Ross Bauer, Composer Portrait Celebrating His Sixtieth Birthday
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Mika Pelo and Kurt Rohde, co-directors PeRFoRMeRS Hrabba atladottir, violin ellen Ruth Rose, viola Mary artmann, cello Michael Seth orland, piano Peter Josheff, clarinet eric Zivian, piano Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello Ross Bauer, Composer Portrait Celebrating His Sixtieth Birthday 7:00 pm, Sunday, JanuaRy 22, 2012 Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing arts 6:15pm pre-ConCert TalK with composers Ross Bauer, Martha Horst, and Harold Meltzer EmpyRean enSemble Co-directors Mika Pelo Kurt Rohde PERFORMERS Hrabba Atladottir, violin Ellen Ruth Rose, viola Mary Artmann, cello Michael Seth Orland, piano Peter Josheff, clarinet Eric Zivian, piano Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello adMinistraTiVe & PRoduction STaff Christina Acosta, editor Philip Daley, publicity manager Rudy Garibay, designer Joshua Paterson, production manager THe dePartmenT oF MuSiC preSents The empyrean ensemble Mika Pelo and Kurt Rohde, co-directors Ross Bauer Composer Portrait Program The Near Beyond for Clarinet and String Trio Ross Bauer (b. 1951) Pink Angels for Violin, Viola, and Violoncello Harold Meltzer (world premiere, in honor of Ross Bauer’s sixtieth birthday) (b. 1966) Riff Tides for Violin, Cello, Viola, Bass Clarinet Martha Horst (world premiere, in honor of Ross Bauer’s sixtieth birthday) (b. ) Tribute for Cello and Piano Ross Bauer intermission Sequenza IX for Solo Clarinet Luciano Berio (1925–2003) Piano Quartet Ross Bauer Moderato Adagio Allegro giocoso Please join us for a reception following the concert in the Bartholomew Room Sunday, January 22, 2012 • 7:00 pm Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center We ask that you be courteous to your fellow audience members and the performers. Please turn off your cell phones and refrain from texting. Audience members who are distracting to their neighbors or the performers in any way may be asked to leave at any time. Also, this performance is being professionally recorded for the university archive. Photography, audio, or audiovisual recording is prohibited during the performance. aBOUT THe CoMPoSeRS AND THEIR CoMPoSiTIONS Ross Bauer’s compositions Fund at the Library of Congress, Meet the Composer, the “consistently reveal clarity of form ASCAP Foundation, the Barlow Endowment at Brigham Young coupled with expressive elegance and a University, Symphony Space, Concert Artists Guild, and the distinct musical trajectory that rewards chamber choir Volti. During the 2007–08 concert season he the listener with its internal logic and was Music Alive composer-in-residence with the Colonial compelling conclusions” (Academy Symphony in New Jersey. In 2011 he served both as guest Award citation). His work is published by composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference and as C. F. Peters, APNM, and ACA, and resident composer at the Chamber Music Conference and recorded on the GM, Centaur, and New Composers’ Forum of the East. While in graduate school he World labels. Both Ritual Fragments, a CD co-founded the new music ensemble Sequitur and remains its of his chamber and vocal music, and Thin Ice, for cello and coartistic director. Harold was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1966, fourteen players, are available on Albany Recordings. grew up in Long Island, graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, and holds degrees from King’s College, The Near Beyond, for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, was Cambridge, and the Yale School of Music, as well as from composed during the fall of 2005 (at the request of Laurie Columbia Law School. He teaches at Vassar College and lives San Martin and Yu-Hui Chang) for Peter Josheff and the with his family in the East Village of Manhattan. Empyrean Ensemble. It’s dedicated to the memory of Lois Jones, an early and fervent supporter of Empyrean Ensemble, In writing my little string trio I was influenced by Willem a friend of modern art of all kinds, and a warm and de Kooning’s 1945 painting Pink Angels, its canvas suffused wonderful human being. Although there are some expressive with pink biomorphic spaces that compete for attention with moments, particularly near the end, The Near Beyond is not of an active gold field. Mediating between them are pentimenti, an elegiac character. Lois’s spirit was too buoyant for that. or black lines that suggest the painter’s earlier and different placement of these pink spaces on the canvas. The overall In one movement lasting around ten minutes, the piece falls impression is of bodies striving for a sense of place over into six sections of varying length. The opening, marked time, and that seemed fitting inspiration for music meant to Mysterious and subdued, quarter note = 104, unfolds slowly commemorate a friendship that has grown and deepened over with long, drawn-out harmonies in the strings leading the last twelve years. Happy Birthday, Ross. seamlessly into a lyrical viola solo. Things become more —H.M. animated with the entrance of the clarinet, initiating an extended passage that features dialogue with the strings. The tempo increases and the clarinet takes center stage with the strings playing pizzicato accents in octaves leading to Martha Horst is a composer who has a very long, wide-ranging tune with continuous pizzicato devoted herself to the performance, arpeggiation. The fifth section, for the strings alone, builds to creation, and instruction of classical an intense climax in double stops that then dissolves into a music. Her music has been performed by col legno battuto upbeat passage (tapping the strings with the performers and groups including the bow). The sixth and final section, the only truly slow music Fromm Players, Earplay, Alea III, of the piece, has the clarinet playing a variant of the opening Empyrean Ensemble, Susan Narucki, Left string tune in counterpoint with the strings, and its last two Coast Ensemble, Dal Niente, the notes are doubled by the cello. The cello has the last word: a Women’s Philharmonic, Composers, Inc., descending passage marked morendo (dying away). CUBE, members of the Scottish Chamber —Ross Bauer Orchestra, Eric Mandat, and Amy Dissanayake. Horst has won the Copland Award, the 2005 Alea III International Composition Competition, and the Rebecca Clarke International Composition Competition and has held The New York Times listed an October fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the 2010 Naxos release of Harold Arts, Wellesley Conference, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Meltzer’s music as one of the best and Dartington International School in the United Kingdom. classical recordings of the year. The disc Her Piano Sonata No. 1, recorded by acclaimed pianist Lara includes Sindbad, for narrator and piano Downes, was released nationally by Crossover Media. She trio, with John Shirley-Quirk narrating, began her performance and music theory training at the age and the sextet Brion, a finalist for the 2009 of five and studied formal composition at Stanford University, Pulitzer Prize. His work has been honored under Ross Bauer, David Rakowski, and John Chowning at by the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize, a CCRMA. She has attended several national and international Guggenheim Fellowship, a Charles Ives festivals and studied with composers such as Milton Babbitt, Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Mario Davidovsky, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and Oliver Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency, and by commissions Knussen. She received a PhD in theory and composition from in the last few years from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the UC Davis. Fromm and Koussevitzky Music Foundations, the McKim 4 aBOUT THe CoMPoSeRS AND THEIR CoMPoSiTIONS Before moving to Illinois, Horst was an active member of directions are suggested, but are usually cut off, often rather the San Francisco musical community, served as president prematurely. This process naturally generates a considerable of Earplay, a San Francisco-based contemporary music amount of tension, tension that culminates in the substantial ensemble, and, in addition to her compositional activities, and active final section of the piece. The rhetoric of the piece, was also a professional singer, performing regularly with the more floaty and introspective earlier, becomes quite rhythmic San Francisco Symphony Chorus. She was a soloist in the and driving here, leading to a series of repeated notes Symphony’s Grammy award-winning production of Sweeney followed by a long sixteenth-note unison passage between the Todd starring Patti LuPone and Neil Patrick Harris. Dr. Horst cello and piano. A short reprise of some earlier soft chords currently teaches composition and theory at Illinois State leads to the somewhat abrupt ending. University and has also taught at UC Davis, East Carolina University, and San Francisco State University. —Ross Bauer Riff Tides is a short, fast-paced work written at the request of Empyrean Ensemble to honor Ross Bauer’s sixtieth birthday. I was relieved when Empyrean Ensemble asked me to write a Sequenza IX, for solo clarinet (1980), is the ninth in a series short work of no more than five minutes to honor Ross Bauer. of fourteen works scored for various solo instruments written If not given such a time constraint, I would have to write a between 1958 and 2002 by the Italian composer Luciano work several hours long to honor my most cherished mentor. Berio (1925–2003). This work was later adapted for alto saxophone by Berio in 1981 (Sequenza IXb) and for bass When seeking inspiration for this work, I thought of the clarinet by Rocco Parisi in 1998 (Sequenza IXc). Empyrean Ensemble’s fabulous bass clarinetist Peter Josheff. I wanted to write something that showed off his musicality and The sequenzas, Italian for sequence, explore the inherent rhythmic flare. Another source of inspiration for this work qualities and technical extremes of the instrument and was the bass clarinet playing of jazz musician Michel Pilz, a are considered by some as one of the most remarkable German-born bass clarinetist who played with the Manfred compositional achievements of the late twentieth century.