New Music New Haven

march 1, 2012 Morse Recital Hall Thursday at 8 pm artistic director Christopher Theofanidis featured composers Aaron Jay Kernis Christopher Theofanidis and music of Stephen Feigenbaum Jordan Kuspa Daniel Schlosberg Justin Tierney Matthew Welch

Robert Blocker, Dean

PROGRAM

Matthew Welch

Lagu Campur Dua Wesleyan Balinese Gamelan Mathew Welch, conductor

Jordan Kuspa

Lemonade Toccata Leonardo Gorosito, marimba

Daniel Schlosberg

Guitar Duo Graham Banfield, guitar • Alan Kulka, guitar

Christopher Theofanidis

Flow, my tears Julie Eskar, violin

Intermission

Aaron Jay Kernis

Ballad(e) out of the Blue(s) – Superstar Etude No. 3 Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano

Justin Tierney

Piano Trio Laura Keller, violin • Shinae Kim, cello Daniel Schlosberg, piano

PROFILES + NOTES

JORDAN KUSPA composer Jordan Kuspa’s music has been praised in The New York Times as “animated and melodically opulent” and “consistently alive and inspired.”

His compositions have been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony, 21st Century Consort, Xanthos Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus, Third Wheel Trio, Linden String Quartet, the Yale Camerata, and the Yale Philharmonia, among others. His works have been commissioned by the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, American Festival for the Arts Summer Conservatory, and the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band. He has been a composition fellow at June in Buffalo, MusicX, and the Chamber Music Institute at UNL. Jordan was the winner of the 2011 Pittsburgh Symphony Audience of the Future Competition, the 2010 League of Composers– ISCM Competition, and the 2007 Robert Avalon Young Composers Competition. His work Iterations was selected for the 2011 American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings. Jordan was homeschooled before entering Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He also holds the M.M. degree from the Yale School of Music, where he is pursuing his doctorate studying with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, Ingram Marshall, and Christopher Theofanidis.

Lemonade Toccata notes For a four-minute solo work, Lemonade Toccata endured an unusually long gestation. In my first year at Yale (2008), I composed a largescale suite for twelve players that I ultimately

decided was overlong. I excised the final movement and reorchestrated it. This new work premiered as Lemonade Battery in the fall of 2009. Perhaps the most memorable feature of both the chamber and orchestral versions of this piece is the extended solo marimba opening—a driving and incessant buildup of momentum that spans the first minute of the piece before the marimba is finally overtaken by the rest of the ensemble. When Leo Gorosito asked me for a solo work for his 2011 degree recital, I took the marimba solo from Lemonade Battery and imagined what would happen if the orchestra was not there to sublimate the momentum of the marimba. What would happen to all of that energy?

Lemonade Toccata is dedicated to four friends who all took part in the premieres of the several versions of this piece: Candy Chiu, John Corkill, Ian Rosenbaum, and Leo Gorosito. It was premiered by Leo Gorosito on April 10, 2011, here in Morse Recital Hall.

DANIEL SCHLOSBERG composer Originally from Philadelphia, composer and pianist Daniel Schlosberg has had works premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Encompass New Opera Theater, the Lorelei Ensemble, counter)induction, and New Triad for Collaborative Arts. He has won awards and honors from Yale, ASCAP, ACO, and NFAA. Five Stuck, his first work for large orchestra, was commissioned and premiered by the Yale Symphony Orchestra in October 2010. In February, the re-orchestrated first movement, Grosse Concerto, was read by the Buffalo Philharmonic as part of American Composers Orchestra’s EarShot series. His chamber opera, A Country Doctor, was premiered in a semistaged version in March 2009. His current projects include a new music-theater piece for the Yale Cabaret and the New Morse Code Ensemble.

Daniel regularly performs as a solo and collaborative pianist, and remains dedicated to performing works of his contemporaries.

He has played Barber’s Piano Concerto and Scriabin’s Prometheus with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous solo recitals featuring music from Scarlatti to Ustvolskaya.

In addition, he has a passion for music directing and has conducted Hansel and Gretel, Dialogues of the Carmelites, L’enfant et les sortilèges, Carousel, and Sondheim’s Passion. Recently, he was the rehearsal pianist for Sondheim’s Follies at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. before its transfer to Broadway.

Daniel graduated with a B.A. from Yale College in 2010 and is now in his first year at the Yale School of Music. He has worked with Christopher Theofanidis and currently studies with Aaron Jay Kernis and piano with HungKuan Chen.

His music has been described as “somewhat akin to eating a warm chocolate chip cookie.”

PROFILES + NOTES

JUSTIN TIERNEY composer Justin Tierney (b. 1984, New Haven, CT, the son of an electrician and brother of plumber) is finishing an Artist Diploma in music composition at Yale University, where he has studied with Aaron Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Christopher Theofanidis and Ezra Laderman.

His music was declared “superb, robust, and grand” by the Boston Globe, which avowed that “Tierney’s dark-hued music has polished, ominous richness… [and] sound-worlds that are cogent and immediate.” Regarding his aesthetic, Tierney has stated that “natural phenomena can be admired from either a scientific or aesthetic view, yet the coupling of the two modalities creates an experience greater than their sum.” An aspect of this philosophy is apparent in Tierney’s affective musical surfaces that are supported by rigorous formal structures.

Before dedicating himself to music, Tierney raced BMX (bicycles) competitively, becoming Connecticut State Champion in 1997. In high school, on a whim, he wandered into an orchestral concert (in Yale’s Woolsey Hall) for the first time (Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony) and felt “a dam break inside of me.” A performance of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps pushed him over the edge to give up his career in BMX, and abandon his philosophy major at Albertus Magnus to devote himself to music, asserting “my life started over at that point.”

Mr. Tierney has studied composition with Jeffrey Johnson and Douglas Townsend at the University of Bridgeport (B.M., 2007),

John McDonald at Tufts University (M.A., 2010), and privately with Ryan Vigil. He also studied violin, programed robots to play violin with Kurt Coble, and studied cello with In-Hwa Lee. Tierney is currently Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of Bridgeport and a teaching fellow at Yale College in music composition. He lives in West Haven with his wife Michiko and their two retired greyhounds.

Trio notes The Piano Trio, composed between 10/30/2010 and 01/03/2012, is cast in a single twentyminute movement. Tonight’s performance is dedicated to Daniel Schlosberg, Laura Keller, and Shinae Kim, whose labor and love have brought the music to life.

MATTHEW WELCH composer Regarded as “a composer possessed of both rich imagination and the skill to bring his fancies to life” by Time Out New York, composer and bagpipe virtuoso Matthew Welch (b.1976) holds two degrees in music composition, a BFA from Simon Fraser University (1999), and an MA from Wesleyan University (2001), having studied with noted composers such as Barry Truax, Rodney Sharman, Alvin Lucier, and Anthony Braxton. After locating to New York City in 2001, he has worked with a host of other artists such as John Zorn, Julia Wolfe, Zeena Parkins, and Ikue Mori. His eclectic interests in Scottish bagpipe music, Balinese gamelan, minimalism, improvisation, and rock converge in compositional amalgams ranging from traditional-like bagpipe tunes to electronic pieces, improvisation strategies and fully notated works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and non-western instruments. Since 2002, Mr. Welch has been running and composing for his own eclectic ensemble, Blarvuster, whose repertoire The New York Times has claimed as “border-busting music; original and catchy.” Mr. Welch has recorded for the Tzadik, Mode, Cantaloupe, Leo, Porter, Muud, Avian, Newsonic, and Parallactic labels.

Lagu Campur Dua notes In an experiment of cross-cultural confusion, Scottish and Balinese aesthetics collide in a chemistry experiment gone awry. New interlocking figures and melodic monads played on experimental gender wayang in a full pelog tuning–variations on the instruments that accompany the shadow play.

PROFILES + NOTES

CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS composer Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967) 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, London Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and he has a longstanding relationship with the Atlanta Symphony and Maestro Robert Spano. His Symphony No. 1 has just been released by that orchestra on disc.

Mr. Theofanidis has written widely for the stage, from a work for the American Ballet Theatre, to multiple dramatic pieces, including The Refuge for the Houston Grand Opera and Heart of a Soldier with Donna DiNovelli for San Francisco Opera. His large-scale piece The Here and Now was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2007.

Mr. Theofanidis is currently on the faculty of Yale University and has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School. He is also a fellow of the U.S.-Japan’s Leadership Program. Mr. Theofanidis upcoming works include the opera Siddhartha for Houston Grand Opera, a work for the Miró String Quartet for Chamber Music Monterey Bay in collaboration with multimedia artist Bill Viola, a solo piano work for the fiftieth anniversary of the Van Cliburn Competition, and a evening-length oratorio called Creation/ Creator for the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus. » www.theofanidismusic.com

Flow, my tears notes Flow, my tears (1997) was written as a work in memoriam Jacob Druckman, who passed away after a fight with cancer in 1996. Mr. Druckman was one of my mentors during my time here at Yale as a student, and he believed strongly in the idea of a Zeitgeist. He was endlessly fascinated by the things his students were interested in and supported them fervently, even if he had a distinctive and committed path of his own. A little more than fifteen years later, his generous artistic spirit and way of seeing is still very much part of the mentality of the composition program at Yale.

There is a small reference to his 1989 work, Nor Spell, Nor Charm, which he had written in dedication to Jan De Gaetani, the wonderful singer who had died earlier that same year from leukemia. The reference is a series of falling open-fifth sonorities which occur relatively early in my piece and again at the end.

AARON JAY KERNIS composer Aaron Jay Kernis, winner of the coveted 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and one of the youngest composers ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize, has taught composition at the Yale School of Music since 2003.

Among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation, his music figures prominently on orchestral, chamber, and recital programs worldwide and he has been commissioned by many of America‘s foremost performing artists, including Renee Fleming, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Dawn Upshaw, and Sharon Isbin, and by the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Birmingham Bach Choir, Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Walt Disney Company, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among many others.

Recent and upcoming recordings include a disc of his song cycles by soprano Susan Narucki (Koch) and orchestral works by the Grant Park Festival Orchestra (Cedille). His music is available on Nonesuch, Phoenix, New Albion, Argo, and CRI. One of America’s most honored composers, Mr. Kernis received the Grawemeyer Award for the cello concerto Colored Field and the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2 (musica instrumentalis). He has also been awarded the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize, and received Grammy nominations for Air and the Second Symphony. He has served as Composer-inResidence for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Public Radio, and the American Composers Forum, and, since 1998, as New

Music Advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra, a position he retains to this day. He is chairman and co-director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.

Ballad(e) out of the Blue(s) notes The three etudes I’ve written are homages to wildly popular pianist/composers and vernacular styles – the first inspired by Jerry Lee Lewis and early rock and roll, the second by Thelonius Monk and bebop, and the third by George Gershwin and the blues. Tonight’s piece, Ballad(e) out of the Blue(s) – Superstar Etude No. 3 is the longest of the three, lasting around eight minutes. It also echoes other jazz performers and improvisor whose playing has meant a lot to me – Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, and in the background, Errol Garner (and Chopin). This third Etude is dedicated to the memory of my father, Frank Kernis, who particularly loved jazz and American popular song, and in whose house (and car) I heard this music often when I was growing up.

PROFILES + NOTES

This etude was first sketched in 2004 and completed in 2007, and commissioned by the St. Paul (Minnesota) Chopin Society for Roumanian virtuoso Mihaela Ursuleasa.

Vienna. She has also worked under the guidance of Alberto Lysy, Ana Chumachenco, Sylvia Rosenberg, Christian Tetzlaff, and Ivry Gitlis, among others.

JULIE ESKAR violin

CHARLES RICHARD-HAMELIN piano

Julie Eskar is currently the concertmaster of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra and has performed as a soloist with several orchestras in Denmark and abroad, including the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Belgian Radio Orchestra, Austrian Chamber Philharmonia, Danish Radio Sinfonietta, and the Copenhagen Chamber Soloists.

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Eskar is a founding member of the award-winning Eskar Trio, which has established a reputation as one of the leading ensembles on the Danish chamber music stage and has also enjoyed great success in Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Japan, and the Netherlands, where they recently gave their Concertgebouw debut. In 2003, the Trio released a critically-acclaimed CD of works by Ravel and Chausson which The Strad praised as “outstanding.” The Trio’s second CD, featuring never-before recorded Danish Romantic piano trios, was released in 2005 and was named Best Chamber Music Recording and Best Classical Recording of the Year by the Danish Radio Music Awards.

Winner of the Prix d’Europe in 2011, Charles Richard-Hamelin is one of today’s most promising Canadian pianists. Originally from Lanaudière in Québec, Charles began studying piano at age five and quickly distinguished himself in various regional, provincial, and national competitions. Recently, he won the first prize at the TSO National Piano Competition in 2011 and the second prize at the Stepping Stone Competition in 2010.

Ms. Eskar studied under Professor Milan Vitek at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Professor Gerhard Schultz at the University of Music and Performing Arts,

Charles has studied piano with Paul Surdulescu, Sara Laimon, and Richard Raymond, and is now pursuing a master’s degree at the Yale School of Music, studying with Boris Berman.

Charles has worked in master classes with pianists such as Julian Martin, Peter Frankl, Robert McDonald, Robert Silverman, and Marc Durand. As a soloist, Charles has performed with chamber orchestra I Musici and the McGill Symphony Orchestra. He will perform Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2012.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN

artistic director Christopher Theofanidis managing director Krista Johnson

Thursdays at 8 pm Morse Recital Hall Free admission

music librarian Roberta Senatore production assistant Kate Gonzales conducting fellows Paolo Bortolameolli Yang Jiao assistant Benjamin Firer music librarians Cristobal Gajardo-Benitez Timothy Hilgert Wai Lau Qizhen Liu Rachel Perfecto Holly Piccoli Matthew Rosenthal Kathryn Salfelder Kaitlin Taylor stage crew John Allen Jonathan Allen Jeffery Arredondo Colin Brookes Timothy Hilgert Michael Levin Jonathan McWilliams Shawn Moore Matthew Rosenthal Aaron Sorensen Gerald Villella

music.yale.edu

MAR 29 Feigenbaum: Gatekeeper for solo viola Gardiner: hedgehog Gilbertson: Nocturne Kuspa: Nitwit, Oddment, Blubber, Tweak Tierney: Blue Tigers Wohl: Slow Wave for percussion quartet Steve Reich: Vermont Counterpoint, with Ransom Wilson and current and former members of the Yale Flute Studio; Proverb (1995) with members of the Yale Camerata and Yale Schola Cantorum

APR 12 Feigenbaum:Sonatafordoublebassandpiano Kuspa: Picaresque Episodes Schlosberg: Once Tierney: Escritura del Dios with Dashon

Burton, bass Wang: Monodrama of Old Haven Kaija Saariaho: Serenatas and Terrestre

COMING UP

Robert Blocker, piano Yale School of Music 203 432-4158 concerts@yale.edu music.yale.edu/media

concerts & public relations Dana Astmann Danielle Heller Dashon Burton new media Monica Ong Reed Austin Kase

march 21 Morse Recital Hall | Wed | 8 pm Horowitz Piano Series Music of Schumann, Martin Bresnick, Brahms, and Ezra Laderman.

Tickets $12–22, Students $6–9

Liederabend march 22 Morse Recital Hall | Thu | 8 pm Yale Opera

operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo

An evening of French art song.

Free admission

piano curators Brian Daley William Harold

Ron Carter Trio

recording studio Eugene Kimball

march 23 Morse Recital Hall | Fri | 8 pm Ellington Jazz Series Donald Vega, piano; Russell Malone, guitar; Ron Carter, bass.

Tickets $20–$30, Students $10