John Luther Adams JACK Quartet International Contemporary Ensemble Steven Schick, Conductor
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Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2015-16 | 27th Season 2015 William Schuman Award honoring John Luther Adams JACK Quartet International Contemporary Ensemble Steven Schick, conductor Wednesday, October 7, 8:00 p.m. Friday, October 9, 8:00 p.m. Saturday, October 10, 8:00 p.m. From the Executive Director This week we celebrate John Luther Adams, powerhouse composer and winner of the 2015 William Schuman Award. John is immensely deserving of this incredible accolade. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to work with him again since collaborating to bring Inuksuit to Morningside Park in 2011. Upon hearing that he was chosen for this award, I jumped at the chance to bring these three beautiful works to New York audiences for the first time. Next week, on October 14th and 16th, we welcome the Orlando Consort for the North American premiere of The Passion of Joan of Arc, a project I’ve been following for a long time. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, largely considered one of the greatest silent films of all time, will be paired with a score of medieval music devised and performed by the Orlando Consort. I am blown away by the artistry of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film and the depth that Donald Greig’s score, comprised entirely of music composed in Joan’s lifetime, adds to it. He and the Orlando Consort have done a beautiful job crafting a score to accompany this truly epic silent film. Rounding out October is another large-scale project I’m very proud of: the residency of acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz. Matt will be joining us from October 21st, playing a total of eight—yes, eight—concerts with us. He will be performing six spontaneous concerts in various locations around the Columbia campus in his and Miller’s joint effort to bring music to new audiences, wherever they may be. He will be pairing the six Bach cello suites with six overtures that he commissioned from contemporary composers such as Du Yun, Vijay Iyer, and Philip Glass. The project comes together in two evening-length concerts here at Miller Theatre. Thank you for joining us tonight to celebrate the work of a masterful composer. I hope to see you again soon for the wonderful offerings on the horizon. Melissa Smey Executive Director Please note that photography and the use of recording devices are not permitted. Remember to turn off all cellular phones and pagers before tonight’s performance begins. Miller Theatre is ADA accessible. Large print programs are available upon request. For more information or to arrange accommodations, please call 212-854-7799. Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2015-16 | 27th Season New York Premiere Wednesday, October 7, 8:00 p.m. Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing International Contemporary Ensemble Steven Schick, conductor Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-95) John Luther Adams for chamber orchestra (b. 1953) Minor Seconds, Rising Clouds Of Mixed Sounds Major Seconds, Rising Clouds of Seconds And Thirds Diminished Bells Clouds of Mixed Thirds Forgotten Triads Lost Chorales Clouds of Perfect Fourths Turbulent Changes Clouds of Perfect Fifths Chorales Return Triads, Remembered Clouds Of Mixed Sixths . And Bells, Again . Clouds Of Sixths And Sevenths Minor Sevenths, Rising Clouds Of Mixed Sevenths Major Sevenths, Rising This program runs approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes with no intermission. New York Premiere Friday, October 9, 8:00 p.m. for Lou Harrison JACK Quartet International Contemporary Ensemble Steven Schick, conductor for Lou Harrison (2003) John Luther Adams for string quartet, two pianos, and strings (b. 1953) Beginning Measure 93 Letter H Measure 315 Letter P Measure 537 Letter X Measure 759 Letter Ff This program runs approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes with no intermission. New York Premiere Saturday, October 10, 8:00 p.m. In the White Silence JACK Quartet International Contemporary Ensemble Steven Schick, conductor In the White Silence (1998) John Luther Adams for celeste, harp, string quartet, two vibraphones, and strings (b. 1953) Beginning Letter B Letter C Letter D Letter E Letter F Letter G Letter H Letter I Letter J Letter K Letter L Letter M Letter N Letter O Letter P Letter Q Letter R Letter S This program runs approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes with no intermission. About the Award The William Schuman Award of Columbia University was established in 1981. It was awarded to its namesake, composer William Schuman, on the occasion of his 70th birthday for his achievements and contributions in the field of music. William Schuman (1910-1992) was an American composer and an alumnus of Columbia University Teachers College. He was the first to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music —another prestigious award administered by Columbia University—in 1943 for his piece Secular Cantata No. 2, A Free Song. He also served as president of The Juilliard School and was appointed the first president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The William Schuman Award is granted every several years by Columbia University School of the Arts in recognition of the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works are widely performed and of lasting significance. The award, which takes the form of an unrestricted $50,000 grant, is one of the largest of its kind to be given to an American composer. John Luther Adams is the ninth composer to receive the William Schuman Award. Recipients of the William Schuman Award: 1981: William Schuman 1985: David Diamond 1989: Gunther Schuller 1992: Milton Babbitt 1995: Hugo Weisgall 2000: Steve Reich 2007: John Zorn 2010: Pauline Oliveros 2015: John Luther Adams About the Program Extraordinary Listening: A John Luther Adams Trilogy “Music is not what I do. Music is how I live. It’s not how I express myself. It’s how I understand the world.” —John Luther Adams One among many moments of dazzling clarity in the writings and reflections of John Luther Adams, this artistic credo points to a composer deeply rooted in the American maverick tradition of figures like Lou Harrison, John Cage, and Morton Feldman: figures who have operated outside the business-as-usual conventions of making and thinking about music. It’s only in the past few years that the music of the 62-year-old Adams—long a cherished secret among his loyal aficionados—has begun to gain more widespread recognition. His vast orchestral canvas from 2014, Become Ocean, won both the Pulitzer Prize in Music and a Grammy Award, and a larger public continues to be exposed to his unique musical philosophy through immersive performances of his recent outdoor epics: Sila (premiered last year at Lincoln Center) and the expanded, “urban” version of Inuksuit, which was presented at Morningside Park by Miller Theatre in 2011. This three-concert series devoted to Adams pays tribute to the 2015 recipient of Columbia University’s William Schuman Award by focusing on a trilogy of works from a crucial transition period in his development. Each of these works can be appreciated either independently or as part of a trilogy; the latter presentation, in turn, does not require performance in the chronological order of creation. Whether viewed as discrete, self-contained compositions or in the larger context of the trilogy, these pieces offer a fascinating window into a transformational creative period for a musical thinker with whom the world finally seems eager to catch up. Notwithstanding the recent wave of recognition, Adams has always regarded himself as outside the mainstream — a restless but patient seeker who believes the composer’s task is “to follow the music wherever it may want to lead me.” By the mid-1970s it had led the Meridian, Mississippi-born Adams from his student years at the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Leonard Stein and James Tenney, to the vastness of Alaska. In the great northern wilderness, says Adams, he was “just lucky enough to stumble onto something large enough, vague enough, deep enough to encompass a whole lifetime of work.” Referring to the obsession with natural place that is both a tangible and metaphorical key to his musical philosophy, Adams regards Alaska as his spiritual home — even though he and his wife, Cynthia, currently triangulate their time in a Morningside Park apartment and a home in the Sonoran Desert. Alaska is also where Adams’s earlier musical career as a percussionist converged with his increasing environmental consciousness, forging a composer, as he puts it, “in search of an ecology of music.” The belated recognition that has come to Adams has largely centered attention on such recent works as Sila and Become Ocean. In these, the composer has notably altered his vision from the great breakthrough compositions of the 1990s and early 2000s: Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing, In the White Silence, and for Lou Harrison. Adams points out that these three works — spanning the years from 1991 to 2003 — constitute a trilogy he didn’t realize he was creating “until after the fact.” On one level, all three are memorial works honoring the composer’s father (Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing), his mother (In the White Silence), and an artistic “parent” (for Lou Harrison). All three take the form of concert-length pieces for comparable forces—“big works for smallish orchestras”—and all three define a specific period in Adams’s work, as evidenced by their similar approaches to form and even at times shared textures. These Miller Theatre concerts not only present their New York premieres but offer the first-ever opportunity to experience them as a trilogy. Their position as “transitional” should by no means be construed to imply “less important,” Adams stresses.