yale in new york 路 david shifrin 路 artistic director
JANUARY 24, 2015 morse recital hall
ROBERT VAN SICE director
robert blocker, dean
YALE PERCUSSION GROUP robert van sice, director
Michael Laurello b. 1981
Spine (world premiere) Yifei Fu, Jeff Stern, Matt Keown, percussion Georgi Videnov, piano
Paul Lansky b. 1944
Textures (2013) I. Striations II. Loose Ends III. Soft Substrates IV. Slither V. Granite VI. Points of Light VII. Aflutter, On Edge VIII. Round-Wound Matthew Keown, Jeff Stern, percussion Dominic Cheli, Yevgeny Yontov, piano intermission
Mauricio Kagel 1931–2008
Dressur (1977) Kramer Milan, Terrence Sweeney, Georgi Videnov, percussion
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence all electronic devices. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
YALE PERCUSSION GROUP
about
director
Founded in 1997 by Robert van Sice, the Yale Percussion Group has been called “something truly extraordinary” by composer Steve Reich. It is composed of talented and dedicated young artists who have come from around the world for graduate study at the Yale School of Music. Members of the YPG have gone on to form the acclaimed quartet, Sō Percussion, and to perform with the Oslo and Auckland Philharmonics, and are percussionists in America’s great chamber music ensembles including Chamber Music at Lincoln Center, Ensemble ACJW at Carnegie Hall and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Currently, alumni of YPG teach at the University of Miami, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Baylor University, Bard College, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Cornell, University of Alabama, Notre Dame, Dartmouth College, and the University of Kansas. The Yale Percussion Group has twice won the Percussive Arts Society International Percussion Ensemble Competition.
Robert van Sice, percussion, has premiered more than one hundred works including concertos, chamber music, and solos. He has made solo appearances with symphony orchestras and given recitals in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Far East. In 1989 he gave the first full-length marimba recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has since played in most of Europe’s major concert halls, many of which have been broadcast by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, WDR, and Radio France. He is frequently invited as a soloist with Europe’s leading contemporary music ensembles and festivals, including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps, the Archipel, L’Itinéraire, Darmstadt, and North American new music festivals. From 1988 to 1997 he headed Europe’s very first diploma program for solo marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatorium. Mr. van Sice has given master classes in more than twenty countries and frequently visits the major conservatories in Europe and Asia as a guest lecturer. He joined the Yale faculty in the fall of 1997.
members Yifei Fu Matt Keown Kramer Milan Jeff Stern Terrence Sweeney Georgi Videnov
The Yale Percussion Group would like to thank Adams/Pearl and Vic Firth for their extraordinary continued support.
PROGRAM NOTES
michael laurello Spine Spine was composed in 2014–15 for the Yale Percussion Group, featuring Yifei Fu. A single line — Yifei’s part — runs through most of the piece, and virtually all of the musical material is derived from it. This meta-line serves as the spine of the music, both in structural terms (backbone), but also with respect to the line’s perceived control over the direction and progression of the music (central nervous system). The music played by the other three members of the quartet (Jeff Stern and Matthew Keown on multi-percussion setups; Georgi Videnov on piano) serves to color and punctuate the main line. However, over the course of the work, players drift in and out of agreement with one another; occasionally the primary line loses its unique identity within the texture of the ensemble, only to fight to get it back. I tried to impart an almost biological sense to the way motives grow, attempting to balance an intuitive — almost improvisatory — type of development with more structured patterns and processes. I am incredibly grateful to the talented musicians of the Yale Percussion Group for their dedication and unwavering support.
Michael Laurello is an American composer and pianist. He has written for ensembles and soloists such as Sō Percussion (Brooklyn, NY), the Yale Percussion Group, the Yale Philharmonia, Sound Icon (Boston, MA), the 15.19ensemble (Pavia, Italy), Nota Riotous/The Boston Microtonal Society, guitarist Flavio Virzì, soprano Sarah Pelletier, pianist/composer John McDonald, and clarinetist and linguist/music theorist Ray Jackendoff. Upcoming collaborations include Sandbox Percussion (Brooklyn, NY). Laurello is an Artist Diploma candidate in composition at the Yale School of Music, where he received the Jacob Druckman Scholarship and the Rena Greenwald Memorial Scholarship for 2014–2015. His primary composition teachers at Yale are Martin Bresnick, David Lang, and Christopher Theofanidis. He holds an M.A. in composition from Tufts University, where he studied under John McDonald, and a B.Mus. in music synthesis (electronic production and design) from the Berklee College of Music. Recent honors include a commission from the American Composers Forum (ACF) and an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation (Boston, Mass). He has attended composition festivals at highscore (Pavia, Italy) and Etchings (Auvillar, France).
— Michael Laurello In addition to his work as a composer and performer, Laurello is a recording engineer and a teaching fellow at Yale University.
PROGRAM NOTES
paul lansky Textures I love writing percussion music. It’s a lot like making computer music (which I did full-time for more than 35 years). On the machine you work with spectral balance, envelope, timbre difference, etc. In the percussion world this near infinitude of possibility is matched by the vast potential among percussion’s families of woods, metals, mallets, skins, toys, etc. To make matters even more interesting, there is no guarantee that one doumbek will sound just like every other, or that there is a standard for cowbells. And then we come to the matter of percussionists themselves, one of the most interesting and lively group of musicians working today. It is now rare that a music school doesn’t have a percussion ensemble class; there is a growing number of professional percussion groups; and it’s axiomatic that part of their job description is to generate literature, which they do with evangelical zeal and fervor. Textures, for two pianists and two percussionists, was written in 2012–2013. It was commissioned by the group Hammer/ Klavier: Svet Stoyanov ’07mm, Gwendolyn Burgett ’05mm, Thomas Rosenkranz and Michael Sheppard. They premiered it at Bowling Green State University on October 3, 2013 and at Oberlin College on October 5.
This unusual instrumental combination, first used by Bartók in his Sonata for two pianos and percussion, begs for scoring that brings the instruments to the edge of their respective sonic potentials. Pianos can function as percussion instruments, and percussion can explore its tuneful side, particularly through mallet instruments. The idea of “textures” occurred to me almost as soon as I started work. I didn’t first decide on a specific texture and then compose with that in mind. Rather, I jumped in, arms flailing, and then found the focus for a movement once its texture and musical ecology became clear. Basically, the piece celebrates the unique sonic potential of this unusual combination. It’s been interesting to start something new as a ‘senior citizen’. One of the reasons I gave up a promising career as a French horn player fifty years ago was that I wanted to do something where I’d be at the top of my game at the age I am now (70). I reasoned that were I to stay in performance I would be closing shop about now. But life is full of surprises. I had no idea that I would spend the best part of 35 years banging my head against the machine and then, when I just about had it figured out, I’d change my major and basically become a newbie again, writing music the old-fashioned way, this time for bows, lips, sticks, and fingers. — Paul Lansky
PROGRAM NOTES
mauricio kagel Dressur The German-Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel (1931–2008) was one of the most intriguing composers of the twentieth century. Many of his diverse works contain undercurrents of surrealism and anarchism in an effort to shed light on — and often confront — the musical tradition. His film Ludwig Van refashions Beethoven scores as furniture; his chamber work Der Schall employs cash registers and household appliances as its main instruments; and in his anti-opera Staatstheater, members of the chorus perform overlapping solos, soloists sing in a chorus, and non-dancers present a ballet. The half-hour percussion trio Dressur (1977) is rooted in Kagel’s concern for how audio recordings have altered the tradition of audience experience. “In the nineteenth century people still enjoyed music with their eyes as well, with all their senses,” Kagel noted. “Only with the increasing dominance of the mechanical reproduction of music, through broadcast and records, was this reduced to the purely acoustical dimension. What I want is to bring the audience back to an enjoyment of music with all senses. That’s why my music is a direct, exaggerated protest against the mechanical reproduction of music.” Like many of the other works in Kagel’s “instrumental theater” idiom, Dressur therefore combines the visual element with the auditory, the theatrical with the musical.
Utilizing over fifty instruments and noninstruments, Kagel creates sound out of theater (such as when a percussionist slams a chair on the ground several times), and theater out of sound (such as when castanets mimic the sound of a typewriter). The percussionist is a particularly fitting conduit for the visual-aural convergence: even in the most traditional works, his or her striking a variety of instruments, often while clearly visible behind several seated performers, seems to possess an inherent theatricality. Interestingly, Dressur has become something of a YouTube hit lately, with a handful of recorded performances (many by Yale’s own performers) totaling several thousand hits. If technological advances in the twentieth century resulted in audiences listening without seeing, those in the twenty-first may help bring us “back to an enjoyment of music with all senses.” — Jacob Cooper
UPCOMING EVENTS Four Nations Ensemble
Wei-Yi Yang, piano
january 25 15 Hillhouse Ave. | Sunday | 3 pm Collection of Musical Instruments Strange Accents: Composers Writing in Foreign Styles. Works by Telemann, Leclair, Geminiani, Handel, and more Tickets $25 • Seniors $20 • Students $10
february 4 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Horowitz Piano Series Selections from Scriabin’s enigmatic and mystical Etudes and Poèmes to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death, intertwined with works of Chopin and Liszt Tickets start at $13 • Students $7
Wendy Sharp and Friends Music by David Lang & Hannah Lash
january 25 Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 4 pm Faculty Artist Series Wendy Sharp, violin; with Marka Gustavsson, viola; Mimi Hwang, cello; and Melvin Chen, piano. Featuring music by Beethoven and George Tsontakis, plus Fauré’s Piano Quartet in G minor Free Admission
february 5 Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm New Music New Haven With Antico Moderno and Hilary Summers, contralto. Works by faculty composers David Lang and Hannah Lash, as well as graduate students in the School’s composition program Free Admission
Brentano String Quartet
Beethoven: Complete Cello Sonatas
january 27 Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm Oneppo Chamber Music Series Quartets by Haydn, Brahms, and James MacMillan Tickets start at $26 • Students $13
february 8 Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 2 pm Faculty Artist Series Ole Akahoshi, cello, and Peter Frankl, piano, perform the complete Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano Free Admission
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Robert Blocker, Dean