Deviant Septet

Karen Kim, violin

Doug Balliett, contrabass

Bill Kalinkos, clarinet

Brad Balliett, bassoon

Mike Gurfield, trumpet

Mike Lormand, trombone

Jared Soldiviero, percussion

Tuesday, October 25, 2016 7:30 p.m. University Auditorium

Program

L.E.O. (2012) Caroline Shaw (b.1982)

Recovering (2012) Chris Cerrone (b. 1984)

Catch and Release (2006) Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958) I. Tema II. Aria III. Games

—INTERMISSION—

L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) (1918) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Part One I. The Soldier’s March II. Music to Scene One: Airs by a Stream III. Reprise of The Soldier’s March IV. Music to Scene Two: Pastorale V. Postlude to Pastorale VI. Reprise of Airs by a Stream VII. Music to Scene Three

Part Two VIII. The Soldier’s March IX. Continuation of Marching Tunes X. Royal March XI. The Little Concert XII. Tango XIII. Waltz XIV. Ragtime XV. The Devil’s Dance XVI. The Little Chorale XVII. The Devil’s Song XVIII. The Great Chorale XIX. The Devil’s Triumphant March

For the legal and physical safety of the artists and for the comfort of the audience, cameras and other recording devices are not permitted in the hall during the performance.

Members of the Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity sell refreshments during intermission as a fundraiser and service project.

The Deviant Septet appears by arrangement with Serious Music Media, http://www.seriousmusicmedia.com

Deviant Septet

The Deviant Septet gave its premiere concert in May 2011. The group’s commission of David Liptak’s Focusing received a 2013 Serge Koussevitzky Foundation commissioning grant. The Septet’s members also perform with various contemporary groups like Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Signal, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble ACJW, the Wordless Music Orchestra, and the Talea Ensemble, and they collaborate with artists such as The National, David Byrne, the Dirty Projectors, Tyondai Braxton, St. Vincent, and John Zorn.

This season's highlights include three trips to Duke University, where the Deviant Septet works with Ph.D. student composers and premieres a new version of Pierrot Lunaire arranged for septet; the world premiere of a new work by Doug and Brad Balliett for septet and choir with the Cecilia Chorus in New York City; a swing through Texas to play and teach at Rice University; and the release of the Deviant Septet's first album with music by Igor Stravinsky and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Septet just received grants from the Alice M. Ditson Fund and the Amphion Foundation to support their Summer Composition Intensive at Dickinson College, an annual festival for young composers to work intimately with the ensemble, starting in June 2017.

Individual Biographies

Violinist Karen Kim is widely hailed for her sensitive musicianship and passionate commitment to chamber and contemporary music. Her performances have been described as “compellingly structured and intimately detailed” (Cleveland Classical) and “muscular and gripping” (New York Classical Review). She has performed extensively on five continents. Among her recordings with the Parker Quartet, the complete string quartets of György Ligeti received the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance. Karen is a member of Third Sound, the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, the Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and Ensemble Échappe, and frequently performs with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Metropolis Ensemble, NOVUS NY, and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble. She has premiered works by many leading composers.

Bassist Doug Balliett's career has spanned composition, performances of classical, new and early music, rap, rock, and conducting. His compositions have been heard around the world, ranging from works for solo instrument in Lincoln Center to full scale hip-hopera in Lucerne. His bass playing has been described as "elegant" (New York Times), and his compositions have been critiqued as "brilliant and witty" (New York Times). He has performed as solo or principal bass with Ensemble Modern, the San Antonio Symphony, the Metropolis Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the Talea Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Ensemble ACJW, NOVUS, the Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Arcadian Players, and Pink Martini.

Clarinetist Bill Kalinkos,"a powerhouse" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "a superb performer" (San Jose Mercury News), is a member of Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Signal, the Deviant Septet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Eco Ensemble. Recognized by the Washington Post as a "notable contemporary music specialist," he has premiered pieces by many composers. Bill is the principal clarinetist of the Oakland Symphony, has performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kansas City Symphony, has served on the faculties of the University of Missouri and the Universities of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley, and has recorded for the Cantaloupe, Nonesuch, Euroarts, Naxos, Albany Records, Deutsche Gramophon, and Harmonia Mundi labels.

Brad Balliett is principal bassoon of the Princeton Symphony and artistic director of the chamber music collective Decoda. He performs regularly with the Metropolis Ensemble, Ensemble Signal and Ensemble ACJW, and has performed with International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra musicians. Brad has participated in festivals including Marlboro, Tanglewood, June in Buffalo, the Newport Jazz Festival, and the Lucerne Festival. As a composer, Brad is currently working on a choral work, a bassoon concerto, and an opera. He makes operatic hip- hop albums and hosts a weekly radio show with his twin brother, Doug, on WQXR’s Q2 Music.

Artistic Director Mike Gurfield has performed trumpet with contemporary music groups such as Alarm Will Sound and the American Composers Orchestra, on Broadway, and in concert with the New Jersey Symphony, the Harrisburg Symphony, and The Knights. Also active in the indie-rock world, Mike performs and records with David Byrne, The Dirty Projectors, Tyondai Braxton, John Cale, and Johnny Greenwood. Mike teaches trumpet at New York University and is the head of the brass department at New York's Greenwich House Music School. He has been heard on live radio on NPR and Radio Bremen and on recordings on the Sony Classical, Warner Brothers, Warp Records, Naxos, and New Amsterdam Records labels.

Trombonist Mike Lormand is a performer of eclectic classical and contemporary music in solo, chamber, and orchestral settings. He is a member of the Deviant Septet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Weather Vest Quartet, and also performs with the Talea Ensemble, Argento Chamber Ensemble, TILT Brass, and Steve Coleman’s Council of Balance. Mike is a member of the period ensemble Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. As a freelance trombonist, he has appeared on Broadway, as lead trombone on the Radio City New York Spectacular, in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Stone, and Littlefield, and with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, The Knights, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, IRIS Orchestra, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Percussionist Jared Soldiviero has performed with American Ballet Theater, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic and is a member of Decoda and Newband, a group dedicated to preserving the microtonal instruments built by Harry Partch. Jared was an inaugural fellow of The Academy at Carnegie Hall and has toured extensively with Ensemble ACJW. He has appeared with new music groups such as Argento, Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, Wordless Music, and Perspectives Ensemble. Jared’s compositions, available at Bachovich Publications, have been performed by the percussion ensembles of Boston University, Rutgers University, and New York University.

Program Notes

Caroline Shaw New York-based musician Caroline Shaw is a Grammy-winning singer in Roomful of Teeth, a violinist in the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices. Recent and current projects include commissions for the Cincinnati Symphony, the Guggenheim Museum Works & Process Series, and the Folger Library, and collaborations with Kanye West. In her work L.E.O., commissioned by the Deviant Septet, Shaw reimagines Leo from Stockhausen’s Tierkreis.

Chris Cerrone Recovering is about gradually coming back to how things were, and in the process becoming something new. When wounds heal, new skin grows back in its place. In this piece, I selected a brief moment from L’Histoire du soldat’s “Pastorale” and froze it. This gesture is first played by a sustained vibraphone, coated in a delicate haze of breath sounds arranged to surround the audience—as in recovery, breathing is the most basic element. Stravinsky’s gesture gradually thaws and gains direction, joined by evolving sounds in the strings. In time, tiny alterations to the gesture—a displaced octave, a new pitch, different harmonies, and finally a regular pulse—recontextualize it completely from its origins in L’Histoire. Only at this point does the music reach a state of repose and stability, if only temporarily. Recovering is dedicated to my teacher and friend Nils Vigeland, who first introduced me to the wonders of Stravinsky, particularly L’Histoire.

Esa-Pekka Salonen How does one compose a piece for the distinctive Soldier’s Tale instrumentation and make it not sound too much like Stravinsky’s masterpiece? Catch and Release lends itself more to some other Stravinsky gems: the trombone glissandi from Pulcinella and the wind fanfares from Agon. The influence of John Adams and Maurice Ravel can be heard, too. The perky spirit, the exceptional quick wit, the quicksilver rhythmic writing, and the fresh harmonic language are pure Salonen, though. In the end, Catch and Release may be more companion to Salonen's own Insomnia, his dark 9/11 orchestral score. He said that it contains ideas he had in 2002, when writing the earlier work, but that they were too bright for it. Here, then, is music with which to greet the dawn and take delight in a new day. –Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

Igor Stravinsky In 1918, with Europe still dealing with the devastation of World War I, Igor Stravinsky was living in Switzerland. His three major scores for the ballets The Firebird, Petrouchka, and The Rite of Spring had made him a major international reputation. But, given the times, he conceived of The Soldier’s Tale as a minimalist theater piece for two actors, a narrator, a dancer, and seven musicians who could go on the road with the production. The work did not end up touring, but the music became a landmark of the period. It represents the neoclassical aesthetic that repudiated the chromatic and lushly orchestrated late Romantic style, and the unfortunate fact that the war had taken a terrible toll on musicians. Stravinsky’s choice of instruments—roughly the highest and lowest from each of the instrument families, plus percussion—offers a wide a range of sonorities with the greatest economy of means and represents an early jazz ensemble, though Stravinsky chose bassoon rather than saxophone as the low woodwind.

Ragtime and proto-jazz were popular in Europe 1918, but Stravinsky said it was sheet music and not live performances of this new American music that influenced his style and choice of instruments. He captures the essence of the march, waltz, tango and ragtime dance although he constantly changes meter, and his extended diatonic harmony is more neoclassical than jazzy. Stravinsky also nods his head to the Bach revival of the time, choosing to write chorales (although with a “wrong- note” style wink) for the wedding of the soldier and the princess.

The story is based on a Russian folk tale. The Devil, in disguise, encounters a soldier on leave from his regiment. In exchange for the soldier’s violin, the Devil offers a book that promises great wealth but will put the soldier under his power. The soldier accepts and becomes rich but is friendless and spiritually impoverished. The princess of the land is ill, and if the soldier can make her well, he will win her hand in marriage. He wins the violin back from the Devil through a card trick and with his violin plays dances that raise her from her sick bed. She is cured, and they marry. The Devil warns the soldier that he may never return to his homeland or he will be irrevocably doomed. The soldier, however, cannot resist returning to his home village, and the Devil, playing the violin again, leads him triumphantly to Hell. -Mary DuPree