NEWMUSIC NEWHAVEN hannah lash & christopher theofanidis 路 artistic directors
featuring
PAUL DRESHER and music by Yale graduate composers Morse Recital Hall 路 October 2, 2014
Robert Blocker, Dean
Hannah Lash & Christopher Theofanidis, Artistic Directors
William Gardiner b. 1987
Hebbian Theory 1. Hebbian Theory 2. Soma 3. Long Term Potentiation Ludomil Wojtkowski, violin Gleb Kanasevich, clarinet Miki Sawada, piano
Michael Laurello b. 1981
Big Things
Jesse Limbacher b. 1991
shadowed
Brendon Randall-Myers, electric guitar Samuel Suggs, electric bass Douglas Perry and Jonathan Allen, percussion Miki Sawada, piano
Nathan Lesser, violin Barbora Kolarova, violin Julia Clancy, viola Pall Kalmansson, cello intermission
Paul Dresher b. 1979
Glimpsed from Afar Paul Dresher, quadrachord Joel Davel, marimba lumina
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence all electronic devices. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
PROGRAM NOTES
biography William Gardiner Composer William Gardiner is an Australian composer currently based in the United States at the Yale School of Music, where he studies with David Lang. Gardiner’s output includes works for symphony orchestra, chamber music, and pieces for early music ensembles, but also frequently involves electronic media and amplified instruments. He brings an ear honed in recording studios to his work, which has been performed at venues including the Melbourne Recital Centre, the Sydney Opera House, Yale University’s Morse Recital Hall, San Francisco’s Center for New Music, and the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. In 2013 he was the recipient of a Presser Foundation Graduate Award, the John and Astrid Baumgardner Scholarship at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and a winner of the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s Composer to Center Stage national composer search, part of their American Music Festival. In 2014, he was a composition fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass MoCA. Born in 1987, William Gardiner previously attended the University of Sydney, where he received degrees in Arts and Law. At Yale, he is a doctoral candidate. “A coherent vision and a rare ability to incorporate outside influences seamlessly into it…classical music needs more new blood like this” (Anthony d’Amico, brainwashed.com).
program note Hebbian Theory Hebbian Theory is the result of a few avenues of enquiry I have taken up which can be traced into the world of electronic music. First, the treatment of timbre in this piece is strongly informed by the possibilities of amplification and the recording studio. Secondly, I would characterize my approach to form as concerning itself increasingly with the careful placement of musical ‘objects’ in a multi-directional network of relationships, as opposed to a more linear approach involving a narrative with problems or other events along the way. biography Michael Laurello Composer Michael Laurello is an American composer and pianist. He has written for ensembles and soloists such as So Percussion, Sound Icon, the 15.19 Ensemble, NotaRiotous/The Boston Microtonal Society, guitarist Flavio Virzì, soprano Sarah Pelletier, pianist/composer John McDonald, and clarinetist and linguist/music theorist Ray Jackendoff. Upcoming collaborations include a new orchestral work for the Yale Philharmonia (December 2014) and a new percussion quartet for Sandbox Percussion (March 2015). Laurello is an Artist Diploma candidate in composition at the Yale School of Music, where he received the Jacob Druckman Scholarship and the Rena Greenwald Memorial Scholarship for 2014–2015. His primary composition teachers are David Lang and Christopher Theofanidis. He holds an M.A. in composition from Tufts
PROGRAM NOTES
University, where he studied under John McDonald, and a B.Mus. in Music Synthesis (Electronic Production and Design) from the Berklee College of Music. Recent honors include a commission from the American Composers Forum and an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation (Boston). He has attended composition festivals at highSCORE (Pavia, Italy) and Etchings (Auvillar, France). In addition to his work as a composer and performer, Laurello is a teaching fellow at Yale University. biography Jesse Limbacher Composer Jesse Limbacher is an award-winning composer of acoustic music that draws upon influences from an eclectic and everchanging variety of sources. His honors include an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the Donald Erb Prize for excellence in music composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music. His music has been commissioned by the fresh inc. festival, violinist Andrew Williams, Latitude 49, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. His reed trio Air was released this fall on Fifth House Ensemble's debut CD Excelsior, on Cedille Records. Jesse received a B.M. in composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music before coming to Yale. He is grateful for the support of his mentors Keith Fitch, Martin Bresnick, Hannah Lash, and David Lang.
program note shadowed shadowed is a veiled object, distilled to its elemental core and spread across a plane of frozen time. Its drama is created by shifts in its absolute stillness of being. Inwardly expressive, elusive, and mystical; its inevitable paradox is its human nature. biography Paul Dresher Guest Composer Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and unique personal style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Walker Arts Center, Meet the Composer, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, and the National Flute Association. He has performed or had his works performed throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at venues including New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Munich State Opera, London Sinfonietta,
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Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia ’95 and Festival Interlink in Japan. Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp, Wendy Rogers, and Allyson Green. Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He also studied intonation and instrument building with Lou Harrision. He has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music and Arts, 0.0. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels. program note Glimpsed from Afar Glimpsed from Afar is the second concert work created for this duo of invented instruments (the first was In The Name(less) from 2002). It was commissioned by the San Francisco Jewish Music Festival and premiered on the Festival in March 2006. In a different form, much of the music in the work was integrated into the live score for
the collaboration with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company on the dance work A Slipping Glimpse, which premiered in May 2006 in San Francisco. The creation and development of the work is indebted to percussionist Joel Davel, whose ideas and performance have been integral to both the composition and performance of the work. As in In The Name(less), my compositional approach combines, in much the same way as jazz or many non-classical traditions organize their forms, germinal composed materials (including live looping/layering and the technical manipulation of the sounds) and a predetermined sequence of distinct sections with substantial improvisational development within each of these sections. Perhaps this is reflective of my musical roots, which are in many improvised musical forms, from blues through free(ish) jazz and into North Indian Classical music. While not sounding like any of these, these works share both a philosophical desire and emotional imperative that all these musics embody: the need to combine both freedom and structure, the rational (and expected) with the intuitive (and unexpected).
NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN
Artistic Directors Hannah Lash Christopher Theofanidis Manager Andrew W. Parker Music Librarian Roberta Senatore Production Assistant Brent LaFlam Office Assistant Timothy Gocklin Conducting Fellows Heejung Kim Louis Lohraseb
Stage Crew Samuel Bobinski Patrick Durbin Batmyagmar Erdenebat Julia Ghica John Kossler Fiona Last Christopher Lettie Thomas Park Elisabeth Shafer Terrence Sweeney Georgi Videnov Yifei Fu Matthew Keown John Weisgerber John Caughman
Music Librarians Nicholas DeBerardino Allan Hon Fiona Last Michael Laurello David Mason Richard Liverano Yefim Romanov Marie Oka Matthew Keown
UPCOMING EVENTS Trombone Studio Recital
Lunchtime Chamber Music
october 6 Sudler Recital Hall| Monday | 7:30 pm Yale School of Music Ensembles Featuring students in the studio of Scott Hartman Free Admission
october 15 Yale School of Music Ensembles Center for British Art | Wednesday | 12:30 pm Music for a variety of ensembles. Wendy Sharp, director Free Admission
Colleen Potter Thorburn, harp
John Adams, guest conductor
october 9 Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Music of Hindemith, Vivaldi, Couperin, Rameau, and more. Free Admission
october 17 Yale Philharmonia Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Stravinsky: Orpheus; Adams: Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra, featuring the Brentano String Quartet; Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major Tickets start at $10, Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door
Carol Jantsch, tuba october 13 Morse Recital Hall | Monday | 7:30 pm Faculty Artist Series David Lang: Press Release Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun Piazzolla: Tango Koetsier: Concertino for Tuba Free Admission
Peter Serkin, piano october 22 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Horowitz Piano Series Music from the Renaissance; Schoenberg: Suite, Op. 25; Mozart: Rondo in A minor, K. 511 Tickets start at $21, Students $11
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Robert Blocker, Dean