559190 bk Feldman US 2/11/05 10:00 Page 5 Carol Zeavin Joshua Gordon AMERICAN CLASSICS A native of Los Angeles, California, Carol Zeavin graduated cum laude from UCLA and served as concertmaster of The cellist Joshua Gordon joined the Lydian String Quartet and the faculty of Brandeis University in 2002. He is an the UCLA Symphony under Mehli Mehta. During this time she also served as Principal Second of both the Young alumnus of the Juilliard School and the Tanglewood Music Center, and has been heard as soloist and chamber Musicians’ Foundation Debut Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas and of the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. musician in concerts, festivals, and broadcasts across the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, and Her interest in chamber music led her to string quartet residencies in Binghamton, Buffalo and Vermont, as well as South America. He has been a member of the New York Chamber Soloists (1984-1987), the Group For quartet performances at the Grand Teton and White Mountain music festivals. Her arrival in New York in 1976 Contemporary Music (1990-1993), and the New Millennium Ensemble (1992-1994), and has performed as a guest heralded the founding of the Columbia String Quartet, which gave first performances of works by Charles with the Cassatt and Ying Quartets, Emmanuel Music, the Fromm Chamber Players at Harvard University, the New Wuorinen, Nicolas Roussakis, Lukas Foss, Morton Feldman and Wayne Peterson, and the world première of Alban York Festival of Song, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae. He was principal cellist of the Morton Berg’s programmatic Lyric Suite with voice. She has performed with Speculum Musicae since 1976, and has Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic in Scranton and Wilkes Barre (1999-2004) and acting principal cellist of recorded chamber music for Columbia Records, New World Records, Nonesuch, CRI, Bridge Records and Koch the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (2000-2001). He is currently principal cellist of the New England String International. She gave her solo New York début recital in 1982. In her orchestral work Carol Zeavin has served as Ensemble, co-principal cellist of the New Hampshire Symphony, and resident cellist at the annual Composers FELDMAN principal second with the American Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Conference at Wellesley College. He studied with Harvey Shapiro, Joel Krosnick, and the Juilliard Quartet, and American Ballet Theatre, and Paul Taylor Ballet. She currently serves as principal second of the New York more recently with George Neikrug. He is featured on recordings from Albany, CRI, Cala, Koch International Chamber Symphony, and Dance Theatre of Harlem, and was a member for twenty years of the Mostly Mozart Classics, Tall Poppies, and Tzadik, and with the Lydians received a Copland Fund grant to record the complete Orchestra. In addition, since 1992, she has embraced a second career in Early Childhood Education and Early string quartets of Vincent Persichetti for Centaur. Intervention, has received two Masters degrees from Bank Street College and permanent certification from the State of New York. Formerly Head Teacher at the Barnard College Toddler Development Center, she is now working in the field of Special Education with young children at home and at school. String Lois Martin Quartet Lois Martin, a native of York, Pennsylvania, began her viola studies with Arthur Lewis at the Peabody Preparatory School. She completed her undergraduate work at the Eastman School of Music where she was a scholarship student of Francis Tursi. During this time she was a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She continued her graduate studies at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Lillian Fuchs. She is a founding member (1979) of the Atlantic String Quartet, which is dedicated to the performance of newly written compositions, and is also principal violist for the Stamford Symphony, Solisti New York, OK Mozart Festival, Concordia and String Fever. She is also a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Salon Chamber Players and the American Chamber Ensemble. Performances have included three different tours to California playing with Michael Brecker, the New York City Ballet and New York New Music. She also recorded the cast album of the Broadway hit Spamalot and John Zorns’s Orphee. She was principal violist for the Martha Graham Dance Company. In addition, she had the honour of playing for Pierre Boulez’s eightieth birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall. Her continuing commitment to contemporary music includes performances with the Group for Contemporary Music, the ISCM Chamber Players, the Ensemble Sospeso, Ensemble 21, the New York New Music Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the Composers’ Guild, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Composers Forum, Musicians’ Accord, and Steve Reich and Musicians. Lois Martin is also on the faculty of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and has taught at Princeton University. The Group for Contemporary Music 8.559190 5 6 8.559190 559190 bk Feldman US 2/11/05 10:00 Page 2 Morton Feldman (1926-1987) admiration for the music of Anton Webern5. Feldman 1 Ben Hudson, the first violinist on this recording, was The Group for Contemporary Music String Quartet (1979) does not follow strict serial procedures for ordering the the leader of the Columbia Quartet. chromatic scale, rather he starts with a chromatic subset In 1985 The Group for Contemporary Music was awarded a citation from the American Academy and Institute of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a characterized the String Quartet as a natural result of his which he utilizes as his basic material. Typically, he works 2 February 1981 at the CalArts Contemporary Music Arts and Letters as follows: “The Group for Contemporary Music, founded in 1962 by Harvey Sollberger and decade of compositional activity where the composer work up to that time: with groupings of three to eight notes (a three pitch class Festival. The audience at this performance was so full of Charles Wuorinen ... changed the musical climate by redefining the standards of performance of knowing, was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. chromatic sequence, such as C sharp, D, E flat, serving for tension that Feldman later characterized it as “like a demanding contemporary composition. It was the first collection of musicians joined in ensemble to present new In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced “Mel Powell used the word at his talk the other him as the most fundamental of building blocks.) From lynch mob”. music exclusively and appropriately, with the necessary preparation, in time and understanding. Today its ideals, fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and day, a term which I feel very important to me. these pitch class groupings he realizes a musical idea and its personnel have spawned a population of such groups across the country...wherever the music of our time has the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and The term is strategy ... I don’t like to give things through an aspect of orchestration, registration or 3 Completed on 13th May, 1981. Its original title was its rightful place.” For four decades, the Group has been central to the American new music scene, and for more Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only a name. This is my compositional strategy, I rhythmic patterning. The result is an identifiable musical Patterns in a Chromatic Field, a title equally applicable than a generation has trained or introduced a large number of distinguished musicians. The Group’s primary aim is three orchestral works were written, The Turfan don’t want to give things a name. If I have module which is brought back at various times in the to the String Quartet. to present a broad spectrum of the highest compositional achievements of our time, from the classic works of our Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel repetition I don’t call it repetition. It looks like course of a particular work. With each return the material century to emerging new talents, never bowing to fashions of the moment, but always supporting excellence in Beckett (1987). With the String Quartet, Feldman’s repetition, it doesn’t sound like repetition ... is altered; sometimes this is subtle (such as a cello figure 4 Feldman had high regard for Varèse. When they composition and performance. attention turned almost exclusively to chamber music, subsequently played by the violin - in the same octave). It created a professorial chair in music composition at the and particularly, to the long piece. This change, I would never let a student of mine put in a repeat is a modular form of construction, with an obvious debt to University at Buffalo for Feldman, he asked that they however, was not made without a certain degree of sign. I would say, “something’s happening, what Stravinsky, but also to his own music from the 1950s name the chair after Varèse. Benjamin Hudson uncertainty. if you wanted to change your mind?” where he composed graphic scores on a grid. The String Quartet was first performed on 4th May, A note about tempos: scores from Feldman’s last peri- 5 Two Webern rows are quoted toward the end of Violin Benjamin Hudson was born in the State of Illinois and grew up in California. He studied with famous violin teachers 1980, by the Columbia Quartet1 at the Drawing Center I copy like an idiot. Until finally I put a double od usually carry the tempo mark 63 to 66 (to the quarter and Orchestra, written for Paul Zukofsky. At one time such as Oscar Shumsky, Joseph Gingold, Donald Weilerstein, Joseph Silverstein and Henryk Szeryng. During his in New York City. The performance lasted well over bar line in and I just write fifteen times, seven note), indicating a slow tempo with a certain degree of he considered entitling this violin concerto Why years in New York from 1975-1995, he was concertmaster of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Clarion Chamber one and a half hours, hence the nick-name of “100 times, nine times.