New Music New Haven, Katherine Balch, featured composer, April 21, 2022

Robert Blocker, Dean

new music new haven Aaron Jay Kernis, Artistic Director

Katherine Balch featured composer

Thursday, April 21, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.

Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Program Udi Perlman b. 1990

Psalm 86 (2022) Yale Glee Club Chamber Singers Nate Widelitz, conductor

Lila Meretzky b. 1998

Two Triangles (2022) Makana Medeiros, percussion

Marco-Adrián Ramos b. 1995

¡Precaución! Huapanguero suelto (2022) Gabrielle Chou, violin

Samantha Wolf b. 1990

Early Pandemic Nostalgia Meditation (2022) Maggie McCaffery, narrator Maura Tuffy, voice Eunsae Lee, violin Guan-Ru Lin, violin Serena Hsu, viola Jihyun Hwang, cello Aaron Kurz, piano

Soomin Kim b. 1995

H. A. N. Y. U. N. I. M. (2022) I. Jungnang Rose Park II. Gae-do III. Jongam dong IV. Wherever you are Soomin Kim, soprano Harris Bernstein, viola

pause Audience members are asked to refrain from mingling.

Katherine Balch b. 1991

Phrases (2017) I. le haut étange fume II. quand le monde III. j’ai tendu des cordes IV. il sonne une cloche Mary Bonhang, soprano Evan Premo, double bass

Aaron Israel Levin b. 1995

Snow Fractals (2022) Cameron Cullen, flute Alex Dergal, clarinet Riana Heath, violin Cheng “Allen” Liang, cello

Benjamin Webster b. 1997

Serenata (2022) Anna Lee, solo violin Andrew Samarasekara, violin 1 Yan Li, violin 2 Brian Isaacs, viola Hans Emil Sollesnes, cello Dylan Reckner, double bass Elvin Schlanger, flute Tianyi Shen, clarinet Torrin Hallett, horn Michael Yeung, percussion Linda Lee, piano Maura Tuffy, conductor

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.

Texts & Translations Psalm 86 udi perlman

Psalm 86 (King James Version)

(1) Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me; For I am poor and needy. [...]

(3) Be merciful to me, O Lord, For I cry to You all day long. [...]

(6) Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; And attend to the voice of my supplications.

(7) In the day of my trouble I will call upon You, For You will answer me.

(8) Among the gods there is none like You, O Lord; Nor are there any works like Your works [...]

(10) For You are great, and do wondrous things; You alone are God. [...]

(12) I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And I will glorify Your name forevermore ¡Precaución! Huapanguero suelto Marco-Adrián Ramos Guapa huapanguera suelta, ¿qué nos ha norteado?

235etetcetcet 352 523 ?¡|:123223/122232:|!¡ Sabía que también las caderas del sonido vuelan en luz y lumbre H. A. N. Y. U. N. I. M. Soomin Kim I. Jungnang Rose Park When you were 24, you had mom; when mom was 24, she had me. I was thinking about this when we went to see roses in the park in the summer of 2018. All three of us born in the Year of the Pig — I

Huapanguera on the loose, what has led us to this place?

235etetcetcet 352 523 i i i |:123223/122232:|?!

Did you know that the hips of sound also soar into light and flame

wondered if I would also somehow have a daughter, in the Year of the Pig, who’s kind like you, who’s tall like you, who’s got curly hair like you, who’s strong like you.

II. Gae-do 갱본에 벅금이 부글부글 가이내야 머이내야 갱본에 벅금이 부글부글 III. Jongam-dong You asked me to teach you how to write your name in English.

You practiced everyday.

H, A, N, Y, U, N, I, M. IV. Wherever you are Yes, I’m doing well.

I eat well.

I wear my mask everywhere.

No need to worry about me.

Yes, I cried when I read your letter.

How are things where you are?

Why were you so proud of me?

I was barely there.

I’m sorry.

I miss you too.

I pray to the same God you prayed to, hoping, foolishly, that I eventually end up in the same place as you. 힘낼게요. 몸조심할게요. 행복할게요. 한 달에 한번씩은 꼭 하늘을 볼게요.

Love, Soomin.

Artist Profile Katherine Balch ’17MM, featured composer Called “spellbinding” (Seen and Heard International) with “glow and poise and electric tension” (The Daily Telegraph), the music of composer Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds, inviting audiences into a sonic world characterized by imagination, discovery, and textural lyricism.

Inspired by the intimacy of quotidian objects, found sounds, and natural processes, she has been described as “some kind of musical Thomas Edison – you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Katherine’s work has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, l’Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the symphony orchestras of Minnesota, Oregon, Albany, Indianapolis, and Tokyo. She has been featured on IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Fontainebleau Music Festival, and Festival MANCA in France, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK, Suntory Summer Arts and Takefu Music Festival in Japan, and the Aspen, Norfolk, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood music festivals in the United States. Her work has been presented in major global venues including Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.

Winner of the 2020–2021 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Katherine was recently nominated by violinist Hilary Hahn for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020 Career Advancement Award. She has also been honored by ASCAP, BMI, the

American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and Wigmore Hall. Her music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Music.

Katherine was the 2017–2020 composerin-residence for the California Symphony, where she was lauded by the Mercury News as a “superbly gifted composer [with] a compositional voice that is truly unique and full of wonder.” She has also served as composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Inc. Deeply committed to pursuing inclusive, engaging pedagogical practices that empower students through creative musicmaking, Katherine is guest faculty at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Effective July 2022, she will join the faculty of Yale School of Music as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition. She has previously served on faculty at the Mannes School of Music, The Walden School and Bard College Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division.

Currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at Columbia University, she counts George Lewis, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Marcos Balter among her mentors there.

Katherine documents her lived experiences on the page, with each composition serving as a diary of what has captivated her curiosity. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, or hanging out with her feline sidekick, Zarathustra, and her husband, fellow composer Ted Moore.

Student Profiles

Staff

Udi Perlman ’26DMA Student of Christopher Theofanidis » udiperlman.com

Manager Jeffrey M. Mistri

Lila Meretzky ’22MM Student of David Lang » lilameretzky.com Marco-Adrián Ramos ’22MMA Student of David Lang » marcoadrianramos.com Samantha Wolf ’21MM ’22MMA Student of David Lang » samanthawolfmusic.com Soomin Kim ’21MM ’22MMA Student of Martin Bresnick » soominkim.net Aaron Israel Levin ’19MM ’27DMA Student of Aaron Jay Kernis » aaronisraellevin.com Benjamin Webster ’23MMA Student of Martin Bresnick » benwebstermusic.com

Music Librarian Samuel Bobinski office assistant Matthew Matheny

Program Notes by the composers Psalm 86 udi perlman

Early Pandemic Nostalgia Meditation samantha wolf

Like many other psalms, Psalm 86 presents a praise to God alongside an emphatic plea for salvation. What attracted me to this specific text is its central poetic metaphor: listening. Throughout much of the piece, the choir sings as one, asking to be heard.

The opening cry, “bow down your ear, O Lord, hear me,” inspired the bending melodic gesture that permeate the entire composition. Commissioned by the 2021–22 Yale Glee Club Chamber Singers, the piece uses selected verses from Psalm 86, sung in Hebrew, my mother tongue.

Welcome to Ambient Dreams for SleepDeprived Teens, the radio show that puts your health and wellbeing first, so you don’t have to – and more importantly, so Yale Health doesn’t have to. Sit back and relax as we take you back to the era of whipped coffee, faith in humanity, and excessive toilet paper hoarding.

Two Triangles lila meretzky Two Triangles was written for my friend, percussionist Sam Carullo. Sam asked me to write a piece inspired by music of the European middle ages and Renaissance.

There is a dearth of percussion music from this period. Music notation was for hundreds of years the sole possession of literate monks who only wrote vocal music, and percussion was largely an oral folk tradition. So this project required me to create a kind of imaginary music that probably (well, certainly) wouldn’t have existed. Two Triangles uses the Ars Nova-era technique of isorhythm, a grounding rhythm which appears throughout a piece of vocal music. Here, a long-short-shortlong rhythm first played by the triangle is the isorhythm, which is successively layered over itself at different speeds and spins off into playful variations.

H. A. N. Y. U. N. I. M. soomin kim Han Yunim is the name of my grandmother who passed away in March 2022. Losing her was very difficult for me, especially because I couldn’t travel to Seoul to attend her funeral and be with my family. It also made me feel extremely lonely; I am the only person on this side of the earth who is mourning her and missing her.

H. A. N. Y. U. N. I. M., therefore, is my letter to her; it is my attempt at grieving her death, celebrating her life, and remembering her, albeit alone.

Phrases katherine balch I wrote this short set of pieces in a week in January when I was feeling very agitated and restless musically — stuck in the middle of a piece but frantic, like tight-knit jittering of molecules in a solid. These songs are in part a reflection of that nervous energy and in part a reminder to myself that writing music can be as much an exercise in lightness and ease of the pen as it can be one of rigorous self-reflection and scrutiny.

The texts are excerpts from Rimbaud’s Phrases, which themselves feel like excerpts or fleeting fragments amidst longer aphorisms in his weird prose suite Les Illuminations.

Their brevity makes them easier for me to translate into my own English (below), but also exemplifies the abstract, ambiguous, but deeply beautiful language used throughout Les Illuminations. I don’t pretend to understand the poems, but rather usurp their words and sounds to reflect this restless quality they stir in me.

Snow Fractals aaron israel levin In 2020 and 2021, I spent an extended amount of time in my hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota where I lived through a true and bitter midwest winter for the first time in a long time. This experience inspired me to write a series of pieces that dealt with the imagery and sensations of winter, inflected by my particular memories of growing up in Minnesota. With Snow Fractals, I represent winter in a more modest and mellow way than some of my other snow works, which deal with a wider variety of emotions associated with the season. Instead, Snow Fractals freezes a moment in time, and in so doing cherishes both the hibernal beauty and bitterness within that single instance. In this way, the piece freezes time itself, preserving the characteristics of my childhood winters from the ongoing effects of climate change.

Serenata benjamin webster During the Baroque period of Western Classical Music, a serenata (or serenade) typically referred to a composition for vocalists and orchestra performed outdoors in evening concerts. While my version of this genre uses a violinist as opposed to a vocalist, I did envision the piece as an extended song of sorts for the soloist. The music performed by the solo violin tends toward being lyrical and spacious rather than explicitly virtuosic, creating an organic and free-flowing atmosphere that attempts to evoke the outdoor, open-air affect of the piece’s namesake.

Upcoming Events at YSM Apr 27

Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

may 6

Yale Opera: L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

may 7

Yale Philharmonia Peter Oundjian, principal conductor 7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall

may 8

Yale Opera: L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) 2:00 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

may 9

Guitar Chamber Music 4:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

may 10

Chamber Music Competition Winners 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

may 22

Commencement Concert 4:00 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

YSM Audience Policy spring 2022 Concerts presented by the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music are open to members of the public who are asymptomatic and up-to-date on COVID vaccinations— meaning they have received all recommended COVID-19 vaccines for their age range, including any booster dose(s) when eligible. Unvaccinated children and individuals with any type of exemption are not permitted to attend Yale events at this time.

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