New Music New Haven

Christopher Theofanidis 路 Artistic Director

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN

FIVE

FACULTY COMPOSERS

MARCH 28 Morse Recital Hall 路 Thursday, 8 pm

music by Martin Bresnick David Lang Hannah Lash Ingram Marshall Jack Vees

Robert Blocker, Dean

Christopher Theofanidis · Artistic Director

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN March 28, 2013 • 8:00 pm • Morse Recital Hall Jack Vees b. 1955

Lines of Desire Connecticut Reed Trio Libby Van Cleve, English horn Tom Labadorf, bass clarinet Rebecca Noreen, bassoon

David Lang b. 1957

Orpheus Under and Over Sean Chen, piano Peter Klimo, piano

Martin Bresnick b. 1946

Ishi’s Song (2012) Lisa Moore, piano intermission

Ingram Marshall b. 1942

Baghdad Blues Libby Van Cleve, oboe

Hannah Lash b. 1981

Violations Lindsay Kesselman, soprano Kristen Sollek, mezzo-soprano Eric Brenner, countertenor Michael Compitello, percussion Benjamin Wallace, percussion Daniel Schlosberg, piano Pauk Kerekes, piano Paolo Bortolameolli, 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.

JACK VEES composer Jack Vees, composer and electric bassist, is operations director of the Center for Studies in Music Technology. He received his M.F.A. in composition from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Louis Andriessen, Vinko Globokar, and Morton Subotnik. He is active in the international arena as both a performer and a composer, having works played at sites from CBGB’s of the downtown New York scene to such festivals as the Berlin Biennale and New Music America. Many contemporary music groups like Ensemble Modern, Zeitgeist, and the California Ear Unit have com-missioned pieces from him. A collection of his works entitled Surf Music Again is available on the CRI/ Emergency Music label. His opera Feynman, for solo voice and percussion, was premiered in June 2005 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and later performed at the Knitting Factory in New York City. He is also the author of The Book on Bass Harmonics, which has become a standard reference for bassists since its publication in 1979. Mr. Vees came to Yale in 1988.

Lines of Desire notes Sometimes a piece comes about as a mostly pure abstract idea, the working out in sound of some process the composer has in mind (a fugue, for instance). Other germinations are much more pictorial, with the intent being more programmatic or cinematic.

Lines of Desire gives a nod to both of these poles. It existed as a concept that sat in my head for a number of years. It then found the right metaphor by a comment that was made by a friend of mine.

She is an architectural historian. One day we were walking through a local park, and she tossed off a term that I had never heard before.

It was a reference to those footpaths that are made not by anyone who planned the park, but by the people who walk through the space: Folks simply want to go from point A to point B, or run a jogging path that stays in the shade, or any number of other reasons. She said there is a technical term for these resultant paths, “lines of desire” or desire lines. (Architects seem to have special names and phrases for all sorts of everyday objects.)

In any case this idea triggered a memory I had about wanting to write a piece where the instruments start out in very close proximity to each other, almost treading on each others’ footsteps. It also fit in with my own desire to write for English horn, bass clarinet, and bassoon, a slightly thicker, earthier lineup than the usual reed trio instrumentation.

DAVID LANG composer The music of David Lang has been performed by major musical, dance, and theatrical organizations throughout the world, including the Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, The Nederlands Dans Theater, and the Royal Ballet to name a few, and has been performed in the most renowned concert halls and festivals in the United States and Europe. Lang is well known as co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music festival, Bang on a Can. In 2008, Lang was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Paul Hillier’s vocal ensemble, Theater of Voices.

He has also has been honored with the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich), a Kennedy Center/Friedheim Award, the Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic, a Bessie Award, a Village Voice OBIE Award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is recorded on the Sony Classical, Teldec, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, Caprice, Koch, Albany, CRI and Cantaloupe labels.

Born in Los Angeles in 1957, David Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, and received the D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He has studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze, and Martin Bresnick. His music is published by Red Poppy (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc. David Lang joined the Yale faculty in 2008.

MARTIN BRESNICK composer Martin Bresnick’s compositions, from chamber and symphonic music to film scores and computer music, are performed throughout the world. Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. But his com-positions never descend into agitprop; one gains their meaning by the way the music itself unfolds, and always on its own terms.

Besides having received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others, Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition.

Students from every part of the globe and of virtually every musical inclination have been inspired by his critical encouragement.

Martin Bresnick’s compositions are published by Carl Fischer Music Publishers, New York; Bote & Bock, Berlin; CommonMuse Music Publishers, New Haven; and have been recorded by Cantaloupe Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Bridge Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, and Artifact Music.

Ishi’s Song (2012) notes Ishi was among the last of the Yahi Indians.

Living in northern California, these Native Americans were part of a larger group known as the Yana. They were ruthlessly suppressed and finally decimated at the end of the 19th century. The few remaining Yahi people hid in the mountains until they all died, leaving only Ishi. He was found and brought to the University of California at Berkeley by sympathetic anthropology professors Alfred Kroeber and T.T. Waterman. Ishi lived for several years at the University’s museum, then in San Francisco, teaching the professors and other researchers the ways of his people and helping to create a dictionary of his language. He was the last native speaker of the Yahi-Yana language. The opening melody of my work was taken from a transcription of a recording made by Ishi himself singing what he called “The Maidu Doctor’s Song.” There is no known translation of the text.

INGRAM MARSHALL composer Ingram Marshall, composer, studied at Columbia University and California Institute of the Arts, where he received an M.F.A., and has been a student of Indonesian gamelan music, the influence of which may be heard in the slowed-down sense of time and use of melodic repetition found in many of his pieces. In recent years he has concentrated on music combining tape and electronic processing with ensembles and soloists. His music has been performed by ensembles and orchestras such as the Theater of Voices, Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and American Composers Orchestra. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. »www.ingrammarshall.com

Baghdad Blues notes I wrote Baghdad Blues in August 2006 as a birthday present for the oboist Libby Van Cleve. Libby had been my collaborator and brilliant performer on two earlier occasions when I employed live electronic processing. Those pieces, Dark Waters and Holy Ghosts, existed in a sonic world of deep reverb and very pronounced digital delay effects. Baghdad Blues, however, except for some subtle reverb and amplification, requires no such effects—it stands on its own. What is does require is a command of multi-phonics which the performer must execute throughout the music-- and who

better to realize it than Libby who has, literally, written the book on the subject (Oboe Unbound). In my composition, I employed very specific examples of multiphonics garnered from her book.

What does the title mean? I had been listening to the great Iraqi Oud player, Munir Bashir, and the modes and pitch bending that he employs inspired me to write this piece even though it has nothing to do with the Oud—it’s more of a spiritual affinity. Given the ongoing tragic events of the war, “blue” seemed an apt coloristic description of the music.

Baghdad Blues is a short but intense composition.

HANNAH LASH composer Hannah Lash (b. 1981) has emerged as a leading voice of her generation. Her music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, (le) Poisson Rouge, and the Chicago Art Institute. Lash’s awards include a Charles Ives Scholarship (American Academy of Arts and Letters), a Fromm Foundation Commission, a Yaddo Artist Colony fellowship, the Naumburg Prize, the Barnard Rogers Prize, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize, and the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She has received commissions from the Aspen Music Festival, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Orpheus Duo, Howard Hanson Foundation, Case Western Reserve’s University Circle Wind Ensemble, MAYA, Great Noise Ensemble, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Lash’s orchestral work Furthermore was performed in the American Composers Orchestra 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. The Minnesota Orchestra performed God Music Bug Music in the 2012 Minnesota Composers Institute, and her chamber opera Blood Rose was presented by NYC Opera’s VOX 2011.

Educated at Eastman, Harvard, The Cleveland Institute of Music, and Yale, she now serves on the faculty at the Yale School of Music.

Lash’s music is published by Schott.

Violations notes Violations is about anger and loss. It is a scream expressing the outrage we feel when we’ve been wronged: the need for retribution and yet the realization that revenge will never restore what was taken. I decided to write

this piece after my computer was stolen and years’ worth of creative work (that I had backed up all too sporadically) was lost.

Although this loss was the catalyst for the creation of Violations, the piece really addresses the concept of being violated in a far more universal sense.

The text for Violations was written by my friend and collaborator Royce Vavrek.

(1) Hands, Sandpaper Gripping.

(4) Her sins, My bruises.

(2) Forgive him His trespass.

(5) Ones, Zeros, Robbed.

(3) Errors, A growing debt.

LIBBY VAN CLEEVE English horn & oboe

THOMAS LABADORF bass clarinet

Described as “expert” by the Washington Post, “dazzling” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and “absolutely exquisite” by Paris Transatlantic, Libby Van Cleve’s most extreme epithet was from the Hartford Courant, which dubbed her “the double reed queen of the new music world.” Libby Van Cleve is recognized as one of the foremost interpreters of chamber and contemporary music for the oboe. Her solo playing is featured on the New Albion, CRI, Aerial, and Centrediscs CD labels. Her solo English horn and oboe d’amore performances are featured on the internationally acclaimed CD “Dark Waters,” music by Ingram Marshall. Compact discs featuring her chamber playing have been released on the Tzadik, New World, OODisc, Braxton House, What Next?, CRI, and Artifacts labels. Ms. Van Cleve is the author of Oboe Unbound, a book on contemporary oboe techniques published by Scarecrow Press, and she is co-author of the awardwinning book/CD publication, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale University Press). Ms. Van Cleve received her DMA from Yale School of Music, her MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and her BA magna cum laude, from Bowdoin College.

She is the Director of Oral History of American Music at Yale University and oboe teacher at Connecticut College and Wesleyan University.

Her former teachers have included Ronald Roseman, Allan Vogel, and Basil Reeve.

Thomas Labadorf enjoys myriad musical styles as chamber musician, symphonist, and most recently, pit musician for the Hartford Stage production of Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. His musical experience began at age 8 in Argentina with classical guitar lessons, and he continued in the United States playing clarinet in public school music programs. He began his professional career with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra while attending the Eastman School of Music then later performing in various Connecticut ensembles. He was clarinetist and bass clarinetist with the United States Coast Guard Band from 1982 to 2005, performing as section clarinetist and soloist in concerts across the United States and abroad. His most recent positions include principal clarinet with the New Haven and Waterbury Symphonies and Connecticut Virtuosi Orchestra. Besides performing with fellow faculty members at Connecticut College, he regularly performs chamber music with the Kelet Duo, the Connecticut Trio, Wall Street Chamber Players in New Haven, and Harmonia V Wind Quintet, and is a founding member of the Hop River Chamber Music Series in Andover, CT. Tom is currently working on his dissertation for a Doctor or Musical Arts degree at the University of Connecticut, which, with luck and perseverance, he hopes to complete by December of this year.

REBECCA NOREEN bassoon

LISA MOORE piano

Rebecca Noreen, bassoonist, was a winner of the Artist International Competition in New York City with the Kammer Quintet, which appeared in two recitals in Carnegie Recital Hall. She graduated with a M.M. from Manhattan School of Music and from Western Washington University where she obtained a B.A. and B.E. Ms. Noreen performs with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. She also is a former member of the New Haven Symphony and the United States Coast Guard Band.

She performs with many choral groups in the area such as the Stonington Choral Society, Con Brio, and the Mystic River Chorale. Her chamber music ventures include the Neighborhood Music School Woodwind Quintet and the Laurel Double Reed Ensemble.

Ms. Noreen is an instructor of bassoon presently at Connecticut College and Calvary Music School and was an instructor at the University of Rhode Island and Hartt Community Division for many years. She also has attended the Waterloo Festival and played with members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the conductor Gerard Schwarz. In Graz, Austria she performed in the Opera Orchestra of the American Institute of Musical Studies. Her instructors include Stephen Maxym, Jane Taylor, Mark Eubanks, Matthew Ruggiero, Bruce Grainger, and Gregg Henegar.

Australian pianist Lisa Moore has been described as “beautiful and impassioned” (The New York Times) and “New York’s queen of avant-garde piano” (The New Yorker). She has collaborated with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists – the London Sinfonietta, Bang on a Can, Steve Reich Ensemble, New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, American Composers Orchestra, So Percussion, Signal, TwoSense, and the Paul Dresher Double Duo. Festival appearances include Lincoln Center, BAM, Crash, Graz, Tanglewood, Huddersfield, Paris d’Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, BBC Proms, Southbank, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Spoleto, Israel, and Warsaw. Moore has released six solo discs (Cantaloupe Music and Tall Poppies) and over 30 collaborative discs (Sony, Nonesuch, DG, BMG, New World, ABC Classics, Albany and New Albion). Lisa Moore won the Silver Medal in the 1981 Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition. From 1992 through 2008 she was the founding pianist for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, and she won Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award. She has collaborated with composers ranging from Iannis Xenakis, Elliot Carter, and Frederic Rzewski to Ornette Coleman, Meredith Monk, and Martin Bresnick. As an artistic curator Moore directed Australia’s Canberra International Music Festival 2008 Sounds Alive series. Lisa Moore teaches at Wesleyan University and as a regular guest at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne.

She is an avid skier, gardener, and vegetarian cook. She also bikes, hikes, and does yoga.

Ms. Noreen plays pennywhistle for the Mystic Garland Dancers and the Westerly Morris Men who perform at many festivals in New England.

She lives in Stonington with her clarinetist husband, Jonathan Towne, and her two children, ages 18 and 20.

LINDSAY KESSELMAN soprano

KRISTEN SOLLEK mezzo-soprano

Lindsay Kesselman is a new music soprano quickly becoming known for her “exquisite” singing (Pittsburgh Tribune), her “captivating” performances (Sequenza21), and her exemplary musicianship. She passionately advocates for contemporary music in America, actively commissioning and collaborating with a diverse array of composers. In 2012–2013 she sings with the Philip Glass Ensemble on an international tour of Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach, which includes 12 cities and the Latin American premiere of the piece. She is also the resident soprano with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and in that capacity has performed music by Joseph Schwantner, Louis Andriessen, Amy Kirsten, and Kieren MacMillan. This season she will premiere a new piece by Mathew Rosenblum. Other upcoming performances include Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a new multimedia work for soprano, electronics, dancers, and chamber orchestra by David Biedenbender, Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man with the Michigan State University Wind Symphony, and a recital at the Atlas Theater in Washington, D.C. with cellist Nicholas Photinos and pianist Yasuko Oura.

Called “…a true contralto…” and “ …an appealingly rich alto” by The New York Times and a singer of “elemental tone quality” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kirsten Sollek is gaining recognition for her unique voice and career. Highlights include Haydn Masses performed and recorded with Jane Glover and Trinity Wall Street, Vivaldi’s Gloria with Seattle Baroque, Bach performances with Andrew Parrott and the New York Collegium, Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater with the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, and Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. She has been a featured soloist with Bach Collegium Japan, Kansas City Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Signal, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Grand Rapids Symphony, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Early Music Festival, Lufthansa Festival, and Carmel Bach Festival. Very active in new music, she has appeared at the June in Buffalo and Ojai Music Festivals performing works by Steve Reich, and has recorded Reich’s music with Alarm Will Sound and Signal. She has worked extensively with composers John Zorn, Doug Cuomo, Greg Mertl, and Hannah Lash.

Opera credits include covering the title role in Handel’s Rinaldo for Glyndebourne, Rosmira in Handel’s Partenope for Boston Baroque, Bradamante in Handel’s Alcina for the Teatro Municipal de Santiago, Chile; Lucretia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and the role of Beauty in Blood Rose by Hannah Lash.

Upcoming performances include Zorn’s Shir Hashirim, Holy Visions and Madrigals (premiere) at festivals in London, Paris, Ghent, Jerusalem, and New York City, and a premiere of a new song cycle by Greg Mertl.

Recent engagements include the music of Amy Kirsten in recital at Roosevelt University with members of eighth blackbird and Third Coast Percussion, Harbison’s Mirabai Songs with Baltimore’s SONAR Ensemble, and a recital tour of Abbie Betinis’ song cycle Nattsanger to universities in Texas and Oklahoma, which culminated in a recording to be released on the Fleur de Son Classics label. Kesselman holds degrees in voice performance from Rice University and Michigan State University. » www.lindsaykesselman.com

ERIC BRENNER countertenor

MICHAEL COMPITELLO percussion

Countertenor Eric S. Brenner has been praised for his “penetrating eloquence,” “astonishing solo singing” (New York Times), and “auto-tuned Mr. Roboto majesty” (Stage Mage). A Long Island, New York native, Eric began his training on violin and viola before beginning to sing — as a tenor — in high school. Several years later, under the invaluable tutelage of William Appling, he discovered his countertenor voice, and the remarkable repertoire (both very old and very new) available to him.

Percussionist Michael Compitello is guided by his passion to create new art through collaborations with composers, performers, actors, and artists in all mediums. Currently Visiting Lecturer in Percussion at Cornell University, Michael has worked with composers David Lang, John Luther Adams, Martin Bresnick, Helmut Lachenmann, Alejandro Viñao, and Marc Applebaum on premieres and performances of new works, and has performed as a chamber musician and soloist in diverse locations such as the Darmstadt Summer Course, the L.A. Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Kurt Weill Festival.

Some of Eric’s current opera and new music projects include: Riccardo in Scarlatti’s Il Trionfo dell’Onore with Underworld Productions Opera; Giuliano (cover) in Cavalli’s Eliogabalo with Gotham Chamber Opera; The Poet in Virko Baley’s Holodomor at John Jay College; Doodle in Stefan Weisman’s and David Cote’s Scarlet Ibis; countertenor soloist on Hannah Lash’s Requiem for Extinct Birds & Beast in Lash’s Blood Rose; D.A.V.E. in Kamala Sankaram’s Miranda; soloist/ensemble on Guggenheim Fellow Toby Twining’s new CD Eurydice (Cantaloupe Music), and area appearances with Toby Twining Music. In more traditional concert settings: soprano and alto solos in Handel’s Messiah at Alice Tully Hall, Trinity Wall Street Church, St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, and the Cathedral of St. John’s in Albuquerque, NM; alto soloist at the Boulder Bach Festival; treble soloist in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms at Avery Fisher Hall, presented by Distinguished Concerts International New York. When not singing, Eric dabbles in composition and song-writing, fiction writing, bike-riding, and rooting incorrigibly for the Mets. » www.ericsbrenner.com

From 2009 to 2010, Michael performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt, Germany on a Fulbright Grant from the U.S. Department of State.

As a student of Robert van Sice, Michael earned an MM and MMA from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from the Peabody Conservatory. He was Interim Lecturer in Percussion at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2012.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN artistic director Christopher Theofanidis 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 technology Jack Vees

music.yale.edu

manager Andrew W. Parker music librarian Roberta Senatore production assistant Kate Gonzales 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 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