MRU Presents: Kronos Quartet

M R U C O N S E R VAT O RY P R E S E N T S

W YAT T C O N C E R T S E R I E S

Kronos Quartet

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS CONCERT SEASON 2016/17 BELLA CONCERT HALL MARCH 22, 2017 • 7:30 P.M.

David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Sunny Yang, cello Brian H. Scott, Lighting Designer Brian Mohr, Associate Sound Designer  @MRUPERFORMS • #BELLASTYLE #MRUBELLA  @MRUCONSERVATORY • #BELLASTYLE #MRUBELLA  MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY CONSERVATORY

Musicians often point to an educational encounter with, or a transformational performance by, a great artist as the inspiration for their commitment to a life in the performing arts.

Mount Royal University Conservatory’s Wyatt Artist in Residence Program strives to provide our students with these life-changing opportunities: allowing them to hear and study with world-renowned artists as mentors in intimate master class settings.

The Wyatt Series was established in honour of the late Hal and Marnie Wyatt, longtime friends and supporters of the MRU Conservatory. Through their generosity, we are pleased to provide unique training opportunities for our students and memorable performances for our community to enjoy.

Tonight, thanks to their legacy, we are thrilled to present the Kronos Quartet, the second this year’s Wyatt Concert Series in the Bella Concert Hall. We are very proud to be able to participate as a commissioning partner in the Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project. We trust you will enjoy tonight’s program. We look forward to having you join us for the third and final installment of the Wyatt Series featuring internationally acclaimed American-Cuban violinist Andrés Cárdenes with MRU Conservatory’s Calgary Youth Orchestra, at the Bella on Sunday, May 14th.

Our continued heartfelt thanks to the Wyatts.

Dr. Brad Mahon

Message from the Conservatory WELCOME TO THE MUSIC TO YOUR EARS concert season at the Bella Concert Hall in the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts! We are so excited to launch our inaugural season featuring seven separate series with over 25 diverse events.

As a world-class centre for arts education and training, we are committed to providing education and performance opportunities for our students as well as showcasing exemplary artistic achievement in music and speech arts.

From reggae legends and jazz aficionados to eastern classical masters to Canadian astronauts, this year’s line-up quite literally has something for everyone.

The Kronos Quartet are the pinnacle of what we want our students and our community to aspire to. They have defined the pursuit of excellence in their passion while exemplifying what it is to be musical innovators. They have not only mastered their art form but they continue to define where this artform lives in the present and in the future.

We welcome their collaborative spirit, mentorship to our students, and are proud to have them perform at the Bella Concert Hall.

Mark DeJong Artistic Program Coordinator

KRONOS QUARTET David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Sunny Yang, cello ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV GARTH KNOX

N. RAJAM (ARR. REENA ESMAIL)

My Desert, My Rose* Satellites: III. Dimensions*

Dadra in Raga Bhairavi+

TANYA TAGAQ Sivunittinni* (ARR. JACOB GARCHIK) FODÉ LASSANA DIABATÉ (ARR. JACOB GARCHIK)

Sunjata’s Time: 3. Nana Triban*

PETE TOWNSHEND (ARR. JACOB GARCHICK)

Baba O’Riley

INTERMISSION SOO YEON LYUH TERRY RILEY

Yessori (Sound from the Past)* Good Medicine from Salome Dances for Peace*

* Written for Kronos Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire + Arranged for Kronos

Fifty for the Future Aleksandra Vrebalov’s My Desert, My Rose, Garth Knox’s Satellites, Tanya Tagaq’s Sivunittinni, Fodé Lassana Diabaté’s Sunjata’s Time, Nicole Lizée’s Another Living Soul, and Soo Yeon Lyuh’s Yessori (Sound from the Past) were commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including the Wyatt Artist in Residence Series, Mount Royal University Conservatory; Carnegie Hall; and many others.

Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has launched an exciting new commissioning initiative — Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Beginning in the 2015/16 season, Fifty for the Future will commission 50 new works — 10 per year for five years — devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers — 25 men and 25 women.

Kronos will premiere each piece and create companion digital materials, including scores, recordings, and performance notes, which will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present string quartet music as a living art form. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners will join forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.

Kronos Quartet For more than 40 years, the Kronos Quartet — David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello) — has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 900 works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. The group’s numerous awards also include a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.

Kronos’ adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble’s origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War–inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Webern, Schnittke), contemporary composers (Sophia Gubaidulina, Bryce Dessner, Aleksandra Vrebalov), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Maria Schneider, Thelonious Monk), rock artists (guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin, and Icelandic indie-rock group Sigur Rós), and artists who truly defy genre (performance artist Laurie Anderson, composer/sound sculptor/inventor Trimpin, and singersongwriter/poet Patti Smith).

Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of long-running, indepth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. One of the quartet’s most frequent composercollaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose

work with Kronos includes Salome Dances for Peace (1985– 86); Sun Rings (2002), a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and The Serquent Risadome, premiered during Kronos’ 40th Anniversary Celebration at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Górecki, with whom the group worked for more than 25 years. The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording a CD of his string quartets in 1995 and premiering String Quartet No. 6 in 2013, among other projects; Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi; Steve Reich, from Kronos’ performance of the Grammy-winning composition Different Trains (1989) to the September 11–themed WTC 9/11 (2011); and many more.

In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous performers from around the world among its collaborators, including the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; Azeri master vocalist Alim Qasimov; legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’ 2005 Grammynominated CD You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; indie rock band The National; Mexican rockers Café Tacvba; sound artist and instrument builder Walter Kitundu; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Kronos has performed live with the likes of Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Jarvis Cocker, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Noam Chomsky, Rokia Traoré, Tom Waits, Rhiannon Giddens, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Dan Zanes, Glenn Kotche, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Joan Armatrading, and Don Walser. In dance, the famed choreographers Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Eiko & Koma, and Paul Lightfoot and Sol León (Nederlands Dans Theater) have created pieces with Kronos’ music.

Kronos’ work has also featured prominently in a number of films, including two recent Academy Award–nominated documentaries: the AIDS-themed How to Survive a Plague (2012) and Dirty Wars (2013), an exposé of covert warfare for which Kronos’ David Harrington served as Music Supervisor. Kronos also performed scores by Philip Glass

for the films Mishima and Dracula (a 1999 restored edition of the 1931 Tod Browning–Bela Lugosi classic) and by Clint Mansell for the Darren Aronofsky films Noah (2014), The Fountain (2006), and Requiem for a Dream (2000).

Additional films featuring Kronos’ music include The Great Beauty (2013), Heat (1995), and True Stories (1986).

The quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Big Ears, BAM Next Wave Festival, Chicago’s Harris Theater, Disney Hall, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Barbican in London, WOMAD, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall, and Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; 1998’s ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2004 Grammy winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, featuring renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw. Other more recent releases include Rainbow (Smithsonian Folkways, 2010), in collaboration with musicians from Afghanistan and Azerbaijan; and Aheym: Kronos Quartet Plays Music by Bryce Dessner (Anti-, 2013).

In celebration of the quartet’s 40th anniversary season in 2014, Nonesuch released both Kronos Explorer Series, a five-CD retrospective boxed set, and the single-disc A Thousand Thoughts, featuring mostly unreleased recordings from throughout Kronos’ career. 2015 brought the release of Tundra Songs by Derek Charke as well as a boxed set of Terry Riley’s music written for and performed by Kronos in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday. Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos have released two editions of Kronos Collection sheet music: Volume 1 (2006), featuring three Kronos-commissioned works; and Volume 2 (2014), featuring six Kronos-commissioned arrangements by composer Osvaldo Golijov.

In addition to its role as a performing and recording ensemble, the quartet is committed to mentoring emerging performers and composers and has led workshops, master classes, and other education programs via the San Francisco

Conservatory of Music, the California State Summer School for the Arts, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, and other institutions in the U.S. and overseas. Kronos has recently undertaken extended educational residencies at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, The Clarice at the University of Maryland, and with the Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music.

With a staff of 12 based in San Francisco, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and local performances, education programs, and more. KPAA’s Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and residency program for composers under age 30, has now added five new works to the Kronos repertoire. KRONOS PRESENTS is a new presenting program showcasing Kronos’ commissioned works, artistic projects and farranging musical collaborations through an annual festival, education and community activities, and other events in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

In 2015 KPAA launched a new commissioning and education initiative—Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. With Carnegie Hall as a lead partner, KPAA is commissioning 50 new works—10 per year for five years—devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers—25 women and 25 men. The quartet will premiere each piece and create companion materials, including scores and parts, recordings, videos, performance notes, and composer interviews, that will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present quartet music as a living art form, and provide young musicians with both an indispensable library of learning and a blueprint for their own future collaborations with composers. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners that includes presenters, academic institutions, foundations and individuals, have joined forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.

Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970)

My Desert, My Rose (2015) Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and now lives in New York City. She has written more than 60 works, ranging from concert music, to opera and modern dance, to music for film. Her works have been commissioned and/or performed by the Kronos Quartet, Serbian National Theater, Carnegie Hall, Moravian Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic and Providence Festival Ballet. Vrebalov is a fellow of MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Bellagio Center, New York’s New Dramatists, American Opera Projects, Other Minds Festival, and Tanglewood. Her awards include The Harvard Fromm Commission, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship, Barlow Endowment Commission, MAP Fund, Vienna Modern Masters, Meet the Composer, and Douglas Moore Fellowship. Her works have been recorded for Nonesuch, Innova, Centaur, Records, and Vienna Modern Masters.

Vrebalov’s collaborative work with director Bill Morrison, Beyond Zero (1914–1918), was commissioned and premiered

by Kronos at U.C. Berkeley’s Cal Performances in April 2014 and had its European premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival that summer. Her string quartet …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… was written for and recorded by Kronos for the album Floodplain. Her string quartet Pannonia Boundless, also for Kronos, was published by Boosey & Hawkes as part of the Kronos Collection, and recorded for the album Kronos Caravan.

Vrebalov recently finished a song cycle on Charles Simic’s poetry commissioned by ASCAP/Kingsford Fund and a sound installation with architect Ronit Eisenbach, converting an old bank building into a music box in Chestertown, Maryland. In 2016 she collaborated with choreographer Patricia Okenwa on a new piece for Rambert Dance Company.

About My Desert, My Rose, Vrebalov writes: “My Desert, My Rose consists of a series of patterns open in length, meter, tempo, and dynamics, different for each performer. The unfolding of the piece is almost entirely left to each performer’s sensibility and responsiveness to the parts of other members of the group. Instinct and precision are each equally important in the performance of the piece.

The patterns are (notated as) suggested rather than fixed musical lines, so the flow and the length of the piece are unique to each performance. The lines merge and align to separate and then meet again, each time in a more concrete and tighter way. The piece ends in a metric unison, like a seemingly coincidental meeting of the lines predestined to reunite. It is like a journey of four characters that start in distinctly different places, who, after long searching and occasional, brief meeting points, end up in the same space, time, language.

“The writing of this piece, in a form as open and as tightly coordinated at the same time, was possible thanks to 20 years of exposure to rehearsal and performance habits of the Kronos Quartet, a group for which I have written 13 out of 14 of my pieces involving string quartet.”

Garth Knox (b. 1956)

Dimensions from Satellites (2015) Garth Knox is one of today’s leading performers of contemporary music, and his formative experience as a member of Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain and then as violist of the Arditti Quartet has given him a very comprehensive grasp of new music. Stimulated by the practical experience of working on a personal level with composers such as Boulez, Ligeti, Berio, Xenakis, and many others, he channels and expands this energy when writing his own music.

Knox’s solo and ensemble pieces have been played all over Europe, USA, and Japan. He has received commissions from the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Proquartet (France), Concorde Ensemble (Ireland), Lucillin Ensemble (Luxembourg), Tokyo International Viola Competition (Japan), Camarata Variabile (Switzerland), Radio France, and the Kronos Quartet (USA).

Viola Spaces, the first phase of a multi-faceted, on-going series of concert studies for strings published in 2010 by Schott, combines ground-breaking innovation in string technique with joyous pleasure in the act of music making, and the pieces have been adopted and performed by young string players all over the world.

“Dimensions” is the third and final movement of Satellites, about which Knox writes: “‘Dimensions’ deals with the many possible dimensions which surround us, represented by the physical movements of the bow through space. In the first dimension, only vertical movement is possible. In the second, only horizontal movement along the string is possible. Then only circular motion, then alternating between the two sides of the bow (the stick and the hair). The fun really starts when we begin to mix the dimensions, slipping from one to another, and the piece builds to a climax of spectacular bow techniques including the ‘whip’ and the ‘helicopter’, producing a huge range of other-worldly sounds.”

N. Rajam (b. 1938)

Dadra in Raga Bhairavi (arr. 2015) Arranged by Reena Esmail

Indian-American composer, Reena Esmail is a graduate of Juilliard and the Yale School of Music, and a 2011–12 Fulbright grantee to India. Her work draws elements from both Western and Hindustani (North Indian) classical music. Esmail’s works have received honors from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and have been performed throughout the United States, in India and abroad.

Esmail currently resides in Los Angeles, California. More information about her work is available at reenaesmail.com.

About Dadra in Raga Bhairavi, Esmail writes: “Hindustani (North Indian) violinist N. Rajam occupies a rare and unique position in Indian music. While initially trained as a Carnatic (South Indian) violinist, she later adapted Carnatic violin technique to the performance of Hindustani music.

N. Rajam plays in what is called the gakayi ang, the singing style, having trained on her instrument with such vocal legends as Omkarnath Thakur. Her melodies are direct and yet subtle: they seem, at once, guileless and ephemeral.

“This arrangement of N. Rajam’s Dadra in Raga Bhairavi sets her improvised violin solo into the medium of string quartet.

Raga Bhairavi, normally rendered in the late morning hours, is often used throughout the day in its semi-classical form (as heard here) in shorter, lighter pieces that come towards the end of a Hindustani classical performance. The metric cycle, Dadra, is also characteristic of a lighter piece of music. In this arrangement, the Dadra taal (metric cycle) is rendered on the body of the cello, as it imitates the strokes of the tabla (Hindustani percussion).”

Reena Esmail’s arrangement of N. Rajam’s Dadra in Raga Bhairavi was commissioned for Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research & Development Fund.

Tanya Tagaq (b. 1975)

Sivunittinni (2015)

Arranged by Jacob Garchik Tanya Tagaq’s unique vocal expression is rooted in Inuit throat singing, but her music has as much to do with electronica, industrial and metal influences as it does with traditional culture. She is known for her artistic collaborations that defy genre boundaries. Her contribution to Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project marks another chapter in a longstanding creative association with the group. Appearances with Kronos have included a performance at the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville, Tennessee) in 2015 and work on the album Tundra Songs.

Her albums make for complex listening, but a string of international awards and accolades attest to her ability to make music that speaks a universal tongue. Tagaq’s album Animism won the Polaris Music Prize in 2014 and a Juno Award in 2015.

In addition to her internationally renowned status as a performer and recording artist, Tagaq also does regular speaking engagements at educational and cultural institutions, including delivering the Pecha Kucha at APAP in 2014. In these lectures, Tagaq discusses her personal experience and creative process, and how her origin in Canada’s arctic shapes her art. Tagaq is the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from her alma mater, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax.

About Sivunittinni, Tagaq writes: “Sivunittinni, or ‘the future ones,’ comes from a part of a poem I wrote for my album, and is the perfect title for this piece. My hope is to bring a little bit of the land to future musicians through this piece. There’s a disconnect in the human condition, a disconnect from nature, and it has caused a great deal of social anxiety and fear, as well as a lack of true meaning of health, and a lack of a relationship with what life is, so maybe this piece can be a little bit of a wake-up.

“Working with the Kronos Quartet has been an honour. We have a symbiosis that allows a lot of growth musically. They teach me so much, I can only hope to reciprocate. Kronos has gifted me the opportunity to take the sounds that live in my body and translate them into the body of instruments.

This means so much because the world changes very quickly, and documenting allows future musicians to glean inspiration from our output.”

Fodé Lassana Diabaté (b. 1971)

Nana Triban from Sunjata’s Time (2015) Arranged by Jacob Garchik

Lassana Diabaté is a virtuoso balafon (22-key xylophone) player who comes originally from Guinea. The balafon dates back at least to the 13th century with the founding of the Mali empire. Lassana began playing balafon at the age of five at home in Conakry with his father, Djelisory Diabaté, a master balafon player, from Kindia, some 150 kms inland.

Lassana later apprenticed himself to some of the celebrated balafon masters such as the late, great El Hadj Djeli Sory Kouyate, also from Kindia, as well as the late Alkali Camara.

To this day, Lassana cherishes the rare recordings of his mentors, whose unique styles continue to be an important inspiration to him.

Lassana settled in Mali in the late 1980s after being invited to join the band of Ami Koita, one of Mali’s most popular divas of the time, and has since recorded with many of Mali’s top artists such as Toumani Diabaté, Salif Keita, Babani Koné, Tiken Jah Fakoly, and Bassekou Kouyaté; he was also a member of the Grammy-nominated Mali-Cuba collaboration, Afrocubism.

Sunjata’s Time is dedicated to Sunjata Keita, the warrior prince who founded the great Mali Empire in 1235, which at its height stretched across the West African savannah to

the Atlantic shores. Sunjata’s legacy continues to be felt in many ways. During his time as emperor he established many of the cultural norms that remain in practice today— including the close relationship between patron and musician that is the hallmark of so much music in Mali.

The word “time” is meant to denote both “rhythm,” an important element in balafon performance, and “epoch,” since the composition sets out to evoke the kinds of musical sounds that might have been heard in Sunjata’s time, drawing on older styles of balafon playing which Lassana Diabaté has learned while studying with elder masters of the instrument in Guinea.

Each of the first four movements depicts a character who played a central role in Sunjata’s life, and each is fronted by one of the four instruments of the quartet. The fifth movement brings the quartet together in equality to portray the harmonious and peaceful reign of this great West African emperor who lived nearly eight centuries ago.

Tonight’s performance features “Nana Triban,” the third movement. Nana Triban was Sunjata’s beautiful sister.

When Sunjata went into exile, the sorcerer blacksmith wrested the throne from Sunjata’s half-brother. So the people of Mande went to find Sunjata, to beg him to return and help overthrow Sumaworo. Sunjata gathered an army from all the neighboring kingdoms. But it seemed that the Sumaworo was invincible, drawing on his powers of sorcery to evade defeat.

Finally, Nana Triban intervened. She used her skills of seduction to trick Sumaworo into revealing the secret of his vulnerability, escaping before the act was consummated.

Armed with this knowledge, Sunjata was victorious, restoring peace to the land, and building West Africa’s most powerful empire (dedicated to the cello).

Notes about Sunjata’s Time by Lucy Durán

Nicole Lizée (b. 1973)

Another Living Soul (2016) Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation,” Montréal-based composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, glitch, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology, and captures, notates, and integrates these glitches into live performance.

Lizée’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring fully notated DJ techniques, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.

In 2001, Lizée received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 40 works is varied and distinguished and includes the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, the San Francisco Symphony, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, New York City’s Kaufman Center, TorQ Percussion, Fondation Arte Musica/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Calefax, ECM+, Continuum, and Soundstreams, among others. Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall (NYC), Royal Albert Hall (London), and Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam), and in festivals including the BBC Proms (UK), Huddersfield (UK), Bang On a Can (USA), Classical:NEXT (Rotterdam), Roskilde (Denmark), Melos-Ethos (Slovakia), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Canada), X Avant (Canada), Luminato (Canada), Switchboard (San Francisco), Casalmaggiore (Italy), and Dark Music Days (Iceland).

Lizée was awarded the prestigious 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. A Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy), Lizée was selected in 2015 by acclaimed composer and conductor Howard Shore to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, was chosen for the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Hitchcock Études for piano and notated glitch was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music and featured at the 2014 World Music Days in Poland. Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus (2013), Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Opera (2015), two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine (2012, 2013), and the 2002 Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition.

About Another Living Soul, Lizée writes: “Another Living Soul is stop motion animation for string quartet. Considered one of the most complex and idiosyncratic art forms, stop motion demands imagination, craft, isolation, an unwavering vision, fortitude, and copious amounts of time. The act of beginning the process invites both angst at the daunting task that has just begun and a kind of zen acceptance of the labyrinthine road ahead.

“The earliest stop motion—those beings and worlds created by Harryhausen, Starevich, Clokey, et al—still impresses and inspires. Oozing creativity, their work has a rough-hewn beauty and a timeless enchantment.

“Throughout its evolution, the end result has always been incrementally imbuing vitality and life to something devoid of any such spark on its own. The close quarters, intimacy, and camaraderie of the people who work in this art form are mirrored by the scrutiny and care they afford their tiny subjects and the attention to minutiae required to render a work that is lifelike. The impossible becomes possible— souls emerge from where once there were none.”

Pete Townshend (b. 1945)

Baba O’Riley (1971) Arranged by Jacob Garchik

Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter, was born into a musical family in Chiswick, West London. He attended Ealing Art College, where he broadened his mind on a diet of radical performance art and American blues music, both of which would eventually inform the Detours as they worked their passage through the West London club and pub circuit. With the arrival in 1964 of drummer Keith Moon and managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who were on their way, with Townshend increasingly cast in the role of leader and spokesman.

Townshend soon found himself at the forefront of the British musical boom of the Sixties. As guitarist and composer of the band, he became the driving force behind one of the most powerful, inventive, and articulate bodies of work in rock. From early classic three-minute singles like “My Generation,” “Substitute,” and “I Can See For Miles,” to complete song cycles in the shape of Tommy, Lifehouse, and Quadrophenia, Townshend established himself as one of the most gifted and imaginative musicians working in the rock field.

He has run his own book publishing company and worked as an editor at the literary house of Faber & Faber which, in 1985, published Horse’s Neck, a collection of his short stories. Townshend has published his memoir Who I Am and is currently working on Floss, an ambitious new music project.

“Baba O’Riley” (also known as “Teenage Wasteland”) was recorded by The Who for the 1971 album Who’s Next. The title is inspired by Meher Baba, the Indian spiritual master, and Terry Riley, whose A Rainbow in Curved Air was a great influence on Townshend.

Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Baba O’Riley was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

Soo Yeon Lyuh (b. 1980)

Yessori (Sound from the Past) (2016) Soo Yeon Lyuh is a haegeum (Korean two-string fiddle) player, composer, and improviser currently based in the Bay Area. Rigorously trained in court and folk repertories from a young age, Lyuh is known for her masterful performances of new compositions for the haegeum. In Korea, she served as a member of the National Gugak Center’s new music troupe for 12 years.

Deeply invested in exploring new musical possibilities via improvisation, she has collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, Henry Kaiser, William Winant, and numerous other diverse international performers and composers. Lyuh has premiered new music compositions by Cindy Cox, David Evan Jones, Donald Womack, and Thomas Osborne. She has performed renowned contemporary and experimental concerts in festivals and venues all over the world, including the 2016 Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival (MASS MoCA), Isang Yun Music Festival (North Korea), Pacific Exchange 2016 (SF), Büyükşehir Belediyesi Sanat ve Kültür Sarayı (Turkey), Siri Fort Auditorium (India) and the Seoul Arts Center, among others.

Lyuh holds a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in Korean Musicology from Seoul National University where she taught for 6 years.

More recently, she has organized workshops and lecture concerts in collaboration with faculty at UC Berkeley (Ken Ueno), UC Santa Cruz (Hikyung Kim), UC Davis (Katherine Lee), and Mills College (John Bischoff, Chris Brown). Lyuh seeks to continually expand contemporary haegeum possibilities through work with new media and technology.

About Yessori, Lyuh writes: “When I first played the haegeum for Kronos violinist David Harrington, he commented that the sound seemed ‘ancient,’ and commissioned me to write a piece that explores aspects of Korean traditional music. With his observation in mind, I composed Yessori (옛소리), which is Korean for ‘sound from the past.’

“The first time I experienced Korean traditional music, the relative pitch relationships and fluid nature of the rhythmic cycles felt chaotic, perhaps because of my background in Western music. However, over the past two decades of studying the haegeum, I came to love these unique qualities and am excited to share them through Yessori.

“My compositional process began with improvisations on the haegeum in the style of traditional Korean music. I then adapted the distinctive techniques, vibrato, and articulations for string quartet.”

Terry Riley (b. 1935)

Good Medicine from Salome Dances for Peace (1985-86) Terry Riley first came to prominence in 1964 when he subverted the world of tightly organized atonal composition then in fashion. With the groundbreaking In C—a work built upon steady pulse throughout, simple repeated melodic motives, and static harmonies—Riley achieved an elegant and non-nostalgic return to tonality. In demonstrating the hypnotic allure of complex musical patterns made of basic means, he produced the seminal work of the so-called “minimal” school.

Riley’s facility for complex pattern-making is the product of his virtuosity as a keyboard improviser. He quit formal composition following In C in order to concentrate on improvisation, and in the late 1960s and early ’70s he became known for weaving dazzlingly intricate skeins of music from improvisations on organ and synthesizer. At this time, Riley also devoted himself to studying North Indian vocal techniques under the legendary Pandit Pran Nath, and a new element entered his music: long-limbed melody. From his work in Indian music, moreover, he became interested in the subtle distinctions of tuning that would be hard to achieve with a traditional classical ensemble.

Riley began notating music again in 1979, expressly at David Harrington’s request, when both he and the Kronos Quartet were on the faculty at Mills College in Oakland.

By collaborating with Kronos, he discovered that his various musical passions could be integrated, not as pastiche, but as different sides of similar musical impulses that still maintained something of the oral performing traditions of India and jazz. Riley’s first quartets were inspired by his keyboard improvisations, but his knowledge of string quartets became more sophisticated through his work with Kronos, combining rigorous compositional ideas with a more performance-oriented approach. Kronos’ long relationship with Riley has produced over 25 new works.

Good Medicine is the last section of Salome Dances for Peace, an epic, two-hour-long string quartet. About Salome Riley has said: “The idea for Salome Dances for Peace came out of an improvisation theme from The Harp of New Albion. I realized this was potentially a whole new piece. Around that time, David Harrington called me and asked me to write another string quartet.

“I thought that it should be a ballet about Salome using her alluring powers to actually create peace in the world. So Salome in this case becomes like a goddess who—drawn out of antiquity, having done evil kinds of deeds—reincarnates and is trained as a sorceress, as a shaman. And through her dancing, she is able to become both a warrior and an influence on the world leaders’ actions.

“I’m always trying to find ways that I can, besides doing music, contribute to world peace, or maybe neighborhood peace or home peace. I told David that when we first started that I thought we ought to create a piece that can be played at the United Nations on special holidays. It would not be just a concert piece but a piece that could be played as a rite.”

Salome Dances for Peace was commissioned for Kronos

by IRCAM and Betty Freeman, and recorded by Kronos for Nonesuch Records.

For the Kronos Quartet/ Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator Mason Dille, Development Manager Sarah Donahue, Production & Tour Associate Lauren Frankel, Development Associate Scott Fraser, Sound Designer Sasha Hnatkovich, Communications Manager Gregory T. Kuhn, Production & Artistic Services Director Reshena Liao, Communications & Marketing Associate Nikolås McConnie-Saad, Office Manager Kären Nagy, Strategic Initiatives Director Lucinda Toy, Business Operations Manager Contact: Kronos Quartet/ Kronos Performing Arts Association P. O. Box 225340 San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 USA kronosquartet.org facebook.com/kronosquartet instagram.com/kronos_quartet twitter.com/kronosquartet The Kronos Quartet records for Nonesuch Records.

403.974.8255

NEWSTALK770.COM

Things are looking up He had a good job but Kofi was looking for more.

Now, with new skills and credentials, there’s no limit to his success.

What’s next for you?

mru.ca/Kofi

Acquisition of our Hamburg Steinway Piano was made possible through generous support from an anonymous donor and The Community Facility Enhancement Program, Alberta Culture and Tourism.

Take Your Seat at the Bella Concert Hall Ensure that you always have the best seat in the house. A tax-deductible donation of $1000 is all it takes to place your name on a seat in Calgary's brand new Bella Concert Hall in the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts. With only 300 seats left, now is the time to support your arts community by sponsoring in your name, or the name of a loved one. Each seat sponsorship comes with the gift of a pair of concert tickets to an MRU Conservatory event of your choice at the Bella in 2017.

To take your seat, and for more information, contact Heidi Christophel at 403.440.6591.

MRU CONSERVATORY Junior Orchestra Ages 7 to 15

Early Childhood Strings Ages 3 to 8

Conservatory Strings Ages 12 to 16

Choral Programs Ages 6+

Calgary Youth Orchestra Ages 14 to 24

Academy for Young Artists Ages 8+

Children’s Cello Ages 3 to 9

Advanced Performance Program Ages 15+

mru.ca/conservatory

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS The Queen, The Bear and The Bumblebee APR. 23, 2017

Tickets at mru.ca/enjoy

Andrés Cárdenes with the Calgary Youth Orchestra

MAY 14, 2017

Journey LIVE!

Fifth House Ensemble MAY 5, 2017

Cowtown Opera APR. 2, 2017

Pedrito Martinez Group APR. 22, 2017

Land’s End Ensemble with Evelyn Glennie MAY 26, 2017

LET'S STAY CONNECTED! Share, tag, or follow for a chance to win concert tickets!

MRConservatory MRUConservatory MRUperforms bellastyle, MRUBella

Music to our ears Thank you to our partners and sponsors for helping us bring concerts, community and culture to our hometown through the performing arts.