ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
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LANG THEATRE
THE VOICE OF GNE ●
FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2015
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8 PM
GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE PRESENTS
FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Welcome to the final concert of our tenth anniversary season, which features three works that have become favorites in Great Noise Ensemble's repertoire, and which brings to the Atlas stage some of our most incredible vocal collaborators. We first performed Tom Schnauber's The Walrus and the Carpenter on our very first full season as an ensemble, and we're very excited to welcome back mezzo-soprano Tracy Elizabeth Cowart to bring this fun and funny work to life with us again as she does so well. Sean Doyle's Letters From Zelda proved to be an instant favoite both with audiences and with GNE's performers, featuring some of the most beautiful music we've been privileged to perform in our ten-year history. Lisa Perry originated the role when we premiered the work some five years ago and her luminous voice and stunning interpretation is one of the reasons the piece has become such an audience favorite. Sacred Cows has probably generated the most commentary of any piece in our repertoire-- as you'll hear, it inspires ire and anger, passion and laughter, and hopefully most importantly, thought. Of course, this is made possible by the incredible talents of Andrew Sauvageau and Megan Ihnen, who bring such life to the material. We're thrilled to once again collaborate with Atlas Performing Arts Center this season as an Ensemble In Residence. We'd especially like to thank Doug Yeuell and the entire Atlas staff for their work to make the continuance of this residency possible, and are looking forward to a continued relationship of presenting great performances in the future. As always, many, many thanks to you, our audience, without whom Great Noise Ensemble’s continued success in its mission would not be possible. Thank you for your devotion and your energy. We hope to continue the fight for new music, American or otherwise, alongside you for many years to come. --Armando Bayolo, Artistic Director and Conductor
GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE ARMANDO BAYOLO, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CONDUCTOR
THE VOICE OF GNE Friday, May 15, 2015, 8:00 p.m. Lang Theatre, Atlas Performing Arts Center Program The Walrus and the Carpenter Tom Schnauber I. The Sun was Shining (Shanty) Recitative II. O Oysters Come (March) Recitative III. The Time Has Come (Tango) Recitative IV. I Weep for You (Lament) Tracy Elizabeth Cowart, mezzo-soprano Letters from Zelda I. (Prologue)-Westport, 1920 II. Switzerland, 1930 III. Towson, 1935 IV. Asheville, 1939 Lisa Perry, soprano
Sean Doyle
INTERMISSION Sacred Cows Armando Bayolo I. Epur si muove (The Earth Still Moves) II. Sacred Cows III. Drinking Song IV. Hymn (after Gustav Mahler) V. Credo VI. Childhood of Our Species VII. Gospel Truth VIII. Sacred Cows (Reprise) Megan Ihnen, mezzo-soprano Andrew Sauvageau, baritone funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE ARMANDO BAYOLO, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR DAVID VICKERMAN, ASSOCAITE CONDUCTOR
Zach Matteson, violin* Kaitlin Moreno, violin* Rebecca Steele, viola Tim Thulson, cello* Jon Steele, bass Sacha Place, flute Katherine Kellert, clarinet, bass clarinet & alto saxophone Michelle Acton, alto saxophone Audrey Cupples, tenor saxophone* Scott Weinhold, baritone saxophone* Sergio Acosta, bassoon* Tess Coffey, trumpet* Jose Luis Oviedo, trumpet* Heidi Brown, horn Kirsten Warfield, trombone Katie Thigpen, trombone* Blair Goins, tuba Francesca Hurst, piano Jasmine Hogan, harp* Chris DeChiara, percussion David Wolf, percussion Sara McKimmie, backup singer* Hilary LaBonte, backup singer* Katelyn Jackman, backup singer*
*Guest performer GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE STAFF Armando Bayolo, Artistic Director & Conductor David Vickerman, Assistant Conductor Mark Sylvester, Recording Technician Brian Seaton, Librarian
ABOUT GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE “Among the most exciting and ambitious new music ensembles in Washington, D.C.” (Kyle Gullings, A Composer’s Notebook), and “perhaps the DC region’s most exciting professional group dedicated to performing new classical music” (Jason McCool, The Pinkline Project), Great Noise Ensemble is a working embodiment of its mission to fight for the performance of new works and promote emerging talent in contemporary music. Born in 2005 when composer and conductor Armando Bayolo placed an ad on Craigslist.org seeking like-minded musicians passionate about contemporary music, Great Noise Ensemble has presented the world premieres of 45 new compositions as well as regional premieres and rare performances of some of the major works of the last 25 years by composers like Steve Reich, John Luther Adams, Marc Mellits, Poul Ruders and Louis Andriessen. They have presented concerts in venues ranging from intimate community concert spaces like the Patricia M. Sitar Center and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring to prestigious locales such as the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Great Noise Ensemble was also recently named the Ensemble in Residence at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, where they have headlined and anchored the New Music Series since the 2012-13 concert season.
PROGRAM NOTES The Walrus and the Carpenter “You like Poetry?” [asked Tweedle-dee.] “Ye-es, pretty well—some poetry” Alice said doubtfully… “What shall I repeat to her?” said Tweedle-dee, looking round at Tweedle-dum with great solemn eyes. “The Walrus and the Carpenter is the longest,” Tweedle-dum replied, giving his brother an affectionate hug. Tweedle-dee began instantly… —from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll It is a long poem. It is also a funny poem. Not a thigh-slapping gut-wrencher, but rather an eyebrow-cocking smirker, full of hyperbole and nonsense; strange, but ever so proper. My response was to set this verse to music in which time honored styles become oddly overdone: the sea shanty, the march, the tango, the recitative, the lament, are all represented with the selfaggrandizement of a senile noblemen. The drama of the poem lends itself well to the form of the old Italian scena. The flavor of the story, familiar, yet with characters that cannot really be what they are, warrants a similar tonality: familiar, but with relationships that are not quite what we are used to. All in all, a frolicsome tragedy. --Tom Schnauber
Letters From Zelda Zelda Fitzgerald was, according to her husband, the "first American flapper". Originally a southern belle, she grew to be the personification of the Roaring Twenties along with her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Letters from Zelda is a setting of four correspondences from Zelda to Scott that span the time period of their complex, often tumultuous marriage (from 1920 to Scott’s untimely death in 1940). Zelda was diagnosed schizophrenic and confined to hospitals for much of this time, and the letters reflect the unique sentiments of
an intense, estranged relationship. They also display Zelda’s oftenoverlooked talent for words, as the text of each letter captures with beauty and poetry the bicameral personality of this remarkable woman - completely free-spirited and independent, and yet at the same time so vulnerable and dependent upon the attention and sympathy of her husband. The musical setting seeks to create the environment of both her energetic musings and melancholy recollections. The last line of the work yields particular affinity with regard to the Fitzgerald mythology - it bears a striking resemblance to the last line of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". This is also the epitaph on the grave that Scott and Zelda share in a cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. The texts of the letters are excerpted from the book Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda:The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks; St. Martin’s Griffin Press, 2003). --Sean Doyle Sacred Cows For years I was EXTREMELY religious (one of my ambitions, in the fourth or fifth grade, was to grow up to become Pope!) Then, in 2001, motivated by the conclusion of my doctoral studies, I began reading scholarship about Jesus Christ and Christianity. Nobody told me that this was almost always a fatal step for faith and, predictably, mine eroded and evaporated in a cloud of logic. Sacred Cows is a delayed reaction to that journey. It is a set of quasi-pop songs (well, my attempt at appropriating popular tropes, anyway) dealing with doubt and the ills of unquestioning spirituality. Don't get me wrong: spirituality is fine! I'm all for it! And, in the end, I heed the words of Buddha at the end of Sacred Cows: Question everything; find your own light. Sacred Cows was written for Great Noise Ensemble. --Armando Bayolo
TEXTS The Walrus and the Carpenter The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright-And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done-"It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!" The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead-There were no birds to fly. The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!" "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year. Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear. "O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each." The eldest Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said: The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head-Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the oyster-bed. But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat-And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet. Four other Oysters followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more-All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore. The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low: And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row. "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-Of cabbages--and kings-And why the sea is boiling hot-And whether pigs have wings." "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that. "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed-Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed." "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue. "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said. "Do you admire the view? "It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice: I wish you were not quite so deaf-I've had to ask you twice!" "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!" "I weep for you," the Walrus said: "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. "O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?' But answer came there none-And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.
Letters from Zelda 1. (Prologue) – Westport, 1920 I love you… I love you, and I can’t tell you how much. I look down the tracks and see you coming and out of every haze and mist your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me. Without you, dearest dearest, I couldn’t see or hear or think – or live. I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm, or killing Beauty, or growing old without you… Come quick – Come quick to me I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper… if you ran away with another woman and starved me and beat me I would still want you… I know. 2. Switzerland, 1930 Just at the point in my life when there is no time left me for losing I am here to incapacitate myself for using what I have learned in such a desperate school through my own fault and from a complete lack of medical knowledge on a rather esoteric subject. If you could write to Egorova a friendly impersonal note to find out exactly where I stand as a dancer it would be of the greatest help to me. Remember this is in no way at all her fault. I would have liked to dance in New York this fall but where am I going to find again these months that dribble into the beets of the clinic garden? Is it worth it? […] I want you to let me leave here. Two sick horses might conceivably pull a heavier load than a well one alone.
3. Towson, 1935 Sometimes, at this dusty time of year the flowers and trees take on the aspect of flowers and trees drifted from other summers the dusty shuttered back of the hotel at Antibes those roads that cradled the happier suns of a long time ago. I wish we could go there again. Of course, if you invited me to North Carolina, it would be very nice, too. In my last despair of every being asked anyplace again I am going to write mamma and ask if I can visit. Wouldn’t you like to smell the pine woods of Alabama again? Remember there were 3 pines on one side and 4 on the other the night you gave me my birthday party and you were a young lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn’t I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best Remember the faded gray romance. (?) And the beneficence of the trees which sighed together that they would or they wouldn’t for we could never make out inform (?) the fates for or against us -Darling, that’s the first time I ever said that in my life. I hope you are better – and I hope you are – for all that I know is that you are a darling. 4. Asheville, 1939 The weather does its eccentricities and now it’s cold, and fair and a brittle and “unchosen” world confronts us again. I’ll be so glad when the winter desists from it barbarianisms and one can breathe again. Meantime: I’m painting lampshades, instead of souls; just for a little while and meantime I play the radio and moon about considerably and dream of Utopias where it’s always July the 24th, 1935.
That’s my chosen happiest equipment: to be 35, in the middle of summer forever. Where is my book on architecture? not that I would ever have time to master it, but it says in the funny-papers that a wife should follow her husband’s interests so that she will be better material for the funny papers. There’s nothing to write: shall I just ask you for things instead? The bad old shoe-maker poured glue in my moccasins, which I love, and so now – what days does Mr. Goldwyn do the shopping? I’ve been very expensive lately and ought to be able to produce a glamorous chronicle. I long for home; for all the so-poignant indispensibilities of a life that can’t have so much longer. Things that people have cared about, and places that have housed their aspirations are ceaselessly moving.
Sacred Cows 1. Epur si muove (The Earth Still Moves) We ought to begin not with the scriptures but with experiments and demonstrations Epur si muove I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect [has] intended us to forego their use. --Galileo Galilei
2. Sacred Cows Sacred cows make the Tastiest hamburger --Anon. (attributed to Abbie Hoffman) Men create gods after their own image not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life. --Aristotle 3. Drinking Song Stupefy yourselves! Forget your misery! We are HAPPY! --for a few minutes, anyway-You go to church for the same reason You go to a tavern! The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the Phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on Earth. --Mikhail Bakunin (first verse adapted) 4. Hymn (after Gustav Mahler) The man of belief is necessarily a dependent man He does not belong to himself but to the author of the idea he believes. Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum
shows that faith does not prove anything. --Friedrich Nietzsche 5. Credo I believe in the absurd; I believe in it, Precisely and mainly Because it is absurd. In the same way Many distinguished and enlightened minds in our day believe in animal magnetism spiritualism tipping the tables and—why go so far?— still in Christianity, in idealism, in God. --Mikhail Bakunin 6. Childhood of Our Species I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the Madrahsahs or the sermons of Billy Graham or Joseph Ratzinger But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wrecking random violence on the nearest church or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish, rumor fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, [especially in the Islamic world,] show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species. --Christopher Hitchens
7. Gospel Truth Thus saith the Lord, The Lord of Hosts: “Get smart and I'll fuck you over! All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. Get smart, and I'll FUCK you over! You could have been in Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut! Get smart and I'll fuck you over!� The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. --after Frank Zappa 8. Sacred Cows (Reprise) Sacred Cows make the tastiest hamburger. Amen. --Anon. (attributed to Abbie Hoffman) 9. Bodhi Tree (Moral of Our Tale) Do not believe in anything because you have heard it handed down for many generations merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Doubt everything! Find your own light! --Siddartha Gautama
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS German-American composer Tom Schnauber is a versatile artist who enjoys writing for a variety of ensembles and venues. After a small stint in Hollywood scoring films no one will ever see, he turned his attention to concert music. His list of more than three-dozen works includes music for unaccompanied instruments, chamber ensembles, voice, and symphony orchestra. In addition to his ungrand opera With Such Friends..., which was featured at the New York City Opera's Vox 2007 festival, he has written musicals and incidental music for various stage productions throughout the Midwest. Schnauber's has won awards for composition from ASCAP, the Kennedy Center, the Columbia Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin. His music has been performed throughout the United States as well as in Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Taiwan, and is published by, among others, Dramatic Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishers, and Classical Vocal Repertoire. He has also been an active performer on the French horn, and has conducted various instrumental and theatrical ensembles. Schnauber is a member of the Boston-based composers' collective Composers in Red Sneakers, and a co-founder of the arts organization WordSong. He is an avid collector and passionate listener of LPs and CDs, and enjoys hiking, playing with his kids, and all things Star Trek. Sean Doyle is a composer, conductor, singer and multiinstrumentalist who originally hails from Long Island, New York. He has written for various media, including works for orchestra and symphonic band, art song and choral music, solo and chamber instrumental works, opera and incidental music, and music for film. Drawing upon widespread influences from literature and the visual arts, Sean’s music demonstrates a unique, personal voice that reflects a
commitment to capturing the emotional capabilities of artistic expression. From 2004-2009, Sean was an instructor of music theory at the State University of New York at Fredonia, teaching courses in theory, ear training and form & analysis. He has also maintained an active role as a conductor, directing many premieres of his own works as well as repertoire both traditional and contemporary. As a member of the Fredonia Chamber Singers, Sean toured across the United States, theUnited Kingdom and Scandinavia, performing as both a featured vocalist and conductor. As well as writing works for the concert hall, Sean maintains an active career as a songwriter. Sean holds both the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in composition from SUNY Fredonia, where he studied with Donald Bohlen. He is currently pursuing doctoral study in composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, studying with Kevin Puts.
Born in 1973 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, composer Armando Bayolo began musical studies at the age of twelve. At sixteen he went on to study at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where he first began the serious study of composition. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M. 1995), where his teachers were Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner and Christopher Rouse; Yale University (M.M. 1997), where he studied with Roberto Sierra, Jacob Druckman, Ingram Marshall and Martin Bresnick; and the University of Michigan (D.M.A. 2001) where he studied with Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng and Evan Chambers. Mr. Bayolo has been hailed for his “suggestive aural imagination” (El Nuevo Día) in works that are “full of lush ideas and a kind of fierce grandeur, (unfolding) with subtle, driving power” (The Washington Post). His “music combines the audacity of popular music, the verve-filled rhythmic
language of Latin America, and the pugnacity of postmodern classicism into a heady, formidable concoction” (Sequenza21), and “deserves to be heard many more times, and in many more places. It is new, it is fresh, and it gets its message across” (The Charlotte Observer) “with quite a high degree of poetic expressiveness” (Music-Web International). Mr. Bayolo’s music has been commissioned and performed throughout the world by some of today’s most important musicians and ensembles and he has been the recipient of important commissions and awards from the Aspen Music Festival, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Music Department of the National Gallery of Art, the Arts Councils of the states of Iowa and North Carolina, the Cintas Foundation, the Minnesota Orchestra and American Composers Forum, the Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence, the all-Virginia Intercollegiate Band, and the Festival Interamericano de las Artes. Besides being active as a composer, Mr. Bayolo is an “adventurous, imaginative and fiercely committed (The Washington Post) advocate for contemporary music in American culture through his activities as Artistic Director and conductor of Great Noise Ensemble, curator of the New Music at the Atlas series and as a writer for such publications as Sequenza21 and NewMusicBox. Mr. Bayolo’s music has recently been released on the Innova label with upcoming releases on Great Noise Ensemble’s home label due in 2013 and is published by his own imprint, Olibel Music and available through his web site, www.armandobayolo.com.
“WHAT WE WANT TO DO IS TO SHOW PEOPLE THAT ‘CLASSICAL’ MUSIC IS A LIVING, VIBRANT TRADITION THAT IS FAR FROM BEING THE MUSEUM ART OF DEAD MEN PLAYED INCREDIBLY FORMALLY BY PEOPLE DRESSED VERY UNCOMFORTABLY.” ARMANDO BAYOLO FOUNDER & CONDUCTOR GREAT NOISE ENSEMBLE
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