The Scruncheons Rob Power, Director Donald Buell, Guest Conductor

Donald F. Cook Recital Hall M.O. Morgan Building Thursday, 18 March 2004 at 8:00 p.m. The Scruncheons Rob Power, director Donald Buell, guest conductor Five Alive (2003) The Scruncheons Sunda ( 1989) Anthony Genge ( 1952- ) Omphalo Centric Lecture (1984)* Nigel Westlake (1958- ) DJ (1992) Alexander Lepak ( 1920- ) Intermission Time Warp ( 1992) Don Wherry (1935-2001) Marubatoo ( 1988) John Wyre Ionisation (1931)* Edgard Varese (1885-1965) Donald Buell, guest conductor African Welcome Piece (1973) Michael Udow ( 1949- ) *Newfoundland premieres Performers: Yves Conan, Annie Croft, Andrew Dunsmore, Kim Ettinger, Dan Galway, Keith Harding, Brad Kilpatrick, Rob Pittman, John Power, Rob Power, Sarah Smith, Ed Squires, Amie Watson, Phil Yetman The Scruncheons were formed by Don Wherry in the late 1980s. Over the years they have presented hundreds of concerts and workshops, including collaborations with dance, theatre, and the visual arts. They have performed and collaborated with many well known artists and musicians, including Trichy Sankaran, John Wyre, The Newfoundland Symphony, and The Beothuck Street Players. Since the passing of Don Wherry in 2001, the Scruncheons have become even more inspired and determined to create, experiment, perform and explore. Since 2001, the group's activities have been directed by Rob Power. Rob is a founding member of the 'original' Scruncheons, and is the current professor of percussion at the MUN School of Music. The Scruncheons perform regular concerts and workshops featuring improvisation, world music, homemade instruments, contemporary percussion ensemble repertoire and world premieres. Many Scruncheons compose music for the ensemble, and these works are premiered throughout the year in various venues. They are regular performers at the Sound Symposium, and have been heard several times on CBC Radio's Musicraft, as well as nationally on Two New Hours. The group will often expand to include up and coming percussionists, former students, and other percussion enthusiasts. Once a Scruncheon, always a Scruncheon! Five Alive was composed by five members of the Scruncheons for their trip to Labrador in November, 2003 as invited performers at the Labrador Creative Arts Festival. With stops in Goose Bay, Northwest River, and Nain, the group \Vas forced to travel light while still being prepared to present a full concert of percussion music. Thus the piece utilizes various portable instruments, including frame drums, copper tubes, and artillery shells. Born in Vancouver, B.C., Anthony Genge worked as a jazz performer for a number of years before studying classical composition formally. Dr. Genge received his Ph.D. in composition from the State University of Ne\v York at Buffalo in 1984, where he was a student of Morton Feldman. His other principal composition teachers included Bruce Mather at McGill University and Martin Bartlett and Rudolf Komorous at the University of Victoria. He traveled to Japan 1979 where he began an association with the Japanese composer Jo Kondo. He also made several trips to Pacific-Rim countries, in particular Japan and Indonesia, studying their traditional music. His diverse compositional influences include the traditional music from the Far East (notably Japan and Java), various techniques of Medieval and Renaissance European music, the music of the New York school of composers of the 1950's, the early music of Anton Webern and the work of Igor Stravinsky. Sunda for 6 percussionists was composed in 1989. The composer writes: "The work is based on a rhythmic pattern or pulse, which is repeated, as an ostinato, throughout the entire work. While the music goes through various changes of character and texture, these are unified by the continuous pulse. As the idea of pulse is in some ways so basic to the nature of percussion instruments, I felt at the time that this \Vas important issue for me to explore in writing a piece for percussion ensemble. The title of the work refers to the music of Sunda, which is the area, which forms the western third of the island of Java. I was particularly taken by its distinctive and very elegant musical forms and its special type of small gamelan orchestra while visiting this area in the early 1980s. My piece however, does not try to imitate this music in any \vay, but was inspired by its elegance and refinement." Nigel Westlake is the son of professional musicians. He studied clarinet with his father, Donald Westlake (former principal clarinettist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra) and left school early to pursue a career in music. He was soon freelancing with many prominent orchestras & ensembles in Australia & has since appeared as clarinet / bass clarinet soloist with - John Williams, Geoffrey Parsons, Yvonne Kenny, Stephen Isserlis, Kathy Selby, The Australia Ensemble, Synergy, Michael Kieran Harvey, Melbourne Symphony, Tasmanian Symphony, Hunter Symphony. As a composer he has completed many commissions for ensembles and organizations such as: the ABC, the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Synergy Percussion, the Australia Ensemble, Tall Poppies Records, SBS television, and the Royal Australian Navy Band. He has also become well-known as a composer of film and television music, including scores for Babe, Celluloid Heroes, the IMAX film Antarctica and the 3D IMAX film Breaking Through. His work has been performed throughout the world by John Williams, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Australia Ensemble, Synergy Percussion, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and many others, and has won various awards including the Gold Medal at the New York Radio Festival in 1988 and the 1992 APRA award for Contemporary Classical Composition of the Year. Alexander Lepak has written numerous works and method books for percussion, and has recently retired after playing percussion and timpani \vith the Hartford Symphony Orchestra for the past 56 years. Born in Hartford, he developed an early interest in the drums and began playing the timpani at the age of 15. Following a tour of duty in World War II and living in New York, Lepak returned to Hartford and taught percussion at the Hartt School of Music and began playing with the HSO under its first director. While teaching at Hartt, he wrote percussion instruction books that are still widely used. In 1979, Lepak went on sabbatical from the HSO and Hartt and \Vent to Hollywood where he played music for films including "The Jerk'', "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and for the TV mini-series "Shogun." He also played percussion for Frank Sinatra's 1979 "Trilogy" album and taught percussion with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. In 1997, Alexander Lepak was elected to the International Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame. DJ is an original jazz composition composed in 1992. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Don Wherry moved to Tors Cove, Newfoundland in 1973. It wasn't long before he'd moved to the centre of St. John's and was an integral part of the city's vibrant musical and cultural fabric. As anyone who knew him or his vvork will attest, Don's talents and achievements were varied and virtually boundless, matched by his warmth and creative spirit. He played with, among other groups, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Dance Theatre, CBC Festival Orchestra, Rising Tide Theatre and the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. He was a beloved mentor, private tutor and professor of Music at Memorial University, where his percussion students became - and remain - The Scruncheons. He was also a founding member of Fusion and the Black Auks. He composed Harbour Symphonies for ship's horns in St. John's, Montreal and San Francisco. He was the founder and artistic director of the Sound Symposium, the first ten of which were helmed by Don and his wife, Kathy Clark-Wherry. His legacy continues on in the work of the Scruncheons, the Black Auks, the Sound Symposium, and in the rhythm of people around the world fortunate to have been touched by his inspiration and friendship. Time Warp was composed for a 1992 Scruncheons Prelude Concert at the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre. Thirteen clave players perform using thirteen separate and varying 'click tracks'. John Wyre, performer and composer, was a founding member of NEXUS. After thirty-one years with the ensemble, John resigned from NEXUS in October 2002 to devote more time to composing. His compositions have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Japan Philharmonic, NEXUS, and other orchestras and chamber ensembles in North America, Europe, and Asia. As creator and artistic director of World Drums, John has organized and directed international drum festivals since 1984, bringing musicians together from around the \vorld. John is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. He has been part of the Toronto Symphony, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, and the Marlboro Music Festival. John's music and his book, Touched by Sound, A Drummer's Journey, are published by Buka Music in St. John's. He writes "Marubatoo has evolved in many incarnations from the original piece called Maruba that combined marimba and tuba. In generating a piece for NEXUS, I transcribed the tuba part for bass marimba, which sustains the melodic part throughout the piece, and added parts for vibraphone, crotales, and a third marimba." French-American composer Edgard Varese first studied mathematics and science in Paris, but gradually became more interested in music. He went on to study composition with Roussel and D'Indy at the Schola Cantorum and with Wider at the Conservatory. After composing in Paris and Berlin, he went (1915) to the United States, where he founded (1921) the International Composers' Guild for the advancement of experimental music. A bold innovator whose early works aroused angry protests, Varese explored entirely new rhythms and sounds in such compositions as Hyperprism ( 1923), Integrales ( 1925), both for wind instruments and percussion, and Poeme Electronique ( 1958), vvhich was performed at the Brussels Exposition.

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