Faculty Woodwind Quintet
Quintette en Ut pour quintette a vent (1953)
Belmont University School of Music
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2024 7:30 P.M.
MCAFEE CONCERT HALL
Claude Arrieu
I. Allegro (1903-1990)
II. Andante
III. Allegro Scherzando
IV. Adagio
V. Allegro vivace
Aus Litauen (From Lithuania), Op. 23
Maksas Laurischkus
I. Von Land und Leuten Moderato maestoso (1876-1929) (Of the Country and its People)
II. Abendstimmung Andante con moto (Evening Mood)
III. Daina, litauisches volkslied Allegro molto (Daina, Lithuanian folksong)
IV. Dorfserenade Moderato scherzando (Village Serenade)
V. Metturgis (Kirmes) Fair Allegro non troppo
10 Minute Intermission
Divertimento per quintetto a fiato (1977)
Václav Trojan
I. Letní Slavnosti Sommerfeste (1907-1983) (Annual Celebrations Summer Party)
II. Promenáda Moderato comodo, ma ben ritmico (Promenade)
III. Rozkochané Skádlení Wonnige neckerei (They squealed with delight delightful teasing)
IV. Spící Veze Schlafende Türme (Relationship peaks Sleeping Towers)
V. Svítání noci Karnevalové Morgendämmerung einer Karnevalsnacht (Dawn of Carnival Night)
Oblivion
Shankin’ on a Rutabaga for Wind Quintet (2012)
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) arr. Jeff Scott
Mark Adam Watkins (b.1971)
Personnel
Carolyn Totaro, flute
Rebecca Van de Ven, oboe
Daniel Lochrie, clarinet
Dong-Yun Shankle, bassoon
Tara Johnson, horn
Program Notes
Claude Arrieu was the pseudonym used by the French composer Louise Marie Simon. Arrieu studied composition with Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire and piano with Marguerite Long. She won the first prize for composition at the Conservatoire in 1932. Her music was considered melodic, emotional, and neoclassical showing the influences of Faure, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc. She composed in many genres including opera, orchestral works, songs, chamber music, film scores, and radio scores during her time at the French Radio Broadcasting Service. Her Quintette en Ut from 1953 was composed for the musicians of the French Wind Quintet: Rampal, Pierlot, Lancelot, Coursier, and Hongne.
Maksas “Max” Laurischkus was born in East Prussia, also considered to be Lithuania Minor, now part of present-day Germany. Little is known about Laurischkus besides the most basic information. He studied music from an early age, attended and graduated from the Higher Academy of Music in Berlin in 1897 with a master’s degree in composition. After graduation, he was hired by the Academy to teach music theory, composition, and piano. Considered to be a thoroughly grounded Germanic composer, his small output is exclusively chamber music, and his solo keyboard music includes original works for the harmonium, a small keyboard instrument that is remarkably like an organ in its tone production and timbre. His woodwind quintet, Aus Litauen (From Lithuania), Op. 23 , an homage to his heritage, presents a colorful portrait of Lithuania in five movements each with programmatic titles: Of the Country and its people; Evening Mood; Lithuanian folksong; Village Serenade; and Fair
Czech composer Václav Trojan studied at the Conservatory in Prague from 1923-1929. During the 1930s, he composed and arranged dance and jazz music before becoming the Music Director at Radio Prague, a position he held until 1945. After World War II, he mostly composed for film, stage, radio, and accordion. His most famous collaboration was with Jiri Trnka, a puppet stopmotion animator considered the inspiration for director Tim Burton and the companies of Aardman and Laika. Trojan’s music for Trnka’s films set the industry standard like Carl Stalling’s music for the Warner Bros. Cartoons. As a neo-classical composer often inspired by his homeland, Trojan composed Wind Quintet on folk songs in 1937. Forty years later he dedicated his Divertimento to the Prague Wind Quintet. The programmatic work in five movements is also flavored with the folk traditions of Czechoslovakia.
Born in Argentina to Italian parents, Astor Piazzolla spent most of his childhood in New York City, where he was exposed to jazz and J.S. Bach and became fluent in Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He began playing the bandoneón after his father found one in a pawnshop. A bandoneón is a free-reed instrument particularly popular in Argentina. It plays an essential role in the orquesta tipica, the tango orchestra. Like accordions and concertinas, the bandoneón is played by holding the instrument between both hands and either pushing in or pulling out the instrument while simultaneously pressing one or more buttons with the fingers. Piazzolla returned to Argentina in 1937 and played in groups performing tangos in nightclubs when he met the pianist Arthur Rubinstein who advised him to study with Alberto Ginastera. In 1953, Piazzolla entered his Buenos Aires symphony in a composition contest and won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with the legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Piazzolla remembers their first meeting.
When I met her, I showed her my kilos of symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible sentence: “It's very well written.”
And stopped, with a big period, round like a soccer ball. After a long while, she said: “Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartók, like Ravel, but you know what happens? I can't find Piazzolla in this.” And she began to investigate my private life: what I did, what I did and did not play, if I was single, married, or living with someone, she was like an FBI agent! And I was very ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician. Finally, I said, “I play in a night club.” I didn't want to say cabaret. And she answered, “Night club, mais oui, but that is a cabaret, isn't it?”
“Yes,” I answered, and thought, “I'll hit this woman in the head with a radio....” It wasn't easy to lie to her. She kept asking: “You say that you are not pianist. What instrument do you play, then?” And I didn't want to tell her that I was a bandoneón player, because I thought, “Then she will throw me from the fourth floor.” Finally, I confessed, and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: “You idiot, that's Piazzolla!” And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds.
Piazzolla returned from New York to Argentina in 1955 and formed the Octeto Buenos Aires to perform his own tangos. Oblivion, Piazzolla’s haunting tango creating the illusion of extinction, obscurity, and darkness, has been transcribed for many different instruments; this one featuring a virtuosic oboe line.
Mark Adam Watkins is an American composer, orchestrator, and pianist. He received a jazz piano degree from California State University, Long Beach and composed for Improv Acting studios, commercial music houses and scored for television and film. After his graduate work at the Henry Mancini Institute and California State University, Los Angeles, he collaborated with the Quadre horn quartet, which led to other chamber works for brass quintet, flute choir, and string quartet..Mr. Watkins spent many years orchestrating for the Pageant of the Masters’ Orchestra, The New Four Freshman, and music directing music theatre tours. Some highlights include working on projects with: Lou Rawls, Al Jarreau, Bill Conti, Beyoncé, Debbie Harry, Lisa Loeb, Jack Sheldon, Issac Hayes & the Trans-Sylvanian Orchestra. He works as a free-lance composer, and moonlights as a pianist with the North Carolina, Charlotte, & Greensboro symphonies, and other ensembles ad hoc.
Watkins writes in the performance notes:
This quirky composition was originally sketched in the halls of the Henry Mancini Institute in a race to get a new work on the bill of a concert. Uniquely, this piece always makes me think I’m some British composer who was writing about rabbits vying for vegetables, frolicking in a forbidden garden…maybe I was channeling ‘The Tortoise & the Hare’ and the turtle finally gets a voice at ‘E’. The rabbit gets a tummy ache mistaking a rutabaga for a carrot, & has to play catch up…? Sky is the limit… The first draft spun itself out on a Wednesday night, as a playful romp for my new friends at the conservatory. After my hands fell off finishing the copywork, the work was played a few days later at the Karen Carpenter Center. Over time, I tinkered with the draft & finally chiseled it into its current fun, angular, but comfortable state.
“Shankin’ on a Rutabaga,” a delightful one-movement wind quintet is dedicated to Myka Miller, Executive Director of the Harmony Project, a non-profit organization established in April of 2001 with a vision of serving the cultural and artistic needs of underprivileged children in the Los Angeles area.
Program notes by Dr. Carolyn Totaro, School of Music Faculty
About the Performers
Dr. Carolyn Totaro is Assistant Professor (Flute) at the Belmont University School of Music. Before moving to Nashville in 2005, Totaro taught applied flute, music history, and music appreciation at Southeastern Louisiana University and then served as the Graduate Coordinator for the School of Music at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she also served as an adjunct flute instructor. She has performed with symphony orchestras in Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. Totaro has been the director of the Nashville Philharmonic Flute Ensemble and currently teaches flute and coaches chamber ensembles at the Tennessee Valley Music Festival each summer. Totaro received the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Texas (at Austin), Master of Music (Flute) and Master of Music (History) from the University of Akron and the Bachelor of Music Education and Bachelor of Music from Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of
Music. Totaro’s primary instructors have included William Hebert (Cleveland Orchestra), Jaqueline Hofto (Interlochen Arts Academy), Peter Lloyd (London Symphony, London Virtuosi), and George Pope (Akron Symphony, Solaris Wind Quintet).
Rebecca Van de Ven joined the faculty at Belmont University and Tennessee State University in 2018 and the faculty of the University of the South in 2011. Prior to that Van de Ven taught at Middle Tennessee State University, Albion College, and Spring Arbor University. In addition, she is on faculty at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival where she coaches and organizes the wind chamber music program. Van de Ven frequently records music in Nashville and can be heard playing English Horn on season three of the Emmy winning hit TV series Fargo as well as the 2016 Evanescence Album. She currently plays second oboe in the Nashville Opera. Her orchestral engagements have included orchestras such as Nashville Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Grand Rapids Symphony. She can also be found playing regionally in Chattanooga and Huntsville Symphonies and in staged works at Tennessee Performing Arts Center. On a full tuition scholarship, Van de Ven received a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in Oboe Performance where she was a student of Eugene Izotov, current principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony. She attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison on tuition scholarship where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and Bachelor of Science degree. She was a student of Professor Marc Fink. Van de Ven attended the Pierre Monteux Music Festival in Maine and was awarded a full scholarship to the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. She lives in Sewanee Tennessee with her husband and two children.
Dr. Daniel Lochrie is adjunct instructor in the School of Music, teaching applied clarinet, classical woodwind seminar, and woodwind techniques. Lochrie received degrees from The University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and The Ohio State University, where he studied with James Pyne. Other teachers included Paul Schaller, Brian Schweickhardt, John Mohler, Franklin Cohen, and bass clarinetist, Oliver Green. Before entering graduate school, he joined the National Orchestra of New York, studying with Leon Russianoff and performing regularly with the orchestra in Carnegie Hall. In addition to teaching experience at Lipscomb University, Middle Tennessee State University, The Ohio State University, and the Corsi Internazionale di Musica, Lochrie has been a member of the Nashville Symphony (with recent recordings on the Naxos and Decca labels) since 1992. His chamber music activities include regular appearances on clarinet and bass clarinet at several area universities, recital appearances throughout the US, and performances at summer festivals in Ohio, Colorado, and Italy. With further experience as a Nashville studio musician, managerial experience in the Nashville Symphony, and with success as a composer and arranger (performances by ensembles such as the Tennessee Tech faculty woodwind quintet and the Pacific and Nashville Symphonies), Lochrie maintains a multifaceted musical career.
Dong-Yun K. Shankle is an adjunct bassoon professor at Belmont and Trevecca Universities. She is a member of Belmont’s faculty woodwind quintet. She has also taught at Western Kentucky and Campbellsville Universities. She is the principal bassoonist in the Paducah Symphony Orchestra, and Parthenon Chamber Orchestra. She has also been principal in Orchestra Kentucky, Jackson Symphony, Owensboro Symphony, and Western Kentucky. Shankle has had a distinguished career as a symphony bassoonist, recording artist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestras in Asia, Europe, Russia, and America.
During her twenty-year career in Korea, she has worked in the Seoul KBS Symphony Orchestra. She was the principal bassoonist in the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra and the Asian Six Nations Orchestra in Fukuoka, Japan. She has appeared as a soloist with the Russia St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra, Sofia Orchestra both in Bulgaria, Seoul KBS Chamber Orchestra, Busan Philharmonic Orchestra, Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, Paducah Symphony Orchestra, and many other orchestras all over Asia, Europe, and America. Shankle had the honor of playing principal bassoon in some of the world's greatest concert halls such as: Carnegie Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur Hall in Malaysian. Also, she performed recitals with internationally known performers such as Emmanuel Abbuel (Principal Oboist/London Philharmonic), Kirill Sokolov (Principal bassoon/St.Petersburg Philharmonic), Valeri Popov (Principal bassoon/Moscow Symphony), Otto Eifert (Principal Bassoonn/Cincinnati Symphony), and many more. Shankle graduated from Daegu Catholic University, where she received a Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Bassoon Performance and Music Education. After that, she studied in Holland for a Performance Soloist Degree from the Rotterdam Conservatorium. While in school she won the prestigious Seoul DongA International Music Competition. Shankle has three solo CDs on the Sung-Eum label.
Tara Johnson is Adjunct Instructor of Music at Belmont University, teaching Aural Skills courses. Originally from Hudsonville, Michigan, Johnson began her studies in French horn at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. From there she moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in Horn Performance, with a minor in Music Business. She worked in Nashville as a freelance music transcriber and copyist. Johnson earned the Master of Arts in Music degree in Horn Performance from Middle Tennessee State University in 2012, where she studied with Angela DeBoer, and worked as a teaching assistant in the brass department and in general music and music theory courses. Johnson currently plays as 3rd Horn of the Evansville Philharmonic in Evansville, Indiana, and 2nd Horn of the Owensboro Symphony in Owensboro, Kentucky. Additionally, she has performed with the Nashville Symphony, Huntsville Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, and the Jackson Symphony. She has taken her horn playing to China with the Hollywood Film Orchestra, and to other parts of the world such as Israel, Romania, and Hungary. As an active freelance horn player, she can also be heard on several soundtrack recordings for movies, video games, and television shows, recorded in Nashville at Ocean Way Studios. She maintains a private studio of horn students across the Nashville area and enjoys playing as a member of the Music City Horn Quartet.
Upcoming Concerts and Events
A Conversation with Marcus Hummon
Highlighting the world premiere of “No Man’s Land” by Belmont Musical Theatre Wednesday, October 2, 10:00 a.m.
Massey Concert Hall
Music and Discourse: Dr. Lesley Mann
An Expressive SPIRIT: 6 Decisions for Illustrating Musicality Wednesday, October 2, 10:00 a.m.
Hitch 130
Composition Honors Recital Wednesday, October 2, 7:30 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
Concert Band & Wind Ensemble Friday, October 4, 7:30 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
Musical Theatre: No Man’s Land Friday, October 4, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 5, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, October 6, 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
This is a ticketed event. Tickets can be purchased through the Belmont Box Office.
Jazz Small Groups II and III
Monday, October 7, 7:30 p.m.
Harton Recital Hall
Commercial Guitar Ensembles I and II Wednesday, October 9, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
Belmont University Symphony Orchestra “Something for Everyone”
An evening of timeless masterpieces, from Mozart and Tchaikovsky to 21st century composers
Gabriela Ortiz, Myroslav Skoryk, and Mason Bates Thursday, October 10, 7:30 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
For more information on upcoming concerts and events, please visit www.belmont.edu/cmpa or “like” Belmont University School of Music on Facebook.
