Miller Theatre at 2014-15 | 26th Season

Composer Portraits Keeril Makan Either/Or

Friday, December 5, 8:00 p.m. From the Executive Director

It’s hard to believe that it’s December, and time for the final performances of 2014! These past few months have been an amazing time at Miller Theatre. We started the season strong with a sold-out Opening Night featuring eighth blackbird, where we were joined by more than 275 student audience members—many experiencing their first new-music performance.

Next, we welcomed over 375 community members to Miller for a week of lantern- making workshops during the third annual Morningside Lights, and over 1,000 people joined us for the illuminated procession through Morningside Park. Morningside Lights has fast become a beloved neighborhood tradition, and it’s just one of the ways that Miller is committed to sharing the arts with our community. Last year, almost 700 people joined us for free Pop-Up Concerts, enjoying new music and complimentary drinks. This spring, Pop-Up Concerts are back, with four new performances just announced today!

Tonight, you’ll hear the world premiere performance of Keeril Makan’s newest work, one of more than 40 world premieres that Miller Theatre has presented in the last five seasons. We make it a priority to expand the contemporary repertoire by commissioning new works as often as we can. During my tenure, it’s been an honor to commission 11 composers and two visual artists: nine for Composer Portraits, two for the Early Music series, and two site-specific murals for the Miller Theatre lobby.

If you value the work that we do, please make a donation to support Miller today. Big or small, your gift matters a lot. Miller has no programming endowment, so we rely on support from friends like you to keep the music going for everyone.

You may have received a letter from me recently, asking for your support. If you’ve already given to Miller Theatre, thank you. On behalf of all of us, we appreciate your generosity.

Melissa Smey Executive Director Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2014-15 | 26th Season

Composer Portraits Friday, December 5, 8:00 p.m. Keeril Makan Either/Or

Keeril Makan (b. 1972)

If We Knew The Sky (2014) world premiere Richard Carrick, conductor

Onstage discussion with Keeril Makan and Richard Carrick

INTERMISSION

Letting Time Circle Through Us (2013) New York premiere Jennifer Choi, violin Dan Lippel, guitar Russell Greenberg, percussion John Popham, cello Taka Kigawa, piano David Shively, cimbalom

This program runs approximately ninety minutes, including intermission.

Major support for Composer Portraits is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

Please note that photography and the use of recording devices are not permitted. Remember to turn off all cellular phones and pagers before tonight’s performance begins. Miller Theatre is ADA accessible. Large print programs are available upon request. For more information or to arrange accommodations, please call 212-854-7799. About the Program

Introduction

Probably if there is one central thing, even more than the love of sound, it is the love of performance. —Keeril Makan

Keeril Makan was born in New Jersey in 1972, to parents of South-African Indian and Russian Jewish origin. He played the violin as a boy, and grew up surrounded by diverse musical cultures—Western classical, Indian classical, blues, rock—from which he was later to form his own, not by patching together so much as by stripping down, finding common basics, and building up again.

Those common basics naturally include the act of performance, and communication by way of performance, but they also embrace principles within the sonic material: most notably, regularity and resonance. Five seconds of almost any Makan composition will show these features, as pulse and as a bloom of partials on the sound, whether this bloom comes directly from an instrument or from reverberation within the performance space. A classic example is his solo percussion piece Resonance Alloy of 2007, where rapidly repeating strokes, moving over a small array of metal instruments, generate a shifting cloud of hovering sound that moves on slowly through half an hour.

This extraordinary piece is, though, a special case. Makan’s music is generally more impatient, more dynamic, ricocheting in several dimensions between sameness and difference. Take 2, for violin and percussion, which was his breakthrough achievement, dating back to 1998. It starts with the two components locked together reiterating one sound, with a glow of metal resonance on it. (Afterglow is the very appropriate title of a solo piano piece that, coming from the same year as Resonance Alloy, also has to do with resonant effects caused by repetition.) Regularity in Makan’s music, though, is always going to hit up against irregularity. In the case of 2, the instruments stop, and then they go on again, but not for so long. Other things change, and what you thought was the music comes to seem like the obstacle to the music, which is emerging now as something less regular—though only to become in turn regular, and the obstacle to some other music. Eventually there arrives a lament, which, in terms of sources, could be Scottish or Chinese, but which also, in its registration for violin and echoing percussion, sounds like nothing else. Here one might recognize how “resonance” has another meaning, how the music resonates not only in itself but with traditions beyond. References are not sought; rather, they spring to life as sympathetic vibrations, and might well be different for different listeners.

When he wrote this piece, Makan was still a student, on the doctoral program at U. C. Berkeley, where his teachers included Edmund Campion, Jorge Liderman, and David Wessel. He completed his doctorate in 2004, after spending a year in Finland and two in France, and began his teaching career at the University of Illinois. Two years later, he moved to M. I. T.

Makan has composed an opera, Persona, to a libretto by Jay Scheib after the Ingmar Bergman film, but most of his output so far has been for instrumental resources. Ensembles for which he has written—besides tonight’s group— include the American Composers Orchestra (Dream Lightly, with solo electric guitar, played at Carnegie Hall just over six years ago), the Scharoun Ensemble of Berlin, California EAR Unit, and the Del Sol, Kronos, and Pacifica string quartets. There are albums devoted to his work on Tzadik (Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble), Starkland (Either/Or), and mode (ICE).

If We Knew The Sky (2014)

Makan’s new piece is music of grand gyrations, like the composition that will follow after intermission, but this time for a larger ensemble—of woodwind, brass, and string soloists with two xylophones and a harp—completing its course in about half the time: under half an hour. This is also another of Makan’s great titles. If we knew the sky, then what? Yes, we might want to agree, there is nothing more unknown and unknowable than the sky, which is always there and always different, and which our gaze tends to ignore in favor of what is, like us, earthbound. But then what? The proposition is left off halfway, open.

Setting the work in motion, the two vibraphones shake a low-middle G sharp, one of them in even eighth-notes but with irregular accents, which the other reinforces, the dynamic level increasing in steps. The music is initiatory, waiting for something to happen, and eventually something does. A fundamental A is established by the two

About the Program low string instruments, and the work begins to unfold its most characteristic texture: progressions of parallel, exquisitely dissonant chords, sometimes rotating on more than one temporal level, here more or less ignoring louder octaves. F sharps, on the vibraphones and harp, set a new fundamental, over which a new process of growth starts. Some way into this a rising scale figure is introduced, a memento fromLetting Time Circle Through Us.

This brings us to about a quarter of the way through the piece, and most of the constituents are in place—but not all. For, while sharing something of the cyclical nature of its predecessor, If We Knew The Sky also keeps turning in new directions, perhaps not so much a circle as a helix. Different aspects and different energies are encountered in this steady, exploratory motion, and though tremulant eighth-note repercussions recur, they are never as they were at the beginning, being altered in position, instrumentation, and speed. Much of the piece has all the instruments in play in music of buoyancy and drive, after which, when the eighth-note impulses come back, they are transformed, and they signal something quite different.

Letting Time Circle Through Us (2013)

Playing for almost fifty minutes, this piece was composed in 2013 as a commission from Either/Or, which gave the first performance eight months ago at M. I. T. It is by some way Makan’s longest work to date, excepting only his opera Persona, which he completed the year before. It is also a beautiful, serene, and yet at the same time electric adventure into a time world of sweeping rotations within an essential changelessness— of movement where there is no movement. This stillness of imminence he had found before in parts of works (the opening of his 2007 string quartet Washed by Fire, for instance), but never for so long. Listening to it here, we may well feel ourselves in the presence of time circling through us.

Just six players are involved: three on instruments that have strings that are hammered or plucked (piano, cimbalom, guitar), two on instruments whose strings are bowed (violin and cello), and one adding high-treble brilliance on crotales or glockenspiel. Together they generate a whole range of bell-like sonorities through which two relative strangers—though strangers who are central, the violin and the cello—glide.

The music breathes out from simplicity to complexity and back again, starting out on an A drone projected by the violin from two of its strings, one open, the other stopped, the sound given a quality of quietness and distance—and a glistening aura of harmonics— by the use of a metal practice mute combined with vibrato-free playing close to the bridge. Other notes are invited to participate, the G below and the B above, and so the requisites are assembled for what the piano can then come to introduce as the work’s primary harmonic gesture, a kind of exhalation from the fourth E–A to the major third G–B, which the piano shares with progressively more of the ensemble, in frank and generous exchanges.

In a way, this is all there is, and no more is needed—though much more accretes around this basic image as the work progresses. There are elements that return, like the phases of the moon, including not only this harmonic motif—though its reappearances are always much briefer, and find new possibilities of variation each time—but also what comes next, sounding like the chiming of innumerable clocks, in octaves, all going at different rates. Other episodes arrive only once, like the rush of intricate white- note counterpoint on cimbalom and guitar. Sometimes, there is the sense of a cosmic machinery; at other times, the focus narrows to an almost domestic scene of quiet conversation between violin and cello.

These are some of the constituents. It is with and through them that the work majestically conveys itself.

Program notes by Paul Griffiths

If We Knew The Sky was made possible by a grant from the Jebediah Foundation New Music Commissions.

About the Program About the Artists

Either/Or has been at the forefront of Either/Or has premiered more than 50 New York’s contemporary music scene new works in past seasons, not including since 2004, presenting new and recent dozens of student compositions. Artists works for unconventional ensembles commissioned by Either/Or include rarely heard elsewhere. Co-directors Anthony Coleman, George Lewis, Keeril Richard Carrick and David Shively Makan, Miya Masaoka, Zeena Parkins, curate its programming, drawing on the and . Either/Or has released Either/Or roster of 17 regular musicians CD recordings of composers Keeril alongside special guests. Performances Makan (Starkland, 2011), Richard Carrick throughout the Northeast include Phila- (New World, 2011), Karin Rehnqvist delphia Museum of Art, ICA Boston, The (Sterling, 2013), and Anthony Coleman Kitchen, and Miller Theatre, as well as a (New World, 2014) with further titles in recent Swedish tour and frequent appear- preparation from Carrick, Makan, Elliott ances at experimental music venues such Sharp, and Morton Feldman. as The Stone, Roulette, and Issue Project Room. Either/Or Nanci Belmont, bassoon The Either/Or programming explores Jennifer Choi, violin equally the products of an American Russell Greenberg, percussion Experimental tradition (as traceable via Jacqui Kerrod, harp artists such as Cage, Feldman, Lucier, Taka Kigawa, piano Ashley) and of a European avant-garde, Margaret Lancaster, flute with a special emphasis on composers Alicia Lee, clarinet working outside the institutional main- Timothy Leopold, trumpet stream. Either/Or has presented the first Dan Lippel, guitar U.S. portrait concerts for composers such Chris McIntyre, trombone as Chaya Czernowin, Horatiu Radulescu, Esther Noh, violin Karin Rehnqvist, Rebecca Saunders, Hans John Popham, cello Thomalla, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Arthur Sato, oboe bringing most of these composers to New David Shively, percussion York City for public lectures and teaching Laura Weiner, horn engagements. Erin Wight, viola Rémy Yulzari, bass Richard Carrick is a composer, classes at and conductor, pianist, and co-founder/ currently teaches internationally for director of the New York New Music the New York Philharmonic Education Ensemble Either/Or. The New York Department. He has recorded for Times describes his performances as Wergo, New World Records, New Focus “hallucinatory” and “first-rate,” and Recordings, and Cleerfeed, and his scores his compositions as “charming, with are available through Project Schott New exoticism and sheer infectiousness.” York. Learn more at richardcarrick.com.

As a performer, Richard has specialized in innovative contemporary music, with performances at Merkin Concert Hall, The Kitchen, Miller Theater, Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, and as soloist in , , Banff, , and throughout the U.S. He regularly premieres works by leading composers including George Lewis, Rebecca Saunders, Chaya Czernowin, Jonny Greenwood, Helmut Lachenmann, Hans Thomalla, and others.

Carrick’s compositions have been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and performed by the New York Philharmonic Biennial Festival 2014 (with Carrick conducting), ISCM World Music Days-Switzerland, Mid-American New Music Festival, Summer Festival, Tokyo’s International House, Nieuw Ensemble, JACK Quartet, soloists Tony Arnold, Magnus Andersson, Steven Schick, Rohan de Saram, and at Vienna’s Konzerthaus.

Carrick taught graduate composition at Columbia University, undergraduate

About the Artists About Miller Theatre

Miller Theatre at Columbia University is the leading presenter of new music in and one of the most vital forces nationwide for innovative programming. In partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, Miller is dedicated to producing and presenting unique events, with a focus on contemporary and early music, jazz, and multimedia. Founded in 1988, Miller has helped launch the careers of myriad composers and ensembles, serving as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known in the U.S. A three- time recipient of the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming, Miller continues to meet the high expectations set forth by its founders—to present innovative programs, support new work, and connect creative artists with adventurous audiences.

Advisory Committee Paul D. Carter Mark Jackson Margo Viscusi* Mary Sharp Cronson* Eric Johnson Mr. and Mrs. George Votis* Stephanie French* Philip Mindlin Cecille Wasserman* Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith Linda Nochlin Elke Weber Karen Hagberg Peter Pohly I. Peter Wolff* * Miller Theatre Advisory Board member Columbia University Trustees Jonathan D. Schiller, Chair William V. Campbell, Benjamin Horowitz A’Lelia Bundles, Vice Chair Chair Emeritus Ann F. Kaplan Mark E. Kingdon, Vice Chair Lisa Carnoy Jonathan Lavine Esta Stecher, Vice Chair Kenneth Forde Charles Li Rolando T. Acosta Noam Gottesman Paul J. Maddon Armen A. Avanessians Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. Vikram Pandit Andrew F. Barth James Harden Michael B. Rothfeld Lee C. Bollinger, Marc Holliday Claire Shipman President of the University Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Columbia University School of the Arts Carol Becker Dean of Faculty Jana Hart Wright Dean of Academic Administration Miller Theatre Staff Melissa Smey Executive Director Charlotte Levitt Director of Marketing & Outreach Brenna St. George Jones Director of Production James Hirschfeld Business Manager Nora Sørena Casey Marketing & Communications Associate Megan Harrold Audience Services Manager Katherine Bergstrom, Artistic Administrator Taylor Riccio Production Coordinator Rhiannon McClintock Executive Assistant

Aleba & Co. Public Relations The Heads of State Graphic Design Thanks to Our Donors Miller Theatre acknowledges with deep appreciation and gratitude the following organizations, individuals, and government agencies whose extraordinary support makes our programming possible.

$25,000 and above Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts Dow Jones Foundation H. F. (Gerry) Lenfest

$10,000 - $24,999 William V. Campbell Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music New York State Council on the Arts The Aaron Copland Fund for Music at Columbia University The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation Mary Sharp Cronson The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation The Evelyn Sharp Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Margo and Anthony Viscusi $5,000 - $9,999 The Amphion Foundation CLC Kramer Foundation Craig Silverstein Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation

$1,000 - $4,999 Rima Ayas Carol Avery Haber / Haber Family Jessie and Charles Price Paul D. Carter Charitable Fund Peter Pohly Hester Diamond Karen Hagberg and Mark Jackson Christopher Rothko R. H. Rackstraw Downes Donella and David Held Cecille Wasserman Claude Ghez Roger Lehecka Janet C. Waterhouse Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith Philip Mindlin Elke Weber and Eric Johnson Christine and Thomas Griesa Linda Nochlin Anonymous Jeanine and Roland Plottel

$500 - $999 Oliver Allen Cedomir Crnkovic / Cavali Foundation Marian M. Warden Fund of the Foundation Regula Aregger Kristine and Joseph Delfausse for Enhancing Communities Mercedes Armillas Stephanie French James Sharp ASCAP Mary and Gordon Gould J. P. Sullivan Barbara Batcheler John Kander Cia Toscanini Elaine S. Bernstein Mark Kempson and Janet Greenberg Kathryn Yatrakis Paul J. Maddon

$100 - $499 Gail and James Addiss Marc Gilman Gerald McGee Qais Al-Awqati, M.D. June O. Goldberg Bannon and Barnabas McHenry Edward Albee Richard Gray Rolf Meyershon Roger Bagnall James P. Hanbury Susan Narucki Sandra and Marc Bernstein Barbara Harris Mary and Andrew Pinkowitz Andrew Birsh Bernard Hoffer Monique Rinere in honor of James F. Rinere Jim Boorstein Alan Houston and Lisa DeLange Carol Robbins Alexandra Bowie and Daniel Richman Frank Immler and Andrew Tunick Esther Rosenberg and Michael Ostroff Eileen and Adam Boxer William Josephson Mariam Said Elizabeth and Ralph Brown Rebecca Kennison Eliisa Salmi-Saslaw Caplan Family Foundation L. Wilson Kidd, Jr. Elliot Schwartz Richard Carrick and Nomi Levy-Carrick Sandra Kincaid Anita Shapolsky Ginger Chinn Nikki Kowalski Gilbert Spitzer and Janet Glaser Spitzer Jennifer Choi Daniel Lee Rand Steiger and Rebecca Jo Plant Gregory Cokorinos Barbara and Kenneth Leish Peter Strauss Merry Conway Arthur S. Leonard Jim Strawhorn Noah Creshevsky Richard H. Levy and Lorraine Gallard Larry Wehr David Demnitz Peter C. Lincoln Seymour Weingarten Rosamund Else-Mitchell Sarah Lowengard Ila and Dennis Weiss Randy Ezratty Patricia Lowy and Daniel Frank Elizabeth Wheeler Peter and Joan Faber Caroline and Anthony Lukaszewski Anonymous as of November 14, 2014 Upcoming Events

Tuesday, December 9 doors at 5:30 p.m., music at 6:00 p.m. POP-UP CONCERTS Mivos Quartet

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT SAVE THE DATES FOR OUR WINTER POP-UP CONCERTS

Bring a friend, grab a drink, and join us onstage for these fun, free, informal performances. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., music begins at 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015 Trios by Zorn Vicky Chow, Jennifer Choi & Michael Nicolas

Tuesday, February 10, 2015 Curtis 20/21 featuring the Curtis Guitar Studio

Tuesday, February 24, 2015 JACK Quartet

Tuesday, March 24, 2015 Yarn/Wire

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