Dot : Line : Sigh Album Booklet

D O T : L I N E : S I G H

OSNAT NETZER

OSNAT NETZER DOT : LINE : SIGH 1

They bury their dead with great ululations (2018)

9:11

Pillars (2014)

6:46

I won’t be outrun by a cavalry of snails (2021)

11:22

Schertch (scherzo sketch) (2014)

4:23

Contrapose (2020)

9:21

I AM FUCKING ZEN (2020)

9:07

away dream all away (2015)

4:28

Ensemble Dal Niente Andrew Nogal, oboe • Katherine Schoepflin Jimoh, bass clarinet Hanna Hurwitz, violin • Juan Horie, cello • Michael Lewanski, conductor

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Geoffrey Landman, alto saxophone / Osnat Netzer, piano

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Ensemble Dal Niente Carrie Henneman Shaw and Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, sopranos Emma Hospelhorn, flutes • Katherine Schoepflin Jimoh, clarinets Winston Choi, piano • Hanna Hurwitz, violin • Ammie Brod, viola Juan Horie, cello • Michael Lewanski, conductor

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Mivos Quartet & Eric Lamb Olivia De Prato, violin • Maya Bennardo, violin Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola • Tyler J. Borden, cello Eric Lamb, alto flute

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Michael Hall, viola • Marianne Parker, piano

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~Nois Julian Velasco, soprano saxophone • Hunter Bockes, alto saxophone Jordan Lulloff, tenor saxophone • János Csontos, baritone saxophone

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Poem: Samuel Beckett Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, soprano Constance Volk, flute • Doyle Armbrust, viola

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Total: 54:38

Osnat Netzer

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T

he works on this album represent an artistic and aesthetic shift that originated in 2014, when I began to incorporate principles of cognitive linguistics into my music, namely: the metaphor of motion, energy trajectory, and the kinesthetic experience of physicality. Though the pieces differ in musical language and aesthetics, they all share the tropes of a punctuated sustain (Dot-Line) and many forms of pitch bends, glissandi, and stylized portamenti (Sigh).

They bury their dead with great ululations was commissioned

by Winsor Music. The title refers to the ancient custom of hiring women to cry loudly and pull their hair at funerals. The main purpose of this custom is to inspire people to cry and outwardly mourn for loved ones, to forgo the perceived embarrassment of crying in public. Art provides the same service. It allows us to connect to a feeling that is already there but that we struggle to express. Art can serve as a conscience for the ills of society, but its existence also proves that there is hope for a better world.

Ululation is a cry of mourning and it is also a cry of joy. That the same sound can express such contradicting states is indicative of our strong emotional affinity to sound itself and to its ability to purge us of overwhelming emotions and provide

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cathartic relief. In my piece I use sound in a similar way – the sheer joy of Sound is to me an expression of deep grief and deep exhilaration, and the piece is meant to evoke both, or to keep the listener wondering whether it is expressing one or the other. Can it express both at once?

Can art inspire in us the courage to cry out in times of injustice and ignorance?

I won’t be outrun by a cavalry of snails was commissioned

by Ensemble Dal Niente. It is a theatrical, absurdist, psychedelic adventure. The vocals are a combination of abstract vocal sounds and nonsense text, created through stream of consciousness. The aim is to create a fantasy world in which the listener can almost piece together a semantic meaning, but that meaning always escapes them.

The vocalists are always on a tightrope between being instrumentalists, to conveyors of the absurdity of the human condition. Incoherent but ultra-affected shouts, whispers, vocalizations, interactions alternate quickly throughout the piece, that quick-paced transition from one affect to another adding another layer of mad-hatter-style comedy.

The piece is to me a kind of battle between higher order, the unconscious, the intuitive and the counter-intuitive.

Pillars was commissioned by Geoffrey Landman for the 2014 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial National Conference. I wrote the piece after a year-long hiatus from composing. This hiatus, and my transition into becoming a faculty member at Harvard the previous September led me to reassess my own compositional pillars. I realized that those pillars can be diluted to four features: a) Idiomatic use of instruments and tailoring the piece to the performer’s abilities, tastes and personality. b) Abstract and concrete voice-leading: smoothly maintaining line of musical thought, and concretely maintaining a linear continuity of pitches. c) Abstract and concrete counterpoint: the layering of many meanings on one another, and the layering of musical ideas, each maintaining independence, but also communicating with one another. d) Play with the groove: one of the features that is most appealing to me when I listen to music is a play of rhythms against a steady beat. For me, the steady beat can be almost hidden from plain hearing, as long as the music corresponds with that beat, conspiring against it while complying to it.

Schertch (scherzo sketch) was co-commissioned by The Walden School and Spektral Quartet. It is a light-hearted piece with exaggerated Haydnesque humor; setting and breaking phrasal expectation, offsetting, augmenting and diminishing scherzo rhythms in unusual ways, and contrasting the scherzo brilliance with hyperbolized sighs.

The choice of alto flute rather than a bright-timbred C flute contributes to a contrast between the two motifs, while the “sketch” of the portmanteau title suggests something unfinished or deconstructed.

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Contrapose was commissioned by Michael Hall. It is part of a series of pieces that exhibit my kinetic approach to music, drawing from metaphors of inertia, energy accumulation, energy potential, transference and discharge and similar schemas. What sets this piece apart is that it is deeply inspired by body work, namely the Vijñāna school of yoga. In Vijñāna, two concepts spoke to me: rooting and connecting. “As the roots of a tree deepen and widen into the earth, so the branches above expand into the sky.”

“Always be conscious of two opposite directions that are connected to each other. To go up, go down. To go forward, shift into the back. Wishing for the left side, steady yourself on the right. Wishing to expand, come from the core. The first direction is the arrow, the second direction is the bow; the thread which binds them is connecting.”

(Vijñāna Yoga Practice Manual, Orit Sen-Gupta). For every gesture in the piece, viola and piano join together to balance forces of rooting down and reaching out.

of these elements at a time, highlighting the internal battle of trying to maintain Zen, and feeling the stress and confinement of quarantine and the global pandemic.

The piece is also inspired by the extraordinary virtuosity of ~Nois, allowing the group to showcase their mastery of extreme groove, rhythmic complexity and ensemble playing. away dream all away was co-commissioned by The Walden School and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). The short text (also the title) is a complete poem by Samuel Beckett. I wrote it in a frenzy as a response to my discovery of the formidable Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote, whose music is often described as MultiDimensional, Polyrhythmic Neo-Soul. This is a playful piece, meant to evoke some of the so-called “stank” that Hiatus Kaiyote do so well, a laid back, crunchy kind of hiphop-inspired sound.

— Osnat Netzer

I AM FUCKING ZEN was commissioned by ~Nois. It is a process-based composition, wherein a short musical idea undergoes gradual transformations, mutating from one state to another over time, not unlike a raging viral pandemic.

The musical theme showcases major and minor triads — the semblance of wholesomeness — and narrow-ranged microtonal lines — signifying confinement and stress.

Though both materials live together in the same theme, the piece undergoes musical processes that winnow one 6

Israel native Osnat Netzer is a composer, performer, and educator. Inspired by performers’ bodies, personalities, and their relationship to their instruments, Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality and improvisational inclinations.

Netzer’s works have been commissioned and performed

by Del Sol Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, ~Nois, International Contemporary Ensemble, Patchwork, mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae, bass David Salsbery Fry, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky, Doug O’Connor and Geoffrey Landman, Spektral Quartet, and Winsor Music, among many others. Her works are published by Edition Peters and earthsongs, and recorded on Bridge Records and New Focus Recordings.

Her opera, The Wondrous Woman Within, was described as “riotously funny” in The New York Times when its first scene was performed at New York City Opera’s VOX festival in 2012 and “challenging and fascinating” by critic Amir Kidron when it received its World Premiere in a sold out run at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre in 2015.

As a pianist and performer, she regularly plays and conducts new music by fellow composers, as well as her own songs and compositions. Also a committed and passionate educator, Netzer teaches at The Walden School and has served on the faculties of New England Conservatory, Longy School of Music of Bard College and Harvard University, and as of 2023 is Associate Professor of Composition and Musicianship at DePaul University in Chicago, IL.

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Ensemble Dal Niente performs new and experimental chamber music with dedication, virtuosity, and an exploratory spirit. Flexible and adaptable, Dal Niente’s roster of 26 musicians presents an uncommonly broad range of contemporary music, guiding listeners towards music that transforms existing ideas and subverts convention. Audiences coming to Dal Niente shows can expect distinctive productions—from fully staged operas to multimedia spectacles to intimate solo performances—that are curated to pique curiosity and connect art, culture, and people.

Over the past two decades, Ensemble Dal Niente has performed concerts across Europe and the Americas, including appearances at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC; The Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City; Radialsystem Berlin, MusicArte Festival in Panama City; The Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; The Americas Society; and the Darmstadt Summer Courses in Germany. Dal Niente is the recipient of the 2019 Fromm Music Foundation prize, and was the firstever ensemble to win the Kranichstein prize for interpretation in 2012. The group has recordings available on the New World, New Amsterdam, New Focus, Navona, Parlour Tapes+, and Carrier labels; has held residencies at The University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, Brown University, Brandeis University, and Northwestern University, among others; and collaborated with a wide

range of composers, from Enno Poppe to George Lewis to Hilda Paredes to Roscoe Mitchell.

The Mivos Quartet is dedicated to advancing and performing new music in all its variety to diverse audiences worldwide. The quartet commissions and premieres new repertoire for string quartet, working closely with composers over extended time periods, treating each new piece as a true collaboration. Mivos maintains an active international performance schedule, with regular appearances as ensemble-in-residence at festivals including June in Buffalo, Shanghai New Music Week, and VIPA (Spain). Mivos takes part in many educational residencies at universities and summer festivals, working with young performers and composers to develop their skills. The quartet also runs two composition prizes to help discover and promote emerging composers in the US and abroad. Beyond these activities, Mivos is committed to collaborating with guest artists, exploring multimedia projects involving live video and electronics, and performing improvised music.

Founded in 2016, ~Nois (pronounced “noise”) has become one of the premier ensembles in the United States by combining contemporary chamber music and improvisation to connect with audiences in unique concert experiences. Heralded as “fiendishly good” (Chicago Tribune) and known for their “supremely sensitive balance and control” (Chicago Classical Review), ~Nois has been awarded top prizes at prestigious chamber music competitions​

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including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the M-Prize International Arts Competition.

Since their founding, ~Nois has presented over 120 performances in 24 states. In addition to their regular concert season in Chicago, ~Nois has performed on festivals and series such as Big Ears, LONG PLAY, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the University of Chicago Presents Series. In addition, ~Nois is in demand as a guest artist and lecturer at universities across the nation having held residencies and given performances at over 44 institutions including University of Southern California, the University of Colorado - Boulder, the Manhattan School of Music, and Princeton University. During the 2022/23 season, ~Nois has been appointed as an Entrepreneurial Musical Artist in Residence at Michigan State University alongside Imani Winds and Damien Sneed.

Dedicated to expanding and redefining the saxophone quartet repertoire, ~Nois has premiered over 80 works including compositions by Gaudeamus Prize winners Kelley Sheehan and Annika Socolofsky as well as 2018 Guggenheim Fellow Tonia Ko. ~Nois’ recent commission, I Tell You Me by Annika Socolofksy was called “grotesquely gorgeous” by the Chicago Tribune and the premiere performance was included in their list of “Chicago’s Top 10 moments in classical music, opera, and jazz that defined 2021”.

Amanda DeBoer Bartlett is a classical vocalist and singersongwriter based in Chicago, IL. Her performance repertoire ranges from contemporary and experimental chamber music, to traditional art song, to American folk and country music. She is the founder of Quince Ensemble, an all-women contemporary vocal group, and Hasco Duo, an experimental improvisation and songwriting project. She is also a member of and program curator for Ensemble Dal Niente, a Chicago-based chamber orchestra that commissions and performs the music of living composers. Born and raised in Omaha, NE, DeBoer holds degrees from DePaul University, the University at Buffalo, and Bowling Green State University. amandadeboer.com Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano, has been a part of Chicago’s vibrant new music community since 2007, when she joined Ensemble Dal Niente and later Quince Ensemble. In addition to her work with these highly regarded ensembles, she teaches at the University of Washington, where her research focuses on experiments with vocal timbre and technique and new directions in opera and music theatre. Carrie also is part of the electroacoustic trio uluuul alongside Mabel Kwan and Mauricio Pauly.

Geoffrey Landman is a performer, teacher, and advocate of the saxophone and new music. He has performed across North America, Europe, Singapore, Thailand, and in New York City’s most well-known venues including Carnegie Hall, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The

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United Nations, and Trinity Wall Street.

He performs with new music groups including Either/ Or Ensemble, NovusNY, and Wavefield Ensemble, and has collaborated with many acclaimed artists, including vocalists Donatienne Michel-Dansac and Tony Arnold, JACK String Quartet, TILT Brass, Prism Saxophone Quartet, pianist/composer Osnat Netzer, and poet J.D. McClatchy. For 8 years Geoffrey was the soprano saxophonist with the New Thread Saxophone Quartet, a new-music saxophone quartet he co-founded in 2011.

Dr. Landman is the Associate Professor of the Practice in Saxophone at the University of Kansas, and previously served on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, post-graduate work at the Hochschule für Musik Basel in Switzerland, and New England Conservatory where he was the first ever DMA in saxophone performance in the school’s history.

(Sydney), the Cleveland Orchestra, PHACE, Camerata Bern, the City of Birmingham Orchestra, ASKO Schoenberg Ensemble and the Radio Orchestra Frankfurt. He has been invited to perform at festivals in Melbourne, Darmstadt, Graz, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Acht Brücken in Cologne, Mostly Mozart Festival, Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, and the Bucharest Festival for New Music, to name but a few. Presently, Eric Lamb teaches flute, improvisation and is Chair of woodwind, brass and percussion performance at the Fredrich Gulda School of Music in Vienna Austria. ericlambflutist.com Noted as “a well-connected pillar of the Chicago new-music scene” by The New York Times, violist Doyle Armbrust is a founding member of the multi-Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. Motivating his work are the twin beliefs that 1) Curiosity should be the only prerequisite for a captivating musical encounter, and 2) For a musical encounter to be relevant, it must immediately connect to what it means to be alive today. This creed threads through his professional writing, found within the pages of Time Out Chicago, Chicago Magazine, and Crain’s Chicago Business, as well as program books at the Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati Symphonies. Doyle is currently violist for new-music supergroup The Grossman Ensemble as well as host and creator of The Society of Disobedient Listeners pre-concert discussion series at UMS (University of Michigan). He is conspicuously proud to serve on the DComposed board of directors.

Flutist Eric Lamb is in demand internationally as a concerto soloist, recording artist, recitalist, concert curator and chamber musician. Since leaving his post as a core member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Eric performs regularly as guest with a long list of the world's most important orchestras and soloist ensembles including the Boulez Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Geneva Camerata, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Omega Ensemble 10

Constance Volk is a musician, a painter, and an illustrator.

She is a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, the Grossman Ensemble, the Chicago Wind project, and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. She has collaborated with Alarm Will Sound, Eighth Blackbird, and Lookingglass Theatre. Her illustrations are featured with ‘Density Seeds’, an offshoot of the ‘Density 2036’ solo flute repertoire project by Claire Chase. Constance is the creator of ‘Connie’s Characters’, a series of mix and match coloring books full of wacky weirdos.

phrases and impassioned pealing” (Chicago Classical Review). Her work can be heard on four albums, Pages intimes (2019), Pyano Sa (2020), and Currents in Time (2020, PARMA/Navona Records), and Decho Ensemble (2023). Marianne is curator for the Anthology of 21st century works for solo piano through NewMusicShelf Publishing. An active chamber musician, Marianne’s first foray into new music was with L+M Duo, which she co-founded in 2016 with marimbist Laurel Black. Marianne is in demand locally, regionally, and nationally as collaborator and performer. Marianne has been a featured performer at the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival, James Madison University Contemporary Music Festival, Nief Norf Summer Festival, UIC Wind Ensemble, with whom she premiered Alan Theisen’s piano concerto AMP in 2023, and many others. She serves as President of New Music Chicago, an organization that serves the city’s vast ecosystem of new music creators.

Marianne has performed with many ensembles across the Midwest, including The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Present Music, Access Contemporary Music, Fourth Coast Ensemble, Crossing Borders Music, and more. She served as the principal pianist for the Chicago Civic Orchestra from 2013-2015, during which time she worked with longtime Chicago Symphony, Pianist Mary Sauer and Chicago Symphony Creative Consultant, Yo-Yo Ma.

Michael Hall lives in Chicago and has performed and taught across Europe, Asia and the United States. Described by the New Music Connoisseur as “utterly masterful,” and Chamber Music Today as having “superb technique,” he recently made his Chicago Orchestra Hall solo debut performing the world premiere of Kim Diehnelt’s “Montegar,” and concluded a recital tour to Vienna, Austria and Udine and Tolmezzo, Italy. Hall has been a featured performer at the Thailand International Composition Festival in Bangkok, the Positano Chamber Music Festival in Italy, the Vianden International Chamber Music Festival in Luxembourg and the Composer’s Concordance Series in New York City. January 2018, Hall gave the world premiere of Stacy Garrop’s Viola Concerto - “Krakatoa,” with the Bandung Philharmonic in Indonesia.

Marianne Parker’s playing has been described as, “a cut above...her sympathetic fingers offering well-sculpted

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They bury their dead with great ululations Recorded July 14, 2023 at Gannon Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul School of Music, Chicago IL Producer: Osnat Netzer Engineer: Dan Nichols Edited and mixed by Dan Nichols at Aphorism Audio

away dream all away Recorded March 31, 2023 at Gannon Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul School of Music, Chicago IL Producer: Osnat Netzer Co-producer and assistant engineer: Frank McKearn IV Engineer: Dan Nichols Edited and mixed by Dan Nichols at Aphorism Audio

Pillars Recorded March 24, 2022 at Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge MA Recording producer, sound engineer, editing and mix: Zach Herchen

Mastered by Fredrick Gifford Cover artwork by Ayala Netzer (all rights reserved) Headshot by Steven Sacks Design, layout & typography by Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com

I won’t be outrun by a cavalry of snails Recorded June 14, 2021 at Nichols Concert Hall, Music Institute of Chicago, Evanston, IL Producer: Benjamin Melsky Technical Assistance: Igor Santos Engineer: Dan Nichols Edited and mixed by Dan Nichols at Aphorism Audio

Funded in part by DePaul University URC Grant Funded in part by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Steven Sacks for his unending love and support.

Thank you Ayala Netzer for putting so much care into the artwork.

Derek David, my dear friend, your spirit always inspires me. Thanks to all the commissioning organizations and players who helped usher these pieces into the world: Winsor Music, Geoffrey Landman, who is also a fierce collaborator, Ensemble Dal Niente, Spektral Quartet, Michael Hall, ~Nois, International Contemporary Ensemble and The Walden School. Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago provided fiscal sponsorship, and DePaul University provided funding, a fantastic hall to record in, and personnel to support us as we recorded. I thank The Copland Fund for supporting this project. Thank you, Trudy Chan and Black Tea Music, for logistical and moral support. To Steven Swartz and dot dot dot for advice and consultation. To Dan Nichols, for giving above and beyond to this project and making it also your own. Thanks to friends who gave consult: Curtis Hughes, George Lewis, Annegret Klaua, and Doug O’Connor. Yitzi Sacks inspired the freedom of vocal play in Snails, and Barry Sacks inspired the bari sax solo in ZEN.

Schertch (scherzo sketch) Recorded February 1, 2023 at 4tune Audio Productions, Vienna, Austria Producer: Osnat Netzer Recording producer, sound engineer, editing and mix: Martin Klebhan Contrapose Recorded October 8, 2022 at Gannon Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul School of Music, Chicago IL Producer: Osnat Netzer Assistant Producer: Annegret Klaua Engineer: Dan Nichols Edited and mixed by Dan Nichols at Aphorism Audio I AM FUCKING ZEN Recorded April 29, 2023 at Gannon Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul School of Music, Chicago IL Producer: Osnat Netzer Engineer: Dan Nichols Edited and mixed by Dan Nichols at Aphorism Audio

℗ & © 2024 Osnat Netzer

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