Program Notes - Percussion: A Listener's Guide

PROGRAM EDGARD VARÈSE (1883-1965) Ionisation* (1931)

STEVEN SCHICK

Tuesday, January 16 | 7:30PM

PERCUSSION: A LISTENER’S GUIDE

Steven Schick, conductor James Beauton Christopher Clarino Gregory Cohen Fiona Digney Ryan J. DiLisi Sean Dowgrey Erin Douglas Dowrey Mari Kawamura Daniel King Rebecca Lloyd-Jones Ryan Nestor Benjamin Rempel Andrew Watkins

CARLOS CHÁVEZ (1899-1978) Toccata (1942)

A Chamber Music Series Concert

Allegro, sempre giusto Largo

Allegro, un poco marziale Gregory Cohen

Fiona Digney

Ryan J. DiLisi

Erin Douglas Dowrey

Steven Schick

Andrew Watkins

Special Guests: conductor* and percussion Steven Schick

JOHN CAGE (1912-1992) Third Construction (1941)

See page 11 for Steven Schick biography

percussion ensemble red fish blue fish

James Beauton Christopher Clarino Fiona Digney Sean Dowgrey Mari Kawamura Daniel King Rebecca Lloyd-Jones Ryan Nestor Benjamin Rempel

vocal ensemble kallisti

Susan Narucki Kirsten Wiest Hillary Jean Young

SDSO Percussion Section

Gregory Cohen Andrew Watkins Erin Douglas Dowrey Ryan J. DiLisi

This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Penny and Louis Rosso.

The Chamber Music Series is sponsored by Sam B. Ersan.

Performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

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Gregory Cohen

Erin Douglas Dowrey

Steven Schick

Andrew Watkins

IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001) Psappha (1975) Steven Schick

INTERMISSION VINKO GLOBOKAR (b. 1934) ?Corporel (1985)

Steven Schick

ANNA THORVALDSDÓTTIR (b. 1977) Aura (2011) Fiona Digney

Daniel King

Benjamin Rempel

STEVE REICH (b. 1936) Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ (1973) James Beauton, glockenspiel

Ryan Nestor, glockenspiel

Gregory Cohen, marimba

Erin Douglas Dowrey, marimba

Andrew Watkins, marimba

Fiona Digney, marimba

Sean Dowgrey, organ

Ryan J. DiLisi, vibraphone

Susan Narucki, vocals

Kirsten Wiest, vocals

Hillary Jean Young, vocals

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PROGRAM NOTES | PERCUSSION: A LISTENER'S GUIDE – JANUARY 16

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

The New York Times calls red fish blue fish a "dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California." Founded 20 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego-based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion's rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent. Recent projects include the world premiere of Roger Reynolds' Sanctuary and the American premiere of James Dillon's epic Nine Rivers cycle with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In the Summer of 2011 red fish blue fish collaborated with George Crumb, Dawn Upshaw and Peter Sellars to premiere the staged version of The Winds of Destiny. Eighth Blackbird invited red fish blue fish to join them in performances of works by American icons John Cage and Steve Reich at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

The New York Times called their "riveting" John Cage performance the "highlight" of the program. Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Recordings released in the 2012-13 season included the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacinto Scelsi and rare works of Iannis Xenakis.

In 2012 red fish blue fish presented four concerts of percussion music alongside Percussion Group Cincinnati at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, D.C., where they performed highlights from Cage's collection of percussion works.

RFBF has had a huge impact on new music percussion performances, recordings and education. Successful RFBF/UC San Diego Department of Music alums include Ross Karre, now with ICE; Aiyun Huang, who heads the percussion department at McGill University; Morris Palter, an assistant professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he is also the artistic director of the 64.8 percussion group; and Justin DeHart, who is a member of the Chapman University faculty and of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet. n

Concert Sponsor Spotlight

PENNY AND LOUIS ROSSO

We moved to San Diego from Newport Beach five years ago and have been delighted to become involved with the Symphony. We feel fortunate to have access to this fine group of musicians and staff.

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Established by soprano Susan Narucki at the University of California, San Diego in 2009, kallisti offers San Diego audiences exceptional performances of rarely heard works for voice in an intimate setting. kallisti creates remarkable collaborations between singers from UC San Diego's Graduate Program in Contemporary Music Performance and distinguished guest artists in a wide range of repertoire that celebrates the extraordinary beauty and power of the singing voice.

Now in its eighth season, kallisti has presented a wide range of repertoire, ranging from unusual chamber operas to rarely heard vocal chamber music. kallisti has also been featured with the La Jolla Symphony (Berio: Sinfonia) and on the Green Umbrella Series at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Reich: Music for 18), both under conductor Steven Schick. kallisti presented the San Diego premiere of Viktor Ullman's 1943 chamber opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis in a critically-acclaimed production that has been viewed over 4000 times worldwide on Vimeo. Other highlights include the world premiere of leading American composer Anthony Davis' opera Lear on the Second Floor and the West Coast premiere of Pascal Dusapin'g To Be Sung led by Jullian Pellicano. kallisti has also presented San Diego premieres of music by Italian modernists Luigi Dallapiccola, Niccolo Castiglioni, Salvatore Sciarrino, and they introduced audiences to the genius of Baroque composer Barbara Stozzi. kallisti is housed at the Department of Music at the University of California at San Diego and receives support from the University of California, as well as private donations and individuals. n

Series Sponsor Spotlight

SAM B. ERSAN

SAM B. ERSAN has been a classical music lover since 1956. He has been supporting the San Diego Symphony and chamber music in San Diego for the past 12 years.

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CURATING "IT'S ABOUT TIME" | AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SCHICK

CURATING "IT 'S ABOUT TIME": AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SCHICK

by JAMES CHUTE You can ask Steven Schick anything regarding “It’s About Time:

Q: You could say, it’s about time you did a festival in San Diego.

A: I’ve done it almost everywhere else that I care about: in New York, in San Francisco, in Asia, in Europe. But I’ve never done it here, partly because I’ve felt, “Oh well, they see me all the time.”

Putting together this festival with all these partners that I care about, with a repertory that I believe in, in a place that I love, is really the thing that I’m attracted to.

Q: Among your various roles in this festival is guest conducting the San Diego Symphony on subscription concerts (Jan 26 and

A Festival of Rhythm, Sound and Place,” just be careful not to

28). That’s also a first time thing for you.

diminish the wide-ranging, month-long event by calling it a

A: The San Diego Symphony is a treasure in this community,

percussion festival.

there’s no other way to describe it. The investment of this city, the donors, is extraordinary, and this institution is paying back

As much as Rhythm, it’s the Sound, and especially the Place, that

that investment. So as someone who lives here, and loves this

are important to Schick, who has lived in San Diego since his 1990

place, the chance to work with this institution is fantastic.

appointment to the faculty at UC San Diego. Since that time, he’s had a significant, global impact on contemporary music as one of the world’s preeminent percussionists. (He was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2014.) He’s also emerged as an insightful conductor whose innovative programming reflects his passion for all types of music, new and old.

But he’s never directed a festival in San Diego, and he was eager to talk about his “It’s About Time” curation experience, working with the San Diego Symphony and the many other organizations

Q: Among its dozens of programs, “It’s About Time” incorporates concerts by your own, UC San Diego-based community orchestra, the La Jolla Symphony. How important was that?

A: It was very important to involve a large number of community partners. We have something like 15 partnerships throughout the community for this festival . . . Of course the La Jolla Symphony has to be a part of that because it’s such an important part of my life and it was the ensemble that allowed me to explore the programming paradigm that I’m able to realize in greater detail here.

participating in this month’s festival.

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CURATING "IT'S ABOUT TIME" | AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN SCHICK Q: What is the essence of your approach to programming?

A: The programming paradigm that I believe in is that you counterpose old music and new music in such a way that the older music reminds us that the newer music didn’t come out of nothing; it has roots, it has legacy, it has a past. And the newer

Q: Creating a context, or even multiple contexts, seems critical to your approach. In Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale (Feb. 3 at UC San Diego), you are replacing the original text with text by the Mexican-American author Luis Urrea and adding dance and improvisation, essentially re-contextualizing the piece.

music reminds us that the older music had a premiere, had a time

A: Art activates and metabolizes in people’s lives through the

when it was untested and had a new audience that was grappling

context in which it’s presented. Without the right framing it can

with that new experience. . .

And I think we need that; otherwise we lapse into a kind of directionless nostalgia.

Q: How challenging is that to the audience?

A: An audience of people with open minds and open ears, if the programming is

be almost value neutral. Value

“IF YOU FIND A CATALY TIC ELEMENT THAT ALLOWS THE AUDIENCE TO METABOLIZE THE ART, TO UNDERSTAND THEIR LIVES THROUGH THE EXPERIENCE , THEN IT BECOMES EXTRAORDINARY.”

properly contextualized, is up for an enormous amount of adventure. I think we sometimes underestimate the audience. Frankly, I’ve never seen an audience overestimated. It doesn’t just come from what we play. Can we, through the way we write, talk, perform and coalesce these programs, convince people that a piece of music that they don’t know can have leverage and relevance to them?

is released when you find the right chemical state to allow someone to use it. So we can play Stravinsky in a way that could be absolutely irrelevant to everybody, it can be done; you can also play Beethoven in that same way. But if you find a catalytic element that allows the audience to metabolize

the art, to understand their lives through the experience, then it becomes extraordinary. . . I’ll come back to the subtitle of the festival, “Rhythm, Sound and Place.’ Every experience a listener will have in the festival will have this simultaneous leverage to help us understand where we are, when we are and why we are.

Without that, frankly, it becomes just a percussion festival. n

Q: It seems key to the success of your programming that you present pieces you believe in, pieces to which you are totally committed. I assume John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit, which will be performed outdoors at the U.S.-Mexican border (on Jan. 27 at the International Friendship Park), is an example of that.

A: That piece is extremely important to me. It’s a wedding gift to Brenda (Schick) and me. It was written just after we were married and it had its first performance at Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies, where I’m now co-directing (with Claire Chase) the summer music program. The piece has been played hundreds of times, but never in San Diego…We’ll have percussionists on both sides of what looks to be pretty solid line on the map, but will have no function whatsoever in terms of the piece. And if you could sit close to the fence, on either side, you would hear a totality of a coherent piece of music, and you would

INUKSUIT

not know that that border existed.

[The complete “It’s About Time” concert and event schedule appears on pages 8-9.]

As a critic, writer and editor, JAMES CHUTE has covered the arts for nearly four decades. A Pulitzer Prize nominee, he served as music critic for The Cincinnati Post, The Milwaukee Journal and The Orange County Register before joining The San Diego Union in 1990, later evolving to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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