Yale Percussion Group february 24, 2013 Morse Recital Hall robert van sice Director
Robert Blocker, Dean
february 24, 2013 Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall · 8 pm
Yale Percussion Group Robert van Sice, director
Béla Bartók 1881–1945
Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz. 110, BB 115 Cristóbal Gajardo and Jonathan Allen, percussion Peter Klimo and Melody Quah, piano
John Supko b. 1980
Straits
Alejandro Viñao b. 1951
Book of Grooves Garrett Arney and Mari Yoshinaga, percussion
Meehan/Perkins Duo Doug Perkins and Todd Meehan, percussion
intermission James Wood b. 1953
Cloud Polyphonies Victor Caccese, Garrett Arney, Jonathan Allen, Mari Yoshinaga, Doug Perry, and Cristóbal Gajardo, percussion
Robert van Sice and the Yale Percussion Group would like to thank Adams/Pearl and Vic Firth for their longstanding support of the Yale School of Music’s percussion program.
program notes
Béla Bartók Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is one of his most acclaimed masterpieces and stands as a seminal work in the 20 th-century classical music repertoire. Written in 1937, the piece was premiered with Bartók and his wife playing the two piano parts. Later Bartók rewrote the work as a concerto for two pianos and orchestra, but as it is most often played in its original form, the work is generally considered a chamber piece. Bartók called it a “sonata” because he did not know whether the percussion part would require two or three players and thus circumvented the word “quartet.” He later found that two percussionists were sufficient but kept the title nonetheless. The piece’s instrumentation is quite unusual and caused Bartók much trepidation in how it would be performed and received. He had a fascination with percussion that came partly from Stravinsky and partly from Varèse, but what influenced him most were the percussive timbres and colors of the Far East and Africa. As for the piano, Bartók had an intimate relationship to the instrument, being a teacher, performer, and composer of it. In his two piano concerti written prior to the sonata, he experimented with the percussive nature of the piano by occasionally matching it with the percussion section of the orchestra. In this sonata, the piano’s percussiveness is exploited to its fullest. Bartók chose to have two pianos instead of one in order take advantage of antiphonal possibilities between them. He may have also been thinking of the prospect of performing the piece with his wife. The first movement opens with an ominous, circular, seven-note theme that gradually gains
momentum until a dramatic arrival at the allegro section, where the two pianos shout in rhythmic unison. From there the movement, whose length takes up half the entire piece, is a series of climaxes within extended sonata form. In the midst, a rising sixth motive appears like a horn call and is present throughout the rest of the movement, including as the subject of a fugato at the end. The second movement is an example of Bartók’s signature “Night music,” also heard in such pieces as his third piano concerto and his concerto for orchestra. In Night music, instruments simulate the sounds of nature at night, which may include anything from evoking a nocturnal aesthetic to portraying actual nighttime noises. This second movement opens with a sturdy rhythm from the percussion that sets the mood for a spacious, dark melody from the pianos. A second section introduces nocturnal creatures through short quintuplet figures that rap over bell-like chords. The movement is ternary form, though when the opening section returns it sounds like a dream sequence by way of the rippling scales and tremolos rolling around it. The return also brings with it the percussion’s steady, square beat. To contrast, the music of the last movement evokes the brightest of sunshine. The xylophone first introduces a folk-like melody that is more diatonic and linear than the chromatic and circuitous first movement theme. The movement is full of humor, irony, and energy. At the end, a steady, slowly fading snare drum ostinato sounds as if a marching band drummer is walking away, and a surprising, delightful C major chord in the upper registers of the pianos gives the piece finality with a smile. – Laura Usiskin
program notes & biographies
John Supko Straits Straits, the poem by Kenneth Koch from which my piece draws both its title and inspiration, is an exposition of possibilities. It is a quest for and ultimately a record of acquisition of, as Koch puts it, “ecstasy, unity, freedom, completeness, Dionysiac things.” One of the poem’s voices, Andy, is “looking for a strait,/ A way from this pool into the sea.” In the music I tried to capture some of this restlessness, the desire to trade the mundane for something bracing and new. The music is therefore stylistically promiscuous and unconcerned with development in the conventional sense. If it develops anything, it is this yearning to escape the pool of predictable musical situations. Straits is like a resourceful trout thrashing around in the fisherman’s bucket. This fish is not going to end up swimming in sauce amandine. The current version of Straits, commissioned by and dedicated to the Meehan/Perkins Duo with gratitude for the generous support of Meet The Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, is not the first. The original work included a wildly complicated electronic component that proved impossible to realize satisfactorily anywhere but in a recording studio. Upon reflection it wasn’t a surprising result: while writing Straits I had always intended to sit down at the feast of the last century of music and gorge myself on it all, but the electroacoustic version gave me violent indigestion. So I trashed it. At sixteen minutes and a few crumbs, the present recipe is still dangerously high fat/high cholesterol and unabashedly carnivorous, but let’s say the sauce is better reduced, the spices better balanced, and I took the sommelier’s advice.
Straits was commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Commission Music/USA program, which is made possible by generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. – John Supko
John Supko was born in 1980 on Long Island, New York. Currently the Hunt Family Assistant Professor of Music at Duke University, he holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (BM) and Princeton University (MFA & PhD). He is a recipient of the Fulbright (2002) and Georges Lurcy (2007) fellowships, both for Paris, France, where he studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique. He has won numerous prizes and grants, among them the BMI Student Composer Award, two ASCAP/ Morton Gould Young Composers Awards (including the 2008 Leo Kaplan Award), the Grand Prize of the National Young Composers Competition, the Perkins Prize of the Princeton University Music Department and a Commissioning Music/USA Meet the Composer commission for Straits, a percussion work written in 2010 for the Meehan/Perkins Duo. His work has been published in collaborative editions with the poet Philippe Denis by Collection Mémoires (Paris) and by Harpo & (Marseille), and has been released on New Amsterdam Records.
program notes & biographies
Alejandro Viñao Book of Grooves The ‘groove’ or ‘feel’ of a piece is understood to consist of a pattern or sequence that repeats periodically in such a way as to create in the listener the desire to move, or dance, or to foottap following the repeated rhythm. A groove is therefore a rhythm ‘locked’ into a pattern of repetition. To ‘unlock’ a groove would mean – to some extent – to threaten its very existence. This is precisely what happens in this piece. The grooves are presented at first in their simple ‘locked’ form, so that the listener may swing unequivocally with the initial grooves. But gradually these grooves are ‘unlocked’, that is, they are subjected to transformations that change the point at which they repeat. In this way the shape of each groove is changed. This involves a risk because the listener may stop feeling the ‘desire to move’ with the groove. If this were to happen, one could say that the groove has been ‘killed’. My idea in Book of Grooves was to explore changes that would transform each groove without ‘killing’ it. It is a risky compositional strategy: new grooves must be created or ‘cloned’ from the original ones without disturbing the delicate balance that makes the music ‘groove’. If the piece is successful the listener should be able to follow the process of ‘unlocking’ or changing of the original grooves into new ones, and experience this as a voyage of transformation. But unlike what happens with grooves in popular music, in Book of Grooves, the voyager never returns to the port of departure. The process is not cyclical but developmental. And yet, while the music material is permanently transforming into something new, I wanted to make sure that the listener would never ceases to ‘swing’ with a groove. This much I wanted to achieve. – Alejandro Viñao, April 2011
Alejandro Viñao (born 4/9/1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) studied composition with the Russian composer Jacobo Ficher in Buenos Aires. In 1975 he moved to Britain where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music and the City University in London. He has been resident in Britain since then and a citizen since 1994. In 1988 he was awarded a Ph.D. in composition from City University. Viñao has received a number of international prizes and awards including the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica (1992) and First Prize at the International Rostrum at the Unesco World Music Council (1984). Viñao’s music has been played and broadcast worldwide and has been featured in festivals such as the Tanglewood Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the London PROMS. He has received commissions from various performing groups and institutions around the world such as ircam and G.R.M. in France, M.I.T. in the USA and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. During the 1980s, Viñao worked at ircam at regular intervals and in 1987 he was composer-in-residence at M.I.T. in the U.S.A. In 1994 Alejandro Viñao was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in composition. His piece Apocryphal Dances was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in 1997. The same year Viñao was invited to Japan to present his music in a Portrait Concert. Later that year, his chamber opera Rashomon was premiered in Germany. This work was commissioned by ZKM for the opening of their new building in Karlsruhe. Since then Rashomon has been produced in Paris, London and Gothenburg. Following the success of his choral work Epitafios, Viñao was commissioned a new piece, La Trama, for mixed choir and computer by the German
program notes & biographies
Sudwestrundfunk. This work was premiered in February 2003 by the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart. Alejandro Viñao’s music is characterised by the use of pulsed rhythmic structures to create large scale form, and by a melodic writing which, as in the case of much nonEuropean music, develops through rhythm rather than harmony. Viñao has written music for a wide range of musical genre including opera,music-theatre, choral, instrumental, and electroacoustic compositions. He has also been involved with the creation of multimedia works, has composed music for some 20 films and produced several radio programmes for the BBC. Another strand of Viñao’s output consists of a wide range of percussion works, which are rapidly becoming standard repertoire in the concert hall and in the pedagogical world of the conservatory and the university. Viñao’s recent vocal compositions such as The Baghdad Monologue – a music theatre work – and Greed – for 12 singers and electronics – have taken him in a new direction focusing on contemporary social and political events.
Transfiguration de notre Seigneur, Jésus Christ, the mystical cloud which enveloped Christ on the mountain is depicted almost literally by clouds of string glissandi. My interest recalls a little of all these representations, but specifically refers to the movements of large formations of organisms – whether animals, insects, birds, fish, water, steam or crowds of human beings – where, although the general direction of the mass is clear, the relationship in space between the individual elements within the mass are in a constant state of flux. Their freedom and individuality is nevertheless kept in check by a shared sense of purpose, as if some mystical spirit were controlling the behaviour of the individual elements, as a choreographer directs a group of dancers. Specific examples of this are shoals of fish, water particles subjected to the ebb and flow of tidal currents, flocks of migratory birds, herds of animals, clouds of water vapour, swarms of bees, and even crowds of Pilgrims at the Haaj.
James Wood Cloud-Polyphonies
When Mike Rosen first had the idea of inviting me to write a percussion sextet for a consortium of American Universities, my first thoughts were that a percussion sextet could be the perfect medium to explore this phenomenon in musical terms – and this led me directly to Cloud-Polyphonies.
Like many composers before me, I have long held a fascination for the phenomenon of clouds. For Debussy they represented the perfect natural model for his “orchestration without feet” – a music which floats free from any discernible or definable bass-line; for Xenakis, Stochastic Clouds were a phenomenon where a myriad of random elements come together to form a tangible, controllable mass, whilst in Messiaen’s
The ‘Polyphonies’ of the title refers directly to this phenomenon, and is realized in musical terms by a complex web of ‘Points of Imitation’, or distorted canons. The musical material for each percussionist consists of two distinct, polyphonic ‘voices’, making a total of twelve voices in all. The individual motifs which make up each voice are imitated in turn by each of the six percussionists, although both the motifs themselves and the rhythmic
program notes & biographies
distance of each imitation are subject to continual transformation. Melodic fragments, each with their own distinctive form and character, are sent across the six percussionists like waves – either from right to left or from left to right – sometimes very slowly, and sometimes very fast like ricochets. Each of the three movements of Cloud Polyphonies is scored for a completely different instrumentation and can be performed separately, or in any combination, as required. The first movement, Starlings, is written for six marimbas and woodblocks, the second, Clouds, for metal instruments and prepared piano, and the third, Buffalo, for drums, simantras and bull-roarers. I: Starlings The first movement of Cloud-Polyphonies concerns the extraordinary aerobatic displays of starlings, as they gather together before migration. At first just a few starlings gather on telegraph wires, nervously testing their aerobatic potential individually. As more and more starlings gather, these pre-migration test-flights become increasingly spectacular until finally several thousand birds form up together to perform an extended synchronised display. From this moment on, focus on any particular individual bird is lost, as one becomes mesmerized by the brilliantly synchronised aerobatics and shapetransformations of an enormous black cloud of several thousand starlings. Gradually, following some arcane signal, the cloud disappears and is gone for the winter. II: Clouds Just once in my life I have had the experience of going hot-air ballooning. It was a beautiful day in August, and for a couple of hours we glided silently over the Oxfordshire
countryside. Never before have I been so conscious of the presence and activities of the clouds. As we drifted up to our cruising altitude, focus on these mystical, intangible and supernatural phenomena was intensified as we gradually became enveloped by an overwhelming sensation of deepest silence. Our pilot explained how to ‘read’ the clouds – an essential skill for all hot-air balloonists. Active clouds (cumulus, or cumulus congestus) are those huge structures with sharply defined edges, which build from the powerful upward draught of a thermal within them – they are dangerous, and therefore avoided by balloonists. Passive clouds (cirrus) are generally at a much higher altitude, and have more of a wispy appearance – these are harmless, although should be watched, in case they develop into active clouds. In Clouds, passive clouds are represented by sounds produced by bowing, scraping or rubbing, and active clouds by sounds produced by striking. Between these two extremes come sounds sustained by tremolandi – these represent the clouds’ transitional state, as they develop from passive into active. III: Buffalo The final movement of Cloud-Polyphonies invokes that quintessential American symbol, the North American Bison, or Buffalo. Here the continuously changing waves of sound which zigzag across the line of 66 drums recall the sound of herds of galloping buffalo – however the sound comes not from the animals, but from the earth itself – an ever-changing terrain of mud, stone, brush, pampas and water becomes the surface for a thousand pounding buffalo hooves, as the herd stampedes swiftly across the plains. – James Wood
Conductor, composer, instrument designer, musicologist and formerly virtuoso percussionist, James Wood’s multi-faceted career has led him into an extraordinarily broad spectrum of musical activities. Born in 1953 he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris before going to Cambridge as an organ scholar, and to the Royal Academy of Music in London to study conducting and percussion. For the next twenty years he pursued a triple career as composer, conductor and solo percussionist. After four years as conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford he founded the New London Chamber Choir (1981), which was soon to become celebrated throughout Europe for its ground-breaking performances and recordings of contemporary music, and which he directed for 26 years until leaving England and settling in Germany in 2007. During this period he was also professor of percussion at Darmstadt (1982 – 1994), founder and director of the Centre for Microtonal Music in London and it’s ensemble, Critical Band (1990-1994), whilst remaining prolific as a composer. Since the mid-1990s he has focussed more on composition and conducting, working with ensembles such as musikFabrik, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble InterContemporain and Champ d’Action. As a choral conductor he works regularly with most of Europe’s leading chamber choirs, such as RIAS Kammerchor, Netherlands Chamber Choir, Cappella Amsterdam and Latvian Radio Choir, in repertoire from 15th Century to the present day. He has worked closely with composers such as Kurtág, Xenakis, Ligeti, Kagel, Harvey and Reich, and in 2002 he prepared and conducted the Dutch Radio Choir in the world premiere of Stockhausen’s Engel-Prozessionen at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He went on to direct the same work in the context of Cologne Opera’s
2011 production of the complete Sonntag aus Licht with the Estonian Philharmonic Choir and Cappella Amsterdam. As a composer he has written for almost every conceivable genre, and is especially known for his percussion music, his designing and building of new instruments, and for his work in electronics. He has twice been commissioned by the Proms in London, first in 1989 for his orchestral work Oreion, later in 1995 for his Two men meet, each presuming the other to be from a distant planet. His first opera, Hildegard was performed with huge success throughout Great Britain, Holland and Belgium in 20056, and he is currently working on a chamber opera based on Gullivers Travels, to a libretto by Paul Griffiths. His completion of the second book of Gesualdo’s Sacrae Cantiones has led to performances with Vocalconsort Berlinthroughout Germany, and particularly to the staged production “From Inside” featuring music of both Gesualdo and Giacinto Scelsi, directed by Hans-Werner Kroesinger, which was premiered with great success in Berlin in April 2012.
meehan/perkins duo percussion Since its founding in 2006, the Meehan/ Perkins Duo (Todd Meehan and Doug Perkins) has redefined the American percussion duo through its diverse commissions and engaging performances. The Duo has been called “superb young players” by the New Yorker and “gifted percussionists” by the Wall Street Journal. Dedicated to creating a new body of work for the percussion duo genre, to date the Duo has collaborated with composers David Lang, Paul Lansky, Nathan Davis, John Supko, and Matt McBane to expand the repertoire and produce eclectic new acoustic and electroacoustic works for percussion. The Duo has shared this music with audiences throughout the country, including performances at Weill Recital Hall, the Ojai Music Festival, Monadnock Music, the Yellow Barn Festival, the International Festival-Institute at Round Top, the Stone, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and abroad in St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk, Russia. February 2011 marked the release of the Duo’s first recording on New World Records entitled “Restless, Endless, Tactless – Johanna Beyer and the Birth of American Percussion Music”. The recording, a joint project with the Baylor Percussion Group, chronicles a largely unknown body of early percussion works from the 1930s written by Johanna Beyer, Henry Cowell, Harold Davidson, Ray Green, John J. Becker, and Doris Humphrey. The release was praised as “immaculately played by the duo” by the BBC Music Magazine and “an engaging experience” by Gramophone. Fanfare Magazine perhaps best sums up the recording by stating “This is a must-hear for anyone remotely interested in the development of music in the past century and is strongly recommended.”
The Duo is currently undertaking its largest commissioning project to date, engaging composer Jonathan Leshnoff for a Concerto for Two Percussionists and Orchestra. The work will be premiered June 2012 with the Texas Festival Orchestra at the Round Top International Festival under the baton of Michael Stern. Subsequent performances will take place during the 2012–2013 season with the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and the Baylor Symphony Orchestra. The Meehan/ Perkins Duo uses Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Pearl/Adams drums and keyboards, Black Swamp Percussion accessories, Remo drumheads, and Zildjian cymbals. They are represented worldwide by Ariel Artists.
the yale percussion group Robert Van Sice, director
Founded in 1997 by Robert van Sice, the Yale Percussion Group has been called “something truly extraordinary” by composer Steve Reich. It is composed of talented and dedicated young artists who have come from around the world for graduate study at the Yale School of Music.
Percussionist Robert van Sice has premiered more than one hundred works, including concertos, chamber music, and solos. He has made solo appearances with symphony orchestras and given recitals in Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. In 1989 he gave the first full-length marimba recitals at the Members of the YPG have gone on to form the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has since acclaimed quartet So Percussion and to perform played in most of Europe’s major concert halls, with Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two, the with broadcasts by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Carnegie Hall Academy Ensemble, the Oslo Norwegian Radio, WDR, and Radio France. Philharmonic, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Yale percussion students and grad- He is frequently invited as a soloist with Europe’s uates have recently won the Linz (Austria) leading contemporary music ensembles and International Marimba Competition and the festivals, including the London Sinfonietta, Concert Artist Guild Competition. Recent Ensemble Contrechamps, and L’Itinéraire and alumni teach at institutions such as Cornell, the Archipel, Darmstadt, and North American Dartmouth, Michigan State, SUNY Stony new music festivals. From 1988 to 1997 he Brook, UMass Amherst, Baylor, and the headed Europe’s first diploma program for solo Conservatoire de Genève (Switzerland). marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatorium. The members of the YPG are Jonathan Allen, Garrett Arney, Victor Caccese, Cristóbal Gajardo, Doug Perry, and Mari Yoshinaga.
Mr. van Sice has given master classes in more than twenty countries and frequently visits the major conservatories in Europe as a guest lecturer. He joined the Yale faculty as a lecturer in percussion in the fall of 1997.
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Reflections on Bach february 27 Morse Recital Hall | Wed | 8 pm A collaborative project between graduate composers and the Yale Baroque Ensemble. Music by Bach alongside new compositions by Stephen Feigenbaum, William Gardiner, Bálint Karosi, Paul Kerekes, Daniel Schlosberg, and Benjamin Wallace. Free Admission
Music of Christopher Theofanidis february 28 Morse Recital Hall | Thurs | 8 pm Faculty Artist Series The Henschel Quartet Munich and pianist Donald Berman perform a concert of chamber music by faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis, including the new piano quintet At the Still Point. Free Admission
Paul Lewis, piano march 6
technology Jack Vees
Morse Recital Hall | Wed | 8 pm Horowitz Piano Series Paul Lewis, “arguably the finest Schubert interpreter of his generation” (Gramophone), performs Schubert’s three last sonatas: No. 19 in C minor, D. 958; No. 20 in A major, D. 959; and No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960. Tickets $12–$22, Students $6–$9