January 18, 2019
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San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in the LABORATORY Series Auto-Tuning Ives Performing works by HEARNE MARSHALL TURNAGE ANDRES JOYCE Jan 18, 2019 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Tod Brody, flute Kyle Bruckmann, oboe Sarah Rathke, oboe Jeff Anderle, clarinet Peter Josheff, clarinet Adam Luftman, trumpet The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP), is a unionized ensemble Peter Wahrhaftig, tuba of twenty-four highly skilled musicians. SFCMP nourishes the creation and Chris Froh, percussion dissemination of new works through world-class contemporary music performances, Loren Mach, percussion commissions, and community outreach. SFCMP features the work of iconic and William Winant, percussion emerging composers while shining a spotlight on California artists. SFCMP performs Nick Woodbury, percussion the music of composers from across cultures and stylistic traditions who are creating Kate Campbell, piano a vast and vital 21st-century musical language. David Tanenbaum, guitar Hrabba Atladottir, violin Now in its forty-eighth year, SFCMP is one of the most active ensembles in the United States dedicated to contemporary music. Led by Artistic Director Eric Dudley Susan Freier, violin since 2018, SFCMP plays an important role in the regional and national cultural Roy Malan, violin landscape. The most long-standing, continually-performing, new music ensemble Meena Bhasin, viola outside the East Coast, SFCMP has greatly contributed to the art form and the Nanci Severance, viola new music sector. SFCMP is a recent award winner of the Fromm Foundation Hannah Addario-Berry, cello Ensemble Prize, and a ten-time winner of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Stephen Harrison, cello Programming. Richard Worn, contrabass SFCMP evolved out of Bring Your Own Pillow concerts started in 1971 by Charles Boone. Three years later, it was incorporated by Jean-Louis LeRoux and Marcella DeCray who became its directors. Across its history, SFCMP has been led by eight Artistic Directors and seven Executive Directors with continuous support and oversight by an active Board of Directors. SFCMP.org • 3 SFCMP Artistic Director Eric Dudley recorded by the Hartford Symphony an even earlier, and equally grand figure Orchestra, Quey Percussion Duo, and in American music: that of Charles Ives. Born in Toronto and raised in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra by Roomful of Teeth. Eric lives in Walnut Connecticut, Eric Dudley leads a under Paavo Järvi and the Princeton Creek with his wife Melanie and their In effect, we can regard Ives as the multi-faceted career as a conductor, Symphony Orchestra under Rossen infant son Ethan. founding father of the Experimentalist composer, vocalist and pianist deeply Milanov for several seasons, and some trend in American music, and of so engaged in the performance and of his recent guest engagements Message from Eric Dudley much that our in the LABORATORY Series creation of contemporary music. include the Ojai Festival in California, aims to explore; he was essentially the Since its founding in 2009, Eric has International Contemporary Ensemble first composer in the U.S. to advance been a member of the genre-defying (ICE) in New York and Finland, Adelaide fearlessly along the various paths of vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, touring Symphony Orchestra in Australia, and gnarly chromaticism, free atonality, worldwide and recording a wide array the National Symphony Orchestra at polytonality and polyrhythmicity, and of newly commissioned works with the the Kennedy Center. He served on the what could even be called a kind of Grammy Award-winning ensemble. In faculty of The New School and Mannes Post-Modernist collage technique well the 2018-2019 season, he returns to College of Music in New York, where he in advance of its era en vogue. Ives Australia as principal conductor for the directed the Mannes Prep Philharmonic was not pursuing these avenues with Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music, and The New School Chorus. He the conscious goal of determining the where he has also appeared on the currently teaches conducting at course of music in America, but because Melbourne Festival, and leads Roomful the San Francisco Conservatory of they stemmed from life experience and of Teeth and Ensemble L’Instant Donné Music, having directed the orchestra personal fascinations; the apocryphal in a production with Peter Sellars at program there for two seasons, and Dear Friends of SFCMP, stories of his childhood include music the Paris Festival d’Automne. While he was recently appointed to a year- lessons with a father who quirkily living in New York, he conducted long Artist-in-Residence position at After starting our season this year with challenged him to sing popular tunes and performed with organizations as the Conservatory of Music at The an homage to one of the longest-lived in keys other than what he played on diverse as Ekmeles and Tenet vocal University of the Pacific in Stockton. and undeniably key figures in American the piano, and a youthful astonishment ensembles, the Choir of Trinity Wall As a pianist and chamber musician, he music–the indefatigable Elliott Carter– at the overlapping sounds of different we continue with a concert featuring hymns emanating from song circles at Street, Talea Ensemble, American has performed with members of Novus a number of living composers who camp meetings, or of marching bands Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal New York and the Cincinnati and all share some kind of spiritual or playing conflicting rhythms following and the New York Philharmonic. Princeton symphony orchestras, and fundamental connection to the work of one after the other at holiday parades. He was an assistant conductor for his own music has been premiered and 4 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players SFCMP.org • 5 The result was a searchingly creative when a well-known thing is taken out of auto-tuning. As a tool developed at first pre-recorded and digitally processed impulse that led Ives to reimagine the context, and transformed into something to help less singerly pop stars stay on key, sounds of bells, singing, playing performance conventions of the time, entirely different? Above all, how does the now omnipresent digital frequency and vocalisms from a village funeral through groupings within an ensemble our memory of, and contact with, various manipulation of the human voice has procession on a Dalmatian island. British functioning independently of each other types of music affect anything new that become a sound color in itself, and one composer Mark Anthony Turnage’s Slide or requiring more than a single conductor we might write or hear? that Hearne calls upon regularly for its Stride for piano quintet overtly tips its at once, or including early aspects of instantly recognizable connection to hat to a quintessential American music indeterminacy and greater-than-usual In his prefatory note to ‘The Cage’ the spheres of rock and hip hop. Like form–the classic ‘stride bass’ style of freedom of interpretation on the part of Variations, Hearne writes that the piece Ives, Hearne is sampling the musical piano playing advanced by jazz greats the performers. More than anything, Ives “sprung from the idea that we are environment of the time, and tonight, like Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller and Art Tatum– was a composer who listened to the world inextricably tied to the place and time in allowing it to interact with his own actual and explores the deconstruction and around him differently, and wanted to which we live, and that our music reflects voice, as both composer and performer. reconstruction of a sound vocabulary that write music that reflected the individuality the experience we were born into…;” in has become synonymous with a musical of what he heard. his investigation of that territory, Hearne Bay Area native Timo Andres, a close style of this country known worldwide. As creates a set of variations almost wholly colleague of Hearne’s, offers another always, our side-by-side concert here at Aside from his short and enigmatic developed from bits and pieces of music window into the spheres of memory the San Francisco Conservatory includes song ‘The Cage’ that forms the basis of by friends and contemporaries, along with and influence, connecting his own the talent and adventurousness of several Ted Hearne’s set of variations, tonight’s some of his own. This evening we present perceptions of life in Ives’ home state SFCM student musicians, appearing concert presents no music by Ives a sampling of these variations–each one with a personalized approach to the alongside the professionals on our SFCMP himself. Instead, it offers an assemblage punctuated by a full or partial iteration contrapuntal layering of soul-and jazz- roster to further their experience and of pieces by composers who to this day of the Ives song as a continuously re- infused recollections of yesteryear growth in performing the music of today. still appear fascinated by some of the contextualized refrain–in juxtaposition in Some Connecticut Gospel. And yet questions and concepts embedded in with some of the music that most another composer with life experience We invite you to encounter this larger set his music: what does it sound like when directly inspired certain variations: Molly spanning both coasts, Ingram Marshall of variations on a theme along with us, seemingly disparate music collides Joyce’s Blue Swell for solo violin and exploits what Ives could not at his own and to be with us again