SAT OCTOBER 19 2013
Kronos at 40 Dal Grauer Memorial Lecture with Philip Glass / 6:30pm I Concert / 8pm
CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT UBC
The Faculty of Arts at UBC welcomes you to the Chan Centre’s 2013/14 Season! The Faculty of Arts is delighted to welcome pre-eminent composer Philip Glass and the internationally acclaimed Kronos Quartet to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts for the world premiere of Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 6, composed for the Kronos Quartet on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. This premiere is made all the more meaningful as the Faculty co-commissioned this piece, along with the Chan Centre, to mark the Faculty’s 50th anniversary. The Kronos Quartet has a rich history of collaboration with Philip Glass, which has consistently produced works of sophistication and nuance that are exquisitely suited to the ensemble’s unique gifts. The Chan Centre, a valued part of the Faculty of Arts, is the ideal venue to celebrate and share in the achievements of these great artists. One of North America’s leading performing arts venues, it is a place where artistic and academic disciplines integrate to inspire new perspectives on life and culture. The Chan Centre is a vital part of the Faculty’s cultural district, providing UBC music, theatre, and film students access to a top-notch venue throughout the school year, be it for rehearsals, performances, or film screenings. The Faculty of Arts cultural district also includes the Museum of Anthropology, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the School of Music, UBC Opera and the Frederic Wood Theatre. Today, 50 years after separating from the Faculty of Sciences, the Faculty of Arts is the university’s largest faculty, encompassing a full range of courses in the social sciences, humanities and creative and performing arts. A research-intensive faculty, it educates more than 13,000 students in bachelors, masters and doctoral programs in 16 departments, four schools, and a variety of interdisciplinary programs. The Faculty provides compelling opportunities to explore and choose among 2,000 courses taught by more than 750 scholars who are leaders in their fields. Truly unique in its scope, the Faculty of Arts is a dynamic and thriving community of outstanding scholars – both faculty and students.
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Kronos at 40 David Harrington violin John Sherba violin Hank Dutt viola Sunny Yang cello Laurence Neff Lighting Designer Brian Mohr Audio Engineer
Program: 8:00pm
/ Chan Shun Concert Hall
John Oswald / Spectre * Geeshie Wiley (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Last Kind Words + Alter Yechiel Karniol (arr. Judith Berkson) / Sim Sholom + Nicole Lizée / Hymnals * Canadian premiere Philip Glass / String Quartet No. 6 * World premiere In three movements INTERMISSION Tanburi Cemil Bey (arr. Stephen Prutsman) / Evic Taksim + Traditional (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Lullaby + Aleksandra Vrebalov / …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… *
* Written for Kronos + Arranged for Kronos
Please remember to turn off your cell phones, and note that photography and/or recording of any kind is not permitted. Thank you!
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Dal Grauer Memorial Lecture: Philip Glass 6:30pm / Chan Shun Concert Hall An exclusive pre-concert conversation with Philip Glass, hosted by Eleanor Wachtel from CBC Radio’s Wachtel on the Arts. This event is being recorded for future broadcast on CBC.
The Dal Grauer Memorial Lectureship The Dal Grauer Memorial Lectureship held its first lecture in 1966 in memory of A.E. Dal Grauer. Regarded as one of the most brilliant men of his generation in Canada, he was President of the B.C. Electric Company and serving his second term as Chancellor of the University of British Columbia at his untimely death in 1961. The lectures reflect Dal Grauer’s wide range of interests: the arts, especially music and literature; economics; science; and social and political concerns. Previous Dal Grauer Memorial Lecturers include economist John Kenneth Galbraith, architect Buckminster Fuller, biologist George Wald, novelist Margaret Atwood, pianist Richard Goode, philosopher John Ralston Saul, economist Michael Adams, and neurologist Helen Mayberg. Dal Grauer memorial lectures are held once or twice a year on the UBC Campus in Vancouver. The Vancouver Institute, which has provided a venue for free public lectures at UBC since 1916, often hosts and co-sponsors the Dal Grauer Memorial Lectures. Please check their schedule for upcoming lectures, vaninst.ca.
Philip Glass (b. 1937) Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, and the landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson.
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Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8, along with Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee, premiered in 2005.
Phillip Glass
In the past few years several new works were unveiled, including Book of Longing (Luminato Festival) and an opera about the end of the Civil War entitled Appomattox (San Francisco Opera). His Symphony No. 9 was completed in 2011 and was premiered by the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz, Austria on January 1, 2012 and his Symphony No. 10 received its European premiere in France in 2013. Teatro Real Madrid and the English National Opera commissioned Glass’s opera The Perfect American, about the death of Walt Disney, which premiered in January 2013 while the Landestheater Linz premiered his opera Spuren de Verirrten on April 12th, 2013. Upcoming projects include a song cycle for Angelique Kidjo and the Brussels Philharmonic as well as an opera based on Franz Kafka’s The Trial for Music Theatre Wales.
Please see page 11 for program notes about String Quartet No. 6
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Kronos Quartet For 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. A Grammy winner, Kronos is also the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize. Since 1973, Kronos has built a compellingly eclectic repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Schnittke), contemporary composers (John Adams, Aleksandra Vrebalov), jazz legends (Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), rock artists (guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin), and many others. Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers, including: “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, on projects such as the NASA-commissioned Sun Rings (2002) and Another Secret eQuation for youth chorus and string quartet (2011); Philip Glass, including an all-Glass CD in 1995 and the premiere of a new work in 2013; Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, featured on the 2005 CD Mugam Sayagi; Steve Reich, including Kronos’ recording of the Grammy-winning composition Different Trains (1989) and WTC 9/11 (2011); and many more. Kronos has collaborated regularly with performing artists from around the world such as Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, performance artist Laurie Anderson, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Kronos has also performed and/or recorded with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Zakir Hussain, Rokia Traoré, Tom Waits, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter, and Nelly Furtado. In dance, the famed choreographers Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and Eiko & Koma have created pieces with Kronos’ music. Kronos’ work has been featured prominently in film, including, in 2012, the Academy Award–nominated AIDS documentary How to Survive a Plague and Dirty Wars, a documentary exposé of covert warfare. Kronos also recorded full scores by Philip Glass (for Mishima and Dracula) and by Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain) and has contributed music to 21 Grams, Heat, and other films. 6
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
The quartet tours extensively each year, appearing in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, clubs, and festivals. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings, including the Nonesuch Records releases Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers that simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy– nominated celebration of Mexican culture; the 2004 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite; and Music of Vladimir Martynov (2011). Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos released the first volume of its Kronos Collection of sheet music in 2006; Volume 2 will be published in 2014. The non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including as the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home-season performances, and education programs—such as extended residencies in 2013–14 at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, and the Kaufman Music Center in New York City.
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Program Notes: John Oswald (b. 1953) Spectre (1990) Canadian composer John Oswald is well known for his development of “audioquoting” techniques, which have challenged contemporary notions of artistic ownership. In 1990, Oswald’s notorious recording Plunderphonic had to be destroyed as a result of legal action taken by Michael Jackson. In 1991, a sequel was released, featuring thoroughly reworked soundtracks by musical artists as diverse as the Doors, Carly Simon and Metallica. Discosphere, a retrospective of dance soundtracks, was released in 1992 followed by Plexure, the third album of the Plunderphonic series. A retrospective CD box set of Plunderphonic works has been called “mind-numbingly amazing” by Peter Kenneth in Rolling Stone, and made Spin Magazine’s Top 10 in 2001. A Governor General Media Arts Laureate, Ars Electronica Digital Musics and Untitled Arts Award winner, as well as the fourth inductee into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Alternative Walk of Fame, Oswald has also been nominated to third place in a list of the most internationally influential Canadian musicians, tied with Céline Dion. Oswald is Director of Research at Mystery Laboratory in Canada. More information about his current activities can be found at www.pfony.com. Oswald composed three string quartets commissioned by Kronos in the early 1990s: Spectre (for 1001 string quartet reflections), preLieu (after Beethoven), and Mach (for string and heavy metal quartets), followed by a 4th quartet, entitled Fore. In Spectre, Oswald interweaves Kronos playing in concert with multiple overdubs of his recordings of Kronos. In this sense, Spectre is written for a thousand-member string orchestra with all instruments played by Kronos. It was the composer’s first composition for live musicians in 15 years. About Spectre, Oswald writes: “The camera’s shutter blinks and a moment of the visual world is frozen on film. Still, there is no audible equivalent to the snapshot in the time it takes to sound. Sound takes time. Recordings of Kronos fill Spectre. Successive moments happen often at once. In concert the musicians add a final overdub to a string orchestra of a thousand and one reflections. This wall of sound of veils of vibration of ghosts of events of past and future continuously present is a virtually extended moment. An occasional freeze marks a moment’s gesture.”
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John Oswald’s Spectre was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Wexner Center, Canada Council and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and appears on Kronos’ Nonesuch recording Short Stories.
Geeshie Wiley (early 20th cent.) Last Kind Words (c. 1930) Arranged by Jacob Garchik In March 1930, Geeshie Wiley recorded Last Kind Words in Grafton, Wisconsin, for Paramount Records. Beyond this, very little information is confirmed about this singer’s life, though there are reports that she came from Mississippi. She recorded a second song at the same session, Skinny Leg Blues, and provided backup for a few additional tracks. Nevertheless, her recording of Last Kind Words has given Wiley the reputation of being perhaps one of the great early blues musicians. Blues scholar Don Kent has written, “If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into blues.… Moreover, despite her sensual voice, the persona she presents is as tough as Charley Patton: money before romance and she sweetly says, while extolling her sexual charms, that she’s calmly capable of killing you…. Last Kind Words is one of the most imaginatively constructed guitar arrangements of its era and possible one of the most archaic. Although the lyrics date it to the late World War I era, its eight-bar verse structure appears to be older.” The lyrics read, in part, “The last kind words I heard my daddy say: ‘If I die in the German war, please don’t bury my soul. Ah, child, just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole.’” Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Last Kind Words by Geeshie Wiley was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.
Alter Yechiel Karniol (1855–1929) Sim Sholom (c. 1913) Arranged by Judith Berkson (b. 1977) This arrangement of Sim Sholom is inspired by a recording made by Cantor Alter Yechiel Karniol around 1913. Karniol was born in Dzialoszyce, Poland (near Krakow), and sang in Hungary in a number of congregations before being invited by the Hungarian congregation Ohab Zedek in New York City to be its cantor. He returned to Europe to officiate at the Great Synagogue of Odessa, but after the 1905 pogrom erupted he returned to the United States and eventually resumed officiating at Ohab Zedek. Karniol was noted for his extraordinary range and his intensely emotional, improvisatory style. He made the recording of Sim Sholom that this arrangement is based on in New York for Columbia Records, backed by a male chorus. The text is the final blessing of the weekday service, which says, in part, “Grant peace, goodness, blessing, grace, kindness, and compassion upon us and upon all of Your people Israel.”
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Arranger Judith Berkson is a soprano, pianist and composer who also performs as Liederkreis. Her solo record Oylam was released on ECM Records in 2010. She has performed at the New York City Opera Vox Festival, the BrucknerTage in St. Florian, Picasso Museum Malaga, Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and Joe’s Pub and the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York. She collaborated with Kronos Quartet in 2010 in a performance of Schubert songs, arranged for string quartet and analog keyboards, and an aria from Mileva, a forthcoming opera by Aleksandra Vrebalov. In 2011 she received a Six Points Fellowship and is writing an opera about Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer for chamber ensemble, voices, organs and percussion, which will premier in New York in 2012. Judith Berkson’s arrangement of Sim Sholom was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research & Development Fund, and is part of a five-song cycle dedicated to the memory of Harold Goldberg.
Nicole Lizée (b. 1973) Hymnals (2013) Montreal-based composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of sources and influences, including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, post-punk, rave culture, 1960s psychedelia, 1960s modernism, and her family’s trove of vintage easy listening albums. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology, and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance. Lizée’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision. This Will Not Be Televised (2005–7), scored for chamber ensemble and turntables, was selected for the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Her work for piano and notated glitch, Hitchcock Études, was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music to be featured at the 2014 World Music Days. She has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, CBC, the Kaufman Center, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, So Percussion, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and others. Lizée is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow, and holds a Master of Music degree from McGill University. 10
About Hymnals, Lizée writes: “Hymnals re-imagines psychedelic folk in the form of a 16 minute odyssey for string quartet. It’s Side A of a never-made record filled with manic sing-alongs, chanting, incantations and freakedout humming. It’s chiming acoustic guitars and autoharps, phasing swirling layers and backwards tape. Judee Sill’s themes of rapture and redemption through Christianity jockey for position with the paranoia of Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee’s (perhaps prophetic) fears of Armageddon. The hope for existential salvation through hallucinogens gives way to LSD-infused religiosity and Timothy Leary’s exhortations to turn on, tune in and drop out. Music takes on the attributes that the altered state reveals. Like Russian nesting dolls, a disorienting sequence of layers playfully toys with our perception of scale, while the listener is dosed with ecstatic strings that cascade and interweave into endless spires.” Nicole Lizée’s Hymnals was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Philip Glass (b. 1937) String Quartet No. 6 (2013) Please see page 4 for Philip Glass’ biography.
About his Sixth String Quartet, Glass writes: “String Quartet No. 6 is the most recent result of a long and ripening friendship between myself and the Kronos Quartet. Composing for string quartet has been part of my life from my earliest years, even as a student composer at the Juilliard School. The Kronos Quartet had performed and recorded all the earlier ‘numbered’ quartets before they commissioned String Quartet No. 5 in 1991. The next work composed for them was for the soundtrack of the 1931 film Dracula, directed by Tod Browning with the famous performance by Bela Lugosi as Dracula. “For the next 15 years, I performed Dracula with the Kronos, with Michael Riesman conducting, and with an additional piano part for myself. These ‘live’ performances were very popular and frequent events, giving the Kronos and myself ample time to get to know each other as interpreters and performers. I can now perfectly imagine, and even anticipate, the performances of David Harrington, John Sherba, and Hank Dutt. Kronos’ new cellist, Sunny Yang, is as yet unknown to me. But, such is my empathy with the other players, I expect to share their enthusiasm for her as well. “Now about String Quartet No. 6… “In contemporary music, No. 6 quartets have taken on special significance, much as symphonies No. 5 and No. 9 have in the history of symphonic music. However, this is not confined to contemporary music alone. Mozart’s six ‘Haydn’ quartets and Beethoven’s Opus 18 quartets are such examples. In any case, the number six when
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applied to a quartet will usually get a composer’s attention. However, in my case I avoided the issue twice: first, with the Dracula quartet music, by not numbering the music at all; second, with the quartet music for the film Bent, by referring to that collection of quartets composed in 1997 as “The Suite from Bent”. “With the commission from Kronos for a new string quartet, I finally had to address the No. 6 issue. At about a half hour of music, it is a work of significant length. The musical language itself remains firmly ‘post-minimalist,’ as almost everything has been since 1976. It also remains firmly ‘tonal,’ using pan-harmonic and polyharmonic sequences in a rhythmic setting which is, in turn, based on a binary system of twos and threes. This allows for a unified harmonic/rhythmic music in which the resulting melodic material, though basically ambivalent, can be easily heard as harmonic and enharmonic pitches. All this is cast into a three-movement work in which the parts, though structurally separate, flow into each other, much as the movements of my String Quartet No. 5. “For listeners familiar with Symphonies No. 7 through No. 10 or Etudes for Piano 15 through 20, this will be heard as a continuation of music developed in the last five years or so. “The string writing itself has taken on a denser, thicker texture, at times sounding like quintet or sextet music. This has come about through the extensive string writing I’ve done – including two violin concertos, two cello concertos, a string symphony (No. 3), as well as numerous solo and ensemble works for string instruments – and has left me familiar and comfortable with all manner of bowing and performance techniques known and practiced by the best players. “My own string playing has remained rudimentary, and that was gained through the kindness of fellow music students when I was young and eager to learn. They coaxed and coached me through basic skills. And, at a young age, began writing music for them. “Foremost among them was Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, a fellow student at the Juilliard School. For her, in return for the hours of tutoring she gave me, I composed my very first (un-numbered) string quartet as well as an early violin concerto for solo violin, brass and percussion and a string (piano) trio. Understanding and cultivating an aptitude for string writing is a deep and, apparently, endless undertaking. For all of those who have helped me in this regard – and certainly including the members of the Kronos Quartet – I remain forever grateful.” Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 6 was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in the Faculty of Arts at The University of British Columbia; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Philharmonic Society of Orange County; The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Las Vegas, Nevada; and David A. and Evelyne T. Lennette.
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World premiere performance: October 19, 2013, at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Tanburi Cemil Bey (1871–1916) Evic Taksim (date unknown/arr. 2000) Arranged by Stephen Prutsman (b. 1960) Tanburi Cemil Bey is widely regarded as the most renowned composer of instrumental art music from the late period of the Ottoman Empire, as well as one of its greatest instrumentalists. Born in Istanbul, Cemil Bey exhibited exceptional talent as a young boy at the tanbur, a long-necked, fretted lute played with a plectrum. As a composer, he made notable contributions in the development of suite forms knows as pesrev and saz semai, which continue to dominate traditional Turkish music, as well as in the art of taksim, a style of improvisation in Turkish classical music. His skills as an instrumentalist extended to other string instruments, including the kemençe, a small, 3-stringed fiddle played with a bow. Although the kemençe had been used in Turkish classical music since the middle of the 19th century, due in part to Cemil Bey’s influence it has since become an essential part of traditional Turkish music ensembles. Born in Los Angeles in 1960, Stephen Prutsman began playing the piano by ear before moving on to more formal music studies. In his early teens he was the keyboard player for several rock groups, including Cerberus and Vysion. In the early ’90s he was a medal winner at the Tchaikovsky and Queen Elisabeth piano competitions, which led to performances in various prestigious music centers and with leading orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. In 2004, Prutsman was appointed to a three-year term to the position of Artistic Partner with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he acts as composer, arranger, conductor, program host and pianist. Prutsman’s long collaboration with Kronos has resulted in over 40 arrangements of distinctive and varying musical languages. Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement of Evic Taksim was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Angel and Priscilla Stoyanof.
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Traditional Lullaby (arr. 2006) Arranged by Jacob Garchik (b. 1976) For most people, Iran won’t conjure up a musical image—unlike India or Turkey, perhaps. It’s partly because the political agenda of and media portrayal by the West are preoccupied with fundamentalist mullahs, oil reserves and nuclear proliferation. It’s certainly true that in the West we don’t get much access to Iranian music. And it’s not because this nation of 70 million doesn’t enjoy or contain a rich variety of music…. It’s true that, when the Islamic Revolution swept away the Shah’s regime in 1979, in an excess of fundamentalist zeal strict restrictions were placed on music. But apart from a ban on Westernized pop music these were swiftly dropped. It’s often forgotten that the Iranian Revolution was as much about reclaiming traditional Persian culture as espousing an Islamist agenda. Indeed, the long-term musical effect of the revolution has been a revival of Persian classical music, which had suffered in the face of heavy Westernization during the Shah’s regime. Folk music in Iran is a strong living tradition and has probably also been boosted by the “back-to-roots” aspects of the revolution—although, beneath the radar, out of the urban centres, it has essentially been able to carry on untroubled, regardless of offical policy. The group Jahlé is based in Bandar Abbas, Iran’s largest port-city, where there’s a sizable community of black Iranians descended from Arabian traders and African slaves. Jahlé’s performance of this traditional lullaby—which inspired Kronos’ version—was recorded by the BBC’s James Birtwistle when Andy Kershaw was gathering material for a programme on Iran in 2004. With vocals by Isa Baluchestani, guitar from Hamid Saeed and the plangent nay jofti (double flute) playing of Ghanbar Rastgoo, Jahlé’s performance is quite mesmerizing. The double-flute player Rastgoo is also a Baba Zar, a man who leads the ecstatic zar rituals practiced by the black Iranians of the region. Trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik, born in San Francisco, has lived in New York since 1994. He has toured Europe and North America extensively with the acclaimed Lee Konitz New Nonet, and has played with Konitz since 1997. Since 2006 Garchik has contributed dozens of arrangements and transcriptions for the Kronos Quartet of music from all over the world. An active freelance trombonist, he plays with groups including the Ohad Talmor/Steve Swallow Sextet, the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Slavic Soul Party!, and the Four Bags. His second CD, Romance, was hailed by the New York Times as “odd and excellent...taut with paradox...slow and beautiful art songs.” Note adapted from the liner notes to The Rough Guide to the Music of Iran, compiled by Simon Broughton, editor of the world-music magazine Songlines. Used with permission.
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Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Lullaby was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Deborah and Creig Hoyt.
Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970) …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… (2007) Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the United States. She holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Evan Chambers and Michael Daugherty, and a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, where her teacher was Elinor Armer. She has participated in numerous master classes and workshops, such as the New York University Summer Composition Workshop, Music Courses in Darmstadt (Germany), Szombathely (Hungary) and Kazimierz Dolny (Poland) in collaboration with IRCAM, and the Cabrillo Festival in Santa Cruz, California. She now teaches at the City College of New York. Vrebalov’s works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Jorge Caballero, the Sausalito Quartet, Dusan Tynek Dance Company, Ijsbreker, and the Moravian Philharmonic, among others. Her music has been recorded for Nonesuch and Vienna Modern Masters. In 2005, Lila was premiered in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall by violinist Ana Milosavljevic. The premiere of the orchestral work Orbits opened the 30th Novi Sad Music Festivities and was broadcast live on national television, on the NS Channel. The same channel produced a 30-minute television biography of Vrebalov. That year, she also worked on the score for Sleeping Beauty, an experimental film introduced at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives. About …hold me, neighbor, in this storm…, Vrebalov writes: “The Balkans, with its multitude of cultural and religious identities, has had a troubled history of ethnic intolerance. For my generation of Tito’s pioneers and children of Communists, growing up in the former Yugoslavia meant learning about and carrying in our minds the battles and numberless ethnic and religious conflicts dating back half a millennium, and honoring ancestors who died in them. By then, that distant history had merged with the nearer past, so those we remember from World War II are our grandparents. Their stories we heard firsthand. After several devastating ethnic wars in the 1990s we entered a new century, this time each of us knowing in person someone who perished. As I write this in November 2007, on YouTube a new generation of Albanians and Serbs post their war-songs bracing for another conflict, claiming their separate entitlements to the land and history, rather than a different kind of future, together. “Strangely, the cultural and religious differences that led to enmity in everyday life produced—after centuries of turbulently living together—most incredible fusions in music. It is almost as if what we weren’t able to achieve through words and
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deeds—to fuse, and mix, and become something better and richer together—our music so famously accomplished instead. “…hold me, neighbor, in this storm… is inspired by folk and religious music from the region, whose insistent rhythms and harmonies create a sense of inevitability, a ritual trance with an obsessive, dark energy. Peaceful passages of the work grew out of the delicately curved, elusive, often microtonal melodies of prayers, as well as escapist tavern songs from the region, as my grandmother remembers them. “For me, …hold me, neighbor… is a way to bring together the sounds of the church bells of Serbian orthodox monasteries and the Islamic calls for prayer. It is a way to connect histories and places by unifying one of the most civilized sounds of Western classical music—that of the string quartet—with ethnic Balkan instruments, the gusle [a bowed string instrument] and tapan [large double-headed drum]. It is a way to piece together our identities fractured by centuries of intolerance, and to reach out and celebrate the land so rich in its diversity, the land that would be ashen, empty, sallow, if any one of us, all so different, weren’t there.” Aleksandra Vrebalov’s ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm... was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Carnegie Hall and by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland with funds from The Leading College and University Presenters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional support was provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Kronos’ recording is available on Floodplain, released on Nonesuch Records.
For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director Laird Rodet, Associate Director Matthew Campbell, Strategic Initiatives Director Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator Scott Fraser, Sound Designer Christina Johnson, Communications and New Media Manager Nikolás McConnie-Saad, Office Manager Hannah Neff, Production Associate Laurence Neff, Production Director Lucinda Toy, Business Operations Manager Contact: Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association P. O. Box 225340 San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 USA www.kronosquartet.org facebook.com/kronosquartet I myspace.com/kronosquartet Twitter: @kronosquartet #kronos The Kronos Quartet records for Nonesuch Records. 16
Canadian Representation: Henry Kolenko, Kolenko Productions
Photo by Jay Blakesberg 17
Upcoming Events at the Chan Centre Full details at chancentre.com
OCTOBER 2013 Sunday October 20 at 7:30pm: Wonderful Harmony – East Meets West Presented by North Star Performing Arts
Wednesday October 23 at 8pm: 2013 CBC Massey Lectures “Blood – the stuff of life” by Lawrence Hill Presented by CBC Radio Thursday October 24 at 6:30pm: Festival MOSAIC Presented by MOSAIC
Friday October 25 and Saturday October 26 at 8pm: Glorious! Poulenc and Haydn Presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as part of the Classical Traditions series
Saturday October 26 at 10:00am: ReFrame In-A-Day Presented by Regent College
Sunday October 27 at 7pm: Mariza Presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Thursday October 31 at 8pm: Halloween Spectacular! UBC Symphony Orchestra Presented by the UBC School of Music
Just announced! Thirst: Music of Ana Sokolovic, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Oesterle March 29+ 30, 2014 I Telus Studio Theatre, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts Presented by musica intima, Nu:BC and Turning Point Ensemble in partnership with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Featuring a brand new work by Montreal composer Michael Oesterle commissioned by the Chan Centre.
Tickets on sale now! visit chancentre.com for full details. 18
The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC Joyce Hinton Cameron McGill Jazel Argente Carl Armstrong Wendy Atkinson Michael Behrmann Tessa Cernik Brad Danyluk Kara Gibbs Beng Khoo Flora Lew Glenda Makela Trevor Mangion Claire Mohun Christine Offer George Pereira Andrew Riter Nadia Roberts Owen Schellenberger Manila Subedi Lyndsey Townsend
Co-Managing Director Co-Managing Director Administrative & Rentals Assistant Events & Customer Service Manager Programming & Rentals Manager Programming Assistant Marketing & Communications Assistant Head Audio Technician Marketing & Communications Manager Operations Clerk Financial Coordinator Financial & Programming Clerk Ticket Office Manager Marketing & Communications Coordinator Programming Coordinator Production Clerk Head Lighting Technician Events & Front of House Coordinator Technical Director Administration Assistant Ticket Office Supervisor
Administration Office T: 604.822.9197 E: chan.centre@ubc.ca Ticket Office chancentre.com I
T: 604.822.2697 /chan.centre.ubc
I
@ChanCentre
Graphic Design by Lydia Avsec : copilotdesign.com
The Chan Centre would like to thank our 2013/2014 Season Sponsors:
The Chan Endowment Fund and the UBC Faculty of Arts Dal Grauer Memorial Lectures
Subscriptions on-sale now! Save up to 25% off single ticket prices.
A Sound Experience. MARIZA
SAT OCT 19 / 8 pm: KRONOS AT 40 pre-concert talk with Philip Glass
SUN OCT 27 / 7 pm: MARIZA SUN NOV 17 / 7 pm: ROKIA TRAORÉ KRONOS AT 40
SAT JAN 18 / 8 pm: DANSE LHASA DANSE presented with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
ROKIA TRAORÉ
SAT MAR 01 / 8 pm: JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA with WYNTON MARSALIS SAT MAR 15 / 8 pm: SAMULNORI DANSE LHASA DANSE WYNTON MARSALIS
SAT MAY 10 / 8 pm: BÉLA FLECK and ABIGAIL WASHBURN
ORDER TODAY ! chancentre.com Chan Centre Ticket Office (in person Tue to Sat 12pm - 5pm) SAMULNORI
BÉLA FLECK and ABIGAIL WASHBURN
To request a brochure, email us at chan.centre@ubc.ca
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