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Join the conversation about new music! Th e San Francisco Contemporary Music Players invites you to read and comment on our new BLOG. • Share your responses to tonight’s concert. • Read what our musicians are saying about the pieces. • Get perspectives from composers and musicians in the wider new music community. www.sfcmp.blogspot.com San Francisco Contemporary Music Players David Milnes, Music Director Monday, February 4, 2008, 8pm Performers: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum Tod Brody, fl ute Carey Bell, clarinet (Feldman) Peter Josheff , clarinet (Mackey, Liderman) STRONGBOX OF AMERICAN MUSIC William Wohlmacher, clarinet (Sheinfeld) Jeff Biancalana, trumpet Steven Mackey, Indigenous Instruments (1989) Hall Goff , trombone I. Swinging, crisp, rhythmic Karen Gottlieb, harp II. Floating, as if improvised Julie Steinberg, piano (Mackey, Sheinfeld) III. Mesmerizing, strange, dark, funky Michael Orland, piano (Liderman) Co-commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players William Winant, percussion (Feldman) with funding from Meet the Composer Christopher Froh, percussion (Feldman, Sheinfeld) (Approximate duration: 17 minutes) Benjamin Paysen, percussion (Liderman) Graeme Jennings, violin (Sheinfeld) David Sheinfeld, Dear Th eo (1996) Roy Malan, violin (Mackey) Leroy Kromm, baritone Nanci Severance, viola Commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Stephen Harrison, cello (Mackey) with funding from the Koussevitzky Foundation Leighton Fong, cello (Liderman) (Approximate duration: 12 minutes) Richard Worn, contrabass ~ Intermission ~ Morton Feldman, Bass Clarinet and Percussion (1981) Carey Bell, bass clarinet William Winant and Christopher Froh, percussion (Approximate duration: 17 minutes) Jorge Liderman, Furthermore... (2006) Th is concert is underwritten in part by a grant from World Premiere the National Endowment for the Arts. Carla Kihlstedt, violin Th e performance of David Sheinfeld’s Dear Th eo is made possible (Approximate duration: 15 minutes) in part by a gift from Mrs. Ralph I. Dorfman. Steinway Piano provided by Sherman Clay Concert Event Series. 23 Program Notes STEVEN MACKEY (B. 1956) hen the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players com- missioned Steven Mackey’s Indigenous Instruments (1989), W the composer was just coming into his own. A year aft er its premiere, the piece was chosen to represent the United States at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, and the remainder of the 1990s was fi lled with prestigious performances and collaborative projects that have made Mackey and his music familiar to East and West Coast audiences alike. Once heard, Mackey’s music tends to be remembered. Composer Paul Lansky describes a typical encounter with the music of his friend and colleague: “Th e qualities of his music–its originality, fresh- ness, dazzling invention, a certain impertinence–strike the listener like an JOIN US AT THE SANTA FE OPERA unusual stone discovered on a rock-strewn beach; we are not quite sure Only two spots left! where it came from, it really catches the eye… On closer examination we start to marvel at its features. Who would ever have thought to combine Th e San Francisco Contemporary Music Players these particular qualities–this is not how things are usually made, but and Music Director David Milnes what a good idea for a rock.” invite you to join a small group (20 people) in Santa Fe, New Mexico Mackey grew up in Northern California, gaining musical experience by Th ursday, July 24 through Sunday, July 27, 2008. playing electric guitar in local rock bands, and discovering the world of classical composition at U. C. Davis, where he studied with Andrew Frank Enjoy excellent seats for two brilliant operas: and Richard Swift , among others; he also counts the late Andrew Imbrie the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater among his teachers. Aft er doing his doctoral work at SUNY Stony Brook and the Santa Fe premiere of Billy Budd. and Brandeis University with Martin Boykan, John Harbison, John Les- sard, David Lewin, and Donald Martino, he joined the faculty of Princ- Join the group for a backstage tour of the Opera House eton University in 1985. Th ese streams of infl uence–the rough and ready and a meeting with the Opera’s costume designer. sound world of the garage band and the rigors of the University music Meet Kaija Saariaho. department–are thoroughly mingled in Mackey’s oeuvre. He is perhaps best known for building bridges between genres and styles–from classical Support the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. chamber music to experimental music theater and from the Renaissance A portion of the cost of the trip is a tax deductible contribution, to rock ’n’ roll. Indeed, Mackey has managed to create a virtually new helping to support concerts like this one. musical genre (a rare feat): contemporary “classical” music for electric guitar. Beginning in 1991 with Myrtle and Mint (for electric guitar and Cost: $1900 per person. (A single supplement will apply. Airfare not included.) narrator), continuing with his internationally successful works for string Deposit: A deposit of $500 per person will guarantee your place. quartet and electric guitar, On the Verge, Troubadour Songs, and Physical Property, and culminating perhaps in the “psychedelic” suite Heavy Light For further information, contact us: (conceived in collaboration with choreographer Donald Byrd and the [email protected] or 415-278-9566. chamber ensemble MOSAIC), the composer has unabashedly collided Or visit www.sfcmp.org. 5 the rhythmic energy and exuberance of soloistic guitar with the complex co-director of the Composers Ensemble at Princeton University. ensemble work of classical chamber music. Mackey, Indigenous Instruments (1989) Th roughout his tenure at Princeton, he has maintained fruitful relation- for fl ute/piccolo/alto fl ute, clarinet, violin/scordatura violin, scordatura ships with many Californian ensembles, including the San Francisco cello, and piano Contemporary Music Players, which invited soloists Bill Frisell and Joey Baron to share in its 1997 performance of Mackey’s concerto for electric Th e composer off ers a memorable description of the quasi-anthropolog- guitar and drum set, Deal (1995), and co-commissioned his mercu- ical genesis of his seminal quintet: “Indigenous Instruments is vernacular rial Micro-Concerto (1999) in which percussionist Daniel Kennedy was music from a culture that doesn’t actually exist. I fantasized about a featured as soloist. Th e San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson culture and their uses for music, did thought experiments to invent the Th omas gave the world premiere of Mackey’s orchestral score Lost & kind of instruments they might play, and wrote ‘folk melodies’ idiomatic Found (originally written for four guitars) in 1996 and his organ sympho- to those instruments. Th e exercise was silly but did in fact succeed in ny, Pedal Tones, in 2002. Mackey was featured at the Symphony’s Ameri- leading me to sounds and textures that I would never have thought of in can Mavericks Festival in 1997 and 2000, and his String Th eory, commis- my mode as a serious concert-music composer. sioned by the Kronos Quartet for its 25th anniversary season, received its premiere on the San Francisco Symphony’s contemporary music festival. “My starting point was to re-tune or de-tune the ensemble; the cello has a radical microtonal scordatura [mistuning], the violin’s G string is tuned In 1999, Mackey’s award-winning musical theater piece Ravenshead (a down an octave and a quarter tone, the fl ute is pulled out a quarter-tone collaboration with tenor-actor Rinde Eckert and the Paul Dresher Ensem- fl at, and one note of the piano is prepared… Th e inspiration for this ble) enjoyed a month-long run at the Berkeley Repertory Th eatre. Eckert came from looking at transcriptions of the mbira (Africa thumb piano) in has since written about Mackey, describing his quixotic imagination, an ethnomusicology dissertation. I couldn’t really get a sense of what the and the artistic momentum that his works always seem to create: “Steve sound was because these transcriptions seemed so exotic with microtones Mackey’s music has muscle. It behaves like an animal. It’s not polite, this and odd chord voicings, but the look intrigued me and it fascinated me music. It’s not music as math by another means. Th is is emotional music; all the more that this indecipherable notation was somebody’s vernacular this is dance music–at times angry, at times mysterious, at times ethereal, music… I like the sense of a music that seems to obey some natural or, at at times primitive, always intensely searching, and yes, at times heady least, culture-specifi c laws that are consistent and immutable but com- (that too is part of moving about in the world). Th is music doesn’t wait pletely mysterious to me. for us. It isn’t looking back to make sure we’re following, or stopping to explain why it’s moving as it does. Even when it’s still, almost placid, it “Associated with my need to shake up the Pierrot ensemble [named for isn’t waiting.” Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire] is a slightly rebellious attitude toward the piano as tyrant of equal temperament. Th is led me to open Mackey has won Guggenheim, Lieberson, and Tanglewood Fellow- the piece with a microtonal string fi gure which makes the piano, upon its ships and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and entry, sound like a broken toy; this piece was fun to compose! In order to Institute of Arts and Letters, in addition to awards from the Kennedy compose the cello part, I borrowed a cello and put pieces of Scotch tape Center for the Performing Arts, BMI, the International Society of Con- where the frets ‘should’ be (remember, I’m a guitarist) and learned how to temporary Music, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the play that pizzicato part in the last movement.