sign in sign up
<<
Home , Caroline Shaw, Christine Weidinger, Odetta, Partita for 8 Voices, Robert Shaw (conductor), Susan Dunn

Come Hear NC Saturday, June 20, 2020 @ 3:00 pm (Replayed Sunday June 21@ 6 pm and Wednesday, June 24@ 7 pm) Virtual Concert presented with assistance from Manifold Recording

Andrea Edith Moore, soprano David Heid, piano Bonnie Thron, cello

1

PROGRAM in manus tuas (2009) (b. 1982)

Spirit Songs (1993) Thomas Jefferson Anderson I. Call and Response (b. 1928) II. Gospels, Serenades and Vamps Gospels – Serenade 1 & 2 – Vamp 1 –Serenade 3 – Serenade 4 – Vamp 2 III. Shouts

ZOOM INTERVIEW WITH KENNETH FRAZELLE

Through The Window (2020 – WORLD PREMIERE) Kenneth Frazelle “Holly Ridge” (b. 1955) “Heat” “Little Dog” “Hurricane” “Piano” “Row on Row” “Dog Interlude” “Graduation” “Through the Window” “Storefront Winda” “An Ending”

Through the Window was commissioned by the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Andrea Edith Moore With support from the North Carolina Arts Council’s Come Hear NC Project Underwritten by a gift from Linda and Stuart Nelson

Thank you to Manifold Recording, Michael Tiemann and Ian Schreier for making this virtual performance a reality!

2

ARTIST INFORMATION

David Heid comes to North Carolina after a successful career in New York City as a vocal coach/accompanist. Among the many well-known singers he has performed with are Karen Beardsley, Mario Chang, , Adria Firestone, Carolyn James and Christine Weidinger. Also an arranger and conductor, he made his debut in Alice Tully Hall in 1994. In the summer of 1997, he was heard at both the Darling Harbor Convention Center and the historic Towne Hall in Sydney, Australia. His coaching clients include past Grammy and Tony Award winners.

David is currently on the faculty at where he is the Director of Duke Theater as well as teaching piano and working with singers. He is in demand throughout the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area as a collaborative artist and has worked with many of the area's leading organizations including Durham Choral Society, NC Symphony, Raleigh Guild, Mallarmé Chamber Players, The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, NC Opera, Theater in the Park, Thompson Theater Summerfest, Long Leaf Opera and Triangle Opera. He was previously on staff of the renowned in New York City.

Additionally, he has worked extensively in gospel music and recorded with a number of Christian labels. He has toured the U.S. and Canada with Jane Syftestad and directed The Voices of St. John's MCC - named in 1997 "The Best Gospel Choir in the Triangle." Their debut CD "Anywhere with Jesus " was nominated for a GLAMA award in the contemporary spiritual category.

David is a proud graduate of the SUNY Fredonia School of Music.

3

Soprano Andrea Edith Moore is a singer who approaches all things vocal with a fearless excellence. She brings a “certain opalescence that is particularly served by her impressive phrasing and inherent musicality” (operagasm.com) and comfortably traverses repertoire from opera roles such as the Countess to Anne Trulove to Baroque historic performance practice, experimental contemporary music and even pop and country. She has performed with the NC HIP Festival and sung backup vocals for pop artist My Brightest Diamond and with country favorites The Red Clay Ramblers.

Moore regularly stars with North Carolina Opera where she “garnered the biggest ovations” for her performance of Micaela in , in her “Priestess was hauntingly ethereal.” (N&O), in Brittenʼs The Turn of the Screw, “The star of the show was Andrea Edith Moore as the Governess, with beautiful and clear tones, every word and phrase distinct, and convincingly more and more distracted as the drama progressed.” (N&O)

Moore has been a principle artist with North Carolina Opera, Aspen Music Festival, Greensboro Opera, Long Leaf Opera Festival, Yale Opera, and Peabody Opera Theater. Moore has concertized with Richard Tucker Foundation, El Paso Symphony, North Carolina Master Chorale, Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, Duke Symphony, Eastern Music Festival and made notable debuts in Buenos-Aires at Teatro-Colon and Rio de Janeiroʼs Teatro- Municipal.

Moore stays on the pulse of new music and was a 2018 fellow with the Grammy Award winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird at their Blackbird Creative Lab.

Committed to creating and performing the music of living composers she commissioned, produced and premiered Family Secrets: Kith and Kin by Daniel Thomas Davis with seven new texts by world-renowned authors. The world-premiere staging by Francesca Talenti occurred in 2018 with NCO and she is in the process of recording the work with 5 time Grammy Award winning producer Elaine Martone for her debut album.

In June of 2020 Moore will premiere Through the Window a new song cycle by composer Kenneth Frazelle with Mallarmé Chamber Players. Additionally, Moore has premiered works by Judah Adashi, Allen Anderson, David Arcus, Stephen Chatman, Daniel Thomas Davis, Marjorie Merryman, Eric Schwartz, Martin Suckling and Zachary Wadsworth. She has served as a vocal advisor 4 with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and has worked intimately with modern dance choreographer Ros Warby. She sang the role of Sara in Jennifer Higdon’s new opera Cold Mountain; the 2017 world premiere of Eric Schwartz’s live film-score accompanying The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; Dianarah in Patrick Morganelli’s inventive opera Hercules vs. Vampires screened with the film “Hercules in the Haunted World” with NCO.

Moore is a prize-winner in the National Council Auditions, a grant recipient from the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust and has been twice awarded the Alumni Award. For her commission Family Secrets: Kith and Kin Moore was granted the Performing Arts Special Activities Fund from UNC-CH and the Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant from the Durham and NC Arts Councils.

Ms. Moore holds degrees from , the Peabody Conservatory of Music at The Johns Hopkins University and UNCSA. She served on the voice faculty of UNC at Chapel Hill for seven years.

Ms. Moore now performs full time, teaches privately and, with her husband, is a mom to an energetic 5-year-old and owns two restaurants: Alley Twenty Six in Durham and James Beard American Classic Crook's Corner Chapel Hill, NC.

Bonnie Thron joined the North Carolina Symphony as principal cellist in 2000. She is an active chamber musician and recitalist and locally has been a guest artist with the Mallarmé Chamber Players and the Ciompi Quartet, as well as occasionally joining the Jacobowitz-Larkin Duo to form a clarinet trio called Three For All. In the Washington, D.C. area, she has recently been a guest with the American Chamber Players and performs regularly on the Washington Musica Viva series. For the past several summers, she has been a guest artist and teacher at the East Carolina University Summer Chamber Music Institute. In the summers, she plays in the Sebago Long Lake Music Festival in Maine.

Previously Thron was a member of the Peabody Trio, in residence at the Peabody Institute, during which time the group won the Naumberg chamber music competition. Early in her career Thron was assistant principal cellist of the Denver Symphony for a season and she has played and recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. She has had a long history with the Apple Hill Chamber Players, as a guest artist and chamber music coach, and was 5 involved in the group’s first Playing for Peace tour to the Middle East in 1991. Thron has performed concertos with the North Carolina Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Panama National Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and various other orchestras in North Carolina and her original home state of New Hampshire.

Thron received both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Her teachers include Lynn Harrell, Norman Fischer and Elsa Hilger. Thron also received a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and worked as a nurse for several years as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital and as a case manager in home care nursing during which time she was also a cello teacher at the Baltimore School for the Arts.

PROGRAM NOTES Caroline Shaw (born in Greenville, NC) is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the in 2013 for , written for the Grammy-winning , of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, , the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with . Caroline’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for (; Ye) and (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Caroline has studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival. Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.

“In manus tuas is based on a 16th century motet by Thomas Tallis. While there are only a few slices of the piece that reflect exact harmonic changes in 6

Tallis' setting, the motion (or lack of) is intended to capture the sensation of a single moment of hearing the motet in the particular and remarkable space of Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut. In manus tuas was written in 2009 for cellist Hannah Collins, for a secular solo cello compline service held in the dark, candlelit nav.”

T.J. Anderson is one of the leading composers of his generation. He was born August 17, 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and received degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and a Ph.D in Composition from the University of Iowa. He also holds several honorary degrees. After serving as Chairman of the Department of Music at Tufts University for eight years, Thomas Jefferson Anderson became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music and in 1990 became Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he devotes full time to writing music.

He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. Anderson is well known for his orchestration of 's opera, Treemonisha which premiered in Atlanta in 1972. His first opera, Soldier Boy, Soldier based on a libretto by Leon Forrest, was commissioned by Indiana University. The opera, Walker was commissioned by the Boston Athenaeum with a libretto by Derek Walcott and Slip Knot, commissioned by the School of Music, Northwestern University is based on a historical paper by T.H. Breen with libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa.

He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Foundation, the National Humanities Center (their first composer) and a scholar-in- residence at the Rockefeller Center for the Creative Arts, Bellagio, Italy. Other honors include an honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and a Rockefeller Center Foundation grant, Composer-in- Residence Program (with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, , Conductor). At his 60th birthday celebration at Harvard University, letters from Robert Shaw and Sir Michael Tippett were read. In March, 1997 he was honored as a founder and first president of the National Black Music Caucus

7 with concert of his music. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, May 18, 2005.

Spirit Songs by Thomas Jefferson Anderson was commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma in 1993 and received its world premiere by Mallarmé Chambers (Timothy Holley, cello and Thomas Warburton, piano) on January 18, 2004. It is based on Negro which are heard as either full-on spirituals or mostly as small phrases of them throughout the piece. This piece features some improvisation by the performers which makes every performance unique. The 2nd movement has several sections, starting with the soulful “gospel” then variations on this theme, including 4 different serenades (1 and 2 are two totally different pieces – one for cello and one for piano , but played at the same time!) and 2 vamps that are reminiscent of ragtime piano music.

The composer has the following to say about this work: “The independent patterns or note groupings around which the music is organized have the potential to exist in varying environments. Each instrument has its own related and unrelated internal organization. Independent narratives take place through exploration of sonic possibilities, vertical tonal centers, modes, and riffs. Conflicting and prescribed rhythmic and melodic patterns are also present. The work is improvisational in character; however, the music is organized around collective thoughts and notations.” The work was never performed by Mr. Ma, but Mallarmé has performed it several times and it is featured in Mallarmé’s 2010 CD Songs for the Soul on the Albany/Videmus label.

Kenneth Frazelle is a composer whose music, according to The San Francisco Examiner, "came straight from—and went straight to—the heart, an organ too seldom addressed by contemporary composers." Frazelle’s distinctive voice blends structural and tonal sophistication with a lyrical clarity; he has been influenced not only by his study with the great modernist Roger Sessions, but also by the folk songs and landscape of his native North Carolina.

8

Frazelle’s heartfelt compositions have included commissions from such renowned performers as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Paula Robison and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Recent commissions include works for tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, the Music@Menlo Festival, the and the North Carolina Symphony.

Frazelle first received international acclaim with his score for Still/Here, a multimedia dance theater work for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. Still/Here premiered in Lyon, France in September 1994 and toured throughout the world the following two years to rave reviews. praised Frazelle’s score: “part Schubert, part Kurt Weill, Mr. Frazelle’s songs have their own lyric beauty.” wrote, “Kenneth Frazelle’s music for ‘Still’…makes one think of late Beethoven string quartets and their otherworldly perfection.” The film version of Still/Here was viewed by millions on U.S. public television in addition to numerous international broadcasts.

Originally written for the folksinger , Frazelle’s score for Still/Here was reworked in 2004 for jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson to accompany an updated version, renamed The Phantom Project: Still/Here Looking On. In 2004 and 2005 The Phantom Project received numerous performances throughout the country and abroad, including runs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and Sadler’s Wells in London.

In 2000 Frazelle was awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an award given to young composers of exceptional gifts. He was artist-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Rosa Symphony from 1997-2001, and in 1998 was artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In 1997 Frazelle was a recipient of the American Academy in Rome's Regional Visiting Artist Fellowship.

Yo-Yo Ma and Jeffrey Kahane have performed Frazelle’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (1989) throughout the country, and the piece has also been performed on several national tours by cellist Carter Brey and pianist Christopher O’Riley. Kahane has performed the composer’s Blue Ridge Airs I (1988) for piano at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., the Kennedy Center and the

9

Kenneth Frazelle was born in Jacksonville, N.C. in 1955. He was a student of Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School, and attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he now teaches. His music is published by Subito Music Corporation

“Through The Window is an exploration of events in my mother’s earlier years. She was born in a rural area during the Great Depression. She picked cotton and worked in tobacco, and eventually graduated from college. Like her own mother, she was widowed at a young age and sacrificed a great deal to provide for her three young children.

The songs depict both the exuberance of childhood and life’s difficult times. One song (“Storefront Winda”) is devoted to her mother, my grandmother.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that some of my mother’s stories shift - even contradict each other. This idea of “misremembering” intrigues me, and occurs throughout the cycle.”

Through the Window by Kenneth Frazelle

1. Holly Ridge Playing in the sandy yard, it was fun, we played real hard drawing hopscotch squares and wild animals with sticks in the white sand. Holly Ridge.

Down the road Venus flytraps. Open pink hungry mouths like clams, sticky strange eyelashes. Venus flytraps.

Down the other road an old herb lady. Her arms were twisted driftwood, crooked and cracked, wind-burned, dry as scaley pine bark. She could cure sick babies flush with fever,

10 sing a soothing song. Holly Ridge.

2. HEAT Home from college coming back from church. We saw throbbing zigzag lines on the horizon.

The closer we got, the hotter it became. Orange flames where the house should be.

Oh Lord! No. Our house is gone. Just a rectangle of zigzag heat. The house, gone. The flowers, gone. The picture albums, gone.

The only thing they were able to pull out of the fire was a rocking chair.

3. Little Dog I had a little dog. One of Daddy's hunting hounds. The only one we let in the house. He was a clean little dog.

My dog, he wasn't tall. Most hounds were not that small. He had black spots, white, and tan. He was the best little dog.

He raced across the fields, past the barn, into the woods. He earned his keep catching squirrels and rabbits and when he came home we'd feed him table scraps.

Sometimes during a full moon you'd hear a far-off howl. My little hound, howling, 11 bound homeward, my little dog.

4. Hurricane Hurricane! Hurricane! Hurry in. Get the mules in the barn. What about the dogs and chickens? Guess they'll have to wait.

Pounding rain, howling wind, the house shakes. Howling hounds howling underneath the house. Endless rain, relentless wind.

Far away, I hear the mules braying. Rattling windows, hail coming in sideways like baseballs.

I'm scared. The house is whirling. Mama and Dad said "Don't be scared. It's gonna be all right."

"Then how come the animals are frightened and the house is shaking?" Scared myself into sleep.

The storm is over. Let's take a look outside.

5. Piano A piano in a tree! How'd it get there? Let's go see! Look! Look! A piano in a tree!

Mother Nature tore things up. Whirls of wind and swirling rain made a mess of things.

A piano in a tree! How'd it get there? I don't know. It beats me.

12

It beats all I ever saw.

Where's my little dog? Could he be up in the tree? I don't see him anywhere. But we'll find him.

6. Row on Row Row on row, green yellow tobacco leaves row on row.

From sunup 'til 'bout four in the afternoon sweat and sand and sticky hands. We'll wash up soon.

But you know, looking back it really wasn't so bad. I got to be with my friends.

Across the way my uncle's cotton field. I enjoyed that more than working tobacco. I'd pick most summers since I was eight. Enjoyed that more than working tobacco 'cause there was a scuppernong arbor at one end of the field. We'd rest there in the shade. . . and I got paid!

But back to tobacco.

Us young girls would pick the leaves three or four from each plant, bottom to top, row after row. And the older girls and women would loop the leaves around sticks round and round to cart to the barn. 13

You know, looking back it wasn't that bad 'cause my thoughts were on books and grades and college.

On leaving.

7. Dog Interlude Heard loud bangy noises. Looked out through the window. Dad had shot my little dog.

Later they told me little dog ran away.

8. Graduation Coming back from graduation practice. I was valedictorian. Mother and Dad were so proud. I hope my speech is all right.

Dad drove me home. It was so hot. Windows rolled down. I noticed the car was slowing down. Looked over and Dad was slumped over the steering wheel, arms dangling, eyes frozen. Ran as fast as I could to get help. Past the sweet potato house, the tobacco rows, the cotton field. Ran as fast as I could, so hot!

But when we returned to the car he was dead.

Three days later we had the funeral. Then we had the graduation.

9. Through the Window Through the window little boy with his mother department store window. 14

Sales lady asks, "Can I help you?" "I need a black dress." "A black dress? In July?" "My husband's funeral is tomorrow." "I see. . . I'm so sorry. . . he must have been very young. Let's see what we have."

Little boy with his mama in the dressing room. Three mamas in a three-way mirror. Sad mama scared mama sweet mama in a three-way mirror.

"It's hot in here. I want to run away."

"Where will Daddy go?" "To Heaven." "No! I mean, where will they put him?" "In a box in the ground." "A box? Like a bathtub?" "What's a widow?"

"So many questions."

"Who will be the daddy now?"

10. Storefront Winda Once a month we'd march to the shopping center, our grandmother worked at the fabric store. She designed and arranged the holiday windas. She'd see us comin' and rush to the door.

We knew all the latest colors like avocado and burgundy. You could hear slicing scissor sounds as she snipped silk and organdy.

At Christmas she put on quite a show. Those 50's light bulbs a real fire hazard. She went to town with spray-can snow and fiber glass angel hair strewn and scattered.

15

On the cross Jesus looked down from above on a landscape of jellybeans and plastic bunnies. Her storefront winda was a labor of love but the preacher didn't think it was all that funny.

Her house even became a paradise after she went to Honolulu. Barbie dolls with hula skirts and turquoise waves around the bathtub, and plastic palms trees too.

Even with her countless ailments, in some ways she was tough as a hen. Salty tongue and piercing words, she was also fragile, eggshell thin.

When she shopped at the Piggly Wiggly she'd run into mizz so-and-so. "She acts like she thinks a lot of me. . . of course I never cared that much for her."

11. An Ending Sometimes I wonder if I ever never had a little dog.

Lost. Little dog.

MANY THANKS TO MALLARMÉ’S 2019-20 SUPPORTERS

BENEFACTOR BIN Foundation North Carolina Arts Council Stuart and Linda Nelson

SEASON CO-PRODUCER Durham Arts Council Mary Duke Biddle Foundation

FAMILY SERIES SPONSOR Mark and Cindy Kuhn

16

CONCERT SPONSOR Anonymous, in support of Jaap ter Linden’s performance Martha Hsu Anne Parks

CONCERT CO-SPONSOR Kathy and Lex Silbiger

PATRONS Margareta Claesson Judith and Richard Fox Sue Gidwitz and Gail Freeman Kathleen Holt and Stephen Lurie Elizabeth Otwell Florence Nash Laurie MacNeil and Patrick Wallace Anna and Steve Wilson

ADOPT-A-MUSICIAN Kayla and Dale Briggs Celia Dickerson Durham@150 Lorraine Gilmore and David B. Elsbree Sylvianne Roberge Rousso Sportswear Foundation Sarah and Mike Woodard

DONORS Jeffrey and Lettie Anderson John Denardo Marie Borroff, in memory of Edith Michael S. Fisher Borroff Barbara Freedman Nancy Clapp-Channing and Katie and Ed Gerhardt Steven Channing Lynn Goodpasture Alice Churukian and William Maidi Hall Slechta Thomas Kenan, III Carla Copeland-Burns and Susan Kimmel Michael Burns Nathan Leyland Ruth and Sidney Cox Sam Marion

17

Joan Mertens Benjamin Sackberry Alice and Joseph Moore Frances Steele Mindy Oshrain and Stephen Jaffe, Andrew Stewart in honor of Suzanne Rousso Tony Sprinkle John and Bernadette Page Ann Woodward and Howard Salvatore Pizzo Smither Susan Richardson Triangle Community Foundation, Harilyn Rousso, in honor of Eli and in honor of Michael Schoenfeld Judy Rousso Laura and Baron Tymas Suzanne Rousso Robert Upchurch Claire and Allen Wilcox

PLEASE SUPPORT US!

Mallarmé is a 501(c)3 non-profit and relies on your support to keep us in business. To make concerts profitable we would need to charge $150 ticket, which, of course, is not feasible. If you want to see intimate and unique chamber music continue, especially in this time of COVID-19, would you consider making a charitable donation to Mallarmé? For more information, email us at [email protected] or call Suzanne Rousso at 919.413.3120 Thank you!

Mallarmé Chamber Players – 120 Morris Street. Durham, NC 27701 Mallarmemusic.org [email protected] 919-560-2788

Mallarmé plans to continue giving concerts for the 2020-21 season, recorded live and presented virtually until it is safe to go back to live, in-person performances. More info about the season and how to take part will be available in July 2020.

18