Robert Blocker, Dean
ysm ensembles
Yale Percussion Group
Robert van Sice, director Morse Recital Hall November 12, 2016 • Saturday at 4 pm
Yale School of Music
YPG Plays YSM November 12, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall
Martin Bresnick b. 1946
Caprichos Enfáticos: Los Desastres de la Guerra (Emphatic Caprices: The Disasters of War) (2007) I. Farándula simple (Simple Farandole) II. Farándula de charlatanes—No saben el camino (Farandole of charlatans—They don’t know the way.) III. Estragos de la guerra (Ravages of war) IV. Farándula de políticos—Contra el bien general (Farandole of politicians—Against the common good.) V. Farándula de populacho (Farandole of the rabble) VI. Extraña Devoción! (Strange devotion!) VII. Farándula de creyentes—Nada. Ello dirá (Farandole of believers—Nothing. It will say.) VIII. Farándula doble (Double Farandole) Lisa Moore, piano Matthew Keown, percussion Kramer Milan, percussion Georgi Videnov, percussion Dmitrii Nilov, percussion intermission
Toru Takemitsu 1930–1996
Rain Tree (1981) Georgi Videnov, percussion Matthew Keown, percussion Sam Um, percussion
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
Yale Percussion Group
Christopher Theofanidis b. 1967
Aria for solo marimba (2016) World premiere Sam Um, marimba
Michael Laurello b. 1981
Spine (2015) Matthew Keown, percussion Sam Um, percussion Kramer Milan, percussion Georgi Videnov, percussion intermission
Hannah Lash b. 1981
Prelude and Chorale (2016) World premiere YoungKyoung Lee, percussion Dmitrii Nilov, percussion Sam Um, percussion Kramer Milan, percussion
Krists Auznieks b. 1992
Quartz (2016) World premiere Robin Giesbrecht, piano Miles Walter, piano YoungKyoung Lee, percussion Dmitrii Nilov, percussion
David Lang b. 1957
the so-called laws of nature (2002) Matthew Keown, percussion Sam Um, percussion YoungKyoung Lee, percussion Georgi Videnov, percussion
This evening’s concert is played in loving memory of James Deitz.
Program Notes
Caprichos Enfáticos: Los Desastres de la Guerra (Emphatic Caprices: The Disasters of War) (2007) Caprichos Enfáticos is a concerto in eight movements for piano/keyboard and percussion quartet. It was commissioned by Meet the Composer for pianist Lisa Moore and Sō Percussion. The eight movements are accompanied by interpolated DVD projections, created by Johanna Bresnick and based on Francisco Goya’s book of etchings Los Desastres de la Guerra. Konrad Kaczmarek was the technical consultant. The titles of the eight movements are either by Goya himself or suggested by his ideas. A farándula, or farandole, was a chain dance popular in Provence, although its origins are much older. The dance is often in 6/8 time, with a moderate to fast tempo. In modern Spanish, a farándula is a company of actors. —Martin Bresnick Rain Tree (1981) Takemitsu’s Rain Tree draws inspiration from imagery found in Kenzaburo Oe’s novel Atama no ii, Ame no Ki, in which a leafy tree continues to shed drops of water even after rain has ceased. Pointillistic and impressionistic in its construction, the piece is evocative of Messiaen, a composer whom Takemitsu idolized throughout his career. The sound of a single crotale note opens the piece and begins a process of textural accretion that ultimately expands into a denser orchestration of marimba sounds. The piece retains an improvisatory quality
throughout, even as shifts in the lighting of the space (specified by Takemitsu in the score) alter the listener’s experience of the performance. Rain Tree was the first of three related pieces. The other two, Rain Tree Sketch (1982) and Rain Tree Sketch II (1992), were written for piano. —Nathan Reiff Aria for solo marimba (2016) Aria is an adaptation of the third movement of my marimba concerto (2013), written for and dedicated to Robert van Sice. It focuses on the lyrical and delicate side of the instrument and was written in collaboration with van Sice. —Christopher Theofanidis Spine (2015) 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 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, and occasionally the primary line loses its unique identity within the texture of the ensemble. I tried to impart an almost biological sense to the way motives grow, attempting to balance intuitive—almost
Program Notes
improvisatory—types of development with Reveals speckles of meaning more structured patterns and processes. I Stardust on your temples am incredibly grateful to the talented musi—Krists Auznieks cians of the Yale Percussion Group for their dedication and unwavering support. —Michael Laurello the so-called laws of nature (2002) Prelude and Chorale (2016) Prelude and Chorale is a piece about ebb and flow. In the Prelude, patterns set up by the arpeggiating harmonies are constantly in flux, creating a sense of forward motion. But yet the overall gestural surface of the piece does not necessarily develop during this section—the constant state of unrest is itself a steady-state. The Chorale, when it comes in, feels at first like a quieter, more still music. But actually this is the music whose internal harmonic and voice leading relationships create a truer sense of direction forward than was the case in the Prelude. —Hannah Lash Quartz (2016) Listening for resonances I could only hear rocks Shattering light I wanted there to be angels No hardness no solidity Only truth illuminated How can one harken Back and forth Bear with me dear It will not take long Some unnoticed warmth
I went to college to study science. I was expected to become a doctor, or at the very least a medical researcher, and I spent much of my undergraduate years studying math and chemistry and physics, hanging out with future scientists, going to their parties, sharing their apartments, eavesdropping on their conversations. I remember a particularly heated discussion about a quote from Wittgenstein: “At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanation of natural phenomena.” This quote rankled all of us future scientists, as it implied that science can’t explain the universe but can only offer mere descriptions of things observed. Over the years it occurred to me that this could be rephrased as a musical problem. Because music is made of proportions and numbers and formulas and patterns, I always wonder what these numbers actually mean. Do the numbers themselves generate a certain structure, creating the context and the meaning and the form, or are they just the incidental byproducts of other, deeper, more mysterious processes? My piece the so-called laws of nature tries to explore the “meaning” of various processes and formulas. The individual parts are virtually identical—the percussionists play identical patterns throughout, playing unison rhythms on subtly different instruments. Most of these instruments the performers are required to build themselves.
Program Notes • Artist Profiles
Some of the patterns between the players are displaced in time. Some are on instruments that have a kind of incoherence built into their sounds. Does the music come out of the patterns or in spite of them? I am not sure which, but I know that this piece is as close to becoming a scientist as I will ever get. —David Lang Yale Percussion Group
Robert van Sice, director Percussionist Robert van Sice has premiered more than one hundred works including concertos, chamber music, and solo pieces. He has made solo appearances with symphony orchestras and given recitals in Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. 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 to be 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 School of Music faculty in the fall of 1997.
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 perform as concerto soloists with the Berlin Philharmonic, to form the acclaimed quartet Sō Percussion, and to perform with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Oslo and Auckland philharmonics. Former members 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 Lisa Moore, piano at the University of Miami, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Baylor The New York Times writes: “Lisa Moore, University, Bard College, the University an Australian pianist long based in and of Massachusetts, Amherst, Cornell, Uni- around New York, has always been a natversity of Alabama, Notre Dame, Dartmouth ural, compelling storyteller.” TimeOut College, the University of Kansas, and the New York describes her as a “wonderfully Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. lyrical pianist.” The Yale Percussion Group has twice won the Percussive Arts Society’s International Lisa Moore has recorded nine solo discs Percussion Ensemble Competition. The (on Cantaloupe, Orange Mountain Music, ensemble released its first CD on NMC and Tall Poppies) of music that ranges from Records (London) in 2016. Leoš Janáçek to Philip Glass. Her latest
Artist Profiles
solo disc, The Stone People (Cantaloupe), features the music of John Luther Adams, Martin Bresnick, Missy Mazzoli, Kate Moore, and Julia Wolfe. She has recorded more than thirty collaborative discs for the Sony, Nonesuch, DG, BMG, New World, Tall Poppies, ABC Classics, Albany, New Albion, Starkland, and Harmonia Mundi labels. Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians (Harmonia Mundi) recorded by Ensemble Signal recently made The New York Times’ “Best Classical Music Recording” list.
Moore has performed concertos with the London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Albany, La Jolla, Sydney, Thai, Tasmania, and Canberra symphony orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi, Wesleyan Orchestra and Sumarsam Gamelan, Monash Academy of Performing Arts Orchestra, and the Queensland Philharmonic – under the batons of Bradley Lubman, Steven Schick, Richard Mills, Benjamin Northey, Reinbert de Leeuw, Jorge Mester, and Angel Gil-Ordonez. Moore has a Master of Music degree from Eastman and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY Stonybrook. She was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre in January 2016. Moore teaches at the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival New Music Workshop and is a regular guest artist at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. Lisa Moore is a Steinway artist.
Moore has performed with a diverse range of musicians and artists, including the London Sinfonietta, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York City Ballet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Ensemble Signal, Clocked Out, Australian Chamber Orchestra, TwoSense, Grand Band, and the Paul Dresher Double Duo. From 1992» www.lisamoore.org 2008 she was the founding pianist for the electro-acoustic sextet the Bang On A Can All-Stars, winner of Musical America’s Martin Bresnick, composer 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award. She has collaborated with composers ranging Composer Martin Bresnick was born in from Iannis Xenakis, Elliot Carter, Philip New York City in 1946 and is presently a Glass, Steve Reich, and Frederic Rzewski professor of composition and the coorto Ornette Coleman, David Lang, Meredith dinator of the composition department at Monk, Julia Wolfe, Thurston Moore, the Yale School of Music. He was educated Hannah Lash, and Martin Bresnick. at the High School of Music and Art, the Moore’s festival performances include University of Hartford (’67BA), Stanford Lincoln Center, BAM, Banff, Gilmore, University (’68MA, ’72DMA), and the Graz, Tanglewood, Huddersfield, Paris Akademie für Musik, Vienna (’69–’70). d’Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, His principal teachers of composition BBC Proms, Southbank, Adelaide, Perth, include György Ligeti, John Chowning, Sydney, Melbourne Metropolis, Israel, and Gottfried von Einem. Mr. Bresnick and Warsaw in such venues as the Royal has taught at many schools in the United Albert Hall, La Scala, Carnegie Hall, and States and Europe, including the San the Musikverein. As a featured soloist, Francisco Conservatory of Music (1971–72),
Artist Profiles
Eastman School of Music (2002–2003), New College in Oxford (2004), and the Royal Academy of Music in London (2005), among others. In 2006, Mr. Bresnick was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Bresnick’s compositions cover a wide range of instrumentation, from chamber music to symphonic compositions and computer music. His orchestral music has been performed by major symphonies around the world, including the San Francisco Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Münster Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo, and Izumi Sinfonietta Osaka. His chamber music has been performed in concert by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Da Capo Chamber Players, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and MusicWorks!, among others. His music has been heard at numerous festivals, including Prague Spring, Tanglewood, Banff, New Music America, and New Horizons. He has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992), the Fromm Foundation (1995), Lincoln Center Chamber Players (1997), Meet the Composer (1998), and Chamber Music America (1999). He has received many prizes, the most recent being the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise L. Stoeger Prize for Chamber Music (1996), the “Charles Ives Living” award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), the ASCAP Foundation’s Aaron Copland Prize for teaching (2000), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003). Mr. Bresnick has written music for films, two of which — Arthur and Lillie (1975) and The Day After Trinity (1981), both directed by Jon Else — were nominated for Academy Awards in the documentary category. Mr. Bresnick’s music has been recorded by
Cantaloupe Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, New World Records, Artifact Music, and Albany Records, and is published by Carl Fischer Music (New York), Bote and Bock (Berlin), and Common-Muse Music Publishers (New Haven). » martinbresnick.com Christopher Theofanidis, composer Christopher Theofanidis (born December 18, 1967, in Dallas, Texas) has had his music performed by many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Moscow Soloists, and the National, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit symphonies, among many others. He has also served as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony during its 2006-7 season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang. Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the International Masterprize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship to France to study with Tristan Mural at IRCAM, a Tanglewood fellowship, and two fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2007 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for best composition for his chorus and orchestra work The Here and Now, based on the poetry of Rumi. His orchestral work Rainbow Body has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the new millennium, having been performed by more than 150 orchestras
Artist Profiles
internationally. Mr. Theofanidis has written a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre, a work for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as part of its “New Brandenburg” series, and two operas for the San Francisco and Houston Grand Opera companies. Thomas Hampson sang the lead role in the San Francisco work. His work for Houston, The Refuge, featured six sets of international non-Western musicians alongside the opera musicians. He has a long-standing relationship with the Atlanta Symphony and Maestro Robert Spano, and has just had his concert-length oratorio, Creation/Creator, recorded with them. That work will be featured at the SHIFT festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. next season with the ASO, chorus, and soloists. His new work Dreamtime Ancestors, for the orchestral consortium New Music for America, is being played by more than fifty orchestras this and next season. He has served as a delegate to the United States-Japan Foundation’s Leadership Program, and he is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University as well as the Juilliard School. Mr. Theofanidis is currently a professor at the Yale School of Music.
Foundation, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Colorado and Aspen Music festivals, among many others. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship (2011) and Fellowship (2016) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, and the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, among others. Recent premieres include Three Shades Without Angles, for flute, viola, and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players; Two Movements for violin and piano, commissioned by the Library of Congress for Ensemble Intercontemporain; a new chamber opera, Beowulf, for Guerilla Opera; and new orchestral works for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as two concerti for harp premiered by the American Composers Orchestra and the Colorado Music Festival, both with Lash as soloist. In 2016, Lash was honored with a Composer Portraits Concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. Lash’s Requiem was premiered by the Yale Choral Artists in Hannah Lash, composer September 2016, and her large-scale orchestral work The Voynich Symphony Hailed by The New York Times as “striking will be premiered by the New Haven and resourceful … handsomely brooding,” Symphony Orchestra in May 2017. Lash Hannah Lash’s music has been commisobtained her Ph.D. in Composition from sioned by the Fromm Foundation, the Harvard University in 2010. She has held Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama teaching positions at Harvard University Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, the (teaching fellow), at Alfred University Library of Congress, Cabrillo Festival of (guest professor of composition), and Contemporary Music, Columbia Unicurrently serves on the composition versity’s Miller Theatre, the Naumburg faculty at the Yale School of Music.
Artist Profiles
David Lang, composer David Lang received the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his piece the little match girl passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the vocal ensemble Theater of Voices, directed by Paul Hillier. His work is regularly performed by major music, dance, opera, and theatrical organizations throughout the world. Recent works include the concerto man made for the ensemble Sō Percussion and a consortium of orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; mountain for the Cincinnati Symphony; and death speaks, for Shara Worden, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Owen Pallett, at Carnegie Hall. In 2015 Lang composed the music for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth, for which he received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice award nominations, among other accolades. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music festival Bang on a Can. Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Lang holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, and received a D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze, and Martin Bresnick. David Lang joined the Yale faculty in 2008.
PETER OUNDJIAN
BRENTANO STRING QUARTET
YALE OPERA
Robert Blocker, Dean
We invite you into Yale’s celebrated concert halls to experience extraordinary solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral performances of repertoire ranging from early to new music. Come see and hear our distinguished faculty, gifted students and alumni, and acclaimed guest artists in more than 200 performances, many of which are free and streamed live online. COLLECTION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Historically informed performances by early music specialists in an intimate setting
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Upcoming Events Warren Lee, piano november 15
YSM Special Events Guest pianist and Yale School of Music alumnus Warren Lee performs works by Bach-Busoni, Tan Dun, Beethoven, and Chopin, along with his own music Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm free admission
Hung-Kuan Chen november 16
Horowitz Piano Series School of Music faculty pianist Hung-Kuan Chen performs works by Schumann, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $13 • Students $7
Jordan Kuspa, composition november 17
Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Composer Jordan Kuspa presents a DMA recital featuring performances of his music by Sandbox Percussion and Quartet Metadata Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission
Yongyan Hu, guest conductor november 18 Yale Philharmonia
Yongyan Hu leads a program that pays tribute to the memory of longtime Yale Philharmonia conductor Otto-Werner Mueller; featuring music by Brahms and Bruckner Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Yale Faculty/Staff $8 Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door
Yale Voxtet november 19
ISM Ensembles The Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of Music present Salomone Rossi: Baroque Music from Jewish Mantova. Nicholas McGegan, conductor and harpsichord Morse Recital Hall | Saturday| 7:30 pm free admission
Brass of Yale Preview Concert november 29
Yale in New York The YSM brass faculty, students, and alumni perform a program that includes music from the German Renaissance and Gunther Schuller’s Magical Trumpets, among other works Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm free admission
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