PROGRAM NOTES 10.29.12

ANNA CLYNE ROULETTE (2007)

Duration: 10 minutes Instrumentation: string quartet and tape Commissioned by Roulette and the Jerome Foundation Premiered by ETHEL, November 2007 at Roulette Performing Arts Space, New York

Roulette was composed for the New York City based string quartet, ETHEL with support from Roulette's Emerging Artist Commission with funds from the Jerome Foundation and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The premiere performance was given by ETHEL at Roulette, Location One in SoHO with live visuals by Joshue Ott & SuperDraw.

The writes:

“I started writing Roulette with the melody that opens the piece and the choral section that occurs toward the end of the piece. I recorded these sections with vocalists Caleb Burhans and Martha Cluver at Carfax Abbey Studios, Brooklyn, with engineer Alan Labiner. With these two sections marking the framework, I then wrote the string quartet music in a through-composed process. Once the string writing was complete, I then went back through the piece and added the electronic track that accompanies the live musicians. I tried to find sounds that would both complement, interact with, and oppose the live music.”

In 2012, Tzadik Records released Blue Moth, a compilation of Clyne’s electroacoustic chamber music, which includes Roulette.

More information at www.annaclyne.com.

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EDMUND FINNIS UNFOLDS (2011, rev.2012)

Duration: 7 minutes Instrumentation: /piccolo/alto flute, /Eb clarinet, horn, , Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta Premiered by the London Sinfonietta, May 2011 at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

The composer writes:

“I could point to three non-musical influences that were on my mind while composing this piece: the shimmering grid paintings of Agnes Martin, the near- weightless and transparent architecture of Junya Ishigami, and Italo Calvino’s 1985 lecture on ‘Lightness’ in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium.

In their respective mediums, both Martin and Ishigami seem to me to be reaching for something akin to the ideal of ‘thoughtful lightness’ that Calvino describes. This is not lightness in the sense of frivolity or superficiality, but rather the ‘subtraction of weight’ that can bring about clarity, flexibility, precision… a letting-in of light. They create work whose subtle, elegant forms invite the perception of fine detail.

Thinking about the connections between these influences led me to compose a piece characterised by delicate reiterative musical patterns (sometimes heard in sequence, sometimes superimposed) and an absence of bass or loud sounds. I aimed to make music with a quiet intensity, and to find a balance between senses of agility and poise.”

More information at www.edmundfinnis.com.

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MAGNUS LINDBERG SOUVENIR (2010)

Duration: 25 minutes Instrumentation: Flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, tuba, 2 percussion, timpani, harp, , string quintet. Commissioned by the Premiered by the New York Philharmonic with , November 2011 at Symphony Space, New York

During his first year as the New York Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in- Residence, Lindberg worked with Music Director Alan Gilbert, in launching CONTACT!, a new-music series devoted to contemporary music.

The composer writes:

“…today’s concert is a little different in that the second half is given over to music by a composer who is no longer living. Gérard Grisey passed away 12 years ago, very suddenly, of a stroke. He was tremendously admired internationally within the new- music community. I had the honor of working with him when I was a young composer. I graduated from the in in 1981, and then moved to , where I worked with Gérard Grisey and . Gérard was an amazing man. He was very much in his own world, and we spent most of the time around his scores rather than around mine. It took many years before his influence found a place in any of my pieces, but finally my 1989 piece Kinetics included some of the spectralist ideas associated with him.

I first heard Grisey in in the summer of 1980, along with Murail, Lévinas, Du- our — the of the spectralist school. It was a culture shock for me. I had been more aware of other strands of modern music — Stockhausen, for example, who was so interesting in terms of structure, and Milton Babbitt. Then all of a sudden I heard what Grisey was doing, coming at music from a very different angle and generating ideas from the sound itself rather than from a philosophy of music. A lot of his inspiration came from the microscopic world — for example, Gérard would explain how it would feel to be inside a bass drum, and he took the actual recorded sound of a bass drum and stretched it over a long span of time.

I have often thought that Gérard, rather like Xenakis, is a composer who was truly unique and whose world was complete on its own. Not many other composers really followed their models, but Gérard’s compositions are wonderful; many of them should be played. We selected the Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil because, in many respects, it represents an

3 of 4 achievement as extreme as was possible within his world. If I have to pick one work to represent Gérard Grisey, it is this one, his last completed work, and a work that very much involves thinking about death — almost as if he had a premonition of his own passing. The concert begins with the premiere of my own Souvenir (in memoriam Gérard Grisey) — so this concert really is a tribute to Grisey.”

More information at www.magnuslindberg.com.

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