SFCMP in residence at Z Space 2016 Mar 15 & 17 works by David Lang Mar 16 & 18 works by Gérard Grisey and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri Mar 19 45th Anniversary Retrospective Celebration Contemporary Music Players Hrabba Altadottir, violin Bill Kalinkos, clarinet Jeff Anderle, clarinet Adam Luftman, trumpet Tod Brody, flute Loren Mach, percussion Kyle Bruckmann, oboe Roy Malan, violin Kate Campbell, piano Lawrence Regent, french horn Susan Freier, violin Sarah Rathke, oboe Chris Froh, percussion Nanci Severance, viola Hall Goff, trombone David Tanenbaum, guitar Karen Gottlieb, harp Peter Wahrhaftig, tuba Stephen Harrison, cello William Winant, percussion Graeme Jennings, violin Nick Woodbury, percussion Peter Josheff, clarinet Richard Worn, contrabass Special Preview: 2016-17 Season Our 46th Year will offer Bay Area at the Crossroads Series audiences the greatest and latest Join us in a comfortable atmosphere works of composers from around the to listen to iconic contemporary world with an emphasis on classical composers alongside top composers. We’ll bring you behind the emerging composers in the classical scenes to explore classical music that contemporary music scene is advancing and challenging musical space and sound, and you’ll hear new “Stravinsky Interpolations” works by talented national and local Fri, Feb 17, 2017 emerging composers. Herbst Theatre on Stage Series “Lou Harrison and Companions“ Join us in concert to hear the leading Fri and Sat Apr 21 – 22, 2017 national and international works of Venue TBA contemporary classical music SFCMP in the Community “In the Light of the Air” Sat, Oct 8, 2016 ’s “Unsilent Night” Herbst Theatre Dec 10, 2016 in the Laboratory Series Sound and Wine with SFCMP Join us in concert to hear leading Mar 25, 2017 works in the contemporary classical repertoire with unusual instrumentation SFCMP Education Series or stage arrangements. SFSearch: Emerging Composers “Emerging Voices” Competition and Reading Panel Fri, Jan 20, 2017 plus How Music is Made noontime San Francisco Conservatory of Music talks, and Master Classes with Steven Schick and SFCMP Players Message from the Artistic Director We have spent a season in space. Or at least in various dimensions and manifestations of musical space from the plaintive “Songscape,” with music by Lang and Grisey, to the sere “Xeriscape” with its provocative implications in the interrelationships between humans beings and their changing habitat. Our point of departure is that for music to remain relevant, it must be a tool for exploring new spaces for listening, thinking and living.

Now we arrive at twinned explorations of scales from large to small, and

bright to dark in “Oscuroscape” and Photo by Bill Dean “Starscape.” loud speakers and thereby listen to In “Starscape” we’ll return to the their rhythms. These pulsations, the extraordinary music of Gérard Grisey interlocking grooves of deep space, with his Le Noir de l’Étoile. The form the rhythmic bedrock of a piece conceit of the piece is that rhythm is a for six percussionists. Grisey creates foundational value in the universe. The this most expansive piece of the proof can be found in the metronomic percussion repertoire by mapping the impulses of pulsars that emanate from rhythmic signals from distant pulsars the farthest reaches of the universe. onto the fascinating earth-bound We can’t really hear Pulsars, but sonic terrain of six percussionists. we can use their regular bursts of The players surround the audience electromagnetic energy to activate with arsenals of wooden planks,

2 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season tuned drums, bags of marbles (to be the smallest elements of sound to dropped onto bass drums at critical very large musical ideas, and by doing junctures), along with rubbed, bowed, so to suffuse both with purpose and and brushed gongs. At various points integrity. in the work, recordings of the pulsars themselves appear, first as a poetic As we look outward towards distant reminder of the inspirational source of space, we also offer music by the pieces, and then later as musical Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri that material with and against which the looks inward toward the beauty of percussionists engage in polyrhythmic modest noises. Papalexandri-Alexandri commentary. has spent the past five years or so as a sound sculptress, creating fascinating As with his haunting Quatre Chants cross-fertilized structures that appeal pour franchir le seuil, which we simultaneously to the eyes and ears. presented in October, Le Noir de No. 45 Immense is a (ironically brief) l’Étoile was composed immediately precursor to those projects. Here a following Grisey’s tenure as professor solo percussionist is drawn inward to of composition at the University of the sonic qualities of everyday objects California in Berkeley. To what extent and small percussive noise-makers. these late, great pieces of his were Papalexandri-Alexandri is one of incubated at Berkeley is difficult the most original voices among an to judge. But the impact of his emerging generation of composers. compositional process on the music I find that after hearing the way her of the late 20th century cannot be music invigorates small, seemingly overstated. In brief, Grisey was able to unimportant sounds, that even a walk find an artesian source, in the form of a around the block seems full of sonic detailed analysis the spectral qualities vitality and purpose. of sound, for the creation of large- scale, emotionally important pieces. In a parallel program, “Oscuroscape” In short he found a way to connect explores the scale from dark to light

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 3 in the music of David Lang. His darker We’ll set the stage with Lang’s rests on a simple idea: a short melody warmth for two electric guitars. The in mid- to low strings repeats for sense of warmth is generated by a nearly an hour while an interlocking tight embrace of harmonies filtered ornamental part for violins seems to through guitar distortions we associate circle it. Over the course of the piece more often with 60’s rock than the music grows gradually a little recent contemporary concert music. darker; not a lot, just a little. A video For this we are grateful: in warmth, by Suzanne Bocanegra, the New as in all that we will present this York based visual artist, accompanies week, we are aiming for impact not to heighten the effect of darkening. artfulness; intimacy rather than cultural Taken together the music and visuals sophistication. celebrate a very introspective kind of ecstasy: not the kind of joy that makes Whether we will have succeeded is you want to pump your fist, or even up to you, of course. But as we put a the kind of existential joy that attends cap on our season of exploring new a moment of sudden wisdom. No, spaces, we invite you to share your at least for me, the ecstasy of darker thoughts with us. We are playing this is like the mini-celebration you feel music for you, our intrepid listeners, when a good friend winks knowingly and ultimately it is the space that at a private joke, or the intimate joy results from your listening that we care that comes from noticing the beauty most about. of something that everyone else has walked by. But, maybe that’s just me. Steven Schick You, as listeners, will have nearly an hour to explore the insides of your minds and determine what it means to get darker.

4 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season 45th Anniversary Celebration, Mar 19 6:00 - 8:00 pm at Z Space

Tickets Available Online at sfcmp.org

Welcome

It is a delight for us to host our 45th Anniversary Retrospective Celebration where we will celebrate the music, our dedicated friends, and honor our founders Charles Boone, Jean-Louis LeRoux and Marcella DeCray for their vision and dedication. The founding years ran from 1971 through 1988. Surrounding the room you will find memorabilia, archival footage and photographs from this time period. Thank you for coming and enjoy the music!

Program Concert Program George Crumb 6:00 pm Complimentary wine and (1962) beer, cocktails for purchase, small Five Pieces for Solo Piano Kate Campbell, piano plates, and a display of memorabilia ~10 minutes gathered from the founding years. John Cage 6:50 pm Welcome and Tribute by In A Landscape (1948) Steve Schick and Roy Malan Karen Gottlieb, harp ~8 minutes 7:05 pm Concert Lou Harrison Serenade (1952) 7:45 pm Closing and Drawing Karen Gottlieb, harp ~2 minutes Thank you to Paul Draper, Jerry Elkind, Susan Hartzell, Margot Golding, Don Blais, Steven Mark Applebaum Schick, Diane Ellsworth and Paul Asplund for Aphasia (2010) their in-kind contributions for the Steven Schick, vocalist 45th Anniversary Celebration ~9 minutes

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 5 Founders Charles Boone Marcella DeCray was a prominent (b. 1939) is a harpist and teacher with a devotion composer of to both the standard repertoire and classical music contemporary music. She spent 26 who lives in years as principal harpist for the San Francisco. San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. His works have Her devotion to new music found been performed an outlet with the San Francisco by the San Contemporary Music Players, which Francisco she co-founded in 1973. Ms. DeCray Symphony, was an important teacher, providing the Chicago leadership to generations of students Photo by Susanna Mälkki Symphony, at the San Francisco Conservatory of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Music, where she founded the harp other organizations. He has received department in 1964 and taught for 45 commissions from the National years. When she retired from the Ballet Endowment for the Arts and the Orchestra in 2006. San Francisco Symphony, and has been a composer-in-residence for Jean-Louis LeRoux was principal the German Academic Exchange oboist with the San Francisco Service (DAAD). His writings have Symphony for two decades; co- appeared in Leonardo, Arts and founder/director of the San Francisco Architecture, Sculpture Magazine, and Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) Threepenny Review. Mr. Boone was and of the Chamber Symphony of associate professor for many years San Francisco; conductor of the San at the San Francisco Art Institute. In Francisco Ballet Orchestra for 15 years; 1971 he founded BYOP Concerts, the prominent advocate for Messiaen, forerunner of today’s San Francisco Ernst Krenek, Carter, Babbitt, and Contemporary Music Players. many others; Mr. LeRoux held careers in France, Uruguay, Brazil, and Canada.

6 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season The French government named him the recipient of multiple Grammy Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Awards, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Lettres, France’s high cultural honor. Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Boys Chorus, California Symphony and the Skywalker Recording Symphony. Performers She has worked personally with many leading composers, including Elliott Kate Campbell Carter, , Lou Harrison, performs frequently Phillip Glass, John Williams, Gunther as a soloist and Schuller, & Witold Lutoslawski. chamber musician, and is at home with Steven Schick styles ranging from was the founding thorny modernism, to percussionist “sleek and spirited” of the Bang on minimalism, to indie classical. She a Can All-Stars co-founded the duo KATES, and the (1992-2002), “red contemporary ensemble REDSHIFT. fish blue fish,” She is also proud to be on the team of and the summer organizers for Omaha Under the Radar course on contemporary percussion Festival. She can be heard on New “Roots and Rhizomes.” Among his Amsterdam Records. acclaimed publications are a book, “The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Karen Gottlieb Different Dreams,” and numerous has performed, recordings including the complete toured and recorded percussion music of Iannis Xanakis and with such notable a DVD of the early percussion music of ensembles as the San Karlheinz Stockhausen. Francisco Symphony, with which she is For complete biographies, visit sfcmp.org

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 7 Amirkhanian, Yūji Takahashi, and George Rochberg. Daniel Kobialka played violin, Jerome Rosen clarinet, Jean-Louis LeRoux oboe, Marta Bracchi-LeRoux and Pat Lee piano, and Jerome Neff percussion. Jean-Louis LeRoux remembers: “We were impelled by a great love and deep conviction that music of all ages, especially the contemporary, Charles Boone, Marcella DeCray and Jean-Louis LeRoux deserves to be well performed to be appreciated. Northern California The Founding and Early Years composers were important to us as The San Francisco Contemporary much as the rest of the world. We Music Players is the oldest ensemble were to reflect in our programming in the West dedicated to the the latest meaningful trends, season performance, commissioning, and after season ... Our first five years recording of contemporary chamber were heavily influenced by the music. It had its origins in early 1971, thinking of Darius Milhaud and our when composer Charles Boone previous activities with the Mills organized a group of professional Performing Group. Nevertheless, musician friends to present a series of little by little, a personal quality of informal concerts which they called programming took shape, reflecting “Bring Your Own Pillow” since the the passing years.” audience had to sit on the floor. The Subsequent concerts were held at first three concerts took place within venues such as the Grapestake Gallery a single week of March, 1971, at the and at the College of Notre Dame. Hansen-Fuller Gallery. They included Other musicians who were involved in works by Charles Boone, Charles the earliest concerts include soprano

8 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season Miriam Abramowitsch, violist Nancy implicit in the early gallery venue, was Ellis, violinist Roy Malan, and clarinetist developed more fully, and the slogan Don O’Brien. Roy is still a faithful “Listen to Modern Art” came into use. members of the ensemble. Programs were sometimes selected to complement museum exhibitions, such Although the music and the composers as Berliner art 1961-1987 and Tokyo: may have been unfamiliar to the early Form and Spirit. They took place audiences, the concerts were highly sometimes in the Green Room and successful. sometimes in the galleries themselves. In the fall of 1974, Charles Boone, Marcella DeCray, and JeanLouis LeRoux incorporated the ensemble as The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization. The first concerts under that name were performed in the spring of 1975, and the first full season of six concerts began the following fall. The original three founders served as the Board of Directors until the spring of 1978. At that time, Jane Roos was asked to assemble an independent board of directors. The Grapestake Gallery in San Francisco hosted concerts until the spring of 1977, when the series was moved to the San francisco Museum While pillows were no longer required, of Modern Art. There, the relationship the tone of the series at the San between music and the visual arts, francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 9 remained informal. Audiences had music brought the Players national the opportunity to wander through recognition. He was supported by the Museum’s galleries before each Marcella DeCray, who served as concert, and at the intermission. General Director from 1974 to 1989, Composers were often present, and and who has been acclaimed as one available, along with the players, for of America ‘s great contemporary questions and discussions. Scores harpists. could be inspected by the curious. LeRoux brought deep insight not The LeRoux Era only to the performance of European Charles Boone directed the early and Latin American works, but to that “Bring Your Own Pillow” concerts, of local composers as well. During but in 1974, Jean-Louis LeRoux the 1978-79 season, he presented a was chosen as Music Director, and special program of works by Olivier he remained in that position until Messiaen, in celebration of the 1988. LeRoux graduated from the composer’s seventieth birthday, and Conservatoire Nationale de Paris. He in the following season, he conducted first came to San Francisco in 1960 two special events honoring the to play principal oboe with the San work of Darius Milhaud and Ernst Francisco Symphony, a position he Krenek, while in 1980-81 a concert held until 1980. At the same time, was devoted to the work of Conrad he served as music director of the Cummings, a young San Francisco Modesto Symphony Orchestra and composer. the Mills Performing Group. In 1975, The correlation of visual art with he became conductor of the San music was widely popular. Three well Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and he -attended concerts were given in founded and directed the Chamber conjunction with the San Francisco Symphony of San Francisco. His Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition discerning knowledge and inspired Expressionism: a German intuition. programming of contemporary These were followed in 1981-82 by

10 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season three special concerts of American Varèse and Webern with a One composers entitled “Edward Hopper: Hundredth Anniversary Celebration the Music of His Time,” presented in benefit concert at the War Memorial conjunction with the Museum’s Edward Opera House. The legendary rock Hopper retrospective exhibition, musician and composer Frank Zappa and one concert devoted to French served as guest conductor. Grace and Belgian music, complementing Slick was Mistress of Ceremonies. The an exhibit of photographs by Henri audience numbered 2500, and the Cartier-Bresson. A sell-out concert concert drew unprecedented national in January, 1983, featured works by media attention and congratulatory several young European composers reviews. then unknown in the , In this era, the ensemble also began including thc thirty-year-old Wolfgang to tour. In 1986, the Players presented Rihm. the Los Angeles premiere of Boulez’s In February 1983, the Contemporary new work Derive at the Los Angeles Music Players marked the births of County Museum. The first international tour took place in summer of 1986, with a debut performance at the Cheltenham Festival, England, where the group presented works by California composers, including Lou Harrison, Andrew Imbrie, William Kraft, and Conrad Cummings.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 11 Mar 15 & 17 6:30 - 9:30 pm SFCMP in residence at Z Space This concert is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Clarence E. Heller Foundation

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Steven Schick, Artistic Director

Oscuroscape

David Lang warmth (2006) Travis Andrews and David Tanenbaum, guitars ~7 minutes

David Lang darker (2010) Hrabba Atladottir, Roy Malan, Matthew Szemela, Alisa Rose, Iris Stone, Deborah Tien-Price, violins Evan Buttemer, Clio Tilton, violas Hannah Addario-Berry, Helen Newby, cellos Richard Worn, double bass projections by Suzanne Bocanegra ~60 minutes

12 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season Notes by Robert Kirzinger David Lang’s “A Simple Song #3” was nominated for an Academy Award this year; the song comes from his soundtrack for the Paolo Sorrentino film Youth; the other nominees included songs cowritten and performed by such pop megastars as Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Sam Smith, whose “The Writing’s on the Wall,” from the James Bond movie Spectre, was awarded the Oscar. (For the sake of completion, J.Ralph and Anohni’s “Manta Ray” was the fifth nomination.) Lang won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his substantial little match immediacy and directness of his style, girl passion, another vocal work. These which draws on influences from the relatively high-profile recognitions Renaissance and Bach to minimalism. are small traces of the success of His early interests in music were the composer’s broad philosophy of unimpeachably inclusive. He took an reintegrating our nameless genre— interest in such experimental paths as new music, art music, classical music— Cage’s and LaMonte Young’s open- into common, lived experience. ended process forms and theatrical presentations as well as more Co-founder of the remarkable Bang traditional music, and studied formally on a Can Festival with Michael at Stanford University, the University Gordon and Julia Wolfe, David Lang of Iowa, and , where was born in Los Angeles, but is now he subsequently taught. He was also strongly identified with New York a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music City. His experience with Bang on Center, where he worked with and was a Can doubtless helped inform the encouraged by Hans Werner Henze.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 13 In keeping with the breadth of His David Lang Piano Competition his aesthetic intent, Lang’s work invited pianists from around the world encompasses many instrumental, to video record a performance of vocal, and musical theater works, one of his pieces (the winner was the along with film soundtracks. His Australian Peter Poston), and he held work ranges from delicate, tightly Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s constructed pieces to experimental Chair for 2013-14, creating the highly forays, such as his loony crowd out for eclectic and acclaimed “collected “1000 people yelling,” commissioned stories” programming. by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Encouraged by the Lang wrote warmth for two electric range and flexibility of Bang on a guitars on commission from the Can’s varied participants, Lang has Cygnus Ensemble for its guitarists embraced the potential of any number Oren Fader and William Anderson, of non-standard ensemble types. who premiered it April 23, 2006, at Recent works include questionnaire, a Merkin Hall in . Lang piece for 120 guitars celebrating the said, “I wrote it thinking that it might 120th anniversary of the Third Street be interesting to write a guitar solo Music Settlement; and the percussion and have two people play it almost quartet concerto man made for So exactly at the same time.” The pitch Percussion, premiered by So and the and rhythmic content are both BBC Symphony and co-commissioned highly constrained, but the rhythmic by the Barbican Centre and the Los patterns are out of phase with Angeles Philharmonic. Cloud-River- the pitch contours, and continual Mountain was premiered in June adjustment of the ostensibly simple 2015 by and soprano material defies easy predictability. Gong Linna. Beyond Bang on a Can, The rhythmic trickiness heightens the Lang has explored other alternative tension between the players in their routes to music curation, sometimes goal of achieving their intertwined from within conventional institutions. aggregate solo.

14 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season On the surface, precedents for Lang’s of it in terms of giant emotional darker for twelve solo strings range in leaps from one extreme to another— affective content from Schoenberg’s most of my emotional range is not Verklärte Nacht and Strauss’s from extreme bliss to gut-wrenching Metamorphosen to Andriessen’s misery and back, all in a short period Symphony for open strings. The of time; my range is much more expressive template that Lang brings narrow, and too slowly changing for to bear in his piece is modeled on that. In my piece darker I wanted to make a piece of music that more his perception of his own emotional closely matches my own emotional experience—perhaps not really in “real narrative than the narrative we have time” but eschewing the amplified inherited from the dramatic music of peaks and valleys of drama and the past. contrast that have been, and often still are, the norm and the ideal in classical darker is in many ways more like an music (Verklärte Nacht being one object than a piece of music. It is a exemplar). Of this piece, Lang writes: long, slow passing from something mostly even and pleasant to There is a big gulf between the way something a little less pleasant. My that classical music teaches us to piece, like life, expends a lot of effort experience emotions and the way to go a very short distance, from that our emotions are actually felt. beautiful to a little less beautiful, from a little light to something a little We have a great tradition in Western darker. music of embracing great swings of temperament and mood—we have darker is dedicated to the memory of no problem thinking that a piece can Jeanette Yanikian. move seamlessly from something that is whisper-soft to ear-splittingly Jeannette Yanikian (1935-2008) was loud. When I think of how my life a guitarist, and the wife of composer actually works, however, I don’t think Louis Andriessen.

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 15 Unlike, say, Metmorphosen, in being performed with appropriate which the motivically melodic- lighting that would change over its based content is based on a fairly course. traditional sense of musical narrative (over about half an hour’s time), or darker was commissioned by on the other hand a work like Glass’s Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, Music in Twelve Parts, in which a Jean-Paul Dessy, artistic director, and single groove might obtain for a the Concertgebouw Bruges, Jeroen significant stretch of time, Lang’s Vanacker, artistic director. Dessy and darker (like warmth) is assembled Musiques Nouvelles gave the premiere of asymmetrical, difficult-to-predict at the Bruges Concertgebouw, patterns that deflect complacency. Belgium, on April 2010, with lighting The surface of darker is continuously by Koert Vermeulen. active, with fast-moving repeated- note patterns deployed in layers of rhythmic canon above sustained and slower patterns in the lower strings. The ebb and flow of this cumulative texture suggests the quasi-periodic, constantly changing, and overlapping processes of physiology. At the same time, the actual physical activity of playing the piece, for each amplified performer, over the course of an hour creates another layer of apprehensive energy, amplifying too the intensity of attention required both individually Projection artist Suzanne Bocanegra and collective. It’s a remarkable experience from all perspectives. Lang also conceived the piece as

16 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season Mar 16 & 18 6:30 - 9:30 pm SFCMP in residence at Z Space This concert is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Clarence E. Heller Foundation

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Steven Schick, Artistic Director

Starscape

Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri No 45 Immense (2002) Loren Mach, percussion ~9 minutes

Gérard Grisey Le Noir de l’Étoile (1989-1990) William Winant, Loren Mach, Chris Froh, Nick Woodbury, Sean Dowgray, and Megan Shieh, percussion ~60 minutes

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 17 Notes by Robert Kirzinger Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and music; her work repurposes and was born in 1974 in Greece and earned discovers new sonic and dramatic a doctorate in music composition possibilities not only of traditional from the University of California–San musical instruments but of everyday Diego. She also attended Goldsmiths objects as well. College of the University of London and the University of Music and the Working with Swiss kinetic artist Pe Lang, Performing Arts, Vienna. Her teachers she has exhibited and presented her have included Chaya Czernowin and work as often in galleries and alternative Rand Steiger, and she also worked art spaces as in the concert hall. Her with Steven Schick while in San Diego. creative impulses are not unrelated Based in Berlin, she has presented her to those of the Fluxus movement, in work in , Japan, and the U.S., which the conventional attitude toward including New York’s MATA Festival. objects and their use is re-examined, Papalexandri-Alexandri is one of a brought into crisis, leading to new new generation of artists who blur sounds and modes of expression. Many o the boundaries (if such actually exist) of her scores, including that of N 45 between visual art, performance, art, Immense, are hand-drawn catalogs of events and procedures, along the lines of a storyboard or comic strip. In some works she uses technology to automate sound-producing processes. The objects producing sound are frequently as beautiful and delicate in their aspect as the sounds themselves. No 45 Immense was commissioned by the Stockholm International Composition Course (SICC) and was premiered at the Spelplan Festival in Stockholm by Niklas Brommare in

18 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season 2002. The piece employs a red apple, and tension. The action is now taking newspaper, magnifying glass, water, place inside the water. One can argue zipper, plastic cup of water, sand who is the performer- the person, the blocks, coins of various sizes, small tablet or the water? bells, shoe box, bass guitar string, espresso saucer, clear transparent Le Noir de l’Étoile is one of the plastic pen, wooden table, and “fizzy most iconic works of a composer who vitamin C tablet.” The actions are produced more than his fair share of prosaic, if bordering on obsessive; the iconic works, and who was known as act of observing the piece brings one a sense almost of voyeurism, of sharing a secret, even if the actions have no apprehendable narrative “content.” Of No 45 Immense, Marianthi Papalexandri writes, When does an instrument become an ‘object’? Do we treat instruments differently from objects? If so, why? At the end of the piece, No 45 immense, the percussionist picks up a fizzy vitamin C tablet (hidden inside the one of the central figures of a highly box), which he drops into a glass of influential mode of composition. water. He pauses, and waits for it to Gérard Grisey studied with Messiaen dissolve completely. The absence of and Dutilleux, two quite different but action and sound here is what I call quintessentially French composers an ‘energetic silence’. The performer whose concentration on musical timbre is not trying to become invisible. He opened new vistas for composers of the is not acting. On the contrary, his latter half of the 20th century. Grisey body language maintains energy followed suit, also studying electronic

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 19 music and acoustics and beginning approach built on ideas explored by to explore the physical properties of Messiaen, Stockhausen, Vivier, and sound via computer analysis, folding others, and came as a breath of fresh his research back into his own music. air to many composers looking to Grisey met Tristan Murail while in solve problems of form, harmony, and Rome as holder of the Rome Prize flow organically in a post-serial era. in the early 1970s, and with Murail, This approach (helped by with the Michaël Lévinas, Hugues Dufourt, and increasing ease of computer analysis of Roger Tessier, founded the Ensemble sound) has been growing in influence l’Itinéraire. Grisey taught at Darmstadt for the past few decades, and had its and the Paris Conservatoire, and also at effect not only on concert music but the University of California–Berkeley. also on some pop and electronica. In such seminal works as the multi- Along with timbre, and closely related, part Les Espaces acoustiques (1974- is perhaps the most striking aspect 85), Grisey explored how a piece of Grisey’s innovation: the treatment of music might be modeled on the of musical time. Both intuitively and changing timbral characteristics of empirically, Grisey’s forms are based individual sounds. This approach on an organic reflection of time as came to be known as spectrale for experienced in the world, though its basis on the harmonic spectrum, the base structures can be and are although Grisey himself found manipulated for essential musical the term (not unexpectedly) too ends. The experience of passing time limiting; few of his pieces were in Grisey’s work has its parallels less “pure” spectrale. Nonetheless the in European traditions than in certain systematic exploitation of timbre as an Asian classical traditions, such as those observable, independent parameter of India or Tibet; strict repetition of has become one of the most important episodes or individual elements has a developments in music theory and very limited role. Grisey contemplated practice. The acoustic spectral analysis time, too, via poetic metaphors,

20 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season considering that different organisms of a pulsar, a spinning neutron star could and presumably do perceive believed to be a result of a supernova. time very differently. In some of his later Such objects were predicted before works, Grisey addressed the relativity they were actually observed via their of time as experienced in different radio transmissions; the first pulsar contexts and by different organisms. discovered was PSR B1919+21, in Le Temps et l’écume (1989) and Vortex November 1967 by Jocelyn Bell. temporum (1996) both contemplate 1919+21 had a period of about 1.3 the time scales of whales, humans, and seconds, a pulse mimicked by the bass insects by compressing, “normalizing,” drum at the start of Le Noir de l’Étoile. and stretching the musical materials. The piece otherwise is centered Timbre, modeled as harmony changing on the Vela pulsar, which spins at a over time; time as articulated by rate of 11.195 times per second, a organically modulating sonority; and, burst appearing as a recurring motif ultimately, musical form modeled on throughout Le Noir in the percussion varieties of natural phenomena: these instruments as well as in the recorded were the foundations of Grisey’s music. sound. Grisey was alerted to the pulsar phenomenon while at Berkeley in 1985, Le Noir de l’Étoile (“The Black of and found Vela’s “sound” entirely the Star”) was commissioned by the seductive, comparing his mental French Ministry of Culture for Les delight with Picasso’s on wondering Percussions de Strasbourg, who gave what he could do with a bicycle seat. the premiere on March 16, 1991, at Grisey also used sound from the PSR the Halle de Schaerbeek in Brussels B0329+54 pulsar (whose very different during the Festival Ars Musica. The “tempo” is about 84 beats per minute). piece is scored for six percussionists, Le Noir de l’Étoile is prefaced by a arrayed in a large circle and playing few paragraphs about pulsars by the among them some 400 objects, plus astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet; pre-recorded sound, including the the tone of the text falls somewhere acoustic translation of the sound

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 21 between hard science and mysticism, The piece is structured in several large mirroring the combination of natural sections. The percussionists array physical phenomena and ritualization themselves around the audience, that pervades Le Noir. and the piece begins with the 1.3” pulse in the bass drum. The Vela As Grisey has written, the piece is “motif” encroaches and gradually created less from the sound of the becomes more prevalent. In the pulsars directly but by the accretion “First Window,” the Vela recording is of overlapping patterns derived played for the first time (almost fifteen from those rhythms—“reference minutes into the piece), establishing points” that allowed him to create a connection between the percussion interrelations among tempos, explore and the original “source.” The different approaches to periodicity percussionists modify and modulate (that is, measured recurrence of the pulsar’s tempo. The “Second materials), and, with the spatial Window” presents pulsar 329+54 arrangement of the recorded sound (the 84 bpm pulse), interrupted and percussionists, create ways of by the percussionists. Then metal moving and rotating music in space. percussion begin to dominate in a Faults or glitches in the sound are chaotic outburst. The “Third Window” explored; the percussionists also is an “imagined pulsar” with its new push against what is normally a strict tempo. In the Final, “centrifugal” regularity by accelerating or slowing forces create motion among the the base tempos, creating further six players, with great variance in complexities in the patterns. Taking speed via accelerations. The “Fourth place over the course of an hour, Le Window” stabilizes the tempo with Noir de l’Étoile allows for gradual the instruments themselves as a new changes to achieve remarkably pulsar with period of 100 milliseconds. dramatic ends. Grisey also spoke of The final bright sound brings the focus the possibility of keeping time itself to the center. at bay.

22 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season Friends of SFCMP SFCMP gratefully acknowledges these Richard and Patricia Taylor Lee supporters, who have made donations Mary Lorey between July 1, 2014 and March 1, 2016. For corrections, please contact info@ Guest Artists’ Circle ($500-$999) sfcmp.org. Sweta Arora Paul Asplund Artistic Director’s Circle ($10,000 + ) Patti Noel Deuter Erik Neuenschwander and Sonya Chang James C. Hormel Michael McGinley Players’ Circle ($5,000-$9,999) Steve Oroza and Linda Loring Jerome and Linda Elkind Ken Ueno Dianne Ellsworth Margot Golding and Michael Powers Sponsor ($200-$499) Harry Hartzell and Susan Hartzell Ernst and Leslie Bauer JoAnn and Jack Bertges, in honor of Producers’ Circle ($2,500-$4,999) Margot Golding Robert and Anne Baldwin Timothy L. Bridge Donald Blais Lawrence Daressa Eunice Childs, in memory of Dr. Alfred W. Thomas and Nancy Fiene Childs Adam Frey Lois Gottlieb Stephen Harrison and Susan Freier Melanie Johnson, Ph. D. Bud and Fran Johns Liz and Greg Lutz Jill Hunter Matichak Steven and Brenda Schick Jim Newman Suzanne Pfeffer Founders’ Circle ($1,000-$2,499) Katherine Saux and Paul Brandes Claire and Kendall Allphin Tim Savinar and Patricia Unterman Mark Applebaum and Joan Friedman Loren Sevey Karen Gottlieb Lubert and Andrea Stryer, in honor of Anne Mark and Sharon Gottlieb and Robert Baldwin Holly Hartley Kit Sharma and Wei Tsai Lorraine Honig Robert and Martha Warnock

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 23 Supporter ($100-$199) Nancy Gilbert Tonia and Kenneth Baker Diana Goldstein Jonathan Ballard John W. Hillyer Charles Boone and Josefa Vaughan, in Tom Koster honor of Carrie Blanding Leslie Morelli Tod Brody Edward Oberholtzer and Karen Wolf John and Mary Caris Caroline Pincus Ruth A. Felt John Richardson Paul R. Griffin Zachariah and Susan Spellman Gretchen B. Guard Patrick Woodbury Barbara Imbrie Donald and Ethel Worn Gerald Klein Toby and Jerry Levine Major In-kind Supporters Herbert and Claire Lindenberger Cooper White & Cooper, LLP Boris and Dorothy Ragent Laurie San Martin and Sam Nichols Robert Shumaker and Janet Garvin James Simmons Patricia Skillman Sandra Soderlund David and Tina Spring Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Robison Olly and Elouise Wilson William G. Wohlmacher

Patron ($50-$99) Charles Amirkhanian and Carol Law James Bovee Kenneth Bruckmeier Dexter and Jean Dawes Liz and Sam DeSimone Dr. John Gilbert

24 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season The SFCMP Legacy Circle Your bequest to the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Legacy Circle will ensure the future of music for lifetimes ahead. We would like to thank the following individuals who have arranged bequests to help support the future work of SFCMP: Anonymous Ruth Caron Jacobs* Anne Baldwin Roy C. (Bud) Johns George Bosworth* Renate Kay Priscilla Brown Jane LeRoux Eunice Childs, in memory of Alfred W. Jean-Louis LeRoux Childs Terry McKelvey Adam L. Frey A. Robin Orden Margot Golding C. Michael Richards Paul R. Griffin Victor Wolfram Dr. Claire Harrison* Harold Wollack* Susan & Harry Hartzell *deceased For more information about planned giving, please contact our Executive Director, Lisa Oman at 415-278-9566 or [email protected]

Want to sponsor a concert? Join our Producer’s Circle by returning the enclosed envelope. For questions or to make a commemorative gift please contact Executive Director, Lisa Oman at (415) 278-9566. Want to volunteer? Behind every successful nonprofit organization you’ll find a team of dedicated volunteers. If you would like to join our team of volunteers, please give us a ring at (415) 278-9566 or email [email protected] to discuss your interests and our available opportunities. Here are a few of our most urgent volunteer needs: • Concert reception hosts • Archive our history from print to digital format

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 25 Leadership and Staff Board of Directors Founding Directors Artistic Directors Donald Blais Charles Boone David Milnes (2002-2009) President Marcella DeCray Jean-Louis LeRoux (2001- Margot Golding Jean-Louis LeRoux 2002) Vice President Donald Palma (1998-2000) Jerome Elkind Honorary Committee Stephen L. Mosko (1988- Treasurer John Adams 1997) Dianne Ellsworth Ruth Felt Jean-Louis LeRoux (1974- Secretary Patricia Lee 1988) Paul Asplund Pamela Rosenberg Charles Boone (1971-1973) Karen Gottlieb Donald Runnicles Melanie Johnson Helgi Tomasson Executive Directors Rozella Kennedy (2012-2015) Stephen Harrison Carrie Blanding (2010-2012) Susan Hartzell Advisory Council Christopher Honett (2009- Erik Neuenschwander Anne Baldwin 2010) Kit Sharma Timothy Bridge Adam Frey (1991-2009) Ken Ueno Tod Brody Susan Munn (1988-1991) Caroline Crawford Marcella DeCray (1974-1988) Board Presidents Didier de Fontaine Richard Diebold Lee (2009- Paul Griffin Leadership 2013) Roy C. (Bud) Johns Steven Schick Susan Hartzell (2005-2009) Richard Diebold Lee Artistic Director Anne Baldwin (2002-2005) Jane Roos LeRoux Lisa Oman Roy C. (Bud) Johns (2000- Jean-Louis LeRoux Executive Director 2001) Terry McKelvey T. William Melis (1996-2000) T. William Melis Production Adam Fong, Center for New Paul R. Griffin (1986-1996) Gene Nakajima Music, Director Jane Roos (1978-1986) Olly Wilson Jon Yu, Center for New William Wohlmacher Music, Manager Derek Gedalecia, sound Robert Shumaker, recording John Jaworski, intern

26 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season About SFCMP The San Francisco Contemporary emerging artists alike. Through our Music Players is one of the longest- community partnerships and education standing new music ensembles in programs we are committed to the nation. Through performances, helping our audiences explore the collaborations, and education activities music of the future. we give people opportunities to discover music that is new to them– SFCMP gratefully acknowledges the and ways to use those experiences to support of the following foundations better understand and enjoy life and and agencies: our world. Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia We are devoted to 20th- and 21st- University Century repertoire because–as Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation with all art–our collective societal Clarence E. Heller Foundation imagination requires the stimulation of James Irvine Foundation the new. Across cultures and stylistic National Endowment for the Arts constraints, composers today are Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation creating a vast and vital 21st-century San Francisco Grants for the Arts musical language. We want to share The Aaron Copland Fund for it with as many people as possible, Music, Inc. both inside and outside the traditional The Amphion Foundation concert setting. The Bernard Osher Foundation The Ross McKee Foundation Our ensemble features the Bay William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Area’s leading musicians devoted to Wells Fargo Foundation exploring new music. In the course Zellerbach Family Foundation of 45 years we’ve performed more than 1,200 new works by more than 550 composers, including music commissioned from renowned and

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season • 27 Thank you, Hall Goff! After 37 years with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Hall Goff is leaving the group. What an extraordinary contribution he has made!

I can’t speak with personal knowledge about his first three and half decades, but when I joined SFCMP in 2011 (a mere cup of coffee ago by comparison), I was delighted to work with Hall. From his absolutely rock-solid performance of Varèse’s Octandre to his inventive sonic explorations in our Cage Musicircus to Later, that student told me, repeatedly, a truly virtuosic solo turn last season how much he had gotten out of the in Koji Nakano’s chamber concerto project. His positive experience, I am for trombone and ensemble, Hall sure, was largely due to Hall. delivers art and integrity with every performance. He told me he would As we celebrate 45 years of SFCMP be leaving SFCMP during a rehearsal and pay tribute to our founders, we’ll break as we prepared Morton also honor Hall and recognize his Feldman’s For Samuel Beckett, a many gifts to us: of musical honesty, part of the recent concert we did in pervasive good will, and just straight- collaboration with the San Francisco up great playing. Conservatory. When we started up again after the break, I noted how Thank you, Hall! often Hall leaned over to his student trombonist stand partner to offer – Steven Schick words of advice or encouragement.

28 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2015-16 45th Anniversary Season Dirge (2002)

Limited edition series of 45 prints Price: $1,400 plus tax

All proceeds benefit the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Each archival pigment print is 18 inches square, presented in an attractive portfolio that includes a musical excerpt chosen by the artist and a poem by Richard Lang. Prints may be ordered at SFCMP events, or by phone at (415) 278-9566. “new music mecca” —New York Times

We’re pulling out all the stops for Marin Alsop’s 25th and final season as music director and conductor!

Season announcement coming in April. Join our mailing list now!

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 55 Taylor Street, San Francisco, California 94102 415-278-9566 sfcmp.org • fb: @sfcmp • tw: @gosfcmp