Yale Percussion Group

Yale Percussion Group december 10, 2010 Morse Recital Hall robert van sice Director music of De Mey Noda Reich Vi単ao Wood

Robert Blocker, Dean

december 10, 2010 Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall · 8 pm

Yale Percussion Group Robert van Sice, director

Thierry De Mey b. 1956

Musique de Tables (1987)

James Wood b. 1953

Village Burial with Fire (1989)

Steve Reich b. 1936

Sextet (1985)

Michael Compitello John Corkill Robert van Sice

Yun-Chu Candy Chiu Michael Compitello Leonardo Gorosito Adam Rosenblatt

Yun-Chu Candy Chiu Michael Compitello John Corkill Leonardo Gorosito Ian Rosenbaum Adam Rosenblatt intermission

Alejandro Viñao b. 1951

Khan Variations

Teruyuki Noda b. 1940

Quintetto Mattinata

Ian Rosenbaum

Yun-Chu Candy Chiu, marimba Aleksey Klyushnik, double bass Dariya Nikolenko, flute Anouvong Liensavanh, flute Peng Zhou, flute

Robert van Sice and the Yale Percussion Group would like to thank Adams/Pearl and Vic Firth for their long standing support of Yale School of Music’s percussion program.

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.

Members of the YPG have gone on to form the acclaimed quartet So Percussion and to perform with Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two, the Carnegie Hall Academy Ensemble, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Yale percussion students and graduates have recently won the Linz (Austria) International Marimba Competition and the Concert Artist Guild Competition.

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 the Far East. In 1989 he gave the first fulllength marimba recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has since played in most of Europe’s major concert halls, with many broadcasts by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, WDR, and Radio France.

He is frequently invited as a soloist with Europe’s leading contemporary music ensembles and festivals, including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps, and L’Itinéraire and the Archipel, Darmstadt, and North American Recent alumni teach at institutions such as new music festivals. From 1988 to 1997 he Cornell, Dartmouth, Michigan State, SUNY headed Europe’s first diploma program for solo Stonybrook, Umass Amherst, Baylor, and the marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatorium.

Conservatoire de Genève (Switzerland).

Mr. van Sice has given master classes in more The members of the Yale Percussion Group are than twenty countries and frequently visits the Yun-Chu Candy Chiu, Michael Compitello, major conservatories in Europe as a guest John Corkill, Leonardo Gorosito, Ian Rosenbaum, lecturer. He joined the Yale faculty as a lecturer in percussion in the fall of 1997. and Adam Rosenblatt.

program notes

Thierry De Mey Musique de Tables (1987)

James Wood Village Burial with Fire (1989)

Thierry De Mey refers to his Musique de Tables as “an exploration of the relationship between movement and sound.” Conceptually it is more a ballet for three pairs of hands than a conventional percussion ensemble piece. The architecture of the piece is like a miniature Baroque suite, complete with an overture, rondo, fugato, and galop.

Paul Klee used to refer to his own work as “abstract with memories.” I hope he will allow me to borrow the term, at least in this instance.

Belgian composer Thierry De Mey works in numerous different media including film, theater, dance, and composition.

Here the memories are of a Hindu, princely funeral ceremony - for two months the villagers have been making preparations - hundreds have turned out wearing their most lavish and colourful clothes, and carrying offerings of food on their heads. First there is the noisy procession down to the river for purification of the soul, then a short ceremony, and then the vast funeral pyre is set alight. At this moment it seems as though the whole village has exploded into music and dancing - soon, some go into trance. Gradually the physical form of the pyre disintegrates, and the spirit of the deceased is formally set free to mingle with the spirit world.

In the evening, when the festivities have moved on to another place, some mourners lament beside the glowing embers.

Village Burial with Fire was commissioned by the Hungarian percussion group Amadinda for the 1989 Arts Council Contemporary Music Network, with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. The first nine performances were given by Amadinda during their Arts Council tour of Britain during November 1989 in London, Leicester, Winchester, Cheltenham, Bristol, Manchester, Durham, Sheffield and Huddersfield.

– James Wood

Steve Reich Sextet (1985)

Sextet is in five movements played without pause. The relationship of the five movements is that of an arch form, A-B-C-B-A. The first and last movements are fast, the second and fourth moderate and the third, slow. Changes of tempo are made abruptly at the beginning of new movements by metric modulation to either get slower or faster. Movements are also organized harmonically wit the chord cycle for the first and fifth, another for the second and fourth, and yet another for the third. The harmonies used are largely dominant chords with added tones creating a somewhat darker, chromatic and more varied harmonic language were suggested by The Desert Music (1984).

overall repeating contrapuntal web first occurs in my Six Pianos of 1973 and occurs throughout this work. Double canons, where one canon moves slowly (the bowed vibraphones) and the second moves quickly (the pianos), first appear in my music in Octet of 1979. Techniques influenced by African music, where the basic ambiguity in meters of 12 beats is between 3 groups of 4 and 4 groups of 3, appear in the third and fifth movements. A rhythmically ambiguous pattern is played by vibraphones in the third movement, but at a much faster tempo. The result is to change the perception of what is in fact not changing. Another related, more recent techniques appearing near the end of the fourth movement is to gradually remove the melodic material in the sythesizers leaving the accompaniment of the two vibraphones to become the new melodic focus. Similarly, the accompaniment in the piano in the second movement becomes the melody for the synthesizer in the fourth movement. The ambiguity here is between which is melody and which is accompaniment. In music which uses a great deal of repetition, I believe it is precisely these kinds of ambiguities that give vitality and life.

Percussion instruments mostly produce sounds of relatively short duration. In this piece I was interested in overcoming hat limitation. The use of the bowed vibraphone, not merely as a passing effect, but as a basic instrumental voice in the second movement, was one means of getting long continuous sounds not possible with piano. The mallet instruments (marimba, vibraphone etc) are basically instruments of high and middle register without a low range.

To overcome this limit the bass drum was used doubling the piano or synthesizer played in Sextet was commissioned by Laura Dean Dancers their lower register, particularly in the second, and Musicians and by the French government for the Nexus Percussion Ensemble. third and fourth movements.

Compositional techniques used include some – Steve Reich introduced in my music as early as Drumming in 1971. In particular the substitution of beats for rests to “build-up� a canon between two or more identical instruments playing the same repeating pattern is used extensively in the first and last movements. Sudden change of rhythmic position (or phase) of one voice in an

program notes

Alejandro Viñao Khan Variations

Teruyuki Noda Quintetto Mattinata

For some years I have listened to the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He was perhaps the greatest exponent of Qawwali, the music of the sufi mystics. This music in general, and Ali Khan’s singing in particular, are characterized by remarkable rhythmic and melismatic subtlety.

I composed this piece in 1968 as the result of a commission from Keiko Abe for her first recital.

This was a time at which I just completed a symphony and was taking my first steps as a composer. It was also an important period during which Miss Abe was in the course of opening up a new page in the history of the marimba.

The Khan Variations are a set of 8 rhythmic variations based on a traditional theme from Qawwali music as sang by Ali Khan. The basic pulse and ‘feel’ of the music has lingered in my mind ever since I first heard the recording in the early 90’s. I developed each of the eight variations – which are played as a continuous piece – exploring a different rhythmic and melodic aspect of the original theme. However, from the harmonic point of view the piece is rather static, respecting the lack or harmony – in the Western sense – of the original traditional theme.

As I look at the score now, I can recognize a range of influences from Conlon Nancarrow, tango music, and my own previous pieces for marimba. All these influences have one thing in common: the articulation of pulse, or multiple simultaneous pulses to create a dramatic musical discourse.

Khan Variations was jointly commissioned by Bogdan Bacanu, Michael Burritt, Ricardo Gallardo, Eduardo Leandro, Nanae Mimura, William Moersch, Peter Prommel, Gordon Stout, Jack Van Geem, Robert Van Sice, Nancy Zeltsman, and Alan Zimmerman, with the assistance of New Music Marimba. Nancy Zeltsman was the project organizer.

– Alejandro Viñao

It seems like only yesterday that I talked so excitedly with Mss Abe into the early hours of the morning about the future, the possibilities, and her aspirations for the marimba. The unusual combination of instruments used in this piece came about inevitably in the course of our discussions. Miss Abe proposed the idea of employing two flutes, an idea which I augmented through addition of another flute and a double bass.

The work consists of three movements. The first, entitled Prologue, is a brief movement performed at a fast tempo marked Presto (eighth note = 138). The principal interval relationships, themes, and other musical material which appear throughout the work are presented in this movement.

The second movement, Monologue, is in a Molto Lento tempo, and features gentle recitation by the marimba accompanied by the other instruments. A marimba cadenza appears at the center of the movement.

In the third movement, Epilogue (quarter note = ca. 88), contrast is created through the incorporation of a metrical pulse into a non-metrical “moto perpetuo” sense of motion. A chorale is presented in the course of the movement by the flutes, and is taken up again at the end of the

movement by the marimba, combining with a return to material presented in the first movement.

Miss Abe astonished us by performing from memory this and the other works which had been composed for her recital and completed with little time to spare. Her enthusiasm gave a clear hint of the future which lay ahead for the marimba. The enthusiasm which we felt at this time was truly the enthusiasm which is the lost prerogative of youth.

- Teruyuki Noda

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yale school of music Robert Blocker, Dean 203 432-4158 Box Office concerts@yale.edu E-mail

concerts & media Dana Astmann Monica Ong Danielle Heller Richard Henebry

operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo

December 12 yale percussion group in nyc Sunday at 8 pm, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall The Yale Percussion Group, directed by Robert Van Sice, returns to Carnegie Hall. Thierry de Mey: Musique de Tables; Steve Reich: Sextet; James Wood: Village Burial with Fire; Mauricio Kagel: Dressur. Tickets $15–$25 at www.carnegiehall.org or 212 247-7800.

December 13 liederabend

piano curators Brian Daley William Harold

Monday at 8 pm, Morse Recital Hall An evening of Russian art song by Tchaikovsky and many others, featuring the rising stars of Yale Opera. Emily Olin, piano.

Doris Yarick Cross, artistic director.

Free admission.

recording studio Eugene Kimball Jason Robins

December 15 lunchtime chamber music Wednesday at 12:30 pm, Morse Recital Hall Free admission.

December 15 guitar chamber music Wednesday at 8 pm, Morse Recital Hall Benjamin Verdery, director. Music by Kathryn Alexander, David Lang, Astor Piazzolla, and Juan Brouwer. Free admission.