Robert Blocker, Dean
new music new haven Aaron Jay Kernis, Artistic Director
Aaron Jay Kernis & David Lang faculty composers
Thursday, November 3, 2022 | 7:30 p.m. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Program Arseniy Gusev b. 1998
L’usine engloutie Chelsea Strayer, double bass Dylan Reckner, double bass Jarrett May, flute Connor Higley, tuba Sijia Huang, timpani
Emily Liushen b. 1999
Implex I. II. III.
Jessie Chiang, percussion Arseniy Gusev, piano Alex Lew, dron Mia Venezia, hendecq Samuel Hollister, conductor
Psalm 582 Tithe 583 Psalm 583
Alex Goldberg, violin Miranda Werner, violin Katie Liu, viola Amanda Chi, cello
Lila Meretzky b. 1998
To crave and to have Yasmine Fu, violin 1 Zili Sha, violin 2 Emily Rekrut-Pressey, viola Ga Eun Lee, cello Nicole Wiedenmann, double bass Daniel Fletcher, flute Alec Chai, English horn
Aaron Jay Kernis b. 1960
Sky Music Tianyuan Liu, piano Charlie Lovell-Jones, violin Cheng “Allen” Liang, cello
intermission
Zikang Wang, clarinet Lucas Zeiter, bassoon William Sands, horn Joshua Bialkin, trumpet Yuki Mori, trombone Samuel Hollister, conductor
Luke Haaksma b. 1997
murmur Da Young Lim, violin Michael Huerta, flute Nikki Pet, clarinet Michael Yeung, percussion Sijia Huang, percussion Yiran Zhao, soprano
Harriet Steinke b. 1994
Hymnal IV. Did they intend the damage? V. In every room VI. Father, I’m rowing Ilana Zaks, violin Collin Stavinoha, flute William Suh, cello Amer Hasan, clarinet Yongqiu Liu, piano Molly McGuire, mezzo-soprano Yiran Zhao, conductor
David Lang b. 1957
cheating, lying, stealing Jonathan Lopez, bass clarinet Mafalda Santos, cello Alexander Tsereteli, piano Makana Medeiros, percussion Mingyu Son, percussion Yukiko Nakamura, percussion
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 Aaron Jay Kernis, faculty composer
David Lang, faculty composer
The music of Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis has been programmed by orchestras, chamber groups, and recitalists around the world. Kernis’ works have also been commissioned by many of America’s foremost performing artists and institutions. His music has been recorded and released by 11 different labels and is widely available on CD.
David Lang’s music has been performed by major music, dance, and theater organizations throughout the world, and in the most renowned concert halls and festivals in the United States and Europe. He is well-known as co-founder and co-Artistic Director of New York’s legendary music festival Bang on a Can. Active in composing for film and television, Lang’s music for Paolo Sorrentino’s film YOUTH received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, among others.
At the Yale School of Music, Kernis teaches a studio of graduate-level composition students. His works are frequently featured on Yale’s New Music New Haven concert series. During the summer, he is a faculty member at the New Music Workshop at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music. Kernis served as New Music Advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra for 10 years and as Chairman and Director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. He currently serves as Chairman and Co-director of the Nashville Symphonys’ Composer Lab. Kernis was born in Philadelphia and began his musical studies on the violin at a young age. At age 12, he began teaching himself piano and, the following year, composition. He attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and Yale School of Music, studying with such composers as John Adams, Charles Wuorinen, and Jacob Druckman. » aaronjaykernis.com
At the Yale School of Music, Lang teaches a studio of graduate-level composition students and teaches a class in composition to performance majors. His works have been performed many times on Yale’s New Music New Haven concert series. During the summer, Lang is a faculty member at the New Music Workshop at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music. Lang’s music has been recorded on numerous labels. The CD of his Pulitzer Prizewinning work the little match girl passion, performed by the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices on the Harmonia Mundi label, won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa and received a doctor of musical arts degree from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He has studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze, and Martin Bresnick. His music is published by Red Poppy (ASCAP). » davidlangmusic.com
Student Profiles
Program Notes
Arseniy Gusev ’24MM Student of Christopher Theofanidis » arseniygusev.com
L’usine engloutie arseniy gusev
Emily Liushen ’24MM Student of Katherine Balch Lila Meretzky ’22MM Student of Christopher Theofanidis » lilameretzky.com Luke Haaksma ’24MM Student of David Lang » lukehaaksma.com Harriet Steinke ’22MM ’23MMA Student of David Lang » harrietsteinke.com
Staff manager Jeffrey M. Mistri music librarian Samuel Bobinski office assistant Marty Tung
by the composers
L’usine engloutie, or the Sunken Factory, was written as a reflection on industrial sounds and rhythms, as if they were buried under columns of water. Similarly to how Gregorian chant is deformed by water in Debussy’s “La cathédrale engloutie”, the sounds of the factory change in their shapes and colors, merging the factory itself with the forces of nature. As a part of this postindustrial image, the piece features two instruments from the Anarchestra collection, hendecq and dron. Implex emily liushen A gentleman at the premiere asked me to explain the scratchings printed on the program: what implex was (genealogical jargon; a numerical measurement of the degree of incest, the numbers in the movement titles (identifying numbers; scores metabolize, as when a violinist jots a private reminder on the paper, as when the publisher makes an error obsolete by printing an update, as when the composer scratches out a bloated passage), and why two movements were called psalms (word of Greek origin referring to instrumental music; for me, formally, an Überhaupstimme melodic statement followed by group response). Everything can be related if one sets one’s mind to believing that it is so. But applying the analogy of modern genetics to my art provokes logical (in a certain ontology) hiccups. Irritants, like those which provide one’s face with pimples to prod.
Program Notes, cont. To crave and to have lila meretzky This piece has had many names. For me, titles can be the hardest part of composing and are usually the last thing I do. As I prepared the score for this performance, I went back to a mystifying passage from the novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. I heard something of her words resonating in the music. She writes: “To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do we know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, every craving gives it back to us again.” Sky Music aaron jay kernis For a very long time the polyphony of colors in the sky have inspired me, causing me to title at least 3 other works (among them Newly Drawn Sky and Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky) that allude to vast vistas of blue with color shifts over time. This movement, Sky Music, was written in 2019 for the Lee Trio, but with all of their pandemicrelated concerts canceled, it has languished until tonight. Dark Abyss pairs Sky Music with its twin movement, From a Dark Time, which was premiered last year in Sprague. The color palette draws inspiration from the multi-hued chords of Messaien, though with generally angular harmonies and alternation of two ideas – dense/lyrical, and
urgent/restless. It wants to keep building – going beyond an intensity that’s almost impossible for the instruments.... murmur luke haaksma murmur captures a nexus of speech and gesture. The piece ties distant, indiscernible movements of voice to the flocking behaviors of European Starlings, commonly referred to as murmurations. After referencing Søren Solkær’s otherworldly photographs of murmurations, I adapted their forms into hand gestures, then translated these gestures into speech. The musical content then flowed from this phonetic thread, and the hand gestures remain present as a guide for performance. Hymnal harriet steinke Hymnal is a work-in-progress of nine movements, based on the poem “Hymnal” by Alessandra Lynch. Tonight’s performance features the middle three movements: IV, V, and VI. Lynch’s poem was published in her 2021 book Pretty Tripwire, and the poem itself spans several pages of the book. The poem is separate into several contained sections, which I interpreted as the “Hymns.” Between the sections, there is some variation of a repeated text, which I interpreted as a “chorus” of sorts. When I first came across Lynch’s poem, it immediately inspired me in its intense musicality and its structural and rhetorical references to explicitly musical notions. In the same way, the poem originates with religious and historical references that, over the course of the poem, transform and blossom into a poetic liturgy that
lives entirely in the world of the poem itself. Lynch’s text imposes a poetic world that feels all at once spiritual and worldly — it is at times a lament, a celebration, an outcry, and a prayer. Lynch’s poetic speaker embodies and explores the contradictions of reconciling one’s spiritual self with their worldly one. Excerpt from Hymnal by Alessandra Lynch I was taught to snub dad and god— but did they force hot pokers into women’s mouths to shut them up or blow through tenderly in their blue monks’ hoods & feathery shoes that skimmed over fields, bullets falling hard from their pockets obliterating animals and flowers….
god not heavy— — In every room my father entered I vanished we vanished in every room the room enters itself with a dignified air I vanish when I enter dignity dignity vanishes when it enters the room In every shame there is a room nobody’s standing though its standing room only I enter shame & the room vanishes my father vanishes angel angel angel shoo — Once I loved my father— not for the taking
At times, I waved to them: did they intend the damage? I was a weed— sturdy, stuff, difficult to pick— my body thrilling to the inexhaustible wind…. I bowed before its passing, then rose, opened my blazing mouth & ate of it— — God was air & flowers
When would he show? Or would he. Hunched on a bench under narrow tubes of warming-light, I read until the pages illuminated the whole station… In my drawstring sack I kept a pebble the size of his eye, with a stick I could use to row myself towards him. Father, I’m rowing through air in tightening circle…. Appear without guilt or guardedness
Upcoming Events at YSM cheating, lying, stealing david lang (as told to Deborah Artman) A couple of years ago, I started thinking about how so often when classical composers write a piece of music, they are trying to tell you something that they are proud of and like about themselves. Here’s this big gushing melody, see how emotional I am. Or, here’s this abstract hard-to-figure-out piece, see how complicated I am, see my really big brain. I am more noble, more sensitive, I am so happy. The composer really believes he or she is exemplary in this or that area. It’s interesting, but it’s not very humble. So I thought, “What would it be like if composers based pieces on what they thought was wrong with them?” Like, “here’s a piece that shows you how miserable I am.” Or, “here’s a piece that shows you what a liar I am, what a cheater I am.” I wanted to make a piece that was about something disreputable. It’s a hard line to cross. You have to work against all your training. You are not taught to find the dirty seams in music. You are not taught to be low-down, clumsy, sly, and underhanded. In cheating, lying, stealing, although phrased in a comic way, I am trying to look at something dark. There is a swagger, but it is not trustworthy. In fact, the instruction in the score for how to play it says: “Ominous funk.”
nov 6
Wendy Sharp, violin Faculty Artist Series 3 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission
nov 8
Horszowski Trio Oneppo Chamber Music Series 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, Students start at $13
nov 9
Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission
nov 10
Bora Kim, violin Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Recital 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission
nov 13
Ingram Marshall Tribute Concert with Benjamin Verdery & Friends Faculty Artist Series 3 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission
nov 16
Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission
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