New Music for Orchestra, April 22, 2021

Robert Blocker, Dean April 22, 2021 7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall

New Music for Orchestra New Music New Haven Aaron Jay Kernis, artistic director with

Yale Philharmonia Ryan Tani, student conductor Soomin Kim b. 1995

I dreamed of a small blue stone Harris Bernstein, viola

Samantha Wolf b. 1990

Tundra

Eli Greenhoe b. 1994

The Bodiless

Frances Pollock b. 1990

God is Dead, Schoenberg is Dead, but love will come again

Linda Dallimore b. 1981

Here Goes…

Roster Violin 1 Yoon Be Kim* Ilana Zaks Yuna Jo Alexander Goldberg Jieming Tang Violin 2 Jeremy Lap Hei Hao Rebecca Weger Beatrice Hsieh In Ae Lee Shenae Anderson

Viola Adam Newman Deng Zhang Alex McLaughlin Harris Bernstein Cello Samuel Walter Hye In Lee Hans Emil Sollesnes Hongli Diao Double Bass Zachary Merkovsky Zhenyuan Yao

Timpani Russell Fisher Percussion Kevin Zetina Michael Yeung Harp Jane Yoo Piano Derek Hartman *Concertmaster

Program Notes Soomin Kim During this last year, I became more of an outdoor person thanks to the pandemic. I frequented three New Haven beaches: East Shore Park, Lighthouse Point, and Hammonasset Beach, and in the fall, I hiked up Camel’s Hump in Vermont. In the winter, I went to spend the holidays in Lake Superior in Minnesota, and somehow ended up in the Bahamas – I won’t elaborate; it’s complicated – where I swam and sunbathed everyday. Being in nature and seeing beautiful sceneries significantly helped me stay sane in the midst of everything that happened in the last year, both global and personal. As corny as it sounds, nature heals! I dreamed of a small blue stone is both my personal recollection of the ecosystems I experienced, and a musical representation of myself trying to unfold and process the complex emotions evoked by some of the recent events.

Samantha Wolf Permafrost HVAC systems Radio static Noise floors Electromagnetic buzzing Anechoic chambers Vacuum cleaners Radiators Bluetooth speakers Intergalactic chatter Your connection is unstable Eli Greenhoe The Bodiless is a meditation on sound, time, and autonomy. I wrote it at the tail end of the winter in early 2021, as my immediate world was thawing, but also as the larger world was approaching the first anniversary of an ongoing crisis that has enacted a heavy toll on humanity. I was overtaken with a powerful sense that I needed to feel connected to something transcendent, outside the realm of the terrestrial or quotidian. I was also aware that this piece would likely be one of the last that I wrote in New Haven, CT, a city which I’ve called home for the majority of the past five years.

And so The Bodiless begins with the musical gesture that ends the first piece I finished in New Haven, a work for clarinet and piano called After William Forsythe—two alternations, one melodic and one harmonic, are set against one another above low, rumbling bass notes. Beyond sharing this verbatim material, the pieces otherwise have very little to do with one another—but I like it that way. A lot of my favorite art feels profoundly meaningful but also essentially arbitrary.

The Bodiless is dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli (1963–2004), whose music has had a profound influence on me, and who I was listening to a great deal during my first months in New Haven. The title is taken from Wallace Stevens’ “The Auroras of Autumn”: This is where the serpent lives, the bodiless.

His head is air. Beneath his tip at night Eyes open and fix on us in every sky.

Or is this another wriggling out of the egg, Another image at the end of the cave, Another bodiless for the body's slough?

Frances Pollock This piece is simply a protest against nihilism. May we always be able to turn our sights towards brighter days.

Linda Dallimore Here Goes… was originally written for full orchestra and orchestrated here for strings, percussion, harp, and piano. Linda composed the work during late 2020 and early 2021 in Auckland, New Zealand, whilst completing her Masters of Musical Arts at Yale remotely due to the pandemic. Having relocated to New Haven, Connecticut in August 2019 to study in-person, Linda also gave birth to her son, Charlie, there near the end of her first semester. The piece captures Linda’s reflection on some of the excitement and ordeal of those moments.