Yale Concert Band Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director
Celebrating 50/150 Years of Women at Yale feat. Gilda Lyons, soprano
Friday, October 4, 2019 at 7:30 pm
Woolsey Hall, Yale University
GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE arr. Paul Wehage RICHARD WAGNER ed. Michale Votta and John Boyd GILDA LYONS MICHAEL DAUGHERTY
Ouverture from “Il était un Petit Navire” (1935)
Trauermusik (1844)
La Flor Más Linda (2018)
Labyrinth of Love (2013) Gilda Lyons, soprano Introduction V. On the Difficulty of Loving an Invisible God II. Eros VI. Liz’s Lament VII. Oh, come to me in dreams, my love! VIII. Short Talk on the Sensation of Aeroplane Takeoff ~ Intermission ~
DARIUS MILHAUD
Suite Française (1944) I. Normandie II. Bretagne III. Île-de-France IV. Alsace-Lorraine V. Provence
BRANT KARRICK
Mambo Furioso (2001)
Yale University Bands P.O. Box 209048, New Haven, CT 06520-9048 ph: 203-432-4111; fax; 203-432-7213 stephanie.hubbard@yale.edu; www.yale.edu/yaleband
About Tonight’s Music Ouverture from “Il était un Petit Navire” (1935) GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE (1892-1983) (arr. Paul Wehage) Germaine Tailleferre was a prolific French composer and the only female member of the famed “Les Six,” a group of young composers which included Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud, and whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Taillefferre showed interest in music from a young age. Her father objected to her chosen career path, but with the support of her mother, she was admitted to the Paris Conservatory. She won several competitions there, and through her studies met other up-and-coming musicians. After spending some time in the U.S. in the 1940s, she returned to France. She worked and composed until shortly before her death in 1983. Her Ouverture is the opener for the opera Il était un Petit Navire, the farcical story of cannibalism on a ship adrift at sea. This arrangement was produced by Paul Wehage for the Yale University Concert Band and tonight’s performance is its world premiere. Trauermusik (1844) RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883) (ed. Michael Votta and John Boyd) In contrast to the grand sweep of Richard Wagner’s famous operas based on Norse and Germanic myths, the Trauersinfonie (Trauermusik) is remarkable for its relatively limited scope. Literally meaning “mourning symphony,” the work premiered in 1884 as a small piece for wind ensemble written to commemorate the reburial of Carl Maria von Weber, viewed by many as Wagner’s predecessor in the tradition of German Romantic opera. The work was originally conceived as an outdoor procession; its slow, reverent strains draw heavily on material from Weber’s opera Euryanthe, a work greatly influential in Wagner’s development as a composer. La Flor Más Linda (2018) GILDA LYONS (b. 1975) “In September 2018, as protesters from Nicaragua’s Carazo region prepared to march against the increasingly dictatorial Ortega government, my Tios (my aunt and uncle) wrote us with pictures of blockades and descriptions of the armed forces that awaited protesters. A world away, I responded by recording and posting a verse of Carlos Mejía Godoy’s Nicaragua, Nicaragüita, a song that has become as clear a symbol of the resistance as the blue and white Nicaraguan flag. It was a cry into the abyss, but, to my surprise, it actually landed with dear ones and their friends in Nicaragua who wrote that they felt our family standing with them. From this urgent sense of reaching across distance through music grew la flor más linda, written for Glen Adsit, Edward Cumming, and the Foot in the Door Ensemble. With arms outstretched through sound, sonic images I associate with Nicaragua are slammed together: the Basílica bells that toll freely during the Festival of San Sebastián; the pito and chischiles of the dance of the Toro Huaco, for which stand in flute and maracas; the firecrackers that announce celebration; scaler gestures that conjure the strong wind that blows through Diriamba, my mother’s home town; fragments from Los Amores de Abraham, a tune my grandfather and his brothers played in their ensemble Marimba Diriangén; and a single gesture from Godoy’s Nicaragua, Nicaragüita. Despite an impulse to center on vibrant imagery, celebratory sound mutates into the sinister, and song becomes lament. Estamos con la gente de Nicaragua, siempre. Viva Nicaragua libre.” – Gilda Lyons
YALE CONCERT BAND Labyrinth of Love (2012) MICHAEL DAUGHERTY (b. 1954) Labyrinth of Love is inspired by the love poetry and prose of eight women, from which we have selected five for tonight’s performance: Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695, Mexican); Sappho (612 BC-570 BC, Greek); Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011, American); Mary Shelley (1797–1851, British); and Anne Carson (b. 1950, Canadian). Daugherty has created musical landscapes that are full of bitterness, desire, longing, ecstasy, irony, tenderness, despair, hope, sadness and humor.
Introduction V. On the Difficulty of Loving an Invisible God (Traigo commigo un cuidado) Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695; Mexican) I recall – were it not so – a time when the love I knew went far beyond madness even, reached excesses known to few,
Yes, from human weakness, in the midst of purest affection, we still remain a prey to natural dejection.
But being a bastard love, built on warring tensions, it simply fell apart, from its own dissensions.
To see our love returned is so insistent a craving that even when out of place, we still find it enslaving.
But oh, being now directed to the goal true lovers know, through virtue and reason alone it must stronger and stronger grow. Therefore one might inquire why it is I still languish. My troubled heart would make reply: what makes my joy makes my anguish.
It means nothing in this instance that my love be reciprocated; yet no matter how hard I try, the need persists unabated. If this is a sin, I confess it, if this is a crime, I must avow it; the one thing I cannot do is repent and disallow it…
II. Sappho 47 Sappho (612 BCE-570 BC; Greek) Translated by Yopie Prins Eros has my uprooted wits has my again as if it’s a wind a wind wind a whirling wind whipping wild wild whipping wild mountain wild trees mountain uprooted trees uprooted wild trees
VI. Liz’s Lament Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011; American) Richard and Liz The most talked about the most read about the most famous couple in the entire world I see myself being handed from man to man As if I were an amusement I don’t think it’s possible to really love a woman like me Richard and Liz Sad/Sad/Sad I have wasted so many words on so many men How strangely awake I feel But tonight I will begin a dream of my own which will never end
Richard and Liz Sad/Sad/Sad Cleopatra The Sandpipers Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe The VIPs The Comedians The Taming of the Shrew There is only one man in my whole life who has made me happy Richard….my husband….my ex-husband…. I can’t remember which who is somewhere out there Richard and Liz Sad/Sad/Sad
YALE CONCERT BAND VII. Oh, come to me in dreams, my love! Mary Shelley (1797-1851; British) Oh, come to me in dreams, my love! I will not ask a dearer bliss; Come with the starry beams, my love, And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.
Then come to me in dreams, my love, I will not ask a dearer bliss; Come with the starry beams, my love, And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.
‘Twas thus, as ancient fables tell, Love visited a Grecian maid, Till she disturbed the sacred spell, And woke to find her hopes betrayed.
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss
But gentle sleep shall veil my sight, And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be, When, in the visions of the night, Thou dost renew thy vows to me.
VIII. Short Talk on the Sensation of Aeroplane Takeoff Anne Carson (b. 1950; Canadian) Well you know that could be true love running towards my life with its arms up yelling Let’s buy it! What a bargain! Suite Française (1944) DARIUS MILHAUD (1892-1974) In 1945, the publishing firm of Leeds Music commissioned Darius Milhaud to write an extended work for band as part of a proposed series of new works by contemporary composers. The result was Suite Française. The composer wrote about the work: “The five parts of this suite are named after French provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country – Normandy, Brittany, Île-de-France (of which Paris is the center), Alsace-Lorraine, and Provence. I used some folk tunes of the provinces. I wanted the young Americans to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their father fought.” Suite Française was so successful that Milhaud was asked to rescore it for orchestra, which was first performed by the New York Philharmonic. Mambo Furioso (2001) BRANT KARRICK (b. 1960) “On May 31, 2000, the world lost the singularly greatest Latin jazz artist/percussionist, Tito Puente. Often called ‘the Mambo King,’ ‘the King of Latin Jazz’ and ‘El Rey del Timbal’ his pounding mambo rhythms made time throb, pulsate, swivel, shake, crossing over from El Barrio in Harlem, to the Palladium, o the airwaves of America. Although not intended to be programmatic, Mambo Furioso attempts to reflect the excitement and spirit of Puente’s music as well as the sorrow at losing such a legend whose career spanned over half of a century.
About Tonight’s Guest Artist GILDA LYONS, (b. 1975), composer, vocalist, and visual artist, combines elements of renaissance, neo-baroque, spectral, folk, agitprop Music Theater, and extended vocalism to create works of uncompromising emotional honesty and melodic beauty. The premiere of A New Kind of Fallout—Lyons’ mainstage opera inspired by the life and work of environmentalist Rachel Carson, written with librettist Tammy Ryan, and commissioned by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh—was described as “powerfully effective” (Pittsburgh Stage Magazine), “haunting” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) and “spot-on at re-creating the atmosphere of the early ‘60s” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). As composer and vocalist Lyons’ works and performances are available on the Clarion, GPR, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, and Roven Records labels. Current recording projects as composer include spring 2018 releases of Lyons’ works by Quince (Motherland) and entelechron (The Folk Tune Project). Gilda Lyons’ fall 2017 vocal collaboration with Laura Ward was released on the Naxos label on Lyric Fest’s all-Hagen CD 21st Century Song Cycles; Opera News writes of Lyons’ “winning delivery, full of character.” Other recent recording projects include Lindsey Goodman’s tour de force performance of Lyons’ Chrysalis (reach through the sky) and Sing for Hope’s release of Lyons’ Hold On (An AIDS Quilt Songbook). In 2019, Lyons serves as Composer-in-Residence for Chautauqua Opera Company; Co-Chair of the Composition Program at Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, VA; and as Assistant Professor of Composition at The Hartt School, CT. She is Artistic and Executive Director of The Phoenix Concerts, New York’s “intrepid Upper West Side new-music series” (The New Yorker), and serves on the Board of Advisors of Composers Now and the Steven R. Gerber Trust. Premieres in Ann Arbor, Beijing, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo and beyond include: America, Singing (Lyric Fest, Academy of Vocal Arts, Philadelphia); la flor mas linda (Foot in the Door Ensemble, Edward Cumming, conductor; 2019 CBDNA National Convention); hush (Carrie Koffman, saxophone; World Saxophone Congress, Zagreb, Croatia); Summoning Fire (Panic Duo, Los Angeles); Alice Awakens (Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, Erin Freeman, conductor / Foot in the Door Ensemble, Edward Cumming, conductor / University of Pittsburgh Orchestra, Roger Zahab, conductor); Alignment Failed (Blythe Gaissert & Louis Levitt, New York City / Gilda Lyons & Robert Black, Hartford, CT); Scales and Tales (Mirror Visions Ensemble: Musée des arts Decoratifs, Paris / Performing Arts Library of Lincoln Center, New York City / Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, MI); walk, run, fly for pre-recorded sound & voice (Lyons, Flea Theater, New York City); Lady Beetle for koto (Yumi Kurosawa, Tokyo); La Novia de Tola (Beijing New Music Ensemble, Beijing / Finisterra Trio, Seattle / entelechron, New York City); Invocations for shakuhachi & voice (Kyo-Shin-An Arts, New York City); and rapid transit (5 Borough Music Festival, New York City, available on iTunes and GPR Records). Commissions include works for The ASCAP Foundation / Charles Kingsford Fund, American Opera Projects, Amy Pivar Dances, Beijing New Music Ensemble, Carrie Koffman, Chautauqua Opera, ComposersCollaborative Inc., Lara Downes, Lyric Fest, entelechron, Fort Greene Park Conservancy, Yumi Korosawa, Kyo-Shin-An Arts, Mirror Visions Ensemble, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Panic Duo, Paul Sperry, Quince, Seraphim, Sweet Plantain String Quartet, The Walt Whitman Project, Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, and 5 Borough Music Festival, among many others. An active vocalist and fierce advocate of contemporary music, Lyons has commissioned, premiered, and workshopped new vocal works by dozens of composers. Of her performance in Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow (Buffalo Philharmonic/Falletta) (Naxos) David Shengold of Opera, UK writes “Gilda Lyons’s clear soprano compels admiration.” Lyons’ music is published by Schott, E.C. Schirmer, and Burning Sled. She received her Ph.D. in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Bard College. Lyons made her professional debut as composer and vocalist with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in 1997, performing the world premiere of her orchestral song cycle Feis.
YALE CONCERT BAND
About the Music Director Thomas C. Duffy is Professor (Adjunct) of Music, Director of University Bands, and Clinical Professor of Nursing at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982. He has established himself as a composer, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a leader. His interests and research range from non-tonal analysis to jazz, from wind band history to creativity and the brain. Under his direction, the Yale Bands have performed at conferences of the College Band Directors National Association and New England College Band Association; for club audiences at New York City’s Village Vanguard, Birdland, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and Iridium; Ronnie Scott’s (London); the Belmont (Bermuda); as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in twenty-one countries in the course of eighteen international tours. Duffy produced a two-year lecture/performance series, Music and the Brain, with the Yale School of Medicine; and, with the Yale School of Nursing, developed a musical intervention to train nursing students to better hear and identify body sounds with the stethoscope. He combined his interests in music and science to create a genre of music for the bilateral conductor – in which a “split-brained conductor” must conduct a different meter in each hand, sharing downbeats. His compositions have introduced a generation of school musicians to aleatory, the integration of spoken/ sung words and “body rhythms” with instrumental performance, and the pairing of music with political, social, historical and scientific themes. He has been awarded the Yale Tercentennial Medal for Composition, the Elm/ Ivy Award, the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation and certificates of appreciation by the United States Attorney’s Office for his Yale 4/Peace: Rap for Justice concerts – music programs designed for social impact by using the power of music to deliver a message of peace and justice to impressionable middle and high school students. From 1996 to 2006, he served as associate, deputy and acting dean of the Yale School of Music. He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee, the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee, the Grammy Foundation Music Educators Award Screening Committee, and completed the MLE program at the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. He has served as: president of the Connecticut Composers Inc., the New England College Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); editor of the CBDNA Journal, publicity chair for the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles; and chair of the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s Professional Affairs and Government Relations committees. For nine years, he represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. He is a member of American Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, the Social Science Club, and BMI. Duffy has conducted ensembles all over the world, including the National Association for Music Education’s National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. (More extensive data is available at www.duffymusic.com, including a high resolution down-loadable photo.) Upcoming Yale Bands Performances • Saturday, October 5, 2019: Family Weekend Concert. Featuring Yale Glee Club, Jeffrey Douma, Music Director; Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director; Yale Symphony Orchestra, William Boughton, Music Director. 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free. • Monday, October 14, 2019: Yale Jazz Ensemble Season Opener. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Featuring the music of Melba Liston (1926-1999) - trombonist, composer, and arranger, and more. 7:30 pm, Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. Free. • Sunday, November 17, 2019: Yale Concert Band (Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director) and the U.S. Coast Guard Band (LTC Adam Williamson, Director). Each band will perform separately and will combine to end the concert. Yale Concert Band set feat. Dragon Rhyme (Chen Yi) and Fascinating Ribbons (Joan Tower), and the combined piece will be Symphony No. 3 (James Barnes). 2:00 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free. • Friday, December 6, 2019: Yale Bands 75th Anniversary Commemoration of the 1944 D-Day Landings at Normandy (Glenn Miller Radio Show Re-enactment) & 1940s “Big Band” Christmas Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. The Yale Bands will present its acclaimed Glenn Miller radio show broadcast reenactment from Woolsey Hall (premiered in 1994 for the 50th anniversary year, and, by popular demand, repeated multiple times both domestically and abroad – most notably in France in June 1944). The second half of the concert will feature a new twist – an old fashioned “big band” Christmas Concert. 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. $ Tickets required.
YALE CONCERT BAND 2019-2020 THOMAS C. DUFFY, Music Director STEPHANIE HUBBARD, Business Manager
Piccolo Sarah Guan ES 23 Jeremy Goldwasser MC 21† Flute Jeremy Goldwasser MC 21† principal Rosa Kleinman BF 23* Julia Cai BR 20* Seb Seager SM 23 Melissa Leone GH 21 Joan Gomez-Aguilar BK 21 Yaa Owusu JE 22 Katie Handler TC 21 Sarah Monahan MY 21 Oboe Miranda Margulis-Ohnuma BR 23† principal Marcos Barrios ES 23* Ryan Tie-Shue SM 22* English Horn Miranda Margulis-Ohnuma BR 23† Ryan Tie-Shue SM 22* Eb Clarinet César Palacio YSM 21 Bb Clarinet Jalen Li PC ** † Keith L. Wilson Principal Clarinet Chair Joshua Nguyen GH 23* Benjamin Kramer BF 23* Joshua Rothbaum TD 23 Daphne Zhu ES 22 Jessica Oki TC 20 Christian Fernandez BF 20 Catherine Zhang SM 23 Heather McClure MY 20 Bb Bass Clarinet Claudia Ng YSM 21 Jalen Li PC†*
Bassoon Maddy Tung TD 21† principal Bradford Case SM 20 Soprano Saxophone Nick DeWalt SY 21†* Alto Saxophone Nick DeWalt SY 21 principal Michael Chen GH 23† Alina Martel TC 23* Bb Tenor Saxophone Tilden Chao ES 23†* Eb Baritone Saxophone Flynn Chen TC 20† Cornet/Trumpet James Brandfonbrener MC 21† principal Adam Tucker MC 21 Izzy Lopez MC 23 Adé Ben-Salahuddin PC 21 Noah Montgomery GH 20* Joseph Cho BR 22 French Horn Griffin Botts YSM 20 Allison Hammer DC 20* Miriam Huerta BF 22* Michael McNamara TD 20† Trombone JT Mullins MY 23* principal Matt Kirschner ES 23 Andy Pantoja BK 22 Robert Howard GH 21 Ella Lubin SM 23†*
Tuba Josef Lawrence TC 20 principal Adam Wolnikowski TC 21 Kevin Im PC 23 String Bass Ying-Yin Chia YSM 20†* Celeste Ari Essunfeld GH 23 Piano Jack McArthur MY 22†* Piano Charlotte Murphy TC 23 Percussion David Zuckerman DC 20†* principal Meshach Cornelius ES 22†* Ari Essunfeld GH 23†* Ryan Haygood BF 21†* Jack McArthur MY 22†* Alexandria Wynn TD 22†* Andrew Zheng TD 22* Music Librarian Joseph Cho BR 22 † performing on Labyrinth of Love ** Friends of Keith L. Wilson (Director of Yale Bands from 1946-1973) honored him by endowing the principal clarinet chair in the Yale Concert Band in his name. If you would like information about naming a Yale Concert Band chair, please contact the Yale Bands Office. * performing on La Flor Más Linda
Euphonium Alexandra Griffith BF 23
YALE CONCERT BAND OFFICERS President: David Zuckerman Personnel Manager: Ryan Haygood General Managers: Heather McClure, Sarah Monahan Publicity Chair: Miriam Huerta Social Chairs: Katie Handler, Andrew Zheng