SPRING '91 FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSIC presented in conjunction with the 1991 CONFERENCE OF REGION II OF 1HE SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS at Hamilton College Clinton, New York CONFERENCESCHEDUL~ Friday, April 26 4:00 p.m., Room 201, Schambach Center / Presentation by Greg Steinke, "The Percussive Composer" How composers might more easily conceptualize their use of percussion in the compositional process in writing for percussion alone and for percussion with instruments and voices. 8:00 p.m., Wellin Hall, Schambach Center North/South Consonance, Max Lifchitz, director music by Raoul Pleskow, Irwin Swack, Ulf Grahn, Nancy Laird Chance, Hilary Tann, and Max Lifchitz Saturday, April 27 10:00 a.m., Room 201, Schambach Center Presentation by Max Lifchitz, "New Music in Latin America" Latin America is commonly portrayed as a source of political and economic turbulence. Contrary to popular belief, that region of the world enjoys a highly diverse cultural life and a very rich musical culture. Hoping to shed some light on what is musically current in that part of the world, the lecture/performance will focus on six living composers representing different geographical locations and various aesthetic viewpoints. 3:00 p.m., Wellin Hall, Schambach Center the Hamilton College Choir, G. Roberts Kolb, director and the Syracuse Society for New Music music by: Ernest Mannix, Louis Angelini, Marvin Johnson, Phillip Schroeder, and Charles Bestor 8:00 p.m., Wellin Hall, Schambach Center the Hamilton College Ensemble for New Music, E. Michael Richards, director music by: Anthony Lis, Greg Steinke, Elizabeth Bell, Brian Fennelly, Joelle Wallach, and Samuel Pellman Sunday, April 28 12 noon, Dwight Lounge, Bristol Campus Center: Sunday Brunch. 2:15 p.m., Hamilton College Chapel A Recital of Solos and Duos music by: Michael Richards, Walter Winslow, Margaret DeWys, Andrew Waggoner, Paul Brantley, and Janice Macaulay 3:30 p.m., Wellin Hall, Schambach Center The McLean Mix, Priscilla and Barton McLean Gods, Demons, and the Earth This program is a combination of new technology and subjects ranging from the environment to mythology. Earth Music is ethereal and interweaves the sounds of the rainforest, glacial rocks, and other tones of the earth with digitally­ processed evocative improvisation; Dance of Shiva is visually exciting, incorporating computer-controlled dancing and shimmering, multiple slide projections; and Fireflies is magical, utilizing an instrument (recently created by Barton McLean and engineers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) that enables a synthesizer keyboard to control hundreds of blinking lights in dazzling patterns. North/South Consonance Dana Friedli, violin Lisa Hansen, flute Benjamin Whittenburg, cello Richard Goldsmith, clarinet Max Lifchitz, piano/director Carol Woodhouse W ellin Performance Hall The Hans H. Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts Friday, April 26 8:00 p.m. Program Intrada Raoul Pleskow Burlesques . Irwin Swack Nocturne . Ulf Grahn Intermission Windhover . Hilary Tann Duos Nancy Laird Chance Yellow Ribbons No. 30 Max Lifchitz Intrada, by Raoul Pleskow Intrada was composed in 1984 and received its New York Premier on a ISCM Concert. The brief, one movement work is based on a pitch source rich in thirds, and characterized by a discernible beat, conductus-like octaves, scurrying triplets, a violin line with flute obligato, and formal repetition of these elements into a tri-partite form. Raoul Pleskow was born in Vienna, Austria and educated in New York. His principal teachers (in composition) were Karol Rathus, Otto Luening and Stefan Wolpe. Mr. Pleskow has been the recipient of many honors, the most recent of which include awards by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, the National Institute of Arts and Letters,and a fellowship from the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. At present, Raoul Pleskow is a professor of Music at Long Island University CW. Post College. Several of his works are recorded on the CRI and Serenus Labels, and are published by American Composers Alliance, General Music, Bowdoin Press and McGinnis and Marx. His works have been performed by such organizations as the Cleveland Philharmonic; Tanglewood Festival Orchestra; Plainfield Symphony; Orchestra da Camera; New York Virtuosi; South Dakota Symphony; Kennedy Center Chamber Players; Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players; Queens Symphony; Queens Philharmonic; The Group for Contemporary Music; Contemporary Chamber Ensemble; Muska Viva; Pierrot Consort; Pa~nassus; LS.CM.; the New Music Consort; Light Fantastic Players; Da Capo Chamber Players; New Structures Ensemble; and the Santa Cruz Symphony, as well as by distinguished solo instrumentalists and singers both in the U.S.A. and in Europe. Four Burlesques for Flute and Clarinet, by Irwin Swack The Four Burlesques represent a series of short, contrasting movements. While the second one can be described as contemplative and introspective, humor and satire are the main ingredients of the other movements. Other considerations involve contrasting timbres, rhythms, and accents. There is much tension resulting from the rise of a musical idiom that is so atonal but behaves tonally in many ways. Irwin Swack was born in Ohio and attended the Cleveland Institute of Music. After graduating with a major in violin performance, he studied with Vittorio Giannini at The Juilliard School. He went on to receive a Masters Degree in composition from Northwestern University and a Doctorate from Columbia University, where he studied with Henry Cowell. As the recipient of a Ford Fellowship Award, he studied with Gunther Schuller at the Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires. Nocturne, by Ulf Grahn The Nocturne for piano trio and tape was commissioned by the George Washington University Faculty Trio and completed in January 1988, in Leksand, Sweden. I had just started my two-year appointment as Artistic and Managing Director of the Lake Siljan Summer Music Festival in Sweden. The Nocturne--a night piece--a farewell to GWU and Washington at the same time, a greeting to and from the mountains of Sweden. The opening idea is from sketches to my third Sinfonie using a twelve tone row as a germ to build a texture/structure. A Swedish herding song grows out of the texture; it's an evening call from the mountain region north of Leksand in Dalecarlia. The Introspective and reflective quality of nighttime is arrived at by mixing new and old. The complex twelve tone (city life), the simplistic mysterious traditional music of Sweden's northern mountain region (urban life) and through the juxtaposition of live instruments and tape. Ulf Grahn, born and raised in Sweden, has resided in Washington, D.C. area since 1972 where he has been actively involved in the performance and presentation of new music. He studied music at the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm and at the Stockholm City College where his principal composition studies were with Hans Eklund. He holds degrees from Stockholm's Musikpedagogiska Institut and the Catholic University of America. He has the equivalent to a civil economics degree from University of Uppsala, Sweden in Business Administration, Economics, and Developmental Studies. In 1973 he founded the Contemporary Music Forum, Washington, D.C. and served as its Program Director until 1984. During 1988-90 he was Artistic and Managing Director of the Music at Lake Siljan Festival, Sweden. Prior to this he was on the faculty of George Washington University and Director of its Electronic Music Studio. At present he is a free-lance composer and a frequent lecturer on Swedish/Scandinavian music, including his own and American music, and cultural economic issues. Mr. Grahn has composed for all media and received numerous prizes, grants, awards, and commissions. His music is being played worldwide. Windhover, by Hilary Tann Wind hover, composed during July 1985, is based on the idea of flight from a falcon's point of view. The piece is approximately eight minutes long. Sections of slow soaring, where strength and detailed focus predominate, alternate with swifter sections, where the blurring of the rush of flight takes over. Hilary Tann, a Welsh composer, came to the USA in 1972 as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. She is an Associate Professor of Music at Union College, Schenectady, NY. Active on behalf of women's music, Hilary Tann serves on the Executive Board of the International League of Women Composers and was Editor of the ILWC Journal from 1982 to 1988. Her interest in the music of Japan has led her to study the vertical bamboo flute known as the shakuhachi, and to co-edit a symposium of articles called 'Tradition and Renewal in the Music of Japan," published in Perspectives of New Music, Summer 1989. Her music is published by Oxford University Press. Her works for both chamber ensemble and full orchestra have received performances and broadcasts throughout the USA as well as in Australia, Germany, Ireland, and Wales. She is a member of ASCAP, and has received support from Meet The Composer, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Memorial Trust, the Welsh Arts Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Duos III, by Nancy Laird Chance Some of the material for Duos III goes back quite a long way in my life. The first ten notes of the fugue come from an assignment in Professor Ussachevsky's Counterpoint Class, and the resulting subject has been evolving mentally for years. It was hoped, in this piece, to write a work that makes maximum use of techniques and sounds which are specific to the string section, and to create music that truly "lies under the hand" for string players. I wanted to create material that derived organically from the technical needs and sonorous abilities of the instrument-­ idiomatic in the finest sense. Nancy Laird Chance has been twice the first prize winner of ASCAP's prestigious Rudolph Nissim Competition for Orchestra Composition.