The Ph.D./D.M.A. Programs in Music

May 18, 2016 7:30 p.m. Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall

Melissa Keeling, flute Bonnie McAlvin, Anne Dearth, Rachel Hacker, Ammon Swinback, flute; Anne Dearth, ; Elsa Nilsson,

Partita in A minor, BWV 1013 (c. 1721) Johann Sebastian Bach Allemande (1685-1750) Corrente Sarabande Bourrée anglaise

Sonata Appassionata, op. 140 (1917) Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)

Density 21.5 (1936) Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)

Raudra (1976) Robert Morris (b. 1943)

INTERMISSION

Afterlight (1973) (b. 1950)

Paint Your Mammouth (2000) R. Dick

Sliding Life Blues (2001) R. Dick

Air is the Heaviest Metal (2008/14) R. Dick

This recital is given in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the D.M.A. degree. Please switch off your cell phones and refrain from taking flash pictures.

Notes on the Program

The Partita in A minor is performed in honor of , who was Robert Dick’s flute teacher from 1968-1970. Baker, who studied with William Kincaid, was one of the foremost American orchestral flutists of the mid-twentieth century. In addition to teaching flute at Juilliard, he performed for 18 years with the Philharmonic under . Baker played a major part in reviving Bach’s music in the United States; his pure tone and recordings of Bach’s six flute sonatas are considered by many the flutists the gold standard.

Though the original manuscript for the Partita is missing and the exact date of composition unknown, this is J.S. Bach’s earliest piece for solo transverse flute. The baroque flute, known for its ability to create an enormous variety of tone colors, was quickly gaining popularity throughout Europe.

The Partita is an adapted form of the French baroque instrumental dance suite, a systematic tour of styles: a German Allemande, an Italian Corrente, a French Sarabande, and an English Bourrée. The Allemande, in binary form, features violin-like arpeggiation and flowing sixteenth notes, implying two or even three simultaneous parts. The Corrente contains more violinistic figurations, fluid development of motifs, and long runs of sixteenth notes. The third movement, Sarabande, highlights the languishing character of the flute. The final movement, Bourrée angloise, offers a light-hearted finale in the popular style of the English country dance.

Though separated from Robert Dick’s first published work by about 250 years, Bach’s compositional style for flute is similar to Robert Dick’s in several ways. Both composers emphasize the flute’s capacity for timbral variation – Bach accentuates the baroque flute’s natural timbres; Robert Dick uses an array of contemporary techniques. Both composers treat the flute as a harmonic instrument – Bach uses leaps to create the illusion of multiple parts; Robert Dick uses multiphonics.

The flute underwent massive mechanical developments in the second half of the nineteenth century, and German flutists were among the last to abandon simple-system flutes in favor of Boehm-system flutes. Karg-Elert sought to exploit the technical capabilities of the Boehm flute, which include a more powerful tone, greater control of intonation, and an expanded range.

This is Karg-Elert’s first piece for flute, and the first German solo flute piece of the twentieth century. Though written in 1917, the Sonata Appassionata sits firmly in the late Romantic tradition. It features rich chromatic language and an emphasis on timbral changes, and like Bach, creates the illusion of multiple voices. The one-movement sonata presents two main contrasting themes. The first theme, in f#m, appears at the start of the piece, and the second theme follows in DM. After a short development, Karg-Elert presents the second theme again in the parallel minor, instead of the expected return of the first theme in the dominant key. The piece closes in a fiery accelerando sequence. Karg-Elert’s desire to test the limits of the instrument and player parallel Robert Dick’s, whose works are also often highly technical, yet incredibly expressive.

Density 21.5, dedicated to Georges Barrère, was named for Barrère’s debut of his platinum flute (21.5 g/cm3 is the approximate density of platinum). Barrère was principal flutist of the New York Symphony from 1905-1941. William Kincaid was among his students, creating a direct pedagogical link to Robert Dick through Julius Baker.

Published in 1936, this is the earliest composed work to include key clicks, which occur mid-way through the piece. Robert Dick writes, “This piece revolutionized the approach to wind instruments in that it developed the unique tone colors of each note, rather than the older view of the flute as a homogeneous voice.” Like this work by Varèse, Robert Dick’s music often focuses on tone color and includes contemporary techniques, the flute’s highest possible pitches, and dynamic timbres.

Robert Morris was born in England and studied composition with John La Montaigne at the University of Michigan. He has held teaching positions at Yale University and the . Much of his output from the 1970s was influenced by non-Western music and uses structural principles from Arabic, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, and early Western styles. Robert Morris was Robert Dick’s composition professor at Yale University from 1970-1973, and mentored his research and writing of The Other Flute, a manual for contemporary flute techniques.

Raudra is named for the fourth of the nine rasa-s of Indian aesthetics: fury and anger. The atonal work is short but intense, with rapidly articulated passages, flutter-tonguing, harmonics, and glissandi.

Afterlight, Robert Dick’s first published work, appeared in conjunction with The Other Flute in 1975. Dedicated to Robert Dick’s former teacher, James Pappoutsakis, this piece was the 1984 winner of the National Flute Association’s Newly Published Music Competition. It features many hallmarks of Robert Dick’s style: multiphonics, alternate fingerings, singing and playing, glissandi, and harmonics. Though not the first composition to include multiphonics for flute (Berio’s Sequenza I was published 15 years earlier), the central motif of Afterlight is based on the C2/D3 (major ninth) multiphonic and its transpositions. Using series of multiphonics, tremolos, and microtones, the flute’s timbre continually changes – sometimes powerful and dramatic, sometimes ethereal and ghostly – as the three-part piece unfolds.

Paint Your Mammouth contains no musical notation, only written instructions for free improvisation using any number of players on any instruments. Robert Dick outlines a system of hand gestures used to shape the group’s improvisation – for example, one finger indicates for the group to play a fermata; a fist communicates that player will take a solo.

After spending decades working to create the Glissando Headjoint, Sliding Life Blues is one of the pieces Robert Dick wrote using it. The Glissando Headjoint is a telescoping tube that extends the length of the flute to create a downward glissando from every note. Its creation was inspired by the whammy bar of an electric guitar, used by guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix to create many timbral and pitch-bending effects. For the flutist, the Glissando Headjoint extends the low range down to A1, allows for easy transposition of (and otherwise unobtainable) multiphonics, offers a more fluid approach to pitch, and expands the timbral palette.

Sliding Life Blues is an improvised piece based on a blues motif in E minor. The blues motif, and its improvised variations and developments, are contrasted by a distinctly non-Western melody and timbre. The piece weaves in and out of these contrasting motifs.

This through-composed one-movement work is Robert Dick’s most recent publication for solo flute. Inspired by heavy metal bands such as Metallica, is the third piece by Robert Dick based on American popular music styles. Air is the Heaviest Metal contains dramatic multiphonic “power chords,” over-driven air sounds, circular breathing, tremolos, and glissandi.

About the Artists

Anne Dearth is a flutist and music teacher in . She has appeared with Symphony Z, Contemporaneous, the W4 New Music Collective, the Open Music Ensemble, and with various NYU ensembles. Some of her notable performances have included Monologues, works for speaking flute at Specturm NYC, Pierrot Lunaire at the Austrian Cultural Forum's Schoenberg Festival. She has participated in the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Tribeca New Music Festival, and the Lower East Side Music Festival. Anne particularly enjoys working closely with composers and has premiered multiple works written expressly for her, most recently “Shame” for speaking alto flutist by Jesse Diener-Bennett. Hailing from Dearborn, MI, Anne studied with Amy Porter at the University of Michigan before coming to New York to study at NYU with Robert Dick.

Rachel Hacker is a flutist and new music specialist, currently residing in the Cincinnati area. She is a recent graduate of , as a student of Robert Dick. She also holds a Bachelor's degree in music performance from Baldwin Wallace University, as a student of George Pope. Rachel has previously been employed as an adjunct instructor of flute at NYU. Rachel's non traditional career has lead her down many paths. Rachel has played in rock bands, electroacoustic ensembles, and has participated in the premieres of numerous works. She enjoys playing on a Levit-Kingma System Flute and Glissando Headjoint. Rachel aspires to continue her research on the Kingma System flute. In addition to performing, Rachel has written for online Magazine The Flute View since 2013, and was recently hired as a permanent staff member.

Acclaimed for performing repertoire ranging from orchestral literature to experimental electronic music, flutist and composer Melissa Keeling is a sought-after artist based in New York City. She is also member of SONYQ, an electric flute and guitar duo whose debut album was released in 2010. Mrs. Keeling is active on YouTube, and her instructional videos and performances have gained over 450,000 views worldwide. Mrs. Keeling has appeared as a soloist with the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, the Bowling-Green Western Symphony , and the Middle Tennessee State University Chamber Orchestra. Her compositions have been premiered at the National Flute Association Convention; she will premiere her most recent work for Glissando Headjoint and effect pedals, Eruption, at the 2016 convention. She has performed as principal flutist with numerous , wind ensembles, and chamber groups in New York City at venues such as Merkin Hall and Firehouse Space, throughout Kentucky and Tennessee, and in Italy. Mrs. Keeling is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the City University of New York and holds degrees from Middle Tennessee State University (Music Performance, MA) and Western Kentucky University (Music Education, BS). Mrs. Keeling has studied with Heidi Pintner Álvarez, Deanna Hahn Little, and Robert Dick.

Elsa Nilsson believes the true beauty of music is its capacity to transcend cultural boundaries. She tours internationally with the Elsa Nilsson Quartet featuring her original music and arrangements of Swedish Folk Music as well as composes for and performs in a duo with pianist Jon Cowherd (Brian Blade Fellowship) and Far Cry Flutes (ft. Robert Dick, Jamie Baum, Jessica Lurie).

Originally from Colorado, Ammon Swinbank obtained their Bachelor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle in 2014. They are currently a graduate student at New York University under Robert Dick. Passionate about new music for the flute, Ammon is also a composer and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.