New Juilliard Ensemble Behind every Juilliard artist is all of Juilliard —including you. With hundreds of dance, drama, and music performances, Juilliard is a wonderful place. When you join one of our membership programs, you become a part of this singular and celebrated community. by Claudio Papapietro Photo of cellist Khari Joyner Become a member for as little as $250 Join with a gift starting at $1,250 and and receive exclusive benefits, including enjoy VIP privileges, including • Advance access to tickets through • All Association benefits Member Presales • Concierge ticket service by telephone • 50% discount on ticket purchases and email • Invitations to special • Invitations to behind-the-scenes events members-only gatherings • Access to master classes, performance previews, and rehearsal observations (212) 799-5000, ext. 303 [email protected] juilliard.edu The Juilliard School presents New Juilliard Ensemble Joel Sachs, Founding Director and Conductor Tuesday, October 3, 2017, 7:30pm Peter Jay Sharp Theater JOHN The Devil in the Clock (2012) WOOLRICH After the Clock (2005) (U.K., b. 1954) First performances outside the U.K. GERALD Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions (2008–09) BARRY Martial Steps (Ireland, b. 1952) Home Thoughts An Afternoon Sleep Free From Care A Bumpkin’s Dance At Dusk The Dog Barks, The Caravan Passes On The Innermost Secret New York Premiere Intermission RAMINTA Almond Blossom (2006) ŠERKŠNYTE˙ First Rays of the Sun in the Early Spring (Lithuania, b. 1975) The Feeling of the Last Spring to Have Come Almond Blossom U.S. premiere AKIRA Chamber Symphony No. 1 (2003) NISHIMURA In two movements (Japan, b. 1953) Western Hemisphere premiere This performance is supported in part by the Muriel Gluck Production Fund. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 1 Cover photo of bass clarinetist Andrew O’Donnell by Nan Melville Notes on the Program by Joel Sachs JOHN WOOLRICH The Devil in the Clock (2012) After the Clock (2005) John Woolrich John Woolrich studied English Literature at Manchester University and composition with Edward Cowie at Lancaster University. A practical Born: musician, Woolrich has founded and directed his own new-music Cirencester, group (the Composers Ensemble), and a London festival called Hoxton England, in 1954 New Music Days, and he has been composer in association with the Orchestra of St. John’s Smith Square (London) and the Britten Sinfonia. His collaborations with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group led to his appointment, along with Oliver Knussen, as artist in association. Woolrich was guest artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival in 2004 and associate artistic director, with Thomas Adès, and later Pierre-Laurent Aimard, from 2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2013 he was both artistic director of Dartington International Summer School and professor of music at Brunel University. He has taught at Durham University, Royal Holloway–University of London, and the Dartington International Summer School, and was a visiting fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Throughout the 1990s, Woolrich had a string of orchestral commissions which resulted in three pieces that he considers among his most important—concertos for viola, oboe, and cello. (A recording of the viola and oboe concertos on the NMC label was claimed as the BBC’s record of the week.) Other orchestral pieces written during this period include The Ghost in the Machine (1990), premiered in Japan with Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Si va facendo notte, which the Barbican Centre commissioned to celebrate the Mozart European Journey Project. A music-theater commission from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Trestle Theatre Company resulted in Bitter Fruit, a masque for mime actors and ensemble. Recent pieces include Capriccio for violin and strings commissioned by the Scottish Ensemble; Between the Hammer and the Anvil for the London Sinfonietta; a Violin Concerto for the Northern Sinfonia featuring Carolin Widmann, and Falling Down, a contrabassoon concerto commissioned by the Feeney Trust for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (C.B.S.O.) and Margaret Cookhorn. Other recent commissions have come from the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the C.B.S.O. (conducted by Andris Nelsons). Woolrich’s music is published by Faber Music. After living in France for a decade, he has recently returned to London. The two pieces heard tonight are independent of one another—the sources of their titles are also unrelated—but seemed to make a nice pair. Woolrich writes: The Devil in the Clock was one of 10 works commissioned by the BBC to be heard at 10 locations in South Kensington, London. Members of 2 the audience for a BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall were guided along a route leading to the hall, stopping at times to hear new pieces. My site was in Imperial College, next to a huge clock mechanism. It is scored for 13 instruments: four wind, five strings, a couple of brass, marimba, and harp. I chose some of the mellower, darker cousins of instruments (cor anglais, alto flute, and double bassoon for instance) and opted for instruments which can blend together to play the long melody which threads its way through the piece. After the Clock is (mostly) a fast, virtuosic, black, and raucous cap- riccio. It is written for the edgy, acrid, unblendable, one-of-everything ensemble often used by the London Sinfonietta [and many other groups, including the New Juilliard Ensemble] and lasts about 12 minutes. The title comes from a poem by the surrealist artist Jean (Hans) Arp. “It was in dreams that I learned how to write,” Arp said. His poems are built from precisely described images juxtaposed in a dreamlike structure. In them time looms large: “the small red clock that grinds the minutes into gray powder.” GERALD BARRY Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions (2008–09) After attending University College, Dublin, Gerald Barry continued his Gerald Barry studies abroad where he enjoyed the “liberating” experience of teachers Peter Schat (in Amsterdam), and Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Born: Kagel (in Cologne). In the years since several early radical compositions County Clare, brought him to public notice, he has received many commissions from Ireland, in 1952 British and continental orchestras and opera companies as well as the BBC and Channel 4 television (U.K.). Barry’s opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, jointly commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and London’s Barbican Centre, premiered in France in 2013 and was recently staged at Lincoln Center in June 2016. His next opera, Alice's Adventures Under Ground, starring Barbara Hannigan as Alice, was first heard in Los Angeles in December 2016 and in London at the Barbican the following spring, both in concert performances. (I was at the London performance and could not stop laughing.) His newest piece, Canada, for voice and orchestra, commissioned by the BBC for the 2017 Proms concerts, premiered on August 21 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Mirga Gražinyte˙-Tyla at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Barry is now beginning an organ concerto to be performed in 2018, a joint commission of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Southbank Centre (for the London Philharmonic), and the RTE (Irish Radio) Symphony Orchestra. Thomas Trotter will be the soloist. His music, published by Schott, has been recorded on the NMC, Largo, Black Box, Marco Polo, BVHaast, and RTE labels. 3 Notes on the Program (Continued) Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions was co-commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Although many in the audience may associate the title with the American avant-gardist Morton Feldman, it is a pure coincidence. The composer happily acknowledges Feldman’s humorous nature, and this will certainly strike the Feldman fans in the audience as an appropriate absurdity. Barry has provided the following autobiographical program note. Feldman’s was a music shop in London in the early 20th century. They sold collections of popular music for playing at home, and some of these were called Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions. Collections like these were among my first feverish encounters with music as a boy. I fell in love with pieces like “Martial Steps” and “The Dog Barks, The Caravan Passes On.” I entered into them completely, becoming one not only with the music, but with the paper they were printed on, and the advertisements on the back. In their advertisements, publishers placed tantalizing bars by each composer to show you what the music was like. I’d look at these, speculating for ages on how they might continue. I remember Irene Marschand Ritter (one of my favorites), Rowsby Woof (50 Elementary Studies), and Beethoven (Tunes From the Symphonies). I forced my mother to buy them, which she didn’t want to do. For years I had no idea there was anything but good music. As it was music, I assumed it was good, so I was usually happy. I think most of my boyhood was spent in an altered state, every piece I happened on was a new beginning. Before the world came crashing in, those early years of not-knowing were the best. Perhaps because I’d never been told what to think, and no one knew anyway, my Ritter, Woof, Beethoven love stayed with me. As we lived in an isolated place, I had no contact with anyone and learned conventional harmony by letter. I never met my harmony teacher. The act of having to post my exercises and getting them back covered in red marks gave the everyday progressions a heightened quality. This constant sending, waiting, sending, waiting, inflamed the chords in my head and they became my life.