Imani Winds | Program

SUPPORT FOR THE 2022–2023 CONCERT SERIES

PROVIDED IN PART BY:

Christine Beatty Sam Coe

Charles Cohen

Dr. Linda I. Garrity Living Legends Endowment Fund

Michael Hoon

Penny Hubbard

Bill and Char Johnson Classical Music Series Fund

Charles Leadholm

Terry Moen

Stephen Morton

David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Fund

Fan Taylor Fund

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Mead Witter School of Music

Wisconsin Union Theater Endowment

PROGRAMMED BY THE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE

The Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee (WUD PAC) is a student-run organization that brings world-class artists to campus by programming the Wisconsin Union Theater’s annual season of events. WUD PAC focuses on pushing range and diversity in its programming while connecting to students and the broader Madison community.

In addition to planning the Wisconsin Union Theater’s season, WUD PAC programs and produces student-centered events that take place in the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Play Circle. WUD PAC makes it a priority to connect students to performing artists through educational engagement activities and more.

WUD PAC is part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Leadership and Engagement Program and is central to the Wisconsin Union’s purpose of developing the leaders of tomorrow and creating community in a place where all belong.

IMANI WINDS

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2023

Jeff Scott (b. 1967)

Reena Esmail (b. 1983)

Paquito D'Rivera (b. 1948)

Titilayo (2006)

The Light Is the Same (2017)

Aires Tropicales (1994) Alborada Son Habañera Vals Venezolano Dizzyness Afro Contradanza

INTERMISSION

Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)

Wayne Shorter (b. 1933)

Júlio Medaglia (b. 1938)

Rubispheres No. 1 for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon (2015) DROM Serenade Revival

Terra Incognita (2006)

Belle Epoque en Sud-America (1994-1997) El Porsche negro Traumreise nach Attersee Requinta maluca

BLACK AND BROWN A PROGRAM CELEBRATING COMPOSERS OF COLOR

Titilayo (2006)

Jeff Scott (b. 1967)

Composer, French hornist, and founding member of Imani Winds, Jeff Scott epitomizes the working musician of New York City today. He performs in Broadway orchestras for hit shows that include The Lion King, On the Town, and Showboat; records film soundtracks, including Spike Lee’s Clockers; and tours with headliners like Barbra Streisand, Luther Vandross, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. A native of Queens, he describes his compositions as “rooted in European traditions and informed by my African American culture,” in a style he calls “urban classical music.” His Titilayo is no exception, taking the traditional woodwind quintet—a genre originating around 1800 in the Viennese court of Joseph II—as a launchpad for a stylish romp inspired by Black musical traditions and styles. The title, which is a common African name, means “never ending joy,” and the exuberant and bouncing opening section seems exactly that. The B section slows down to a deliberate and crestfallen moment of lament, only to lift back up with the return of the opening to round out the work. He describes the work as a “call and response,” a compositional approach common in spirituals and other Black genres; throughout, the players take turns performing the opening thematic material.

The Light Is the Same (2017)

Reena

Esmail

(b. 1983)

Reena Esmail bridges worlds with her music. Equally fluent in Western and Indian classical traditions, she uses composition to illuminate both intersections and polarities between these traditions. In her groundbreaking work Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz (My Sister’s Voice), which brings a Hindustani vocalist and Western classical soprano into duet in a revisionist version of Delibes’s famous “Flower Duet,” Esmail draws out the difference between an imagined and authentic Indian musicality. In The Light Is the Same, a similar duality guides the composition, this time between two distinct Indian raags (or ragas), Indian scales each associated with individual moods. The two raags—raag Vachaspati and raag Yaman—have contrasting characters: Vachaspati is dark, introverted, and brooding, whereas Yaman is light, extroverted, and optimistic. Yet, as Esmail explains, they are made up of exactly the same notes, except that Yaman has one additional tone (the seventh). So, drawing her title and inspiration from the poet Rumi who wrote, “Religions are many / But God is one / The lamps may be different / But the Light is the same,” Esmail emphasizes how vastly different styles can arrive at the same place.

The work starts rhythmically free and rhapsodic in the brooding raag Vachaspati, as instruments each take turns playing highly ornamented lines that feel extemporaneous as they attempt to gain momentum. Yet one by one, each ends with a falling motive, pulled down by its own weight. After two minutes of failures to launch, the clarinet sounds a clarion call, starting on the thus far unheard seventh and initiating the change to raag Yaman. The mood immediately shifts to brighter harmonies and steadily beating drone provides forward momentum. As the work continues the opening ornamented lines of the raag Vachaspati return with a new buoyancy, the falling tail motive now excised, and building to new heights.

Aires Tropicales (1994)

Paquito D'Rivera (b. 1948)

Paquito D’Rivera has been a titan of Latin jazz since his first recordings in the late 1970s. Yet the versatile saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer is equally at home with classical music, where his compositions draw on his Cuban upbringing, as well as influences from the Spanish-speaking world. His earliest work with the experimental jazz fusion group Irakere blended jazz, rock, classical, and Cuban folk music seamlessly, and it was his ability to bring together diverse threads that won him recognition from Dizzy Gillespie, who recruited D’Rivera into his United Nations Orchestra.

D’Rivera’s 1994 work Aires Tropicales is less focused on merging traditions as it is presenting a panoply of diverse character pieces. Each movement draws inspiration from genres closely associated with the Caribbean. The miniscule “Alborada,” refers to morning songs with roots in Renaissance Spain sung at daybreak for weddings and other ceremonies. “Son,” which features an ostinato bass, refers (in Cuba, where it became a national musical symbol) to the widely popular genre that blended African and Hispanic traditions. The “Habañera” was developed in Cuba when Black Haitians escaping slavery brought a transformed European dance to the island nation in the 1700s; its catchy pattern was influential for many European composers, including Ravel, who inspired D’Rivera in this movement. “Vals Venezolano” (“Venezuelan waltz”), likely refers to the vals melopeya, a Venezuelan example of the many creolizations of the waltz and other European ballroom dances that appeared in 19th-century Latin America. In “Dizzyness,” D’Rivera pays homage to Gillespie, who championed the contribution of Caribbean music to audiences around the world. “Afro” is a 6/8 dance over an ostinato; its intricately layered compound rhythms resemble the Yoruban drumming traditions maintained by Black Cubans (a tradition that Chick Corea also highlighted). The final “Contradanza” is an upbeat Cuban dance that D’Rivera says honors Ernesto Lecuona, a Cuban composer whose own works also bridged jazz and classical.

Rubispheres No. 1 for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon (2015)

Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)

Valerie Coleman has become one of today’s leading composers, with recent commissions by The Philadelphia Orchestra—the first by a Black woman—and the Metropolitan Opera. Yet before her star rose to wider acclaim, Coleman’s entrepreneurial spirit guided her to found Imani Winds as a vehicle for her compositional voice as well as other marginalized composers. Her works often narrate her own cosmopolitan life while also centering her own experiences as a Black woman, such as in Umoja (the Swahili word for “unity” and a principle of Kwanzaa) and Fanfare for Uncommon Times, which meditates on the trauma of the pandemic and the racial awakening of 2020 as a reminder of our own personal grit and resilience.

In Rubispheres No. 1 for Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon, Coleman drew inspiration from the sounds of her home in New York City. She describes the three movements of the work “as depicting urban life and landscapes in the world,” the first and last movements of the work specifically “dedicated” to the Lower East Side and Washington Heights. “DROM,” the first movement, refers to an East Village performance venue whose mission is to provide a space to celebrate cultural diversity through music. The movement concocts a hodgepodge of sounds, oscillating between rhapsodic and groovy. The second movement, “Serenade,” slows down to a lush and impressionistic repose, pausing to take it all in. The final movement, “Revival,” has a jittery but joyful bebop style that suggests a bustling scene in the always busy Washington Heights.

Terra Incognita (2006)

Wayne Shorter (b. 1933)

Jazz legend, composer, and performer Wayne Shorter started his career performing big band with Art Blakey before joining Miles Davis’s Quintet in the 1960s. His cool jazz compositions, including “E.S.P.,” “Pinocchio,” “Footprints,” and “Nefertiti,” became instant jazz standards, and he went on to pioneer the fusion style of the 1970s with his own ensemble, Weather Report, merging funk, bebop, Latin jazz, and futurism. If anything can define Shorter’s artistic sensibility, it is his everforward-looking mentality. A modernist in the best sense of the word, Shorter’s works maintain an experimental and searching spirit as he strives to create music that “opens doorways and portals to unknown sectors.” Yet unlike the disillusioned and pessimistic modernism of the early 20th century, Shorter never loses hope that a better future can emerge from our innate potential.

Terra Incognita is no exception. The title and work were inspired by a passage about a foolhardy explorer in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Antarctica, which, for Shorter, raised the question: “How do we evolve to the level of dealing with the unexpected from an enlightened life condition?” The work maintains the classical idiom of the woodwind quintet, yet Shorter’s subtle jazz harmonies abound. The work affords performers a great deal of creative license with moments of improvisation (sometimes called “aleatory” in avant-garde classical music) interspersed with traditionally composed sections, and the work allows the performers to choose their own paths through the music, starting in different places or working backward; thus a different sonic experience occurs with each performance. Yet this very atmosphere of uncertainty and ambiguity allows for moments of intrepid courage, especially from the French horn, to triumphantly burst through, as though offering a reminder that there can be no bravery where there is no risk.

Belle Epoque en Sud-America (1994–1997)

Júlio Medaglia (b. 1938)

Júlio Medaglia has been a leading figure in Brazilian music for the last 50 years, and his musical evolution aligns with a larger trend in the second half of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, he left São Paulo for Germany and joined the avant-garde composition scene, focusing on integral serialist, electroacoustic, and aleatoric composition and studying with Stockhausen and Boulez. With his longtime friend and collaborator Rogério Duprat, he formed the Música Viva movement, a Brazilian musical cohort dedicated to the avant-garde. Yet by the end of the decade, ultra-modernist composers’ indifference toward audiences proved increasingly unsustainable, and Medaglia became an exponent of Tropicalismo, which highlighted the range of pop music in the Tropics, especially styles from Black and Indigenous communities, mixing it with British psychedelic rock. These musicians and artists also staked out strong countercultural stances against political factions on both the Right and the Left.

In Belle Époque en Sud-America , which was composed for the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, Medaglia explores local dance styles through nostalgic images of the early 1900s, when European ballroom dances were transforming into new styles unique to South America, offering a sendup of European exoticism. The first movement, "El Porsche Negro” (which likely refers to the aspirational German car) is labeled a tango, popular during Buenos Aires’ own “belle époque” as a symbol of upward mobility. The title of the second movement, “Traumreise nach Attersee” (“Dream Journey to Attersee”), suggests an Alpine fantasy, yet the music, labeled “vals paulista,” is a Brazilian waltz, thus subverting the view of Brazil as a tropical paradise with an escapist fantasy from a local perspective. The final “Requinta Maluca” (“Crazy Refinement”) is a chorinho (or little choro). If this work maintains the spirit of Tropicalismo, it is perhaps less in the music styles—ballroom dances were not really the Tropicalismo vibe—than in its transgressive countercultural sarcasm.

IMANI WINDS

Celebrating more than two decades of music making, the twice-Grammy-nominated Imani Winds has led both a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet through their dynamic playing, adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations, and outreach endeavors that have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds. The ensemble’s playlist embraces traditional chamber music repertoire, and as a 21st-century group, Imani Winds is devoutly committed to expanding the wind quintet repertoire by commissioning music from new voices that reflect historical events as well as the current moment.

Present and future season performances include a Jessie Montgomery composition inspired by her great-grandfather’s migration from the American South to the North, as well as music by Andy Akiho designed to be performed both on the concert stage and in front of immigrant detention centers throughout the country.

Imani Winds regularly performs in prominent international concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Kimmel Center. Its touring schedule has taken the musicians throughout Asia, Brazil, Australia, England, New Zealand, and Europe. Its national and international presence includes performances at chamber music series in Boston; New York; Washington, DC; San Francisco; Philadelphia; and Houston. Festival performances include Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Chautauqua Festival, Banff Centre, and Music from Angel Fire.

The group’s successes in the jazz world are highlighted by its association with Wayne Shorter, Paquito D’Rivera, and Jason Moran. Its ambitious project Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot! featured chanteuse René Marie in performances that brought the house down in New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

Imani Winds’ commitment to education runs deep. In 2021, the musicians joined the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music, where they serve as the school’s first-ever faculty wind quintet. They have also served as resident artists at Mannes School of Music, and as ensemble-in-residence at University of Chicago. The group participates in other residencies throughout the US, giving performances and master classes to thousands of students each year. Academic and institutional residencies include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, Da Camera of Houston, and others. The ensemble launched its annual Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2010, bringing together young instrumentalists and composers from across North America and abroad for exploration and performance of the standard repertoire and newly composed chamber music. Festival participants also take part in workshops devoted to entrepreneurial and outreach opportunities, with the goal of nurturing the complete musician and global citizen.

In 2021, Imani Winds released its latest album, Bruits, on Bright Shiny Things, which received a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. Gramophone wrote that “the ensemble’s hot rapport churns with conviction throughout.” Imani Winds has six albums on Koch International Classics and E1 Music, including its 2006 Grammy Award–nominated The Classical Underground. The group has also recorded for Naxos and Blue Note and released Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on Warner Classics. Imani Winds can be heard on many media platforms, including NPR, American Public Media, the BBC, SiriusXM, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal

Imani Winds has a permanent presence in the classical music section of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

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COMING UP IN THEATER

SPRING 2023

CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT

Tuesday, February 7 7:30 PM

Shannon Hall at Memorial Union

SAMARA JOY

Thursday, February 16 7:30 PM

Shannon Hall at Memorial Union

IMMANUEL WILKINS

Saturday, March 25 7:30 PM Play Circle at Memorial Union ANTHONY MCGILL, CLARINET WITH UW–MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Tuesday, April 4 7:30 PM

Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall at Hamel Music Center

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