13 minute read
AT A GLANCE
At Play in Fields of Perception
More than just gender and generation unite this wide-ranging yet also tightly complementary program of new music by young female composers. There is a strong line of literary reference and inspiration, appreciation for vernacular music, and an interest in memory and dream-world reflection. These aspects may be more apparent in some of these pieces than others, but all share a joy in creative sonority and the act of performance, as well as a sense of style as personal and particular expression rather than dogma. —John Henken
AUSENCIAS/AUSÊNCIAS/ ABSENCES
Carolina Heredia
Composed: 2016
Orchestration: fixed media and strings
First LA Phil performance.
Carolina Heredia is an Argentinian/LA-based acoustic and electronic music composer specializing in interdisciplinary collaboration and intermedia art. Her works have been commissioned and performed in the Americas and Europe by esteemed musicians and ensembles, including the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, clarinetists Alex Fiterstein and Derek Bermel, Tesla Quartet, and the Duo Cortona. Carolina’s 2015 Fromm Music Foundation Commission supported the creation of her string quartet Ausencias/ Ausências/Absences. This work received several recognitions, including the 2018 John Corigliano Grand Prize and the 2019 Lake George Music Composition Competition. She was later awarded a one-year fellowship at the University of Michigan Institute of Humanities to expand the string quartet into a longer, intermedia work in collaboration with interactive engineer Carlos García and choreographer Sandra Torijano.
In 2021, she was awarded a Barlow Endowment Commission to compose a new piece for the NYbased Duo Axis, which premiered in 2022. Future premieres include a composition for SATB choir and chamber ensemble with text by LA-based writer Myriam Gurba commissioned by Sphinx Foundation’s Exigence Vocal Ensemble Choir, conducted by Eugene Rogers. Carolina’s music has been featured at Chamber Music OC, SONIC Festival NYC, Cortona Sessions, Bowdoin Festival, Lake George Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Crested Butte Music Festival, SEAMUS, Strange Beautiful Music Festival, among others in the United States and abroad.
Carolina holds Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Music Composition from the University of Michigan. Her mentors include Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, Erik Santos, and Kristin Kuster. In 2017, she was appointed as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Missouri School of Music, where she later held the position of Assistant Professor in Music Composition and Assistant/Associate Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative until 2022. She currently works as a freelance composer and the Director of Artist Support for the American Composers Forum.
“I believe generating empathy through art can be a strong mechanism to develop our understanding of one another. As a path to understanding the broad spectrum of the human experience, exercising empathy can give us a more accurate discernment of our limitations and our place in the infinite universe of perceptions and interpretations. In this work, I explore the concept of death as an intrinsic part of that experience and as an exercise of empathy and compassion for the suffering of others. Furthermore, a practice of relinquishment and detachment as we face the reality of our finite existence and reevaluate the meaning and value of all the things, relationships, and the power of decision we have in our hands daily throughout our lives. I imagine time expanding in all directions then; I feel connected to all the things and people, regardless of how distant we may have seen. The full version of Ausencias/Ausências/ Absences is 30 minute long and written for string quartet, fixed media electronics, dance, and interactive video. It also exists in an abridged version (17 minute), with different combinations of the extra-musical media. The artistic impetus of this work was taken from the last writings of three South-American poets who took their own lives: Violeta Parra (1917–1967) of Chile, Alfonsina Storni (1892–1938) of Argentina, and Ana Cristina Cesar (1952–1983) of Brazil. The three main movements of the piece each focus on one poet and are inspired by the song “Gracias a la vida” (1966) by Parra, and the poems “Me voy a dormir” (1938) by Storni and “Samba canção” (1982) by Cesar.
The audio and video portions of the work include images and recordings taken during my research trips to Chile, Brazil, and Argentina in 2015, including the cuatro venezolano (small guitar with four strings) that belonged to Violeta Parra. In the intermedia version of the work, the dance floor is illuminated by images projected from two overhead projectors.
The full work, with dance, was premiered on March 24, 2017, at the Duderstadt Video Studio at the University of Michigan. The original musiconly version was premiered by JACK Quartet in March 2016, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University.” —Carolina Heredia
No Oyes Ladrar A Los Perros
Erika Vega
Composed: 2021–22
Orchestration: flute (=piccolo), oboe, clarinet (=bass clarinet), bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion (1: vibraphone, glockenspiel, bass drum, temple blocks, 2 tom-toms;
2: tam-tam, crotales, chimes, wood blocks, 2 bongos, guiro), harp, prepared piano, organ, and strings
First LA Phil performance (world premiere).
Mexican composer Erika Vega has received several grants and prizes including the Eighth International Jurgenson Competition for Young Composers at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Russia), the 2016 Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Music Workshop/Competition (Austria), the TACTUS 2017 Young Composers Forum (Belgium), the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2017 National Composers Intensive (USA), the Danish Arts Foundation (Denmark), the Fondation Royaumont (France), the Henfrey Prize for Composition 2019 and 2021 at the University of Oxford, and the Fellowship for young artists from the National Fund for Culture and Arts 2020 (Mexico). She has participated at the ManiFeste academy at IRCAM (2018-2019) and Prototype VI at Royaumont (20182019), writing music for dance, a collaborative relationship between composer and choreographer. Recent commissions include works written for ELISION ensemble, The Curious Chamber Players, Frederik Munk Larsen, CEPROMUSIC ensemble, Sarah Maria Sun, Philippe Graffin, Katharina Gross, ALEPH Guitar Quartet, Sigma Project, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic among others.
Erika is currently a member of the National System of Art Creators (Mexico) and a PhD candidate in Composition at the University of Oxford, where she has been awarded the prestigious Clarendon fund. In her latest works, she has been exploring the relationship between music and poetry, proposing some musico-linguistic analogies that arise from a study of phonology, syntax and semantics, interacting and exchanging techniques and essential structural qualities.
“No oyes ladrar a los perros is composed after the homonymous tale by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, precursor of Magic Realism. The musical work evokes the notion of time and space found in Rulfo’s writings. In musical terms, analogous phenomena can be heard, perception opens up and the auditor is invited to cross the threshold into a dreamlike atmosphere with strong visual sense. The role of memory and perception is fundamental in the development of the non-lineal musical narrative. The literary manifests itself in the way time is perceived unravelling alternative perspectives. The harmonic construction is defined by the organ, and the ensemble is articulated in a spectral cloud.” —Erika Vega
All Around The Sea Blazed Gold
Katherine Balch
Composed: 2022
Orchestration: flute (=piccolo), oboe, clarinet (=bass clarinet), bassoon (=contrabassoon), horn, trumpet, 2 trombones (2nd=bass trombone), percussion (1: vibraphone, rainstick, large tom-tom, large suspended cymbal, ocean drum; 2: xylophone, glockenspiel, crotales, medium suspended cymbal, ocean drum, snare drum, bass drum, tam-tam, coins, glass mason jar, guiro, small triangle), prepared piano, and strings
First LA Phil performance (world premiere).
Described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison–you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle) , composer Katherine Balch is interested in the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes. A collector of aural delights, field recordings are often at the heart of her work, which ranges from acoustic to mixed media and installation.
A recipient of the 2020/21 Rome Prize, Balch’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and presenting organizations including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, Tanglewood, Suntory Summer Arts (Japan), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.) and the symphony orchestras of Tokyo, Darmstadt, Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Dallas. Her music is published worldwide exclusively by Schott. Balch is Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at Yale School of Music and holds a DMA from Columbia University. katherinebalch.com
“all around the sea blazed gold takes its title from the prelude to Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves Throughout the novel, six narrators weave their way from childhood to adulthood, their increasingly intertwined dialogues separated by nine interludes depicting a coastal scene from sunrise to sunset. There are many things I love about The Waves that pique my sonic imagination, from its evocative language to a form that seems to fold over itself while also progressing through time, so it has been the source of inspiration for several pieces of mine over the years.
In all around the sea blazed gold, I focused on the imagery of Woolf’s coastal interludes, which begin at dawn, when “the sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it,” and patiently documents the uniformity of near-darkness transforming into an abundance of detail. I wanted to borrow this trajectory [for] my own piece, which begins with a very open sound world that gradually is saturated with more and more polyphony. While the six narrators in The Waves begin as distinct voices and gradually conglomerate into one, the instruments in my piece begin as a unified sonic body and [then] fragment into soloists.
Since the ocean is a bit of a thematic staple of 20th- and 21st-century music, I also couldn’t resist “text painting” some of Woolf’s descriptions of the sea, so you’ll hear ocean drums and rain sticks and crotales dipped in water in the percussion, rolling breezes in the breath tones of winds and brass players, wave-like surges in the strings, and many other instrumental interpretations of the ocean’s eternal song.” —Katherine Balch
PIANO CONCERTO (HOUSE OF PIANOS)
Courtney Bryan
Composed: 2022
Orchestration: flute (=piccolo), oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion (1: flexatone, cowbell, cymbals, snare drum, clave, seed rattles, hi-hat, crash cymbal, triangle; 2: bass drums, tom-toms, tambourine, bongos, seed rattles, finger cymbals, wind chimes, vibraslap), strings, and solo piano
First LA Phil performance (world premiere).
Composer and pianist
Courtney Bryan’s music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. With degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, Bryan completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University, Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, and a Creative Partner with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, a 2019-20 recipient of the
Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow. courtneybryan.com
“My piano concerto, House of Pianos, is a love letter to the many pianists who have inspired me over the years. It is a dream world where I enter a house full of pianos and journey from room to room, witnessing gatherings of legendary pianists from various times and places. I join them in reverence and with thanksgiving and joy.” —Courtney Bryan
Scenes:
I. rent party
II. jam session
III. homecoming
IV. sanctuary
V. praise house
Paolo Bortolameolli
Paolo Bortolameolli is Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil (Chile), Sinfónica Azteca (México), Principal Guest Conductor of Filarmónica de Santiago (Opera Nacional de Chile) and Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In addition to these regular conducting relationships, he has led ensembles across the Western Hemisphere including engagements with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolivar (Caracas); Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires; Kansas City, Charlotte Symphony, Houston, and San Francisco symphonies; and the LA Phil. In Europe, he is a regular and return guest to the Polish National Radio Symphony
Orchestra, Orchestra Haydn (Bolzano), Helsinki Philharmonic and the Orchestra della Toscana (Florence).
His insatiable artistic curiosity brings him in equal measure to the opera stage with recent and upcoming projects including the Opéra de Paris (Tosca), the Gran Teatre del Liceu ( Die Zauberflöte), as well as Ópera Nacional de Chile for concerts with the Filarmónica in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and No. 8, “Symphony of a Thousand” with Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil. He will also make his debut at the Detroit Opera in Golijov’s Ainadamar later in 2023.
Bortolameolli’s long relationship with the LA Phil continues through 2023, when he will conduct concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Alongside subscription and summer performances, notable past performances include a landmark new production of Meredith Monk’s inventive opera, ATLAS, performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2019.
Bortolameolli is passionately committed to new music including the work of Miguel
Farías, Gabriela Ortiz and Jorge Peña Hen, to name but a few. In 2022, his commission of Miguel Farías’s Estallido was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
As Artistic Director of the Sinfónica Azteca, he leads an educational residency run by the Fundación Azteca from Grupo Salinas in Mexico every year. He has developed several new media initiatives with the Esperanza Azteca in Mexico, and his now legendary “Ponle Pausa”, a project that seeks to rethink the concept of music education through the implementation of short videos and concerts targeting social network users, has received wide acclaim.
In 2018, he was a guest lecturer for a TED Talk in New York and in 2020, he released his first book, Rubato: Procesos musicales y una playlist personal Bortolameolli holds a Master of Music degree (Yale School of Music, 2013), a Graduate Performance Diploma (Peabody Institute, 2015), a Piano Performance Diploma (Universidad Católica de Chile, 2006), and a Conducting Diploma (Universidad de Chile, 2011).
First
Nathan Cole joined the LA Phil in 2011 and holds the Ernest Fleischmann Chair. He has appeared as guest concertmaster with the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Houston, Ottawa,
Seattle, and Oregon and was previously a member of the Chicago Symphony and Principal Second Violin of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, he made his debut with the Louisville Orchestra at the age of ten while studying with Donna Wiehe. After eight years working with Daniel Mason, Cole enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music. In addition to his studies there with Pamela Frank, Felix Galimir, Ida Kavafian, and Jaime Laredo, Cole formed the Grancino String Quartet, debuting in New York’s Weill Hall. Several summers at Marlboro enriched his love of chamber music.
Nathan’s articles and videos on practicing, performing, teaching, and auditioning have helped thousands of violinists worldwide. Visit natesviolin. com for the complete collection. In addition to his online teaching, Nathan is currently on faculty at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts, with classes at the Colburn Conservatory and USC. His articles and photographs have also appeared in Strings, Symphony, and Chamber Music magazines.
Nathan is married to Akiko Tarumoto, the LA Phil’s Assistant Concertmaster. Together they host the weekly podcast Stand Partners for Life, an inside look at orchestra life, which can be heard at standpartnersforlife. com. Nathan and Akiko live in Pasadena with their three children.
Jonathan Karoly
Cellist Jonathan Karoly is a native of Chicago, where he began studying the cello at the age of three. He has been a prize-winning cellist, pianist, and composer from an early age. Following his studies in Chicago and New
York, Karoly graduated from the University of Southern California, where he was a pupil of Ronald Leonard. An avid chamber musician, Karoly has performed in many music festivals: Marlboro, Kingston, La Jolla Summerfest, Verbier, Sarasota, Music Academy of the West, the International Laureates Chamber Music Festival, and Aspen, where he was a fellowship recipient. He has also been a frequent performer on Musicians from Marlboro tours across the country, and was invited to perform several concerts of chamber works with Pierre Boulez at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Karoly has appeared in live radio broadcasts of solo recitals and chamber music performances.
An accomplished competition winner, Karoly took grand prize in the Pasadena Instrumental Competition and first prize in the Chicago Cello Society Competition. He has performed concertos with numerous orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has been principal cellist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles, among others. In 2009, Karoly was the featured performer and actor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Symphonies for Youth program entitled The Spirit of the Cello, which told a fictional story about Karoly’s cello. These performances were repeated in 2016.
Karoly has been a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1997.
Teng Li
Teng Li is a diverse and dynamic performer internationally. Recently, she was appointed Principal Violist, John Connell Chair, of the Los Angeles Philharmonic after more than a decade as Principal with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Teng Li is also an active recitalist and chamber musician participating in the festivals of Marlboro, Santa Fe, Mostly Mozart, Music from Angel Fire,
Rome, Moritzburg (Germany), and the Rising Stars festival in Caramoor. She has performed with the Guarneri Quartet in New York, at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), and with the 92nd Street “Y” Chamber Music Society. Teng was featured with the Guarneri Quartet in their last season (2009) and was also a member of the prestigious Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two program. She is a member of the Rosamunde Quartet (led by Noah BendixBalgley, Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic) and the Toronto-based Arkel Trio.
Teng Li has been featured as soloist with the National Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Haddonfield Symphony, Shanghai Opera Orchestra, Canadian Sinfonietta, and Esprit Orchestra. Her performances have been broadcast on CBC Radio 2, National Public Radio,
WQXR (New York), WHYY (Pennsylvania), WFMT (Chicago), and Bavarian Radio (Munich).
She has won top prizes at the Johanson International and the Holland-America Music Society competitions, the Primrose International Viola Competition, the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, and the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, Germany. She was also a winner of the Astral Artistic Services 2003 National Auditions.
Her discography includes a solo CD entitled 1939 with violinist Benjamin Bowman and pianist Meng-Chieh Liu (for Azica), along with many Toronto Symphony credits, most recently a Vaughan Williams disc featuring Teng Li performing Flos Campi (for Chandos).
Teng is a graduate of the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Akiko Tarumoto
Akiko Tarumoto, Philharmonic Affiliates Chair, began her violin studies at age five. Her principal teachers have been Masao Kawasaki, Dorothy DeLay, and Glenn Dicterow. A native of Eastchester, New York, Tarumoto studied at the preparatory division of the Juilliard School and received her bachelor’s degree in English and American Literature with honors from Harvard University in 1998. In 2000, she received her Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School and joined the second violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In 2004, she was appointed to the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim. While in Chicago, she performed on the Rush Hour and Chicago Symphony chamber series, at the Winter Chamber Music Festival at Northwestern University, and on the MusicNOW contemporary series.
Tarumoto returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the fall of 2011 as a member of the second violin section and was appointed to fifth chair of the first violin section in March 2015. In January 2017, she was named Assistant Concertmaster. She is a frequent performer on the LA Phil’s Chamber Music and Green Umbrella series and has been featured as a soloist with the orchestra. Tarumoto has performed in the summer festivals of Aspen, Taos, and Spoleto (Italy). She has also appeared at the Mimir Festival in Fort Worth, Texas, and at the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington in Kentucky. Her husband is First Associate Concertmaster Nathan Cole.