Harvard University Department of M usic MUSICnewsletter Vol. 16, No. 1 Winter 2016 Yosvany Terry: It’s Always About the Music Yosvany Terry blends jazz with the ceremonial Music Building music of West Africa and Cuba. His 2014 album, North Yard New Throned King, was nominated for a 2015 Harvard University Grammy in the best Latin Jazz category. Terry plays Cambridge, MA 02138 saxophone and checkere, and tours with the Yosvany 617-495-2791 Terry Quartet and Yosvany Terry and the Afro- Caribbean Quintet, as well as with the Gonzalo www.music.fas.harvard.edu Rubalcaba Quintet and Eddie Palmieri and the Latin Jazz Ensemble. He’s working on a new CD with The Bohemian Trio. Terry is Visiting Senior INSIDE Lecturer on Music and Director of Jazz Ensembles. 2 Faculty News “Both parts of my family are grounded in musical tradition, in Yoruba tradition, which 3 Spirit Rising: Angélique Kidjo came from Africa to Cuba,” says Cuban-born 4 HRCM Collaborates w/BMOP Yosvany Terry. His father is a musician (violinist 6 Graduate Student News and master checkere player), and at the age of This blurring of musical territories, says Terry, five, Terry took up playing the violin. Later he helped him create his opera, Makandal (libretto 6 Panayotis League: Combining pursued classical saxophone at the School of by Carl H. Rux). The work, about a slave revo- Research & Performance Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory lution, is the first opera commissioned by the in Havana, and composition with Leo Edwards Harlem Stage. A version was presented at the 8 Alumni News at Mannes when he moved to New York. Guggenheim Museum in 2014, and the full 9 Library News: Chinese Piano “As a student in Cuba, I studied classical opera will premiere in 2016. “We had a hard Music; Hip Hop Archive European music, with mostly Russian and East- time trying to come up with a way to describe ern European teachers. There was no jazz music the music,” he says. 10 Calendar of Events school. But one day my brother and I discovered “Composers tend to look at schools of 11 Undergraduate News this ‘new’ music. He brought home a cassette composition—European, Western. Composi- of Chick Corea, and we were fascinated—what tion, for me, is one thing. Even though I work 11 A Music Curriculum for the 21st were they doing? We found the only two radio with jazz, contemporary, classical, I bring all I Century stations in Cuba that played the jazz masters, know to my composing. And I am exposed to and began to study jazz harmony and theory different traditions by touring. Musicians ask with a teacher at our music school who was a each other, ‘What’s in your ipod; here’s what’s great jazz musician. in mine.’ Now I’m listening to Dutilleux, and “It was an interesting duality for me then. other new French composers.” There were the demands of my classical music Terry recently toured Ancestral Memo- school and my discovery of jazz, plus the Afro- ries, a collaboration with French pianist and Cuban music traditions that were part of my composer Baptiste Trotignon (featuring Terry’s family; before I was born I was part of those younger brother Yunior Terry on bass and traditions. At a very early age I understood: in Jeff “Tain” Watts on drums) sponsored by the life it was always about music, and not about French-American Jazz Exchange. For Memories musical styles or vocabulary. I was playing it he explored the musical traditions of French for- Department Chair before I could even name it. I thought that was mer colonies—Martinique, Haiti, Guadalupe, Carol J. Oja normal. It prepared me in a way that is different New Orleans, Cuba—and used the research to Director of Administration from people in other countries.” inspire new compositions. Nancy Shafman continued, p. 2 Newsletter Editor Lesley Bannatyne [email protected] Terry, continued Faculty News “What I’m doing is not new. Bartok, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Pro- a suite of duo music with trumpeter Wadada Ravel, Prokofiev, they all researched folk music fessor Carolyn Abbate was named an honorary Leo Smith, titled “A Cosmic Rhythm With and brought it into their composition. I’m get- member of AMS at the annual meeting this fall. Each Stroke,”commissioned by the Met and ting inspiration from famous composers to do Precepter Richard Beaudoin gave a inspired by the works of the late Indian abstract the same, to bring all music to any composi- lecture on his own compositions, entitled “Com- artist Nasreen Mohamedi. The recording will be tion I have to write. To think like that helps me position and Microtiming” at the Shanghai released in March 2016 on ECM Records. Mr. not to get caught up in false arguments about Conservatory, and a theory lecture at East China Smith will be the department’s Eileen Southern style, or which music is more important. It’s Normal University, “Nature versus Man: Linear Distinguished Visitor for the Fromm Concerts, not the way I was brought up.” Analysis of Lieder by Schubert and Schumann.” which Iyer is curating this year. Terry has brought this musical openness He gave a talk, “On Pacing, Performance and Morton B. Knafel Professor Thomas F. to his first course at Harvard, a fundamentals Composition” at Brandeis University and Bos- Kelly and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium of modern jazz class that focuses on West Af- ton University. His latest compositions were Musicum presented a performance of highlights rican traditions. “I am used to teaching music premiered by Iktus Percussion in New York, by from Handel’s Messiah in Sanders Theatre in majors. Here, students are studying philoso- Transient Canvas in Boston, and most recently December. As philanthropy inspired the concep- phy, engineering, computer science, language; in London, where cellist Neil Heyde (Professor, tion of Messiah and sustained its early history as they’re graduate students, undergraduates, all Royal Academy of Music) premiered Bacchante at a benefit for many charities, this performance with varying levels of skill. But the music was Wilton’s Music Hall in December. A new study raised awareness and resources for the Y2Y stu- new to all of them, it was a great leveler. of Beaudoin’s compositional techniques, Danick dent organization, a shelter for young adults in “We’re reading scholarly articles by eth- Trottier’s “Richard Beaudoin et la méthode du Harvard Square. nomusicologists in the African diaspora, and microminutage” was published in the latest William Powell Mason Professor Carol J. at the same time, learning Yoruba music tradi- volume of the European journal Dissonance. Oja won the Music in American Culture book tion. What I’m passing on to them—chants, Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor Chaya Cz- award from the American Musicological Society rhythms, melodies—isn’t written out in the ernowin’s Adiantum Capillus-Veneris, Etudes in for her recent book, Bernstein Meets Broadway. same way as Western music. It’s an oral tradi- fragility for voice and breath No I, commissioned She was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow tion. To learn a tradition and talk critically for the ARD competition in Munich, premiered at Harvard for 2015–2016. Oja also conducted about it, to question why it was written, who in September. The New Music Journal called the a public interview with Eric Owens, “Assessing wrote it, what was the audience for it, what do piece “an impertinence in the best sense.” Jeff Ga- the Influence of African American Classical Art- I think about it, it’s incredible. The students vett gave the piece its NYC premiere. In October, ists” as part of Insights at the Atrium, sponsored are a great motivation. You see sparks in their Once I blinked nothing was the same/ a large scale continued, p. 5 eyes, and it gives me more incentive to prepare miniature was performed by Jonathan Note and Wolff elected to for next class.” Bamberg Symphony orchestra and knights of the Terry’s students performed original West strange-Tutti was premiered in the festival Wien Orden Pour le mérite African-inspired compositions at the end of Modern. A CD of Czernowin’s Shu Hai Practices Adams University Research Professor Chris- the term. “Part of class is to prepare them to Javelin was released on Neos. Czernowin has toph Wolff has been elected to Germany's feel capable on stage. If they decide to continue begun work on a commission for her new opera. Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften in music, I’ve given them an authentic idea of The piece (for 6 singers, 7 actors 4 instrumental und Künste, joining fourteen Nobel Laure- what it is to be a musician and a performer.” soloists, large orchestra and IRCAM ) will be ates and other international leaders in the introduced in all the commissioning theaters and arts and sciences in the historic honor so- at the new Paris Philharmonic, with a combined ciety. Past members have included Darwin, season stretching from April to June of 2017. Einstein, T.S. Eliot, Longfellow, Mendels- Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor sohn, Rossini, Brahms, and Verdi. In 1860, Vijay Iyer’s trio album Break Stuff has Louis Agassiz, founder of the Museum of received the Preis der deutschen Schallplatten- Comparative Zoology, became the first Har- kritik, the German Record Critics’ prize of the vard faculty member so honored; Byzantinist year. The album was also named one of the best Ernst Kitzinger the second. Wolff, a music albums of 2015 by Time Magazine, NPR, the historian who joined the Harvard faculty Boston Globe, New York Times, PopMatters, and in 1976, was chosen in September and will the Los Angeles Times.