II Composition Fellowship as an Artist Diploma student of David Ludwig and Jennifer Higdon. Viet received his MFA from Princeton University as a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow, and he finished his Ph.D. therein2021.AtPrincetonhestudiedwith Steven Mackey,DonnachaDennehy,Dan Trueman, Dmitri Tymoczko, Paul Lansky, and Louis Andriessen. Viet holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts and Oscar Bettison.
While at Peabody, Viet received the Peabody Alumni Award (the Valedictorian honor) and the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. Viet has been a fellow at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Cabrillo Festival’s Young Composer Workshop, Copland House’s CULTIVATE emerging composers’ workshop, and was also a scholarship student at the Aspen, Bowdoin, and Lake Champlain music festivals. Additionally, he has received artist residencies from Yaddo, Copland House, Ucross Foundation, and Atlantic Center for the Arts (under Melinda Wagner, 2012 and Christopher Theofanidis, 2014).
Viet Cuong's music has been performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as Sō Percussion, Eighth Blackbird, Alarm Will Sound, Sandbox Percussion, the PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, Gregory Oakes, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among many others. Viet’s music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Aspen Music Festival, New Music Gathering, Boston GuitarFest, International Double Reed Society Conference, US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, and on American Public Radio’s Performance Today. He also enjoys composing for the wind ensemble medium, and his works for winds have amassed over one hundred performances by conservatory and university ensembles worldwide, including at Midwest, WASBE, and CBDNA conferences.
Viet is a recipient of the Barlow Endowment Commission, Copland House Residency Award, ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Music Award, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores, Cortona Prize, New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, Boston GuitarFest Composition Competition, and Walter Beeler Memorial Prize, among others. In addition, he received honorable mentions in the Harvey Gaul Composition Competition and two consecutive ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prizes. Scholarships include the Evergreen House Foundation scholarship at Peabody, a 2010 Susan and Ford Schumann Merit Scholarship from the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the 2011 Bachrach Memorial Gift from the Bowdoin International Music Festival.
Viet is a member of BMI, the American Composers Forum, and the Blue Dot Collective, a group of composers who focus on writing adventurous new music for wind band. In 2020-2021, he was composer-in-residence at Kennesaw State University, Georgia. In 2024, he became one of the youngest members ever to be elected to the prestigious American Bandmasters Association. For a long time after my father passed away, I felt like I had “lost my leaves.” In the way that leaves harness light to create energy for trees and plants, I felt like I had so little left to harness creatively. Many days I feared those leaves would never grow back. After struggling for months to write, I finally found some healing while creating Deciduous. This involved revisiting chord progressions that brought me solace as a child and activating them in textures that I have enjoyed exploring as an adult. The piece cycles through these chord progressions, building to a moment where it’s stripped of everything and must find a way to renew itself. While I continue to struggle with this loss, I have come to understand that healing is not as much of a linear process as it is a cyclical journey, where, without fail, every leafless winter is following by a spring.
Thank you to the Florida Bandmasters Association for commissioning Deciduous in 2023, and to Dr. Emily Threinen for conducting the premiere with the 11-12 Florda All-State Band. Deciduous won the NBA/William D. Revelli Composition Award in 2023.
Program Note by Viet Cuong
Hidden Currents Catherine Bergman
Catherine Bergman holds a master’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa School of Music, where she studied composition with Jonathan Schwabe and Alan Schmitz. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota, with composition instructors including Michele Gillman and Steve Wright. She has studied extensively with Mary Ellen Childs, and has received individual instruction from Samuel Adler.
Bergman draws on literature, environmentalism, and found materials to create music that has been described as hypnotic and visceral. She has received commissions and performances from leading ensembles throughout the United States, including the U.S. Coast Guard Band, Estonian Police and Border Guard Orchestra, Encore Wind Ensemble, Hub New Music, Zeitgeist, Seen/Heard Trio, Minnesota Percussion Trio, The Dream Songs Project, and many others. Her music has been presented at ISCM World Music Days, The Midwest Clinic, North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, College Band Directors National Association Conference, and The Upper Midwest Chamber Winds Symposium, and her compositions have received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Metro Regional Arts Council, and New Music USA.
She is artistic director and co-founder of Spitting Image, a composer collective that brings together composers, listeners, and performers to strengthen the Twin Cities new music community.
Hidden Currents takes inspiration from the northernmost stretch of the Mississippi River during winter. The river's character changes frequently throughout the season, and it take on new traits as the water flows through varied landscapes. Hidden Currents depicts three distinct winter river scenes, performed without pause and connected as one.
The first movement, Beneath, begins with a glimpse of bright white snow cover, sparkling in the sunlight and concealing the river below. Then, diving below the ice, a meandering current drifts along the rocky riverbed where aquatic life carries on despite the frigid stillness above. The middle movement, January Thaw, takes place that the convergence of one of the Mississippi's tributaries during a midwinter warm stream. The converging currents and mild temperatures shift, bend and unhinge the river's ice cover for a fleeting glance at spring. Trumpeter swans, goldeneyes, and other waterfowl flock to the sliver of open water, while slushy blocks of ice break loose, drift away, and reattach to the next sheet of ice downstream. The final movement, Between Bluffs, pays homage to the river landscape along the southern Minnesota/Wisconsin border, which continues south into Iowa and Illinois. Ice cover creates a temporary bridge between bordering states, lined by towering bluffs on either side. Standing high atop the bluffs, with eagles soaring past at eye level, the view commands an appreciation of the enduring life force of the mighty Mississippi.
Program Note by Catherine Bergman
Dr.Anna Hendrickson, oboe soloist
Anna Hendrickson is Associate Professor of Oboe at the Crane School of Music SUNY Potsdam. As an orchestral player, Dr. Hendrickson performs regularly with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, ON and with the summer Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Oregon. She also plays principal oboe in the Orchestra of Northern New York. Her previous orchestral positions include theThunder Bay Symphony Orchestra (Ontario) and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Dr. Hendrickson is equally at home playing chamber music. She has been selected to play at several International Double Reed Society Conferences as a member of chamber groups. She also has performed at the US Embassy in Paris, theAmerican Church in Paris, and the Château de Champs with pianist Mieko Hironaka Bergt while spending a year in France as a Fulbright scholar. As a faculty member of the Crane School of Music, Dr. Hendrickson performs regularly with the Aria Reed Trio and the Potsdam Woodwind Quintet. She holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Richard Killmer, and the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a student of Marc Fink. She previously held teaching positions at SUNY Geneseo, the Community Music School of the Eastman School of Music, and the Hochstein Music School, where she performed on the live radio broadcast recital series and other faculty recital series.Astudent of Dr. Hendrickson recently won second place in the first annual International Double Reed SocietyYoungArtist Competition; many of her students have attended prestigious summer festivals and graduate schools throughout the nation.
Enigma David Biedenbender
Biedenbender's first musical collaborations were in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist and in wind and jazz bands as a bass trombone and euphonium player. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in composition from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Bachelor of Music degree in composition and theory from Central Michigan University. He has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden with Anders Hillborg and Steven Stucky, the Aspen Music Festival and School with Sydney Hodkinson, and in Mysore, India. wherehe studied South Indian Carnatic music. His primary musical mentors include Stephen Rush, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Erik Santos, Christopher Lees, David Gillingham, José Luis-Maurtúa, John Williamson, and Mark Cox.
Composer David Biedenbender’s music has been described as “simply beautiful”, “striking” and “brilliantly crafted” and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” and “stirring harmonies”. “Modern, venturesome, and inexorable…The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played”. He has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist, in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player, and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music.
His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data.
Davidhashad theprivilegeofcollaboratingwithmanyrenowned performersandensembles,includingAlarmWillSound,thePRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Stenhammar String Quartet (Sweden), the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the United States Navy Band, the Philharmonie Baden-Baden(Germany), VocalEssence, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Music from Copland House Ensemble, Detroit Symphony Orchestra bass trombonist Randall Hawes, and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir.
Recent recognition for his work includes two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2011, 2012) and the 2012 Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award. His music has been heard in many diverse venues, including Symphony Space (New York City), the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church (NYC), the Smithsonian Museum, the German Embassy (Washington, DC), the Antonín Dvořák Museum (Prague), the Old First Church (San Francisco), Harris Hall (Aspen Music Festival), the Interlochen Center for the Arts, Hill Auditorium (Ann Arbor, MI), the University of Michigan Museum of Art, as well as at numerous universities and conservatories, and it has been broadcast on NPR stations around the country.
In addition to composing, David is a dedicated teacher. He is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Boise State University, and he was previously on the composition and theory faculty at Eastern Michigan University, Oakland University, Madonna University, and the Interlochen Arts Camp. He has also taught an interdisciplinary course in creativity and collaboration in the Living Arts program at the University of Michigan. His composition students have achieved regional and national recognition for their creative work, including numerous awards and acceptance into renowned summer music festivals and undergraduate and graduate composition programs.
Enigma was originally written for brass choir and organ for the dedication of the Red Cedar Organ in the Michigan State University Alumni Chapel. This version was created for my friend Henry Dorn and the St. Olaf Band.
Enigma comes from a Greek word that means “to speak in riddles,” and in this piece, the riddle or theme is revealed gradually. The theme comes from the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, which is one of my favorite pieces of music, and, once the theme is revealed, it is repeated cyclically with 21 variations, just like in Bach’s original.
This piece is dedicated in memoriam to my former teacher, José-Luis Maúrtua, a composer, theorist, conductor, and teacher with whom I studied at Central Michigan University. José-Luis was an extraordinary musician and teacher who was tirelessly dedicated to his students and to pushing them to do their best. I am forever grateful for the lessons I learned from him, and my music and my life are far better for having known him. Unfortunately, he was taken from this earth far too young at the age of 57 by pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2022. I miss him dearly, and this music is for him.
Program Note by David Biedenbender
Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Paul Hindemith
Hindemith's most famous composition has one of the longest titles in all classical music: Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber. Weber (1786-1826) was the first great German romantic composer. Today he is best remembered for his operas, particularly Der Freischütz (1821), Euryanthe (1823), and Oberon (1826). His concertos for piano and clarinet are occasionally revived. Weber was also a brilliant pianist who composed prolifically for the keyboard.
Hindemith left Germany for Switzerland in 1938 and came to the United States in 1940. He composed the Symphonic Metamorphosis in 1943, while teaching at Yale University. The piece was originally intended to be a ballet for the legendary choreographer Leonid Massine, with whom Hindemith had collaborated in 1938. Massine asked for an orchestration of Weber's music. Because of artistic disagreements between composer and choreographer, however, the original project never came to fruition. Instead, Hindemith wrote to his wife in March 1940 that he had changed his mind and perhaps would compose a "free paraphrase" on Weber's music.
The sketches lay dormant until 1943, when Hindemith dusted off the score and completed the new piece. It evolved into a virtuoso exercise invariationtechnique. Symphonic Metamorphosis is as much ofan orchestral showpiece as Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra
The compositional premise, however, is quite different. Hindemith's metamorphosis of Weber's music relates his piece to Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana Suite, Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite, Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, and Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. In each case, the more modern composer adapted music of an earlier master by imprinting his own distinct personality on the new work.
Hindemith used several pieces by Weber. The first was an overture written in 1809 as incidental music to Friedrich Schiller's Turandot. Its theme, which dominates Hindemith's second movement, is actually taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1768 Dictionary of Music, where it is cited as an example of a Chinese melody. Weber's overture simply restates the "Chinese" theme with slight variation. Hindemith's treatment is more elaborate, incorporating a jazzy fugato and a dizzying array of orchestral color.
The other three movements of Symphonic Metamorphosis are based on various works Weber wrote for one piano, four hands. As Ian Kemp has observed, "Weber is treated neither with reverence nor with condescension." The music has an upbeat, outgoing flavor that is surely related to the positive spirit Hindemith encountered when he settled in this country. Free of the pedantry sometimes associated with Hindemith's music, the Symphonic Metamorphosis shows him at his best: spontaneous, concise, brilliantly orchestrated, and above all exciting.
Note by Laurie Shulman [Richardson Symphony]
After the New York Philharmonic world premiere of "Symphonic Metamorphosis, Hindemith felt it should also be accessible for band performance. He approached hisYale colleague, band director Keith Wilson, to create the transcription. Wilson agreed, going over the score with Hindemith. However, this project languished for several years due to the lack of permissions from Hindemith’s publisher. The transcription was eventually completed in 1945, and Wilson conducted the Yale Band in the premiere in March 1962, only to receive a “blistering letter” from Hindemith’s publisher, claiming the agreement to transcribe void, along with a demand to impound the score and set of parts. Although unavailable for several years, Belwin-Mills eventually purchased Associated Music (AMP), immediately making the set available.