Illinois Wesleyan University School of Music PR E SE N T S
: David Vayo, Director
Guest Composer
2017
Judith Shatin November 16-17
Symposium of Contemporary Music November 16, 2017 4:00 pm School of Music 258
Music and the Surrounding World Presentation by Judith Shatin
This program is presented as part of the IWU New Music Series. To receive email notifications of future New Music Series events, contact David Vayo, Series director: dvayo@iwu.edu. The New Music Series Facebook address is https://www.facebook.com/IWUNewMusicSeries/
• November 16, 2017 8:00 pm
Westbrook Auditorium
Music of Judith Shatin Hark My Love Collegiate Choir J. Scott Ferguson, Director Eva Ferguson, piano Hosech Al P’ney Ha Tehom Electronic composition A Line-Storm Song Claire Challacombe, soprano Sarah Dale, piano
Vayter un Vayter Es klopn di shleyfn (My Temples are Throbbing) Dayne Shpiltsayg (Toys) Ver Vet Blaybn (Who Will Last?)
Beth Hildenbrand, clarinet Nina Gordon, violoncello Ilia Radoslavov, piano
Robert Mangialardi, baritone Intermission
A Little Water Music Electronic composition Grito del Corazón Mark Mathison, bassoon Bailey Knowles, viola Ari Scott, violoncello Fantasía sobre El Flamenco Colin Halihan, Alex Huebner, trumpet Jessica Sheetz, horn Raymond Bolton, bass trombone Jacob Taitel, tuba
• Following the program, the audience is invited to a reception in the Presser Hall reception room, courtesy of Sigma Alpha Iota Special thanks to Mario Pelusi, Director, School of Music; Michael Limacher, Thorpe Digital Center; Jay Langhoff, Physical Plant sound technician; Ed Risinger, Technical Coordinator, School of Music; School of Music Stage Crew, Sound Crew and Recording Crew; Cady Williamson, clerical assistant to the New Music Series director This program is presented as part of the IWU New Music Series. To receive email notifications of future New Music Series events, contact David Vayo, Series director: dvayo@iwu.edu. The New Music Series Facebook address is https://www.facebook.com/IWUNewMusicSeries/
November 17, 2017 7:30 pm
Second Presbyterian Church 404 North Prairie Street, Bloomington
Illinois Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra
Lev Ivanov, Conductor Program to include Black Moon by Judith Shatin Please note: the orchestra concert will have its own printed program.
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Judith Shatin
Judith Shatin (www.judithshatin.com) is a composer whose music, called ‘something magical’ by Fanfare, draws on expanded instrumental palettes and a cornucopia of the sounding world, from machines in a coal mine, to the calls of animals, the shuttle of Photo credit: a wooden loom, the crunch of a potato chip. Timbral Mary Noble Ours exploration and invention, cross-boundary acoustic and digital combinations, and dynamic narrative design are fundamental to her work. Sounds of the natural world play an important role in her music, as in her path-breaking Singing the Blue Ridge, scored for mezzo, baritone, orchestra and electronics created from the calls of wild animals. Built environments figure as well, as in COAL, an eveninglength folk oratorio, with sounds she collected in a working coal mine combined with music for Appalachian band, chorus and keyboard synthesizer. Supported by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program, this piece was the culmination of a two-year retrospective of Shatin’s music, hosted by Shepherd College. Shatin’s music has also been commissioned by organizations such as the Barlow Endowment, Carnegie Hall, the Fromm Foundation and the Library of Congress. Ensembles that have commissioned it include Ensemble Berlin PianoPercussion, the Kronos Quartet, the National Symphony, San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, Scottish Voices and many others. She has received four NEA Composer Fellowships as well as awards from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer; and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Twice a fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, she has also held residencies at Brahmshaus, La Cité des Arts, MacDowell, Mishkan Omanim, Yaddo and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her music is widely recorded on labels such as Innova (two portrait discs), Neuma, New World Records, Ravello and Sonora. Educated at Douglass College (AB), The Juilliard School (MM) and Princeton University (MFA, PhD), Shatin is currently William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of Virginia, where she founded the Virginia Center for Computer Music. A master teacher, Shatin has served as senior composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference, Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, featured composer at the Chamber Music Conference of the East, and senior faculty at California Summer Music.
Program Notes
all notes by the composer Hark My Love is a setting of verses from the Song of Songs in Marvin Pope’s translation for the Anchor Bible (verses 8-10, 14, 16-17). This richly-textured symbolic text sparked my musical imagination, and the lyrical translation and rhythmic flow seemed especially apt for musical interpretation. Hark My Love was commissioned by choral conductor Judith Clurman and premiered by her and the New York Concert Singers at New York’s Merkin Hall. The text is used by the kind permission of the publisher, Yale University Press. Hosech Al P’ney HaTehom (Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep) is about a world being born: out of the subterranean darkness, sonic lightning; out of chaos, life. It is also about a new world of sound being born; not the music of traditional instruments or sampled sounds, but a music constructed from the fundamental building blocks of sound using direct digital synthesis. There are three sections. In the first, the rumble of the void reaches up to become audible. In the second, sonic lightning sets off a wild storm, with volcanic action spawning animate sounds. In the third, the primordial quality of the first returns, but now there are traces of the second. I composed Hosech Al P’ney HaTehom while a guest composer at Stanford University’s CCRMA. Robert Frost’s poem, A Line-Storm Song, is a love poem about love that has been through a wild storm, and yet persists. I have tried to capture something of the wistful, wild, urgent nature of the poem. This song was commissioned by the Ensemble for These Times, through their Jewish Music and Poetry Project, with support from the Jewish Music Commission of Los Angeles. I have slightly revised it since, with thanks to mezzo Katharine Soroka, who premiered the new version on 5/20/17 with pianist Nathan Carterette, presented by the Tuesday Musical Club of Pittsburgh. I dedicated this song to my beloved Michael. Vayter un Vayter is a setting of three powerful poems by the noted Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever. These include Es Klopn di Shleyfn (My Head is Throbbing), Shpiltsayg (Toys) and Ver Vet Blaybn (What Remains?). The first is a dark and intense poem about a race between
good and evil; the second a touching poem from father to daughter, with both delicate images and tragic darkness in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the third is a rich reflection on faith and eternity tinged with irony. The title I have given the entire set, Vayter un Vayter, translated as Further and Further, is drawn from the first poem, and speaks to how Sutzkever draws one further and further into his world, that of the Yiddish-speaking community of Eastern Europe prior to its destruction in World War II. The piece is dedicated to my paternal grandparents, Hannah and Samuel Shatinsky, and to my father, Dr. Leo Shatin, all of whom spoke Yiddish as their first language. A Little Water Music is an electronic composition created from recordings I made of the waters of Biscayne Bay in North Miami and of the bay and smaller estuaries on the Deering Estate at Cutler just south of Miami while in residence with the Deering Estate Chamber Players. I digitally processed recordings made both underwater and above. A Little Water Music was premiered at the Bass Museum in Miami. Grito del Corazón was inspired by Goya’s “Black Paintings.” Their haunting, stark quality was deeply compelling to both myself and artist Kathy Aoki. When the Ensemble Barcelona Nuova Musica wanted to commission a work for their Painting Music program, premiered on at the VIII Festival de CinemaIndependent de Alternativa 2001, I immediately recalled Goya’s paintings in the Prado, and suggested this theme. These paintings surrounded Goya in his home known as the “Deaf House,” because a devastating illness had left him completely deaf. The contents deal with terrifying subject matter, such as Saturn devouring his Son (Saturno Devorando a su Hijo). In all cases, the images invoke fear and trembling. I met video artist Kathy Aoki at the MacDowell Colony, and that meeting led to this collaboration, with the video as an optional performance element. Kathy is based in the San Francisco Bay area and has created a number of multimedia works, as well as fine art prints and art books. The score involves guided improvisation, with the sonic world inspired by and reflective of the electronic music. Versions are available for a variety of solo and chamber combinations, and the piece has been played by a multitude of soloists, and ensembles including Da Capo
Chamber Players, Figura Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Rare Degree and soloists such as cellist Madeleine Shapiro and saxophonist Michael Straus. The version for sax has been recorded by William Perconti on the Centaur label (3243). The score provides an electronic cue sheet as well as motivic shapes that are created in relation to the instrument or group of instruments involved in the performance. In addition, the performer(s) works with digital music that is provided on either CD or DVD depending on the performance situation and whether the work is performed with or without video. The performer is a collaborator in the process of realization. Versions are available for a variety of solo and chamber combinations. For more information, visit www.judithshatin.com. Fantasía Sobre El Flamenco is my musical response to a visit to the Corpus Christi fair in Granada, Spain, where the music and dance of the flamenco is all-enveloping. It is a complex music with a fascinating variety of forms. I have thought about this experience in music, influenced by the mixture of civilizations emblematic of Spain’s past. One of the striking aspects of the dance is the intermingling of qualities: sensuousness, pride and violence. I was particularly struck by the cante jondo, with its intense and dark qualities. In Fantasìa Sobre El Flamenco sinuous melodies that have a conversational flavor are interrupted by characteristic rhythmic bursts reminiscent of zapateado (toe and heel clicking). These two musical ideas collide, creating different rhythmic planes. The cante winds its way through the ensemble, though interrupted by violent staccato bursts. Fantasìa Sobre El Flamenco was commissioned by Jeffrey Silberschlag for St. Mary’s Brass, who premiered it and recorded it for the CD Hearing the Call: 20th century American Brass Music on the Sonora label (SO22591).
A Line-storm Song The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain. The birds have less to say for themselves In the wood-world’s torn despair Than now these numberless years the elves, Although they are no less there: All song of the woods is crushed like some Wild, easily shattered rose. Come, be my love in the wet woods; come, Where the boughs rain when it blows. There is the gale to urge behind And bruit our singing down, And the shallow waters aflutter with wind From which to gather your gown. What matter if we go clear to the west, And come not through dry-shod? For wilding brooch shall wet your breast The rain-fresh goldenrod. Oh, never this whelming east wind swells But it seems like the sea’s return To the ancient lands where it left the shells Before the age of the fern; And it seems like the time when after doubt Our love came back amain. Oh, come forth into the storm and rout And be my love in the rain.
–Robert Frost
Collegiate Choir
J. Scott Ferguson, conductor Eva Ferguson, pianist Soprano Sara Caligiuri (on leave) Claire Challacombe Katy Holub Kate Masson Crystal Muro Elizabeth Turner *Minji Will Elisabeth Williams *Grace Wolf Alto Brigid Broderick *Keara Corbett Maren Flessen (on leave) Dalila Hatibovic Kelsey Maka Victoria Morford Kelly Riordan *Stephanie Rudi Austin Rupert (on leave) Genna Simon Anne Warnke (on leave)
Tenor Chris Ancira Kristian Avise-Rouse Spencer Burbach Filip Duda *Aaron Kahn *Jake Scheuring Bass John Fegan Blake Miller (on leave) Moises Garcia *Andrew Johnson Joshua Mikaili *Jacob Taitel S. V. Villano
*Section leaders
Officers Minji Will, president Aaron Kahn, vice president, Victoria Morford, secretary Kate Masson, treasurer
Symposium of Contemporary Music Guest Composers • Performers • Scholars 1952-2017 1952: Earl George, Grant Fletcher, Burrill Phillips 1953: Anthony Donato, Homer Keller 1954: Normand Lockwood, Robert Palmer 1955: Wallingford Riegger, Peter Mennin 1956: Hunter Johnson, Ulysses Kay 1957: Ernst Krenek, William Bergsma 1958: Aaron Copland 1959: Paul Pisk, George Rochberg 1960: Roy Harris 1962: Robert Erickson, George Rochberg, Glenn Glasow 1963: Robert Wykes, Alabama String Quartet 1964: Robert Wykes, E. J. Ulrich, Salvatore Martirano, Herbert Brün, Ben Johnston 1966: Louis Coyner, Edwin Harkins, Philip Winsor, Edwin London 1967: Frederick Tillis, George Crumb 1968: Iain Hamilton 1969: The Loop Group, DePaul University 1970: Halim El-Dabh, Olly Wilson 1971: Edward J. Miller 1972: Stravinsky Memorial Concert 1973: Courtney Cox, Phil Wilson 1974: Scott Huston 1975: David Ward-Steinman 1976: Donald Erb 1977: Lou Harrison, Ezra Sims 1978: M. William Karlins 1979: Leonard B. Meyer 1981: Walter S. Hartley 1982: David Ward-Steinman 1983: George Crumb Concert 1984: Robert Bankert, Abram M. Plum, R. Bedford Watkins 1985: Michael Schelle 1986: Jean Eichelberger Ivey 1987: Jan Bach
1988: John Beall 1989: Hale Smith 1990: Karel Husa 1991: Alice Parker 1993: (Spring) Alexander Aslamazov 1993: (Fall) Leslie Bassett, John Crawford (Society of Composers, Inc. Region 5 Conference) 1995: David Diamond 1996: Morton Gould Memorial Concert 1997: Joseph Schwantner 1998: Arvo Pärt 1999: John Corigliano 2000: Libby Larsen 2001: William Bolcom, Joan Morris 2002: Present Music 2003: Mario Lavista, Carmen Helena Téllez 2004: Louis Andriessen, James Quandt, Monica Germino,Cristina Zavalloni 2005: Vince Mendoza 2006: New York New Music Ensemble 2007: Stephen Paulus 2008: (Spring) Roderik de Man, Annelie de Man (Amsterdam) 2008: (Fall) John Sharpley, Orchid Ensemble 2009: ONIX (Mexico City) 2011: Yang Xiaozhong, Song Mingzhu, Zhou Tianli (Sichuan Conservatory of Music) 2012: (Spring) Shulamit Ran 2012: (Fall) Chinary Ung, Susan Ung, Adam Greene, Stacey Fraser, Jocelyn Chang 2014: John Daversa 2015: Fifth House Ensemble 2016: (Spring): Kyle Gann 2016: (Fall): Eve Beglarian 2017: Judith Shatin