american composers orchestra world premiere recording Clyne • Dawe McGowan Mason • Trueman Playing It UNsafe ABOUT PLAYING IT UNSAFE Anna Clyne: Tender Hooks “Tender Hooks” is an experimental work cre- Playing It UNsafe, is the first professional ated by collaborators Anna Clyne, Jeremy research and development lab to support Flower and Joshue Ott. The work stretches the the creation of cutting-edge new American orchestra by means of live electronics and live orchestral music. Through no-holds-barred visuals, creating a synergistic audio and visual experimentation, it encourages composers experience. to do anything but “play it safe.” “Tender Hooks” features technologies and Anna Clyne, Jonathan Dawe, Ned McGowan, instruments created and developed by the Charles Norman Mason, and Dan Trueman, laptop-artists themselves. Flower performs were selected from a national search for with digital source sounds, custom-made their willingness to experiment and stretch instruments, and the orchestra as a source for their own musical sensibilities, and their live processing. Ott performs with his super- ability to test the limits of the orchestra. Draw software, created for live visual expres- Playing It UNsafe grew out of American sion. For this live recording, Ott and Flower Composers Orchestra’s (ACO) ongoing mis- linked their computers to transmit live data sion to commission and perform new music and to receive live data from the orchestra. that expands the range of possibilities for – Clyne’s score is specifically composed for these ACO Music Director George Manahan says, and challenges conventional notions about two solo artists with orchestra – each element “Orchestra commissions are usually about – orchestral music. being choreographed through a combination orchestras telling composers what they of standard notation, written instructions and should deliver: x minutes duration, winds Great art is about new ideas and risk- graphic representation. This process incorpo- in twos, something that pairs well with a taking. Too often in orchestra music, that rates a wide variety of input devices such as Brahms Symphony, etc. It’s no wonder many ‘on-the-edge-what-happens-next’ element microphones, foot pedals, controllers, drawing really creative musical voices turn to other is stripped out. Rehearsal time is limited, tablets and theremins. vehicles besides the orchestra. We wanted standardization prevails, box office pres- to turn the tables, so to speak, to have really ANNA CLYNE sures restrict possibilities. With Playing It innovative composers tell us what they’ve Anna Clyne is a composer of acoustic and elec- UNsafe, ACO created a paradigm that was always wanted to do. We created a program tro-acoustic music, combining resonant sound- more open-ended, that invited composers that helps bring their ideas to life. Then we scapes with propelling textures that weave, to stretch themselves, to give us their best invited listeners to follow the trajectory and morph, and collide in dramatic explosions. Her new ideas, no matter how out-of-the-norm development of these pieces, rather than work, described as “dazzlingly inventive” by they might be. treating the premiere as an isolated event.” Time Out New York, often includes collabora- tions with cutting edge choreographers, visual Libretto: artists, film-makers, and musicians. The Chica- (text in blue is translated) go Symphony’s Mead Composer-in-Residence through the 2010-11 season, Clyne has also RENAUD served as the Director of the New York Youth Armide, do you leave me now? Symphony’s program for young composers “Making Score.” ARMIDE I must go, I must go… Clyne was a 2006 participant in ACO’s annual Emerging Composers Readings. Her commis- RENAUD sions include works for the Chicago Symphony Armide, do you leave me then? Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, the London Sinfonietta, and ARMIDE the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Awards include My work requires solitude ASCAP, a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Meet RENAUD the Composer, the American Music Center, the Stay, please just don’t leave again Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Her music is published by ARMIDE Boosey & Hawkes. Before you loved me, Glory was your quest, Conquest was your love! Jonathan Dawe: Overture and with ambition, duties, a growing love for Ren- RENAUD Ballet Music from Armide aud, a driving hope for her country, and deeper I was wrong in my thinking then understanding of her culture. Just don’t leave, not yet “Armide”, a new opera set in 2019, is a dynam- Baby, don’t you know I need some more ic drama set in post-war Iraq. In a transformed Based on musical fragments from Jean-Bap- Than your beautiful eyes… political and social landscape, there is a fragile tiste Lully’s 1686 opera of the same title, the co-existence among the integrated American new work transforms musical material into a No, no presence, the InnerAmerican Republic led by dynamic postmodern syntax by applying com- Please don’t leave, Renaud, and the Iraqi people. As the Iraqi so- position procedures based on fractal geom- Stay awhile, stay ciety is exasperated with the ineffectiveness etry. In addition, the work involves influences No, please don’t go. of current politicians, Armide has emerged as of American (east and west coast) hip-hop an Don’t you know when you leave, you carry me a leader among the people. Armide struggles Iraqi folk music as compositional ingredients. with you? RENAUD Ned McGowan: I know you’ll return Bantammer Swing ARMIDE The contrabass flute is the larger cousin of No, no the normal flute, sounding two octaves below I have to go now for a short while and taking up four times as much space. It’s I’m leaving… largely unknown in the classical repertoire, and I know you’ll be with me, “Bantammer Swing” is likely the first ever solo You know I’ll be back. concerto written for it. The piece is a standard Please, just wait… concerto form of three movements with a cadenza. ARMIDE (teasing) Perhaps the cleaning women will entertain you That being the case, McGowan’s main goal as While you wait… a composer was to try to show off some of its qualities – the singing highs, the velvety middles, the rich lows, and also some of its possibilities for extended techniques. Having JONATHAN DAWE played the smaller flute for many years before Cited for his innovative sound, involving the becoming a composer, he was immediately natic [South Indian music], a fascination with recasting of early music through composi- attracted to the low notes on the contrabass proportionally intricate rhythms, the use of tional workings based upon fractal geometry, flute and the various musical roles possible at microtones in the search for new subtleties of Jonathan Dawe’s music has been described the low end of the frequency spectrum. melody rub against each other and generate as “skillful,” “sparkling” (New York Times) and new meanings.” This is how musicologist Bob “envelope-pushing” (Boston Globe). “The Regarding the title, McGowan recently moved Gilmore describes composer and flutist Ned Flowering Arts” was commissioned by James to a different house after living in his little McGowan. Levine and The Boston Symphony Orchestra Amsterdam attic apartment on the Binnen in 2006, making Dawe the youngest com- Bantammer street. He chose the title to com- After finishing studies in flute at the San Fran- poser ever commissioned by Levine. Subse- memorate his time there and because most of cisco Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute quent to the premiere of these excerpts from the voices in “Bantammer Swing” are the ones of Music, McGowan moved to Amsterdam “Armide” by ACO, scenes from the opera were he developed during that period. to continue his research. Over the course of presented in the New York City Opera’s VOX eight years, he studied both flute and compo- program in 2009. In addition to ACO, Dawe’s NED McGOWAN sition in Amsterdam and The Hague, explor- works have been performed by The Miró Quar- “McGowan’s music strives for an idiom in ing a wide range of subjects – from extended tet, The New York Baroque Dance Company, which various musics – American popular, techniques to Carnatic forms and rhythms, The Cygnus Ensemble and others. European classical, avant-garde, and Car- from jazz improvisation to West-African drum- ming. His compositional voice was profoundly CHARLES NORMAN MASON influenced by these experiences, even though Charles Norman Mason has been recognized he never directly follows any of these tradi- repeatedly for his originality and attention to tions stylistically. color. Steve Smith of The New York Times writes “‘Additions’ by Charles Mason , offered In 2007, his specific fascination with Carnatic a nearly seamless integration of electronic and music led to a series of extended stays in India acoustic sounds…” Peter Burwasser of Fanfare studying performance, rhythm and composi- writes that Mason’s music speaks in a “boldly, tion. “What fascinates me is the Carnatic use original voice.” He received the 2005 Rome of rhythmical complexities developed through Prize and is associate professor of composi- a tradition of performance.” But despite what- tion and director of the electroacoustic music ever complexity McGowan might write, his studio at the Frost School of Music at the music is never bookish; it is written with both University of Miami. the performers and the listeners in mind. In his debut in Carnegie Hall with ACO, he “proved Dan Trueman: Silicon/Carbon: there’s still plenty of life in old-fashioned an anti-Concerto Grosso virtuosity with ‘Bantammer Swing,’ a playful, athletic concerto for his unwieldy contrabass “Silicon/Carbon: an anti-Concerto Grosso” flute,” according to The New York Times. features, alongside ACO, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), an ensemble of computer- based instruments.