New Music New Haven, Martin Bresnick, faculty composer, April 18, 2019

Robert Blocker, Dean

N E W M US IC N E W H AV E N Hannah Lash, Artistic Director

Featuring music by

Martin Bresnick and Yale School of Music graduate-student composers Thursday, April 18, 2019 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Aaron Israel Levin b. 1995

Eikhah Gabrielle Herbst, ukulele & voice Tanner Porter, ukulele & voice Russell Fisher, percussion HĂŠloĂŻse Carlean Jones, harp Miles Walter, piano Harry Doernberg, cello Eric Timperman, bass Ryan Lindveit, conductor

Joel Thompson b. 1988

Choir: Anteo Fabris Michael Gancz Nate Huvard Nate May Paul Mortilla Peter Shin

The Struggle is Real Kyungah Oh, violin Yintong Liu, violin Rayna Chou, viola Ha Eun Song, cello

Nate May b. 1987

Improvisation and Half-Life Fragment Kohl Weisman, baritone Nate May, piano

Program, cont.

Gabrielle Lily Herbst b. 1986

Time Stops Gabrielle Lily Herbst, voice & electronics Matthew Woodard, violin Yebeen Seo, violin Alex McLaughlin, viola Samuel Walter, cello Paul Mortilla, conductor

intermission

Grant Luhman b. 1994

Chaffinch Park, for processed flute and cello harmonics Meera Gudipati, flute Josephina Kim, cello Anita BalĂĄzs, cello Yun Han, cello

Martin Bresnick b. 1946

The Planet of the Table I. Mrs. Anderson’s Swedish Baby II. She Measured the Hour III. Scene 10 Becomes 11 IV. Someone Has Walked Across the Snow V. His Self and the Sun Brentano String Quartet Mark Steinberg, violin Serena Canin, violin Misha Amory, viola Nina Lee, cello

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 Profiles

Student Profiles

Martin Bresnick

Aaron Israel Levin ’19MM Student of David Lang aaronisraellevin.com

Composer Martin Bresnick is Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the Composition Department at the Yale School of Music. His music has been performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Bang on A Can All Stars, among other ensembles. He has received commissions from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts, Fromm Foundation, and Chamber Music America.

Bresnick is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise L. Stoeger Prize, the ASCAP Foundation’s Aaron Copland Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Joel Thompson ’20MMa Student of Hannah Lash Nate May ’23DMA Student of Hannah Lash natemaymusic.com Gabrielle Lily Herbst ’20MM Student of Martin Bresnick and Aaron Jay Kernis iamgabimusic.com Grant Luhmann ’19MM Student of David Lang grantluhmann.com

Brentano String Quartet Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim.

Within a few years of its formation, the quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In recent seasons the quartet has appeared in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as Jessye Norman, Joyce DiDonato, Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida.

In fall 2014, the quartet became the quartetin-residence at the Yale School of Music, succeeding the Tokyo String Quartet in that position.

Staff Manager Jeffrey M. Mistri assistant manager/ Music Librarian Samuel Bobinski Office Assistant Kristy Tucker

Program Notes Aaron Israel Levin

Nate May

The Hebrew word “eikhah,” which translates to “how,” is the first word of the Biblical Book of Lamentations. In this piece, “eikhah” is posed as an existential question to God by a chorus that represents the corrupt priests and politicians from the Book of Lamentations. God, represented here by two voices always sung in unison, answers this question with a sardonic and blithe Yiddish proverb. When God ceases to answer, the chorus continues crying out, eternally chained to their question.

Half-Life The grain makes everything smell fried.

Trains. All night. Stopping at the silos.

This is industry. This is sleep. The crust in your eyes as you sing to the dew-slick dandelions. It is a bowl of beans smashed with mustard.

You are peeling a scab from your elbow—jeans holing at the knee.

The bus bobs your head against the glass, your face dissolving against the diesels convoying out of town.

Joel Thompson The fatigue I’ve gathered year after year and stored inside now heaves a muted cry of helplessness.

Nothing but fatigue, rounding my shoulders, heavier than ever on this late autumn day with a useless sun, a world of unforgiving disasters.

So many struggles and tragedies, so much sorrow and egotism in this dark, in this rotting century of hate.

_ Setting of a text by contemporary Cherokee poet Santee Frazier

Gabrielle Herbst “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.”

– Georgia O’Keefe

Grant Luhmann – Emil Dorian Quality of Witness: A Romanian Diary, 1937-1944

A partially-improvised piece for electronically processed flute whistle tones and cello harmonics.

Martin Bresnick Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Planet on the Table” begins: “Ariel was glad he had written his poems, They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked.”

In this string quartet, also entitled The Planet on the Table, my planet is made of the music and sounds of a remembered time or of something heard that I liked.

The quartet has five movements, each headed by a quotation from one of Stevens’ poems* as a point of departure or pathway into those remembered sounds and music: I. Mrs. Anderson’s Swedish Baby II. She Measured the Hour III. Scene 10 Becomes 11 IV. Someone Has Walked Across the Snow V. His Self and the Sun Like Stevens, my self and the sun are one, and my music, like his poetry, although makings of my self, is also makings of the sun. Stevens wrote it was not important that his poetry survive, which is also true of my work.

What matters is that my music, like his poetry, should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half perceived in the poverty of its sounds, of the planet of which it was part. *Sources for the titles:

Upcoming Events apr 26 Peter Oundjian, principal conductor

Yale Philharmonia Reinecke’s Flute Concerto in D major, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68.

7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, Students FREE* may 3 The Old Maid and the Thief may 4 & Le Rossignol

Yale Opera

A new double-bill production of Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol,

directed by Dustin Wills, with

music direction by Douglas

Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, Students $5 may 7 Competition Winners

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

Performances by the winners of the Yale School of Music’s annual Chamber Music Competition.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, Students $6

may 7 Yale Brass Ensemble

YSM Ensembles 12:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Free may 8 Robert Blocker, piano

Horowitz Piano Series A recital by faculty pianist Robert Blocker, whom the Los Angeles Times has described as a pianist of “great skill and accomplishment.”

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, Students $7 may 9 Guitar Chamber Music

YSM Ensembles 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Free may 19 YSM Commencement Concert

Special Events

Performances by graduating students from the YSM Class of 2019.

4 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Free

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