8 minute read
About the Music
AWADAGIN PRATT
Photo: Rob Davidson
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AWADAGIN PRATT
PIANO
“A great favorite on college and university performing arts series and a strong advocate of music education, Awadagin Pratt participates in numerous residency and outreach activities wherever he appears.” Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.
Born in Pittsburgh, Awadagin Pratt began studying piano at the age of six. Three years later, having moved to Normal, Illinois with his family, he also began studying violin. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Illinois where he studied piano, violin, and conducting. He subsequently enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he became the first student in the school’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting. In recognition of this achievement and for his work in the field of classical music, Mr. Pratt received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins as well as an honorary doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University. In 1992, Mr. Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition and two years later was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, he has played numerous recitals throughout the US including performances at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and the NJ Performing Arts Center. His many orchestral performances include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, National, Detroit and New Jersey symphonies among many others. Summer festival engagements include appearances at Ravinia, Blossom, Wolftrap, Caramoor, Aspen and the Hollywood Bowl. Internationally, Mr. Pratt has toured Japan four times and performed in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Columbia and South Africa.
A great favorite on college and university performing arts series and a strong advocate of music education, Awadagin Pratt participates in numerous residency and outreach activities wherever he appears; these activities may include master classes, children’s recitals, play/talk demonstrations and question/answer sessions for students of all ages. He is also frequently invited to participate on international competition juries, such as the Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel, the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Minnesota e-Competition and the Unisa International Piano Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in the Ukraine. *We are thrilled to announce that Mr. Pratt will be serving on the Hilton Head International Piano Competition’s seven-juror panel in March, 2022. Mr. Pratt’s recordings for Angel/EMI include A Long Way From Normal, an all Beethoven Sonata CD, Live From South Africa, Transformations and an all Bach disc with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. His most recent recordings are the Brahms Sonatas for Cello and Piano with Zuill Bailey for Telarc and a recording of the music of Judith Lang Zaimont witth the Harlem Quartet for Navona Records.
Mr. Pratt is currently a Professor of Piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He also served as the Artistic Director of the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati and is currently the Artistic Director of the Art of the Piano Festival at CCM.
Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).
Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)- written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”- for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which was presented in its UK premiere at the BBC Proms in London, England on 7 August 2021. Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for Soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (7 August); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (8 July); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (13 August). Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble.
A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Jessie holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate at Princeton University. She is Professor of violin and composition at The New School. In May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-inResidence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
JESSIE
MONTGOMERY
Photo: Jiyang Chen JESSIE MONTGOMERY
COMPOSER
“Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience.”
ABOUT THE MUSIC
by Jonathan Aceto
Fratres Arvo Pärt b. 1935
Arvo Pärt, one of the most often-performed living classical composers since 2011, is a major figure in the realm of mystical or spiritual minimalism. Born in Estonia in 1935, Pärt began his musical training at seven and graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory in 1963. He started out his career composing in the German 12-tone manner, which drew criticism from Soviet officials who felt he was “susceptible to foreign influences.” Pärt had a significant reawakening in the late 1960s, both musically and spiritually, and began studying European religious music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras. From this study of early Western polyphony came tintinnabulation (ringing bells), his unique style of composing in which he artfully combines simple movement up or down a scale with triads and a drone. Although Pärt was allowed by the Soviets to emigrate to Austria in 1980, he eventually returned to Estonia and currently lives in Laulasmaa. In light of Pärt’s spiritual style, it is not surprising that many of his most beloved pieces are sacred choral works, including the Magnificat, Te Deum, Miserere and the Berliner Mass. Some of his instrumental works are also popular, including Tabula Rasa and this evening’s piece Fratres (Brotherhood). Fratres is rather unique among his output in that he has made several versions of it since its original form of a string quintet in 1977. Among the varieties of instrumentation are ones for wind octet and percussion; cello ensemble; four percussionists; and three recorders, cello and percussion. The one you will hear tonight is for string orchestra and percussion.
Fratres is a haunting meditation on a harmonic progression. It starts off with a drone of a fifth in the lower strings while claves quietly mark time. The rest of the strings enter playing chords in harmonics, that special technique where the left hand lightly touches the string in order to create a pitch significantly higher. The truly important aspect of these chords, however, is how they are arranged. There is a center harmony around which the other chords are heard; the center chord is played, then goes down a pitch, then one pitch above, then back to the center. It is repeated, adding one chord going down and one going up, then repeated again with yet another added set of chords. That entire pattern is repeated several times throughout the piece, all the while the original drone fifth is heard lurking in the background. The overall effect is surprisingly organic, with the chords acting almost like a giant
Piano Concerto
Jessie Montgomery b. 1980
Growing up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the 1980s was an exciting time for Jessie Montgomery, especially with the unique combination of experimentation and activism that flourished in that area. As a violinist, she was a founding member of the PUBLIQuartet and currently performs with the Catalyst Quartet. Montgomery has been an active member of the Sphinx Organization and is the composer-in-residence for its top professional group, the Sphinx Virtuosi. Among her recent works is Banner, written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner, and future works include a nonet inspired by the Great Migration as experienced by her own great-grandfather. Montgomery has also been selected as one of the female composers for the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19, a multi-season commissioning project commemorating the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment securing the right to vote for women. *Ms. Montgomery’s notes specific to this composition will be provided at the concerts.
Piano Concerto Composed by
Jessie Montgomery
Montgomery is a composer who thinks in musical gestures, phrases that bubble forth, repeat, and constantly evolve in tiny ways. These gestures, however, give an overall sense of tonality so the piece never dissolves into chaos but rather stays afloat in the key. Montgomery’s compositions also have an intense rhythmic vitality, regardless of the actual tempo. In the words of The Washington Post, her works are “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life.”
Commissioned by
Art of the Piano Foundation for pianist Awadagin Pratt
Co-commissioned by
Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, IRIS Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony
