jan 30 – feb 2 A festival & Julius Eastman symposium of Sarah Hennies (mostly) piano Robert Palmer music by Ithacans Ann Silsbee past & present David Borden 11 THURSDAY, JAN 30 12:30–1:15 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall B20 Concert: In Search of Robert Palmer a solo piano lecture-recital by Adam Tendler 4:30–6 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall 124 Workshop: Decolonizing the Curriculum with Sara Haefeli 7–8 pm | Cornell University, Johnson Museum Lobby Concert: Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Richard Valitutto plays Sarah Hennies’s hour-long work SOVT (2017) for solo prepared piano FRIDAY, JAN 31 10 am–12 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall 124 Panel: Listening Locally: Intersectionality and Contemporary Music a discussion on festival themes with Matthew Mendez, Frederick Cruz Nowell, and Isaac Jean-François 5–6:30 pm | Ithaca College, Whalen Center for Music, Iger Lecture Hall Lecture/Demo: “A Persistent Obsession with Identity” with composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies, hosted by Sara Haefeli Greetings and welcome to Ithaca Sounding 2020! Over the next four and its community have engaged with similar issues, questions, and days we celebrate the keyboard music of five composers for whom problems old and new, as a nexus of musical creativity and thought, 8–10 pm | Cornell University, Barnes Hall Ithaca was, or still is, home: Julius Eastman, Sarah Hennies, Robert both for itself and for the country and world at-large. Concert: Letters, Stories, and Journeys for 1 & 2 Pianos Palmer, Ann Silsbee, and David Borden, whose collective careers solos and duos by Julius Eastman, Ann Silsbee, David Borden, and Robert Palmer and reputations span the better part of the past century. We look I would like to thank the numerous talented and brilliant performers forward to connecting and mediating their musical practices and and presenters involved in bringing the work of these five composers histories through a series of concerts, discussions, presentations, to life, both in musical performance and equally resonant ideas and SATURDAY, FEB 1 scholarship. Specials thanks go to my advisor Xak Bjerken for his and workshops. As the various local waterways wind through 10 am–12 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall B21 greater Ithaca’s famed gorges to feed the iconic lake Cayuga, generous inspiration, encouragement, and advice in creating and Lectures: Julius Eastman’s Heterological Perspectives & Queer Practices so too do we wind our way through the music and practices of planning this festival. paper presentations by Ellie Hisama (Columbia) & Matthew Mendez (Yale) these representatives of Ithaca’s renowned modern classical and Additional thanks to Laurel Gilmer, Kiko Nobusawa, Roger Moseley, contemporary musical personae. Annette Richards, Sara Haefeli, and Ellie Hisama who all contributed 2–3 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall B20 Moreover, this weekend is an opportunity to consider and investigate their unique and invaluable insights, assistance, and time with the Concert: “That Which is Fundamental:” Julius Eastman works for 4 pianos the effects of their individual and shared streams of history—at times many moving parts: creative and logistic. Thanks to Laura Chichisan performed by Joseph Kubera, Adam Tendler, David Friend, and Richard Valitutto uncannily intertwined and at others, incongruously opposed—and who created the beautiful art and design for the posters and this their stylistic, theoretical, and socio-political influences on North program book. Finally, this festival would not be possible without 6–6:30 pm | Ithaca College, Whalen Center for Music, Hockett Hall American musical practices and thought. From academic modernism the support from the following organizations: Cornell Center for Preconcert lecture by Ellie Hisama and minimalism to queer experimentalism and the contemporary Historical Keyboards, Cornell Council for the Arts, Cornell Society for avant-garde, we will explore, discuss, and experience their music the Humanities, Humanities Corridor of Central New York, Cornell 7–9:30 pm | Ithaca College, Whalen Center for Music, Hockett Hall through the lenses of musical hermeneutics, race and gender studies, Department of Music, Ithaca College School of Music, Johnson Concert: Julius Eastman: Joy Boy / Femenine • Festival Finale aesthetics, and queer theory, both within and around the composition/ Museum of Art, and Buffalo Street Books. performed by Sarah Hennies, Richard Valitutto, and musicians from CU, IC, and Ithaca improvisation dialectic. Entering the next twenty years of this new century and millennium, we Richard Valitutto SUNDAY, FEB 2 face local and global challenges both tediously familiar and jarringly Festival coordinator fresh. It is worth appreciating how the town of Ithaca, its institutions, DMA student in Performance Practice 12–2 pm | Buffalo Street Books Cornell University Reading: Poems and Memoirs by Musicians (who also Write) poems by Ann Silsbee and memoirs of David Borden & Adam Tendler 2 3 Second Sonata WORKSHOP The Second Sonata [the first passage begun in 1942, and then abandoned DECOLONIZING THE CURRICULUM before Palmer completed the rest of the work in 1948] is an exercise in balance. From his correspondence with John Kirkpatrick, who premiered A WORKSHOP WITH SARA HAEFELI (IC) this piece—and with whom Palmer collaborated closely on so many of 4:30-6pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall, room 124 these piano works—we know that Palmer decided against using the formal structure of a Prelude and Fugue for this sonata, but nevertheless retained The field of musicology is just now coming to terms with its exclusionary, the musical ideals represented by the opposition of “prelude” vs. “fugue” as colonialist history. But what, if not the canon, is it that we are supposed a sort of guiding notion for the diptych. to teach? I propose that in order to decolonize the traditional curriculum, While thus resisting strict fugal form, the Second Sonata plays out we must do away with the typical iterative study of style periods, genres, the contrast between these horizontal and vertical aspects of musical [genius] composers, and [masterpiece] musical examples. Instead, we must organization, balancing the two ideals not only between the two shift focus from teaching content to teaching musicological methods. In movements but within them. The first movement opens by luxuriating this interactive session, learn about a new curricular framework centered in widely spaced, slow-moving modal harmonies, strumming arpeggios on musical contexts that encourage, support, inspire, or require music. to explore a rhythmic idea in 5/8. But after this “vertical” introduction, A contextual study of music history opens up pathways of inquiry that PANEL the introduction of a lyrical melody soon develops into quasi-fugal are inclusive and non-hierarchical; it flattens dichotomies (such as high/ CONCERT 1: MIDDAY MUSIC counterpoint, each statement of the melody being imitated at increasingly low or European/indigenous); and it suggests that communities of LISTENING LOCALLY: close intervals before dissolving again into those ringing arpeggios. performers, audiences, patrons, inventors, and technologies shape musical INTERSECTIONALITY AND IN SEARCH OF ROBERT PALMER practices more than do individual composers. This session will explore a Conversely, the second movement opens with an unmistakably “horizontal” case study methodology that I have developed that puts students at the 12:30-1:15 | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall, room B20 energy, opening with an octatonic melody whose curves all but spell out center of the process of inquiry and invites them to work collaboratively CONTEMPORARY MUSIC the words “fugue subject”—but the movement develops according to a from areas of strength. — Sara Haefeli A DISCUSSION ON FESTIVAL THEMES much freer logic than a strict fugal form, breaking down into aggressively Robert Palmer: chordal writing and then into interludes of lyrical, largely diatonic 5/4 10 am–12 pm | Cornell University, Lincoln Hall 124 Three Epigrams (1957-58) passages that recall the serenity of the opening movement. Workshop participants should read Loren Kajikawa’s book chapter, “The Possessive Investment in Classical Music” and Robin James’s book chapter, Facilitated by guest musicologist Matthew Mendez (Yale), and Second Sonata (1942/48) Toccata Ostinato “How Not to Listen to Lemonade.” featuring participants Frederick Cruz Nowell (Cornell), and Isaac Jean-François (Columbia). Toccata Ostinato (1945) The specifics of Palmer’s style can be defined, like anything, by its Adam Tendler, piano boundaries: What is kept in; what is kept out. Composed for William Kappell, the Toccata Ostinato has been referred to more than once as CONCERT 2: a “boogie-woogie” movement in 13/8, but this label seems intriguingly LECTURE/DEMO Three Epigrams inadequate when one compares the movement to the music of peers like “SEMI-OCCLUDED VOCAL TRACT” Conlon Nancarrow, whose own experiments with boogie-woogie may “A PERSISTENT OBSESSION Palmer would go on to compose upward of 13 Epigrams, the last dating more audibly represent the vernacular style. 7–8 pm | Cornell University, Johnson Museum Lobby from 1990, but these are the three “well-constructed” (Alvin K. Fossner) WITH IDENTITY” movements, published by Peer, that composer Julius Eastman performed As the title suggests, the pianist plays as if fixated on a short musical cycle at his 1966 Town Hall recital. Joseph Kubera tells us that Eastman had “a in the left hand, and that ostinato