Saturday Evening, March 18, 2017 at 8:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor @ 80 Performed by Third Coast Percussion

49th Performance of the 138th Annual Season 138th Annual Choral Union Series Tonight’s presenting sponsor is the Renegade Ventures Fund, established by Maxine and Stuart Frankel. Tonight’s supporting sponsor is Level X Talent. Tonight’s performance will be livestreamed, with an archived version available online at UMS.org. Tonight’s performance and livestream is funded in part by the Building Audiences for Sustainability initiative of The Wallace Foundation, which aims to develop practical insights into how arts organizations can attract new audiences while retaining current ones. Media partnership provided by WGTE 91.3 FM, Ann Arbor’s 107one, Metro Times, and WDET 101.9 FM. The Steinway used in this evening’s performance are made possible by William and Mary Palmer. Special thanks to Tom Thompson of Tom Thompson Flowers, Ann Arbor, for his generous contribution of lobby floral art for this evening’s performance. Special thanks to Matt Albert, Joseph Gramley, and Heather Kendrick for their participation in events surrounding this evening’s performance. Special thanks to Tiffany Ng, assistant professor of carillon and university carillonist, for coordinating the pre-performance music on the Charles Baird Carillon. Steve Reich @ 80 appears by arrangement with David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives. In consideration of the artists and the audience, please refrain from the use of electronic devices during the performance. The photography, sound recording, or videotaping of this performance is prohibited. PROGRAM

All-Steve Reich Program

Sextet

I. Fast II. Moderate III. Slow IV. Moderate V. Fast

Sextet is performed attacca (without pause).

Third Coast Percussion, Mr. Duvall, Ms. Kaplan

Intermission

Music for 18 Musicians

Pulses — Section I — Section II — Section IIIA — Section IIIB — Section IV — Section V — Section VI — Section VII — Section VIII — Section IX — Section X — Section XI — Pulses

Music for 18 Musicians is performed attacca (without pause).

3 PERFORMERS

Eighth Blackbird Nathalie Joachim / Flutes and Voice Michael J. Maccaferri / Clarinets Yvonne Lam / Violin Nick Photinos / Cello Matthew Duvall / Percussion Lisa Kaplan /

Third Coast Percussion Sean Connors / Percussion and Piano Robert Dillon / Percussion Peter Martin / Percussion David Skidmore / Percussion

Featuring Kayleigh Butcher / Voice John Corkill / Percussion Zachary Good / Clarinets Adam Marks / Piano Alex Monroe / Percussion and Piano Elizabeth Pearse / Voice Doug Perkins / Daniel Schlosberg / Piano Carrie Henneman Shaw / Voice

Eighth Blackbird is ensemble-in-residence at the University of Richmond. Nathalie Joachim is a Burkart Flutes & Piccolos artist. Michael J. Maccaferri is a D’Addario Woodwinds Artist. Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist.

4 SEXTET (1984) MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS (1976)

Steve Reich Born October 3, 1936 in New York City

UMS premieres: These pieces have never been performed on a UMS concert.

Snapshots of History…In 1984: · Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the US · The TED conference is founded · US researchers announce their discovery of the AIDS virus

Snapshots of History…In 1976: · The first class of women is inducted at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis · Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank · The punk rock group the Ramones release their first self-titled album

I’d like to ask you participate in an by this “soundtrack,” that would be experiment. tremendous. This is science. Well, No, not like that “totally safe” armchair science…but using an pharmaceutical study you did for beer armchair that Neil deGrasse Tyson money in college. would think is pretty comfy. Sometime this week, I’d like you to Here’s the thing. Beyond a profound buy or cue up a copy of Steve Reich’s love for the music itself, a majority Music for 18 Musicians, pull on a pair of quotient of my musician and writer headphones, and do a task. Any task. colleagues believe that this path- Could be alphabetizing the spice rack, carving work increases productivity climbing the email Everest toward more than just about any other piece inbox zero, or making collections for in the repertoire. It is on heavy rotation your bookie operation. When you’re when deadlines loom, and annually on done, ask yourself: If opting for a the evening of April 14 ($). mundane task, did time seem to slip This piece isn’t just classical music’s by more effortlessly? If attempting a life-hack answer to the standing desk creative task, did thoughts organize or a ping-pong table in the break themselves more readily than they room, though. Music for 18 Musicians usually do? is best experienced live because If I might be so bold, would you it is so phenomenally transparent, visit www.ums.org/reich and this connection between movement post the response “Yes” or “No?” and sound you are about to witness. If you’d like to be more specific, Watching the mesmerizing oscillation about what you were doing and the of mallet heads striking , experience of doing it accompanied flexed fingers feverishly casting

5 “Balinese gamelan music cro ss-dressing as Minimalism.” —David Bowie, on Music for 18 Musicians

wizardly spells on piano ivories, and that time stretches and inverts even the pulsating throats of the vocalists though the performers are offering us — it’s as though the sound waves are a metronome at every given moment. being projected from the lighting booth If you find yourself wondering how this above you. Ripples are visible across musical amoeba holds together, keep the stage as chords mutate, their an eye on Doug Perkins there on the insides foaming out before the tide vibraphone. His licks denote movement pulls them back in. forward to the rest of the ensemble. Part of what makes this piece so In the words of the composer, “much extraordinary is its confluence of the as in Balinese gamelan a drummer will mechanical and the organic. The pulse audibly call for changes of pattern in is methodical, dependable even, and West African music.” given how much of our world is built If you are the kind of person that on cyclic rhythms (the circadian cycle, walks back to your car 4–5 times the oxygen cycle, the calling-your- at a pop to make sure it is locked, Internet-Service-Provider cycle), it you may find yourself feeling very stands to reason that we are drawn satisfied at the conclusion ofMusic toward repetition. But our humanness for 18 Musicians. (Except that now is also wonderfully chaotic — often you’re wondering.) In any case, one asymmetric and unpredictable and reason may be that Reich turns to the in constant negotiation with our obsessive’s catnip known as arch form environment. Here’s where things (ABCDCBA) in a number of the piece’s get organic. The real-time breath sections. It’s a theme shared with this capacity of the bass clarinet is at evening’s other selection, Sextet, the times dictating how long each chord five movements of which also form an is sustained, which makes this arch (ABCBA). performance you’re about to hear Quick sidebar: if you’d like to dig singular…and dependent, in part, on into arch form elsewhere, see Bartók’s how strictly Eighth Blackbird clarinetist fourth and fifth string quartets, Michael Maccaferri has been adhering Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, or to his Jazzercise regimen. get your melancholy on with Barber’s That Reich conjures this Adagio for Strings. kaleidoscopic panorama with just If Music for 18 Musicians is a kind of 11 primary chords, moving from plucky field recording of our interior rhythms optimism of Section I, through the and cycles, Sextet is the music of the nervous deliberations of Section VII, metropolis. The opening, “I. Fast,” and into the positively euphoric could convincingly be the default waterfall of Section X. We are guided soundtrack playing inside the first so gently, so seamlessly, through commercially available driverless these and the surrounding movements car, its buoyant canons and

6 “Balinese gamelan music cro ss-dressing as Minimalism.” —David Bowie, on Music for 18 Musicians

shimmering bowed was reminiscing with his buddy Steve offering promises of a brighter future. that back when they were performing Whereas the sections of Music for Steve’s music a few decades earlier, 18 seem to melt into each other, the audiences would literally try to five continuous movements of Sextet overwhelm the performers with their are marked by abrupt, seismic hits booing during their shows. Steve in the pianos. Maneuvering between Reich. The guy that won the Pulitzer movements feels a bit like entering in 2009. The guy that the New Yorker a series of breathtaking skyscraper calls “the most original musical lobbies and having the pressure thinker of our time.” vacuum of your entry slam the door If the music you hear tonight behind you every time. For example, sounds provocative to you…you’re the fourth movement, “Moderate,” right! If you happen to be the kind of is a groovy 1970s building in which person that gives Reich albums to slithering synthesizers conjure up friends who claim they don’t like new images of decadent, persimmon- music, because Reich is the most hued sofas and spherical glass effective gateway drug…you’re also chandeliers. Skyscrapers or not, each right! Either way, I hypothesize that of these movements feel towering and you’ll leave this concert feeling like spacious, arriving by way of a kind of your brain and your body are burning echo effect between instruments — brighter and noticeably more in sync. canons and double-canons. Watching Now for that in-home trial. Let me this unfold, especially between know. like pairs of instruments is instant, transcendent meditation. Program note by Doyle Armbrust. You know that thing we do in classical music…where during a pre- Doyle Armbrust is a Chicago- concert talk the speaker reads some based violist and member of the below-the-belt review from the 19th Spektral Quartet and Ensemble Dal century about the premiere of a piece Niente. He is a contributing writer that is now near-universally adored? for WQXR’s Q2 Music, Crain’s Chicago The audience chuckles knowingly and Business, Chicago Magazine, Chicago scoffs at the critic’s idiocy. Well, rash Tribune, and formerly, Time Out Chicago. judgments about new music aren’t relegated to previous centuries. When I was a viola fellow at the New World Symphony, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was rehearsing us in front of Steve Reich, live via Internet 2 (think: a souped-up Skype video call). MTT

7 8 9 UMS ARCHIVES

This evening’s performance marks Eighth Blackbird’s third UMS appearance, following its UMS debut in April 2008 with two performances at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre in a program that included Steve Reich’s Pulitzer Prize- winning . The ensemble most recently appeared at UMS in January 2015 at Rackham Auditorium. Doug Perkins makes his second UMS appearance this evening following his UMS debut in January 2015 with Eighth Blackbird. UMS welcomes Third Coast Percussion, Kayleigh Butcher, John Corkill, Zachary Good, Adam Marks, Alex Monroe, Elizabeth Pearse, Daniel Schlosberg, and Carrie Henneman Shaw, who make their UMS debuts this evening.

Photo (previous spread): Steve Reich; photographer: Jeffrey Herman.

10 ARTISTS

Eighth Blackbird is “one of the smartest, Eye, as well as keystone performances most dynamic contemporary classical celebrating Steve Reich’s 80th birthday, ensembles on the planet” (Chicago a fresh round of raucous shows with Tribune). Launched by six entrepreneurial “Appalachian post-punk solipsist” (The Oberlin Conservatory undergraduates in Wanderer) Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince 1996, this Chicago-based super-group Billy), and world premieres by Holly Harrison, has earned its status as “a brand-name… Pulitzer Prize-winner , and defined by adventure, vibrancy, and Ned McGowan. This season marks debuts quality….known for performing from at Justin Vernon’s (Bon Iver) and Aaron memory, employing choreography and Dessner’s (The National) Eaux Claires collaborations with theater artists, lighting Festival, a collaboration with the San designers, and even puppetry artists” Francisco Symphony, performances in Paris, (Detroit Free Press). France, and a three-week tour of Australia. Over the course of two decades, Eighth Eighth Blackbird’s mission — to Blackbird has commissioned and premiered move music forward through innovative hundreds of works by composers such as performance, advocacy for new music by David Lang, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, living composers, and a legacy of guiding and Steve Reich, whose Double Sextet went an emerging generation of musicians — on to win the Pulitzer Prize (2009). A long- extends beyond recording and touring to term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille curation and education. The ensemble Records has produced seven acclaimed served as music director of the Ojai recordings and four Grammy Awards for Music Festival (2009), enjoyed a three- “Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music year residency at the Curtis Institute of Performance”: strange imaginary animals Music, and holds an ongoing ensemble- (2008), Lonely Motel: Music from Slide in-residence position at the University of (2011), Meanwhile (2013), and Filament Richmond. The 2015–16 season featured (2015). Hand Eye, their most recent a pioneering residency at Chicago’s recording released in March 2016 and Museum of Contemporary Art, serving as featuring the music of composer collective a living installation with open rehearsals, Sleeping Giant, was hailed as “dazzling” and performances, guest artists, and public “vigorously, flawlessly performed” (WQXR). talks. In 2017, Eighth Blackbird launches Eighth Blackbird celebrated its its boldest initiative yet with the creation 20th anniversary in 2016, winning its of Blackbird Creative Laboratory, a tuition- fourth Grammy Award and the coveted free, two-week summer workshop and MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective performance festival for musicians in Ojai, Institutions. January 2017 saw them hailed California. as Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Eighth Blackbird’s members hail Year” and the recipients of Chamber from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Music America’s inaugural Visionary Empire, and Bay states. The name “Eighth Award. Anniversary celebrations continue Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza throughout the 2016–17 season with tours of Wallace Stevens’ evocative, imagistic from its two most recent and broadly- poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a acclaimed albums, Filament and Hand Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And

11 UMS Lobby Takeover

Before this evening’s performance, texturing in West African , U-M School of Music, Theatre and specifically that of the Ewe people Dance students bring to life Steve from the Volta region of Ghana, was Reich’s musical influences in three a large inspiration in composing his lobbies of Hill Auditorium, in a set first masterpiece,Drumming, in 1970– of performances curated by Joseph 71. The inspiration of polyrhythmic Gramley, director of percussion counterpoint found in Ewe drumming studies, and Matthew Albert, chair can also be heard in many of Reich’s of the chamber music department. later works, including Sextet and Music for 18 Musicians. In an effort to University of Michigan illustrate the West African heritage West African Drumming Ensemble in Reich’s music, the U-M West Program to include Ewe barrel African Drumming Ensemble will be drumming from the Volta region performing traditional Ewe rhythms of Ghana learned from the Agbeli family in the village of Kopeyia, Ghana. Shane Jones / Director Charles Bartlett —Shane Jones, DMA Graduate School Sofia Carbonara Instructor, University of Michigan Chelsea Tinsler Jones School Jonathan Mashburn Alec Ockaskis Jacob Rogers Christopher Weber

After receiving a grant from the Institute for International Education in 1970, Reich conducted a five- week research trip in Ghana to study West African drumming from Gideon Alorwoyie at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. His exposure to and study of the polyrhythmic layering and Africa Steve Reich John Coltrane

Esther Lee / Violin Alain Sullivan / Tenor Saxophone Tiffany Loe / Violin Jordan Anderson / Piano Heewon Uhm / Violin Seamus Lynch / Bass Iris Wu / Violin David Ward / Drums

Reich’s Violin Phase was among “The giant in all this harmonic stasis the first pieces that mimicked the for me was John Coltrane in his tape process he discovered in Africa Brass album of 1961 where his 1965 composition, It’s Gonna the title tune is 16 minutes — all on Rain. The tapes began to “phase” ‘E’!...the low ‘E’ of the double bass as one tape moved slightly ahead played by Jimmy Garrison. How did of another and in doing so, created he make 16 minutes on one harmony interesting juxtapositions of sound riveting? Well, first by remarkable and structure. Although there is no melodic invention and sometimes phasing in Music for 18 Musicians, by almost screaming through his the rhythmic structure of Violin instrument, then by incredible Phase is similarly influenced by rhythmic complexity played by Ghanaian rhythms like those Elvin Jones, and finally by timbral performed by the U-M West African variety arranged by Eric Dolphy for Drumming Ensemble this evening. French horns playing glissandos that Additionally, the melodic patterns of sounded like charging elephants.” Violin Phase are closely quoted by the pianos in Section V of Music for —Steve Reich, in a 2013 interview 18 Musicians. with Phil Johnson of The Independent, “Rock was pretty much off my radar — then came Radiohead”

This Renegade Lobby Takeover is funded in part by the Wallace Foundation. lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright too, / That the blackbird is involved / In Foundation, dancers at Hubbard Street what I know.” Eighth Blackbird is managed Dance Chicago, and musicians from by David Lieberman Artists. For more info, traditions ranging from the mbira music please visit www.eighthblackbird.org. of Zimbabwe’s Shona people, to indie rockers, to some of the world’s leading Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy- concert musicians. winning, artist-run quartet of classically A commission for a new work from trained percussionists hailing from the Augusta Read Thomas in 2012 led to great city of Chicago. For over 10 years, the realization that commissioning new the ensemble has forged a unique path musical works can be — and should in the musical landscape with virtuosic, be — as collaborative as any other energetic performances that celebrate artistic partnership. Through extensive the extraordinary depth and breadth work-shopping and close contact with of musical possibilities in the world of composers, Third Coast Percussion has percussion. The ensemble has been praised commissioned and premiered new works for “commandingly elegant” (New York from Donnacha Dennehy, Glenn Kotche, Times) performances, and the “rare power” Lei Liang, Gavin Bryars, Christopher (Washington Post) of their recordings. Cerrone, Timo Andres, Marcos Balter, The four members of Third Coast are also Ted Hearne, and today’s leading up-and- accomplished teachers, and since 2012, coming composers through their Emerging have served as ensemble-in-residence at Composers Partnership Program. These the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo works have become part of the ensemble’s Performing Arts Center. core repertoire and seen hundreds of A direct connection with the audience is performances across North America and at the core of all of Third Coast Percussion’s throughout Europe. work. Percussion instruments are perhaps Third Coast Percussion maintains a busy the oldest musical instruments, and any touring schedule, with past performances in object on the planet that produces sound 32 of the 50 states plus Canada, Germany, can be a . Perhaps Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, and this is why audiences seem to have an venues ranging from concert halls at the innate attraction to percussion instruments. Metropolitan Museum of Art and De Doelen A spirit of inclusivity inspires all that Third to clubs and alternative performance Coast Percussion does, whether the spaces such as New York’s Le Poisson musicians are speaking from the stage Rouge and the National Gallery’s West about a new piece of music, inviting the Garden Court. audience to play along in a concert or Third Coast Percussion’s recordings educational performance, or inviting their include three full-length albums, three fans around the world to create new music EPs, and a number of appearances on using one of their free mobile apps. other releases. The quartet has put its The quartet’s curiosity and eclectic stamp on iconic percussion works by taste have led to a series of unlikely John Cage and Steve Reich, and Third collaborations that have produced exciting Coast has also created first recordings new art. The ensemble has worked with of commissioned works by Augusta Read engineers at the University of Notre Dame, Thomas, David T. Little, and Ted Hearne, in

14 addition to recordings of the ensemble’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steve own compositions. In 2017 the ensemble Reich was recently called “our greatest was awarded a Grammy Award for living composer” (New York Times) and “Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble “…the most original musical thinker of Performance” for its recording of Steve our time” (The New Yorker). From his Reich’s works for percussion. early taped speech pieces It’s Gonna Rain Third Coast Percussion has always (1965) and (1966) to his and maintained strong ties to the vibrant video artist Beryl Korot’s digital video artistic community in their hometown of opera (2002), Mr. Reich’s Chicago. The quartet has collaborated path has embraced not only aspects with Chicago institutions such as Hubbard of Western Classical music, but the Street Dance Chicago and the Adler structures, harmonies, and rhythms of Planetarium, performed at the grand non-Western and American vernacular opening of Maggie Daley Children’s Park, music, particularly jazz. In April 2009 conducted residencies at the University Steve Reich was awarded the Pulitzer of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Prize in Music for his composition the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, created Double Sextet. He records exclusively multi-year collaborative projects with with Nonesuch, on which label Different Chicago-based composers Augusta Read Trains (1988) earned him a Grammy Award Thomas, Glenn Kotche, and chamber for “Best Contemporary Composition” ensemble Eighth Blackbird, and taught and Music for 18 Musicians a second. tens of thousands of students through The current season sees worldwide partnerships with Urban Gateways, the celebrations of Mr. Reich’s 80th birthday, People’s Music School, the Chicago Park guided by performances of two new major District, Rush Hour Concerts, and others. works — Pulse (Carnegie Hall premiere) The four members of Third Coast and Runner. The ensemble work Runner Percussion met while studying music premiered at London’s Royal Ballet last at Northwestern University. Members November, accompanied by a new ballet of Third Coast also hold degrees choreographed by Wayne McGregor. In from the Eastman School of Music, 1994 Steve Reich was elected to the Rutgers University, the New England American Academy of Arts and Letters, Conservatory, and the Yale School of to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Music. Stay up-to-date and go behind- 1995, and, in 1999, awarded Commandeur the-scenes by following Third Coast on de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres. Twitter (@ThirdCoastPerc), Facebook (@ Third Coast Percussion), and Instagram (@ThirdCoastPercussion). Third Coast Percussion is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.

15 TONIGHT’S VICTORS FOR UMS: Renegade Ventures Fund, established by Maxine and Stuart Frankel — Level X Talent — The Wallace Foundation

MAY WE ALSO RECOMMEND...

3/29 DakhaBrakha 3/30–4/1 Complicite/Simon McBurney: The Encounter 4/12 A Far Cry with Roomful of Teeth

Tickets available at www.ums.org.

ON THE EDUCATION HORIZON...

3/25 Pre-Concert Lecture Series: Exploring Beethoven’s String Quartets (Michigan League Koessler Room, Third Floor, 911 N. University Ave., 7:00 pm)

3/30 Renegade Pre-Performance Talk: The Encounter (Power Center Lobby, 121 Fletcher Street, 7:00 pm) Must have a ticket to the 3/30 performance to attend.

Educational events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.