Music from the Society of Composers
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THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE MUSIC FROM THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS REGION 1 (NEW ENGLAND) October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall Fine Arts Center THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 9:30 am Amherst, Massachusetts CONCERT 1 Luminous Descent Richard Nelson electronic tape Trombonius Emanuel Rubin Three Pieces for Piano Daniel Cate Nikki Stoia, piano The Voice of Jane Carlyle Ann Kearns Jane Bryden, soprano Monica Jakuc, piano Music for Tuba and Timpani Stephen Gryc Adam Porter, tuba William Hanley, timpani Flower-Terrible Memories Andrew Simpson Andrew Simpson, piano THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 10:45 am Amherst, Massachusetts PAPER SESSION I Ron Parks: Non-Real-Time Granular Synthesis with Csound This presentation introduces and demonstrates a collection of Csound computer music instrument designs developed for granular synthesis. The instrument designs presented demonstrate control over all parameters of granular synthesis. William Pfaff & Whitman Brown, electric guitars: Composer as Improviser Trapeze for electric guitar duo was created in 1993 to explore the possibilities of free improvisation and interdisciplinary collaboration. It presents an alternative to traditional concepts of freely improvised music. THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 11 :30 am Amherst, Massachusetts CONCERT 2 Four Studies for Two Clarinets Elliott Schwartz Jean Johnson, clarinet Jason Fettig, clarinet Sonata #2 William Goldberg William Goldberg, piano Soliloquy Pamela Marshall Emmanuel Feldman, cello Skelter Memory Douglas Durant Bruce Rankin, wind controller Hoquet Hayg Boyadjian Marsha Johnson, soprano Herman Weiss, piano Two Suspended Images Will Moylan Bruce Rankin, wind controller Sonaria Elizabeth Walton Vercoe Emmanuel Feldman, cello Chimeric Fantasy Allen Brings Lynn Klock, alto saxophone Eric Roth, cello Nikki Stoia, piano THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 2:30 pm Amherst, Massachusetts CONCERT 3 Into The Labyrinth Charles Bester electronic tape Proimion Beta Alexandros Kalogeras Janet Underhill, bassoon Seven Songs on Poems of James Joyce Elizabeth Lauer Alice Marie Nelson, mezzo soprano Elizabeth Lauer, piano Sinuosity Canary Burton Katherine Kleitz, flute Gail Grycel, oboe Marc Lauritsen, piano Elegy David Cleary David Cleary, cello Drei Lieder Frank Warren Sally Baker, mezzo soprano Debbie Greenebaum, violin Eric Roth, cello C'est si bon William Matthews William Matthews, flute Hannah Lilja, clarinet Amy Chandler and Geoffrey Holm, violin Alison Brooks, viola Benjamin Tassinari, cello Timothy Bakland, piano THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 4:00 pm Amherst, Massachusetts PAPER SESSION II William Matthews Many Exits: Post-Modern Working Conditions for American Composers Composers in the United States are often taught to write music in the absence of particular performance opportunities: a quartet is composed for a generic two violins, viola and cello playing in an imagined Alice Tully Hall. In contrast to this traditional and increasingly futile approach, there are advantages to writing for particular local musicians and specific local community conditions. The more modest satisfactions gained may ultimately be more fulfilling, and are certainly more within our reach as we face the fact that we're not all going to be famous, an<j that the rewards of composerly fame in our society are· in fact insubstantial and fleeting. Performance opportunities abound for composers who can work within local cultural constraints. Several community composing projects are described as examples. l I I j THE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, REGION 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND DANCE October 7, 1995 Bezanson Recital Hall 4:30 pm Amherst, Massachusetts CONCERT 4 Three Household Miniatures Karen Tarlow Mary Ellen Miller, clarinet Diane Fedora, bassoon Saving Daylight Time: David Patterson Poems from a Texas Border Town Eleanor Kelly, soprano David Patterson, piano Images for Solo Clarinet Margo Simmons Edwards Kirk Edwards, clarinet Modal and Polymodal Pieces Steven David Stalzer Bernadette Balkus, piano Duo Charles Kaufmann Charles Kaufmann, recorder John Byrne, Baroque bassoon Sonnets from the Portuguese Elizabeth Scheidel Austin Maria Tegzes, soprano Geoffrey Burleson, piano Winter Haiku Dennis Leclaire Linda Papatoboli, piano Trio for violin, cello & piano Gerald Shapiro Adagio rubato e mo/to espressivo (3rd movement) Debbie Greenebaum, violin Eric Roth, cello Nikki Stoia, piano Program Notes Elizabeth Scheidel Austin received her early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory and Goucher College and was awarded a scholarship by Nadia Boulanger to study at the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau. After teaching and earning a Master's degree at the Hartt School, she established a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hochschule tor Musik Mannheim/Heidelberg in 1990. During her Ph.D. studies at the University of Connecticut, she won first Prize in the David Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition. Currently she is Assistant Director of the German Proficiency Program, encouraging American music and fine arts students who wish to study for a semester in Germany. She spends part of every year abroad on this program. She has studied with Robert Hall Lewis and Donald Harris. Her music is published by Arsis Press and Peter Tonger Verlag and recorded on the Capstone label. Her unpublished scores are available through the American Composers Alliance. Setting five Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writes the composer, "required the evocation of an intense turning point in a life: a reflection of wonderment and quietude in the face of tumultuous emotion." Much of the thematic material in these songs is heard throughout the cycle with the expectation of varying degrees of recognition. The composer's goal in setting the sonnets was to enhance the beauty and underline the import of the texts. The title of the sonnets comes from Robert Browning calling Elizabeth Barrett his 'Portuguese' because of her dark hair. [Note: texts printed separately] Charles Bestor received his musical training under Paul Hindemith at Yale University, Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin at the Juilliard School of Music, and independently under Vladimir Ussachevsky. He has served on the faculty and administration of the Juilliard School and subsequently as the head of the music departments of Willamette University and the Universities of Massachusetts, Utah, and Alabama. He has written commissioned works for the Utah Symphony, the Composers String Quartet and many other organizations and individual performers. Also, he won first prize in the 1994 Omaha Symphony Competition, the Delius Prize, and awards in the Bourges International Competition and Quinto Maganini. His music is published by G. Schirmer, Elkan-Vogel, International Editions and others and is recorded on Centaur, Serenus, Orion and Ariel labels. Into the Labyrinth is the score for a sound, sculpture, light and text installation designed by the sculptor Barbara Cornett and the lighting designer John Wade. The physical sculpture is a literal maze in which the contemporary viewer recreates the journey of Theseus through the labyrinth of Minos in search of the Minotaur. As the visitor travels deeper into the maze, he or she is accompanied by images, sounds and text that relate the journey to the rites of passage and self discovery that we all must undertake in our lives. "Like Joyce's Bloom," the text begins, "unconsciously we reenact the myths that underlie our own reality." At the conclusion of the journey, at "the secret heart of darkness," we ultimately confront the Minotaur of our own making, the distorted but unmistakable image of ourselves. Hayg Boyadjian was born of Armenian parents in Paris where he spent his early years. After emigrating with his family to Argentina, he came to the United States in 1958. His musical education began in Argentina, continuing in Boston at New England Conservatory and later at Brandeis University, with additional studies in economics at Northeastern University. Boyadjian has composed many works, primarily chamber music, and his music has been performed here and in South America, Europe, Central Europe and the Middle East. His music has been recorded on Opus One records and his second string quartet, recorded in Russia, will appear soon on a Living Music compact disc. Hoquet (or 'hiccup') by Leon Gontran Damas of French Guiana is a poem that is a tableau about social influences imposed on the Africans by the French. The composer writes that "in my role as the composer, I impose on each tableau its own exclusive musical idea, giving thus to the song a sense of continual change, or, as one listener called it, a 'mini-opera.' [Note: texts printed separately] Allen Brings writes: "From the Classical period extending through the Romantic, the fantasy has increasingly relied, it seems to me, less on an exclusively musical logic and more on composers' insights into human psychology. Freed from the constraints imposed