New Music New Haven: Bernard Rands

10.08.09

SPRAGUE HALL

JORDAN KUSPA

Lemonade Battery

POLINA NAZAYKINSKAYA

Underground. Real April

Farkhad Khudyev, conductor Members of the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale

Farkhad Khudyev, conductor Chrystal Williams, mezzo-soprano Vince Vincent, baritone Yoorhi Choi, violin Aleksey Klyushnik, double bass In Hyung Hwang, clarinet Ted Sonnier, trombone Ian Rosenbaum, percussion Amy Yang, piano intermission

BERNARD RANDS

Concertino for Oboe and Ensemble

Adrian Slywotzky, conductor Alexandra Detyniecki, solo oboe Marjolaine Lambert, violin Igor Kalnin, violin Raul Garcia, viola Arnold Choi, cello Christopher Matthews, flute Paul Won Jin Cho, clarinet Keturah Bixby, harp now again

Adrian Slywotzky, conductor Janna Baty, mezzo-soprano Gabriella Tortorello, soprano Chloe Zale, alto Marjolaine Lambert, violin Raul Garcia, viola Arnold Choi, cello Christopher Matthews, flute Paul Won Jin Cho, clarinet Keturah Bixby, harp

Robert Blocker, Dean

JORDAN KUSPA Lemonade Battery

: Notes

: Biography

Did you ever make a battery out of a lemon?

It’s easy! Simply take a lemon and cut two slits in the skin about half an inch apart. Into one slit, place a penny; into the other, place a dime.

Voila! Instant battery! Now, touch your tongue to both coins at the same time. If you’ve done your job, you should feel a slight tingle, and maybe a slight taste of metal. Have no fear – it’s just some electrons being conducted through your tongue!

Jordan Kuspa’s compositions have been performed and workshopped by the New York New Music Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, California E.A.R. Unit, Third Wheel Trio, Gang of Two, Duo Scordatura, organist Chelsea Chen, violist Brett Deubner, the Enso and Kailas String Quartets, the Kensington Sinfonia (Canada), the Young Artists Chamber Players (Utah), and the Woodlands Symphony (Texas), among others. His music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, and his works have been commissioned by the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the American Festival for the Arts Summer Conservatory.

I bet you’ve made lemonade at some point.

They say, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” In a sense, that’s what I’ve done with this piece. Lemonade Battery started as an earlier work for twelve players. I was unhappy with the scoring of that version, so I decided to expand the playing forces to a chamber orchestra.

I think this orchestration brings out the motoric rhythmic drive and the brightness of the instrumental colors to a much greater degree. Plus, it’s louder.

At age 16, Jordan founded the Houston Young Musicians, a group that sought to broaden interest in classical music among new listeners as well as promote the works of American and other contemporary composers. Jordan was also co-founder and Artistic Director of the You know, it’s possible to make a battery with Sonus Chamber Music Society, an organization lemonade. What’s the difference, you ask? that presented an interactive concert series in the Houston museum district. Educational and One is sweeter. community outreach, in schools, churches, and hospitals, was a central component of each of these programs.

Jordan was homeschooled his entire life before entering Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Currently, he is a graduate student in composition at the Yale School of Music, studying with Martin Bresnick, Ingram Marshall and Christopher Theofanidis.

POLINA NAZAYKINSKAYA Underground. Real April

: Notes

: Text

I wrote this cycle for the Norfolk New Music Workshop this summer. The task seemed difficult – unusual combination of instruments, contemporary American poetry. But it ended up as a very inspirational work of mine. I was deeply touched by these words of young poets from Yale University, Jordan Jacks and Laura Marris, and their lyrics helped me with the process of composing.

Underground :: By Laura Marris

: Biography Polina Nazaykinskaya was born in Togliatti, Russia on January 20, 1987. She has been studying music since the age of four. She graduated with honors from the Music Academic Gymnasium in Togliatti in 2004. In 2008 she graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory Music College as a violinist and composer.

Currently she is a graduate student at the Yale School of Music, studying composition with Ezra Laderman and Christopher Theofanidis and violin with Kyung Hak Yu. She is the winner of several composers’ competitions such as the Dmitriy Kabalevskiy Competition and the International Composers Competition named after Vyacheslav Zolotarev.

Her music had been performed in a number of music festivals including the Music Academy of the West, Classic Music Festival on the Volga River (Russia), Cadiza Festival (Spain), and throughout Europe. In 2008, Polina was included in the Golden Book of the Samara Region as an outstanding violinist and composer. In 2009 she was among the finalists of ASCAP’s young composers’ competition and the Missouri New Music Festival. The same year, Polina participated as a composer in the New Music Workshop at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where she had a premiere of a new cycle of songs.

Beneath the earth we leave each other, down darkened steps, where trains pass by.

At dawn and at dusk the same half-light.

If we stood for hours the days would not go by.

My name on your lips is the sound of doors– their silent alarm like a snapped goodbye.

Real April :: By Jordan Jacks Like the exercise of a muscle by electric shock, the sun stutters its way down the oaks.

I don't have much time.

I take off all my clothes.

Lord, I listen with my entire body.

It is very cold, I never hear you anymore. But I still imagine your voice coming to me from the opposite hill.

To my unremitting regret please add that He allowed himself pleasure, knowing that the battle, if not won, was at least over. Please sing again that song you always used to sing.

You know the one? It sounds like headlights at night, falling on sleeping animals. There. Like that.

BERNARD RANDS Concertino | now again

: Notes

Concertino is in one continuous movement divided into two principal formal sections: the first of some five minutes’ duration and the second of approximately twice that length. Each of the principal sections consists of several subsections; for example, the work begins with an extended, cadenza-like oboe solo which exposes the material from which the entire piece is generated. The soloist is then joined by the harp in a passage which leads to the engagement of the entire ensemble in a fast, strident, complex, and virtuosic development of the initial ideas.

The second large section is made up of alternating slow, lyrical music (mainly in the high register of the ensemble) and progressively quicker, dramatic music culminating in a return to the fast, strident, complex and virtuosic character found at the end of the first principal section.

Concertino was commissioned by the Philadelphia Network for New Music with generous support from Anni Baker. The premiere performance was given by Richard Woodhams, solo oboe, and members of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia on November 15, 1998.

Concertino is dedicated to Richard Woodhams and to the memory of Mel Powell. “now again” —fragments from Sappho, commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Network for New Music, was completed in September 2006. As the title states, the texts are from the extant fragments of Sappho's poetry. Only one complete poem exists, and the remainder range from tiny, disconnected phrases to single words and parts of words. A large amount of conjecture is therefore necessary in order to discern (imagine) the poet's precise meanings and intent. In this context, the composer felt free to assemble fragments at will creating a “libretto” in which

a dialogue between Sappho (as narrator) and other young ladies conveys the poet's love and desire for women. In a “feminine voice, desiring other women” she sings, again and again, of desire and yearning; of “the amorous pleasures women share on soft beds” (Page duBois).

Thus a text is created for a Cantata Erotica in which the four vocal sections suggest, in turn, an Invocation, a Convocation, a Consummation, and an Introspection. These are connected by three brief instrumental interludes.

Sappho was a musician who sang or recited her poems, accompanying herself on the lyre and sometimes on a small harp. In fact, she “wrote songs, she wrote for the ear, with all the need for repetition and the quickly recognized phrase that song requires” (duBois). With these qualities dominating the fragmentary poems, the composer has responded in a musical idiom somewhat different from that normally associated with his music. Here, the harmonic language is simpler, more direct and the melodic lines (both vocal and instrumental) are essentially conjunct in their movement. The rhythms of the vocal lines directly reflect the syllabic speech patterns of the poems and melismatic settings are reserved for moments of fantasy.

The composer has said, “I could not imagine these texts being sung in disjunct vocal lines typical of the sound world of so much postSecond Viennese school music. Thus, I forced myself to think and hear differently and be transported into other sonic realms.”

The beautiful translations and renderings used in this work are by Paul Roche. "now again" is dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Kousevitzky.

BERNARD RANDS Biography

the Composer, and the Barlow, Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, among many others.

Photo by Jack Mitchell Through more than a hundred published works and many recordings, Bernard Rands is established as a major figure in contemporary music.

His work Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize in Music. His large orchestral suite Le Tambourin won the 1986 Kennedy Center Freidheim Award.

Conductors including Barenboim, Boulez, Berio, Maderna, Marriner, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rilling, Salonen, Sawallisch, Schiff, Schuller, Schwarz, Silverstein, Sinopoli, Slatkin, von Dohnanyi, and Zinman, among others, have programmed his music. Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra for seven years, from 1989 to 1995, as part of the Meet The Composer Residency Program for the first three years, with four years continued funding by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rands has contributed significantly to the music of our time.

His works are widely performed and frequently recorded. His work Canti D'Amor, recorded by Chanticleer, won a Grammy Award in 2000.

Born in England, Rands emigrated to the United States in 1975 and became an American citizen in 1983. He has been honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, bmi, the Guggenheim Foundation, the nea, Meet

Recent commissions have come from the Suntory Concert Hall, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, BBC Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Internationale Bach Akademie, Eastman Wind Ensemble, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His chamber opera Belladonna was commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Festival in 1999; in 2003 the first act was performed as part of New York City’s VOX. Upcoming projects include commissions from the Institute for American Music to write a string quartet for the Ying String Quartet; a Meet the Composer consortium commission to compose a guitar concerto for Eliot Fisk and three chamber orchestras; and a solo piano work for Robert Levin. In progress is a full-scale opera entitled Vincent, based on the life and work of Van Gogh.

A dedicated and passionate teacher, Rands has been guest composer at many international festivals and composer-in-residence at the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. He is the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard University. The originality and distinctive character of his music have been variously described as "plangent lyricism" with a "dramatic intensity" and a "musicality and clarity of idea allied to a sophisticated and elegant technical mastery"—qualities developed from his studies with Dallapiccola and Berio. Rands was elected and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004.

BERNARD RANDS Texts

: Mezzo-Soprano

: Soprano and Alto

Far sweeter-tuned than a lyre Golder than gold Softer than velvet radiant lyre speak to me become a voice Winged words Words made of air I begin But words good to hear I’ll sing these songs beautifully today to please you my faithful coterie

what will your eyes say? what will your eyes say?

Sing us the praises of the girl with the violet-sweet breasts.

now again Oh, come again now: Let me go loose from this merciless craving And I shall set you to rest on the softest cushion: Yes, you shall lie on fresh new pillows

so long as you wish it

now again

Stars round the fair moon veil their own shining when she’s full on the earth with the light of her silver

serenest of all stars

And the moon rose clear and full On girls grouped round the alter

Youth Girls with voices like honey

again now again

now again

So come now You delectable Graces You muses with the glorious tresses

You have come and you did well to come I pined for you.

And now you have put a torch to my heart A flare of loveO bless you and bless you and bless you: You are back…

We were parted

We swathed her in the softest cambric veil.

And the garlands were wild parsley desire you scorch me O beautiful O graceful one For day is near

BERNARD RANDS Texts

Eros the melter of limbs (now again)

– stirs me Pretty one, I’m yours again: far too long apart into desire I shall come Love like a sudden breeze tumbling on the oak-tree leaves left my heart trembling And through the NightAir I heard the faint trickle of the nymphs of the springs That night of ours O, I can tell you I begged it could be doubled desire, wet with dew, took delight

now again I famish and I pine Pain drips…. now again

The black trance of night flooded into their eyes Now (again) go to sleep on the breast of your sweetheart The moon has gone The Pleiades gone In dead of night Time passes on I lie alone

now again

I shall be a maiden forever do I still yearn for my virginity?

virginity…. now again

Let us go dear girls Our carols are over, For day is near

memories

Toward you pretty ones this mind of mine can never change

My lady, goldsandled Dawn.

now again longing floats around you

luxurious woman Holy and beautiful maiden now again These translations and renderings of the original Sappho fragments are by Paul Roche from the book published by Prometheus Books entitled The Love Songs of Sappho, from their Literary Classics Series.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN Artist Profiles

JANNA BATY : mezzo-soprano

ALEXANDRA LAMBERTSON DETYNIECKI : oboe

Mezzo-soprano Janna Baty‘s recent engagements include appearances with Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Daejeon Philharmonic, Hamburgische Staatsoper, L’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Boston Lyric Opera. She has performed at festivals worldwide, including the Aldeburgh and Britten Festivals in England, The Varna Festival in Bulgaria, the Semanas Musicales de Frutillar Festival in Chile, and the Tanglewood, Norfolk, and Coastal Carolina festivals in the U.S. With Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Ms. Baty has recorded the critically lauded Vali: Flute Concert/Deylaman/ Folk Songs (sung in Persian), Lukas Foss’ opera Grifflekin, and the world-premiere recording of Eric Sawyer’s Civil War-era opera Our American Cousin. She is a member of the Yale School of Music faculty.

Emerging oboist Alexandra Lambertson Detyniecki is currently pursuing her Artist Diploma degree at the Yale School of Music as a student of Stephen Taylor. She earned her MM at the Juilliard School as a student of Elaine Douvas, Nathan Hughes, and Pedro Diaz and her BM at the Curtis Institute, where she studied with Richard Woodhams. Ms. Lambertson is also an avid English hornist and served as regular English hornist of the Haddonfield (NJ) Symphony for the 2006-07 season. A contemporary music enthusiast, she performed in the Elliott Carter Festival at the Juilliard School. As a baroque oboist, Alexandra was a participant in the Longy International Baroque Institute where she studied with Gonzalo Ruiz and in the Les Arts Florissants residency at Juilliard in the spring of 2009. In past summers, she has traveled to Germany to participate in the Moritzburg Festival and to South America with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. She has also attended music festivals at Colorado College, Aspen, and the Orford Arts Center.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN Artist Profiles

GABRIELLA TORTORELLO : soprano

CHLOE ZALE : alto

Gabriella Tortorello is a junior at Yale College, where she is studying Art History and Italian.

Gabriella has sung with the Yale Baroque Opera Project in its productions of Orfeo and Capriccio Barocco, and this semester will be singing in YBOP’s Handel scenes program, Le Tre Stagioni.

Gabriella also sang in the chorus of the Yale School of Music’s 2008 production of Die Fledermaus. She has performed with the Opera Theater of Yale College and will be singing the role of the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors this November. Most recently she performed as Marcellina in La Nozze di Figaro.

Gabriella has studied with Lili Chookasian and Samantha Talmadge and now studies with Janna Baty.

Chloe Zale is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College at Yale. She sings with the Opera Theater of Yale College and the Yale Undergraduate Madrigal Singers. She currently studies voice with Janna Baty and has also studied under Allison Charney, Patricia Misslin, and Lorraine Nubar. She has participated in summer voice programs including the Spoleto Vocal Arts Symposium, L’Académie Internationale d’ Eté de Nice, and the Bel Canto Institute in Florence. Recent roles have included the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Opera Theater of Yale College and the Second Spirit in Die Zauberflöte with Yale Opera. She has also premiered original works by Yale composers with IGIGI. A native New Yorker, Chloe fell in love with classical music as a child after singing with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus for three seasons. In high school, she sang with the Citywide Youth Opera and founded her school’s first Opera Club. Chloe graduated cum laude from Trinity School in New York City in 2008.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN Artist Profiles

FARKHAD KHUDYEV : conductor

ADRIAN SLYWOTZKY : conductor

Farkhad Khudyev is originally from Ashgabad, Turkmenistan, where he studied violin and composition with Zinaida Ahmedzhanova and Vera Abaeva at the Special Music School. At the age of 10, he became the youngest performer ever selected to play with the National Violin Ensemble of Turkmenistan, and at 12 he won a scholarship to the New Names Festival (Suzdal, Russia), where he was named the most promising young musician and earned the top award. Mr. Khudyev has performed in Ashgabad, Suzdal, Moscow, and Odessa as both a soloist and a member of the Violin Ensemble of Turkmenistan. He came to the U.S. in 2001 under a full scholarship to the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he studied with Paul Sonner and Michael Albaugh, and then completed his BM at the Oberlin Conservatory with Milan Vitek. Currently a second-year MM student at Yale, he is studying with Shinik Hahm. Mr. Khudyev won the Grand Prize and the Gold Medal at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in 2007 as a member of the Prima Trio. He also received an honorable mention in the 2004 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer awards for his symphonic work Turkmenistan. His other awards include a prize at the 30th Annual Glenn Miller Competition and the Neil Rabaut Composition Prize from the Interlochen Arts Academy. He has served as the assistant conductor of NOYO orchestra and has conducted the Chamber Orchestra of Ashgabad.

Conductor Adrian Slywotzky has been active as a musician in the New Haven area since 1998.

For the last three years he has been the director of the New Haven Chamber Orchestra, and he is the founding conductor of the Yale Medical Symphony Orchestra. Following his passion for teaching, Adrian has worked as an educator throughout New England. Since 2005 he has been on the conducting staff of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, and he is serving as interim conductor of the Greater New Haven Youth Orchestra for the 2008-2010 seasons. For five years he was Director of Instrumental Music at Hopkins School in New Haven, and he has taught at Neighborhood Music School, Elm City ChamberFest, and the Southern Maine String Camp. As a violinist, Adrian has participated in festivals including Tanglewood Music Center, California Summer Music, and the Norfolk Contemporary Music Festival.

Adrian holds a BA in Architecture from Yale College, where he studied violin with Kyung Yu, and an MM in Violin Performance from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Wendy Sharp. He is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at the Yale School of Music, where he studies with Shinik Hahm.

NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN Fall 2009

NOV 19 Thu / 8 pm

Jack Vees and Christopher Theofanidis Chris Cerrone: Invisible Cities Jordan Kuspa: Piano Trio Adrian Knight: Work for Sixteen Strings Feinan Wang: Pisces Monodrama–Chapter VII Jack Vees: Party Talk

DEC 11 Fri / 8 pm

New Music for Orchestra with the Yale Philharmonia Works by Samuel Adams, Robert Honstein, Richard Harrold, Jordan Kuspa, Polina Nazaykinskaya, and Feinan Wang David Lang: International Business Machine and Grind to a Halt

Members of THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA OF YALE

violin 1

cello

bassoon

Anastasia Metla Soo Ryun Baek Kensho Watanabe Jae-Won Bang Alissa Cheung Yu-Ting Huang

Kyung Mi Anna Preuss Soo Jin Chung Alvin Yan Ming Wong Neena Deb-Sen

Micahla Cohen SaMona Bryant

violin 2 Liesl Schoenberger Ka Chun Gary Ngan Edson Scheid de Andrade Jae-In Shin Holly Piccoli

viola Edwin Kaplan Eve Tang Hyun-Jung Lee Minjung Chun

horn

bass

Tianxia Wu Timothy Riley

Nathaniel Chase Michael Levin

trumpet

flute

David Wharton Ryan Olsen

Dariya Nikolenko Itay Lantner

timpani

oboe Carl Oswald Emily Holum

clarinet Jaehee Choi In Hyung Hwang

John Corkill

percussion Yun-Chu Chiu Leonardo Gorosito

harp Maura Valenti

UPCOMING

http://music.yale.edu

WEI-YI YANG PIANO

Horowitz Piano Series Tickets $11-20 / Students $5 / Sprague Hall Chopin: Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 45; Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48 no. 2; Sonata in B minor, Op. 58.

Scriabin: Twelve Etudes; Poème-nocturne, Op. 61.

Oct 14 / Wed / 8pm

ILYA POLETAEV PIANO Oct 15 / Thu / 8pm

SAXOPHONE SUMMIT Oct 16 / Fri / 7:30pm

yale school of music Robert Blocker, Dean

203 432-4158 Box Office concerts@yale.edu E-mail Us

Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Rameau: Suite in A from Nouvelles Suite de Pièces de Clavecin; Enescu: Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 24, no.1; and Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6.

Free Admission / Sprague Hall Ellington Jazz Series Tickets $20-30 / Student $12 / Sprague Hall Featuring Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, Antonio Hart, Todd Bashore, Frank Basile, and Scott Robinson on the entire family of saxes from soprano to the rare contrabass. With a stellar rhythm section including Tootie Heath, drums; David Wong, bass; and Michael Weiss, piano.

concerts & media Vincent Oneppo Dana Astmann Monica Ong Reed Danielle Heller Elizabeth Fleming

new music new haven Christopher Theofanidis Artistic Director

operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo

Renata Steve Music Librarian

piano curators Brian Daley William Harold recording studio Eugene Kimball Jason Robins

Krista Johnson Managing Director

Farkhad Khudyev Adrian Slywotzky Assistant Conductors