Mika Pelo and kurt rohde, co-directors Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center The DeparTmenT of music presenTs The Empyrean Ensemble Mika Pelo and Kurt Rohde, Co-directors Americans in Rome Pre-concert talk: 6pm, moderated by Kurt Rohde Program Mu for Solo Violin (2007) Keeril Makan (b. 1972) Piano Etude No. 5 from 7 Piano Etudes (2008–09) Don Byron (b. 1957) Bird as Prophet for Violin and Piano (1999) Martin Bresnick (b. 1946) Piano Etude No. 2 from 7 Piano Etudes (2008–09) Don Byron Song for Andrew for Piano Quartet (2008) Laura Schwendinger (b. 1962) Intermission Three Phantasy Pieces for Viola and Percussion (2005) Claude Baker I. J.B. (b. 1948) II. R.S. III. H.B. Piano Etude No. 3 (a la Suzanne Vega) from 7 Piano Etudes (2008–09) Don Byron Dusk from The Book of Hours for Piano Trio (2000) Martin Brody (b. 1949) Piano Etude No. 6 from 7 Piano Etudes (2008–09) Don Byron Mu for Solo Violin (2007) Keeril Makan Hrabba Atladottir, violin; Ellen Ruth Rose, viola; Michael Graham, cello; Chris Froh, percussion; Michael Seth Orland, piano Sunday, January 23, 2011 • 7:00 pm Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center 3 NOTES Mu (2007) for prepared violin: some meanings of Mu (according to Wikipedia): · Micro- the prefix signifying one millionth. · In Zen Buddhism, a word that can mean neither yes nor no. · The twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet, which was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water. · The name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth’s oceans but disappeared at the dawn of human history. 7 Piano Etudes (2008–09). Originally, I conceived a work inspired by Kurt Schwitters, but I changed my mind after a pianist showed me some etudes by Brahms. I immediately knew there would be 7 (it just sounds great) and planned specific stylistic choices for each etude according to its numeric position. I love the idea of developing a pedagogy for the technical elements of one’s own music. Steve Coleman is great at that. Conlon Nancarrow gave up on it. I am a big fan of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. The idea of creating pedagogical music with high artistic content really appeals to me. Bartók did a great job of introducing the idea of modern controlled dissonance as a form of entertainment, in hopes of creating a new audience for the sort of music he chose to make. At this point in musical history, post-Stravinsky/Schoenberg, playing complicated rhythms correctly enough to create a groove may be the new frontier for the modern classical player. It’s much simpler to play individual measures correctly than it is to make a long passage groove, especially when the measures are not exact repeats. Each etude has a different technical focus. Many of them are exercises in ambidexterity, independence, basic ear training, and singing. One movement was inspired by a famous Picasso painting; another movement was inspired by a long-forgotten ad campaign for a soft drink; another explores the rhythmic structure of the Wiener Waltz. Overall, the pianist/vocalist is asked to reveal her inner “entertainer” as well as her mathematical musicianship. Bird as Prophet for Violin and Piano is the last in a series of twelve pieces entitled Opere della Musica Povera (Works of a Poor Music). The title Bird as Prophet refers to a piano miniature of the same name from Robert Schumann’s Waldszenen, op. 82. Bird as Prophet’s combination of simple programmatic suggestiveness and abstract patterning seeks to recapture the vivid, oracular, but finally enigmatic spirit of Schumann’s (and Charlie Parker’s) remarkable musical prophecies. Song for Andrew was written in memory of my teacher Andrew Imbrie. It was composed for Young-Nam Kim and Sally Chisholm, two of Andrew’s close friends and was premiered in Minnesota in spring 2009 and performed by the New Juilliard Ensemble on the Summergarden series at MOMA last summer. The opening violin line is from the second movement of Andrew’s wonderful work Pilgrimage (1983), for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello, which was written for and premiered by Collage New Music in Boston. This movement is a deeply moving and personal work on every level. Punctuated at the opening with chimes and high piano, it has a haunting, bell-like clarity. This movement continues on to explore instrumental interaction through long arching linear lines and exacting jazz rhythms. I have isolated the theme here in its simplest form, to highlight the depth of its melodic beauty, and added my own accompaniment to the opening. My voice and a strain of Andrew’s voice join in one last, affectionate conversation, but soon this material takes on a character all its own as it develops and unfolds. Three Phantasy Pieces for Viola and Percussion were commissioned by the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa for Christine Rutledge and Daniel Moore. Each movement draws its inspiration in turn from three well-known compositions for viola. The first piece in the set makes oblique reference to the second movement of the Sonata for Viola and Piano, op. 120, no. 1, by Johannes Brahms. The next uses as its structural (and motivic) basis the second “Märchenbild” of Robert Schumann and provides a light-hearted foil for the more somber outer movements. The final piece is a parody of the “Procession of the Pilgrims” from Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy and is, in essence, a chaconne (a musical form based on the continuous variation of a series of chords). The gradual unfolding and intensification of the chaconne pattern in both the viola and vibraphone are interrupted at the movement’s climax with a modified quotation of the “Canto Religioso” from Berlioz’s work. Dusk is the concluding piece of a group of three that comprises a cycle, Book of Hours. Like its companions (Dawn and Meridian), it conveys the sensations and aura of a particular time of day. Dawn evokes a slow awakening and a sense of inchoate potential; Meridian the nervous energy, mercurial thought processes, and inflated sense of high purpose that I associate with midday. In the concluding piece, Dusk is a time of muted colors and a calm that can’t quite be sustained. The movement offers a fleeting sense of struggle between accepting and resisting the fact of day’s end and the conclusion of its restless activity. Each passage embellishes a cadential gesture that appears at the outset. Melodic ideas and harmonic progressions emerge, more or less strongly resisting the initial impulse for closure. The movement as a whole is comprised of continuous variations on and elaborations of the initial material, finally coming to accept its insistent premise. Dusk was written for and premiered by Triple Helix under the auspices of a commission from First Nights, a core course of the Harvard University Music Department, with funding from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard. 4 aBOUT THE ARTISTs Icelandic violinist Hrabba Atladottir studied in Berlin with Primarily a composer of concert and theatrical chamber Axel Gerhardt. After finishing her studies, Hrabba worked as music, Martin Brody has also written extensively for film and a freelance violinist in Berlin for five years, regularly playing television. He has received various awards and commissions, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Oper, and among them the Academy-Institute Award from the American Deutsche Symphonieorchester. Hrabba also participated in a Academy of Arts and Letters, three fellowships from the world tour with the Icelandic pop artist Björk, and a Germany National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, tour with violinist Nigel Kennedy. the Pinanski Prize for excellence in teaching at Wellesley College, and commissions from the Fromm Foundation at In 2004 she moved to New York and continued to freelance, Harvard, the MacArthur Foundation’s Regional Touring playing on a regular basis with the Metropolitan Opera, Program, the Artists Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts New York City Opera, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and New and Humanities Council. In the fall of 2001, he was Fromm Jersey Symphony Orchestra. She also plays a lot of new Composer-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome. music, most recently with the Either/Or ensemble in New He also served as Heiskell Arts Director there from 2007 to York in connection with their Helmut Lachenmann festival. 2010. Brody is president of the Stefan Wolpe Society and has Since August 2008, Hrabba has been based in Berkeley, also served as a Director of the League of Composers-ISCM, California, where she performs with various ensembles, the Composers Conference, Boston Musica Viva, and WGBH such as the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Left Coast Radio’s Art of the States. In 1987 he collaborated with the Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, and the Berkeley ethnomusicologist Ted Levin to initiate a US-USSR composers Contemporary Chamber Players to name a few. Hrabba is also exchange sponsored by the International Research and a violin lecturer at UC Berkeley. Exchanges Board, the first such exchange to occur in twenty- five years. His has written extensively on contemporary music and serves on the editorial board of Perspectives of New Music. Claude Baker attained his doctoral degree from the Eastman He is Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music at Wellesley School of Music, where his principal composition teachers College, where he has been on the faculty since 1979. were Samuel Adler and Warren Benson. As a composer, Mr. Baker has received a number of professional