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Home , Boston Musica Viva, Gunther Schuller

Acknowledgments Publishers: The Ibis Camerata would like to express its deepest gratitude to all Malcolm Peyton: Mobart Music participants of this project. Many thanks to all the composers who Publications, Hillsdale, NY worked closely with the performers during the rehearsals and : Associated recording sessions. Special thanks to Mr. Gunther Schuller, who Music Publishers, Inc. produced and edited his work for this recording, and also wrote the John Heiss: Boosey & Hawkes introductory notes. Many thanks to the New England Conservatory for their help and generosity in making Jordan Hall available for this Pozzi Escot: Publication Contact recording. Special thanks to Jordan Hall management, Brian Yankee, International, Cambridge, MA Jonathan Wulp, and Lisa Nigris for their efforts in scheduling the : Mohammed recording sessions and obtaining permission to include the archive Fairouz Music Editions Ibis Camerata recording, as well as to Ellen Pfeifer, Public Relations Manager who Kati Agócs: Agócs Editions supplied the photos of Jordan Hall and the composers. A special Producers: thanks to the Callithumpian Consort and their Artistic Director Gunther Schuller and Stephen Drury for letting us use the live archive recording of Pozzi Biljana Milovanovic Escot’s Clarinet Concerto. Many thanks to recording engineers Patrick Keating, Cameron Willey, and Corey Schreppel, and the piano Engineers: technician Mark Whitlock for their contribution to this recording. Patrick Keating, Cameron Willey, Diary Corey Schreppel —Ibis Camerata Malcolm Peyton | Gunther Schuller Editing: Patrick Keating John Heiss | Pozzi Escot Cover Photo: Mohammed Fairouz | Kati Agócs Jordan Hall, Courtesy of New England Conservatory. Recorded in Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory

WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1176 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2010 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Malcolm Peyton has directed, conducted, and concertized in many new music concerts in Boston and New York, including most recently The Composers Series in NEC’s Jordan Hall. He is also developing new teaching concepts for understanding modern tonal practice. He has received a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and awards from the NEA, Norlin Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His music has been performed in Europe and the U.S. and is published by Boelke Bomart/Mobart and the Association for the Promotion of New Music. Well-known and celebrated compositions include Apostrophe for chorus, soloists, and orchestra; Fantasies Concertantes for orchestra; String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2; five song cycles including Four Songs from Shakespeare, Songs from Walt Whitman, and Sonnets from John Donne. Malcolm Peyton received his B.A., and M.F.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University. He studied composition with Roger Sessions and Edward Cone and piano with Edward Steuermann. He received a Fulbright Award studying in Germany with Wolfgang Fortner; a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Award; a Margaret Crofts Scholarship studying two summers at the Music Center with and Irving Fine; and citations and awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His music has been recorded on CRI and Centaur. Peyton is a former visiting lecturer at Princeton and Boston Universities. The New England Conservatory has had a long and proud history of supporting the new music of the last hundred years or so. This goes back all the way to the time of George W. Chadwick, Cello Piece the New England Conservatory’s President for thirty-one years (1900-1931), at the time My Cello Piece was composed in 1972 for the cellist Ronald one of America’s most distinguished composers. This nurturing of new music has manifested Clearfield. The piece is a series of variations based on an opening statement which throughout the itself over the years not only by the teaching and creating of music by the Conservatory’s faculty, piece become more and more fantastic and exuberant, giving the impression of an improvisation and but also, at various periods, by producing and/or supporting recordings of contemporary ending with reference to the beginning. In 1986, Andres Diaz played it in the Naumburg International music. This CD represents one of the latest such offerings, presenting works by six of NEC’s Cello Competition, in which he won first prize. Cello Piece has enjoyed numerous fine performances composer family, four faculty and one president. by fine cellists but this recording with Rafael Popper-Keizer is truly outstanding. —Malcolm Peyton —Gunther Schuller The composer Gunther Schuller is, famously, a man of many Many of Schuller’s other purely orchestral works draw explicitly on visual influences while invoking the musical pursuits. He began his professional life as a horn Impressionist and late Romantic tone poems of Debussy and Schoenberg. These include An Arc player in both the and classical worlds, working as Ascending (1996), which was inspired by photographs by Alice Weston. readily with and Gil Evans as with Toscanini; Only one of Schuller’s large orchestral pieces takes the generic title of “symphony”: his colorful he was principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony from Symphony (1965), written for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and premiered that year. Written for the age sixteen and later of the Orchestra Louisville Orchestra and winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Of Reminiscences and Reflections until 1959. is Schuller’s large-scale memorial to his wife of 49 years, Marjorie Black. One of his first works In the 1950s he began a conducting career focusing largely performed by a major orchestra was his Symphony for Brass and Percussion, played in 1949 by on contemporary music, and thereafter conducted most of Mitropoulos and the . the major orchestras of the world in a wide range of works, including his own. He was central in As in his concertos, Schuller’s chamber music is for a range of both traditional and non-traditional precipitating a new stylistic marriage between progressive factions of jazz and classical, coining the forces, from the four string quartets, brass and woodwind quintets, to works for solo instrument or term “” and collaborating in the development of the style with , the Modem voice with piano and mixed-ensemble pieces. These works appear frequently on the programs of local Jazz Quartet, and others. and internationally known ensembles throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. His String Quartet No. 3 An educator of extraordinary influence, he has been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music (1986) is prominent in the repertoire of, and has been recorded by, the Emerson String Quartet, and and Yale University; he was, for many years, head of contemporary music activities (succeeding the Juilliard Quartet has championed his String Quartet No. 4 (2002). Aaron Copland) as well as a director of the , and served as President of the Not to be overlooked are Schuller’s original jazz compositions such as Teardrop and Jumpin’ in the New England Conservatory. He has published several books and recently embarked on the writing of Future, works that epitomize the composer’s Third Stream approach combining the total-chromatic his memoirs. language of Schoenberg and the structural sophistication of the contemporary classical composer Composition has had a continual central presence in Schuller’s musical life: he has written more than with the ensemble fluidity and swing of jazz. 180 works dating back to the beginning of his career when, at age nineteen, he was soloist in his own Schuller has been the recipient of many awards, including the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for his composition Horn Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Eugene Goosens. His works range written for the Louisville Orchestra Of Reminiscences and Reflections, the MacArthur Foundation from solo works to concertos, symphonies, and opera, and many fall outside of any genre (for which “genius” award (1991), the William Schuman Award (1988), given by Columbia University for reason there can be no such thing as a brief and comprehensive overview of his output). “Lifetime Achievement in American Music Composition,” and ten honorary degrees. He received the Gunther Schuller’s orchestral works include some of the classics of the modern repertoire written for Ditson Conductor’s Award in 1970. In 1993, Down Beat magazine honored him with a Lifetime the major orchestras of the world. Prominent among these are several masterful examples in the Achievement Award for his contribution to jazz. “Concerto for Orchestra” genre, though not all of them take that title. Most recently, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and James Levine premiered Where the Word Ends in February 2009. John Heiss is an active composer, conductor, flutist, and teacher. His works have been performed worldwide, receiv- ing premieres by , , , the Da Capo Chamber Players, Aeolian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, and Alea III. He has received awards and commissions from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, ASCAP, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His principal publishers are Boosey & Piano Trio Hawkes, E.C. Schirmer, and Elkus & Son. My Piano Trio was composed in 1984 on commission from the Macalester Trio, at the time in residence at Macalester College, just north of St. Paul, Minnesota. Heiss has been principal flute of Boston Musica Viva and has performed with many local ensembles, Knowing of my keen interest and various long involvements in jazz, they requested that I write one including the BSO. His articles on contemporary music have appeared in Winds Quarterly, Perspectives “jazzy” movement. That became the Trio’s third (final) movement. It is a very modern jazz, of the kind of New Music, and The Instrumentalist. Along with Juilliard faculty Joel Sachs, Heiss has designed and that came into being in the 1960s and ’70s, when atonality — or, if you wish, full chromaticism — written a book/CD-Rom primer for Blue Marble Music entitled Classical Explorer. also became one of the possible languages of jazz. I would have loved to have had a bass in this Trio, but I managed to represent that instrument in some nice “walking” bass lines in the piano. Starting in the 1970s, Heiss has directed many NEC festivals dedicated to composers or themes, and has spearheaded visits to NEC by many composers, including Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Berio, Carter, The other two movements are representative of my many subtle ‘inside’ tributes over the years to Messiaen, Schuller, and Tippett. At Commencement 1998, John Heiss received NEC’s Louis and major composers whose music I have loved, admired, and learned from; Brahms in the case of the Adrienne Krasner Teaching Excellence Award. first movement, Bach in the second. In the former I allude to Brahms’s love of — indeed obsession with — a) combining triplet and duplet rhythms, with polyrhythmic structures of all kinds, and b) his John Heiss has a B.A. in mathematics from Lehigh University and a M.F.A., music from Princeton delight in displacing melodies and themes into the “wrong” part of the measure, the meter. In those University. He studied composition with Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Earl Kim, , and two respects Brahms was a very modern, one might say, twentieth century composer. Darius Milhaud and flute with Arthur Lora, James Hosmer, and Albert Tipton. His recordings appear on TelArc, Nonesuch, CRI, Golden Crest, Arista, Turnabout, Video Artists International, Boston Records, In the second movement I tried to emulate Bach’s amazing ability to spin long lines, seemingly end- and AFKA. He is a former faculty member of Columbia University, Barnard College, MIT, and NEC lessly, accompanied by simple yet expressively harmonically rich harmonic progressions, which in Institute at Tanglewood. In addition to his work in multidisciplinary role in NEC College studies, John composite give a feeling of sublime serenity. Whether I and the performers have achieved something Heiss teaches flute to NEC Preparatory and Continuing Education students. like that is probably in the ears of the beholder. The collective cadenza (though written out) at the end of the movement gives all three performers a brief opportunity to shine soloistically. I can only add that it was a great pleasure working with and coaching these three fine musicians in the preparation of this Trio No. 1. —Gunther Schuller Episode I This short but impassioned work, once dubbed “a cadenza in search words are obviously rooted in genuine musicality and join in a really moving work, Lamentus.” of a concerto,” was composed for the distinguished violinist Daniel Stepner. After a bravura opening, (Suddeutscher Zeitung) “In the first performance of Cristhos, Escot exploited brilliantly unfamiliar a series of changing moods lead to a climactic frenzy on one note, only to subside into a pensive sounds.” (The New York Times) “Interra pulses with the beauty and excitement of mathematics.” (The conclusion – more question than answer. There are three later Episodes (for double-bass, viola, and Philadelphia Inquirer) “Escot’s Symphony V is a fascinating study in textural contrast and interplay.” flute, respectively) which further develop the explorations begun in this piece. (Washington Post) “Escot’s Mirabilis II is an impressive piece.” (The London Wire) “Escot is a composer, theorist, author, and professor. Added to these disciplines is her passion for philosophy, physics, and It has been a distinct pleasure and privilege to work closely with violinist Dmitri Pogorelov and pianist mathematics. She captures the Renaissance spirit in devotion to her work. She manufactures from her Biljana Milovanovic in the preparation of this recording! imagination sounds rooted in the tradition of Mozart, disciplined in Da Vinci, and vitalized by the moderns. —John Heiss Escot is a genius.” (The Christian Science Monitor) Escot is recognized as the principal exponent of the relationship between music and mathematics; and is author of numerous published articles developing and discussing this aspect and other theoretical/interdisciplinary issues. Her most recent book, The Four Short Pieces Four Short Pieces were written out of love for Poetics of Simple Mathematics in Music has received prominent reviews. Her awards are numerous and Schoenberg’s Op. 19, Six Short Pieces, but they go to very different places. The younger, more American her works are recorded by Delos, Spectrum, Centaur, Neuma, Leo, and Music & Arts. composer hears differently. Even jazz chords find their way into my piece. The movements could be entitled: Little Fantasy, Ostinato Study, Waltz and Chorale. Clarinet Concerto The Clarinet Concerto was especially composed —John Heiss for Michael Norsworthy. It is dedicated to the memory of French scientist, Marius Emm. Pozzi-Escot de Meslon (1880-1963). Of Escot’s first work of this style, the Piano Concerto (1982), which received its world premiere at the International Nice Festival (France), Jean-Etienne Marie of Musiques Actuelle Pozzi Escot is the co-author (with composer ) of the acclaimed books Sonic Design: Nice wrote that “If one were to characterize American composer Escot’s work in reference to composers The Nature of Sound and Music, and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal SONUS founded in of the immediate past, of Partch, Escot has retained a world view of the sound phenomena and of Ives, 1980 and reviewed recently as the best music journal published in the USA. Escot is President of the a certain ‘Concord’ spirit as if living in Boston were to determine an impregnation of the transcendental International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. A graduate charm, for the Concerto perfectly fits in the vision of Ives, the discoverer.” of the Juilliard School and Hamburg Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik, she is currently Professor of Graduate Theory and Composition at the New England Conservatory. A much sought after lecturer in This recording was the World Premiere performance of the Clarinet Concerto by “The Callithumpian the interdisciplinary studies of music, Escot has most recently been invited by Columbia, Princeton, Consort” with Michael Norsworthy (clarinet solo), Natalie Pao (flute), Elizabeth England (oboe), Harvard, Berkeley, Universities of Chicago, Illinois, London, Edinburg, Nice, Eichtatt, Ausburg, Helsinki, Jennifer Ashe (soprano), Alexis Sykes (violin), Benjamin Schwartz (cello), Evan Halloin (contrabass) Estonia, Hamburg, Leuven, Darmstadt, SIdAM, ICRAM, Beijing, Shanhai, Hanyang, Yonsei, Kunitachi, and conducted by Eric Hewitt. Hiroshima, among many throughout the world. The foremost critic Virgil Thomson regarded her as one —Pozzi Escot of the five remarkable women composers of the 20th century. Critics around the world have praised her works: “A striking appearance was made by Escot, the instrumental mosaics, the strange syllables and Bonsai Journal The music of Mohammed Fairouz straddles multiple worlds from the Bonsai Journal, commissioned by soprano Emily Spear Sanskrit invocations of the Bagavad Gita, to the Latin Mass and Arabic and based upon a collection of Haibun by acclaimed poet Judson Evans, received its world premiere music, minimalism, indie rock, romantic tonality, jazz, thorny modernism, at New York’s Carnegie hall in 2007. Soon thereafter, the work received its Boston premiere on the musical theater, the avant-garde, and other idioms. His early musical stage of the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. The poems of Bonsai Journal were composed training was in composition and piano with teachers at the Royal during a period when Evans was nursing his partner’s large collection of bonsai trees and decided to Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Fairouz’s record his impressions of the trees. The result is ten highly charged imagistic haibun whose titles substantial body of work in every genre including opera, song cycles, (Fanfare, Nocturne, etc.) are the invention of the composer rather than that of the poet. symphonic and choral works, piano music and electronic music in addition to chamber music, has been extensively performed throughout the United The present recording is the premiere recording of this work by Rachele Schmegie (who sang its States, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Among the performers of premiere) and Biljana Milovanovic, who plays with surreal virtuosity. The cycle is the subject of multiple his work are the Borromeo String Quartet, the Mimesis Ensemble, the Ibis essays, among them Joan Pamies’ well publicized essay on prominent American compositions in the Camerata, the Second Instrumental Unit, Counter Induction, the New Spanish journal Sonograma and Judson Evans’ own Impressions from Bonsai Journal. It is also the England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble, Freisinger Chamber Orchestra, the conductors inspiration for a watercolor painting by Mu-Xuan Lin. Gunther Schuller, John Page, David Hoose, Malcolm Peyton, Yoichi Udagawa and others. Bonsai Journal is the third cycle (together with Four Haiku Poems and Panopticon) to form what students As a cultural ambassador, Fairouz is currently working with Musicians for Harmony to fulfill a and performers of the work have dubbed the Evans Trilogy. In his Impressions from Bonsai Journal, commission for a large chamber work promoting dialogue between Arabic and Jewish musical traditions the poet writes “I imagine that it is very rare, considering our possessiveness, for poets to feel that a and cultural trends. poetic work can achieve its ultimate fulfillment in a musical setting, but with Bonsai Journal I must give Fairouz credit for an interpretation both true and clairvoyant.” Among the awards that Fairouz has received for his work are the Tourjee alumni award, the Malcolm Morse Memorial Award, the NEC Honors Award, the New England Conservatory Contemporary —Mohammed Fairouz Ensemble Prize and awards from the Merit Funds of the New England and Boston Conservatories. In 2008, he was honored with a national citation from the embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington D.C. for outstanding achievement in artistry and scholarship. As an educator, Fairouz has been invited to lecture across the country at institutions such as Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, University of Western Michigan and Boston Conservatory’s Liberal Arts Department speaking on topics that range from post-colonial critical theory to Mahler’s Sixth Symphony to Al-Kindi and the Arab golden’s contribution to European music of the renaissance. www.mohammedfairouz.com Bonsai Journal

By Judson Evans (2007)

1 Each has a different way of waiting, 6 Lights out. The trees stay intricate and closed inside their force field. resists personification making you guess They don’t sleep, devising scenes of Caravaggian bondage. the address of each profile. 7 Green candle with multiple wicks the architect 2 In the dark, lilies like horns from an old Victrola building an island from candle wax The spool of waxed string left to stake them, the cylinder that locked must draw down ravens into a bell. to a copper trough with its crude, built-in stylus. But there’s no music. 8 Remove the arteries and veins When I lean back on the steps, the summer stars are clustered lay down capillaries in slow increments, until the heart is listless in its nest. around the silhouette of a maple. The hand turned Nile of its pulse is between your fingers, its clutch of roots The stars smell like a dust of cinnamon. another, darker hand. 3 This one the color of a storm that never gets closer the way we realize 9 They put a bundling board between them courting, sparking, stewing, Grannie when we fly through them cloud patterns seen from earth are incomprehensible and Grampy Pine. They bound themselves in Ace bandage and afgans, hot compresses, hourglass inversions. hot toddies, poultices and salve, a capsule containing coiled information from 4-H, Oddfellows, 4 The birds land like dinosaurs in their branches. almanacs and schedules of model trains. They hold to a different measure. As a child climbing a tree 10 As if an elaborate top were spun that slowing, didn’t topple out of phase, but kept composure, was not a form of play. It was work and mystery and prayer. You first learned the dispossession, unearthing retrograde spin of some odd moon in the saddle of other gravity, until its drone tuned disclaimers of the branches. Unaccomodated by the way your weight was into a backward duration. not assumed nor your perception. I can see its castle now, its moat You were discommoded. A rude reorganization of the limbs. Of motionlessness from here, its torque of sap and sawdust, and the needles 5 With this one I feel the embarrassment of greetings, difficult gestures in their files, the library of needles. in a foreign tongue. The same non-recognition. Doubled. A failure of face time. Kati Agócs was born in Windsor, Canada, of Hungarian and American Babbitt, Robert Beaser, and George Tsontakis; she also worked with Zoltán Jeney during her Fulbright background, and is on the composition faculty of the New England year in Budapest, and with and Michael Gandolfi at Tanglewood. She has studied voice Conservatory of Music. A 2008 citation from the American Academy of Arts with Adele Addison and Adrienne Cengery. Kati Agócs holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters and Letters praises the “soulful directness” of her music, its “naturalness degrees from The Juilliard School. She is also an alumna of the Aspen Music School, Tanglewood of dissonance,” and its “melody, drama, and clear design.” The Boston Globe Music Festival, Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific (one of the United World Colleges), and Sarah has described it as “music of fluidity and austere beauty,” while The New Lawrence College, all of which she attended on full scholarship. York Times has characterized it as “filled with attractive ideas,” and has described her vocal music as possessing “an almost 19th-century natu- Supernatural Love ralness.” Recent commissions include new works for The National Youth Supernatural Love was commissioned in 2007 Orchestra of Canada (for their 50th Anniversary season), Pearls for the by Duo Concertante (violinist Nancy Dahn, a New England Conservatory alumna, and pianist Timothy American Composers Orchestra, Requiem Fragments for the CBC Radio Steeves) with support from the Canada Council for the Arts Commissioning of Canadian Compositions Orchestra (Vancouver), I and Thou for the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble program. It was premiered in Vernon, British Columbia in April 2008, and presented as part of national (New York), Immutable Dreams for the Da Capo Chamber Players (New York), Division of Heaven and tours of Canada and China by Duo Concertante that same year. The piece takes its title from a poem Earth for pianist Fredrik Ullén (Stockholm, Sweden), Supernatural Love for Duo Concertante, and new by Gjertrud Schnackenberg in which she continuously re-examines history from different spatial and works for Ensemble de Flûtes Alizé (Montréal),the Autumn Festival in Budapest, Hungary, The Albany temporal points of view. My piece is not based upon the poem — it takes off in its own direction — Symphony, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the Juilliard School (for its annual Irene Diamond Concert). but, in a related manner, the work progressively and dynamically re-hears the resonances of the heart. The duet was pivotal for me in envisioning an elemental, streamlined, and transformative treatment of Her works have been performed around the world by such artists as Eighth Blackbird, who featured relatively sparse musical material. The first movement introduces, in canon, an upper-neighbor figure the quintet Immutable Dreams on their national tour in 2008-2009, The Chamber Music Society of present in different guises throughout the entire work. Marked ‘open and warm,’ the second movement in New York (Immutable Dreams), saxophonist Timothy McAllister ( the solo aria for alto takes the form of a recitative and aria that evoke a sense of gratitude in cantabile writing for the violin. saxophone As Biddeth Thy Tongue, showcased across the U.S and at the Lontano Festival of American Building to an area of purging, the opening figure re-emerges in monolithic unison sequences. Chromatic Music in London, U.K), and harpist Bridget Kibbey, whose debut CD ‘Love is Come Again,’ featuring gestures of grief from the first movement’s piano part are picked up and amplified by the violin against a the premiere recording of Kati Agócs’s solo harp piece Every Lover is a Warrior, was featured by Time foil of precipitously ascending piano lines. The third movement, marked ‘with a spirit of emancipation,’ Out New York as one of its Top Ten Recordings of 2007. Awards include a Meet the Composer ‘Music is a perpetual-motion refrain. The upper-neighbor idea takes on a life of its own, returning obsessively Alive: New Partnerships’ residency, a 2008 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts until the surface splits open to reveal an icy transmutation of the same idea — ‘empty sound,’ or loss and Letters, an ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center, grants from the giving way to emptiness. My first collaboration with the wonderful musicians of Ibis Camerata took Canada Council for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship to the Liszt Academy in Budapest, a Jacob Javits place in the autumn of 2008, with a performance of Supernatural Love by Dimitri Pogorelov and Biljana Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, a New York Foundation for the Arts Composition Milovanovic on the New England Conservatory Faculty Recital Series. That performance led to the making fellowship, a Jerome Foundation commission, Presser Foundation Award, and honors from ASCAP in of this recording. We had the opportunity to work closely during the preparations and actual recording. their Young Composer Awards. Kati Agócs has written on recent American and Hungarian music for Tempo and The Musical Times. Her principal composition teachers are Milton —Kati Agócs Ibis Camerata The Ibis Camerata brings together four internationally They have performed at such world renowned festivals as the Aspen Music Festival, the Hampton- acclaimed musicians of the new generation. Coming from different corners of the world, each one of Sydney Music Festival and the White Nights Music Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. They have them possesses a distinct remarkable musical personality. previously released two albums on the Albany Records label titled “Glisten” and “Sculpting Clouds.” Their upcoming new recording will feature the music of the Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Yehudi Wyner. Formed under the auspices of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2001, they have gar- The recording will include a performance by Mr. Wyner with special guest artist Richard Stoltzman. nered much attention with audiences and critics in their new home base of Boston and Miami, Florida (their original home) as well as around the world. For more information visit www.ibiscamerata.com. Their unique ensemble enables them to command a much more varied repertoire than the traditional piano trio, allowing them to perform rarely heard classical Biljana Milovanovic began her performance career at the age of 15 under masterpieces, works by contemporary composers and the sponsorship of the Concert Management Association “Jeunesses non-conventional repertoire such as tango and jazz. Musicales” while still a student at the School for Gifted Children in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds four First Prizes at Serbian and Yugoslavian The result is their ability to offer audiences an original National Competitions, and was admitted to the School of Music at the and unique listening experience. The group performs in University of Belgrade at the age of 16. She has performed both as a a number of configurations: several combinations of soloist and chamber musician in Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, duos, trios with either clarinet or violin as well as full Estonia, Ukraine, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and the quartet. The Ibis Camerata’s innovative vision takes United States. Ms. Milovanovic continued her education at the world them well beyond the boundaries of classical music. renowned Conservatory “Rimsky-Korsakov” in St-Petersburg, Russia, where Avid supporters of new music, the Ibis Camerata have she received her Bachelor and Master Degrees. She was awarded full performed and recorded works by Yehudi Wyner, scholarship and her professors include L. Vakhina (piano) and G. Serova Gunther Schuller, Lansing McLoskey, Kati Agócs, Eric and A. Zohova (chamber music). After completing her studies in Russia, she moved to Toronto, where Ewazen, and John Heiss to only name a few. she worked with Andre Laplante, , Marc Durand, John Perry and Jean Saulnier at the Glenn Gould Professional School of the Royal Conservatory of Music. She has had the opportunity to perform They have been recognized as one of North America’s Master Classes with Steven Kovachevich, Anton Kuerti, Joseph Kalichstein, Jamie Laredo, Sharon premier ensembles by some of the world’s top chamber Robinson, Ida Handel, Jean Paul Sevilla, and Arnold Steinhardt (of the Guarneri Quartet). She also musicians including the Paris Trio, the Guarneri holds a DMA in Chamber Music Performance from the University of Miami Frost School of Music. Quartet and the Klichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The Ibis Camerata has given critically acclaimed perfor- Ms. Milovanovic has performed in several international festivals, such as the “White Nights” Festival in mances in many cities in the United States, Canada, St. Petersburg, Russia, the Orford International Music Festival in Canada, Festival Miami and Mainly Mozart, Serbia, Italy, Switzerland and Russia. Florida and the Belgrade International Harpsichord Festival in Serbia. Her performances can be heard on many radio stations in the United States and Canada, as well as on the TV and radio in Europe. Parallel to her performing career as a pianist, Ms. Milovanovic is also a harpsichordist. Together with A recent review in the Palm Beach Daily News described Dmitri as “…a mature, technically proficient her mentor Frank Cooper (former performing partner of the renowned harpsichordist Igor Kipnis), she soloist who performs the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the skill and panache of a player twice his played Bach’s complete Double and Triple Concerti and appeared with the Miami Bach Society, years…(he) brought the audience to its feet after the first movement …Pogorelov’s performance Bergonzi String Quartet and St. George Chamber Players. In 2002, she won the Duane Wilder Award demanded recognition even before it was over.” for excellence in harpsichord performance. Recently, she had the honor of recording a work by the Dmitri Pogorelov plays a 1714 Vincenzo Ruggieri violin, on loan to him courtesy of long time mentor Pulitzer Prize Winner Yehudi Wyner titled Cadenza originally written for Ralph Kirkpatrick. The piece and friend Archimandrite Zinovy of Kursk. will appear as part of her latest recording project to be released on Albany Records. Ms. Milovanovic is the founding member of the chamber ensemble Ibis Camerata. Her interests in contemporary music Hailed by the major Boston and New York press as “imaginative and led her to collaborate with many composers, notably Yehudi Wyner, Gunther Schuller, Malcolm Peyton, eloquent;” praised for his “dazzling dispatch of every bravura challenge” John Heiss, Lansing McLoskey, Pozzi Escot, Kati Agócs and Kareem Roustom. She has recorded and and his “melodic phrasing of melting tenderness,” cellist Rafael Popper- produced the critically acclaimed recordings titled “Glisten” and “Sculpting Clouds,” released on Keizer maintains an active and diverse career as chamber musician, Albany Records in 2006 and 2007 respectively. soloist, and orchestral section leader. Mr. Popper-Keizer has appeared nationwide in various capacities, including performances in the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in Massachusetts, Hailed as the “future violin superstar” by the Flint Journal, Dmitri John Harbison’s Token Creek Festival in Wisconsin, and the Monadnock Pogorelov started playing the violin at the age of five, gave his first Chamber Music Festival in New Hampshire. In Boston, Mr. Popper-Keizer solo recital three years later, and first soloed with an orchestra at the has enjoyed guest affiliations with the Fromm Players at Harvard, Winsor age of nine. After moving to the United States seven years ago Dmitri Chamber Players, Boston Musica Viva, and the Walden Chamber Players, studied with world-renowned violinists Ilya Kaler, Elmar Oliveira, and as well as long-term relationships with Boston’s Emmanuel Music and Sergiu Schwartz. Firebird New Music Ensemble. Mr. Popper-Keizer has concertized with many of New England’s most Dmitri has appeared in solo recitals, and as a soloist with orchestras esteemed chamber musicians, including members of the Borromeo and Muir String Quartets, the Museum in the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, and Russia, where of Fine Arts Trio, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra; as well as recent appearances with the Boston he performed in the most prestigious concert halls of Moscow and Trio, violinist Curtis Macomber, and flautist Eugenia Zuckerman. Mr. Popper-Keizer has toured extensively St. Petersburg. with the CORE Ensemble, a nationally acclaimed percussion trio with over twenty commissions to its name, through which he was invited to appear as both soloist and chamber musician in the contem- In addition to his solo and chamber music activities Dmitri has porary music festival “Contrasts” in Lviv, Ukraine. In 1998 and 1999, Mr. Popper-Keizer was invited to also worked under Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Sir Mark Elder, the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he acted as Yo-Yo Ma’s understudy for Richard Strauss’ Don Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, as leader of the Chicago Quixote under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. Symphony’s Civic Orchestra. Mr. Popper-Keizer has been featured as a soloist throughout the United States, including recitals in Mr. Norsworthy is one of the most celebrated champions of the modern repertoire and has given New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall; the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; and as a guest premieres of more than 100 works in collaboration with composers Milton Babbitt, Harrison Birtwistle, artist on the faculty concert series at Grinnell College. Recent engagements include the Saint-Saëns , Chris Dench, Pozzi Escot, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, , Hans Werner Concerto in A minor, with the Boston Philharmonic; the Beethoven Triple Concerto, with the Indian Hill Henze, Magnus Lindberg, and Marc Anthony Turnage, among many others. As soloist, Symphony; and the Dvorak Concerto, with the University of Santa Cruz Orchestra. Mr. Popper-Keizer is Michael Norsworthy has performed an extensive repertoire of concerti, ranging from Mozart to the principal cellist of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and co-principal of the New Hampshire Ferneyhough, with the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Kalistos Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Contemporary Symphony, and has made principal appearances with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Pottstown Symphony, Soria Chamber Players, Southern Illinois Monadnock Festival Orchestra, among others. Labels for which he has recorded include Albany, Arsis, Symphony and Symphony Pro Musica. He has also collaborated with Tony Arnold, Patrick Demenga, Helicon, Musical Heritage Society, Intrada, and Zimbel. Stephen Drury, Aleck Karis, John Zorn, the Borromeo String Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and many players from major orchestras in Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Conductors he has worked with include Boulez, DePriest, Knussen, Levine, Milarsky, Muti, An acclaimed soloist and widely sought-after chamber music collaborator, Robertson, Ozawa, Tilson Thomas and many others. clarinetist Michael Norsworthy has emerged as one of the most gifted artists Mr. Norsworthy is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, among them: The Award, of his generation. Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award and Southern Illinois University’s Chancellor’s Research and Michael Norsworthy’s performances have taken him to distinguished Creativity Award, grants from the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, St. Louis Artist Presentation concert venues throughout the world, including Vienna’s Musikverein, Society and St. Botolph Club Foundation, as well as a fellowship from the Aspen Music Festival. He holds Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Philharmonie Hall, New York City’s Carnegie Hall, advanced degrees from New England Conservatory and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Merkin Hall, Metropolitan Opera and Miller Theatre, Boston’s Jordan and has attended Michigan State University. His teachers included Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, Eric Mandat, Kalmen Symphony Halls, St. Louis’ Sheldon Concert Hall, Festival Casals de Puerto Opperman and Richard Stoltzman. He has previously served on the faculty of Columbia University and is Rico and the Aspen Music Festival. Recent seasons have included world currently artist in residence at Harvard University with the Harvard Group for New Music and Professor premieres of works written for him by Michael Finnissy, Chris Dench and of Clarinet at The Boston Conservatory. Pozzi Escot, domestic and international recital tours with pianists Marilyn Michael Norsworthy plays exclusively on Buffet Clarinets and Rico Reserve reeds. He is a performing Nonken and Tyson Deaton, radio appearances on Boston’s WGBH, multiple performances on the Composer artist for Buffet Crampon, the Parisian firm that is the world’s oldest and most distinguished clarinet Portraits Series at New York’s Miller Theatre, recordings for the Mode, Gasparo, Canteloupe, BMOP Sound, maker and Rico International, the world’s largest and most popular manufacturer of reeds. For more Albany, ECM, Nonesuch and Cauchemar labels and performances with leading contemporary music groups, information, please visit: www.michaelnorsworthy.com. including Klangforum Wien, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Manhattan Sinfonietta, Fromm Players at Harvard, Boston Musica Viva, Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble 21 and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Young coloratura soprano Rachele Schmiege is a highly sought-after The Callithumpian Consort is dedicated to the proposition that music is an experience. Founded by performer in the New England area. This “silvery, brilliant” soprano is equally pianist and conductor Stephen Drury, we are an ensemble producing concerts of contemporary music at home with new, avant-garde compositions as she is with legendary at the highest standard. The Consort consists of a senior band of long standing Thump soloists, but is operatic repertoire. In 2008, Ms Schmiege sang the world premiere of fundamentally flexible in size and makeup, enabling the group to tackle unusual repertoire in non- Mohammad Fairouz’s Bonsai Journal in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, with standard or larger chamber ensembles, or to take part in experimental projects. Our repertoire encom- Katie Reimer, piano. Later, she reprised this piece at the Miller Theater, passes a huge stylistic spectrum, from the classics of the last 50 years to works of the avant-garde New York University with the Mimesis Ensemble, accompanied by Biljana and experimental jazz and rock. Active commissioning and recording of new works is crucial to our mis- Milovanovic of the Ibis Camerata. In the past two years, she has per- sion. We have worked with composers John Cage, Lee Hyla, John Zorn, Michael Finnissy, Franco formed the Bonsai Journal in numerous concerts, aiding in the growth Donatoni, Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Helmut Lachenmann, John Luther Adams, Frederic Rzewski, and popularity of this ground breaking composition. Ever active in the Christian Wolff and many others. Recordings are available on Tzadik, New World and Mode records. For new music world, Rachele has also performed works by Kareem Roustom more information on the Callithumpian Consort, visit their website at www.callithumpian.org. For more and Eric Ewazen. information on Stephen Drury, visit www.stephendrury.com. Ms. Schmiege is an active and long-standing member of the Boston Opera Collaborative, a Boston based, non-profit arts organization. With the Boston Opera Collaborative, Rachele has performed Frasquita in Carmen, the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Voluptua in Barab’s Pizza con Funghi, Blanche de la Force in Dialogues of the Carmelites, conducted by world renowned coach and conductor Michael Strauss and directed by Metropolitan Opera Director Marc Astafan, and the role of the Goddess Diana in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide. Ms. Schmiege has performed the roles of Lola in Gallantry with the MetroWest Opera and Fiordiligi with Cape Cod Opera. Other operatic roles include First Witch and Spirit in Dido and Aeneas, Nella and La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi, Laetitia and Susannah. Ms. Schmiege completed her Master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music. A native of Michigan, Ms. Schmiege completed her Bachelors of Music at Western Michigan University. www.racheleschmiege.com