Paul Kerekes, composition, Nov 29, 2018

Robert Blocker, Dean

doctor of musical arts degree recital

Paul Kerekes, composition Thursday, November 29, 2018 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Paul Kerekes b. 1988

wither (2014) Grand Band Blair McMillen, piano 1 Erika Dohi, piano 2 Paul Kerekes, piano 3 Lisa Moore, piano 4 Ben Wallace, piano 5 Isabelle O’Connell, piano 6

Kerekes

bloom (2015) Grand Band

Kerekes

figment (2015) Albert Yamamoto, violin Amy Nickler, double bass Amy Hur, clarinet Ethan Lippert, bassoon Oscar Mason, trumpet Danny Alford, trombone Alexander Casimiro, percussion

Kerekes

trail (2015) recording Trevor Babb, 7 electric guitars

intermission

Kerekes

memory etude (2017) Invisible Anatomy Fay Wang, voice Jillian Blythe, cello Brendon Randall-Myers, electric guitar Ben Wallace, percussion Paul Kerekes, piano

Kerekes

comb (2015) members of Invisible Anatomy Brendon Randall-Myers, electric guitar Paul Kerekes, piano

Kerekes

four pieces (2015) I. improvisation 1 (after Leunig) II. hypermarket III. aviphobia, among others IV. improvisation 2 (self-portrait with MJ and Ligeti) Josh Henderson, viola Paul Kerekes, piano

This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited.

Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profile Paul Kerekes, composition Paul Kerekes is a composer and pianist based in New York City who often confronts and blurs the space between composition and performance. As a cofounding member of Grand Band – a piano sextet described by The New York Times as “a kind of new-music supergroup” – and Invisible Anatomy – an “otherworldly and uncanny” (Village Voice) composerperformer ensemble/collective that’s “shedding labels” (Yale Alumni Magazine) – most of his projects engage and unify these two sometimes-disparate worlds.

Both ensembles have had the pleasure of being featured on festivals across the States and abroad – most notably Grand Band’s performance of Kerekes’ first six-piano piece, wither, on The Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, which was described as “pointillistic, sparkling, and delicate” by the Kalamazoo Gazette, and Invisible Anatomy’s performance on the Beijing Modern Music Festival, which led to consequent tours throughout China’s major cities.

Paul’s music has also been described as “gently poetic” (The New York Times), “striking” (WQXR), and “highly eloquent” (New Haven Advocate), and he has had the privilege of hearing his pieces performed by many outstanding ensembles, some of which include the American Composers Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, New Morse Code, guitarist Trevor Babb, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Real Loud, andPlay, and Exceptet, in such venues as Merkin Hall, (le) poisson rouge, The DiMenna Center, Roulette, Spectrum,

and Symphony Space. His compositions and playing have also been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, hosted by Fred Child, and released on major recording labels such as New Amsterdam Records, Innova, New Focus, and Naxos.

He is a recipient of the Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP, the JFund Award from the American Composer’s Forum, and the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Paul is a graduate of Queens College and Yale School of Music, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Program Notes by Paul Kerekes wither

figment

I have always been really attracted to Renaissance and Baroque music and their performance practices. There’s a quality of the voice within every gesture, as if it all required breath, even the “non-breathing” instruments. The result is a diminishing relationship between the notes–a strong to weak shape that, to me, has always molded the music in a very natural and expressive way. wither explores this gesture at the piano, as well as the instrument’s natural decay.

The phrases travel throughout the ensemble to illustrate a distancing effect through shifting location, notes are struck and sustained with the pedal allowing them to ring and die away, and music travels from high to low to portray a quality of withering over the piano’s expansive range.

figment was written for the debut recital of a septet that goes by the name of Exceptet.

The piece has a very whimsical nature about it, which partly came from the lightheartedness of the group, as you might have guessed from their name, but also the quirkiness of this particular combination of instruments. As a composer, I found it hard not to think of the instrumentation’s roots in Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat.

It got me thinking a lot about the connections between his compositional voice and choice of instruments. Not to mention his unique handling of orchestration, which emphasized the ensemble’s more rustic qualities.

wither was premiered at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan. bloom When I was asked to write a complementary movement to wither for the 2015 Bang on a Can Marathon, my first thought was to do the opposite and base the piece on growth. In bloom, the shape is concerned with accumulation, which you’ll hear most directly through an increase in volume and amount of pianos playing across each phrase, but perhaps less obvious is expansion. The main theme begins by alternating two notes back and forth and gradually adds one note at a time to the mix until a larger arpeggiated chord is reached. To me, this musical idea reminded me of time-lapse videos of plants or flowers unfurling.

figment is a fantasy on the soul of this ensemble, which to me also inherently contains the spirit of Stravinsky. I also wanted to approach my orchestration differently and find a way of blending what many composers may see as an unwieldy combination. I treated it very much like a miniature orchestra, making many connections between instruments to achieve layered sounds and bursts of color. trail trail further explores the idea of “traveling music,” as I have in other recent works using large homogenous ensembles. This unity of timbre and texture allows for a play between homogeny and autonomy: from the haze of the ensemble emerges moments of controlled clarity. The result is a sort of “traveling” effect, where these salient moments can be followed throughout the piece and throughout the ensemble. The idea seems

most appropriate for guitar, which is iconically known as a traveling instrument in the folk tradition. In this setting, it is the music that travels among the guitars, bringing the listener to different places. trail was written for guitarist Trevor Babb with support from the Jerome Fund for New Music, a program of the American Composer’s Forum. memory etude memory etude was written for a production Invisible Anatomy premiered at Roulette in 2017 called “Transfigure.” The eveninglength work consisted of pieces that each evoked an idea about transformation.

Somewhere along our process of development, an idea came up about taking a musical excerpt from a previous production and altering it just enough so that it becomes unrecognizable. I was fascinated by this thought of keeping certain elements the same, so one can still derive its source material upon closer examination, but have an immediate sensation of hearing something completely new. Our singer Fay Wang wrote a brilliant piece the previous year for a concert we called “Dissections” and there’s a six bar melody in the middle that she turned into a massive chorale canon.

The melody had been a bit of an earworm for me over that year, so I knew immediately that it would be the perfect candidate for me to transfigure. It worked out that I was able to alter one’s experience of the melody by changing only its rhythmic profile. In sections where the original melody appears, it is surrounded by new textures, simulating the experience of recalling things from the past but failing to fully recapture its entirety.

comb In 2015, Invisible Anatomy made our debut with a show called “Body Parts” at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn. Like our later concerts, this was also similarly designed to have a central thematic idea that we each wrote pieces inspired by – in this case we chose different body parts to respond to. Texturally speaking, comb relates a lot to other pieces of mine where the central focus is harmony and through overlapping chords of the progression, the effect of going in and out of focus comes through. I saw this as a portrayal of combing through hair – one is working their way through knotted parts (moments of rhythmic and harmonic haziness) and gradually smoothing them out (harmonic and rhythmic clarity). four pieces These short movements for viola and piano are character pieces – each movement’s inspiration serves as the launching point for a musical portrait. The first is an attempt to capture the whimsical yet serious tone of Michael Leunig’s work. The second examines patterns found in images of well-stocked, ultra-organized supermarkets. The third reflects on fear, particularly that of flying.

The fourth is an homage to the styles of Michael Jackson and György Ligeti.

Violist Xina Hawkins gave the premiere in Melbourne during her fellowship at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).

Upcoming Events dec 1 Vista: Chamber Music

YSM Ensembles 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Free

dec 6 Patrick Jankowski, horn

Doctor of Musical Arts Recital 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Free

dec 4 Emerson String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

A performance by the legendary Emerson String Quartet, an ensemble The New Yorker has said is “as eminent as ever.”

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, students $13

dec 12 Guitar Chamber Music

YSM Ensembles 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Free

dec 5 Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Joseph Slifka Center

Free dec 6 New Music for Orchestra

New Music New Haven

A program of new orchestral music by the School’s student composers performed by the Yale Philharmonia, with guest conductor Julian Pellicano.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall

Free

jan 16 Peter Serkin, piano

Horowitz Piano Series Visiting professor of piano Peter Serkin performs Bach’s enduring “Goldberg” Variations and works by Mozart.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $11 jan 18 Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Yale Philharmonia

The Yale Philharmonia performs Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, an arresting musical portrait of resistance.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5

$3 surcharge at the door

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