Separation anxiety nov 2010

Acknowledgements BENEFACTORS The activities of C4 are funded, in large part, by grants and generous contributions. We wish to thank and acknowledge: For their major support: The David and Minnie Berk Foundation, Inc. Dodger Properties Nan Bases Michael David & Lauren Mitchell Tracy & Stanley Shopkorn Yale School of Music alumniVentures Program

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And for their contributions: Ian Moss Clarence & Sally Baum Ruth Mueller-Maerki Francine Belkind Michael & Roberta Nassau Jennifer Borum Rochelle & Bernard Natt Timothy Brown Marjorie Naughton Nancy & Lee Corbin Elizabeth Vardin Newman Zachary Cummings Julianne Parolisi Orianne Yin Dutka Raymond Penn Hugh & Kathryn Eddy Warren Prince Carol Garner & Martin Geller Barry Putterman Martha Garner-Duhe Amy Fonda Sara Eileen & Arthur Hirsh Ann & Richard Sarnoff Linnéa Johnson Mina Seeman John Kander Larry & Pat Siegel Sheldon Klenetsky Alan Silverman Tania J. León Carol Spencer Jodi & Stephen Leone Ellen Stafford-Sigg Stanley Lieblein Daniel & Susan Stearns Patricia Lutz Kenneth & Jean Telljohann Elizabeth Marker Deborah Teplow Dan Martin & Michael Biello Mary Tsimenoglou Edward & Rose Mermelstein Richard Walker Peter & Christine Metz Jessica & Markus Wichser Jon Minikes & Susan Backstrom

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SPECIAL THANKS We also wish to express our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the following organizations and individuals for their support and assistance: The Church of St. Luke in the Fields David Shuler St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church Douglas Keilitz Aaron Jones

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective

C4: THE CHORAL COMPOSER/CONDUCTOR COLLECTIVE Sopranos Franny Geller Magdalen Kadel Karen Siegel Martha Sullivan Melissa Wozniak

Altos Karen Goldfeder Elizabeth Marker

Tenors Christopher Baum Jonathan David Joseph Rubinstein

Basses Daniel Andor Hayes Biggs James Bilodeau Timothy Brown David Harris

“Separation Anxiety”

Thursday, 18 November 2010, St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, New York, NY Saturday, 20 November 2010, The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, New York, NY Gratias tibi (2000) Christopher Baum, conductor

Tarik O’Regan (b. 1978)

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C4, the world’s first Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, is a unique vocal ensemble in New York City dedicated to performing music written in the last twenty-five years. A collaborative project of its singing members, it functions not only as a presenting ensemble in its own right, with a three-program, six-concert season, but also as an ongoing workshop and recital chorus for the emerging composers and conductors who form the core of the group. It is, as far as we know, the first ensemble of its kind.

Please visit our website, www.c4ensemble.org.

Vit encore la mousque, quel plaisir! (2010)† Martha Sullivan, conductor

Karen Siegel (b. 1980)

O Sapientia (1995) Christopher Baum, conductor

Hayes Biggs (b. 1957)

Daglarym/My Mountains (2008)‡ David Harris, conductor

Donald Crockett (b. 1951)

Money Is Your VuVuZeLa (2010)† Aaron Jones, vuvuzela Karen Siegel, conductor

David Harris (b. 1974)

TEN-MINUTE INTERMISSION

We hope to see you at our next concert:

C4 Commissioning Competition Finalists

Featuring the world premieres of newly-commissioned works by the five finalists of C4’s first-ever commissioning competition: Matthew Brown, Allen W. Menton, Carlos Michans, Jordan Nobles and Matt Van Brink. The program will also include major works by Torbjørn Dyrud and Einojuhani Rautavaara.

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Thursday, 3 March 2011, 8:00 p.m.

St Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, 552 West End Avenue, New York, NY, 10024 Saturday, 5 March 2011, 8:00 p.m.

The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street, New York, NY, 10014

Gleams of a Remoter World (1997)§ David Harris, conductor

Judith Bingham (b. 1952)

Hana/Blossom (2007) Daniel Andor, conductor

Jonathan David (b. 1965)

Though I Walk (2005; rev. 2010) Martha Sullivan, Karen Goldfeder, Joseph Rubinstein and Hayes Biggs, solo quartet David Harris, conductor

Thomas Stumpf (b. 1950)

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Privilege (2010)‡ 1. mission/motive 2. casino 3. burning tv song 4. they get it 5. we cannot leave Joseph Rubinstein, tenor solo Christopher Baum, conductor † World premiere

Ted Hearne (b. 1982)

§ U.S. premiere

‡ East Coast premiere

Program Notes & Texts Gratias tibi This composition takes for its text the final two sentences of Book I of St. Augustine’s Confessions. Written in the final years of the fourth century A.D., the Confessions is a microcosm of remembrance and understanding. They reflect on St. Augustine’s own life and more importantly, they reflect on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. — Tarik O’Regan

For thus wilt thou preserve me; and those things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected, and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.

Augustine of Hippo (354-390) Translated by Albert C. Outler

The texts are from The Combinative Chanson: An Anthology, edited by Maria Rika Maniates, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, vol. 77. Madison, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., 1989. Used with permission.— Karen Siegel Las, quel plaisir [L]as, quel plaisir ce me seroit, S’à vous porie parler apart.

Jamais nul mal ne [ferait part] [De mon voloir, si grant que soit.]

Alas, it would be so delightful if I could speak to you alone.

No evil wish could enter into my desire, however strong it might be.

Tousjours mais se [ras]sioiroit, Mon povre cuer que de deul part.

Las, quel [plaisir ce me seroit, S’à vous porie parler apart.]

And thus my heart, emerging from grief, would become tranquil.

Alas, it would be so delightful if I could speak to you alone.

Hélas amours, qui me poroit, De ma mestresse faire part?

Qui m’a percé de part en part, Danier me nuit, acuel me noit.

Alas, love, is there anyone to help, to speak for me to my mistress?

Since I have been pierced from limb to limb, danger stifles me and welcome overwhelms me.

Las, [quel plaisir ce me seroit, S’à vous porie parler apart.

Jamais nul mal ne ferait part De mon voloir, si grant que soit.]

Alas, it would be so delightful if I could speak to you alone.

No evil wish could enter into my desire, however strong it might be.

La mousque La mousque, la mousque!

Or y vient la moule à tout son moulier.

Qui menga la mousque et tout sans maquier?

Et mousque, mousque, mousque!

The mussel, the mussel!

Here comes the mussel with its fisherman.

Who can eat the mussel all up without chewing?

And mussel, mussel, mussel!

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Born in London, TARIK O’REGAN was educated at Oxford University and subsequently at Cambridge. His work has garnered two 2009 GRAMMY® nominations (including Best Classical Album), two British Composer Awards and a NEA Artistic Excellence grant. He has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. Other appointments include positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Yale University.

2010 marked the premiere of O’Regan’s BBC Proms commission, Latent Manifest, by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the broadcast of a self-penned documentary, Composing New York, which he presented for BBC Radio. Heart of Darkness, his opera based on Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same name, opens at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre in November 2011.

Vit encore la mousque, quel plaisir!

I am fascinated by the oddity of the combinative chanson, a renaissance practice of juxtaposing widely varying texts within the same work, usually with different texts in different voice parts. I have chosen as the basis of this work the texts of an anonymous 15th Century Franco-Flemish triple-texted chanson, which combines two such vulgar poems that might have originally been set as popular songs and sung in taverns (La mousque and Waleri la tire) with a formal courtship rondeau (Las, quel plaisir). In its renaissance counterpart, the strangeness of the text juxtaposition was not at all reflected in the music, and the texts were set in such a way that none of the texts could be understood; the result being an inside joke for the performer. This contemporary version, with original melodies, brings the joke to the audience. It brings out the irony inherent in the combination of these poems, and gives at least the most important parts of each poem enough space to be heard, while also layering them in juxtaposition.

Different modes and meters highlight the differences between the texts.

These texts have been transcribed and reconstructed, in places relying on other versions of the chanson in related manuscripts, by Professor Emeritus Maria Rika Maniates. Thanks to Ellen Rentz and Martha Sullivan, C4 is rendering the early French as faithfully as possible to the way it would have been pronounced in the 15th Century.

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Gratias tibi, dulcedo mea et honor meus et fiducia mea, deus meus, gratias tibi de donis tuis: sed tu mihi ea serva. Ita enim servabis me, et augebuntur et perficientur quae dedisti mihi, et ero ipse tecum, quia et ut sim tu dedisti mihi.

Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my confidence, my God — thanks be to thee for thy gifts; but do thou preserve them in me.

Waleri la Tire Vit encore Waleri la Tire, vit-il?

Oyl voir, il voit, il vit, il vit encore, Oïl voir, il voit, il vit, encore vit- i[l]!

Or n’est-il si bon amer, Que de ces pucelles.

Il letz fait sin bon amer, Elles sont si belles.

Vit encore Waleri la Tire, vit-il?

Oyl voir, il voit, il vit, il vit encore, Oyl voir, il voit, il vit, encore vit-il!

Does Wally the Twanger still get it up, get it up?

Yes indeed, he does, he does, he still gets it up!

There’s nothing around so good to love as these virgins.

They’ve been made for loving, they’re so delectable.

Does Wally the Twanger still get it up, get it up?

Yes indeed, he does, he does, he still gets it up!

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Anonymous 15th-century chansons Edited and translated by M.R. Maniates

O Sapientia My motet O Sapientia was composed in 1995, one of many pieces I wrote originally as holiday greetings to family, friends and colleagues. It eventually found its way into a collection entitled Four Christmas Motets, published by C. F. Peters. By 2004 it also had found its way into my String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away, recently recorded by the Avalon String Quartet on the Albany label. Musically the piece is primarily about simple triadic harmonies that are linked together by voice leading in what I hope are fresh new ways. The text is from the series of seven “O” antiphons used during Advent, each incipit representing a description of the Messiah (“O Wisdom,” “O Adonai,” “O Root of Jesse,” “O Key of David,” etc.). These antiphons are perhaps best known to Christian worshipers from the verses of the Advent Hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” My setting of this plea for wisdom and prudence—one might say sanity—is to me tinged both with urgency and a bit of melancholy. — Hayes Biggs

create a respiratory, gliding energy around which the sopranos and basses conjoin through melodic interplay). These tonal strata challenge the listener to recognize the mind’s capacity to engage in life dualities: stasis/motion, yin/yang, left/right, focus/ blur, etc. Crockett takes the insights of his friend and Mongolian traveler, Katherine Vincent, and sketches separation in everflowing comings and goings that mimic the human experience. Here we pause to note the mountains, like sentinels “like cranes. . .gliding in formation” and there we go about the business of life “barypla, bazala, going, once again” and then a pause to note the echo of time spent, the “honash,” showing presently that individual efforts will soon disappear with new growth, erasing memory of our time in this place beyond anyone but ourselves... and “the child runs with the herd, invisible, in this nomadic night...”— David Harris West-coast based composer/conductor DONALD CROCKETT has received commissions and performances from a litany of performing organizations and artists. He was Composer-in-Residence for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1991-97, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and has also received the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a commission from the Barlow Endowment, an Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council, an Aaron Copland Award and the first Sylvia Goldstein Award from the Copland House, a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, as well as grants and awards from the American Music Center, BMI, Composers Inc., the Copland Fund, Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts. Also active as a conductor of new music, Donald Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with the Los Angelesbased new music ensembles. He is currently Chair of the Composition Department and Director of the Contemporary Music Ensemble at the University of Southern

California Thornton School of Music, and Senior Composer-in-Residence with the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East.

Daglarym My mountains Like cranes flying, gliding in formation silently through this nomadic night.

Money is Your VuVuZeLa Or “Strain of the Schizophrenic Habitué” If there is a more contentious and cumbersome question in the human experience than the assignment of value, then Friedman and Keynes are soul mates.

In our svelte 21st-century utopia, most people have learned that value is handed to them in the form of small white (sometimes multi-colored) billboards that sit beneath merchandise on a shelf or stuck to windows, etc. Sadly, few people even care to haggle any more. This is all fine and good in the realm of the tangible (well, not really, because value is always dependent upon both party’s agreement, and if one accepts the other’s claim whole cloth. . .), but certainly runs out of steam (for rich and poor alike) when the all-elusive “things money can’t buy” arrive, and it is in this realm that art lives, ever burdened by the need for a price tag and ever diminished when given one.

“Money Is Your VuVuZeLa” is a manneristic reflection on this double world in which the artist thrives, in which perspective and motivation shift quickly and often, encouraging creativity and stomach ulsers.

The text is intentionally disjointed, and like those popular posters in the 1990s with a 2-dimensional image that grew into 3 with a cross-eyed viewing, the lines make sense (or don’t) from various angles. Ultimately, however, the point is that money is somehow necessary to people’s understanding and yet is the very thing that depletes people’s ability to understand, and in this conundrum, we commune with one another and somehow accept that warm, brown liquid is worthy of $3.50 but warm bodies providing life experience for 1.5 hours is worthy of $10, and perhaps it is. . . — David Harris

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O Sapientia quæ ex ore Altissimi prodisti, O Wisdom that proceeded from the mouth of the Most High, Veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiæ Come and show us the way of prudence.

Latin antiphon, 5th century or older

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Daglarym/My Mountains The comparison between Bingham’s/Shelley’s evocation of the power of mountains upon the psyche and Crockett’s/Vincent’s reflection on the silent but ever-present commentary that mountains whisper over humanity’s daily grind is hard to escape.

Although Crockett doesn’t split his choir into two distinct parts like Bingham, he does provide tonal strata (e.g. the alto and tenor parts in the opening movement

Barypla, bazala Going, once again

Honash The trace of the yurt on the grass

The yurt has left its echo in the pasture.

As the season exhaled, the aal [the camp of the nomads] moved on.

Youth recalled from your whisperings.

Remembering cliffs where goats were herded by moonlight under your gaze.

The land mourns the sounds of children Herding goats across the plain And the heat of a fire which warms the chai.

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Climbing toward twilight beyond the plains of Saryglyg The child runs with the herd, invisible, in this nomadic night You bear our mortality, and our aal moves on.

Katherine Vincent, after Tuvan folk songs

Phantom lover underwater Vuvuzela after, over If you want, give me a dollar But you still won’t get my power.

(You don’t get paid for the work you do Because the stock exchange can’t measure you I said, you don’t get paid for the work you do Because the market can’t take care of you) I’ve got money and you don’t My opinion matters and yours won’t If I want I can own you, And can make a million clones of you.

Your value hangs beneath a view That worth lies not in what you do And giving should not draw a fee So if you sing, go sing for free...

Disavowed is disobeyed And money is your vuvuzela!

David Harris

and stars, and sea, / If to the human mind’s imaginings / Silence and solitude were vacancy?”— David Harris JUDITH BINGHAM has, until recently, combined the careers of professional singer and composer. She began composing as a small child, and then studied composing and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was awarded the Principal’s prize in 1971, and 6 years later the BBC Young Composer award. She is the 2004 winner of the Barlow Prize for a cappella music. From 1983-1995 she sang with the BBC Singers as a full time member, before leaving to focus on composition.

Judith Bingham’s compositional voice is a distinctive one: her singer’s feeling for expressive melodic lines is complemented by a strong rhythmic and harmonic sense. Her music is never purely abstract in conception, but always shaped and coloured by extramusical sources of inspiration – both from the natural world and from the world of arts and ideas.

On joining the BBC Singers, she quickly made her reputation with a series of choral works, many of them based on texts compiled from disparate sources as an integral part of the compositional process. Several of these were for the BBC Singers, but there were also pieces for other professional, amateur and collegiate choirs.

Although Bingham’s output is marked by the number and variety of its choral works, the scope of her activities has included pieces for brass band, symphonic wind ensemble and various chamber groups and solo instruments, concertos for trumpet and bassoon, and several impressive works for large orchestra.

Has some unknown omnipotence Unfurled the veil of life and death?

Far, far above, Mont Blanc appears.

In the calm darkness of the Moonless nights, the snows descend.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Hana no kage aka no tanin wa nakari keri Cherry blossom shade, never an utter stranger.

Issa (1763-1828)

Though I Walk The poet and singer Diana Cole wrote her poem “Though I walk” in response to a poem entitled “Faith” by M. L. Morgan.

She has juxtaposed verses from Psalm 23 with exclamations of doubt and questioning.

These painful doubts and questions - as well as the desire for comfort represented by the beautiful and well-known psalm - are shared by the composer, Thomas Stumpf. He has set the psalm text for one S.A.T.B. group as a quiet chorale, the passionate confessional words for a second, antiphonal S.A.T.B. group in more complex contrapuntal textures. The composition was originally written in response to a call for scores by the Pharos Music Project and performed by them in New York City in 2005. A slightly revised version is being premiered by C4 at these performances.— Thomas Stumpf THOMAS STUMPF is one of Boston’s bestknown and most versatile musicians. His compositions have appeared on programs throughout the U.S. as well as in Russia and Germany. He won the Kahn Award for his musical theater project “Dark Lady,” one section of which was recorded by soprano Joan Heller on the Albany label.

He is Director of Music at Follen Church in Lexington, where he conducts the adult and youth choirs in repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Messiaen and Duke Ellington. He also directs a Gilbert and Sullivan opera every June with the Follen Youth and Junior Choirs; and was the Artistic Director of Prism Opera for 15 years. His career as a solo and collaborative pianist has spanned four continents and he is featured on seven CDs. He has taught piano, chamber music and art song repertoire at Boston University, the New England

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Gleams of a Remoter World

...if a tree falls in the woods... The double choir configuration of Bingham’s construction is a doorway into Shelley’s depiction of the tail-chasing nature of exploring the human psyche. In “Mont Blanc” (the Shelley poem from which Bingham borrows but a morsel of lines), the poet muses on nature, on human nature, and ultimately on humanity’s limits and what lies beyond our scope of understanding. We move in between a life veiled from certainty and one in which clarity comes in the form of visions. Whether those visions are a part of our waking experience or a dream state is hard to say, and nature, the well of wisdom, governs and reflects our wanderings.

Bingham’s setting utilizes text painting in moments like “sonno e morte, schlaf und tod” (“sleep and death” in languages heard spoken around Mont Blanc, in Switzerland) that reflect distant mountain peaks, and “far, far above” that provides a sonic, snow-like veil. The text painting elements add sonic layers to Shelley’s clouded depiction and the piece ultimately expands Shelley’s chief inquiry: “And what were thou, and earth,

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Some say that gleams of a remoter world visit the soul in sleep-that death is slumber.

Sonno e morte, Schlaf und Tod Sleep and death

Hana/Blossom

Hana/Blossom was written for a C4 program entitled “Not Dead Yet”, a concert of works based on reimaginings of existing music.

The main inspiration behind my work is the isorhythmic motet, in particular that of the Medieval French composer Guillaume de Machaut. Isorhythm is a device whereby rhythmic and melodic patterns repeat themselves, not together, but rather at offset intervals, generating new music without sacrificing unity. Machaut was also fond of setting different texts, often in different languages, simultaneously in the same piece. My twist on this was to present a haiku in its original Japanese (sung by the men) simultaneously alongside its English translation (sung by the women).

The differing textures of the two groups emphasize the otherness of the 2 languages: The men sing essentially a harmonically expanded 3-part isorhythmic motet; the women’s part by contrast is more updated, comparatively homophonic, enhanced by slides and stutter effects. The two groups also sing in different keys for most of the piece. There is a brief moment of harmonic reconciliation, but it is fleeting, and the men end alone, quietly questioning perhaps the same text they are singing. — Jonathan David

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Conservatory of Music, UMassLowell and Tufts University. He is also the author of a collection of essays, “A Sounding Mirror,” published by Higganum Hill Books in 2005.

A Response to “Faith” for M. L. Morgan Though I walk Under the shadow of grave imagine an unexpected transparency in the shadow of death in blinding doubt, my faith in flesh flailing, I awake in the darkness of the sixth to ninth hour.

I will fear No fault – no redemption no savior – annihilation. no evil My thinking a thin reed of vinegar and gall. thy rod and staff Brood the silence the final cadence the never ending counterpoint of options.

I long like night for morning, angles of light, arms, angels, another life they comfort me.

Diana Cole

modern society (perhaps as he rides the subway here in New York). “Burning tv song” is a song to the isolation that can come from density.

The second and fourth movements are set to texts taken from an interview of David Simon (creator of The Wire) by journalist Bill Moyers, which aired in April 2009 on PBS. “Casino” sets Simon’s response to Moyers’ question: “why do you think that we tolerate such gaps between rich and poor?” “They get it” addresses the idea that there is a large segment of our population - Simon guesses ten to fifteen percent - whose existence is unnecessary to the American economy, especially those who “are undereducated, that have been ill served by the inner city school system, that have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy.” Until there is a place for them in the American ideal, Simon posits, drug trafficking and other illegal activity will provide a more viable financial option.

The final movement, “We cannot leave”, is set to the translation of a black South African Anti-Apartheid song, the original words of which are in Xhosa. — Ted Hearne TED HEARNE is a composer, conductor and performer of new music. His work Katrina Ballads is the recipient of the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize in composition, and his piece Cordavi and Fig was recently praised

by Allan Kozinn of the New York Times as “fresh and muscular.” Ted’s music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Calder Quartet, The Knights, and New York City Opera; heard at the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Carlsbad Music Festival, and LPR’S Sleeping Giant; and commissioned by Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion, San Francisco’s Volti Choral Arts Laboratory, Charleston’s New Music Collective, Newspeak, Huntsville Symphony, Albany Symphony and Ensemble ACJW. Ted is the artistic director of Yes is a World, resident conductor of Red Light New Music, and for five years was composer-in-residence

of the Chicago Children’s Choir. He served as music director for the premieres of David Lang’s opera Anatomy Theatre (performed

by ICE, 2005), Michael Gordon’s Lightning at our Feet (BAM Next Wave Festival, 2008), and Bryan Senti’s From the margins, this, unmentioned (Brooklyn Lyceum, 2009); as well as the American premieres of Constantine Koukias’s Prayer Bells and Beat Fürrer’s Gaspra. Ted has received the 2008 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in Fall 2009, and recently completed collaborations with composer J.G. Thirlwell and renowned filmmaker Bill Morrison. His album Katrina Ballads was released in August 2010 on New Amsterdam Records. Upcoming commissions include works for DITHER Electric Guitar Quartet, Toomai String Quintet, and a new work for Yale Glee Club and Yale Symphony Orchestra to premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 2011.

i’ll play by those rules.

David Simons Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) (Broadcast April 17, 2009) 3. burning tv song flashing window empty street burning tv song flashing window empty street burning tv song flashing window empty street burning tv song stay Ted Hearne

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Privilege Privilege is a collection of five short pieces, commissioned by San Francisco’s excellent contemporary music choir, Volti. I wrote the texts for the first and third movements.

They are meant to be miniature snapshots of contemporary consciousness. “Motive/ mission” captures a flash of self-questioning that interrupts the thought-stream of an ambitious and conscientious member of

1. motive/mission motive/mission you were always fair you were almost always kind weren’t you? you always reached out your hand you almost always refused to lie didn’t you? you wouldn’t shut your shining eyes would you?

Ted Hearne

4. they get it we pretend to need them we pretend to educate the kids but we don’t and they’re not foolish they get it David Simons 5. we cannot leave we cannot leave this land of our ancestors on this earth we are being killed by the monster on this earth shuku shuku [the sound of the train] i want to get on the train to get on the train in the morning i want oh mother, it’s leaving me behind!

“As’ Kwaz’ uKuhamba” Traditional Xhosa anti-Apartheid song Translated by Patiswa Nombona and Mollie Stone, 2003

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2. casino it’s almost like a casino you’re looking at the guy winning, you’re looking at the guy who pulled the lever and all the bells go off and all the coins are coming out of a one-armed bandit and you’re thinking that could be me.

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Daniel Andor started playing piano at four and studied composition and piano at The Purcell School of Music, London.

His compositions won a number of awards and have been performed internationally, and he was featured by the Society for the Promotion of New Music during 2000–2002. As he felt drawn to making music with others, he took up trombone and conducting. Orchestral conducting kept him busy during his years at the University of Cambridge, where he lingered vigorously until he received his PhD in physics in 2005.

Daniel now finds himself in New York, contemplating the receiving end of music: researching hearing and its neuro-physiology.

the opportunity to live and compose in Copland’s home in upstate New York for five weeks in the summer of 2002. Since 1992 he has been on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. His Symphonia brevis, commissioned by the Riverside Symphony, received its premiere under the direction of George Rothman in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on February 12, 2010. Biggs is currently composing a song cycle on religious poetry Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, for soprano Susan Narucki.

In December of 2006 his String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away (2004) was given its premiere at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall by the Avalon String Quartet as part of the 2006-2007 season of the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society; it was recorded by the Avalon String Quartet in 2008, and was recently released on Albany Records. Biggs’s music is published by C. F. Peters Corporation, APNM (Association for the Promotion of New Music) and Margun Music, Inc. www.hayesbiggs.com

composer, Tim focused for a time on music for the theatre. His Curious George toured nationally for over ten years. His songs have been showcased at the the BMI Workshop, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, the Donnell Library ‘Songbook’ and - most recently - in A Trace of Love, a complete concert of his songs at the Manhattan Movement and Arts Center. On the classical side, Tim worked toward a masters degree at The Manhattan School of Music with Nils Vigeland and studied further with J. Mark Stambaugh and John Corigliano. His Epitaph (Songs on Poems of Dorothy Parker) was recorded

by Metropolitan Opera mezzo Theadora Hanslowe. With C4, Tim’s piece for choir and tape Drip Dream was premiered in May of this year. Tim has also led C4 as a conductor including premiere performances of Joseph Rubinstein’s How She Went To Ireland and Jocelyn Hagen’s Ophelia.

Tim’s church music includes Christ Our Passover and Eloi, Lama Sabbachtani, both commissioned through and premiered by the choir and instrumentalists of The Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York.

Village Singers and Music Director for the Morningside Heights-based chorus, Howl! His music has received awards from ASCAP, the Americas Vocal Ensemble, and the Global Network of Conservatories. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he studied composition with John Bavicchi and Don McDonnell at the Berklee College of Music.

He is published by Oxford University Press.

His music is also available through his website. www.jonathandavidmusic.com

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In addition to conducting, singing and occasionally composing for C4, Christopher Baum is the Music Director of the Manhattan Wind Ensemble, an Associate Conductor of Columbia Summer Winds, and the tenor section leader at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea. He received his BA in Classical Guitar from San Jose State University and his MM in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Denver. www.christopherbaum.com

James Bilodeau grew up in the Adirondacks.

He spent his youth singing in church choirs, school choruses and several musicals. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Production and Technology from the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, CT. At Hartt he also studied choral arts and conducting with Dr. Edward Bolkovac and voice with Janine Hawley and Janet Alcorn.

Since moving to New York, James has sung with the Empire City Men’s Chorus under Dr. Jonathan Babcock and with C4.

Professionally, he works as a Talk Radio Imaging Producer for Sirius XM Radio.

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Hayes Biggs was born in Huntsville, Alabama and raised in Helena, Arkansas.

He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Columbia University.

His teachers included Don Freund, Mario Davidovsky, Jack Beeson, Fred Lerdahl and Donald Erb. Biggs has been a fellow in composition at the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley, at the Tanglewood Music Center, at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts and at the MacDowell Colony. Among his honors are a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, as well as the 2001 Aaron Copland Award, which afforded him

Timothy Brown has been a choral music professional for over 25 years, directing and singing with high school, church, community, and chamber choirs. As a

Composer Jonathan David has been described as “an important emerging musical voice” in the worlds of choral music, musictheatre, and art song. He has pending song commissions from Jay Barksdale (soprano/ piano) and Daniel Neer (baritone/harp).

Past commissions have come from the New York Treble Singers, Glass Menagerie and the Thanks-Giving Foundation. Highlights of the 2010-2011 season include the November premieres of Alleluia and Evening Song, both finalists in the Shoreline Community Chorale (CT) Composition Competition; the west coast premiere of Fantasy on Medieval Carols by the Mountainside Master Chorale (Claremont, CA); the January premiere of Even in Darkness by the Juilliard Pre-College Chorus; and The Marshes of Glynn, a major choral work to be premiered

by C4 in June. David has served as Composer-in-Residence for The Greenwich

Franny Geller is a boy soprano in a dress and an aspiring ornithologist. A choral addict since childhood, Franny has passed through such New York City ensembles as Trinity Wall Street Choir, St. Bartholomew’s Choir, the Pharos Music Project, Canticum Novum Singers, and Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, with whom she appears on two recent releases: Lisa Bielawa’s A Handful of World and Yumiko Matsuoka’s To Every Thing There is a Season. She is currently a member of the Bach Vespers Choir at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, and of Guildsingers, a quartet devoted to Medieval music. Franny has also pulled a couple of musical all-nighters, once for the New York premiere of John Tavener’s Veil of the Temple, and again to close the 2008 Bang On a Can Summer Marathon with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Stimmung, as a member of Toby Twining Music.

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Karen Goldfeder has sung with ensembles from Musica Sacra to The Screaming Headless Torsos in genres spanning jazz, oratorio, new music, free improvisation, early music, folk, opera, musical theatre, and R&B. She has performed and recorded with New York Virtuoso Singers, Voices of Ascension, New York Treble Singers, the Bard Festival Chorale, and the Gregg Smith Singers. Her contemporary opera credits include John Adam’s Death of Klinghoffer at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel at Merkin Hall with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra.

Oratorio and early music solos appearances include the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, the Stravinsky Mass, and the Pergolesi Stabat Mater.

Her jazz resume includes appearances with Bobby McFerrin, Jay Clayton, Julian Priester, Jeff Watts, Benny Green, Patrick Zimmerli, Frank London, Dave Fiuczynski, and Abbey Lincoln and with her own band at festivals including Vancouver Jazz, Bumbershoot in Seattle, and the Edinburgh Fringe. Her compositions and arrangements have been performed by the New York Treble Singers, the Marble Collegiate Church Sanctuary Choir, the Choir of St. Francis of Assisi, Kiitos: a vocal quartet, and The Todd Reynolds String Quartet. She recently completed music for the short film Letters Home (directed by Melissa Hacker), screening November 30, 2010 at the IFC Center in NYC.

bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, where she was enrolled in the Institute for Early Music, studying voice with Paul Elliott. She has had singing engagements with the New York based contemporary music group Alarm Will Sound. She enjoys living in New York City, where she is soprano section leader at Holy Apostles’ Episcopal Church, directed by David Hurd.

groups including the Columbia University Bach Society, the International Vocal Arts Workshop, and WorldMuse. He graduated with a BA in Music from Columbia University in 2008, and currently works on composer and new music promotion for a major music publisher.

Karen Siegel grew up harmonizing doowop tunes with her family, and went on to study voice, piano, cello, and eventually composition. She holds a Master’s degree in Composition from NYU, where she studied with Marc Antonio Consoli, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Yale.

Additional studies include coursework with Conrad Cummings at the Juilliard Evening Division and vocal instruction with Lavinia Bertotti and Claudine Ansermet at the Fondazione Italiana di Musica Antica in Urbino, Italy. Her works have been commissioned by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Trio Eos, and the Matrix Music Collaborators, and performed by the new music ensemble Cygnus. Currently, Karen is a PhD candidate in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she studies with Tania León and was recently awarded the Robert Starer Award for composition. www.karensiegel.com

She has never studied composition formally, but she has studied voice with such notable divas as Phyllis Curtin and Lili Chookasian, at Boston University and Yale. She has sung and recorded premieres by such innovators as Toby Twining and John Zorn, so she’s been heard on WNYC’s “New Sounds” a number of times; she has also appeared on New York City Opera’s VOX program of new operas twice, in Gordon Beeferman’s The Rat Land. She has sung with numerous ensembles in New York and elsewhere, under conductors such as Sarah Caldwell, Robert Shaw, and James Levine. Singing with C4, however, is unique, in that its members’ interests and experience are at least as eclectic as her own.

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David Harris is a freelance conductor, composer, singer and instrumentalist.

His compositions range from large-scale choral works to songs and instrumental pieces. He is artistic director of the New World Music Festival, music director for the Columbia University Glee Club and The Brearley Singers, a member of C4 the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective and a teacher with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy and the Collegiate School. He is also an active theater musician, having worked with the Brooklyn Theater Arts Project in the fall of 2009 and as music director and orchestrator for the premiere of Carly and Chad Howard’s Hansel and Gretel: An Indie-Folk Musical with the Sparrowtree Theater Company. He has six recordings available on iTunes and CDBaby. www.davidharrismusic.net

Elizabeth Marker is an accomplished musician who has devoted the major portion of her career to the advancement of choral music. She holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from Boston University where she studied with Mary Davenport and coached with Alan Rodgers. She has sung with many notable choral groups including Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Russian Chamber Chorus and Cantori New York.

In 1987, Elizabeth was invited to sing with the Oregon Repertory Singers representing the United States at the 26th Choral Singing Festival in Kärnten, Austria where the group won both the Folk and Classical Repertoire competitions. Elizabeth performed in many Robert Shaw Choral Workshops at Carnegie Hall and was a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers. She has served as section leader at The Church of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal) and been a member of the professional choir at St. Ignatius of Antioch (Episcopal). As a soloist, Elizabeth can be heard on two recordings: My Heart is Ready, music of Yuri Yukechev (Russian Chamber Chorus), and, as the Mother of Iseut, in Le vin herbé by Frank Martin (I Cantori di New York).

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Magdalen Kadel sang for many years in the Girls’ Choir and in the Choir of Men and Boys at Trinity Episcopal Church, Princeton, where she served as head girl under the direction of John Bertalot. She received her

Joseph Rubinstein sings with C4 and the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. He is a passionate supporter of contemporary music and has been involved in many premieres of pieces by young and emerging composers.

A composer himself, his works have been featured at festivals such as the Bowdoin International Music Festival and The Yale Summer Festival at Norfolk, and by

Melissa Wozniak is currently working on her thesis for her M.M. in Music History and Literature from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she also taught music appreciation. While in Mississippi, she appeared as a soprano soloist in Bach’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and Derr’s I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Melissa has performed with the Southern Chorale, the Southern Mississippi Chamber Singers, and the Hattiesburg (MS) Civic Chorale The Meistersingers, as well as the USM Vocal Jazz Ensemble. In 2005 Melissa earned a B.M.E. in Music Education from SUNY Fredonia.

Onstage performances include L’Orfeo (Fury), and choral roles in I Pagliacci, The Merry Widow, L’Elisir d’Amore, and Candide.

Last year Melissa was the recipient of both the DAAD Intensive Language Course Grant which enabled her to live and study in Berlin for 8 weeks, and the Sigma Alpha Iota Professional Development Grant, which provided assistance for three weeks of musicological study in Vienna with her mentor Edward Hafer. Melissa is a member of the American Musicological Society and Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity. She is now living and teaching on Long Island with her husband David, a saxophonist.

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Martha Sullivan’s music has been praised as “vibrant” and “a singer’s favorite”.

She has been commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Esoterics and numerous others, in cities as far-flung as Tokyo, Reno, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Zurich. She has received several Meet the Composer grants for her work with Gregg Smith and recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work with the Esoterics. She was a medalist in the Sorel Medallion competition in 2009, in which Voices of Ascension premiered her music at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, and she won the Dale Warland Singers’ Choral Ventures competition in its final year (2003).