Music of Aaron Jay Kernis & Christopher Theofanidis, September 29, 2016

Robert Blocker, Dean

new music new haven

featuring music by

Aaron Jay Kernis & Christopher Theofanidis and music by Yale School of Music student composers

Hannah Lash, Artistic Director September 29, 2016 • Thursday at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

Yale School of Music

New Music New Haven September 29, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Matthew Bridgham b. 1989

Scherzo (2016) Marina Aikawa, Cheuk-Yin Clement Luu, violin Joyce Huang, viola Allan Hon, cello

Krists Auznieks b. 1992

Migration (2016) Kelly Hill, mezzo-soprano Giovanni Bertoni, clarinet Jordan Calixto, double bass Dmitri Nilov, percussion Robin Giesbrecht, piano Krists Auznieks, electronics

Christopher Theofanidis b. 1967

O Vis Aeternitatis (2000) Argus Quartet David Fung, piano intermission

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

New Music New Haven

Molly Joyce b. 1992

Lost and Found (2016) Eric Braley, clarinet David Kai Yuan Loke, violin Yeji Yoo, cello Kaden Hall Henderson, bass Young Kyoung Lee, percussion Kaisaier Ainiwaer, piano

Aaron Jay Kernis b. 1960

Perpetual Chaconne (2012) David Shifrin, clarinet Jasper String Quartet J Freivogel, Sae Chonabayashi, violin Sam Quintal, viola Rachel Henderson Freivogel, cello

Program Notes

biography Matthew Bridgham

at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Finland and was broadcast on classical music radio stations worldwide.

Matthew Bridgham’s music embraces a Having received his Bachelor of Arts degree union of his own individual perspective with from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague the profound impact on his ears of the music and the Institute of Sonology, he was he loves. His music interacts with classical awarded a Master of Music degree and and romantic aspects of form and tonality, Frances E. Osborne Kellogg Memorial refracted through a lens wholly his own. He Prize from the Yale School of Music where has worked privately with William Bolcom, he is currently pursuing a doctoral degree.

Martin Bresnick, Gabriela Lena Frank, Derek Auznieks’ latest opera, NeoArctic, was Bermel, Joan Tower, and Libby Larsen, performed at the Riga Russian Theatre and his music has been performed at the (Latvia) and Royal Danish Theatre American Music Festival, Colorado Music (Denmark) in fall 2016.

Festival, the Midwest Composers Symposium, the Shandelee Music Festival, text and the New York Festival of Song. He Migration (2016) studies composition privately with Hannah Lyrics by Ilmārs Šlāpins Lash at the Yale School of Music. mīlestība prasa laiku laiks prasa dzīvību biography dzīvība prasa tavas zemes augļus Krists Auznieks zeme prasa asinis asinis prasa ienīst un aizmirst Krists Auznieks’ music has been performed visi šai pasaulē prasa un prasa at the National Centre for the Performing kādam reiz būtu jādod Arts in Beijing, Shanghai City Theatre, and Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw; featured at love takes time Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Holland), the time takes life NEXT Festival of Emerging Artists (New life takes fruits from this earth York), American Academy of Fontainebleau earth takes blood (France), and Bennington Chamber Music blood takes your hate and your memories Conference (Vermont); commissioned by everything takes and takes the Latvian Radio Choir, Albany Symphony there must be someone who gives (New York), Latvian Radio Big Band, Contemporaneous (New York), and Sinfonietta Riga (Latvia); and performed by biography Sandbox Percussion (New York), the David Christopher Theofanidis Kweksilber Big Band (Holland), Antico Moderno (Boston), and the Philharmonia Christopher Theofanidis has had his work Orchestra of Yale. Auznieks’ work I Exist performed by the London Symphony, the As I Am was a Selected Work (under 30) New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia

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Orchestra, and the Atlanta, National, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit symphonies, among many others. He also served as composer of the year for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra during its 2006-7 season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang.

Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, Eastman, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the International Masterprize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship to France, and two fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2007 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for his work The Here and Now, based on the poetry of Rumi. His orchestral work Rainbow Body has been one of the most performed new works of the new millennium, having been performed by over 150 orchestras internationally. Dreamtime Ancestors, a consortium work for New Music for America, is being played by 58 different orchestras over the past season and the current one.

Mr. Theofanidis has written widely for the stage, including works for the San Francisco and Houston Grand Opera companies, as well as the American Ballet Theatre. He is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University as well as The Juilliard School. Mr. Theofanidis is currently a professor at the Yale School of Music and a composer-inresidence at the Aspen Music Festival.

program note O Vis Aeternitatis (2000) O Vis Aeternitatis for piano quintet is loosely based on the Hildegard of Bingen chant by the same name and is one of three works I have written that are connected to her.

The others are Rainbow Body (2000) for orchestra and Virtue (2013) for soprano solo, male actor, girl’s choir, and chamber orchestra (based on her Ordo Virtutum).

My love of Hildegard’s musical work is connected to both the repetitive quality of shorter motives found buried within her melodic writing (unusual for medieval chant) and to the sound world of the higher vaulting female vocal writing that she engaged. I have always felt that her melodies have had an affect (a basic emotive quality) to them, much like the way ancient Greek music or classical Indian music approaches the link between modes and mood, and that much of this quality comes from her distinctive intervallic choices from within the modes. O Vis Aeternitatis translates roughly to “O Essence of Eternity,” and is strongly defined by a rising perfect fifth and minor second. Much of the melodic writing in my piece takes that contour as its starting point.

O Vis Aeternitatis was commissioned by the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival for Speculum Musicae and lasts approximately eleven minutes.

Program Notes

biography Molly Joyce Molly Joyce’s music has been described as “impassioned” (Washington Post), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “vibrant, inventive music that communicates straight from the heart” (Prufrock’s Dilemma). Her works have been commissioned and performed by several distinguished ensembles including the New World Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and the New Juilliard, Decoda, and Contempor-aneous ensembles. Additionally, her work has been performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon and VisionIntoArt’s FERUS Festival.

The 2016-17 season will see the first commercial releases of Molly’s music, both on New Amsterdam Records. These releases include two violin and electronics singles, and a work on pianist Vicky Chow’s album of electroacoustic piano compositions.

program note Lost and Found (2016) Lost and Found was commissioned by and dedicated to the New York-based chamber ensemble Echo Chamber.

The work was inspired by the idea of constantly losing and finding yourself, and how this idea can fit into a regimented rhythmic structure, similar to that of a regimented daily schedule. When initially asked to write the piece for Echo Chamber, I knew immediately that I wanted to feature the incredible bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, and somehow represent the bass instrument, lost at first and by the end of the piece eventually finding itself. biography Aaron Jay Kernis

Winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award, 1998 Pulitzer Prize, and 2011 Nemmers Award, Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America’s As a performer, Molly often performs on most honored composers. His music appears her vintage Magnus toy organ, an instrument prominently in concerts worldwide, and she bought on eBay and has performed on he has been commissioned by America’s in multiple capacities, including as a soloist, preeminent performing organizations and with toy piano, and with a beatboxer. artists, including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles and Also an active participant in other aspects Saint Paul Chamber orchestras, Walt Disney of the music industry, Molly is currently the Company, Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, digital content manager for New Amsterdam and others. Recent commissions include Presents/Records and has served as an concertos for violinist James Ehnes, cellist assistant to Glenn Kotche, Missy Mazzoli, Joshua Roman, violist Paul Neubauer, flautist Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Shara Nova, Marina Piccinini, and a third string quartet among others. for the Jasper Quartet. His works have been recorded on Virgin, Dorian, Arabesque, Molly has studied at The Juilliard School, Phoenix, Argo, Signum, Cedille, and other the Koninklijk Conservatorium, and the Yale labels. His newest release on Naxos features School of Music.

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pianist Andrew Russo, violinist James Ehnes, and the Albany Symphony under the direction of David Alan Miller.

For ten years he was the new music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and co-founder and artistic director of their Composer Institute. He now directs the Nashville Symphony’s Composer’s Lab. Kernis is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Classical Music Hall of Fame. Leta Miller’s book-length portrait of Kernis and his work was published in 2014 by the University of Illinois Press.

He has taught at the Yale School of Music since 2003. program note Perpetual Chaconne (2012) Perpetual Chaconne grows out of four main ideas: the falling lines in the violins that open it, the lyrical, expressive music that is introduced by the clarinet, a group of minor chords that is the harmonic grounding (the chaconne) of the whole work, and the rocking, alternating triplets that pass from instrument to instrument. Everything else in the piece varies one or more of these ideas, and maps an emotional journey from mournful lyricism to increasingly abstract, harsh gestures and back. Some of the ideas return to echo earlier appearances in the work, but most are varied and transformed all the way through to the end. It was written for David Shifrin, John Bruce Yeh, and the Orion and Calder quartets.The piece is in one movement of about 18 minutes.

biography The Argus Quartet The Argus Quartet is dedicated to reinvigorating the audience-performer relationship through innovative concerts and diverse repertoire—connecting with and building up a community of engaged listeners is at the core of the quartet’s mission.

Formed in the summer of 2013, Argus is receiving invitations from concert series throughout the United States and abroad.

Recent performances include appearances at Carnegie Hall, Laguna Beach Live!, Encinitas’ Music By the Sea, the Hear Now Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, the Birdfoot Festival, and the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam. During the 2016-17 season, the Argus Quartet will serve as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts.

Argus recently began an appointment as the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet in-residence and is the first ensemble to be mentored by the Brentano String Quartet in that capacity. Next season, Argus will appear at Carnegie Hall, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Oneppo Chamber Series in programs with the Brentano String Quartet and clarinetist David Shifrin.

The Argus Quartet believes that today’s ensembles must honor the storied chamber music traditions of our past while forging a new path forward. In that spirit, their repertoire includes not just staples of the chamber music canon, but also a large number of pieces by living composers.

The quartet was recently awarded a commissioning grant from Chamber Music

Program Notes

America for a new work by composer and Grammy Award nominee Eric Guinivan.

Beyond its commitment to performing chamber music at the highest level, Argus aims to engage audiences in unique ways.

Last fall marked the inaugural season of Argus in LA, a concert series that reimagines many aspects of the traditional concert experience. These handcrafted presentations have something for everyone: eclectic programming, world premieres, and exciting guest artists. biography David Fung

Jasper String Quartet Winner of the prestigious CMA Cleveland Quartet Award, Philadelphia’s Jasper String Quartet is the Professional Quartet-inResidence at Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians.

The Jaspers have been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad) and “powerful” (New York Times). “The Jaspers ... match their sounds perfectly, as if each swelling chord were coming out of a single, impossibly welltuned organ, instead of four distinct instruments.” (New Haven Advocate)

A frequent guest artist of prestigious fesThe quartet records exclusively for Sono tivals and concert series worldwide, David Luminus and have released three highly Fung has performed at the Aspen Music acclaimed albums—Beethoven Op. 131, Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, The Kernis Project: Schubert, and The Kernis Music@Menlo, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Project: Beethoven.

Ravinia Festival, and at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill halls, the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), Wigmore Hall biography (London), the Queen’s Hall, the Louvre David Shifrin Auditorium (Paris), La Monnaie (Brussels), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), the One of only two wind players to have been Zürich Tonhalle, the Glenn Gould Studio awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the (Toronto), the Sydney Opera House, the award’s inception in 1974, clarinetist David Beijing Concert Hall, the Tianjin Grand Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchesTheater, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, tral soloist, recitalist, and chamber music Hong Kong City Hall, the National Concert collaborator.

Hall in Taiwan, the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center (Israeli Opera House), and the He has performed with numerous major Charles Bronfman Auditorium (Israel). orchestras including the Dallas, Seattle, At his Edinburgh International Festival Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit, Denver, and debut, Jonas Green of the Edinburgh Guide Memphis symphonies, the Los Angeles described Mr. Fung as being “impossibly Chamber Orchestra, and the Philadelphia virtuosic, prodigiously talented... and [who] and Minnesota orchestras. Internationally, probably does ten more impossible things he has performed with orchestras in Italy, daily before breakfast.”

Switzerland, Germany, and Taiwan. In biography

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addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), with the Cleveland Orchestra, Honolulu, and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Chamber Symphony.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared in critically acclaimed recitals around the world, including at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and throughout Germany.

His recordings (on Delos, DGG, Angel/ EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI) continue to garner praise as well as awards, and he has received three Grammy Award nominations. Sought after as a chamber musician, he appears frequently with such distinguished artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson string quartets and Wynton Marsalis.

Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by championing the works of 20th- and 21st-century American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, Mr. Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. Along with his work at CMSLC, Mr. Shifrin is also the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. David Shifrin has been a professor at the Yale School of Music since 1987.

He has also served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the University of Southern

California, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii. Mr. Shifrin has been on the Yale faculty since 1987 and has been artistic director of the Oneppo Chamber Music Series at Yale and Yale in New York since 2008.

Staff

Artistic Director Hannah Lash Manager Jeffrey M. Mistri Assistant Manager Roberta Senatore Conducting Fellow David Yi Office Assistant Valery Sly Library Mariya-Andoniya Andonova Emily Brandenburg Sophie Cash-Goldwasser Antonia Chandler Allan Hon Bora Kim Laura Park Lauren Williams Stage Crew Lydia Consilvio Margaret Davis Thomas Duboski Reese Farnell Christopher Garwood Ashley Hale Nozomi Imamura Pall Quinn Kalmansson Matthew Keown Young Kyoung Lee Cheuk Yin Clement Luu Hillary Simms Andrew Stadler Sam Um Georgi Videnov

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Upcoming Events Wei-Yi Yang october 5

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Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang performs Ravel’s enigmatic Miroirs suite and selections from Goyescas, to commemorate Granados’ centennial, along with works by Chopin and Rachmaninoff Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $13 • Students $7

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