Scott Conklin VIOLIN Alan Huckleberry PIANO

WORKS BY Kevin Beavers Ching-chu Hu Joel Puckett Kevin Puts

ViolinguisticsWWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM Cover Art Photography: TROY1138 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 Rita Dowling TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. Recording Session Photographs: BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD Dave Schall TEL: 01539 824008 © 2009 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Kevin Beavers has emerged as a rising star among the next generation of American composers and has written a variety of works for chamber musicians, voice, and orchestra. In recent years, he has focused much of his efforts on writing works for orchestra including the St. Louis the music Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra among others. Beavers taught at The University of KEVIN BEAVERS (b. 1971): Sonata for Violin and Piano (1996) Texas at Austin Butler School of Music, and he currently resides in Dusseldorf, Germany. It couldn’t be more appropriate and wonderful than to have Scott Conklin and Alan Huckleberry, two friends from my student days at The , releasing the premiere www.kevinbeavers.com recording of my Sonata for Violin and Piano. It remains one of my favorite works that I wrote at the University while I was studying with composer William Bolcom to whom it is dedicated. WILLIAM BOLCOM (b. 1938): The Graceful Ghost Rag Concert Variation for Violin and Piano (1983) To those familiar with my teacher’s music, the influence on my sonata should be evident in the The Graceful Ghost Rag Concert Variation for Violin and Piano was inspired by William Bolcom’s work’s attitude; that is, the willingness to blur artistic boundaries, the pulling together of wide affinity for the ragtime genre, the character pieces of Fritz Kreisler, the playing of jazz violinist and diverse stylistic genres, and the explosion of pastiche. While some of these characteristics Joe Venuti, and memories of his father. The work was initially written for solo piano and later have waned in my music over time, the lasting effect of the sonata upon my development as a arranged by Bolcom for clarinet, violin, and piano in a suite of rags for the Murray Louis Dance composer is an undying longing for an artistic liberation and freedom. Company in New York City. This trio arrangement ultimately inspired the composer to write My sonata was written with a trust in my musical instincts and gut feelings over preconceptions The Graceful Ghost Rag Concert Variation for Violin and Piano as a gift for violinist Sergiu Luca and or detailed planning. The opening passage from which all arises came to me like a gift during pianist Anne Epperson. a car ride with my father with whom I strongly associate the work. The four-movement setting developed out of the surprising variety and potential of the work’s materials that surfaced during Named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America and honored with multiple Grammy musical free association and play. Of concern to me was allowing for the vast variety of musical Awards for his ground-breaking setting of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William directions arising from within and not suppressing what arose. Thus, the Blues, a quote of Bolcom is a composer of cabaret songs, concertos, sonatas, operas, symphonies and much more. Brahms, stark dissonance, and surprisingly simple tunes wove together into a single dream. Bolcom, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, was the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor I began the composition in the autumn of 1995 and completed it in June of 1996. Maria of Composition at The University of Michigan, where he taught from 1973 through 2008. Sampen and Gordon Beeferman premiered the first movement in Ann Arbor, Michigan just www.williambolcom.com before the first complete performance on August 18, 1996 in Ozawa Hall at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Glen Cherry played violin and Miri Yampolsky played the piano. —Note by Kevin Beavers (June, 2008) CHING-CHU HU (b. 1969): Snow Ash (2008) BRIGHT SHENG (b. 1955): The Stream Flows for Solo Violin (1990) Initially appearing as the second and middle movement of Hu’s suite Glaciers Red: Vistas Veiled (2004), The Stream Flows for Solo Violin is comprised of two contrasting movements. The lyrical first half the slow moving and contemplative nature of “Snow Ash” (revised 2008) represents a coherent conjures both the feel and sound of a female folk singer’s voice and contains a melody that is stand-alone composition. With its rich harmonies equally reminiscent of Aaron Copland and derived from a renowned traditional Chinese folk song that bears the same name as this piece. Paul Williams, much of the romantically steeped piece is based upon a repeating pattern pre- The text of the song draws on the imagery of water, mountains, wind, the moon, and the heart. The sented by the piano in long note values in the initial sixteen measures; and while the pattern driving second section is very dance-like in nature and is constructed on a motive of three notes. is given to change of one sort or another (including fragmentation, rhythmic manipulation and Violinist Nai-Yuan Hu premiered The Stream Flows in Boston Massachusetts in October of the like), its organizational role is unmistakable. The measured swell to the initial highpoint of 1990. The work was commissioned for Hu by the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts and the movement is compelling, as is the meditative final return of the primary melodic line in is dedicated to Sheng’s teacher, composer Hugo Weisgall. the violin—transformed as it is by all that has preceded it. The shift in tonal center late in the Bright Sheng is respected as one of the foremost composers of our times and his stage, orchestra, piece is something of a ruse: its turn to D is best regarded as generated on an upper partial of chamber and vocal works are performed regularly in North America, Europe, and Asia. He is G, a secondary center of “Snow Ash.” That tonal center, G, stands as upper third of the more the recipient of the 2001 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” and was runner-up for both prominent E-flat sonority. the 1989 and 1991 Pulitzer Prize. Sheng is the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University “Snow Ash” and the larger suite from which it was initially conceived is the outgrowth of Professor of Music at The University of Michigan, where he has been on faculty since 1995. Ching-chu Hu’s 2003 summer residency at the Leighton Studios of Banff Centre for the Arts. The composition, in Hu’s words, symbolizes “my various sensory experiences that summer as man www.brightsheng.com and nature collided and obscured my view,” a view at once directed by an awe-inspiring response to the innate beauty of the landscape, and man’s seemingly cavalier capacity to exploit it. JOEL PUCKETT (b. 1977): Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano (2003) —Note by Gregory Marion, University of Saskatchewan Joel Puckett’s Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano (2003), winner of a prestigious BMI Composition Ching-chu Hu is Associate Professor of Composition and Chair of the Music Department at Award, was inspired by the composer’s home and childhood remembrances of Atlanta, Georgia. Denison University in Granville, Ohio. His music has been performed in the United States and The first movement, “Faulkner,” was inspired by the American literary giant’s writing style and around the world. Honors have included composer-in-residence at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival deep connection to the South. The second movement, “Football and the Lord,” is based on Puckett’s and guest composer at the American Music Week Festival in Bulgaria. He is active as a con- childhood routine of going to church and watching professional football, namely the Atlanta Falcons, ductor and advocate of new music. on Sundays. The third movement, “Lamentation,” is comprised of a descending chromatic scalar ostinato that is set within the framework of a primitive baroque opera formal structure. The www.chingchuhu.com movement is a stoic yet mournful tribute to the composer’s grandmother, Egypt Puckett, who passed away on May 5, 2002. The fourth movement, “Mint Julep,” encapsulates the hysteria of the Kentucky Derby, the famous horserace that annually takes place during the first weekend of May, around the time of Egypt Puckett’s passing. “Mint Julep” is a beverage that is indigenous to Kentucky. Colloquial Threads is dedicated to violinist Scott Conklin and pianist Robert Auler, and the final movement’s connections to Kentucky are a nod to Conklin, who is a native of the state. the performers The Washington Post hailed Joel Puckett as both “visionary” and “gifted,” and the head critic Scott Conklin regularly appears as a recitalist, soloist, chamber for the Baltimore Sun, Tim Smith, hailed his piece, This Mourning, as “being of comparable musician, orchestral player, and teaching clinician throughout the expressive weight” to John Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work, On the Transmigration of Souls. United States and abroad, and he is currently Assistant Professor of Puckett currently teaches on the faculty of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins Violin at The University of Iowa School of Music and a violin teacher University and is the Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. at the Preucil School of Music in Iowa City, Iowa. Conklin has performed www.joelpuckett.com as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Louisville, Nashville, and Berlin Symphony Orchestras. He is the 2008 Iowa String Teachers Association Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year and was KEVIN PUTS (b. 1972): Aria for Violin and Piano (2000) named a “Rising Star” and featured artist at the 2004 Music Aria is based on a lyrical melody from a larger work of mine called Arches for solo violin. It was intended Teachers National Association Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. to be played as an encore for any recital but particularly for one which includes a performance of Arches. Conklin’s recording of A Tempered Wish for Solo Violin and Chamber It was commissioned by Spoleto USA and received its premiere in 2000 by violinist Chee-Yun. Orchestra (2003) by Ching-chu Hu was released on Albany Records —Note by Kevin Puts (June, 2008) in 2009. He has also recorded works by Luke Dahn, Franco Donatoni, Known for his rich and distinctive voice, Kevin Puts has been hailed by the critics as one of the and Jeremy Dale Roberts on the same record label. In the past year, leading composers of his generation. His work has been commissioned and performed by orchestras Ching-chu Hu wrote and dedicated a new work to Conklin called in the United States and abroad, including the New York Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchestër The Hope Moment for Violin and Piano (2009). Composer Joel Puckett (Zurich), the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Atlanta, Colorado, Houston, of the Peabody Institute of the expanded Fort Worth, Utah, St. Louis, the Boston Pops, and Minnesota and by leading chamber ensembles his BMI award-winning composition Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano (2003) into a new such as the Mirò Quartet, the Eroica Trio, eighth blackbird, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln four-movement violin concerto called Southern Comforts for violin, orchestral winds, bass, piano, and Center. Puts’ catalog includes four symphonies as well as concertos premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, Evelyn percussion (2008). Both works were written for and dedicated to Conklin. Recently, Conklin Glennie, and other leading performers. He has received awards from the American Academy in Rome, appeared on a concert tour of Germany with pianist Alan Huckleberry, and he also repeatedly the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI and ASCAP. He received performed the complete violin and piano works by Brahms over successive nights with pianist his training as a composer and pianist at the Eastman School of Music and Yale University. Since 2006, Uriel Tsachor. The latter project included Brahms’s very own violin and piano transcriptions of he has been a member of the composition department at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. the Op. 120 Sonatas Numbers 1 and 2 for clarinet/viola and piano. www.kevinputs.com Conklin is a former faculty member of The University of Texas at Arlington, and he also In addition to his performing career, Dr. Huckleberry is equally passionate about his role taught on several occasions as a substitute violin professor at The University of Texas at Austin as an educator. He is currently assistant professor of piano pedagogy and collaborative arts at Butler School of Music. In summer months, Conklin has served and/or continues to serve on The University of Iowa. There he heads the piano pedagogy program, which is rapidly faculty at The University of Iowa All-State Camp, Sound Encounters (Kansas), American Suzuki becoming recognized as one of the leading programs in the nation. He is a sought-after speaker Institute (Stevens Point, Wisconsin), Ottawa Suzuki Institute Mid-Southwest and Young Artist on pedagogical topics, including talks at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, the National Camp (Kansas), DFW WOW (Texas), and the Interlochen Arts Camp All-State Division (Michigan) Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, and the Music Teachers National Conference. At The University among many others. During the academic year, Conklin teaches at many clinics, conferences, of Iowa, he also maintains a studio of national and international students, who themselves are workshops, and educational settings throughout the country and serves on the Editorial Board beginning to leave their mark in their field. of the American Music Teacher Magazine. Conklin also holds the honorary distinction of being A native of Indiana, Huckleberry began serious studies at the piano in Germany with a “Kentucky Colonel,” a title given to him by Governor Wallace G. Wilkinson. Polish pianist Barbara Szczepanska. Further studies at the conservatories of Karlsruhe and During his youth, Conklin was a student of Carol Dallinger, Violin Professor at the Cologne with Japanese pedagogue Naoyuki Taneda and German pianist Josef A. Scherrer University of Evansville (IN). He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Cleveland solidified a diverse and international musical background. He then returned to the United Institute of Music, where he studied violin with David Updegraff and chamber music with States to complete his studies with Arthur Greene at The University of Michigan. Peter Salaff. Conklin also earned Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees from Huckleberry’s repertoire not only includes the standard works of the piano literature, but The University of Michigan School of Music as a student of Paul Kantor. he is an ardent supporter of new music and young composers, as seen by a long list of compo- www.violinguistics.com sitions which were written for him. Among the many 20th and 21st century styles he enjoys, he is particularly interested in contemporary rags and other crossover genres. Praised for his “impeccable musicianship, exhilarating technique, and panache” (American Record Guide), pianist Alan Huckleberry is recognized as a multi-faceted artist on the classical music scene. He has performed Acknowledgments both in recitals and as a soloist with orchestras in Germany, England, Czech Engineered, recorded, and mastered Republic, Italy, Austria, Spain, France, Costa Rica, and across the United by Dave Schall: (www.daveschallacoustic.com) States. The upcoming season will also mark his debut in South America. Produced by Scott Conklin, with Alan Huckleberry, Huckleberry is also in demand as a chamber musician, with recitals Dave Schall, Joel Puckett, and Ching-chu Hu. across the United States, Australia, and Europe. He can be heard on two compact disc records on the Crystal Record label, as well as soon to be Recording Gear released CDs; one of the complete Piano and Wind chamber music of the French composer microphones—Neumann U-87Ais, Neumann km-184s, AKG 414s Francis Poulenc and one featuring contemporary US American composers. preamps and recording: Focusrite and Digidesign, 24-bit Pro Tools session monitors: Event TR8 and Sennheiser HD-265 Publishers Sonata for Violin and Piano (1996) by Kevin Beavers (Oxford University Press); Graceful Ghost Rag Concert Variation for Violin and Piano by William Bolcom (Hal Leonard Corporation); Snow Ash (2008) by Ching-chu Hu (Sebtzi and Torena Music); The Stream Flows for Solo Violin by Bright Sheng (G. Schirmer); Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano by Joel Puckett (Joel Puckett Music); Aria by Kevin Puts (Aperto Press-BMI)

The University of Iowa Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant funded this recording project. Thank you for supporting the scholarly and artistic endeavors of your own professors.

Thank you to my colleague and friend Prof. Alan Huckleberry for sharing your friendship and Recorded artistry. Thank you to Dave Schall, recording engineer, for your guidance and help. Special June 2008, Clapp Recital Hall, The University of Iowa Voxman School of Music Building thanks to Kevin Beavers, Ching-chu Hu, Joel Puckett, Kevin Puts, and Bright Sheng for your Unpredictably, this recording is historic because it captures the final musical event in both music, insight, and for going over the pieces with us. Thank you to William Bolcom for your Clapp Recital Hall and The University of Iowa Voxman School of Music Building (1970-2008). music, generosity, and help. This “500 Year Flood” was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, and it ultimately destroyed the building. Throughout the recording sessions, the front of Clapp Recital Hall Thank you to Mark Weiger, Nicole Esposito, Jason Sifford, David Gier, Kristin Thelander, served as the center for flood relief activity for The University of Iowa, Iowa City, and Coralville David Nelson, Kate Thompson, Kayt Conrad, Cheri Arneson, Jay Semel, Alan MacVey, Linda communities. In the final day of our sessions, several tracks were recorded while the hall’s Maxson, Graham Hunt, Paul Kantor, David Updegraff, Peter Salaff, Carol Dallinger, Robert orchestra pit was taking in water. The previously sealed stage floor had been opened, and the Culver, Leslie Bassett, The University of Iowa, Preucil School of Music, Flood Relief, Wolfgang circumference of the emptied orchestra pit was roped off with streams of yellow construction Dersch, Rita Dowling, Treesa and Matt Gold, Main Street Photography (North Liberty, IA), area tape that draped from the balcony rails. The acoustic shells and recording equipment had David Gompper, Brian Lewis, Michael Jordan, Susan Bush, and Albany Records. to be reconfigured, and an intense focus was imperative to complete this project before the building’s evacuation deadline and eventual demise. It is fortuitous that one of the recorded This recording was made with gratitude to our families, friends, teachers, colleagues, students, pieces is called “The Stream Flows.” It most certainly did. and the source of all things.

V I 8 O 3 L 1 I 1 Kevin Beavers (b. 1971) N Y G

O Sonata for Violin and Piano (1996) U R Intense and Aggressive [5:54] 1 I T S

2 Groové [4:44] T I

3 Spirited and Explosive [3:00] C

4 Delicate [6:12] S

Scott Conklin VIOLIN S c

William Bolcom (b. 1938) o t

Alan Huckleberry PIANO The Graceful Ghost Rag t

5 C

Concert Variation for Violin and Piano (1983) [6:06] o O n k N l A i

I Ching-chu Hu (b. 1969) n P

6 Snow Ash (2008) [8:21] V y I r O r e L

b Bright Sheng (b. 1955) I N e l The Stream Flows for Solo Violin (1990) k c Movement One [5:00] A u American Voices 7 l a H 8 Movement Two [5:04] n Violinguistics n H a l

Joel Puckett (b. 1977) u A c

Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano (2003) k l e N I 9 Faulkner [1:38] b L e r O 10 Football and the Lord [4:14] r I y V

Lamentation [3:58]

11 P n I i Mint Julep [3:50] A l 12 N k n O o 13 Kevin Puts (b. 1972) C

t Aria for Violin and Piano (2000) [3:55] t o c

S Total Time = 62:59 S C I

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© 2009 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA 3

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I WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. V