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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC
new music, and world premieres. During the Fall 2015 University Musical Associates Concert Series, the University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Alexander Jiménez gave the world premiere of Concertante Borealis by Daniel Fulmer (b. 1964) on October 9, 2015. The Concertante featured members of the Trio Bel Canto, including recently retired College of Music saxophone professor, Patrick Meighan. That concert concluded with a rousing performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. On October 5, Richard Clary and the University Wind Orchestra presented a well-received concert of twentieth-century masterworks, including pieces by Hindemith, Persichetti, and Stravinsky, as well as “Sanctuary” (2006) by Frank Ticheli (b. 1958). Likewise, the first concert of the 2015–2016 Faculty Chamber Music Series featured twelve College of Music faculty in performances of twentieth-century American chamber music for voice and strings composed by Lee Hoiby, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, and the College’s own Dr. Timothy Hoekman. The second Faculty Chamber Music Series concert concluded with an inspired performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht by Professors Corinne Stillwell, Shannon Thomas, Pamela Ryan, Greg Sauer, and Evan Jones, with graduate violist Razvan Berindean. New music continued to be celebrated in the Spring 2016 semester in faculty solo recitals by Shannon Thomas, Heidi Louise Williams, David
Kalhous, and Benjamin Sung, as well as in large ensemble concerts. Among the most anticipated premiere performances in Fall 2015 was Dr. Ladislav Kubík’s Flashes of Light for percussion, pianos, and trumpets. Guest artist Barbara Butler and FSU Professor Christopher Moore, as well as members of Moore’s trumpet studio, were joined by FSU piano faculty Read Gainsford, Joel Hastings, David Kalhous, and Heidi Louise Williams and students from the percussion studio of Professor John Parks. Kubík writes that the work was inspired by “the deep history and symbolism of the trumpet... Associated with the significant, often pivotal moments of life, it is the harbinger of both good and bad news, triumphs and tragedies, blinding jubilance and unfathomable anguish. Even though the modern trumpet is an excellent concert instrument, I believe we are still impressed with a sense of its timeless symbolic foundation, as we similarly are with the bells or drums.” Kubík chose an ensemble comprising four pianos and percussion instruments because of his “love of the piano (‘my’ instrument) and my rather substantial experience with percussion.”
College of Music composition faculty are actively involved with the Biennial Festival of New Music, but they are also engaged in many other projects. Mark Wingate (Associate Students conduct and perform in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall at the 2013 Professor of Music FSU Festival of New Music. Composition) and renowned composer Christopher Theofanidis have been cocommissioned by the Houston-based Apollo Chamber Players to prepare a string quartet with live electronics to be premiered during their 2016–2017 concert
season. This is the second time Wingate and Theofanidis have collaborated. In 2008, they were co-commissioned by the Austin Symphony for “Field of Infinite Forms,” a fivemovement work for orchestra and fixed media utilizing 22 loudspeakers. Clifton Callender (Professor of Composition) also continues to compose for performances both on and off campus. In 2015, he was an Artist-in-Residence at I-Park, a competitive artist residency in Connecticut, and his work Point and Line to Plane for solo piano was performed throughout China by FSU alumna Hui-Ting Yang. His Canonic Offerings was also performed by the T’ang Quartet at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore as part of Mathemusical Conversation, an international workshop on mathematics and computation in music performance and composition. Callender’s Metamorphoses II, for violin and piano, was recorded in August 2014 by Emily Hanna Crane (also an FSU alumna) and Hui-Ting Yang and was included as part of the CD Pendulum, released by Parma/Navona Records. February 2016 saw the release of Callender’s gegenschein, for solo violin, on alumnus Piotr Szewczyk’s CD Violin Futura (Navona Records). March 2016 saw the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s latest opera, Prince of Players, which concerns the seventeenth-century English actor Edward Kynaston. Floyd served as a member of the faculty of the College of Music from 1951 to 1976. The Houston Grand Opera commissioned Prince of Players, and Floyd’s work on the opera was featured on OPERA America’s web-based series, “MASTERS AT WORK: Crafting an Opera with CARLISLE FLOYD,” during the past year. The five, livestreamed webcasts featured Floyd and Marc Scorca, President of OPERA America, who moderated questions about the compositional and rehearsal processes from students participating at Florida State University and four other invited universities.