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 Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, 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. 15 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 ETHEL, soprano Tony Arnold, Described as “alluring” and “wildly inventive” Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, and saxo- by the New York Times, 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 Sym phony, 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 University of Michigan, 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 Chicago. 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- 17 PROGRAM NOTES 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 Bang on a Can 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 Julia Wolfe 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 mass 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 18 PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES (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 American Composers Forum, and the Society Quadrille.