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The William Paterson University Department of Music Presents New The William Paterson University Department of Music presents New Music Series Peter Jarvis, director Featuring the Velez / Jarvis Duo, Judith Bettina & James Goldsworthy, Daniel Lippel and the William Paterson University Percussion Ensemble Monday, October 17, 2016, 7:00 PM Shea Center for the Performing Arts Program Mundus Canis (1997) George Crumb Five Humoresques for Guitar and Percussion 1. “Tammy” 2. “Fritzi” 3. “Heidel” 4. “Emma‐Jean” 5. “Yoda” Phonemena (1975) Milton Babbitt For Voice and Electronics Judith Bettina, voice Phonemena (1969) Milton Babbitt For Voice and Piano Judith Bettina, voice James Goldsworthy, Piano Penance Creek (2016) * Glen Velez For Frame Drums and Drum Set Glen Velez – Frame Drums Peter Jarvis – Drum Set Themes and Improvisations Peter Jarvis For open Ensemble Glen Velez & Peter Jarvis Controlled Improvisation Number 4, Opus 48 (2016) * Peter Jarvis For Frame Drums and Drum Set Glen Velez – Frame Drums Peter Jarvis – Drum Set Aria (1958) John Cage For a Voice of any Range Judith Bettina May Rain (1941) Lou Harrison For Soprano, Piano and Tam‐tam Elsa Gidlow Judith Bettina, James Goldsworthy, Peter Jarvis Ostinato Mezzo Forte, Opus 51 (2016) * Peter Jarvis For Percussion Band Evan Chertok, David Endean, Greg Fredric, Jesse Gerbasi Daniel Lucci, Elise Macloon Sean Dello Monaco – Drum Set * = World Premiere Program Notes Mundus Canis: George Crumb George Crumb’s Mundus Canis came about in 1997 when he wanted to write a solo guitar piece for his friend David Starobin that would be a musical homage to the lineage of Crumb family dogs. He explains, “It occurred to me that the feline species has been disproportionately memorialized in music and I wanted to help redress the balance.” Crumb calls the work “a suite of five canis humoresques” with a character study of each dog implied through the music. Each of the five movements is named after one of the family dogs: Crumb Writes: 1. “Tammy, a brown, short‐haired, full‐size dachshund, and the first dog in our family, exhibited qualities ranging from nobility to capriciousness.” 2. “Fritzi’s piece, marked furioso in the score, expresses a pronounced impetuosity and irrepressibility of spirit.” 3. “The dog Heidel (acquired on a visit to Heidelberg, Germany) was our first long‐haired specimen of the breed, a rich brown in color, who exhibited a philosophical disposition and confounding depths of personality.” 4. “Emma‐Jean was a jet black miniature female dachshund of a definitely coquettish nature.” 5. “The final character in our quintet of dogs is Yoda, who was rescued from a New York City pound by my daughter. He is a fluffy‐white animal of mixed parentage (in which the bichon frise strain predominates) and mercurial temperament…Yoda’s naughty, yet endearing, pranks necessitate an occasional scolding from master or mistress. But in an instant, all forgiven, Yoda plops in one’s lap!” ‐ Andrew Bergeron Aria: John Cage The Score for Aria (1958) consists of 20 pages of music, each page being sufficient for 30 seconds in performance. Pages may be performed over longer or shorter time‐ranges to create a program of a determined time‐length. The Aria may be performed as a solo, or with Fontana Mix (a composition from 1958) and/or with any parts of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra. The text employs vowels and consonants and works from American, Russian, Italian, French and English. The notation consists basically of wavy lines in different colors and 16 black squares denoting “non‐musical” vocal noises. The colors denote different singing styles, to be determined by the singer. Cage used Fontana Mix as a composing means to create this Aria. ‐ From http://www.johncage.info/workscage/aria.html Penance Creek: Glen Velez Penance Creek was completed on July 28, 2016. Dedicated to esteemed percussionist Peter Jarvis. The piece explores the interplay between hand drumming and stick drumming, giving the freedom to the performers to reconcile the dynamic and coloristic differences. The title is a result of my meditations on the power of flowing water, its bubbling sound over rocks in a creek is the sound of cleansing. ‐ Glen Velez Controlled Improvisation Number 4: Peter Jarvis Controlled Improvisation Number 4 was completed on June 13, 2012. It is respectfully dedicated to master performer Glen Velez. The 4th piece in an ongoing series of 6 “controlled improvisations” it is designed to explore the delicate combination of notated and improvised music. In some cases the improvisations are free, at other times the improvisations are pitches only with notated rhythms. Sometimes one player has notated music while the other is improvising. At times both parts are fully notated and finally there are moments when both players are improvising at the same time. It is my hope that, in performance, a listener will be hard‐pressed to tell which music is improvised and which is notated. Controlled Improvisation Number 1 is for electric guitar and drumset and was composed for Gene Pritsker. Controlled Improvisation Number 2 is for amplified or electric violin and drumset and was composed for Lynn Bechtold. Controlled Improvisation Number 3 is for accordion and drum set and was composed for William Schimmel. ‐ Peter Jarvis Phonemena: Milton Babbitt Milton Babbitt contributed the following program note for a concert at the Juilliard School celebrating his 85th birthday on May 10, 2001: Phonemena was composed for voice and piano in 1969. The voice part was retained intact, and the “accompaniment” only slightly modified but timbrally “clarified” in the voice and synthesizer version of 1975. In the first version, by virtue of the medium, the voice is focal and central, but in the second version the voice is a component of the total timbral ensemble, to which it contributes its own “ensemble” , composed of timbral lines characterized by phonemic compounds, various concatenations of 12 vowel formants, and 24 consonant envelopes, which serve to delineate linear constituents of the polyphonic total. ‐ Milton Babbitt May Rain: Lou Harrison May Rain was written for my friend William Weaver to sing. The beautiful poem is one from a sequence titled From Alba Hill by the wonderful Elsa Gidlow. It first appeared in the very early thirties and currently is printed in her Sapphic Songs Seventeen to Seventy (Diana Press, 1976). The music was printed in the first issue of Peter Garland's Soundings. ‐ Lou Harrison Ostinato Mezzo Forte: Peter Jarvis Ostinato Pianissimo by Henry Cowell, composed in 1934, is one of my most beloved pieces of music. It is a classic in the percussion repertoire and is one of the earlier pieces composed for the genre. My Ostinato Mezzo Forte was completed on June 18, 2016 and is dedicated to Henry Cowell. However, it was composed specifically for Sean Dello Monaco and the William Paterson University Percussion Ensemble. In my piece, the ensemble of seven players is made up of six players each performing an individual ostinato, in different meters, while a drummer improvises a solo over the collective “ostinato.” The duration of the piece is determined by the performers, but should never be less than 3 minutes long. When the time feels appropriate, one of the ensemble members cues the rest of the ensemble to proceed to a predetermined ending. ‐ Peter Jarvis Biographical Information William Paterson University New Music Series: The William Paterson University New Music Series is now in its 40th season. Directed by Peter Jarvis, the series presents 8 – 10 concerts a year consisting of a wire‐range of musical genres, 15‐20 premieres a season and includes many guest composers and distinguished guest performers. Over the past few seasons guests have included Robert Dick, Davis Taylor, Taka Kigawa, John Clark, Kevin Norton, Michiyo Suzuki, Steve Rush, Franz Hackl, Gene Pritsker, Composers Concordance and many others. Noted for innovative and high‐quality performances, the New Music Connoisseur cited “The presentation of the Rzewski composition (Coming Together) was as grand and exciting as a Mahler symphony. The audience was left breathless by the histrionics, the virtuosity, the interpretation, the rigorous baton of maestro (Peter) Jarvis, and the dedication of the performers to bring about this epic twentieth‐century composition.” – Helmut Calabrese Velez / Jarvis Duo: The Velez / Jarvis Duo, formed in 2016, is a percussion duo, primarily made up of frames drums and drum set. After several collaborations on larger projects, we decided to form this duo. While exploring our mutual interest in improvisation, new pieces are being composed the ensemble. Milton Babbitt: Milton Babbitt, who died two years shy of his 95th birthday, was a towering and unique figure in music. Musicians as different as Gunther Schuller, Stephen Sondheim and James Levine have declared him one of the greatest composers of all time. Yet he was equally esteemed as a music theorist. As a composer, he will forever be heralded as a pioneer both in electronic music and in the techniques of twelve‐tone serialism. As a theorist, he was often thought of as perhaps the most profound musical thinker ever to have lived. Best known is his careful formulation, explication and wide extension of Schoenberg’s twelve‐tone methodology; but he also was the first to think about musical coherence and structuring in general at unprecedentedly deep levels. So as he pointed the way for composers of electronic and twelve‐tone music, he also almost singlehandedly was responsible for the emergence of music theory ‐ really a branch of philosophical inquiry ‐ as an academic discipline in the United States. What always astounded his countless colleagues and students is that this deep intellection always existed side‐by‐side with his phenomenally wide knowledge of subjects that were his cherished hobbies, which included baseball, jazz, American popular music and beer. He was deeply knowledgeable in all the arts and sciences (he did classified work in mathematics during the Second World War).
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