Akropolis Reed Quintet, October 22, 2019

oneppo chamber music series David Shifrin, artistic director

Akropolis Reed Quintet Kari Landry, clarinet • Andrew Koeppe, bass clarinet Ryan Reynolds, bassoon • Matt Landry, saxophone • Tim Gocklin, oboe

Tuesday, October 22, 2019 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Jean-Philippe Rameau 1683–1764 arr. Raaf Hekkema

Nouvelle suite in A minor, RCT 5, No. 6, “La triomphante” Prelude Allemande Les trois mains Sarabande Fanfarinette La triomphante

Jeff Scott b. 1967

Homage to Paradise Valley (2019) Ghosts of Black Bottom Roho, Pumzika kwa Amani (Spirits, Rest Peacefully) Club Paradise Jump!

intermission

Steven Snowden b. 1981

Sprocket (2019) Jeff Stern ’16ad, percussion

George Gershwin 1898–1937 arr. Hekkema

An American in Paris (1928)

As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profiles Akropolis Reed Quintet Kari Landry, clarinet Andrew Koeppe, bass clarinet Ryan Reynolds, bassoon Matt Landry, saxophone Tim Gocklin ’14mm ’15ad, oboe Hailed for their “imagination, infallible musicality, and huge vitality” (Fanfare Magazine), Akropolis was founded in 2009 at the University of Michigan by its current members, and has won seven national chamber music prizes since 2011, including the 2014 Fischoff Gold Medal and the 2015 Fischoff Educator Award, as well as numerous grants from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts, Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, CultureSource, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, Alice M. Ditson Fund, Amphion Foundation, High Wire Lab, and Quicken Loans.

Akropolis’ impressive list of recent and upcoming appearances includes performances at Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, the Chautauqua Institution, Artist Series of Sarasota, Chamber Music Abu Dhabi, Chamber Music Columbus, and more. Akropolis has been awarded a juried showcase at Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ Young Performers Career Advancement, Chamber Music America (twice), Performing Arts Exchange, Western Arts Alliance, and the Mid-Atlantic Performing Arts Market. With three studio albums, including its March, 2017 release of The Space Between Us, called “Pure gold” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Akropolis has recorded 17 original reed quintet works.

Establishing Akropolis WORKS in 2016, Akropolis’ members teach an annual 7-week mini-course at the University of Michigan as well as a semester-long course at Michigan State University titled, “The Self-Managed Music Career,” and have delivered WORKS lectures to college-level musicians around the United States on marketing, financial planning, brand identity, and more. Equally committed to students K–12, Akropolis toured Illinois and Indiana on the Fischoff Educators Tour in 2015, collaborating with local school reading programs to musically re-enact a children’s book, The Best Story

by Eileen Spinelli. In 2013 Akropolis conducted its Fall Education Tour, funded by over $5,000 raised by a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. The tour visited 10 schools in Michigan serving underprivileged youth or under-funded arts programs.

Continuing this effort, Akropolis reached more than 6,000 K-12 students during its 2017–18 season alone.

Akropolis regularly appears in unconventional settings, including performances in office spaces in Detroit as part of its Corporate to Corner Tour in January 2017.

In May 2016, Akropolis conducted a live recording session featuring audience participation for John Steinmetz’s Sorrow and Celebration for reed quintet and audience, which Akropolis commissioned in 2014.

Akropolis presented its second annual Together We Sound festival in Detroit in May 2018, bringing together multidisciplinary collaborators, new works, and educational outreach to increase arts access throughout the city. » akropolisquintet.org

Artist Profiles, cont.

Program Notes by the Akropolis Reed Quintet

Jeff Stern, percussion Known for performing “with precision and an impressive attention to timbral detail” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), percussionist Jeff Stern has developed a voice to listen for in today’s contemporary music scene.

He has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has collaborated with a number of the world’s most prominent composers. Recent premieres include Alejandro Viñao’s Stress and Flow with The Percussion Collective, James Wood’s Secret Dialogues for solo marimba, and John Luther Adams’ Sila at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival.

Jeff is the executive director, co-artistic director, and founding percussionist of icarus Quartet, a 2 piano/2 percussion group and winner of the 2019 Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition. He has appeared at the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, and can be heard on Elm City and Cantaloupe Records.

Jeff is on the percussion faculty of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He holds degrees from UMass Amherst, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Yale School of Music. Jeff is a proud artist endorser of Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Zildjian cymbals, Evans drumheads, and Pearl/Adams drums and percussion. » sternpercussion.com

Nouvelle suite “La triomphante” Rameau Arranged from harpsichord for reed quintet by Raaf Hekkema, Rameau’s “La triomphante” suite was one of 2 large-scale “nouvelle” harpsichord suites, this one composed in 1727. Rameau composed this suite both as a concert work and as a method book (“pour la mécanique des doigts”), the movements serving as development of proper ornamentation. A defining characteristic of the French Baroque style was the use of rhythm and ornamentation (as opposed to the German style, more concerned with counterpoint). The ornamentations, which were not composed, but implied by the performer based on standard practices, accentuate important harmonic moments.

To the lay-listener these will sound like trills of various length and starting points.

This music was also dance music, and so the use of rhythm to accentuate changes in harmony and to draw the ear into important harmonic moments gives this arrangement particular joy, allowing five players to negotiate rhythms and textures among themselves.

Homage to Paradise Valley scott Paradise Valley was the business district of Black Bottom, a densely-populated African American neighborhood in Detroit. It was displaced during the mid-century urban renewal, most notably by highway projects.

This became the subject of Jeff Scott’s first reed quintet after he and Akropolis visited the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, while Jeff’s

quintet, Imani Winds, was passing through Detroit on tour. Homage to Paradise Valley utilizes Jeff’s diverse musical background as a jazz and studio musician in New York City. This work is made possible through the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Fund. One can learn more about this part of Detroit’s history by visiting the Detroit Historical Society website at detroithistorical.org.

Sprocket Snowden Sprocket was composed by Steven Snowden for Akropolis’ Together We Sound festival in Detroit, MI, and premiered in June 2019.

Commissioned by Akropolis with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sprocket combines reed quintet with percussion. In Detroit the percussion instruments were combined into a rideable percussion bicycle which reflected the massive cycling culture of Detroit.

Each movement utilizes different components of the reed quintet timbre in combination with different percussive elements. The original percussion bike was designed and built by Detroit resident and Kresge Arts Fellow, Juan Martinez, and premiered at Wasserman Projects gallery and the Dequindre Cut bike path in Detroit.

An American In Paris Gershwin In An American in Paris, Gershwin aimed to create one of his more serious works despite his natural affinity for frivolity.

He consulted Ravel about this conundrum,

who wisely instructed that if Gershwin was making more money than Ravel (which he was), he shouldn’t change how he writes his music. He sought advice from Nadia Boulanger, the great teacher of Aaron Copland and others. She also wisely suggested to Gershwin try to be no one but Gershwin. And so, using complex motivic development which is constantly modulating and changing form, Gershwin manages to create his most accessible, but simultaneously most complex piece of music. Among the challenges Dutch saxophonist Raaf Hekkema faced in arranging the work was how to convey these ideas with only 5 instruments. Hekkema brilliantly takes a smaller color palette and combines the instruments to create more textural possibilities than the listener could ever predict.

In ways, while Gershwin’s orchestration maximizes the orchestra’s capabilities, the listener might find Gershwin’s ideas even easier to deduce in the chamber music format. The continually repeating and evolving motives make for a challenging but thrilling performance which Akropolis is delighted to bring to the stage.

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Oneppo Chamber Music Series

2019–2020 Season nov 12

Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio Pianist Anna Polonsky, clarinetist David Shifrin, and cellist Peter Wiley perform Beethoven’s “Gassenhauer” Trio, Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano, and Brahms’ Clarinet Trio in A minor.

dec 3

Horszowski Trio An ensemble The New Yorker says “seems destined for great things” performs Dvorák’s “Dumky” Trio, Carter’s Epigrams, and Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor.

jan 28

Brentano String Quartet A performance of Bruce Adolphe’s Coiled and the work on which it’s based, Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet, along with music by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Shostakovich.

feb Zukerman Trio 18 Violinist Pinchas Zukerman, cellist Amanda Forsyth, and pianist Angela Cheng perform Beethoven’s “Kakadu” Variations; Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor; and Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C major. mar Pamela Frank and Emanuel Ax 31 Two of the most admired instrumentalists on the international chamber music scene perform Mozart’s Sonatas in G major, K. 379, and B-flat major, K. 454, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10, Op. 96. may Competition Winners 5 Performances by the winners of the School’s annual Chamber Music Competition.

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Upcoming Events oct 25 Ludovic Morlot, guest conductor

Yale Philharmonia Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition winner Jung Eun Kang.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students free* $3 surcharge at the door Nov 1-2 Fall Scenes

Yale Opera A variety of scenes from beloved comic and tragic operas.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, students $5 nov 6 Boris Berman

Horowitz Piano Series A performance of Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 20, D. 959, and music by Chopin.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7

Bernarda Fink, mezzo-soprano Faculty Artist Series “A master of the disarming, deceptive simplicity of the song recital.” – The New York Times 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, students $5 nov 8

nov 12 Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio

Oneppo Chamber Music Series Trios by Beethoven, Poulenc, Brahms, and Nino Rota.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 nov 21 Peter Oundjian,

principal conductor

Yale Philharmonia Nighttime is celebrated in a program featuring Debussy’s Nocturnes with the treble voices of the Yale Schola Cantorum, Weber’s Bassoon Concerto, and Scheherazade.

7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 $3 surcharge at the door

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