FACULTY SELECT SERIES Timothy McAllister, alto and soprano saxophones Liz Ames, piano

Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. DePauw University School of Music Green Center, Thompson Recital Hall

Program Notes

Streetlegal Roshanne Etezady

About her piece, Streetlegal, Roshanne Etezady writes: “The word ‘streetlegal’ comes from the world of racing cars. To me, it suggests a vehicle of great speed and power tearing around city streets and highways. It brings to mind something fast, brilliant, shiny, and even a little bit dangerous.

“This piece has, at its core, a deep sense of hyperkinetic energy. Both instruments are required to perform calisthenic, athletic gestures, all the while maintaining a larger sense of musicality. The piece is virtuosic on an individual level as well as—if not especially—in terms of ensemble. Aggressive, angular lines predominate in the melodic language of Streetlegal, and in terms of structure, ‘hard edges’ are the norm. Each section of the piece seems almost to collide into the next, and when there are transitions between sections, they are short and abrupt. The overall effect, I hope, is one of barely containable energy, excitement, and realized momentum.”

As a young musician, Roshanne Etezady studied piano and flute, and developed an interest in many different styles of music, from the musicals of Steven Sondheim to the 1980s power ballads and Euro-pop of her teenage years. One fateful evening evening in 1986, she saw Philip Glass and his ensemble perform as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. This event marked the beginning of her interest in contemporary classical music, as well as her interest in being a composer herself.

Since then, Etezady’s works have been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, Dartmouth Symphony, eighth blackbird, Music at the Anthology, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet. She has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Performers and ensembles including Rêlache, Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble De Ereprijs, and the Dogs of Desire have performed Etezady’s music throughout the and Europe. Roshanne Etezady's music has earned recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Korean Society of 21st-Century Music, the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP.

As one of the founding members of the Minimum Security Composers Collective, Etezady has helped expand the audience for new music. Through collaborative projects with performing ensembles as well as creative outreach programs, MSCC creates an open dialogue between composers, performers and audiences.

An active teacher, Etezady has taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Yale University, Saint Mary’s College, the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, Arizona State University, and . She has given masterclasses at Holy Cross College, the Juilliard School, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Currently, she is on the faculty of the University of -.

Etezady holds academic degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, and she has worked intensively with numerous composers, including , Martin Bresnick, Michael Daugherty, and Ned Rorem. She completed her doctorate at the in March 2005.

Conceived of as an homage to the playing of Johnny Hodges, Torch Song takes advantage of the saxophone’s remarkable ability to emulate the lyrical qualities of the human voice. Hodges’ technique, so well suited to ballad playing, relies on the expressive use of vibrato, glissandi, and timbre.

In addition to the technical aspects of Hodges’s playing, Torch Song also makes use of its stylistic devices, one of the most important of which is the dynamic, endemic to the performance of jazz standards, between an ideal musical structure and its incompletely realized or expressively embellished interpretation. The material in Torch Song is underpinned by a simple melodic/harmonic structure that, through the employment of temporal stretching and expressive nuance, should be brought to the brink (but not beyond) of imperceptibility. —C. Fisher-Lochhead

Christopher Fisher-Lochhead, born 1984, is a Chicago-based composer, violinist/violist, jazz and folk musician whose interests include the dynamic between innovation and orthodoxy, composition and improvisation, experimentalism and craft, and the tension between the specific demands of material and the generalizing impulse of abstract systems. His music has been performed widely by groups such as the Spektral Quartet, ensemble dal niente, ICE, Third Coast Percussion, Grant Wallace Band, among many others. From 2002–2006, he attended The University of Michigan, where his teachers included William Bolcom and Betsy Jolas for composition, Yizhak Schotten for viola, and Andrew Mead for theory. In the fall 2010, he began graduate degrees at Northwestern University, where he has worked with Lee Hyla, Hans Thomalla, and Jay Alan Yim.

Sonata William Albright

William Albright’s Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano has become a cornerstone of the saxophone repertoire—its emotional urgency and remarkable invention mark it as one of the major works for the instrument. Throughout his career, Albright was a pioneer in streaming together styles and genres that composers had kept strictly separate during the last days of high modernism; instead of partitioning his lives as ragtime artist, “classical” composer, and church musician, he combined them all freely in his work. In doing so, a lot of energy was released, and this music is full of the manic drive, quirkiness, and rough edges that results from the rubbing together of often starkly contrasting musical impulses. This piece swings from the unrelenting bare hammering of the first movement to the unbearably soft ache of the second, from the almost inaudible delicate swirls of the third to the raucous recitative and (mad) dance of the finale.

It might be said that the heart of the piece is the second movement, dedicated to the memory of Albright’s friend, composer George Cacioppo, who died unexpectedly in 1984. “Cacioppo and his music and personality rest at the foundation of my thinking,” writes Albright. He chose an alternate spelling of the baroque ground-bass variation form, la folia for the title of this altered-chaconne movement; his use of the modern Italian spelling in “La follia nuova” suggests both a new “la folia” as well as a “new madness.”

The work was written in 1984 for three saxophone/piano duos (Laura Hunter/Brian Connelly, Donald Sinta/Ellen Weckler, and Joseph Wytko/Walter Cosand) with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Biographies

Saxophonist Timothy McAllister has been hailed as “one of the foremost saxophonists of his generation” (The Times) and “a titan of contemporary music and the instrument, in general” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer), with performances lauded as “astonishing” (The Sydney Morning Herald), “phenomenal” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and "proving brilliantly up to enormous demands" (The Dallas Morning News). His solo, orchestral, and chamber music recordings appear on the Naxos, Albany, Summit, Equilibrium, Centaur, OMM, G.I.A. Publications, New Focus, AUR, New Dynamic, Parma, and Innova labels. Credited with over 200 premieres of new works by eminent and emerging composers worldwide, his work is highlighted in the recent Deutsche Grammophone DVD release of the world premiere of ’s City Noir, filmed as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural concert as music director of the . In 2013, he gave the world premiere of John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer in the Sydney Opera House, followed by critically acclaimed U.S. premieres with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony, conducted by David Roberston. Nonesuch Records released the recording of the Adams Concerto with McAllister and St. Louis Symphony in May 2014, which won the 2015 GRAMMY Award for “Best Orchestral Performance.” He presented the UK premiere of the Adams Concerto at the BBC Proms with Maestra Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the South American premiere in Brazil with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra.

McAllister has been a recent soloist with the Strasbourg Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, Texas Festival Orchestra at Round Top, Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force, United States Navy Band, Dallas Wind Symphony, Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia, Tokyo Wind Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Nashville Symphony and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, among others. An in-demand orchestral musician, he has been invited to appear as guest saxophonist in the wind sections of the Chicago Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Houston Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.

Since 2001, he has appeared frequently on major chamber music series and international festivals as soprano saxophonist of the acclaimed PRISM Saxophone Quartet, including repeat performances each season in venues such as ’s Merkin Hall, Whitney Museum of Art, Miller Theater, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Roulette. The PRISM Quartet regularly conducts ground-breaking residencies each year at the nation’s elite music institutions, including the Curtis Institute, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory among others.

A dedicated teacher of his instrument, he serves as Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, and previously served as co-director of the Institute for New Music and Associate Professor at Northwestern University. He has received invitations for visiting positions and residencies at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique of Paris, and Tokyo’s Kunitachi College of Music and Shobi University, among others. Additionally, he spends his summers as distinguished faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, the American Saxophone Academy and the European University for Saxophone in Gap, France.

He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and other degrees in music education, conducting and performance from the University of Michigan School of Music, where he studied saxophone with Donald Sinta. He is the only saxophonist to ever receive the UM School of Music’s most distinguished performance award—the Albert A.Stanley Medal—and he has been honored alongside noted alums David Daniels (countertenor), American tenor Nicholas Phan, Howard Watkins (MET Opera pianist/vocal coach) and composer Derek Bermel with the Paul C. Boylan Award from the School of Music Alumni Society for his significant contributions in the field of music.

For more information, visit www.timothymcallister.com and www.prismquartet.com.

Liz Ames is a collaborative pianist who is passionate about performing and working with instrumentalists, vocalists, and composers.

Her international appearances include performances at the 2015 World Saxophone Congress, 2008 Contemporary Music Festival in Lima, Peru, as a member of the Trio de las Americas (with her husband, saxophonist Kevin Ames and flutist Penelope Quesada), and at the 2011 International Double Reed Society Conference where she played for the master classes of Richard Woodhams, Nicholas Daniel, and John Steinmetz. In March 2012, Liz served as piano coordinator and staff pianist at the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference in Tempe, Arizona. In September 2014, she performed with saxophonist Dr. Chien Kwan-Lin and clarinetist Dr. Kimberly Cole Luevano at Northern Arizona University’s Single Reed Symposium.

Liz received permission to create piano reductions for four concerti, including Henry Brant’s Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, Edison Denisov’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, My Assam Dragon by Jan Sandstrom, and John Mackey’s Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra. These four reductions are the beginning of Liz’s life-long project of making saxophone concertos more accessible to saxophonists. Liz recently performed her reductions of the Brant Concerto and My Assam Dragon at the 2012 World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland.

While specializing in saxophone literature, Liz continues to pursue projects with a wide variety of instrumentalists and vocalists. She was the pianist for a series of concerts during the 2010–2011 season where she performed the entire collection of 114 Songs by Charles Ives with eight different singers.

Liz completed her doctorate in collaborative piano at Arizona State University and is currently living near Syracuse, New York.