Kathryn Schulmeister
Bri any Tro er
Thursday, November 14, 2024
7:30 pm
Recital Hall
Kathryn Schulmeister (b. 1989)
Michael Genese (b. 1994)
Three Miniatures (2024) I.
Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988)
Mantram (1967)
Stagger (2024)
Three Miniatures (2024) II.
Kathryn Schulmeister 2′
On a Poem by Miho Nonaka: Harvard Square (2013)
Shawn E. Okpebholo (b. 1981)
Teppo Hauta-aho (1941–2021)
Kadenza (1978)
Pequeño vikingo (2016) I. II. III.
Wilfrido Terrazas (b. 1964) 6′
Three Miniatures (2024) III.
Kathryn Schulmeister 2′
Scelsi: Mantram
Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988) started making his way into the art, music and literary world during the 1920s—as he frequently traveled abroad— establishing friendships that would lead him into the most important international cultural movements of the time.
Scelsi developed a deep interest for poetry, visual arts, Eastern mysticism and esotericism. His interests in Eastern philosophies, Zen doctrines, Yoga and the subconscious mind shine through his musical experimentations and compositions.
His most significant compositions are characterized by the instrumentation of figures determined at random, improvising and applying new uses to traditional instruments, the introduction of the ondiola (the first electronic instrument able to produce quarter and eighth tone notes) but above all, his unconditioned way of improvising, as if wrapped in a mist of Zen-like emptiness. Scelsi's compositional method was quite unique: he would record his improvisations on a magnetic tape, subsequently entrusting the transcription to collaborators that would then work under his guidance. —adapted from scelsi.it
Genese: Stagger
"A friend once shared what she called the Parable of the Choir: A choir can sing a beautiful note impossibly long because singers can individually drop out to breathe as necessary and the note goes on. Social justice activism should be like that, she said. That's stuck with me."
—Paul Matisz, 2020
Stagger refers to the act of stagger breathing in choir, as described above. The piece was mostly sketched in lulls between choral rehearsals at First Presbyterian in Greenwich Village. My favorite way to stagger in choral singing is by annunciating an initial consonant, breathing during the vowel, and fading back in afterward:
PROGRAM NOTES
I began staggering like this after realizing just how similar it was to splicing two performance takes together in an audio program; it is much easier to discreetly crossfade two recordings by lining them up at a percussive moment in the music. The flutist begins Stagger trying to do everything themselves, embodying the contemporary activist who never gets a break. Shapeshifting and contorting through varied musical figures, they eventually burn themselves out. Through the incorporation of consonants in the middle section, the flutist discovers stagger breathing, leaving space for others to enter the fold. They also get a bit wiser! The command "Think what we're told we think," as well as the realization "We said what we heard others say" are splayed across several musical lines. These phrases are inspired by yet another parable concerning relationship and word: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents, specifically the opening parable of Chapter 18:
Beware:
All too often,
We say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we’re told that we think.
We see
What we’re permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we’re told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we’ve said it
And at last to embrace it
Because we’ve defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we’ve embraced and defended
An obvious lie.
PROGRAM NOTES
Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make
Mere echoes Of ourselves—
And we say What we hear others say.
With this newfound wisdom the flutist tactfully closes the piece, building stagger breathing into the musical texture. Highlighting the individual's experience within the collective, Stagger invokes themes of speech, organizing, and cooperation, but also illusion, perception, and even deceit. Blending both musical and social sustenance into one, Stagger is a spell for our sustained futures, and all the humble cooperation to come.
—Michael Genese
Hauta-aho: Kadenza
Finnish bassist Teppo Hauta-aho was a highly versatile performer and prolific self-taught composer. With a performance career spanning many genres and styles of music, Hauta-aho brought various elements of classical, jazz, and contemporary improvisation into his compositions. Kadenza (1978) is one of his most well-known pieces and is considered a 20th century classic work for solo double bass.
—Kathryn Schulmeister
Terrazas: Pequeño vikingo
Pequeño vikingo (2016) is an essay in composition-improvisation for solo contrabass player. The entire piece is written using a device called Growth Modules. These are platforms for improvisation. They contain certain material which acts as a point of departure to improvise, as the roots of a rapidly growing plant (the stems, leaves and flowers do not necessarily resemble the roots, but they stem from them).
—Wilfrido Terrazas
Okpebholo: On
a Poem by Miho Nonaka: Harvard Square
This composition—inspired by Harvard Square, a poem by the Japanese poet Miho Nonaka—is a work for solo flute, composed for and premiered by my friend, Caen Thomason-Redus. It was not my intention to, necessarily, text paint each word of the poem; rather, I tried to evoke the essence of the poem’s meaning. In one word, Nonaka describes her poem as being about ‘resonance.’ A natural term in the music world, the term ‘resonance’, figuratively speaking, can also mean evoking images, memories, and emotions, which she beautifully achieves in Harvard Square. This composition is for the virtuoso flutist, utilizing many extended flute techniques. For example, the composition begins with the flute playing bamboo tones, a way for the modern western flute (by using unconventional fingerings), to sound like the shakuhachi flute, a Japanese bamboo flute. Other extended techniques include, residual tones, pizzicato, jet whistle, tongue ram, multiphonics, singing while playing, key clicks, and flutter tonguing.
—Shawn E. Okpebholo
PROGRAM NOTES
Harvard Square
Like all leaves turned into birds overnight. Walking to their voice from the wet branches of a tree marked with so many scars.
Walking to the square and its promise of dripping coffee, street musicians and people reduced to speaking only with their hands, wrapped in unreliable mist. Whose soul is made of crumbs? There are those who play chess
at Au Bon Pain rain or snow, keep playing despite the clutter of words exchanged all around, gossips, dirty jokes, grades given
and received. Across the street sits a bagel in a puddle, a bloated island for a flock of sparrows, chattering and pecking busily
the diminishing kingdom of their own. I like how they pay no attention to my hungry gaze— how, having no individual names, they deepen my conviction of being a trifle. Such a relief it is to squat down beside them and their bumpy island, which is no
beehive, neither production nor symphony, just the giddy chaos and appetite of chiming peeps. Even a bucket makes music when raindrops fall in.
The question isn’t whether you are in a good place or bad place. You happen to be in the right place
—Miho Nonaka
Hawai‘i-born bassist Kathryn Schulmeister joined the faculty of University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music in fall 2023 where she serves as assistant professor of practice in string bass.
Praised for her “expressive and captivating performance” (Grammy.com), she enjoys a creative music practice as a versatile performer, educator and researcher. Recent honors include a 2020 Grammy Award nomination as a collaborating artist featured on Susan Narucki’s The Edge of Silence, a contemporary classical album of chamber works by György Kurtág on AVIE Records (2019).
Schulmeister has appeared as a soloist with leading international contemporary ensembles including Klangforum Wien, the ELISION Ensemble and Ensemble Vertixe Sonora. She has given solo performances at venues and festivals around the world including the Melbourne Recital Centre, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, ECLAT Festival Neue Musik Stuttgart, San Diego Museum of Making Music, soundSCAPE Festival, Vértice Festival and the Clive Davis Theater at the Grammy Museum. She is a member of the ELISION Ensemble, Fonema Consort, and Echoi Ensemble. She has performed as a guest artist with various adventurous ensembles including Delirium Musicum, Ensemble MusikFabrik, SWR Experimentalstudio Freiburg, Wild Up! and Ensemble Dal Niente.
Prize-winning flutist Brittany Trotter leads a diverse career as an educator, soloist, and collaborator. She is assistant professor in flute and the Chair of the Woodwind Program at University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music.
Trotter has been awarded first prize in numerous national and regional competitions including the Music Teachers National Association Young Artist Competition in Woodwinds in West Virginia (2017, 2016), Wyoming (2015, 2014), and Mississippi (2009). She has also competed as a semi-finalist in the 2017 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Since moving to California in 2021, Trotter has performed with such central valley regional orchestras as the Stockton Symphony Orchestra, Modesto Symphony Orchestra, and Auburn Symphony Orchestra.
Equally versed in post-classical contemporary and experimental music as well as electro-acoustic music and interdisciplinary works, Trotter has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Players and premiered new works for the flute nationally.
Trotter regularly performs, teaches, and serves as a guest lecturer across the United States. Recent appearances include Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of the Performing Arts, Slippery Rock University, and the University of Memphis. Additionally, she has performed and presented at regional and national flute conventions such as the Kentucky Flute Fair, Florida Flute Association Convention, Rochester Flute Fair, Mid-Atlantic flute convention, and the National Flute Association Convention where she was a featured soloist in the 2020 virtual summer series celebration concert series.
Recipient of the NFA’s 2020 Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation entitled, Examining Music Hybridity and Cultural Influences in Valerie Coleman’s Wish Sonatine and Fanmi Imen, Trotter continues to actively study the merging of western classical music, diverse culture, and modern popular music. She has also presented a lecture recital entitled Flute and Hip Hop at several music conferences.
A native from Laurel, Mississippi, Trotter has received degrees from the University of Southern Mississippi (BM, BME), University of Wyoming (MM), and West Virginia University (DMA, Certificate of University Teaching).
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