The UC Davis Department of Music Presents The

Meridian Arts Ensemble

Jon Nelson and Brian McWhorter, Daniel Grabois, horn Benjamin Herrington, Raymond Stewart, John Ferrari, percussion

7 pm, Saturday, 7 November 2009 Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center THE UC DAVIS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC PRESENTS THE

Meridian Arts Ensemble

Jon Nelson and Brian McWhorter, trumpets Daniel Grabois, horn Benjamin Herrington, trombone Raymond Stewart, tuba John Ferrari, percussion

PROGRAM

Ascension (2008) (b. 1972)

Passed Time (2006) Edward Jacobs (b. 1961)

Magnetic North (2006) Mark Applebaum (b. 1967)

Intermission

In the Zone (2009) Andrew Rindfleisch Introitus (b. 1963) Canons Fantasia

Corpus (1997) David Sanford Antiphon (b. 1963) Introit Shot Kreuz/Männer De Profundis Sermon

All works on this program were commissioned by MAE.

7 pm, Saturday, 7 November 2009 Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center

This concert is being recorded professionally for the university archive. Please remain seated during the music, remembering that distractions will be audible on the recording. Please deactivate cell phones, pagers, and wristwatches. Flash photography and audio and video recording are prohibited during the performance. NOTES

Lei Liang is a Chinese-born American composer of mostly stage and chamber works that have been performed throughout the world. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award, Lei Liang has received commissions from the Philharmonic, the Heidelberger Philharmonisches Orchester, the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, America, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Manhattan Sinfonietta, the Shanghai Quartet, , pianist Stephen Drury and pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Lei Liang’s music is recorded on Telarc International, Mode, GM, Encounter, Spektral and Opal Records. As a scholar, he is active in the research and preservation of traditional Asian music. He studied composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogan, Chaya Czernowin, and Mario Davidovsky, and he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and a doctoral degree from . Since 2007, he has served as an assistant professor of music at UC San Diego.

The central section of Ascension builds on harmonies that ascend gradually in microtonal steps. The nuanced tonal inflection stretches the chords in and out of tune. This section may be regarded as a musical prayer, and it is framed by sections of exuberant energy. Ascension was commissioned by and dedicated to the Meridian Arts Ensemble, who gave its world premiere at the Manhattan School of Music on October 27, 2008.

Edward Jacobs is an acclaimed composer and accomplished educator whose music the American Academy of Arts and Letters described as “immediately engaging, attractive, and intellectually demanding” upon presenting him with the Charles Ives Award in 2005. Jacobs began playing violin at age 8 but was drawn to the saxophone at age 11 upon hearing a friend’s jazz quartet. Work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (bachelor’s degree) in jazz performance and arranging (Jeff Holmes) and composition (Sal Macchia, Robert Stern) was followed by study in composition (Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gerard Grisey) and conducting (Michael Senturia) at UC Berkeley (masters degree) and at Columbia University (composition with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, Marty Boykan, George Edwards; conducting with George Rothman), where Jacobs completed his Doctor of Music Arts degree in 1993. In 2001, Jacobs began to explore electronic media. He has since written works for computer-generated sound with clarinet (A Function of Memory, 2001; Beauty Shop, 2005), with cello (al momento, 2002), and for dancers (dis/Connect, 2004). His music is published by C.F. Peters Corp., NY, APNM and ACA.

Six years after he began teaching at East Carolina University, Jacobs was chosen for a Teacher-Scholar Award in 2004. He founded and directs the Annual NEWMUSIC@ECU FESTIVAL and works in the Pitt County Public Schools, collaborating with middle school general music teachers in his Composers-in-Public Schools Project, a program that strives to make the creation of music a fundamental part of children’s education.

Passed Time was written for the Meridian Arts Ensemble in 2006 and premiered in June of that year in Greenville, NC. The generative material of the piece is heard in the chorale of the work’s final minute. That chorale, the first music written, includes several pauses, some cadential, some interruptive, which seemed ‘right’ to me, but also seemed very curious and odd. The piece became a working out of that chorale, its harmonic phrasing, its pauses, and its melodic shapes. At times these elements are presented in hocket-like textures, at times with colorful accents, at times quickly, at other times more lyrical, and at other times perhaps more humorously—several passages are described in the music as “impish.” The music’s mood is often quick changing and, with an ensemble like MAE—players who’re able to turn on a dime—these moods may seem to be the components of a mercurial personality experiencing similar ideas in moments of both contracting and expanding “time.” —E.J.

Mark Applebaum is an associate professor of composition and theory at Stanford University. He received his doctoral degree in composition from UC San Diego, where he studied principally with . His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the , Europe, Africa, and Asia, with notable premieres at the Darmstadt summer sessions. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Vienna Modern Festival, Antwerp’s Champ D’Action, Festival ADEvantgarde in Munich, Zeitgeist, MANUFACTURE in Tokyo, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Jerome Foundation, and the , among others. In 1997, Applebaum received the American Music Center’s Stephen Albert Award and an artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo colony in Northern California.

Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist and builds electroacoustic instruments out of junk, hardware, and found objects for use as both compositional and improvisational tools. His music can be heard on recordings on the Innova, Tzadik, Capstone, and SEAMUS labels. Prior to his current appointment, he taught at UC San Diego, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College.

Magnetic North is a piece that aspires—with enthusiasm, vigor, absurdity, and maybe even some belligerence—to remind us that there are many ways to make music. A quick glance through the score reveals a plethora of notational constructs (including reference to custom-made wristwatches whose second hands are consulted as they pass over graphic musical provocations). The piece includes ritualistic, “dadaist” activities that seem to serve arcane purposes alongside the most traditional “complexity” textures made up of rigorous counterpoint. Other recent traditions are briefly referenced (e.g., John Zorn’s improvisational game piece Cobra), along with concise, ironic chorale settings. In fact, the hectic, mercurial, compressed nature of the discourse is chief among Magnetic North’s procedural attributes. —M.A. Andrew Rindfleisch is an internationally active composer, conductor, and pianist whose work continues to gain consistent critical and popular acclaim. He has produced dozens of works for the concert hall, including solo, chamber, vocal, choral, orchestral, and wind music. His committed interest in other forms of music-making have also led him to the composition and performance of jazz and related forms of improvisation. As a composer, he has received many prestigious honors. He is the 1997–98 recipient of the coveted Rome Prize and the 1996 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Most recently, he received the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Aaron Copland Award, and the Koussevitzky Foundation Commission from the Library of Congress. He has also been the recipient of more than 35 other prizes and awards, including those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, ASCAP, and the League of Composers-ISCM. He has participated in dozens of renowned music festivals and has received residency fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), the Charles Ives Center for American Music, the Czech-American Music Institute in Prague, the June in Buffalo Contemporary Music Festival, the MacDowell Colony, and the Pierre Boulez Workshop at Carnegie Hall, among others. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Bachelor of Music), the New England Conservatory of Music (Master of Music), and Harvard University (Ph.D.).

An active conductor and producer, Rindfleisch’s commitment to contemporary music culture has brought into performance more than 500 works by living composers over the past 15 years. He has founded several contemporary music ensembles and is currently music director of both the Cleveland Contemporary Players and the Utah Arts Festival Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble—all committed to performing, presenting, and commissioning new works. Rindfleisch regularly makes guest conducting appearances throughout the U.S. and abroad with many diverse musical organizations, from opera and musical theatre, to orchestral, jazz, improvisational, and contemporary avant-garde ensembles.

Rindfleisch is currently a professor of music and head of music composition studies at Cleveland State University. Here, he has built one of the most unique and supportive programs of composition study in the country that includes the Cleveland Contemporary Players and an unprecedented Music Composition Resource Center.

In the Zone is a reverent nod to the popular instrumental form of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, the canzone. Often associated with the early precursors of modern brass instruments, the instrumental canzone was a form often dominated by contrapuntal and imitative textures. In the Zone is then a three-movement work exploring those aspects of counterpoint, imitation, and polyphony so often found in those late-Renaissance forms—here, intensified, transformed, and woven into a virtuoso vehicle for . In the Zone is dedicated to the Meridian Arts Ensemble.

David Sanford credits a variety of influences with igniting his musicianship. “I started on trombone when I was about 10 and liked big band music early. I wanted to be a jazz musician. Charles Mingus inspired me to be a composer later on.” Sanford was also influenced by rhythm and blues/funk groups like Parliament, the Isley Brothers, and Sly and the Family Stone and, later, by orchestral and more mainstream popular music. After completing undergraduate music studies at the University of Northern Colorado, he earned a master’s degree in theory and composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University.

Sanford has won many awards and honors, including a BMI Student Composer Award, a Koussevitzky Commission and a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled him to take a year off to focus exclusively on composing during graduate school. Recently, Sanford won the Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship, allowing him to stay at the American Academy in Rome for 11 months with a group of 25 to 30 scholars in other areas of the humanities. One of the referees for his work wrote, “David Sanford is the real thing, a composer in the American tradition of brash, open-eared exploration: No material is too exalted or too debased for him to transform into his living art.”

Sanford’s works have been performed by the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Harlem Festival Orchestra, cellist Matt Haimovitz, the Corvini e Iodice Roma Jazz Ensemble, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, , the Empyrean Ensemble at UC Davis, Mount Holyoke faculty members, and dozens of other groups and performers. In addition, he has conducted performances of his own works at Monadnock Music, the New England Conservatory, the Knitting Factory, and the Five Colleges New Music Festival, and he leads his own big band, the Pittsburgh Collective.

The initial ideas for Corpus were formed at the end of the composer’s 1995–96 fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts/Department of State. The commissioning of the work was funded by Chamber Music America with funds from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The work is structured in the manner of a Baroque cantata, with individual movements—some of them distorted and debased—referring to a single underlying chorale, stated most prominently in the fifth movement. In the more stylistically recognizable repetitive drum figures of movements three, five, and six, a beat pattern and dynamic markings are supplied for the percussionist, who is free to embellish and extend relating riffs. So if the beats are particularly raging, then all praise is due John Ferrari. Other than these instances, the entire piece is fully notated and the composer apologizes for the fascism. —D.S.

ABOUT THE MERIDIAN ARTS ENSEMBLE

For 20 years, the Meridian Arts Ensemble has been one of the leading brass and percussion ensembles in the world. Now as faculty members at Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program, the members of the band have brought this same aggressive and ambitious musical approach to the conservatory setting. Performing a living room concert for Frank Zappa and getting his approval for its renditions of his music was only the beginning of Meridian’s continuous journey into broadening the scope of music for brass. The musicians have gone on to commission new works by Milton Babbitt, Mark Applebaum, Elliott Sharp, Tania León, Hermeto Pascoal, Nick Didkovsky, David Sanford, the Common Sense Composers’ Collective, Stephen Barber, Ira Taxin, Kirk Nurock, John Halle, and many others.

The Meridian Arts Ensemble has performed on four continents, in 49 states, on radio and television, in concert halls, and in jazz and rock clubs. The group blazes its own trail and eclecticism is a key element of its performances, which feature a wide variety of music, mixing classical and contemporary works, jazz and rock compositions, world music, and original works by ensemble members. The Meridian Arts Ensemble records for Channel Classics (the Netherlands) and 8bells (United States) exclusively.