The Music of Stephen Scott: A Retrospective

1977 1987 2011 2013

March 29 & 30, 2014 Colorado College Packard Hall 1 2 3

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Terry Riley

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11 12 13 Stephen Scott Biography

Stephen Scott was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1944 to parents trained in the sciences; early study of music included tutoring in recorder in England, clarinet and saxophone in school bands, and private study and transcription of recordings by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and John Coltrane in high school. He played saxophones and piano in a jazz quintet as a teenager, but he also learned and played, as a clarinetist, the classics of the European tradition.

After studying composition with Homer Keller at the University of Oregon and Gerald Shapiro at Brown, he met and studied informally with Steve Reich in Ghana. Later he collaborated with Terry Riley, and these two composers became his most important influences outside jazz. Scott is a professor of music at Colorado College and has served the Music Department as both chair and associate chair. In 1972 he established the Colorado College New Music Ensemble (NME), and in 1977 The Bowed Piano Ensemble, a branch of the NME. He has served on the faculty of The Evergreen State College and as visiting composer at Eastman School of Music, Aspen Music School, New England Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Southern California, Cal Arts, and at festivals and conservatories in Germany, Italy, Estonia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Ireland, Norway, England, Italy, Canary Islands, Malta, Bermuda, New Zealand and Australia. In February 2011 he and New York Philharmonic English horn soloist Thomas Stacy premiered his Lyric Suite for English Horn and Bowed Piano. In the summer of 2004 Scott was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como, Italy. In 2008 United States Artists named Scott the USA Simon Fellow.

Scott is listed in New Grove's Dictionary of American Music and Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and his work is discussed in several books on twentieth-century music. Awards include commissions from Meet the Composer/USA, Pacific Symphony and the Barlow Endowment, a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation, the New England Conservatory/Rockefeller Foundation Chamber Music Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Composer's Fellowship. His music may be heard on the New Albion, Albany and Navona labels. Film and television credits include Traffic (DVD version), Egg: the Arts Show (PBS) and the NBC special Revenge of the Whale. Scott lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Victoria Hansen, who tours with the Bowed Piano Ensemble as soprano soloist.

Scott’s interests outside music include reading and writing, sailing, hiking with friends and his grown children, anesthesiologist Benjamin Scott of Denver and public radio reporter Amy Scott of Baltimore and their spouses, pediatrician Halden Scott and photographer/art professor Alex Heilner. Scott has summited ten Colorado “Fourteeners” and several peaks in Oregon and Washington. He has three grandsons and expects his first granddaughter to arrive in May.

All of the Scotts, from the elders to the toddlers and infants, seem to have hot feet and travel quite a bit. Stephen’s parents were world travelers and often took their three young children along. By 1957 Stephen and his brother and sister had visited all of the then forty-eight states, as well as Great Britain and most of Western Europe. Visits to Hawai’i and Alaska came much later.

At Colorado College, Scott’s passions for music and travel seemed made for each other; from 1972 to the present, his ensembles, from NME to BPE, have toured at least once, and often twice, almost every academic year. More about the travels and travails of ensemble touring will be found on the final program page.

Saturday, March 29 – Symposium Session

Welcome Remarks Ryan Raul Bañagale, PhD, Class of 2000 Assistant Professor of Music, Colorado College

A Brief Overview of the Bowed Piano Current members of the Bowed Piano Ensemble demonstrate how the instrument produces a variety of intricate and subtle sounds through a host of techniques.

From Workbench to Soundboard: the Maiden Voyage of ‘Vikings’ Shawn Marie Keener, Class of 1993 PhD Candidate in Music History, University of Chicago

“My experience at CC, first as a music major, then as department paraprofessional, is unimaginable without Steve. Sound walks around campus, ruined pianos, trips to the junkyard for instruments, the opportunity (and permission) to make music with fire—who but Steve could make these possible? The rigors of participating in the Bowed Piano Ensemble, not the least of which was getting to rehearsals at the crack of dawn, paid off in a uniquely intimate experience of ensemble musicianship. Touring the world and recording Vikings of the Sunrise made all the bleary-eyed rehearsing and the stern 7:35 wake- up calls worth it. Thanks for everything, Steve!”

Bowing Together in Time Tamara Roberts, PhD, Class of 2000 Assistant Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley

“I first came to know Steve through his music. I was fascinated by the BPE in my first year at CC and couldn’t wait to get a chance to audition and learn to create those sounds myself. As an ensemble member, student, and (later) paraprof, I grew to know Steve as a person: a fantastic teacher, encouraging director, pragmatic producer, and a fiercely creative composer who creates music that speaks to the mind and the soul.”

Messages, Memories & Music

Fifty years of performing, composing and revolutionizing music adds up to a wealth of stories and a trove of memories. At this point in the program, alumni, scholars, critics, composers and colleagues share their remarks and reflections on Stephen Scott and his influence.

Contributing Distinguished Alumni

RYAN RAUL BAÑAGALE (CC Class of 2000) is an Assistant Professor of music at Colorado College where he offers classes on a range of American music topics, including musical theatre, jazz, popular music, and media studies. A recipient of the American Musicological Society’s AMS-50 and Howard Mayer Brown Fellowships, he received his PhD from Harvard University in 2011. His work appears in journals such as Jazz Perspectives and the Journal of the Society For American Music. His first book, titled Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon, will be published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2014. He currently sits on the editorial board of the George Gershwin Critical Edition and will be editing at least three separate arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue.

SHAWN MARIE KEENER (CC Class of 1993) is a cultural historian of vernacular music in early modern Italy. Her dissertation, “The giustiniana phenomenon and Venetian cultural memory, 1400- 1600,” investigates how a peculiarly Venetian style of singing navigates the space between written and oral traditions and indexes shifting notions of civic identity. Keener’s work has been supported in part by a Fulbright Fellowship for a year of research in Venice and a William Rainey Harper–Provost’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship from the University of Chicago. She has contributed to two volumes of collected essays and has presented her work at national meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Renaissance Society of America, as well as other symposia in the U.S.A., Italy, and Germany.

TAMARA ROBERTS (CC Class of 2000) is Assistant Professor of Music at University of California, Berkeley, where she is also affiliated faculty with the Folklore program and Gender and Womens Studies. Her current research investigates connections between sound and race, centering on interracial and intercultural histories of popular and folk music in the Americas. Her forthcoming book, Resounding Afro Asia: Interracial Music and the Performance of Unity (Oxford UP), examines Afro Asian musical collaborations as a window onto inter-minority politics in the post-multicultural era. Tamara also co-edited Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho (Illinois UP), a special issue of Journal of Popular Music Studies on Michael Jackson, and has published several other articles and essays. She has given keynote addresses and guest lectures on music, race, Afro Asian cultural politics, and theatrical sound design at a variety of institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Tamara is also an active musician and has worked nationally and internationally as a composer, sound designer, and performer (percussion, voice) in theater, dance, and film. She performs with a number of Bay Area musicians, including Las Bomberas de la Bahía and The Crane and The Crow. Tamara recently co- founded the HushArbor, a community-based performance workshop that promotes the study and performance of early African American music, an endeavor closely linked with her new research on spirituality, technology, and politics in plantation slavery-era music in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

DANIEL WIENCEK (CC Class of 1991) joined the BPE as a sophomore in 1988, and has been fortunate enough to be on a handful recordings and several tours throughout the world. He has served as BPE rehearsal critic, concert video mixer, and occasional ensemble fill-in. Of course, he’s also been an enthusiastic concertgoer.

Saturday Concert

March 29 7:30 p.m. Packard Hall

Departures (1996) Stephen Scott Batavia, 1770 (b. 1944) Ruth Blues for Miles and Gil June Tune (for Bill Evans) Vivian Lake Victoria, 1970 Ryan Raul Bañagale, piano

These six miniatures were commissioned by pianist Lois Svard and premiered by her at Colorado College in September 1997. The title reflects a sense of departure inherent at three different levels. First, the scope of the piece differs hugely from my custom of writing works of symphonic proportions. Second, most of my music has been composed for bowed piano ensemble, with little or no use of the keyboard. Last, each miniature represents the departure of or from a particular person whose life or work has had an impact on my own. I carry the memory of these people, all deceased but one, and the places I associate with them: Tupaia, the Tahitian star-path navigator who accompanied Captain Cook to Batavia (now Jakarta), only to die in the disease-ridden port; Ruth Carlton Scott, my mother, who taught me much of the music I know and who could sing a hymn or folk tune in all four voices at once, as in the manner of a Bach cello or violin solo; Miles Davis and Gil Evans, whose music introduced a gorgeous sonic universe that nourished my own musical conceptions more than almost any I can think of; my friend Bish (Vivian Edwards), a lovely person, brilliant and busy actor, director and teacher, who always had time for everyone else, too, who died while I was working on the piece, and whose memorial service elegy found its way into Departures. Two hundred years after Tupaia’s passing, I was lucky to find myself at Tanzania’s Lake Victoria studying the local music. I had just left Ghana, where I had met Steve Reich, today still a living icon among American composers, who introduced me to the Ghanaian musicians he was studying with and shared his own compositional ideas with me. My experiences in Africa have never left me; in fact, they provided the means and the inspiration to move away from the European academic tradition found to be so stifling and alien by many American composers of my generation.

Vikings of the Sunrise (1995) Stephen Scott The Bowed Piano Ensemble Trisha Andrews, Wes Brandt, Yan Gao, Neil Hesse, Suzi Kang, Anna Lee, Evan Levy, Andrew Pope (Ensemble Manager), Stephen Scott (Founder and Director), Nick Stephens

Part One

Tangaroa: The Void; The Great Ocean of Kiwa; Ocean Drum

Vikings of the Sunrise: Sun Catcher; Star Path; We, the Navigators; Maui, Tu and Hiro play the Ocean Drum; Tangiia Takes Ten to Tango; Land of Light; Kiukiu: Departing Place of Spirits; Lament for Rapa Nui; The Star Paths Fade Part Two

Vikings of the Sunset: The Caravels of Christ; Fernão’s Theme; El Paso, A.D. 1520; Mar Pacifico; Transit of Venus, Matavai, A.D. 1769; The Last Viking, A.D. 1947; Hawaiki/Valhalla

Vikings of the Sunrise is a concert-length fantasy on themes of navigation, exploration and discovery in the Pacific from ancient times until the present era. The noted Maori/Irish ethnologist Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) coined the term “Vikings of the Sunrise” to denote the intrepid seafaring peoples who first settled the islands of the “Great Ocean of Kiwa”. They set out, probably from Indonesia, as early as 3,500 or more years ago. Sailing and paddling from the West, ever toward the sunrise, they populated island after island throughout the central and south Pacific, sometimes traversing vast expanses of open sea, eventually reaching as far east as Easter Island and perhaps South America. To the north they discovered and colonized Hawaii, and to the south New Zealand. They were the first Polynesians, and probably the first long-distance ocean navigators.

Vikings of the Sunset refers to the European explorers of the Pacific, beginning with Ferdinand Magellan, who first rounded South America from the Atlantic, sailing ever toward the setting sun to discover new trade routes and new lands to colonize (and Christianize as well), and to help complete the map of the world by proving finally that the earth was a sphere and could be sailed around. There are also references to the great explorer Captain James Cook and the latter-day anthropologist, adventurer and iconoclast Thor Heyerdahl.

While the themes outlined above provided the general inspiration for Vikings of the Sunrise, the music should not be thought of as depicting a specific program or story. Rather it consists of sound patterns aroused in my own imagination by ancient and heroic sagas told of men and women who traveled the “Great Ocean of Kiwa”.

Notes on Part One by Stephen Scott

Tangaroa, he without parents, was self-created. After untold ages during which he remained alone in the great void, he decided to act, creating the sea, the lands and the animals and people who inhabited them. Many Polynesians venerated him as Lord of the Ocean. Tangaroa first created Hawaiki (thought by many to be present-day Ra'iatea), the birthplace of lands and traditional homeland of the Polynesians; he caused the island to rise from the sea to the accompaniment of the thundering surf, the “Ocean Drum.”

Maui is one of the most important Polynesian demigods. Legendary sailor and navigator, he accomplished many wonderful feats. He fished up islands from the bottom of the sea, including the North Island of New Zealand and the island of Hawai'i. In one story from the Marquesas, he was frustrated because his laundry wouldn't dry in the short hours of sunlight available, so he voyaged far to the east to find Ra, the Sun. Maui, the Sun Catcher, snared Ra in a noose of human hair to slow down his progress across the sky, thereby introducing what Peter Buck (while a member of New Zealand’s parliament) called “the first practical Daylight Saving Bill in the Pacific.”

Maui, Tu, Hiro, Paintapu and countless other Polynesian sailors both legendary and historically known, both male and female, developed over the centuries many sophisticated navigational techniques for discovering, colonizing and trading among small islands and coral atolls widely scattered over the world’s most immense ocean. The most important of these is the use of “star paths,” by which bearings are determined by aiming toward a rising or setting star known to be in the direction of a particular island. Traditional navigators were systematically trained to remember astronomical information, as well as data about seasonal winds, the direction of ocean swells, cloud patterns near land, and streaks of bioluminescence near islands. As writing was not known in the Pacific, they had to memorize all of this information in order to apply it continually in planning and executing voyages over vast tracts of empty sea.

One widely celebrated navigator was Tangiia, who some believe ranged in his large Tahitian double canoe over the 10,000 miles between Indonesia and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Since this must have been exhausting, I have imagined him occasionally taking a break for recreation and entertainment, though to the tune of a twentieth-century dance form.

The archipelago that the Spanish named The Marquesas was known by its original inhabitants as Hiva, “the land of light,” or “the land of men.” There, a highly developed culture evolved from the traditions brought by the first colonists from central Polynesia, perhaps the Society Islands. Near Vevau is Kiukiu, a promontory pointing west from which the spirits of the dead were thought to begin their homeward journey toward the setting sun and Hawaiki.

Rapa Nui has remained a place of mystery and fascination to the outside world since it was first sighted by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722. As the Dutch explorer Roggeveen passed by, he christened it Easter Island. As elsewhere in Polynesia, the eventual impact of introduced disease and superior European weaponry, combined with the zeal to convert populations to Christianity, was devastating; on Easter Island, so ironically named, Peruvian slave trafficking in the 19th Century aggravated the destruction. My “Lament for Rapa Nui” is meant, by extension, to mourn the tragic loss of much of the great beauty and continuity in Polynesian cultures since Magellan's entry into the Pacific.

By the time of the European explorations, long-distance voyaging seems to have ended in Polynesia, with a consequent dwindling of knowledge of traditional star path navigation. The techniques remain alive in a few places in Oceania, such as the Caroline Islands, where famous navigators like Mau Piailug still practice them. In the 1970s a small group of men in Hawai’i designed and built Hokule’a, a replica of a traditional voyaging double canoe. Hokule’a’s first long passage, navigated without instruments by Mau and sailed by a Hawaiian crew, took her in 1976 to Tahiti over 2,200 miles of empty sea. On a “voyage of rediscovery” in 1985-87 Hokule’a sailed throughout Polynesia, including New Zealand, navigated by Hawaiian Nainoa Thompson; her success has inspired a renaissance of canoe building and voyaging across the Pacific, and a revival of cultural pride among Polynesian peoples.

Notes on Part Two by Stephen Scott

The Caravels of Christ is the title of Gilbert Renault's book on the Portuguese explorations in the Indian Ocean just before and after 1500 A.D. The young Fernao Magalhaes (Ferdinand Magellan) served his apprenticeship aboard these caravels, learning the techniques of navigation and commercial exploitation that were so vital to the expanding Portuguese empire. The epic voyage that brought him great fame set out from Spain under his command in 1519, sailing west to find a route to the East and the Spice Islands. In 1520 Magellan was the first European to discover and navigate El Paso (the pass), the Strait of Magellan, which connects Atlantic and Pacific near the southern tip of South America. Entering the vast unknown ocean seen by Balboa from Panama a few years earlier, he named it “Mar Pacifico,” for it was indeed in a peaceful mood and remained so during most of the three months it took his fleet to cross it. Magellan somehow missed finding any of the islands of Polynesia, and he himself did not complete the historic first circumnavigation—as he was killed in a skirmish in the Philippines—but one ship of his fleet managed to return to Spain in 1522 with 18 survivors from the original crew of 277.

Of the many Europeans who followed Magellan into the Pacific in the next two centuries, the Englishman James Cook was, without doubt, the greatest explorer. In his three voyages he virtually completed the map of the world, “discovering” and mapping important new lands and proving that the long-sought Great South Land did not exist. Though a man of little formal schooling, he made possible much scientific investigation, including the measurement of the transit of Venus across the sun from Matavai Bay in Tahiti and initiating formal study of Pacific peoples, flora and fauna. On his unfortunate third voyage, he too lost his life, in Hawai'i, where he was the first known European visitor.

The Last Viking, Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, famously sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands aboard the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947. He thus proved that the Pacific islands could have been settled from the east, though the weight of much recent scholarship demonstrates that this thesis is incorrect, confirming the traditional Polynesian stories of origins along the western margins of the Pacific. It is now generally agreed that the far-flung but culturally related islands that Cook realized were “the most extensive nation on earth” were discovered and settled over centuries of intentional voyaging on sophisticated craft guided by highly trained navigators.

Finally, I have imagined all the departed Pacific voyagers, the original Polynesian navigators and the European explorers, meeting in the after-life in a mythic homeland that is both the Polynesians' Hawaiki and the Norse Valhalla. They have perhaps left behind the very different yet inexorably intertwined earthly cultures that defined them and which they helped to define, cultures that often so tragically clashed in the Pacific, to be rightly honored as heroes by Tangaroa and Odin.

Sunday Concert

March 30 2:00 p.m. Packard Hall

The Desperate Notes (2008) Stephen Scott One Perfect Rose (poetry by Dorothy Parker) The Lady’s Reward (poetry by Dorothy Parker) Love After Love (poetry by Derek Walcott)

Victoria Hansen, soprano Daniel Brink, piano; Paul Nagem, flutes Cynthia Robinson, violin; Evan Shelton, cello

I wrote this short song cycle for Victoria Hansen especially for the “Desperate Musical Housewives 2” concert at The Colorado Springs School in June 2008, where she and instrumentalist friends premiered the work. Victoria chose the poetry to “mirror changing vantage points of Self as a woman’s life evolves: Self-centered…Self-compromising…Self-reclaiming.” The musical language I chose is straightforward and accessible—quasi tonal and modal, without Modernist clangor, experimental techniques or extreme ranges. -note by Stephen Scott

The composer would like to thank the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for authorizing this use of Dorothy Parker’s works, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC for authorizing the use of Derek Walcott’s work.

Un Poco Passacaglia (1997) Stephen Scott

Daniel Wiencek ‘91, solo piano with Bowed Piano Ensemble alumni

I joined the BPE as a sophomore in 1988 and have been fortunate enough to be on a handful of the Ensemble’s recordings and several tours throughout the world. I have served as BPE rehearsal critic, concert video mixer and occasional ensemble ringer. Of course, I’ve also been an enthusiastic concertgoer. When I was preparing my last piano recital, in 1997, I asked Steve if he had written any non-bowed piano scores. He turned to his sketchbook and produced this gem for me. This time, I thought it would be fun to play the piece as intended, then perform it again, bowed-piano style. -note by Dan Wiencek

I Remember Clifford (1957) Benny Golson/arr. Nick Stephens (b. 1929)

Nick Stephens, flügelhorn Evan Levy, Sylvie Scowcroft, Andrew Pope, Neil Hesse, bowed piano

Clifford Brown was one of the best trumpeters of the Bebop era, thoroughly schooled in music theory, jazz harmony, piano, vibes and bass. In 1948 he played gigs in Philadelphia with trumpeters Miles Davis and Fats Navarro, and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. In the early 50s, he worked with many jazz greats, including Tad Dameron, Art Farmer, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins and Max Roach. His improvised solos were brilliantly lyrical and logical, and he favored long melodic lines. His jazz career, however, lasted less than five years; he died at 25 in an automobile accident. Brown’s band-mate and friend Benny Golson composed this beautiful and haunting jazz threnody, which became a standard. The nostalgia of the tune combined with Stephen’s own love of jazz made this an obvious choice for his retrospective concerts. Nick’s arrangement is inspired by Stephen’s arrangement of In a Silent Way. -note by Nick Stephens and Stephen Scott

Double Variations (1999) Stephen Scott

The 2014 Bowed Piano Ensemble Trisha Andrews, Wes Brandt, Yan Gao, Neil Hesse ‘11, Suzi Kang, Anna Lee, Evan Levy, Andrew Pope ‘13 (Ensemble Manager), Stephen Scott (Founder and Director), Nick Stephens

The Alumni Bowed Piano Ensemble Daniel Wiencek ‘91, Shawn Keener ‘93, Lynn Shelton Holladay ‘05, Jeff Kent ‘92, Paula Olmstead ‘77, Elisha Nottingham ‘05, Ryan Capp ‘91, Chris Eisinger ‘96, Patsy Hauck Aronstein ‘80, Brendan O’Donoghue ‘12

Colorado College commissioned this piece for two bowed pianos (twenty players, forty hands, four hundred fingers) for its Quasquicentennial (aka 125th Anniversary). Ten advanced music students from Tallinn, Estonia joined the 1999 CC ensemble to perform the work in Shove Chapel. Shortly after, the whole gang flew to San Francisco to give a benefit concert for Radio KPFA. The Estonian students were housed, fed and shown around the City by Bay-Area Estonian immigrants. How cool was that?! -note by Stephen Scott

Short Pause

In C (1964) Terry Riley (b. 1935) Special 50th Anniversary Performance by alumni, current students and guests Terry Riley’s 1964 composition was a seminal work of the Minimalist movement, which rapidly took hold among young American composers hungry for an antidote to counter and move away from the academic orthodoxy stemming from a half-century of modernist thought that favored only complex and dissonant serialist and twelve-tone music that had become stifling and alien to a young generation of musicians. Riley’s ingenious use of short, repeating figures, derived from familiar scales and a steady pulse, coupled with elements of choice from the players, blew in like a fresh breeze and is still revered by musicians who perform the piece many times each year around the globe. Colorado College has presented annual performances of In C for many years, through the efforts of Stephen Scott and his Experimental Music students. It’s a good way to clean your ears out! VICTORIA HANSEN, soprano, frequently performs in concerts and theatrical works including solo recitals exploring specific themes, most recently portraying Julia Child in the solo opera Bon Appétit. She performs in a variety of styles, genres and vocal ranges, and specializes in New Music compositions, notably the music of her husband Stephen Scott with The Bowed Piano Ensemble. She has toured extensively with the ensemble throughout the USA, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia including concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room, Canberra International Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, The Other Minds Festival, New Music Santa Fe series, MaerzMusik (Berlin), ppIANISSIMO FESTIVAL (Sofia) and Festival Musica Visual (Canary Islands). Mr. Scott composed two song cycle fantasies for Ms. Hansen with Bowed Piano Ensemble, Paisajes Audibles/Sounding Landscapes (Albany Records) and The Deep Spaces (New Albion) and is featured on their most recent CD, Ice and Fire (Navona). Ms. Hansen joined the faculty of Colorado College in 2000 serving as Principal Instructor in Voice for 12 years and co-directing a music theatre/opera program for nine years.

DANIEL BRINK joined the performance faculty at Colorado College in 1987 and was appointed to the full-time faculty as a lecturer in Music in 1997. Dan participates in music academics teaching Music Theory courses and Music in Western Culture. In the performance arena he teaches private and class piano, accompanies CC choral ensembles, serves as accompanist/coach for CC student vocalists and conducts the CC Chamber Orchestra. He has also taught on the faculty of the Colorado College Vocal Arts Symposium, part of CC’s Summer Festival of the Arts, since its inception in 1999. Outside CC, Dan serves as Assistant Conductor and Principal Pianist for the Colorado Springs Chorale. He also serves as Accompanist/Coach and Music Director for Opera Theatre of the Rockies, and frequently performs in recital with singers from throughout Colorado.

PAUL NAGEM has been principal flute for the Colorado Springs Symphony/Philharmonic since 1994. A native of San Diego, he studied flute there with Damian Bursill-Hall, then principal flute of the San Diego Symphony and now with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Lois Schaefer of the Boston Symphony. Mr. Nagem is the Instructor of Flute at Colorado College. He has performed with the San Diego Symphony, the Colorado Symphony and the Singapore Symphony. Mr. Nagem plays Straubinger flutes. CYNTHIA ROBINSON has played first violin with the Colorado Springs Symphony/Philharmonic since 1980. She has enjoyed performing with celebrities in Colorado Springs, Denver and at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, including Earth Wind & Fire, Red Skelton, Smokey Robinson, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Aaron Copland, Isaac Stern, Manhattan Transfer, John Denver, Dave Brubeck, George Benson, Nell Carter, Mannheim Steamroller, Judy Collins, Luciano Pavarotti, Chet Atkins, Michael Martin Murphy, Yo Yo Ma, Henry Mancini, Peter Nero and Yes. She also plays at churches, hospitals, restaurants, parties, retirement communities, the Broadmoor Waltz Club (in its 77th year), Victorian Balls, and for many weddings and events. Two of her favorite engagements were performing in Phantom of the Opera and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change in Denver. Currently in her 11th year of teaching music at Fountain Valley School, Cynthia also teaches private and group violin classes to students at Pikes Peak Community College and Colorado Springs Conservatory, and in her private studio for violin and piano students.

EVAN SHELTON recently completed a graduate degree in Suzuki Pedagogy from the Lamont School of music at the University of Denver. He is currently a cellist in the Cheza String Quartet, one of the cello instructors at the Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and the lecturer of Cello at the University of Colorado Denver. When he is not practicing or teaching he can be found exploring the amazing Colorado outdoors, as well as playing and recording with some of Colorado’s best singer-songwriters.

One Perfect Rose

A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. Lyrics to All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet One perfect rose. The Desperate

I knew the language of the floweret; “My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.” Notes Love long has taken for its amulet One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah, no, it’s always just my luck to get One perfect rose. Love After Love

The Lady’s Reward The time will come when, with elation, You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, Lady, lady never start In your own mirror, Conversation toward your heart; And each will smile at the other’s welcome, Keep your pretty words serene; And say, sit here, Never murmur what you mean. Eat. Show yourself in word and look, You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Swift and shallow as a brook. Give wine. Be as cool and quick to go Give bread. As a drop of April snow; Be as delicate and gay Give back your heart to itself, As a cherry flower in May To the stranger who has loved you All your life, Lady, lady never speak Whom you ignored for another, Of the tears that burn your cheek Who knows you by heart. She will never win him whose Words had shown she feared to lose. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, Be you wise and never sad, The photographs, You will get your lovely lad. The desperate notes, Never serious be, nor true, Peel your image from the mirror. And your wish will come to you, Sit. And if it makes you happy, kid, Feast on your life. You’ll be the first it ever did.

A Short History of the Bowed Piano Ensemble (2014) Stephen Scott

The Bowed Piano Ensemble, founded by composer Stephen Scott at Colorado College in 1977, has evolved into a small experimental-music orchestra whose ten players conjure, from one open grand piano, long, singing lines, sustained drones, chugging accordion-like figures, crisp staccato tones reminiscent of clarinets, deep drum tones and more, often simultaneously, to create a rich, contrapuntal new-chamber-music tapestry. Since its inception, the Ensemble has toured extensively throughout Europe, the Atlantic Islands, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

The original bow, several strands of rosined nylon fish line, seems to have been invented by Michigan composer Curtis Curtis-Smith. In some of his solo piano compositions, he required the player to reach under the propped piano lid to draw the bow across and under the piano strings to create a single sustained tone, striking and very different from any known conventional or familiar piano sounds. After hearing one of Curtis’s pieces in Boulder, Colorado in 1976, I asked him if I could experiment with one of his bows, and he kindly sent me one.

At that time I was interested in large, extended chords derived from the harmonic explorations of the jazz musicians of the 1940’s, particularly the saxophonist Charlie Parker. I had also been pondering what kind of unique ensemble I could put together to help me find my own “voice” as a composer, and the idea came to me that several of the nylon bows wielded by several players could create organ-like sustained chords, with a sound like no other instrument, and especially un-piano-like. I made several nylon bows similar to Curtis-Smith’s and added some other touches, including a steel-rimmed paper key tag at each end, coloring the paper circles in different hues to denote the pitch of the piano strings to be sounded by the “soft bows”, as we named them. It was an arbitrary color code: “a” was pink, “c” was purple, etc.

This experimentation led to composition, and my first piece for bowed piano, Music for Bowed Strings (later re-named Music One for Bowed Strings) required not only sustained tones made by the soft bows, but also short, crisp staccato tones. These could not be accurately sounded by soft bows, so we invented a new tool, “the rigid bow,” a Popsicle stick covered with rosined horsehair attached by glue and thread. This device was perfect for short vertical strokes on one string, creating the short, percussive tones we wanted to contrast with the long tones of the soft bows. The rigid bows, some of them with horse hair on both sides to allow a player to move from one pitch to an adjacent half-step, were very effective, whether wielded by one player or by a group assigned to sound many pitches and rhythms in a kind of “section,” as in a section of violins or trombones in an orchestra. Over the years, and often fueled by inventive and open-minded student musicians in the BPE, we discovered many more tools and methods to “excite” the piano strings, such as mutes, “bow traps,” plastic, rubber and paper bows, guitar picks, hand-held piano hammers and mallets, and you name it.

These unorthodox musical tools and techniques have surprised and enchanted audiences at world- renowned venues including Sydney Opera House, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Town Hall New York, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the medieval Town Hall in Tallinn, Estonia, the Slovak National Radio Studio, Hamilton City Hall in Bermuda and Jameos del Agua, a volcanic lava-tube-become-concert-hall in Lanzarote, Canary Islands. The group has made many live radio and television broadcasts and played by invitation at many professional festivals on three continents. Our six commercial recordings, spanning 1984 to 2013, are on sale in Packard Hall Lobby during the Retrospective events. A more detailed history of the Bowed Piano Ensemble can be read at http://bit.ly/BowedPianoHistory 2

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5 NME/BPE

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9 10 11 The Ensembles: 1977 - 2014

12 13 14 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the many people who have given their time, know-how and talents to make this series of events possible:

Prof. Ryan Bañagale ’00, Victoria Hansen, Stormy Burns, Gina Abendroth, Andrew Pope ’13, Neil Hesse ’11, Dan Wiencek ’91, Dave McCann, Shawn Keener ’93, Tamara Roberts, ’00, Carl Olson, Patti White, Leslie Weddell, Professor Emeritus Bill Hochman

Key to inside front cover photos

1 Green Room warm-up (with tootsie pop) for 2007 Spoleto USA Festival, Charleston, SC 2 Preparing the “bow dam” with Elissa Green and Laura Whalin, 2002 European Tour 3 Stephen at the helm of Baby Grand, Grand Lake, Colorado 4 Duet with grandson James Scott 5 Teenage Hard Bop quintet, Oregon circa 1962 6 Let’s see, this might be Venice, 2002 7 Stephen’s opera debut and swan song (circa 1987, Tom Johnson’s Four-Note Opera) 8 At Villa Serbelloni, resident scholar in 2004 at Rockefeller Study Center, Bellagio, Italy 9 With Terry Riley at Composer to Composer Festival 1988, Telluride, Colorado 10 Petite Colorado Springs apples, poking fun at older brother, a real Oregon apple grower 11 At Lake Como, Italy during 2004 Rockefeller Foundation residence 12 Christmas, mid ‘90s 13 Relaxing somewhere on the 1987 Australia tour

Key to inside back cover photos

1 The Allen Room and Columbus Circle, New York City, 2006 2 Terry Riley’s In C during the CC New Music Festival, 1972 3 First of nine European tours, 1986 4 “New Music Faces,” after Cleveland Art Museum concert, 2010 5 Life Magazine photo, 1980 6 2013 and 2011 Bowed Piano Ensembles prepare for the 2013 Allen Room Concert, NYC 7 At the Logos Foundation Tetrahedron concert space, Gent, Belgium 2005 8 Almeida Opera Festival, London 1998, with Peter Savage’s live projections to screen 9 Fuzzy friends at the Koala House, Queensland, Australia 1987 (beware the sharp claws!) 10 Definitely not “New Music Faces,” Texas/New Mexico tour 2004 (premiere of first song cycle) 11 1995 Europe tour, premiere of Vikings of the Sunrise 12 Rehearsing circa 1998 in Pearson Studio, Packard Hall 13 A clean, uncluttered Pearson Studio, if you can believe it! 14 Here’s the clutter, 2011