Albagli & Friends

2021 -22

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Photo: Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come by Jake Armour

for a full listing of this season’s events.

Department of Music and Theatre University at Albany presents:

Albagli and Friends: The Song of the Blue Whale Richard Albagli & William Lauricella with Bailey Yerdon

Monday, February 11, 2022 at 7pm

Recital Hall UAlbany Performing Arts Center

Program Have you heard the Blue Whale’s Song Have you heard this song of passion and deep sadness rise within you…

Nagoya Marimbas (1994)

Steve Reich

Prelude and Fugue in G Major (BWV 860) *

J. S. Bach

from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (1722)

Pentad (1965)

Jack Behrens

1. Molto Rubato 2. Allegro 3. Andante 4. Moderato 5. Molto Rubato

Marimba Spiritual (1984)

Minoru Miki INTERMISSION

The Banjo (1853) * Ballade #3 in A-flat, Op. 47 (1841) Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1911) * Movement 1 Metamorphosis (1988; revised 2005) 1. Awakening 2. Fire Dance 3. Resurrection

Louis Moreau Gottschalk Frédéric Chopin Jean Sibelius Richard Albagli

“…and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” (Yeats)

It is our Life to know this Song and our Love as one. * Arranged by Richard Albagli

The Performers Richard Albagli is the Principal Percussionist with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, cofounder of Associated Solo Artists, Co-Director of the Empire State Youth Percussion Ensemble and a member of the music faculty of the University at Albany. He has appeared as soloist or co-soloist many times with the Albany Symphony including works by Creston, Bartok, Hovhaness and Russell Peck.

As co-founder of Associated Solo Artists, Albagli has helped create interdisciplinary programs in the arts, sciences and humanities for schools from kindergarten through college. ASA’s trademark Concert of Ideas and its programs for the corporate and governmental sectors in leadership and creativity development have been presented in more than 20 states, Europe, Mexico, Canada and Australia.

A graduate of both RPI (physics) and the Eastman School of Music (percussion performance), he has written more than 20 works for solo percussion and percussion ensemble, along with a timpani concerto, and two works for Percussion Ensemble and chorus. As a collaborator with John Cimino and Jon Klibonoff of Associated Solo Artists, he has helped compose a dozen art songs for voice and percussion, a musical play for children entitled “The Great Dinosaur Rescue,” and a one-act opera “The Star Thrower” based on an essay by Loren Eiseley.

William Lauricella is a 15-year-old pianist, percussionist and composer. William had his first music class at 2 years old at the Music Studio in Albany, NY. He started private piano lessons at age 5, percussion lessons at age 9 and began composing music at age 11. William attends the Juilliard Pre-College program. He is currently a piano student of Juilliard Pre-College teacher, Orli Shaham. William is a percussion student of Richard Albagli. He also studies percussion at Juilliard Pre-college with Pablo Rieppi, Jonathan Haas, Michael Truesdell and Ian Sullivan. William is a member of the Empire State Youth Orchestra’s Youth Percussion Ensemble under the direction of Richard Albagli and Mark Foster, as well as the Juilliard Pre-College Percussion Ensemble and the Juilliard PreCollege Orchestra.

William recently won first place in the 2021 Luzerne Music Center Senior Concerto Competition, as well as the 2020 ESYO Lois Lyman Concerto Competition, and the 2019 Luzerne Music Center Junior Concerto Competition. William placed second in the 2019 Leschetizky International Concerto Competition and the 2019 CDCYM Chopin Competition. In 2018, he won first place in the Schenectady Symphony Louise DeFeo Parillo Concerto Competition and the Tchaikovsky Music Competition at the New Russia Cultural Center. William was featured as the WMHT Classical Student of the month in 2019.

Bailey Yerdon is a senior at Guilderland High School. She has been a member of the Empire State Youth Percussion Ensemble for four years and the timpanist in the Empire State Youth Orchestra for two.

Selected Notes American-born composer and music educator Jack Behrens has lived most of his life in Canada, where he was associated with the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Western Ontario and the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music. The best known of his large-

scale works are “How Beautiful the Night” for chorus and the chamber opera The Lay of Thrym, based on Icelandic legend. “Pentad” for vibraphone and piano consists of 5 short movements. The opening movement is free-moving and in parts non-metrical. The second Allegro movement has rapidly moving figures in which the players often move in parallel thirds, parallel seconds and parallel sevenths and ninths. The third movement is an expansive solo for vibraphone alone. The fourth movement consists of dramatic declamatory material surrounding a jazzy, rapidly moving middle section. The final movement is a retrograde of the first.

Marimba Spiritual was written by Japanese composer Minoru Miki for the great marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe. Miki had a life-long fascination with traditional Japanese instruments and the classical traditions of his country. He was a pioneer in the composition of contemporary classical music for large ensembles of traditional Japanese musical instruments. Marimba Spiritual is in three large sections, each accompanied by different classes of percussion instruments. The opening, brooding, more free-form section is accompanied by metallic percussion; the second more rhythmic and declamatory section is accompanied by wooden percussion; and the longer final section, “owed to the ‘Chichibu Yatai Bayashi’ Festival near Tokyo is accompanied by an assortment of drums (with a cowbell thrown in for good measure). Mr. Miki appended these words to the score: “I set up the title as both static and vehement prayer by souls of sacrifices by starvation in Asia and Africa.”

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and virtuoso pianist who lived in the mid-nineteenth century. He studied in Europe --- a necessity for an American of that period --- and became well known for the “exotic” nature of his works, namely the American folk elements he brought to his writing, particularly reflecting his Cajun background. “The Banjo” clearly displays that American folk idiom and also utilizes the then newly invented piano mechanism (1829) that allowed rapid playing of repeated notes. This so-named “Parisian” style of piano playing was still the rage in Europe when Gottschalk was touring and studying there. So perhaps in today’s lexicon, “The Banjo” can be described as “Paris meets the Bayou.” More than a dozen years ago, Richard Albagli arranged this work for two marimbas. It is that version that will be performed tonight.

Metamorphosis, by Richard Albagli, was composed in 1988 for a performance right on this stage with Albagli and the (now retired) timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Duncan Patton. It is about life, death, redemption and damnation. “The first movement was taken in part from an earlier work, my contribution to The Voyage of Life, written in collaboration with John Cimino and Jon Klibonoff, based on the four-painting collection by Thomas Cole of that name. The particular painting to which this music pointed was the fourth in the series, following the ‘storms of life,’ in which a man glides in a small boat across a wide lake, with a band of angels in the distant background coming out to greet him. This image was still present in my mind when I wrote this version of the music. The second movement, “Fire Dance,” is a contrast to the first. The Bartokian-sounding theme came to me as I was walking in one of the more rural sections of Delmar on my way to the Glenmont Four-Corners Flea Market. I had to repeat it endlessly in my mind so I wouldn’t forget it before I had an opportunity to write it down. Perhaps that helped dictate the structure of the movement --- a simple folk tune played in numerous and diverse harmonies and backgrounds. The final choral movement, “Resurrection,” was composed on the top floor of West Hall on the RPI campus at 4 AM. I had the idea for the theme and only knew that I wanted to eventually transform the harmony into split-third chords --- triads with both the major and minor thirds sounding. The music began playing itself, as though I was merely transcribing what was pouring out from some unknown source. When I finally realized where it was all heading, I was both astonished and shocked. What popped into my head was the closing line of that William Butler Yeats poem, ‘and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’”

PERFORMING ARTS CENTER HOUSE POLICIES Latecomers will be seated at the discretion of the management and its staff. .

The use of photographic or recording devices of any kind during this performance is strictly prohibited. .

There is no food or drink allowed in the theatres, nor is smoking allowed in UAlbany buildings. .

To avoid disrupting the performance, kindly disable any noise making electronic devices you may have with you. .

Please take time to note the location of the fire exits nearest to you. In the event of an emergency, please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion and follow the directions of our staff.

Created and produced by the University Art Museum, NYS Writers Institute and UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC Public Radio, this popular series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their craft and their careers.

“Roundtable” host Joe Donahue conducts live on-stage interviews followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Dance in

2021-22

Albany

Coming up next:

Mark Morris Dance Group Photo by Erin Baiano

March 11, 8pm at The Egg

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