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Home , Alarm Will Sound, Eighth Blackbird, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Sawdust, Pamela Z

Saturday, December 14, 2019, 8pm Zellerbach Playhouse Eighth Blackbird Nathalie Joachim, flutes Nick Photinos, cello Zachary Good, clarinets* Matthew Duvall, percussion Matthew Albert, violin* Lisa Kaplan, piano Guest Artist Pamela Z, electronics and vocals

PROGRAM Nina SHEKHAR ice ‘n’ SPICE (2018, Bay Area Premiere) Viet CUONG Electric Aroma (2017, Bay Area Premiere) Fjóla EVANS Eroding (2017, Bay Area Premiere) Holly HARRISON Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup (2016, Bay Area Premiere) INTERMISSION Andy AKIHO Karakurenai (2007) Jonathan Bailey HOLLAND The Clarity of Cold Air (2013) Pamela Z Quatre Couches and Badagada Pamela Z Ways of Looking (2019, Bay Area Premiere) Looking – Name – Um – Very

Ice ‘n’ SPICE, Electric Aroma, and Eroding were commissioned by Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting for the Blackbird Creative Lab. Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup was commissioned for Eighth Blackbird by Musica Viva Australia with support from Geo6 Stearn and the Hildegard Project. Ways of Looking was commissioned for Eighth Blackbird by the Philharmonic Association, , Music and Artistic Director, with additional support from Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting. * For this performance, clarinetist Zachary Good and violinist Matthew Albert perform with Eighth Blackbird during vacancies in those positions. Eighth Blackbird is Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Richmond. Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist.

Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Nina Shekhar Blackbird, Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting, ice ‘n’ SPICE (2018, Bay Area Premiere) and everyone at the Blackbird Creative Lab for Nina Shekhar (b. 1995) is a Michigan-based commissioning this piece.” composer whose music explores the intersec- tion of identity, vulnerability, love, and laugh- Viet Cuong ter. Her works have been performed by leading Electric Aroma (2017, Bay Area Premiere) artists such as , soprano Tony Arnold, Described as “alluring” and “wildly inventive” Kaleidoscope Chamber , and saxo- by , Viet Cuong’s music phonist Jan Berry Baker and have been featured has been performed on six continents by so- by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National loists and ensembles including Sō Percussion, Flute Association, North American Saxophone the PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, Sandbox Alliance, I Care if You Listen, TUTTI Festival, Percussion, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and New Jacksonville , Albany Symphony, Music on the Point. She has also previously col- Gregory Oakes, and Mimi Stillman, in ven- laborated with the JACK Quartet, and her piece ues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Quirkhead, about O.C.D. and mental illness, is the Kennedy Center, International Double scheduled to be featured in an upcoming PBS Reed Society Conference, US Navy Band documentary. Current projects include a choral International Saxophone Symposium, and commission for the New York Virtuoso Singers, Midwest Clinic. Cuong’s awards include the an electroacoustic commission for Th ird Angle ASCAP Morton Gould Award, Suzanne and Lee New Music, and a piece for Vanguard Reed Ettelson Award, Th eodore Presser Foundation Quintet, as well as performances at Carnegie Music Award, Cortona Prize, Walter Beeler Hall and National Sawdust. Shekhar is a recip- Memorial Prize, Boston Guitarfest Competition, ient of the 2015 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Dolce Suono Ensemble Competition, and Prix Composer Award and a fi nalist in the 2017 and d’Été Competition. He also received honor- 2018 Morton Gould Awards. She was a com- able mentions in the Harvey Gaul Memorial poser fellow at the 2018 Blackbird Creative Competition and two consecutive ASCAP/ Lab. Aside from composing, Shekhar is also CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prizes. Cuong has an accomplished fl utist and pianist, includ- held artist residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, and the ing performances at the Poland International Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was a schol- Piano Festival as a soloist with the Lublin arship student at the Mizzou International Philharmonic and the Detroit International Composers Festival, Blackbird Creative Lab, Jazz Festival as lead alto saxophonist with her Copland House’s CULTIVATE Institute, and the jazz band. Shekhar completed her undergradu- Aspen and Bowdoin music festivals. Currently a ate studies at the , grad- Naumburg and Roger Sessions doctoral fellow uating summa cum laude with dual degrees in at Princeton, he holds bachelor’s and master’s music composition and chemical engineering. degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, and a About ice ‘n’ SPICE, Shekhar writes: “When DMA from the Curtis Institute. Th e US Navy I was younger, I remember eating my dad’s Band has commissioned a new work by Cuong chicken patties, which were loaded with green for Eighth Blackbird and Winds Band to pre- chilies and garam masala. My brother and I miere in December 2020 at the Midwest Clinic would then run to the freezer to fi ll our mouths in . with ice in a rash attempt to cool down the fi re About Electric Aroma, the composer writes: on our tongues. ice ‘n’ SPICE captures both the “Between painting, sculpting, and print making, before and aft er aspects of this memory, con- Pablo Picasso found the time to write some trasting fi ery and explosive sections with frigid, very intriguing poetry. Electric Aroma was sparse, and glassy textures. May everyone enjoy creatively sparked by a line he wrote on Octo- the spice of life, so long as we also remember ber 10, 1936 which reads “an electric aroma a to keep things cool! Many thanks to Eighth most disagreeable noise.” By using electronic-

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inspired sounds such as buzzy snare drum Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup and vibraphone effects, glitch-like flutter (2016, Bay Area Premiere) tonguing, and raucous multiphonics, the piece Holly Harrison is a young Australian com- forces some disagreeable sounds to agree with poser whose music is driven by the nonsense each other as they are woven into a distorted literature of Lewis Carroll, embracing stylistic tango-like romp. Th is piece was commissioned juxtapositions, the visceral energy of rock, and by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for the 2017 whimsical humor. Her work has been played Blackbird Creative Laboratory.” extensively throughout Australia and the world by ensembles and artists including the Fjóla Evans Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Cabrillo Eroding (2017, Bay Area Premiere) Festival Orchestra, Orkest de Ereprijs, Alarm Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer Will Sound, Ensemble Offspring, Michael and cellist. Her work explores the visceral phys- Kieran Harvey and Timothy Phillips, Caroline icality of sound while drawing inspiration from Cartens, and the Riot Ensemble, among many patterns of natural phenomena. Commissions others. Harrison was the inaugural winner of and performances have come from musi- both the Pyeongchon Arts Hall International cians such as All-Stars pianist Chamber Music Composition Competition Vicky Chow, Quince Contemporary Vocal with Red Queen, White Queen, Alice and the Ensemble, and the Winnipeg Symphony 2017 Sue W Chamber Music Composition Orchestra. Her work has been featured at the Prize for her work for Eighth Blackbird, MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Ung Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup, which featured Nordisk Musik, and the American Composers on Eighth Blackbird’s Australian tour as part Orchestra’s SONiC Festival. Evans has stud- of Musica Viva’s 2017 International Concert ied composition with and cello Season. Harrison currently teaches composi- performance with Matt Haimovitz, and com- tion at MLC School, Burwood, Australia, and pleted a graduate degree in composition at completed her doctorate in creative arts under the Yale School of Music in 2018. She is the the supervision of Bruce Crossman and John 2017 winner of the Robert Fleming Prize— Encarnacao at Western Sydney University, an award given by the Canada Council for the where she is currently a sessional academic. Arts to one composer annually—and was one Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup was commis- of six inaugural composer fellows at the 2017 sioned for Eighth Blackbird by Musica Viva Blackbird Creative Lab. Australia with support from Geo6 Stearn and About Eroding, Evans writes: “Over thou- the Hildegard Project. sands of years, the glacial river Hví tá in Iceland About the work, Harrison writes: “The has carved a deep gorge into the surrounding piece is inspired by chapters 9 and 10 of Lewis landscape. At one particular twist in the river, Carroll’s nonsense book Alice’s Adventures in the erosion has left several huge pillars of Wonderland (1865), ‘Th e Mock Turtle’s Story’ hyaloclastite rock, which look as they were and ‘Th e Lobster Quadrille.’ Along with Alice, fl ung haphazardly into the riverbed. In fact the main characters in these chapters are the they were revealed slowly over time from the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. Both creatures process of the river carving away their sur- are composites of two animals: the Gryphon an roundings. In Eroding, the players create a amalgam of an eagle and a lion, the Mock Turtle dense that gets worn down over time in a cow and a turtle. I see these chimera charac- order to reveal the spiky formations beneath ters as a type of metaphor for the amalgam of the surface.” musical styles in the piece; rock, jazz, metal, hip-hop, pop, blues, and funk. Th e Gryphon Holly Harrison and Mock Turtle scold Alice for imagined slights, tell long stories, and sing long songs that never quite end, order her to recite poetry

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(which comes out all muddled!), and insist on and by organizations such as Bang on a Can, her taking part in an unusual dance; the Lobster , and the Society Quadrille. In capturing these happenings, I’ve for New Music. He is currently pursuing a PhD set the piece with a type of stop-start momen- in composition at Princeton University and tum and spattering of rhythmic hiccups. Th e is Composer-in-Residence at Avaloch Farm piece is split into four main sections, and there Music Institute. Akiho’s debut CD, No One To are four main melodic/rhythmic threads that Know One, on , features bril- continue throughout. Th ese are woven across liantly craft ed compositions that pose intricate each other, intertwining at times, as well as rhythms and exotic timbres around his primary appearing as discrete soundblocks, positioned instrument, the steel pan. To read more about side-by-side, and/or careening off into another Akiho and listen to his music, please visit an- direction/thread at the latest possible moment. dyakiho.com. Th ese include: a blues-y piano and slap cello About Karakurenai, Akiho writes: “Kara- refrain—Alice’s hurrah!; lyrical string lines and kurenai (Japanese for “foreign crimson”) was long glissandi, mirroring the exaggerated and originally written for solo prepared steel pan ‘mock’ emotion of the Turtle’s sad story and during a visit to Rochester (NY) in June 2007 heavy sobs; funky bass lines with fl ashes of dis- as part of the Synesthesia Suite; however, this co—a reimagining of the Lobster’s Quadrille; piece can be performed on any combination of and metal-inspired bursts of sounds with trashy instruments and can include elements of im- cymbal stacks—the continual ‘little arguments’ provisation if the performer desires.” and misunderstandings that take place. At the same time, these four ideas draw infl uence from Jonathan Bailey Holland the branches of arithmetic studied by the Mock Th e Clarity of Cold Air (2013) Turtle: ‘Ambition, Distraction, Uglifi cation, and Jonathan Bailey Holland’s works have been Derision.’ Th ese titles are, of course, a parody of commissioned and performed by numer- the traditional branches, and together inform ous , including those of Atlanta, how I have approached the four sections in the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, way of tempo changes, time signature shift s, Detroit, Min nesota, and Philadelphia, as well and the warping of phrases—though I won’t say as numerous chamber groups and soloists. A in which order they appear or which musical recipient of a 2015 Fromm Foundation Com- thread they relate to!” mission, he has received honors from, among others, the American Academy of Arts & Andy Akiho Letters, American Music Center, ASCAP, Karakurenai (2007) and the Presser Foundation. He has served Described as “mold-breaking,” “alert and as Composer-in-Residence for the Plymouth alive,” “dramatic,” and “vital” (Th e New York Music Series of Minnesota, Ritz Chamber Times), Andy Akiho (b. 1979) is an eclectic Players, Detroit and South Bend Symphony composer and performer of contemporary Orchestras, and the Radius Ensemble. Recent classical music. Recent engagements include highlights include the premiere of Equality commissioned premieres by the New York for narrator and orchestra for the Cincinnati Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, and the premiere of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Carnegie Forged Sanctuaries by Curtis on Tour, com- Hall’s Ensemble ACJW, as well as performances missioned to commemorate the centennial of with the and at the the National Park Service. Holland is Chair of Kennedy Center in Washington (DC). Akiho Composition, Th eory, and History at Boston has been recognized with numerous awards, Conservatory at Berklee, and Faculty Chair of including the 2014–15 Rome the Music Composition Low MFA program Prize. Additionally, his compositions have been at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Previously featured on PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer he served as a professor of composition at the

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Berklee College of Music. in the Arts, an Ars Electronica honorable About Th e Clarity of Cold Air, the composer mention, and the NEA Japan/US Friendship writes: “Inspired by many a cold, Northern Commission Fellowship. She holds a music Midwest or New England day, this work is pri- degree from the University of Colorado, marily atmospheric, focusing on the sonorities Boulder and was a guest artist at the inaugural achieved by blending the instruments of the Blackbird Creative Lab in 2017. For more info, ensemble in various ways. Th ere are many go to www.pamelaz.com. stark sounds—high, glassy harmonics from About Quatre Couches and Badagada, the strings, bowed metallic percussion instru- Pamela writes: “Quatre Couches is a sonic tri- ments, harsh multiphonics from the winds, airy fle, tiramisu, or mille-feuille—juxtaposing cymbal rolls.” four contrasting layers and manually toying with them—mixing them and moving them Pamela Z around on the plate until they all melt away. In Quatre Couches and Badagada Badagada, one of my early digital delay pieces, Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media the syllables “ba-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga” are artist who works primarily with voice, live elec- layered in multiple delay lines to form a har- tronic processing, sampled sound, and video. monic, rhythmic accompaniment to a melody A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, sung in English.” she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works Pamela Z combine experimental extended vocal tech- Ways of Looking (2019, Bay Area Premiere) niques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, About Ways of Looking, Pamela writes: “I have digital processing, and wireless MIDI control- long been fascinated by the musicality of speech lers that allow her to manipulate sound with sounds, and have regularly incorporated them physical gestures. In addition to her solo work, into my work in various ways—mining sam- she has been commissioned to compose scores pled fragments of spoken text for melodic, for dance, theater, fi lm, and chamber ensem- rhythmic, and textural content. To compose bles including , the Bang on Ways of Looking, I began by interviewing all six a Can All Stars, Ethel, and the San Francisco members of Eighth Blackbird, and then I metic- Contemporary Music Players. Her interdis- ulously selected sentences, phrases, words, syl- ciplinary performance works have been pre- lables, and phonemes to create sonic building sented at venues including Th e Kitchen (NY), blocks for the piece. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT “Th is work is in four movements that each (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations focus on sounds or concepts culled from those have been presented at such exhibition spaces interviews. For the fi rst movement, “Looking,” as the Whitney (NY), the Diözesanmuseum I chose to have the ensemble members speak (Cologne), and the Krannert Center for the their own words live. I pulled samples from Performing Arts (IL). Pamela Z has toured their answers to a question about the origin extensively throughout the US, Europe, and of the ensemble’s name. Th ey each answered Japan. She has performed in numerous festi- that question by citing the Wallace Stevens vals, including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center poem that is their namesake. I built a text (New York), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San collage from fragments of that title, and then Francisco), La Bien nale di Venezia (Italy), Dak’Art transcribed it and integrated it into their parts. (Senegal), and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival Th e second movement, “Name,” is all about (Wuppertal, Germany). She is the recipient of describing and identifying people. Th e tape part numerous awards, including the Rome Prize, of that movement consists entirely of names a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, and descriptions (oft en of teachers or mentors) a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke mentioned in the interviews, and the instru- Artist Impact Award, the Herb Alpert Award mental parts are laced with melodic and rhyth-

20 PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES mic transcriptions of those phrases. Movement in the interview responses, that I thought they three, “Um,” is a cloud of sound built around deserved a dedicated movement. Th e melodic the sonorous, non-verbal, fi ller sounds we all material in this movement was inspired by a make during speech. I fi nd “ums” and “uhs” to section of a score I composed a few years ago be among the most musical spoken utterances, (for a dance piece by choreographer Stephan because they are more sustained and contain Koplowitz) that kept haunting me as I listened more focused pitches than most of the words to my long list of Eighth Blackbird “verys.” we speak. Th e fi nal movement, “Very,” cele- I also choose to include a part for my own voice brates the ubiquitous intensifi er. I found so and electronics in this movement. many descriptors that were modifi ed by “very”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Eighth Blackbird, hailed as “one of the smart- with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Brightest est, most dynamic contemporary classical Diamond frontwoman Shara Nova, Will ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Iarla Ó began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneur- Lionáird of Th e Gloaming. ial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly Eighth Blackbird fi rst gained wide recogni- became “a brand-name defi ned by adventure, tion in 1998 as winner of the Concert Artists vibrancy and quality” (Detroit Free Press). Over Guild Competition. Since 2000, the ensemble the course of more than two decades, Eighth has made its home in Chicago, where it has Blackbird has continually pushed at the edges been committed to serving as both importer of what it means to be a contemporary cham- and exporter of world-class artistic experiences. ber ensemble, presenting distinct programs in A recent year-long pioneering residency at the Chicago, nationally, and internationally, and Museum of Contemporary Art–Chicago— reaching audiences totaling tens of thousands. during which the ensemble served as a liv- Th e sextet has commissioned and premiered ing installation featuring open rehearsals, hundreds of works by composers both estab- performances, guest artists, and public talks— lished and emerging, and has perpetuated the exemplifi ed the artists’ stature as community in- creation of music with profound impact, such fl uencers. Receiving the prestigious MacArthur as ’s , which went on Award for Creative and Eff ective Institutions, to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Th e ensem- Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary ble’s extensive recording history, primarily Award, and being named Musical America’s with Chicago’s Cedille Records, has produced 2017 Ensemble of the Year have supported more than a dozen acclaimed albums and four Eighth Blackbird’s position as a catalyst for Grammy awards for Best Small Ensemble/ innovation in the new-music ecosystem of Chamber Music Performance, most recently Chicago and beyond. in 2016 for Filament. Longstanding collabo- Eighth Blackbird’s mission—moving music rative relationships have led to performances forward through innovative performance, ad- with some of the most well-regarded classical vocating for new music by living composers, artists of today, from heralded performers like and creating a legacy of guiding an emerging and , to seminal generation of musicians—extends beyond composers like and . recording and touring to curation and educa- In recent projects, Eighth Blackbird has joined tion. Th e ensemble served as the music direc- forces with composers and performers who tor of the 2009 , has held defy the persistent distinction between clas- residencies at the Curtis Institute of Music sical and nonclassical music, including works and the University of Chicago, and holds an by Th e National’s and Arcade ongoing ensemble-in-residence position at Fire’s Richard Reed Perry, and performances the University of Richmond. In 2017, Eighth

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Blackbird launched its boldest initiative to date of the Music in the Mountains Conservatory with the creation of the Blackbird Creative in Durango, Colorado. Albert holds degrees Laboratory, an inclusive, two-week summer from and Conservatory, the workshop and performance festival for per- Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music, formers and composers in Ojai (CA). and School of Music. Th e members of Eighth Blackbird hail from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Empire, Zachary Good is an instrumentalist (clari- and Bay states. Th e name “Eighth Blackbird” nets and Baroque recorders) and performer derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace from Pittsburgh (PA). Based in Chicago, he Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, “Th irteen freelances as a musician, middle school band Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”: “I know noble director, and founding member/co-artistic accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But director of Mocrep. Good has performed with I know, too, / Th at the blackbird is involved / In Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary what I know.” Ensemble, Th ird Coast Percussion, Lyric Opera Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lie– Unlimited, members of the Chicago Symphony berman Artists. Orchestra, Manual Cinema, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the Called “preposterously talented” by Time Out New World Symphony. He has appeared as a Chicago, violinist and violist Matt Albert is soloist with the International Contemporary Chair of Chamber Music at the School of Music, Ensemble and DePaul University’s new-music Th eatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. ensemble, 20+. Since 2016, Good has regu- He previously served as the director of chamber larly toured with Eighth Blackbird and Th ird music and SYZYGY at the Meadows School of Coast Percussion, performing Steve Reich’s the Arts, Southern Methodist University, and Music for 18 Musicians. In January 2018, he he was a founding member of Eighth Blackbird, worked closely with cellist Yo-Yo Ma as one of with whom he received numerous awards, in- six fellows at the second annual Youth Music cluding fi rst prizes at the Naumburg, Concert Culture Guangdong festival in Guangzhou, Artists Guild, and the Coleman and Fischoff China. While a fellow with the Civic Orchestra competitions; and three Grammy awards for in 2015, he established the annual New Music their recordings on Cedille Records. He has Workshop, a local call for scores that includes collaborated with Alarm Will Sound, Meredith performances, workshops, and recordings of se- Monk and Vocal Ensemble, Seraphic Fire, the lected works with Civic musicians. He regularly International Contemporary Ensemble, and performs with the trio ZRL (with Ryan Packard Wilco, and his orchestral playing has included and Lia Kohl); their albums are released on work with the Shreveport Symphony (as Chicago labels No Index and Homeroom. concertmaster), Baltimore Symphony, Florida Good tours nationally and internationally with Orchestra, and in a tenured position as the the puppet theater company Manual Cinema principal second violinist of the Cabrillo and the interdisciplinary performance ensem- Festival Orchestra. Other leadership roles ble Mocrep. He is also a band director at the include three years as artistic director of Chicago Waldorf School. Good is a graduate of the M-Prize International Chamber Arts Oberlin Conservatory and DePaul University. Competition and three years as artistic director

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