The University of Houston Moores School of Music Presents Travelogue
Hymn for the Arc Harvester (2019)
Wen-Hsiu Angela Lai, flute Adam Boswell, clarinet Luis Osorio Betancourt, violin Ming-Wei Hsieh, violin Yuxuan Zhang, viola Oshagan Merjanian, cello Sharon Montes, double bass Shupeng Wang, piano Rob Smith, conductor
Bagatelles, Op. 14/d (1981)
I. Furious Chorale
Excerpt: Partita in A Minor, BWV 1013, Allemande (1722-23) – J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
II. Hommage à J.S.B.
III. Like the flowers of the field
IV. Wild and Tame
V. Flowers we are, mere flowers
Excerpt: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (1909) – Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
VI. The Girl with the Flaxen Hair – enraged
Wen-Hsiu Angela Lai, flute Sharon Montes, double bass Shupeng Wang, piano
Philip Schuessler (b.1976)
György Kurtág (b.1926)
My Bronx (2013)
Howard Pollack, narrator Adam Boswell, clarinet Luis Osorio Betancourt, violin Ming-Wei Hsieh, violin Yuxuan Zhang, viola Oshagan Merjanian, cello Shupeng Wang, piano
Joshua Kohl (b.1969)
Text: Herbert R. Kohl (b.1937)
This work contains explicit language that may offend some audience members.
Hitchhiker’s Tales (2012)
I. Black Bend
Luis Osorio Betancourt, violin Ming-Wei Hsieh, violin Yuxuan Zhang, viola Oshagan Merjanian, cello Sharon Montes, double bass
Dan Visconti (b.1982)
Rob Smith, music director and conductor
Shupeng Wang, assistant director and piano
Wen-Hsiu Angela Lai, flute
Adam Boswell, clarinet
Luis Osorio Betancourt, violin
Ming-Wei Hsieh, violin Yuxuan Zhang, viola
Jason Burton, lighting design
David Siegel, audio engineer Antonio Sanz Escallón, stage management
facebook.com/AURAUHuh.edu/aura
Oshagan Merjanian, cello Sharon Montes, double bass
Antonio Sanz Escallón, production assistant Eric Estrada Valadez, production assistant Mojgan Misaghi, production assistant Aaron Perez, production assistant
Eric Estrada Valadez, stage management Mojgan Misaghi, lighting and projections Aaron Perez, lighting and projections
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Under the direction of Rob Smith, AURA is an innovative and professional-caliber ensemble is dedicated to the performance of chamber music composed in the last two decades. In addition to serving as a training ground for performers interested in careers performing contemporary music, the ensemble frequently collaborates with dancers and creative writers, and presents students, faculty, and the community with programs that represent the latest classical music trends and styles.
Jason Burton, MOH assistant manager (MSM)
Eunghee Cho, MSM Cello Faculty
Kristin Johnson, MOH manager (MSM) Susan Koozin, Alley Theatre Actor
Eric Larson, MSM Double Bass Faculty Howard Pollack, musicology faculty (MSM)
David Siegel, audio engineer (MSM) Corbin Sturch, piano technician (MSM)
In tonight’s program, Travelogue, AURA hitchhikes to the Bronx and beyond, traveling through a multitude of styles and weather patterns along the way. The blues, banjo playing, and pop music are explored in Dan Visconti’s “Hitchhiker’s Tales” for string quintet, as are a variety of weather patterns via an ancient mythological creature in Philip Scheussler’s “Hymn for the Arc Harvester” for the full ensemble. In György Kurtág’s “Bagatelles, Op. 14/d”, for flute, double bass, and piano, we will reference works by Bach, Bartok, Debussy, and Kurtág himself – several movements are tran scriptions of his piano work Játékok” (Games) – and will explore the Bronx of the 1940’s via Joshua Kohl’s “My Bronx”, a collection of short works based on poems written by his father, Herbert R. Kohl. This charming work details the author’s experiences as a child in the Bronx in the 1940s and will be narrated by UH faculty musicologist Howard Pollack, who originally hails from NYC and is a relative of the Kohls.
Howard Pollack is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the Uni versity of Houston, where he has taught since 1987. He is the author of seven books, including biographies of Walter Piston, John Alden Carpenter, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Marc Blitzstein, and John Latouche, with an eighth book on Samuel Barber due out later this year. He has received two Deems Taylor Awards, the Irving Lowens Award, the Nicolas Slonimsky Award, and an ARSC Award for Excellence for his publications as well as two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities among other grants and fellowships. Pollack’s articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and encyclopedias. He also has lectured at colleges and arts organizations in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and across the United States, and has appeared in film documentaries and on such American radio shows as Morning Edition, All Things Consid ered, the Voice of America, and Fresh Air as well as on British, Australian, New Zealand, and German radio.
Composer Rob Smith is Professor of Music Composition and director of the AURA Contemporary Ensemble at the University of Houston. He has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Grant to Australia and an Aaron Copland House Residency, and his highly energetic music is fre quently performed throughout the United States and abroad. Commissions have come from the Texas Music Festival Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, and the American Composers Forum, among others. Boosey & Hawkes, Carl Fischer, C-Alan Publications, and Skit ter Music Publications publish his music.
Pianist Shupeng Wang has come to music from a diverse background. Before moving into the professional study of music, Mr. Wang started his career in the field of biology. During college, Mr. Wang devoted himself to music by joining piano clubs, where he expanded his repertoire and began per forming regularly. Mr. Wang has participated in numerous competitions and was the prize-winner of Medici International Music Competition (2021) and Great Composer Competition (Prokofiev, 2019). Mr. Wang holds a bachelor’s degree in Science from National Taiwan University in Taiwan and a master’s degree in piano performance from Boston University. He is currently in the Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance program under the guidance of Dr. Tali Morgulis at University of Houston Moores School of Music.
Wen-Hsiu Angela Lai hails from Taiwan and enjoys a musical career that spans across Asia, Australia, and United States. Ms. Lai holds her BA and MM degrees from Taiwan National Sun-Yat Sen University and is now pursuing her DMA at the University of Houston Moores School of Music with a full scholarship in 2020. Her main teachers include Hsiao-Pei Iris Ma at Taiwan National Sun-Yat Sen University, Vernon Hell at Queensland Conservato rium, and Aralee Dorough at the University of Houston. Ms. Lai has received numerous awards in competitions, which includes receiving first prize in the Taiwan National Student Artist Competition and being named a finalist of the Taiwan Flute Competition. This year, she advanced as one of 15 quarterfinalists in the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition in Chicago.
Adam Boswell is a clarinetist based in Houston, Texas and is pursuing an artist diploma at the Moores School of Music under the guidance of Randall Griffin. Following the completion of his bachelor’s degree in 2021, Adam became a full-time private lesson teacher teaching in areas such as Pasa dena, Katy, and Missouri City. During his time at the Moores School of Music, Adam has served as principal of both the Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra. Adam has also participated in the Fresno Summer Orchestral Academy (2019) as well as the Texas Music Festival (2022).
Luis Osorio Betancourt began violin studies with maestro Tania Montañez in Cartagena, Colombia at the Comfenalco School of Music, followed by professional studies with Dr. Ana Maria Trujillo at the University of Antio quia. In 2017 he was selected to perform as a soloist in the McCutcheon Honors Recital in Columbia. Osorio received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern State University in Louisiana, where he studied with Dr. Andrej Kurti, and after graduating served as a public-school orchestra director in Austin. Osorio has been a member of the Rapides Symphony Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, Longview Symphony Orchestra, Marshall Symphony Orchestra, Northeast Texas Symphony Orchestra, and the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra among others. Currently, he is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Houston under the guidance of Dr. Kirsten Yon.
Violinist and Taiwan native Ming-Wei Hsieh frequently performs in the Hou ston area and has regularly led the Moores School Symphony and Opera Orchestras as a concertmaster and sectional principal. In Taiwan, he has performed with the Taiwanese Artists Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan Soloists Symphony Orchestra, and the Apex String Ensemble. In 2020 and 2021 he was invited to perform at the Kaohsiung Spring Art Festival in their Coun terpoint Ensemble concerts, and in 2017 he was featured as a soloist in the Bruch Violin Concerto with the National University of Tainan Symphony Orchestra. Hsieh holds his Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from the National University of Tainan in Taiwan, Master of Music degree from the University of Houston Moores School of Music. Currently he is pursuing working a Performance Certificate at the University of Houston Moores School of Music with Dr. Kirsten Yon.
Yuxuan Zhang comes from Beijing, China, and she is pursuing Master of Music in University of Houston studying with Wayne Brooks. Zhang began her studies of viola at the age of 13 in Pre-College of China Central Conserv atory of Music in Beijing and she received her bachelor’s degree from Kent State University, as well as a performance diploma at Indiana University’s Jacob school of music. Her previous mentors have included Shaowu Wang, Fei Cao, Yu Jin and Atar Arad. Zhang is an alumna of National Repertoire Orchestra and Aspen Music Festival, and she has been a violist of Canton Symphony Orchestra and Owensboro Symphony Orchestra.
Oshagan Merjanian, a native of San Jose, California, learned piano and cello growing up. The summer after his first year of high school he sustained a traumatic brain injury which put him in a coma for three days and caused him to lose all his motor skills. With hard work the support of many, he recov ered and went on to perform Saint Sean’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Win chester Orchestra seven months later. Merjanian holds B.M. and M.M. Cello Performance degrees from Cal State University Northridge (CSUN) – where he performed with the Samuel Goldberg Honors String Quartet and was awarded the CSUN Arts Council Scholarship for Extraordinary Achievement in Music – and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was a member of the Gluck Cello Quartet and received the coveted Mangasar M. Mangasarian Scholarship. Oshagan is currently pursuing his Performance Certificate at the Moores School of Music.
Double bassist and Houston native Sharon Montes received her Bachelor of Music from the University of Texas at Arlington. During her time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Sharon worked as a Fine Arts Clinician and private instructor for Ben Barber Innovative Academy in Mansfield, TX. In 2019, Sharon attended the International Summer String Institute at the University of North Texas where she won the audience prize for the festival’s concerto competition performing the Koussevitzky double bass concerto. Sharon was also accepted into the 2020 PRISMA summer festival in Canada and attended the 2021 Monteux Music Festival in Maine. Currently Montes is pursuing a master’s degree in double bass performance and pedagogy at the Moores School of Music. In her spare time Sharon enjoys cooking and playing frisbee.
joshua-kohl.squarespace.com
Joshua Kohl is co-founder, conductor, composer, and co-artistic director of the Seattle based multi-art group Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE). Under his co-direction, DAE has become a leading entity on the cutting edge of con temporary art in our region as well as an expanding presence internationally. His work with Degenerate Art Ensemble is an intensely collaborative work that sees no boundaries between the visual and performing arts. The work is presented in major dance and music venues as well as shown in galleries, and most recently exhibited in a large-scale Museum exhibition at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum. Joshua’s work as a collaborative artist began in his days as a Cornish composition major in the 1990’s where he met and collaborated with many dance, theater, and art students. Many of these artistic relationships have continued to the present. His newest work with Degenerate Art Ensemble was awarded a Creative Capital award and a Music Theatre Now award from the International Theatre Institute in Germany.
universaledition.com/gyorgy-kurtag-402
Hungarian composer György Kurtág is one of the most performed con temporary composers. During his long career, he has been honored with many awards, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for his lifetime achievement (1998), the Grawemeyer Award (2006), the Golden Lion at the Biennale in Venice (2009) and the largest prize for contemporary music, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2015). With increased free dom of movement in the 1990s he has worked increasingly outside Hungary, as composer in residence with the Berlin Philharmonic (1993-1994), with the Vienna Konzerthaus (1995), in the Netherlands (1996-98), in Berlin again (1998-99), and a Paris residency at the invitation of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cité de la Musique and the Festival d’Automne. Kurtág won the prestigious 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his ...concertante.... His opera Fin de Partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s play, was premiered by La Scala Milan in 2018 and was acclaimed as his magnum opus.
The music of Philip Schuessler is inspired by a variety of sources, including popular and rock music traditions, experimental improvisation, spectralism, natural and scientific processes, and countercultural political theater.
Numerous ensembles and performers have championed his music including Yarn/Wire, Loadbang, Hypercube, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Mantra Percus sion Ensemble, Dither Guitar Quartet, Pesedjet, Iktus Percussion, violinist Graeme Jennings, cellist Craig Hultgren, pianist Mabel Kwan, and soprano Tony Arnold. Schuessler’s music has been featured at various conferences and festivals across the United States and Europe. Awards for his music include the Music Teachers National Association Commissioned Composer of the Year, International Cello Loft Commission for Cello and Per cussion, the Duo Fujin Composition Competition, and Random Access Music’s call for scores. His elec tro-acoustic music has been recognized in France by Elektrophonie’s NuitBleue Music Festival, the Futura Festival, and the Bourges Residence. Schuessler is currently an instructor of music theory and composition at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he was honored with the President’s Award in Artistic Excel lence, and serves as the co-founder, assistant director, pianist, and conductor for Versipel New Music, a contemporary music ensemble in New Orleans.
Dan Visconti
danvisconti.com
Composer Dan Visconti is updating the role of the classical musician for the 21st century as he creates new projects in collaboration with the community. For his ongoing initiatives to address social issues through music by reima gining the arts as a form of cultural and civic service, Visconti was awarded a 2014 TED Fellowship and delivered a TED talk at the conference’s thirtieth anniversary. Visconti’s musical compositions are rooted in the improvisa tional energy and maverick spirit of rock, folk music, and other vernacular performance traditions—elements that tend to collide in unexpected ways with Visconti’s classical training, resulting in a growing body of work the Plain Dealer describes as “both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a power fully crafted lyricism.” Visconti receives commissions and performances by some of the top interpreters of contemporary music, including eighth blackbird, the Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, soprano Lucy Shelton, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the 21st Century Con sort at the Smithsonian, Music from Copland House, pianist Lara Downes, and the JACK Quartet. Visconti’s compositions have been honored with the Rome Prize and Berlin Prize, the Bearns Prize from Columbia Uni versity, the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing Arts, the Barlow Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize; awards from BMI and ASCAP, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Society of Composers, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Naumburg Foundation; and grants from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Chamber Music America.
In the 20-21 season, AURA moved online to perform for a global audience through their innovative video series One on One. Through elaborate and highly creative videos, AURA musicians performed exciting new solo works and interviewed the composers that created them. In addition to domestic composers, we interviewed and performed works by composers from Albania, Australia, Columbia, Costa Rica, France, India, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. youtube.com/AURAUH - go to "One on One" playlist
youtube.com/AURAUH - go to "One on One" playlist
Blue Swell – Molly Joyce Cheng-Wei Hsieh, violin
I Beat With the World Outside Natalie percussion
the light by which she may have ascended – Ryan Brown Wright, cello
music: Rob Smith
text: Brendan Stephens Smith, narrator Stewart, percussion
¡Carnaval del Diablo! Felipe Tovar Salazar, clarinet
Dream Play – HyeKyung Lee Jeremy Larson, toy piano
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The University of Houston’s Moores School of Music (MSM) is one of the leading comprehensive music schools in the nation. Its remarkable faculty — of internationally recognized performers, composers, and scholars — outstanding student body, modern facilities, and broad range of programs make MSM the natural choice for nearly 600 students annually. The school’s commitment to academic excellence and the highest performance standards has ensured its role as a vital resource in the educational and cultural life of Houston and beyond.
The Moores Society is the philanthropic volunteer organization for the Moores School of Music. Moores Society members and donors promote community awareness and provide funding for scholarships and special projects. Moores Society members receive invitations to concerts and special events held throughout the year. Please visit uh.edu/kgmca/music/moores-society.
For more information, please contact Emily Wolfe, Patrons Relations and Communications Coordinator, at mooressociety@uh.edu or 713.743.8036.
The Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston is a dynamic home of creativity and collaboration in one of America’s most artistically vibrant and culturally diverse cities. Bringing together the performing and visual arts entities at the University of Houston, the college has the ability to harness the power of the arts to ultimately impact our world. Our award-winning, internationally distinguished faculty provides top-quality instruction to the talented, emerging student artists from more than 30 programs of study. The Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts seeks to positively impact the community and to empower our students to use their talents to change the world.
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