Imani Winds, Feb 14, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

oneppo chamber music series

Imani Winds

David Shifrin, Artistic Director February 14, 2017 • Tuesday at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

Imani Winds valerie coleman, flute • toyin spellman-diaz, oboe mark dover, clarinet • jeff scott, horn • monica ellis, bassoon with wei-yi yang, piano Valerie Coleman b. 1970

Red Clay and Mississippi Delta (2009)

Júlio Medaglia b. 1938

Suite Popular Brasileira I. Chôro em Berlin II. Baiao III. Seresta IV. Frevo

Igor Stravinsky 1882–1971

The Rite of Spring (2010) arr. Jonathan Russell intermission

Anders Hillborg b. 1954

Six Pieces for Wind Quintet (2007) I. eighth note = 152 II. quarter note = 152 III. Idyll, dotted eighth note = 120 IV. quartet note = 96-108, with fury V. quartet note = 60, very calm VI. dotted quarter note = 76

Francis Poulenc 1899–1963

Sextet for piano and wind quintet, FP 100 I. Allegro vivace. Très vite et emporté II. Divertissement. Andantino III. Finale. Prestissimo

Simon Shaheen b. 1955

Dance Mediterranea arr. Jeff Scott

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.

Artist Profiles

Extolled by the Washington Post as “exuding a sultry sophistication during performances,” the Imani Winds have established themselves as one of the most successful chamber music ensembles in the United States. Since 1997, the Grammy-nominated quintet has taken a unique path, carving out a distinct presence in the classical music world with its dynamic playing, culturally poignant programming, adventurous collaborations, and inspirational outreach programs. With two member composers and a deep commitment to commissioning new work, the group is enriching the traditional wind quintet repertoire while meaningfully bridging European, American, African, and Latin American traditions.

The Imani Winds’ touring schedule has taken them across the globe. At home, the group has performed in the nation’s major concert venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Disney Hall, and the Kimmel Center.

The group is frequently engaged by the premier chamber music series in Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Philadelphia, and New York and has also played virtually every major university performing arts series including those in Amherst, Ann Arbor, Austin, Seattle, Stanford, Urbana, and countless others. Festivals include Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society, Virginia Arts Festival, Bravo!

Colorado, and the Ravinia Festival. In recent seasons, the group has traveled extensively overseas, with tours in China, Singapore, Brazil, and throughout Europe.

Recent season highlights include debuts at La Folle Journée in Nantes, France, and in London’s Wigmore Hall. In 2015 the

quintet made its debut at the Paris Jazz Festival and was featured at the Huntington Estate Festival in Australia.

The group continues its Legacy Commissioning Project, in which the ensemble is commissioning, premiering, and touring new works for woodwind quintet written by established and emerging composers of diverse musical backgrounds. The Legacy Project kicked off in 2008 with world premieres by Alvin Singleton and Roberto Sierra. Since then, projects have included works by Jason Moran, Stefon Harris, Danilo Perez, Simon Shaheen, and Mohammed Fairouz. The group’s fifth album on E1 Music – titled Terra Incognita after Wayne Shorter’s piece written for the group – is a celebration of the Legacy project with new works written for Imani Winds by Mr. Shorter, Jason Moran, and Paquito D’Rivera. In 2015 they premiered a new work by Frederic Rzewski at Duke University’s Duke Performances.

The wide range of programs offered by the Imani Winds demonstrates the group's mission to expand the repertoire and diversify new music sources. From Mendelssohn, Jean Françaix, György Ligeti, and Luciano Berio to Astor Piazzolla, Elliott Carter, and John Harbison; and to the unexpected ranks of Paquito D’Rivera and Simon Shaheen, the Imani Winds actively seek to engage new music and bring new voices into the modern classical idiom. Imani members Valerie Coleman and Jeff Scott both regularly contribute compositions and arrangements to the ensemble’s expanding repertoire, bringing new sounds and textures to the traditional instrumentation.

This past year they premiered a concertlength new work by Mr. Scott written for

Artist Profiles

Imani Winds, jazz trio, and string quartet titled The Passion, which musically explores the idea of a fictitious meeting between J.S. Bach and John Coltrane.

Through commissions and performance the quintet regularly collaborates with artists ranging from Yo-Yo Ma to Wayne Shorter. Shorter’s Terra Incognita – his first ever composition for another ensemble – was premiered by the Imani Winds. The group went on to perform extensively with Shorter at major European festivals like the North Sea Jazz Festival and in North America at venues such as Carnegie and Disney halls. On Shorter’s acclaimed 2013 release on Blue Note, Without a Net, the Imani Winds are featured prominently.

The group’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center residency culminated in a recital in New York’s Alice Tully Hall with renowned clarinetist/saxophonist/composer Paquito D’Rivera. The ensemble has also worked with luminaries such as bandoneonist Daniel Binelli, the Brubeck brothers, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, clarinetist David Shifrin, and pianists Gilbert Kalish and Shai Wosner. Their ambitious project, “Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot!” brought chanteuse René Marie with them to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

The Imani Winds enjoy frequent national exposure in all forms of media, including features on NPR’s All Things Considered, appearances on APM’s Saint Paul Sunday and Performance Today, and BBC/PRI’s The World, as well as frequent coverage in major music magazines and newspapers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The group maintains an ongoing relationship with Sirius-XM

and has been featured multiple times and on various channels.

Their excellence and influences have been recognized with numerous awards including the 2007 ASCAP Award and 2002 CMA/ ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, as well as the CMA/WQXR Award for their debut and self-released recording, Umoja. At the 2001 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Imani Winds were selected as the first-ever Educational Residency Ensemble, in recognition of their tremendous musical abilities and innovative programming.

The Imani Winds’ commitment to education runs deep. The group participates in residencies throughout the United States, giving master classes to thousands of students a year. In the summer of 2010, the ensemble launched its annual Chamber Music Festival.

The program, now in its sixth year, brings together young instrumentalists from across North America and beyond for an intense week of music exploration. The participants have gone on to sundry successes across the world, ranging from winning positions in orchestras around the country to founding their own music educational programs.

The Imani Winds have five releases on E1 Music, including their 2006 Grammy Award-nominated recording, The Classical Underground. They have also recorded for Naxos and Blue Note, and the most recent release, The Rite of Spring on Warner Classics, was on iTunes' Best of 2013 list.

Artist Profiles

Wei-Yi Yang, piano Pianist Wei-Yi Yang has received worldwide acclaim for his captivating performances and imaginative programming. A gold medal winner at the San Antonio International Piano Competition, he has performed at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and across America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Most recently, he was praised

by The New York Times for his “sensational” performance as the piano soloist in a presentation of Messiaen’s TurangalîlaSymphonie at Carnegie Hall.

Wei-Yi Yang’s performances have been featured on NPR, PBS, ARTE (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne), the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and on recordings by Genuin, Ovation, Albany Records, Renegade Classics, and the Holland-America Music Society. Mr. Yang is a frequent guest artist at the festivals of Novi Sad, Serbia; Monterrey, Mexico; Konstanz, Germany; Kotor, Montenegro; La Jolla and Napa, California; and Norfolk, Connecticut.

A dynamic chamber musician with a diverse repertoire, Mr. Yang has collaborated with many distinguished musicians including the Alexander, Brentano, Cassatt, Pacifica, and Tokyo string quartets; mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade; soprano Dawn Upshaw; clarinetists Richard Stoltzman and David Shifrin; violists Ettore Causa, Roberto Díaz, and Roger Tapping; cellist Clive Greensmith and violinist Axel Strauss, among numerous others.

Mr. Yang has curated inventive interdisciplinary projects, including a collaboration

with English actress Miriam Margolyes as part of the “Dickens’ Women” world tour; lecture/recitals on the confluence of Czech music and literature; and multimedia performances of Granados’ monumental piano suite Goyescas with projections of Goya’s etchings. Mr. Yang has worked with several composers, including Jonathan Cole, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, and George Crumb, to prepare their works for premieres and recordings.

Born in Taiwan of Chinese and Japanese heritage, Mr. Yang studied first in the United Kingdom and then in America with renowned Russian pianists Arkady Aronov at the Manhattan School of Music and Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music. Mr. Yang has also worked with eminent pianists Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Vera Gornostaeva, Hans Graf, Byron Janis, Lilian Kallir, and Murray Perahia. He is a founding member of the Soyulla Ensemble, which received the prestigious McKnight Fellowship and recently made its debut at Alice Tully Hall and toured Korea.

In demand as a dedicated teacher, Mr. Yang has presented master classes and performances in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Serbia, and Montenegro, among other countries.

He has adjudicated the Isidor Bajic Piano Memorial Competition, the San Antonio International Piano Competition, and the Concert Artists Guild auditions. In 2004, he received his doctorate from Yale School of Music, where he joined the faculty in 2005 and serves as associate professor of piano, chair of the D.M.A. committee, and a Jonathan Edwards Fellow.

Notes on the Program

valerie coleman Red Clay and Mississippi Delta (2009) Red Clay and Mississippi Delta is a light scherzo work that references my family’s background of living in Mississippi. From the juke joints and casino boats that line the Mississippi river, to the skin tone of my relatives from the area: a dark skin that looks like it came directly from the red clay. The solo lines are instilled with personality, meant to capture the listener’s attention as they wail with “bluesy” riffs that are accompanied ("comped") by the rest of the ensemble. The result is a virtuosic chamber work that merges classical technique and orchestration with the blues dialect and charm of the south.

– Valerie Coleman júlio medaglia Suite Popular Brasileira (1998) In 1991, after four years of restoration, the City Theater of Rio de Janeiro, fashioned after the Parisian Opera House, celebrated a reopening. Because of this occasion, and because of Mozart’s birthday celebration, they invited the members of the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet as soloists of the Symphonia Orchestra of Rio De Janeiro. At this time I was the general music director of the City Theater and had the honor to conduct the concert.

The quintet showed interest in the charm and virtuosity of the Brazilian instrumental music and asked me about names and composers of this type of music. However, I found it more original to write a specific authentic piece for them, which I did. To my surprise, they played this piece later

on as an encore at their concerts. Since this encore was successful, they asked me to write more pieces for them. Three additional pieces with Brazilian rhythmic elements were added to create the suite. In memory of Paul Lincke, who also used authentic elements and the Berlin charm for his pieces, I created a play on words with the names of his most famous compositions and callled it “This is a Brazilian Air” (instead of “This is a Berlin Air”).

Medaglia studied in Freiburg, Germany, was Gunther Schuller’s assistant at Tanglewood, and spent ten years in Germany serving as musical director of several symphonies.

He has written for film, theater, and TV music. He is a translator and writer of several books, is a member of the Brazilian Writers Association, musical director of the fourth biggest TV network in world, and director of the Free Musical University of Sao Paolo and the City Theater of Rio. – Júlio Medaglia igor stravinsky (arr. Jonathan Russell) The Rite of Spring (2010) The Rite of Spring is one of the most revered pieces within the pantheon of contemporary classical music, since its sordid premiere on May 29, 1913. Although it was originally a ballet, this tour-de-force has become a staple of the orchestral repertoire. The first note sets the stage, with a haunting bassoon solo, opening the door to visions of a pagan ritual in which a young girl dances herself to death.

The piece is divided into two parts that include intense and famously complex,

Notes on the Program

multimeter rhythms, coupled with completely innovative uses of harmony and orchestration. Also Stravinsky is masterful with his use of stark dissonances at one point and the most serene melodic phrases at another.

The Rite of Spring was tastefully excerpted and arranged by Jonathan Russell, a London-based composer and clarinetist.

The beauty of this arrangement is that although it reduces a one-hundred-piece orchestra to a wind quintet, it completely captures the essence of the selected sections while still fulfilling the meaning of the entire of piece. The writing is already so exceptionally executed that the piece is capable of being arranged for a small ensemble with careful placement of voices and pairings of instruments within the quintet, which Mr. Russell achieves.

All of the intricate and beautiful elements that lovers of the piece look for are well within this arrangement and it is a hearty addition to the wind quintet repertoire.

– Monica Ellis anders hillborg Six Pieces for Wind Quintet (2007) Hillborg’s sphere of activity is extensive, covering orchestral, choral, and chamber music as well as pop music and music for films. Six Pieces for Wind Quintet was written in 2007. The piece examines different moods and styles within each movement, but in short, exciting bursts of time.

The writing is virtuosic, challenging, and even rock-and-roll, which results in quite the ride for the musicians and the audience.

– Anders Hillborg

francis poulenc Sextet for piano and wind quintet, FP 100 Critic Claude Rostand once wrote of Poulenc that he was “part monk, part guttersnipe,” a neat characterization of the two strikingly different aspects of his musical personality.

Much of his work from the early 1920s, when he was associated with the highly publicized “Groupe des Six,” is lighthearted, even frivolous, sometimes bawdy, and thoroughly Parisian. An opposing strain appeared in his musical character in the middle '30s, when the death of a close friend prompted the composition of a sacred choral work. Thereafter sacred and secular mingled almost equally in his output, and he could shift even within the context of a single phrase from melancholy or somber lyricism to nose-thumbing impertinence. As Ned Rorem said in a memorial tribute, Poulenc was “a whole man always interlocking soul and flesh, sacred and profane.”

Possessing the least formal musical education of any noted composer of his century, Poulenc learned from the music that he liked. His own comment is the best summary: “The music of Roussel, more cerebral than Satie’s, seems to me to have opened a door on the future. I admire it profoundly; it is disciplined, orderly, and yet full of feeling. I love Chabrier: España is a marvelous thing and the Marche joyeuse is a chefd’oeuvre … I consider Manon and Werther [by Massanet] as part of French national folklore. And I enjoy the quadrilles of Offenbach. Finally my gods are Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Stravinsky, and Mussorgsky. You may say, ‘what a concoction!’ But that’s how I like music: taking my models everywhere, from what pleases me.”

Notes on the Program

Poulenc originally composed his Sextet for piano and winds in 1932, but he was dissatisfied with the work and rewrote it entirely in 1939. In his typical way, Poulenc builds up his musical forms through the reiteration of small ideas in clearly demarcated sections; the large forms, too, are sectional – ternary for the first and second movements and a rondo for the finale. The Sextet is a composition of enormous charm, hardly profound, but brilliantly written for the participating instruments. The piano (Poulenc’s own instrument) is without doubt the leader; it has scarcely a measure of rest in the entire work. The winds carry on a cheeky dialogue throughout. The work is essentially a divertissement, but sudden turns of mood and feeling recall the serious side of the composer. Yet its spirit remains fundamentally lighthearted.

– Steven Ledbetter simon shaheen (arr. Jeff Scott) Dance Mediterranea Dance Mediterranea is one of Shaheen’s classic compositions. The essence of traditional Middle Eastern sounds met with virtuosic compositional technique is more than apparent in this multi-dimensional, multimetered piece. It mixes improvisation with block ensemble writing concluding with a fiery finish. This arrangement stems from the collaboration the Imani Winds have established with master oud player Simon Shaheen.

– Jeff Scott

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ONEPPO CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES SEP 27

2016–2017

BRENTANO STRING QUARTET With Ettore Causa, viola; Argus Quartet

OCT 25

PRISM QUARTET Bach, Gershwin, Schumann, and Martin Bresnick

DEC 13

MIRÓ QUARTET With Martin Beaver, viola; David Shifrin, clarinet

JAN 24

BRENTANO STRING QUARTET With Jonathan Biss, piano; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola

FEB 14

IMANI WINDS Wei-Yi Yang, piano

FEB 28

AN UNLIKELY MUSE A concert drama about Brahms and the clarinetist who inspired his later works

MAR 28

JERUSALEM STRING QUARTET Haydn, Prokofiev, and Beethoven

MAY 09

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DAVID SHIFRIN Artistic Director TUESDAYS, 7 : 30 PM Morse Recital Hall BOX OFFICE 203 432-4158 music-tickets.yale.edu

Robert Blocker, Dean

Upcoming Events Hannah Lash, harp/composer february 15

Faculty Artist Series School of Music faculty composer Hannah Lash performs new music for and with harp Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Free Admission

Ettore Causa, viola & Boris Berman, piano february 16

Faculty Artist Series Faculty violist Ettore Causa and faculty pianist Boris Berman perform works by Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Free Admission

Così fan tutte february 17, 18 & 19

Yale Opera The Yale Opera presents a new production with stage direction by Chas Rader-Shieber and music direction by Giuseppe Grazioli Shubert Theater Friday & Saturday 8 pm | Sunday 2 pm Tickets from $19, available online (shubert.com), at the Shubert Theater Box Office (247 College St.), or by calling 203-562-5666 Student tickets from $14 available at the Shubert Theater Box Office with ID

Yale Brass Trio february 19

Faculty Artist Series Pianist Mihae Lee joins the Yale Brass Trio for a program that honors Robert E. Nagel Jr. with performances of Nagel’s Choral Prelude, Paul Lansky’s Pieces of Advice, Pierre Gabaye’s Récréation, and more Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 7:30 pm Free Admission

Philharmonia in Sprague David Yi, conducting fellow february 24

Yale Philharmonia Conducting fellow David Yi leads the Yale Philharmonia and student pianist Viacheslav Gryaznov in a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35, along with music by Ravel and Brahms Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Students $5

House of Time february 26

Yale Collection of Musical Instruments "Imaginary Theater": Works of Rameau and Handel 15 Hillhouse Ave | Sunday | 3 pm Tickets $25 • Seniors & Yale Faculty/Staff $20 Students $10

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