EASTMAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

COMPOSERS’ SINFONIETTA

Thursday, March 25, 2021 Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre (livestream) 7:30 PM PROGRAM At the Waters of Oblivion (2015/2021) Nicolas Chuaqui (b. 1990)

Austin Chanu, conductor

Machine Turn Quickly (2020-2021) Parker Callister (b. 1994)

Maurice Cohn, conductor

The program will be repeated.

PERSONNEL Nash Ryder, violin 1 Jason Hurlbut, violin 2 Megan Wike, viola Kyle Johnson, cello Jiayan Yang, double bass Xander Day, flute Meagan Prewitt, oboe Julianna Darby, clarinet Megan Neuman, bassoon Cristina Vieytez, horn Chad Rockwell, trumpet Will Hurtz, trombone Juan Alonso, tuba Nathan Cheung, piano Remy Thomas, percussion David Wang, percussion Emily Stone, harp

PROGRAM NOTES At the Waters of Oblivion Nicolas Chuaqui The River Lethe, one of the five rivers of the underworld, is the river of forgetting and of oblivion in Ancient Greek Mythology. The souls of the dead drank from the river, and once they had forgotten their past lives, they were ready to be reincarnated.

“The souls that throng the flood Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow'd: In Lethe's lake they long oblivion taste, Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.” —Virgil, Aeneid, trans. Dryden

Machine Turn Quickly Parker Callister Machine Turn Quickly is inspired by glitches, dystopia, machines, as well as mechanical failures. Throughout the work, multiple attempts are made at connecting the ensemble via aural mechanical processes. However, the complexity of the instrumental output becomes too overbearing to create a succinct network among the tiny moving parts. The piece takes its name from a painting by Francis Picabia of two stationary gears.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS Parker Callister is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Ithaca, NY and is currently based out of Rochester, NY. His music draws influence from rock, electronic, jazz and noise music while also operating in a contemporary music idiom. He has had his music performed by notable artists such as Erik Drescher, Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Lori Freedman as well as the Unheard//Of Ensemble, the Ithaca New Music Ensemble, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, the Ithaca Graduate Percussion Trio, the ETHEL Quartet and ASKO/Schoenberg. His primary mentors have included Michael Hersch, Evis Sammoutis, Jorge Grossmann and Du Yun and has received additional instruction in masterclasses and lessons from composers such as Chinary Ung, Georg Friedrich Haas, Augusta Read Thomas, among others. Parker has received commissions from the Baltimore Integrated Arts Society and the Music Educators of Lansing, NY. Having received his Bachelor’s in Music Composition from Ithaca College and his Master’s from the Peabody Institute, Parker is currently attending the Eastman School of Music to obtain his PhD in Music Composition where he studies with Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez.

Praised for its “sharp and precise imagery,” (The Utah Review) the music of Nicolas Chuaqui has been recognized for its interest and imagination. Most recently, he was a winner of the 2020 Ortus International New Music Competition, as well as one of four finalists for the 2020 ASCAP/ SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US) Student Commissioning Prize.

His acoustic music has been heard at many of the country's prominent showcases for young composers, such as June in Buffalo, and has been performed by such well-recognized ensembles as the Arditti Quartet and The Crossing. His music incorporating electronic media has been featured at several notable venues, such as the International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival (Florence, Italy). His vocal and operatic music has been awarded by various organizations, and his first opera, The Forest of Dreams, was premiered in a fully-staged production by New Voices Opera (Bloomington, Indiana) in 2016.

Chuaqui is currently a DMA Candidate at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught music theory and composition and organized new music concerts as a graduate assistant. He also holds degrees from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music and Dartmouth College.

UPCOMING EVENTS AT EASTMAN

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