Concert 32/2

Welcome We are delighted to welcome you to ODC Theater for Wind, the second concert of Earplay’s 32nd season. This season we honor the remarkable musical legacy of composer Toru Takemitsu, and tonight we have the unusual good fortune to present two exquisite Takemitsu pieces that include harp. You’ll also hear intriguing new music by Linda Bouchard and Heidi Jacob, both wonderful composers with strong ties to the Bay Area. Earplay has proudly sponsored the Earplay Donald Aird Composers Competition since 2001, honoring composer and former Earplay board member Donald Aird. The Aird Competition draws entries from a world- wide international field and tonight Earplay performs the West Coast premiere of Stephen Yip’s Insight II, the winner of the 2016 Aird Prize. We hope you will join us for a pre-concert conversation with composers Linda Bouchard, Heidi Jacob, and Stephen Yip. We also invite you to linger after the concert to chat with composers, Earplayers, and Earplay board members over refreshments and a cup of sake. Earplay is very grateful to the Japan Foundation of Los Angeles for their generous support of this concert. Thanks to them, to our other funders, and to you for your enthusiastic support, Earplay will continue to commission exciting new works and to present passionate performances of vibrant, bold new music. And spread the word: don’t miss Earplay’s next concert on May 15, 2017 at ODC Theater, and please don't forget to bring a friend! — Earplay Board of Directors Board of Directors Staff Terrie Baune, musician representative Lori Zook, executive director Bruce Bennett Terrie Baune, scheduler Mary Chun, conductor Renona Brown, accountant Richard Festinger David Ogilvy, sound recordist Larissa Koehler Ellen Ruth Rose, artistic coordinator May Luke, co-chair Stephen Ness, secretary/treasurer Advisory Board Ellen Ruth Rose Laura Rosenberg, co-chair Chen Yi Richard Felciano William Kraft Kent Nagano Wayne Peterson 2 Monday, March 20, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. ODC Theater Earplay Season 32: Air, Wind, Water Concert 2: Wind Earplayers Terrie Baune, violin Tod Brody, flutes Mary Chun, conductor Peter Josheff, clarinets Thalia Moore, cello Ellen Ruth Rose, viola Brenda Tom, piano Guest Artists Meredith Clark, harp Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano Pre-concert conversation at 6:45 PM: Bruce Christian Bennett, moderator with composers Linda Bouchard, Heidi Jacob, and Stephen Yip Please power down your cellphone before the performance (do not just silence it!). No photography, videography, or sound recording is permitted. Programs are subject to change without notice. Earplay’s season is made possible through generous funding from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, the Ross McKee Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and generous donors like you. 3 Program Heidi Jacob Metamorphosis I (2012) Thalia Moore Brenda Tom Toru Takemitsu Toward the Sea III (1989) I. The Night II. Moby-Dick III. Cape Cod Tod Brody Meredith Clark Stephen Yip Insight II (2015) 2016 Earplay Donald Aird Composers Competition winner; West Coast premiere Tod Brody Peter Josheff Terrie Baune Thalia Moore Keisuke Nakagoshi Mary Chun INTERMISSION Toru Takemitsu And then I knew ‘twas Wind (1992) Tod Brody Ellen Ruth Rose Meredith Clark Linda Bouchard Second Survival (2009, rev. 2016) Earplay Commission World premiere (of revised version) Tod Brody Peter Josheff Terrie Baune Ellen Ruth Rose Thalia Moore Brenda Tom Mary Chun 4 Program Notes Metamorphosis I (2012) by Heidi Jacob for cello and piano Metamorphosis I upends several premises, beginning with the cello's subservient role in the opening introduction. Pairing techniques from minimalism and, broadly speaking, serialism, the work juxtaposes these two contrary compositional impulses from the 20th and 21st century. The opening piano gradually introduces the 12-note row that appears again in double stops by the cello. The row is loosely used throughout the work, most prominently in the dissonant middle portion that uses repeated and evolving minimalist rhythmic and melodic cells. The row's original, retrograde and retrograde inversion forms are presented in a lyrical fashion to conclude the work over quasi-tonal, minimalist triadic textures. — H. J. ◆ The music of Heidi Jacob has been described by BBC Magazine as "compositions ... of complex mesmerizing beauty," by David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer as "a musical adventurer," and by Gramophone Magazine as music with " ... forthright expressiveness [that] exposes a multitude of stylistic associations." Composer, cellist, and conductor, she is a Professor of Music at Haverford College and a graduate of both the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, with a D.M.A. in composition from Temple University. She has performed as a cellist throughout the United States and Europe and has recorded as a cellist and conductor for Capstone Records, Albany Records and Navona records. The CD of her compositions, Beneath Winter Light, produced by Parma Records, was released in January 2015. Her composition untouched by morning and untouched by night is included on the CD InterseCtions, recorded in Cuba with Cuban musicians and released October 2016 on Ansonia Records. Her cycle of songs Beginning Again can be heard on L'Ensemble’s CD Poetry into Song. Ms. Jacob's solo and chamber music works have been performed at Tania León's 2014 Composers Now Festival, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Rutgers University installation Complex Weave: Women and Identity in Contemporary Art, Amphibian, New Music and Video HI Art Gallery, and The Stone in New York City, and by The Argento Ensemble, the Opus One: Berks Chamber Choir, Temple 5 University's Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Momenta String Quartet, and the Hildegard Chamber Players. Ms. Jacob's Winter Light for violin and string orChestra was performed in spring 2016 by I Solisti Veneti, conducted by Claudio Scimone. Her Many in One, for string orchestra work was commissioned by First Editions Chamber Orchestra and was premiered in spring 2016 in Philadelphia. A native Californian, Ms. Jacob grew up in Orinda, California. ◆ Toward the Sea III (1989) by Toru Takemitsu for alto flute and harp I. The Night II. Moby-Dick III. Cape Cod Toward the Sea was commissioned by Greenpeace for the Save the Whales campaign. It exists in three separate versions, each lasting around 11 minutes: the first (composed in 1981), for alto flute and guitar, the second (also 1981), for alto flute, harp and string orchestra, and the third (1989), for alto flute and harp without orchestra. The work is divided into three sections: The Night, Moby-Dick, and Cape Cod. The section titles reference Melville's novel Moby-DiCk. The composer wished to emphasize the spiritual dimension of the book, quoting the passage, "meditation and water are wedded together". He also said, "The music is a homage to the sea which creates all things and a sketch for the sea of tonality". Toward the Sea was written at a time when Takemitsu was increasingly returning to tonality after a period of experimental composition. Most of the work is written in free time, with no bar lines (except in the second version, to facilitate conducting). In each version, the flute has the primary melodic line, based in part on a motif spelling "sea" in German musical notation (Eb– E–A). This S-E-A motif appears in the work in various forms and reappears in several of Takemitsu's later works. — Wikipedia ◆ 6 Toru Takemitsu was born in Tokyo on October 8th, 1930. His musical language is born out of a synthesis of varied styles and influences ranging from traditional Japanese music to Western classical and avant-garde music. He came to international attention when Igor Stravinsky hailed his Requiem for Strings (1957) as a masterpiece. His success abroad was consolidated over the following decade with such scores as November Steps (1967), a commission from the New York Philharmonic that broke new ground by including indigenous Japanese instruments within a Western symphony orchestra. Takemitsu began composing as a teenager after serving as a conscript in the Japanese military at the end of World War II. Later in his life he recalled, "I began [writing] music attracted to music itself as one human being. Being in music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity." During the American post-war occupation of Japan, Takemitsu was employed by the U.S. Armed Forces, but then became ill. Hospitalized and bed-ridden, he took the opportunity to listen to as much Western music as he could on the U.S. Armed Forces Network. French music held a special attraction, especially the work of Debussy and Messiaen, whose influence can be detected right from his earliest scores. While deeply affected by his study of Western music, he simultaneously felt a need to distance himself from the traditional music of his native Japan. He explained much later that for him, Japanese traditional music "recalled the bitter memories of war." One might also hear the influence of Webern in Takemitsu's use of silence, and hints of Cage's musical philosophy, though his overall style is always uniquely his own. Takemitsu believed in music as a means of ordering or contextualizing everyday sound in order to make it meaningful or comprehensible. His philosophy of "sound as life" inspired the incorporation of natural sounds in his music, as well as his desire to both juxtapose and attempt to reconcile opposing elements, such as Orient and Occident, sound and silence, and tradition and innovation.

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