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\ The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players cordially invites you to attend a 35th Anniversary Benefit Concert and Gala Reception Sunday May 21, 2006, 4 – 7 pm San Francisco’s Treasure Island Lou Harrison, Simfony #13 for percussion Edmund Campion, Outside Music Igor Stravinsky, The Soldier’s Tale featuring Roy Malan, violin Julie Steinberg, keyboard David Milnes, Music Director And honoring Roy Malan for thirty years of service to the ensemble Jean-Louis and Jane LeRoux, Honorary Co-chairs Tickets $150 ($75 for ages 35 and under) (all but $40 of ticket price is tax-deductible) 415-278-9566, [email protected] \ SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS Performers David Milnes, Music Director Tod Brody, flute William Wohlmacher, clarinet (Logan, Ueno) Monday, 24 April 2006 8 pm Carey Bell, clarinet (Eckardt, Dennehy) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts - Forum Samuel Williams, electric guitar Roy Malan, violin (Logan, Dennehy) Graeme Jennings, violin (Eckardt) BLOOD AND GLAMOUR: Robin Hong, viola Stephen Harrison, cello NEW MUSIC FROM THE CITY Thalia Moore, cello Richard Worn, contrabass (Ueno) Michel Taddei, contrabass (Dennehy) DONNACHA DENNEHY Julie Steinberg, piano (Logan, Eckardt) Glamour Sleeper (2002-03) Teresa McCollough, piano (Ueno) United States Premiere Christopher Froh, percussion (Dennehy) Daniel Kennedy, percussion (Ueno) William Winant, percussion (Logan) WENDELL LOGAN Transition (2005) World Premiere, Commission KEN UENO We thank the Fromm Music Foundation for its assitance in commissiong Wendell Logan’s Transition and for helping to underwrite tonight’s premiere performance. blood blossoms . (2002) This concert presentation of works by Jason Eckardt, Wendell Logan and Ken Ueno is made possible in part by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, ~ INTERMISSION ~ the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund. Roberto Morales-Manzanares Cenzontle (Mockingbird) (2004) Introduction Wall Flower Spot Roberto Morales-Manzanares, flute, electronics, and video Thanks to Michael Zbyszynski, John MacCallum and Aaron Einbond, for technical supervision and other contributions. Jason Eckardt After Serra (2000) Program Notes DONNACHA DENNEHY (B. 1970) HK Gruber’s cabaret Frankenstein!! n a recent interview with Jonathan Grimes of Ireland’s Wednesday, May 10 8pm Contemporary Music Centre, Donnacha Dennehy explains his Thursday, May 11 8pm (Flint Center, Cupertino) fascination with all things urban. “From being a kid and growing Friday, May 12 6:30pm** I up in Dublin I’ve always had—and still do—a childish delight in cities. Saturday, May 13 8pm I just love cities. I enjoy the countryside too but as a kind of a relax- ation. I enjoy the bustle and all the things that people complain about Edwin Outwater, conductor in cities. It’s all the weirdness of humankind concentrated in cities, HK Gruber, vocalist and yet it’s also ordinary. That kind of energy has always been strong Douglas Rioth, harp for me in my music.” Unfailingly noisy and amiably communal, Dennehy’s music captures the excitement of city life with personality Debussy Danses sacrée et profane and flair. “There is a whiff of high-class vandalism about my recent Thomas Adès Living Toys work,” he writes: “Processes which undermine the integrity of my Bizet Jeux d’enfants material provide the thrill factor in composing. My preoccupation HK Gruber Frankenstein!! with ideas of ‘urban’ music remains.” In Frankenstein!!, the traditional orchestra doubles on a battery of toy In true European fashion, Dennehy took up the recorder in elemen- instruments, ranging from the deceptively tuneful to the mildly berserk, tary school, eventually studying both recorder and flute at the Royal like a Looney Tune score imagined by Mozart. This is not a retelling of Irish Academy of Music. An intrepid music instructor taught the ten- the Frankenstein story - the lyrics are “children’s rhymes” that paint dis- year-old Dennehy harmony and counterpoint and, what’s more, intro- turbingly comic scenarios of Dracula, James Bond, Superman, John duced the youngster to the music of Stockhausen. “I was more inter- Wayne, Batman, and other characters. Gruber is the speaker-singer- ested in Stockhausen then than I have been at any other point in my actor who guides us through this fantastic musical comic book for life,” he recalled in a 2003 interview with Michael Dungan: “I did find adults. May 10 concert sponsored by City National Bank it fascinating, but I found it much more difficult than Stravinsky. I preferred Varèse. I got into Varèse and I liked minimalism. [Philip] **Click sfsymphony.org/Friday6.5 for more information on this new concert format Glass and people like that.” After complementing this early exposure and time. to modern music with a thorough grounding in composition at Trinity College, he came to the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship to Visit sfsymphony.org/Frankenstein for the conductor’s journal and more. work on his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois, where his primary teacher was Salvatore Martirano. Further studies at the Royal Tickets start at $20. Conservatory of the Hague and at IRCAM [Institut de Recherche et Concerts at Davies Symphony Hall unless otherwise noted. de Coordination Acoustique/Musique] have since rounded out his education with a variety of European perspectives. call (415) 864-6000 Based on his experience at Illinois (which he describes as “a real eye- click sfsymphony.org 5 opener” and “an extremely concentrated environment for new Dennehy has received commissions from the Percussion Group of music”), Dennehy co-founded the Crash Ensemble almost immediate- the Hague, Ensemble Integrales, Prism, the National Symphony ly upon his return to Ireland in 1997 in order to foster “music for Orchestra of Ireland, and the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, among oth- mixed media, stuff that was quite rhythmic, and with a little bit of an ers, and his music has appeared at such festivals as ISCM World Music urban edge to it.” He recalls: “We weren’t afraid to acknowledge the Days, EXPO 2000 in Germany, Amsterdam’s Gaudeamus Festival, influence of rock because it’s a very important part of our growing and the Concerts M Montreal. In 2004, the Dutch group Electra per- up now, anyone from my generation.” Since the late 1990s, Dennehy formed his The Weathering (for electric violin, recorder and video) at has produced a steady stream of impressive works, fulfilling commis- Lincoln Center. Upcoming commissions include works for pianist sions from the RTE (Irish Public Television) and the BBC, winning Lisa Moore, the Fidelio Trio, and the Icebreaker ensemble of performances from the London Sinfonietta and the Percussion Group England. Dennehy is currently on the faculty at Trinity College, and of the Hague, and collaborating with choreographers Shobana in 2005, he was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy Jeyasingh and Yoshiko Chuma. for the creative arts. Dennehy’s early love of minimalism is easily audible in many of his present scores. Not unlike Bay Area composer John Adams, he fuses Glamour Sleeper (2002-03) continuous textures and rhythmic repetitions with a strong dramatic for amplified clarinet, violin, double bass, percussion, and electronics impulse. For example, his sextet Streetwalker, premiered at the 2003 Bang on a Can Festival, features electric guitar (with a heavy dose of “The first section is HARDCORE! Attack violently but with distortion), and piano (almost always treated percussively) in addition panache.” This exhortation greets the performers of Dennehy’s to strings, clarinet, and percussion, giving the entire ensemble a decid- Glamour Sleeper, commissioned for the Crash Ensemble’s own Up ed groove; Bernard Holland of the New York Times called it “shrill North Festival and premiered by the Danish group Contemporanea. and tough, with constant shifts in rhythmic patterns.” Elastic Harmonic In fact, this is just the first of many unusual performance instructions (2005)—which the composer emphatically calls “a piece for violin and appearing in the score: for example, “relishing the plink plonk vibe.” orchestra” rather than a violin concerto—presents a similarly propul- At times the instruments are indistinguishable from the carefully dis- sive surface, denying any evocation of nineteenth-century lyricism. torted timbres of the electronic part; at other times, they seem almost Further departures from romantic practice lie in his decision to use human (or vaguely animalistic) as they respond to “expressive” mark- six “prepared” violins (instruments altered so that normal playing ings ranging from “growling boisterous fluttertongue” and “as if techniques produce unexpected results) within the orchestra ranks, panting,” to “fraught and exclamatory,” “intense (almost frightening),” and in the fact that the work was premiered on Irish State television “scratch sound,” “bridge squeak,” and “crunch the bow directly on rather than in a concert hall setting. Still more recently, he has com- body of instrument!” pleted a large scale work for chorus and “de-tuned” orchestra called HIVE in which, for example, adjacent wind players must tune a quar- The composer writes: “Glamour Sleeper is not a concept piece. It sim- ter-tone apart. “I consider it a really layered piece,” Dennehy states. ply is itself, though the title hints at many possible meanings that are “In a way, it’s very slow moving: there’s a lot of fast motion on the related to the material of the piece. Maybe Pierre Hantai’s superb surface and it has a slow harmonic motion. I think of it as an immer- recording of Scarlatti’s sonatas influenced the sharp corners. Maybe sive piece—you immerse yourself in this sound. There’s one section Dublin had an influence too—when working the piece out I called . .[that] feels to me like all these ambulances passing by. It has this each section after a particular area in Dublin, so you had the Rialto feeling that you’re immersed in a city: you’re here in this district, and Hocket, the Inchicore drag etc.