Robert Blocker, Dean
new music new haven
featuring music by
David Lang & Hannah Lash and works by Yale School of Music graduate-student composers
Hannah Lash, Artistic Director Thursday, November 9 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
Yale School of Music
New Music New Haven November 9, 2017 โ ข Morse Recital Hall
Liliya Ugay b. 1990
Sickle Moon David Yi, conductor Jin-Xiang Yu, soprano Benjamin Morency, flute Elliot Lichtenberg, oboe Graeme Johnson, clarinet Sirena Huang, violin Florrie Marshall, viola Samuel DeCaprio, cello Mariya-Andoniya Andonova, double bass Anna Ellsworth, harp Dmitri Nilov, percussion
Grant Luhmann b. 1994
Ergo Grant Luhmann, English horn Liliya Ugay, piano
Fjรณla Evans b. 1987
Eroding Maria Luisk, alto flute Michael Moy, bass clarinet Matt Keown, vibraphone Sophiko Simsive, piano Kyungah Oh, violin Yiqiu Chen, cello
Nate May b. 1987
Songlike Benjamin Krasner, piano intermission
New Music New Haven
Nate May b. 1987
Songlike Lauren White, oboe Elisha Willinger, clarinet Graeme Johnson, clarinet Ethan Lippert, bassoon
Anteo Fabris b. 1991
She Just Leah Brzyski, soprano Abby Elder, viola
Aaron Israel Levin b. 1995
I’ll teach you to levitate Anita Balåzs, cello
Hannah Lash b. 1981
How to Remember Seeds Rolston String Quartet Luri Lee, violin Jeffrey Dyrda, violin Hezekiah Leung, viola Jonathan Lo, cello
David Lang b. 1957
just (after song of songs) Rachel Glodo, soprano Lauren Schiffer, soprano Tanner Porter, soprano Thomas Duboski, viola Bitnalee Pong, cello Sam Um, percussion
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 • Notes on the Program biography Liliya Ugay
program note Sickle Moon
Described as “particularly evocative,” “fluid and theatrical ... the music [that] makes its case with immediacy” (The Arts Fuse) as well as both “assertive and steely,” and “lovely, subtle writing” (Wall Street Journal), music by the award-winning composer and pianist Liliya Ugay has been performed in many countries around the globe. The recipient of a 2016 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2017 Horatio Parker Memorial prize from the Yale School of Music, Ugay has collaborated with the Albany Symphony, New England Philharmonic, Yale Philharmonia, Raleigh Civic Symphony, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Molinari Quartet, Antico Moderno, Omnibus ensemble, and Paul Neubauer, among others. Her music has been featured at the Aspen, American Composers, New York Electroacoustic Music, June in Buffalo, and Darmstadt New Music festivals, as well as the 52nd Venice Biennale. In 2017–2018, Ugay is working on a new opera project as a resident composer at the American Lyric Theater. Originally from Uzbekistan, Liliya is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the Yale School of Music studying with Aaron Jay Kernis and David Lang. Besides new music, Liliya is passionate about the music of the repressed composers from the Soviet era: this year she presents a concert series “Silenced Voices” at the Whitney Humanities Center with the guidance of Boris Berman.
(compiled from the fragments of various poems by Georg Trakl; translated from German) At night I found myself in a pasture, cov ered with rubbish and the dust of stars. Windless, starless night. Empty roadhouses — the longing for home settles about the delicate despair of the grazing flocks, vision of the night; toads plunge from silver waters. Windless, starless night. With the ghostly shapes of dead heroes, moon you fill the growing silence of the forest — sickle moon. All around the crumbling rocks the moon shines with such blue light upon a decaying generation – cold and evil. Icy winds quarrel in the darkness. The birth of man. Each night blue water washes over the rockbase of the cliff; The fallen angel stares at his reflection with sighs. O heart, glittering above in the snowy cold! Icy winds quarrel in the darkness. A thorny desert surrounds the city. The moon chases the scared women from the bleeding stairways. The unborn grandchildren. Sister in my wild despair, look — a precarious skiff is sinking under the stars; The face of night whose voice is fading. Under the gold branches of the night and stars the sister’s shadow falters through the diminishing grove; and from the reeds the sound of dark flutes of autumn rise.
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program White birds from the outskirts of the night flutter out of the shuddering city of steel. Village bells painful to hear. The sun bleaks from gloomy ravines. biography Grant Luhmann Grant Luhmann received his Bachelor of Music Degree in composition and oboe performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. In summer of 2015, Grant spent a month studying at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. He returned to France in the summer of 2016 and attended the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, studying with François Paris and Alain Gaussin and creating installations in collaboration with architecture students. His works are often influenced by his studies in electronic music and his experience as a performer. When Grant is not composing, practicing, or making reeds, he can usually be found outdoors rock climbing, camping, or running. Currently, Grant is persuing a Master of Music Degree at the Yale School of Music. biography Fjóla Evans Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer and cellist. Her work draws inspiration from the behaviors of natural phenomena as well as the droning lilt of Icelandic folk music. Commissions and performances have come from musicians
such as Bang on a Can All-Stars pianist Vicky Chow, the Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Her work has been featured at the MATA Festival, Ung Nordisk Musik, and the American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC Festival. As a performer, she has presented her own work at the Cluster Festival of New Music, (le) poisson rouge, and at the Music Gallery in Toronto. Fjóla has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and KulturKontakt Austria, among others. She has studied composition with Julia Wolfe, cello performance with Matt Haimovitz, and is currently pursuing a Master of Musical Arts Degree at the Yale School of Music as a student of Martin Bresnick and Christopher Theofanidis. program note Eroding Over thousands of years, the glacial river of Hvítá in Iceland has carved a deep gorge into the surrounding rock. At one particular twist in the river, the erosion has left several huge pillars of hyaloclastite rock, which look as they were flung haphazardly into the riverbed. In fact they were revealed slowly over time from the process of the river carving away their surroundings. In Eroding, the players create a dense mass that gets worn down over time in order to reveal the spiky formations beneath the surface.
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program biography Nate May Nate May is an American composer whose music draws on research and imagination with an ear for textural intricacy, rhythmic drive, and re-purposed sounds. His chamber music with and without electronics has been performed by Adam Sliwinski, Eric Wubbels, the Patchwork Duo, Quartetto Indaco, Hajnal Pivnick, Nathan Nabb, and many others. He has been a fellow at the highSCORE festival (Pavia, Italy) and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute (Princeton, New Jersey) and was selected as one of three U.S. composers to participate in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2017 National Composers Intensive. Currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree at the Yale School of Music studying with Christopher Theofanidis, he holds degrees from Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (Master of Music, composition) and the University of Michigan (Bachelor of fine arts., jazz and contemplative studies). He serves as a Teaching Fellow at Yale and is on faculty at The Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire. program note Songlike Songlike is the unfolding of a single, self-tessellating rhythm heard in canon between two voices. After discovering the opening bars through improvisation, I tried to exploit the seeds that I found in them: the misalignment of phrases, the gradual bifurcation of each voice, and the mournful pull of the half-step resolution. The result was something much more emotionally imbued than many of the other explorations of texture and process
I’ve been making: a tapestry of melodic lines, weaving in and out of one another at different rates. At the suggestion of Christopher Theofanidis, I’m presenting it both in its original version — for piano — and in an arrangement for two clarinets that will highlight both the lyricism and independence of the voices. biography Anteo Fabris Hailing from Zurich, Switzerland, composer Anteo Fabris has amassed a substantial oeuvre of classical music since coming to the United States in 2005. Possessing a profound love for classical music, yet deeply captivated by experimental noise, Fabris produces classically virtuosic works that embody not only the spirit of grunge, but also search for a harmony deep within the music. He is a recipient of the 2015 TriBeCa New Music Festival Division 1 Merit Award, the ASCAP Young Composer Scholarship, the BMI Theodora Zavin Scholarship, and The Boston University Wainwright Prize, and his works have been premiered in major cities around the world, including New York, Paris, London, Zurich, Hamburg, and San Francisco. He has written for ensembles such as Sound Icon (Boston), Alea III (Boston), Balboa Theatre Silent Film Ensemble (San Francisco), The Debussy Trio of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the American Composers Orchestra (New York City), ACE New Music Ensemble (New Haven, Connecticut), and Karya IV (Hamburg), and has led
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program premieres of his own works in New York City, Boston, and New Haven. He has attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, Boston University College of Fine Arts (Bachelor of Fine Arts, music theory and composition, 2013), and is currently pursuing a Master of Music Degree in music composition at the Yale School of Music. He has studied with such composers as Ketty Nez, Joshua Fineberg, Martin Amlin, Steven Sacco, Eleanor Cory, and Samuel Headrick and has had his works critiqued in master classes by Salvatore Sciarrino, Nico Muhly, Gunther Schuller, Robert Beaser, John Harbison, and Samuel Adler. biography Aaron Israel Levin Aaron Israel Levin is a composer whose music is guided by the emotional dynamism of storytelling and drama. He is currently pursuing his Master of Music Degree in composition at the Yale School of Music where he studies with Hannah Lash. Levin’s music has been performed by the Fifth House Ensemble, members of Bent Frequency, Pavia Winds, Kayleigh Butcher, Lisa Neher, the Grinnell Symphony Orchestra, and others. A recipient of various awards and honors, Levin’s piece Once I Saw — a multi-dimensional work that draws from pop music and jazz — has been selected by many calls-for-scores across the country. Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Levin received his bachelor of arts in
music from Grinnell College in Iowa where he studied with Eric McIntyre and John Rommereim. Levin has also attended several music festivals and programs where he has studied with Donald Crockett, Joel Hoffman, Pierre Jalbert, David Ludwig, Clint Needham, Dan Visconti, Chen Yi, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and others. biography Hannah Lash Hailed by The New York Times as “striking and resourceful … handsomely brooding,” Hannah Lash’s music has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, the Naumburg Foundation, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Colorado and Aspen Music festivals, among many others. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship (2011) and Fellowship (2016) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, and the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, among others. Recent premieres include Three Shades Without Angles for flute, viola, and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Two Movements for violin and piano, commissioned by the Library of Congress for Ensemble Intercontemporain, a new chamber opera, Beowulf, for Guerilla Opera,
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program and new orchestral works for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as two concerti for harp premiered by the American Composers Orchestra and the Colorado Music Festival, both with Lash as soloist. In 2016, Lash was honored with a Composer Portraits Concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. In the 20162017 season, Lash’s major, large-scale orchestral work The Voynich Symphony was premiered by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Lash obtained her Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University (teaching fellow) and Alfred University (guest professor of composition) and currently serves on the composition faculty at the Yale School of Music. program note How to Remember Seeds How to Remember Seeds uses materials that are malleable in almost any direction, and at the same time recognizable enough that I can relate them audibly to themselves across several different characters. It is a piece that plays very explicitly with pitch hierarchies in a tonal sense. These hierarchies are drawn from the same seed that generates all the melodic/horizontal material. It is a piece that is at once highly abstract and highly evocative.
biography David Lang In the words of The New Yorker, “With his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for the little match girl passion (one of the most original and moving scores of recent years), Lang, once a postminimalist enfant terrible, has solidified his standing as an American master.” Commissioned by Carnegie Hall and based on a fable by Hans Christian Andersen and Lang’s own rewriting of the libretto to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the recording of the piece was awarded a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, Le Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and Musical America’s 2013 Composer of the Year, and was Carnegie Hall’s 2013–2014 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair. Lang’s score for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth received a 2016 Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, among others. Recent premieres include his opera the loser, which opened the 2016 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and for which Lang served as composer, librettist, and stage director; the public domain for one thousand singers at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival; his chamber opera anatomy theater at the Los Angeles Opera and at the Prototype Festival in New York; and the concerto man made for the ensemble Sō Percussion and a consortium of orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program Lang is a professor of music composition at the Yale School of Music and is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music festival Bang on a Can. program note just (after song of songs) just (after song of songs) is a setting of a text I made by finding certain things in the Song of Songs. The original text is of course the most passionate and erotic of the ancient Jewish books, and it is always strange to encounter it in the Bible. In 2008 I wrote a choral piece called for love is strong, in which I made a similar text from the Song of Songs, trying to use the words to see through the relationship between the man and the woman in the story to the relationship between Man and God. According to Jewish tradition, the Song of Songs is a metaphor for our passion for the Eternal, so the words themselves become very important. One thing that has always interested me about the text is that the man and the woman in the Song of Songs have attributes, they notice things about each other, they own things, they have features that are desirable. In a love between people this would be no surprise. In a love between Man and God, however, that might mean that in this text are clues to the nature of God’s own attributes, and a record of how they might attract us. For my text I listed everything personal or owned that is attributed to the man and to the woman. To clarify who is speaking, I started every phrase of his with “just your” and every phrase of hers with “and my.” It is interesting that in a
text about a love that is shared there are only seven instances of “our.” just (after song of songs) is dedicated to my friends Amy Podmore and Frank Jackson. just (after song of songs) was written for the combined forces of Trio Mediaeval and Saltarello, and was commissioned by Eamonn Quinn for Louth Contemporary Music Society, funded by the Irish Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaion. biography Rolston String Quartet In the fall of 2017, the Rolston String Quartet began its tenure as the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet-in-residence. The quartet has also served as the graduate quartet-in-residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and has participated in residencies and fellowships at the Académie musicale de Villecroze, Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre, McGill International String Quartet Academy, Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Robert Mann String Quartet Institute, St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, and the Yehudi Menuhin Chamber Music Festival. Notable collaborations for the Rolston String Quartet include performances with renowned artists Andrés Díaz, Gilbert Kalish, Mark Morris, Donald Palma, Jon Kimura Parker, and Miguel da Silva. Additionally, the quartet has worked with composers John Luther Adams and Brian Current. Primary mentors include the Brentano String Quartet (the School of Music’s quartet-in-residence), James Dunham, Norman Fischer, and Kenneth
Artist Profiles ¡ New music new haven staff Goldsmith, and the quartet has received additional guidance from the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Barry Shiffman, Miguel da Silva, and Alastair Tait. The Rolston String Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Chamber Music Residency. They take their name from Canadian violinist Thomas Rolston, the founder and longtime director of the Music and Sound Programs at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Luri Lee plays a Carlo Tononi violin, generously on loan from Shauna Rolston Shaw. Rolston String Quartet is endorsed by Jargar Strings of Denmark.
Artistic Director Hannah Lash Manager Jeffrey M. Mistri Music Librarian Samuel Bobinski Conducting Fellow David Yi Philharmonia Office Assistant Kristy Tucker Library Antonia Chandler Bora Kim Marta Lambert Gregory Lewis Laura Park Lauren Williams Leonardo Ziporyn Stage Crew Jisu Jung Matthew Keown YoungKyong Lee Aaron Israel Levin Gabriel Mairson Dmitrii Nilov Lucas Oliveira Tanner Porter Hillary Simms Sam Seyong Um Daniel Vaitkus Rimbo Wong
Robert Blocker, Dean
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