New Music New Haven

Christopher Theofanidis 路 Artistic Director

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN

MARCH 7 Morse Recital Hall 路 Thursday, 8 pm Featured Composer Michael Daugherty Guest Conductor Thomas C. Duffy Yale Graduate Composers Matthew Welch Paul Kerekes Polina Nazaykinskaya Brendon Randall-Myers

Robert Blocker, Dean

Christopher Theofanidis · Artistic Director

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN March 7, 2013 • 8:00 pm • Morse Recital Hall Matthew Welch b. 1976

The Favrile Opalescence

Paul Kerekes b. 1988

Trio in Two Parts I. Three rooms II. Turning

Matthew Welch, bagpipes Doug Perry, Victor Caccese, Mari Yoshinaga, Jonathan Allen, Cristóbal Gajardo-Benitez, Benjamin Wallace, percussion Jonathan Brandani, conductor

New Morse Code Hannah Colins, cello Michael Compitello, percussion Paul Kerekes, piano

Polina Nazaykinskaya b. 1987

A Poem of Memory Melanie Clapies, violin Colin Meinecke, viola Yan Levionnois, cello Alexander Smith, bass Miki Sawada, piano Polina Nazaykinskaya, conductor

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Brendon Randall-Myers b. 1986 co-written with Mark Deriso b. 1987

Arrows Grains Brendon Randall-Myers, guitar Matthew Welch, saxophone Marc Deriso, drumset

intermission

Michael Daugherty b. 1954

Walk the Walk Ashley Smith, bass clarinet Jonathan Allen, Doug Perry, percussion

Ladder to the Moon I. Night, New York II. Looking Up Choha Kim, solo violin Caroline Ross, Kristen Kall, oboe Gleb Kanasevich, David Perry, clarinet Michael Zuber, Elizabeth Garrett, bassoon Philip Browne, Craig Hubbard, horn Mari Yoshinaga, percussion Noah Cotler, bass Thomas C. Duffy, conductor

MICHAEL DAUGHERTY featured composer Michael Daugherty is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on the American concert music scene today. His music is rich with cultural allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty has been hailed by The Times (London) as “a master icon maker” with a “maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear.”

Daugherty first came to international attention when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Zinman, performed his Metropolis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1994. Since that time, Daugherty’s music has entered the orchestral, band, and chamber music repertory and made him, according to the League of American Orchestras, one of the ten most performed living American composers.

In 2011, the Nashville Symphony’s Naxos recording of Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony and Deus ex Machina was honored with three Grammy® Awards, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

Also in 2011, Naxos released a new CD of Daugherty’s orchestral music to great acclaim entitled Route 66 with Marin Alsop conducting the Bournemouth Symphony.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas (1972–76), the Manhattan School of Music (1976–78), and computer music at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris (1979–80). In 1986 Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University, where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands.

During this time, he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982–84). After teaching music composition from 1986–90 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan (Ann

Arbor) in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition and a mentor to many of today’s most talented young composers.

Daugherty has been Composer-inResidence with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra (2000), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999- 2003), Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-02), Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2001-04, 2006-08, 2011), Westshore Symphony Orchestra (2005-06), Eugene Symphony (2006), the Henry Mancini Summer Institute (2006), the Music from Angel Fire Chamber Music Festival (2006), and the Pacific Symphony (2010).

Daugherty has received numerous awards, distinctions, and fellowships for his music, including a Fulbright Fellowship (1977), the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award (1989), the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992) and the Guggenheim Foundation (1996), and the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2000). In 2005, Daugherty received the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra Composer’s Award, and in 2007, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra selected Daugherty as the winner of the A.I. DuPont Award. Also in 2007, he received the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for his

composition, Raise the Roof for Timpani and Symphonic Band. Daugherty has been named “Outstanding Classical Composer” at the Detroit Music Awards in 2007, 2009 and 2010. His Grammy® Award-winning recordings can be heard on Albany, Argo, Delos, Equilibrium, Klavier, Naxos, and Nonesuch labels.

Walk the Walk notes Walk the Walk for baritone sax and percussion was commissioned by Opus 21 for a concert honoring pianist Joe Hunter and the Funk Brothers, a group of Detroit studio musicians who played on all of the historic Motown releases from 1959 to 1972. Using a deconstructed fragment from the Temptations’ My Girl as a compositional idée fixe, Daugherty takes the listener through a world of virtuosic Detroit blues, rock, jazz and Latin Motown musical grooves.

Ladder to the Moon notes Ladder to the Moon for solo violin, wind octet, double bass, and percussion was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. The first performance was given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with Ida Kavafian, solo violin, in New York City on May 5, 2006. The

two-movement work is 20 minutes in duration and scored for solo violin, 2 oboes, 2 B-flat clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, double bass, and percussion (one player).

Ladder to the Moon is inspired by the urban landscapes of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1968), who lived and painted in Manhattan before moving to New Mexico in 1934. From 1925–30, O’Keeffe created over twenty New York paintings of newly constructed skyscrapers, such as the Radiator Building and the Shelton Hotel. Like experimental photographers of the era, such as Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe discovered a different reality in the form of skyscrapers, simultaneously realistic and abstract. Although Stieglitz (her husband at the time) claimed it was “an impossible idea” for a woman to paint New York, O’Keeffe went on to create some of her finest work during this time, motivated by her own conviction that “one can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” Ladder to the Moon is a musical tribute to the art of O’Keeffe, recreating the feeling of skyscrapers and cityscapes in Manhattan of the 1930’s.

I. Night, New York is my musical perspective on skyscrapers as seen by O’Keeffe from an elevated height in New York at night: she often painted from her high-rise apartment on the thirtieth floor of the Shelton Hotel.

Like her paintings, which featured

only one or two buildings in the calm of the night, the music of this movement is intimate. Soulful woodwind melodies rise in dark soaring spirals to evoke a nocturnal view. A violin plays repeated pizzicato (plucked) and arco (bowed) patterns, providing a counterpoint like the visual rhythm of hundreds of brightly-lit windows on a skyscraper seen from afar.

II. Looking Up offers another musical perspective on skyscrapers, as seen from below. In 1927 O’Keeffe painted the Radiator Building, looking from the ground up and leading the eye upward on a ladder of vision. In this movement I have composed a ladder of sound, featuring virtuosic and expressive music for the violin in ascending vertical lines. Meanwhile the ensemble is structured in complex light and dark patterns, like the moon reflecting off the side of a building. A reflective slow section features tremolo violin, double bass harmonics, bowed vibraphone, and musical flights of fancy heard in the clarinet and horn. All instruments combine to suggest the rising spirit of the American skyscraper: an inspiring flight heavenward.

– Michael Daugherty

THOMAS C. DUFFY conductor Thomas C. Duffy, composer and conductor, is professor (adjunct) of music and director of bands at Yale University. He served as acting dean of the School of Music in 2005–2006, having served as associate dean since 1996 and deputy dean since 1999. He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee and a member of the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee. He attended the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education in 2005.

He has served as president of the New England College Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) Eastern Division, 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, and he has represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. He is president elect of the College Band Directors National Association. He is a member of American Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, and BMI.

An active composer with a D.M.A. in composition from Cornell University, where he was a student of Karel Husa and Steven Stucky, he has accepted commissions from the American Composers Forum, the United States Military Academy at West Point, the U.S. Army Field Band, and many bands, choruses, and orchestras. He joined the Yale faculty in 1982.

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. The eclectic breadth of his 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 record labels.

The Favrile Opalescence notes Inspired by the opalescent stained glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany, this tour de force pocket concerto for bagpipe and percussion examines the fragmentation of image in Tiffany stained glass and its ever-shifting spectra of iridescence.

PAUL KEREKES composer Paul Kerekes was born in Huntington, New York. His music has been described as “striking…ecstatic…dramatic” (WQXR), “highly eloquent” (New Haven Advocate), and able to create “an almost tactile picture” (New York Times). He has had the privilege of hearing his music performed by many outstanding ensembles, some of which include TwoSense, American Composers Orchestra, and Dinosaur Annex, in such venues as (le) Poisson Rouge, The Dimenna Center, and Symphony Space.

In June 2012, Paul joined forces with vie of New York City’s top pianists to form Grand Band, whose debut was featured on Bang on a Can’s annual marathon.

Grand Band has been described by The New York Times as “the Travelling Wilburys of the city’s new music piano scene.” Paul is currently pursuing an M.M.A. degree at the Yale School of Music, studying with David Lang. He received his undergraduate degree from Queens College, where he primarily studied with Bruce Saylor.

Trio in Two Parts notes Trio in two parts was composed for my friends Mike Compitello and Hannah Collins, also known as New Morse Code. Since I’ve had the pleasure of

working alongside them in the past, I knew I wanted to compose something personalized. My inspiration for “three rooms” comes from an odd rehearsal experience we had during a summer residency in which none of the practice rooms were large enough to accommodate both marimba and piano. We had to rehearse in three adjacent spaces with the doors open, which, despite its inconvenience, resulted in reliance towards the person one was nearest to. Each part’s melody moves independently, but in a way to signal the others around it.

“Turning” is based on a baroque form, the virelai, and was written especially with Hannah in mind, since she was my T.A. for a baroque orchestra class.

POLINA NAZAYKINSKAYA composer Polina Nazaykinskaya was born in Togliatti, Russia on January 20, 1987 and has been studying music since the age of four. After graduating with honors from the the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia with concentrations in violin and composition, Polina earned her Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. Her professors at Yale included Christopher Theofanidis and Ezra Laderman. Currently Polina is pursuing her Artist Diploma in composition at the Yale School of Music. In the last four years her music has been performed by Russian National Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia, Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Metro Opera, and others. Polina`s music has garnered numerous national and international awards and received raving reviews in the press. In 2010 the Sony Music Russia label released a CD that featured Polina`s symphonic poem Winter Bells. In addition to being a composer, Polina is an active violinist and conductor.

A Poem of Memory notes One of the questions that I am exploring in the quintet is the notion of time and the role of memory in our

lives. I am interested in exploring how time through our perception becomes a prolonged experience in which instances obtain new meaning; how the specific “moments” are no longer isolated and separate from one another, but blend into one another; how the amalgamation of various moments influences our assessment of reality, creating new points of reference. Through my music, I would like to manipulate the fabric of “time” and pull the audience away from a conventional linear understanding of “time.” I would like to create a musical experience in which time and memory merge into each other, becoming almost like two sides of the same coin. I would like my piece to take the audience into state of deeper awareness, through which each member of the audience would be able to feel a connection to their own personal experience.

BRENDON RANDALL-MYERS (GRAINS) composer Brendon Randall-Myers is a composer, guitarist, and improviser. His music examines people’s interactions, expectations, and boundaries, often through juxtapositions and combinations of music for bars and music for concert halls. Brendon co-founded the punk-inflected composing/improvising group Grains, and was a fellow at the Bang on a Can summer festival.

He has been commissioned by the Guitar Foundation of America and the Guerilla Composers Guild, and by performers such as The Living Earth Show, Friction, Alien Box Man, Sqwonk, Celliola, Nonsemble 6, Mobius Trio, and flutist Esther Landau. Brendon grew up in rural West Virginia, attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Pomona College, and is currently pursuing his MM in composition at the Yale School of Music, studying with David Lang.

His primary guitar teachers have been Bob Squires and Jack Sanders, and past composition teachers include Tom Flaherty, Kurt Rohde and Belinda Reynolds.

Grains group biography Grains was founded in 2009 after drummer Marc Deriso met guitarist Brendon Randall-Myers through a Craigslist posting entitled “Math Rock.” Whether performing in dive bars, all-ages punk clubs, or new music concerts, the group marries the energy and aesthetic of DIY punk to the precision and rigor of contemporary chamber music and the spontaneity of free jazz.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN

Yale School of Music 203 432-4158 concerts@yale.edu concert programs & box office Krista Johnson Carol Jackson Julie Blindauer communications Dana Astmann Monica Ong Reed Austin Kase operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo piano curators Brian Daley William Harold recording studio Eugene Kimball

artistic director Christopher Theofanidis manager Andrew W. Parker music librarian Roberta Senatore assistant conductor Paolo Bortolameolli assistant conductor Jonathan Brandani office assistants Timothy Gocklin • Jean Laurenz music librarians Paolo Bortolameolli • Leonard Chaing Cristobal Gajardo-Benitez • Michael Gilbertson Darren Hicks • Michael Holloway Hye Jin Koh • Alan Ohkubo • Rachel Perfecto Yuan Ma • Matthew Rosenthal Elisa Rodriguez Sadaba

technology Jack Vees

music.yale.edu

stage crew John Allen • Jonathan Allen • Jeffery Arredondo Colin Brookes • Philip Browne • Victor Caccese Cristóbal Gajardo-Benitez • Jonathan Hammonds Timothy Hilgert • Lauren Hunt • Stephen Ivany Gerardo Mata • Jonathan McWilliams Jacob Mende-Fridkis • Shawn Moore Roby Moser • David Perry • Doug Perry Zachary Quortrup • Matthew Rosenthal Gerald Villella • Mari Yoshinaga

Robert Blocker, Dean