Yale Concert Band, Feb 15, 2019, Woolsey Hall

Yale Concert Band Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director

In Thrall

arx duo, guest artists Friday, February 15, 2019 at 7:30 pm

Woolsey Hall, Yale University

CHEN YI JENNIFER HIGDON CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS CHRIS BRUBECK CHRISTOPHER SAINSBURY TED HEARNE

Spring Festival (2001) Rhythm Stand (2004)

Christian Fernandez BF 20, guest conductor Sweet Like That (2011)

Beatrice Brown PC 19, guest conductor Ghost Walk (2009) The Magic of This Dawn (2016) In Thrall (2019) (world premiere)*

feat. arx duo

Garrett Arney, percussion

Mari Yoshinaga, percussion

~ Intermission ~ Presentation: Yale Band Centennial 1918-2018/9 Address: Andrew Wolf, Director, City of New Haven Arts, Culture and Tourism WILLIAM GRANT STILL arr. Dane Teter H. OWEN REED

Summerland (2013) La Fiesta Mexicana (1954)

I. Prelude and Aztec Dance

II. Mass

III. Carnival

*This commission was funded in part by the Robert Flanagan Yale Band Commissions Endowment Fund. The Robert Flanagan Yale Band Commissions Endowment Fund is a resource that has made it possible for the Yale Bands to commission new and exciting music. Ted Hearne and arx duo appear tonight in part with support from the Rosamonde Safier Yale Band Endowment, established in honor of Rosamonde Safier, a piano prodigy and Tin Pan Alley song composer, to support collaborations between the Yale Bands and the professional world.

About Tonight’s Music

Spring Festival (2001) CHEN YI (b. 1953)

Chen Yi wrote Spring Festival for the most important Chinese celebration of the year, New Year or Yüan Tan, a fifteen-day event. Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival because it marks the time when winter ends and spring is close at hand. This festival begins on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar.

On a western calendar, the date usually falls between the end of January and the beginning of February.

The composer drew her melodic ideas for Spring Festival from a southern Chinese folk ensemble piece called Lion Playing Ball. The form of the music is constructed using a mathematical scheme called the Golden Section – a mathematical construct based on the ratio known as phi (or π). The ratio is equal to 1.61803, and was thought by ancient civilizations to be a perfect proportion most pleasing to the eye. When the ratio of line segments, geometric shapes, objects in nature, or proportions in a building is equal to 1.6, it is called the “golden ratio.”

Chen Yi went two steps further. She constructed a Golden Section within the larger (45 measure) Golden Section which ends at measure 27; the Negative Section [smaller of the two parts of a Golden Section] begins at measure 28 where the clarinet takes the melody for the first time. The first 28 measures of music are further subdivided into a Golden Section, with the Negative Section beginning at measure 17 where the brass play the second phrase of the melody.

Math and music work together well in this spirited, ringing celebration of the Chinese New Year. Gongs and cymbals make it exciting. Crisp articulation, rhythmic syncopation, and uneven phrases enhance the style and spirit of the music.

Rhythm Stand (2004) JENNIFER HIGDON (b. 1962) Rhythm Stand pays tribute to the constant presence of rhythm in our lives, from the pulse of a heart beating to the rhythmic sounds of the world around us. Celebrating the “regular order” we all experience, Jennifer Higdon incorporates traditional and non-traditional sounds within a 4/4-meter U.S. style swing. Organized in unique compositional and rhythmic patterns, this work invites performers and listeners alike to explore multiple ways of organizing sounds and making music.

In the composer’s own words: “Since rhythm is everywhere, not just in music (ever listened to the tires of a car running across pavement, or a train on railroad tracks?), I’ve incorporated sounds that come not from the instruments that you might find in a band, but from ‘objects’ that sit nearby... music stands and pencils! Music stands are played with pencils, which are both ‘objects’ at hand. Not only that, but some of the performers in this piece get even more basic... they snap their fingers. Because music can be any kind of sound arranged into an interesting pattern, I decided to add sounds that you wouldn’t normally hear coming from band instruments, sounds which are created out of ordinary things that might be sitting nearby. Composing is merely the job of combining interesting sounds into interesting patterns. And interesting patterns create cool rhythms. So ... I’m making a STAND FOR RHYTHM!”

YALE CONCERT BAND Sweet Like That (2011) CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS (b. 1967) Christopher Theofanidis regularly writes for a variety of musical genres, from orchestral and chamber music to opera and ballet. His work Rainbow Body, which is loosely based on a melodic fragment of Hildegard of Bingen, has been programmed by over 120 orchestras internationally. Mr. Theofanidis’ works have been performed by such groups as the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and he has a long-standing relationship with the Atlanta Symphony and Maestro Robert Spano. Mr. Theofanidis is currently on the faculty of the Yale School of Music and has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School.

His work Sweet Like That, is dedicated to the students of Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School located on Kimberly Avenue in New Haven. In consulting with students at the school, Mr. Theofanidis found that the brass players wanted to use mutes, percussionists asked for several unusual instruments (such as whistle and vibraslap), and the tuba player asked to be featured, as one hears in the low brass emphasis of the opening measures.

Ghost Walk (2009) CHRIS BRUBECK (b. 1952) Chris Brubeck continues to distinguish himself as an innovative performer and composer. During the 1970s he began touring and recording with his father, Dave Brubeck. Chris plays bass, trombone, piano, guitar and sings and, in the past few decades, has earned international acclaim as composer, performer and leader of his own groups. On stage, his irrepressible enthusiasm is matched by his fluid command of jazz, blues, folk, funk, pop and classical musical styles. An award-winning composer, he is tuned into the pulse of contemporary music.

Chris Brubeck wrote Ghost Walk as part of his BandQuest residency at West Rocks Middle School in Norwalk, Connecticut. The piece combines Brubeck’s lifelong experiences with both jazz and classical idioms, creating a work that’s as fun to play as it is to hear. The title was inspired by the wedding of Brubeck’s son at Gettysburg College, which hosts a “ghost walk,” as well as the minor mode and haunting atmosphere of the piece.

The Magic of This Dawn (2016) CHRISTOPHER SAINSBURY (b. 1963) Christopher Sainsbury has made a sustained contribution to Australian music basing himself in both professional and community music arenas for many years. As part of his practice he focuses on interpreting his home region in sound, seeking out influences from his ‘aural homelands’ of the Central Coast and Sydney where he lived for decades, referencing these in his music. This stems from his Australian Indigenous heritage, being a descendant of Australia’s first settled Indigenous people – the Dharug (also known as Eora) of Sydney and surroundings.

In The Magic of This Dawn, Mr. Sainsbury takes inspiration from Jay Sigmund’s poem “Morning Mists on the Wapsipinicon,” which speaks to the dispossession of

First Nations Peoples, the indigenous peoples of what is today recognized as Canada. Sainsbury draws on Sigmund’s regionalism and his own Australian Aboriginal heritage to pay homage to “the idea of the whole universe expressed in your own place.”

In Thrall (2019) TED HEARNE (b. 1982) Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist Ted Hearne draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music’s full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his “tough edge and wildness of spirit,” and “topical, politically sharp-edged works.” Pitchfork called Hearne’s work “some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory – from any genre,” and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne’s music “holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact.”

In Thrall focuses on the interdependency of different groups. Two solo percussionists shift their weight in time against each other, see-sawing polyrhythms. The ensemble behind them pulses in sound clouds that ebb and flow, demarcating disparate but interlocking periods of time.

The percussionists play mostly cymbals, slipping in and out of audible articulation by controlling the degree to which the instrument is dampened or allowed to ring, and by varying the location on the instrument that is being struck. Led by this cymbal sound, but echoed in all instruments, the music highlights confounding moments when clearly different pulses fuse into one sound.

The title is drawn from a 2017 lecture by Judith Butler, “The Human Condition.” In it, Butler asks us to consider “a set of relations without which there is no self” — “The self is not a bounded entity, but as something that is bound to others. As bound up with others alternatively, bound and unbound, the self is a set of relations, is nothing outside those relations, and even in referring to itself it is referring to nothing other than those set of relations that make survival possible.

The term bound carries complex resonances here. If the self is bounded, it is discrete, defined by its boundary, and so defined precisely by what differentiates that self from others. If the self is bound to others, then it is in thrall, in relationship, and there is no in itself and no boundary that establishes the self as a discrete entity. Indeed, the self is always negotiating the loss of its discreteness, its boundary, and this is an invariable feature of its sociality.

And though we might think in commonsensical ways that we will lose the “self” if we lose our “boundary” — most Americans feel that way, for whatever reason — it is surely more fundamentally true that if we are unable to lose or loosen the boundary, we cannot live in relations with others, which means that we cannot live.”

YALE CONCERT BAND Summerland (2013) WILLIAM GRANT STILL (1895-1978) (arr. Dane Teter) William Grant Still was one of the most important American composers of the early 20th century, with over 150 works, including five symphonies and eight operas to his name. Often termed “the Dean” of African-American composers, Still was the first African-American composer to secure extensive publication and significant performances. His works represent the culmination of musical aspirations of the Harlem Renaissance, in that they “elevated” folkloric materials. Such a concept, however, had been employed occasionally by earlier figures, including Harry T. Burleigh (1868-1949), Clarence Cameron White (1880-1960), R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943), and Still’s Afro-British model and cultural hero, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912).

Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, and his early days were spent in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother moved after his father’s early death. His stepfather was a record collector, and those early opera discs and Still’s violin studies stimulated the youth’s interest in music.

On graduation from high school, Still planned to study for a medical career, but his love of music was intensified at Wilberforce College in Ohio, and especially at Oberlin, where he heard a full orchestra for the first time. Still would go on to become the first African American to have conducted a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra, and the first to have an opera performed by a major company.

His classical work, Summerland, originally the second of Three Visions (1936) for piano, is recast here for band.

The harmonies in these Visions are strange. By them, the listener is aware that the “visions” are real only to the dreamer. As music, they exemplify the scope of Still’s musical individuality. Still has given us strongly contrasted moods, unified by his own personal idiom and by his spiritual concept of the music he creates. Calm and relaxed, Summerland evokes a quiet, warm afternoon.

La Fiesta Mexicana (1954) H. OWEN REED (1910 - 2014) This work was written after Reed had spent a year in Mexico studying folk music and composing on a Guggenheim Fellowship. The entire work depicts a religious festival dedicated to La Virgen, the Virgin Mary, and depicts the rich simultaneities of such a celebration. It is both serious and comical, festive and solemn, devout and pagan, boisterous and tender.

The first movement is a prelude opening with the traditional pealing of church bells and the noise of fireworks announcing the beginning of the celebration. The main part of the movement represents a midday parade (announced by the trumpets) and seeks to pay homage to Aztec peoples, drawing on traditional music.

The second movement, titled Mass, is of a serious liturgical nature. The principal theme is chant-like and is set amid coloristic sections representing the tolling of the church bells.

The last movement, titled Carnival, is given over to unceasing entertainment and celebration. At the beginning of the movement we hear the itenerant circus, the market, the bull fight, the town band, and finish with a section inspired by mariachi music.

About Tonight’s Guest Artists Aspiring to expand the genre of percussion chamber music, arx duo is dedicated to the creation and presentation of new works, as well as the education and engagement of young artists and audiences. They have had premiere performances throughout the globe, conducted workshops on three continents, and worked with a variety of innovators to bring new creations to audiences everywhere.

This April, Mari and Garrett will release their first album with NonClassical Records featuring the Harmonic Canon by Dominic Murcott.

The duo has been lucky enough to work on this project — played on a double-sided half-ton bell — and give its premiere at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the U.K. November of 2017. This summer, they will perform as the Ensemble in Residence at Artosphere Music Festival and Kingston Chamber Music Festival, where they will perform a brand new work for String Quartet and Two Percussion by Composer Jonathan Bailey Holland, as well as play a featured concert of their own repertoire. In the Fall, they will premiere a new work by rising star Nick Diberardino, in collaboration with pianists Amy Yang and Qing Jiang. As members of The Percussion Collective Robert van Sice, now in its opening season, they premiered Garth Neustadter’s Seaborne alongside their established colleagues, and look forward to performing new works

by Alejandro Vinao, Christopher Theofanidis, and many more.

Mari and Garrett served as artists in residence at Michigan State University, and currently are Faculty at the Young Artist Summer Program at Curtis Summerfest.

Mari received her Bachelor of Music degree from Curtis Institute of Music, and Garrett received his Bachelor of Music from Michigan State and Master of Music from The Peabody Conservatory. The both met at Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Robert van Sice, where Mari received her Master of Music Degree, and Garrett an Artist Diploma. They proudly endorse Vic Firth Drumsticks, Evans Drumheads, Pearl Percussion, and Adams Musical Instruments.

YALE CONCERT BAND

About the Music Director Thomas C. Duffy (b. 1955) is Professor (Adjunct) of Music and Director of University Bands at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982.

He has established himself as a composer, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a leader. His interests and research range from non-tonal analysis to jazz, from wind band history to creativity and the brain. Under his direction, the Yale Bands have performed at conferences of the College Band Directors National Association and New England College Band Association; for club audiences at NYC’s Village Vanguard and Iridium, Ronnie Scotts’s (London), and the Belmont (Bermuda); performed as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in twenty-three countries in the course of twenty international tours.

Duffy produced a two-year lecture/performance series, Music and the Brain, with the Yale School of Medicine; and, with the Yale School of Nursing, developed a musical intervention to train nursing students to better hear and identify body sounds with the stethoscope. He combined his interests in music and science to create a genre of music for the bilateral conductor - in which a “split-brained conductor” must conduct a different meter in each hand, sharing downbeats. His compositions have introduced a generation of school musicians to aleatory, the integration of spoken/sung words and “body rhythms” with instrumental performance, and the pairing of music with political, social, historical and scientific themes.

He has been awarded the Yale Tercentennial Medal for Composition, the Elm/ Ivy Award, the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation and certificates of appreciation by the United States Attorney’s Office for his Yale 4/Peace: Rap for Justice concerts – music programs designed for social impact by using the power of music to deliver a message of peace and justice to impressionable middle and high school students.

From 1996 to 2006, he served as associate, deputy and acting dean of the Yale School of Music.

He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee, the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee, and the Grammy Foundation Music Educators Award Screening Committee, and completed the MLE program at the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. He has served as: president of the Connecticut Composers Inc., the New England College Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); editor of the CBDNA Journal, publicity chair for the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles; and chair of the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s Professional Affairs and Government Relations committees. For nine years, he represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. He is a member of American Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, the Social Science Club, and BMI. Duffy has conducted ensembles all over the world and was selected to conduct the NAFME National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

Yale University Bands P.O. Box 209048, New Haven, CT 06520-9048 ph: 203-432-4111; fax; 203-432-7213 stephanie.hubbard@yale.edu; www.yale.edu/yaleband

YALE CONCERT BAND 2018-2019 THOMAS C. DUFFY, Music Director STEPHANIE HUBBARD, Business Manager

Piccolo Valerie Duffy

Soprano Saxophone Nick DeWalt SY 21

Harp Michelle Tong MY 21

Flute Beatrice Brown PC 19* Jeremy Goldwasser MY 21 Julia Cai BR 20 Melissa Leone SY 21 Yaa Owusu JE 22 Katherine Handler TC 21 Sarah Monahan MY 21

Alto Saxophone Nick DeWalt SY 21* Flynn Chen TC 20 Jose Key TC 22

Electric Guitar Satchel Henneman YSM 20 †

Alto Flute Beatrice Brown PC 19 Oboe Ryan Tie-Shue SM 22* Madison Murphy JE 22 Eb Clarinet Alex Brod BK 19 Bb Clarinet Eric Wang PC 21 **

Keith L. Wilson Principal

Clarinet Chair Ruchira Ray TC 21 Daphne Zhu ES 22 Christian Fernandez BF 20 Jessica Oki TC 20 Madeline Bender TD 20 Heather McClure MY 20 Derek Chen TD 22 Eb Alto Clarinet Jessica Oki TC 20 Bb Bass Clarinet Ethan Dodd JE 22 Bassoon Maddy Tung TD 21* Bradford Case SM 20 Kunsang Dorjee TD 22

Bb Tenor Saxophone Antonio Medina MY 19 Eb Baritone Saxophone Sara Harris SY 19 Cornet/Trumpet (rotating) Eli Baum JE 19* James Brandfonbrener MC 21 Joseph Cho BR 22 Adam Tucker MC 21 Jacob Zavatone-Veth MY 19 French Horn (rotating) Esteban Garcia YSM 19 Miriam Huerta BF 22 Michael McNamara TD 20 Sida Tang SY 19 Trombone Elliott Smith BR 22 * Robert Howard GH 21 Luke Benz SM 19 Jordan Crimminger YSM 20 Euphonium Wil Wortley YSM 19 Tuba Josef Lawrence TC 20 * Adam Wolnikowski TC 21 Piano Julia Weiner BK 19

Electric Bass Calvin Kaleel TD 22 † String Bass Kelvin Ng YSM 19 Percussion David Zuckerman DC 20* Meshach Cornelius ES 22 Melina Delgado TD 19 Ryan Haygood BF 21 Jack McArthur MY 22 Lance Saddler MY 22 Alexandria Wynn TD 22 Andrew Zheng TD 22 Music Librarian James Brandfonbrener * principal ** Friends of Keith L. Wilson (Director of Yale Bands from 1946-1973) honored him by endowing the principal clarinet chair in the Yale Concert Band in his name. If you would like information about naming a Yale Concert Band chair, please contact the Yale Bands Office. † performing on Hearne In Thrall only

OFFICERS: David Zuckerman, President Heather McClure, General Manager Sarah Monahan, General Manager Katie Handler, Social Chair Andrew Zheng, Social Chair Ryan Haygood, Personnel Manager Miriam Huerta, Publicity Chair

Upcoming Yale Bands Performances • Monday, February 25, 2019: Yale Jazz Ensemble Winter Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Charts by Lou Donaldson, Jackie McLean, Curtis Fuller, Duke Pearson. 7:30 pm, Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. Free.

• Sunday, March 31, 2019: Stan Wheeler and Marcia Chambers Memorial Jazz Concert. Yale Jazz Ensemble, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director, and the Reunion Jazz Ensemble. 2:00 pm, Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street. Free.

• Friday, April 12, 2019: Yale Concert Band Spring Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. The Rite of Spring (Igor Stravinsky/Terry Vosbein), Symphony No. 1 (Frank Ticheli), 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free.

• Monday, April 15, 2019: Yale Jazz Ensemble in New York. Feat. Wayne Escoffery and Randy Brecker. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director.

7:30 pm and 9:30 pm. Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Lincoln Center, New York City. Tickets: www.jazz.org/dizzys or call 212-258-9595.

• Sunday, May 19, 2019: Yale Concert Band Annual Twilight Concert. Ceremonial music on the eve of Yale’s Commencement. 7:00 pm, outside on the Old Campus. Free.