THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
HOUSEWRIGHT VIRTUOSO SERIES: “ LIVING NOTES:
MEET THE COMPOSERS ”
Featuring compositions by: Clifton Callender
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu
Liliya Ugay
Thursday, January 30, 2025
7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
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Morning Call
PROGRAM
Marcía Porter, soprano
Anna Kirkland, violin; Maya Johnson, viola; Thu Vo, cello; George Speed, double bass
Liliya Ugay
Nöel Wan, harp; Karen Large, flute; Nic Kanipe, oboe; Brad Pilcher, clarinet; Darci Wright, percussion
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Pull No More
Scenes from the Motherhood
I. love
II. soothe
III. laugh-it-out
IV. contemplate
tre balli
I. ballo meccanico
II. adagio
III. ballo continuo
gegenschein
Pareidolia
Ugay
Nöel Wan, harp
Liliya Ugay
Liliya Ugay, piano
Clifton Callender
Geoffrey Deibel, alto saxophone; AJ Nguyen, tenor saxophone
David Kalhous, piano
Benjamin Sung, violin
Benjamin Sung, violin; Angel Miller, violin
Miriam Tellechea, viola; Evan Jones, cello; Liliya Ugay, piano
Clifton Callender
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu
Geoffrey Deibel, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Gordon Cortney, percussion and drum set
Liliya
Morning Call (2016) marked my first collaboration with New York/Khmer poet Sokunthary Svay, with whom we later created several works, including three operas, all exploring the subject of femininity and motherhood. I wrote this piece after a few days spent with my sister and witnessing her becoming a mother: it focuses on feelings of a new mother, simultaneously combining the emotions of tenderness, tiredness, both anxiety and excitement for the life of the newborn child. Lastly, it ends with dreaming – as it is often a comfort place for exhausted mothers, taking them away from everyday routine – dreaming of a bright future for their baby.
– Liliya Ugay
Text:
Morning Song by Sokunthary Svay
I can hear you calling in a hunger cry to reveal your need.
I can hear you coo as you discover your hands and your eyes light up.
As you soften your voice I’ll be the embrace you seek to carry you to sleep.
I imagine you will rise with the sun, my morning call at the start of each new day.
Pull No More (2024)
In Western society, a harp, or playing harp, has been commonly associated with the image of a very limited type: “feminine” -looking women playing pleasant music, often connected to divinity. Noёl and I wished to break that stereotype, so I wrote a piece that aims to connect the harp to true, raw femininity – as it replicates an action only a female human body is capable of – the childbirth. To me the harp is an extremely intense instrument physically because for each note the string has to be pulled by hand/finger flesh. I associate this intense action with the sense of pulling during the labor contractions, based on which I wrote the following poem:
pulling the strings repeatedly is like giving a birthyou feel the constant pulling of your spine-string, yet before the heavy work of pushing starts. the only consoling thought is that the exhausting sensation will eventually be over in the greatest release both bodies deserved, but no one knows when that long-awaited moment arrives. until then – endure
Pull No More was commissioned by the Florida Music Teachers Association and has just been selected as a winner of MTNA national commissioning round, honoring me with the title 2024 MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year.
– Liliya Ugay
Scenes from the Motherhood (2019) was commissioned by the Chelsea Music Festival for the 200th anniversary of Clara Wieck Schumann for the program featuring several of Clara’s piano masterworks and Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, performed by the celebrated Australian pianist, Angela Lam, at New York’s Steinway Hall. As much as I love Kinderszenen, it always made me feel pity that it was written by Robert, whereas Clara, who actually raised seven of their surviving children, had not written any piece that would be directly inspired by the subject of parenthood. Similarly and unfortunately, all other piano works that were written about/for children that I know of were created by men. So I wrote this work inspired by my routine as a mother, with each movement subtitle reflecting on one action of my everyday life at that time.
Today will mark the first time I will be performing Scenes from the Motherhood.
– Liliya Ugay
tre balli was commissioned by Trio Bel Canto. The first movement, “ballo meccanico,” is loosely canonic with voices in the tempo ratios 4:6:9. (Each voice articulates and embellishes the canon line in a unique manner.) The voices enter slowest to fastest and converge at the end of the opening section. Following the non-canonic middle section, the opening section returns in a loosely retrograde manner with the voices concluding in order from fastest to slowest. The middle movement, “adagio,” grows out of its opening chorale–a purely consonant yet not-quitetonal progression presented with utmost simplicity. “ballo continuo” concludes the work in an etude-like fashion. The movement cycles repeatedly throught the opening three figures–scales followed by a noodling chromatic passage followed by a trill. With each repetition the figures grow and interpenetrate one another yielding a design that might be likened to a spiraling rondo.
– Clifton Callender
The gegenschein, or counter shine, is a very feint brightening of the night sky centered on the point directly opposite the sun. It is a very indirect source of light—sunlight reflecting off the very fine particles that make up interplanetary dust. This is an appropriate metaphor for the kind of sound world I have tried to create using a solo violin, a work consisting mostly of very fast arpeggiated and tremolo-like figures involving natural harmonics. Due to the speed of these figures, the harmonics only have time to partially sound, yielding a rapid succession of very feint overtones. The result is a fragile yet brilliant flickering of sound, mostly quiet and diffuse yet played with great intensity and aggression. My thanks to Piotr Szewczyk who commissioned and premiered the work as part of his Violin Futura project.
– Clifton Callender
Pareidolia, for string quartet, clarinet/tenor saxophone, percussion/drum set, piano/synthesizer, and fixed media (drawn from the sounds of an elevator) exhibits kinetic rhythmic interplay, exploring various permutations of pairings between instruments and electronics. It fuses unique timbres with gestural instrumental writing to craft a kind of abstract sonic cinema with orchestration and color occupying an essential role in Gümrükçüoglu’s writing. Equally influential is Gümrükçüoglu’s background in modern jazz, which presents itself not so much in full garb, but obliquely, in refracted form, coloring the rhythmic and harmonic material at pivotal moments and shaping his process for generating material. Urgent, reflex driven rhythms ricochet through the ensemble. Disembodied sustains contain hauntingly complex multiphonics and eerie clusters. Occasionally, the texture coagulates into extended passages of rhythmic regularity anchored by the drum set. The duos between piano and electronics, and saxophone and electronics provide structural contrast and focus the listener’s attention more immediately on the expressive quality of Gümrükçüoglu’s electronic palette. While the saxophone part includes improvisation on the materials of the piece, the other parts are through-composed but retain an improvisatory quality, highlighting Gümrükçüoglu’s deft ability to compose material that sounds nevertheless spontaneous. Pareidolia ends with undulating swells in the strings, as the saxophone floats over the top with unstable multiphonics and gravelly figuration.
– Dan Lippel (2022)
Pareidolia (/pærɪˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.