Helix 4.12_v3 - Mason Gross School of the Arts

HELIX! New Music Ensemble
Sunday, April 12, 2015 • 5:30 & 8:30 p.m.
Le Poisson Rouge
New York City
PROGRAM
5:30 p.m.
Comin’ Right Atcha
Matthew Hindson
Passing Phrase
Matt Anderson
One-and-a-Half Cups
Christopher A. Kaminski
Nach Nach Bach
Christopher Doll
Misterioso
Angelique Mouyis
The Fermi Paradox
Chris Opperman
Piano Trio No. 1
Minah Choi
Pilgrim Voyage – Part Two
Charles Fussell
The Particle Songs
David Wolfson
PERFORMERS
Natasha Loomis, flute
Wei Wang, oboe
Dena Orkin and Anthony Ciccone, clarinet
Wen Hsieh, bassoon
Jessie Mersinger, horn
Arthur Zanin, trumpet
Matthew Walley, trombone
Inga Kashakashvili and Michael Bulychev-Okser, piano
Greg Riss, percussion
Xinou Wei and Yujin Oh, violin
Jen-Hsuan Liao, viola
Joon Whan Kim, violoncello
Emilio Guarino, double bass
Kynan Johns, David Jeong, Heejin Oh, Jason Moore, and Kelly Crandell,
conductors
Pamela Stein, soprano, guest artist
PROGRAM
8:30 p.m.
Comin’ Right Atcha
Matthew Hindson
Contemplation
Gregg Rossetti
Glimmer
Liza Sobel
Big Spinoff
Charles Wuorinen
Attimo
Anqi Liu
By All Means
Nico Muhly
Mystification
Steven Kemper
O(b)stinato Interruptus
Gerald Chenoweth
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano
Movement IV: Presto
Robert Aldridge
Elena Chernova-Davis, violin
Jonathan Spitz, cello
Min Kwon, piano
PERFORMERS
Natasha Loomis, flute
Wei Wang, oboe
Dena Orkin and Anthony Ciccone, clarinet
Wen Hsieh, bassoon
Jessie Mersinger, horn
Arthur Zanin, trumpet
Matthew Walley, trombone
Inga Kashakashvili and Michael Bulychev-Okser, piano
Greg Riss and Paul Nalesnik, percussion
Xinou Wei and Yujin Oh, violin
Jen-Hsuan Liao, viola
Joon Whan Kim, violoncello
Emilio Guarino, double bass
Kynan Johns, David Jeong, and Kelly Crandell, conductors
Elena Chernova-Davis, violin
Jonathan Spitz, cello
Min Kwon, piano, guest artist
PROGRAM NOTES
MATTHEW HINDSON
Comin’ Right Atcha
for amplified ensemble (2002)
The initial source of inspiration for Comin’ Right Atcha came from a
conversation with the conductor of the Absolute Ensemble, Kristjan Jaarvi.
He encouraged me to write a work that was inspired by the funk music of
James Brown, and to an extent this has been reflected in some sections of
the piece, particularly some of the smaller motives and overlapping layers
of rhythmic material.
The majority of the material in this piece has been generated from two
small motives. The spoken rhythm of the title, “Comin’ Right Atcha” (and
its variant, “I’m Comin’ Right Atcha”), creates one of these, and this is
heard earliest in the violin part after the opening high-hat solo. The other
motive is a short, three-pitch descending fragment. The rhythm of this
fragment has also been derived from the speech-rhythm of another piece of
text.
In this piece I have tried to give all members of the ensemble some sort of
solo. This reflects the outstanding caliber of the performers for whom I was
writing.
The works of Australian composer Matthew Hindson (b. 1968) are
frequently commissioned. His music has been performed by every
Australian orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, and the Royal Philharmonic, among many others. It has been
set by dance companies including the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San
Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Japan, and the Sydney Dance
Company. Hindson is chair of the composition and music technology unit
at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. From 2004 to 2010 he was the
artistic director of the Aurora Festival, which is dedicated to the work of
living composers. In 2006 Hindson was made a member of the Order of
Australia for his contributions to music education and composition. From
2009 to 2013 he was chair of the music board of the Australia Council for
the Arts and from 2013 to 2015 was a board member of the same
organization.
MATT ANDERSON
Passing Phrase
Passing Phrase is a play on words for the phase shifting that happens in the
middle of this musical composition. In the middle section we hear a
rhythmic motive that is derived from a previously heard motive in the flute
part. This rhythm is transferred to the drum, wood block, cello, and violin.
In this part the cello and drum play in sync in the general low registers
while the violin and wood block play in sync with each other in the
comparatively higher registers. The rhythmic motive has now been
transformed into a two-measure phrase that starts with all four parts in
sync. The cello and drum, however, start phase shifting as an eighth note is
added to the end of each two-measure phrase of the cello and drum while
the wood block and violin remain constant. The rhythmic motive and
rhythm of the wood block and violin are in a four-four meter as the cello
and drum shift in and out of phase, while the flute and piano play a lyric
melody and accompaniment in three-quarter time. This produces another
level of phase shifting as every 12 beats the three-quarter and four-four
meter time signatures come in and out of phase. All phrases eventually
come together and play in sync with one another to conclude the section.
This phase shifting section is sandwiched by a statement and return of a
jazz-rock-classical fusion of musical ideas played with the full register of
the ensemble.
Matt Anderson is a PhD student in composition at the Mason Gross School
of the Arts at Rutgers University. He received a BM from Temple
University and an MM from the University of Cincinnati. He is the choral
director at Rahway 7th and 8th Grade Academy (Rahway, New Jersey),
music director at Central Unitarian Church (Paramus, New Jersey), and
adjunct professor of music at Felician College (Lodi, New Jersey).
Anderson writes everything from pop, jazz, and commercial music to
musical theater, classical music, and his best attempts at ethnic music.
CHRISTOPHER A. KAMINSKI
One-and-a-Half Cups
I. Watermelon Pressure
II. PRSV-P
III. Pineappolis
One-and-a-Half Cups is a three-movement piece about fruit that is meant to
give a wide variety of musical “flavors.” The first movement, “Watermelon
Pressure,” describes the joys of eating a juicy, fat seedless watermelon (and
shows what happens when one bites down into a seed that is not supposed
to be there). The second movement, “PRSV-P,” or “Papaya Ringspot
Virus,” depicts a virus spreading throughout the ensemble through its long,
somber melodies. The final movement, “Pineappolis,” shows the sweet
inside of a pineapple in contrast with its rough, spiky outside.
Composer and clarinetist Christopher A. Kaminski is a third-year
undergraduate at Mason Gross, studying music education and composition
with Christopher Opperman and clarinet with Maureen Hurd Hause. His
compositional influences include John Mackey, John Adams, Frank
Ticheli, and Eric Whitacre, which has contributed to his minimalistic style
of writing. He is working on a book of clarinet music, which will include
solo pieces, duets, ensemble works, and mixed media works, among others.
CHRISTOPHER DOLL
Nach Nach Bach
Nach Nach Bach occupies a special place in my heart. I wrote it when I
was 24 and a graduate council fellow at Stony Brook University; it was
premiered by the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players on
Halloween night 2001. The pianist is the dominant player, a role performed
at the premiere by Stony Brook DMA degree candidate and new-music
specialist Zoe Browder, who would later become Dr. Zoe Browder Doll,
my wife.
The work uses as a springboard the melodic subject of J.S. Bach’s two-part
Invention in C Minor. The title means “after after Bach” in German—a
jesting description of the work’s repeated notes and also a cryptic reference
to all the Bach quotations that came before, and perhaps more generally a
reference to the intertextual nature of contemporary musical composition as
a whole.
An associate professor at Mason Gross, Christopher Doll has taught theory
and composition at that school since he received a PhD degree with
distinction from Columbia University in 2007. He is an authority on the
harmony of popular music and has given talks at institutions such as the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland), the Experience Music Project
(Seattle), the Institute for Popular Music (Liverpool), the Conservatorium
van Amsterdam, the Eastman School of Music, Oxford University, and four
Ivy League schools.
ANGELIQUE MOUYIS
Misterioso
The first eight-measure theme that you will hear played on the piano has
actually haunted me for a few years. Only recently have I had the
opportunity to put it down on paper and develop it. The piece comprises
two contrasting sections—the first is characterized by the misterioso waltz
theme, and the second breaks open from its harmonic and time-steady
shackles to a free-flowing motion in and out of harmonies, ebbing and
flowing through triplets and tuplets. After culminating to a climax, echoes
of the misterioso theme gently appear, after which the first section is
reimagined and re-sounded. I thank Dr. Aldridge for encouraging me to
find drama and intensity in my compositional writing.
Angelique Mouyis earned a master’s degree in music composition at the
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and a master of fine arts
degree in musical theater writing at New York University’s Tisch School of
the Arts. She is pursuing a PhD degree in music composition at the Mason
Gross School of the Arts, where she is studying with Robert Aldridge.
Most recently, Mouyis and her collaborator, Mkhululi Z. Mabija, were
commissioned to write a short opera as part of Four: 30 – Operas Made in
South Africa, produced by Cape Town Opera, which will premiere in
November 2015. Mouyis has received a Southern African Music Rights
Organisation postgraduate studies scholarship and the Ernest Oppenheimer
Overseas Scholarship for the Performing Arts. Her productions include
Forget This City (Enthuse Theater) and The Boy Who Never Grows Up
(Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute). Mouyis is author of Mikis
Theodorakis: Finding Greece in His Music (Kerkyra Publishers, 2010). For
more information, visit angeliquemouyis.com.
CHRIS OPPERMAN
The Fermi Paradox
in which we ponder the puzzling absence of extraterrestrial life
During a luncheon with his friends in 1950, scientist Enrico Fermi asked,
“Where is everybody?” with respect to the lack of evidence regarding
extraterrestrial life in the universe. Science and mathematics tell us there
are approximately 100 billion suns in the Milky Way Galaxy. Therefore,
there should be, even at a small fraction, at least thousands, if not tens of
thousands, of Earthlike planets in the galaxy capable of sustaining
intelligent life. Assuming the probability that the Earth is not the most
technologically advanced civilization in the galaxy and the fact that it
would be possible to colonize multiple solar systems given five to 50
million years, even if traveling at the comparatively low rate of light speed,
it is paradoxical that we have had no proven contact with interstellar
civilizations. Physicist Carl Sagan, among others, has opined that one
possible solution may be the tendency for advanced civilizations to destroy
themselves, either through nuclear or biological annihilation, or due to
climate change or other planetary calamities. However, for our purposes
today, we ask not what kinds of beings these aliens would be but what kind
of music they would make.
Since debuting on his own Purple Cow Records label in 1998, composer
Chris Opperman has been carving his own niche in today’s pop-saturated
music world. He has released five full studio albums, including the
extended-play (EP) recording The Lionheart (2010) and the digital single
“Aphrodite Nights” (2011), which was composed on the gourd tree, a
unique instrument invented by Harry Partch. Opperman has also performed
or orchestrated music with many industry luminaries, including Grammy
Award-winning guitarist Steve Vai. His association with Vai resulted in
two Grammy Award-nominated recordings: “Lotus Feet” (2006) and “The
Attitude Song” (2008) with Holland’s Metropole Orkest. Opperman’s
orchestration of Vai’s piece “For the Love of God” has received more than
18 million views on YouTube. He has more than a dozen years’ experience
working in the music industry, and has held positions at Universal Music
Publishing Group and GSO Business Management, a financial management
firm for musicians.
MINAH CHOI
Piano Trio No. 1
Piano Trio No. 1 was composed and premiered at the California Summer
Music Festival while I was a fellowship composer in July 2014. After the
rhythmic and virtuosic opening, a lyrical section with violin solo gives a
nice contrast to the piece. The original instrumentation for this piece was
violin, viola, and piano; it was revised for HELIX! in January 2015.
Minah Choi received an MM degree in composition from Mannes College
The New School for Music. She earned a BM degree in composition at
Stony Brook University. Choi has studied piano with Andrea Christie and
Tyler Wottrich, former students of Christina Dahl and Gilbert Kalish. She
has also studied harpsichord with Bethany Cencer and Arthur Haas, and
film scoring with Michael Bacon. She was the harpsichordist in the Mannes
Baroque Ensemble from 2012 to 2014. Her past composition teachers
include Sheila Silver, David Loeb, Robert Cuckson, David Tcimpidis,
Derek Bermel, Louise Karchin, and Noam Sivan. She has taken master
classes with Pierre Jalbert and Louis Karchin, and her orchestra piece From
Darkness to Light was featured in Parsons Festival 2014 as a collaboration
with visual artist Sooa Kim.
Choi has scored for two films, Two Sisters, by Zachary Blaesi, and Sunset
Park, by Jenny Zhang, which will be released this year. She is pursuing a
DMA degree in music composition under the direction of Robert Aldridge
at Rutgers University.
CHARLES FUSSELL
Pilgrim Voyage – Part Two
III. Ceremony One
IV. Night Scenes
VI. Little Ceremony with Three Dancers
VII. Out of the Mist
VIII. Final Ceremony
Some years ago, I began to read and greatly enjoy travel journals, both
American and European. Two that stood out were by Isabella Bird (A
Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1886) and François Augiéras, who was
born in Rochester, New York. Augiéras’s father was a French pianist, his
mother a Polish emigré. After his father’s death, Augiéras went to France.
The time he spent in Algiers in 1945 and with the monks of Mount Athos
in the 1950s were great influences on his writing and painting. A friend of
André Gide, who described his work as a “bizarre delight,” Augiéras died
in 1971 in France at age 46. Both journals suggest a vivid collection of
scenes and adventures that could be given shape in musical movements.
Pilgrim Voyage contains eight movements, beginning with an arrival by
boat and ending with a final religious ceremony of personal enlightenment.
The ceremonial movements are both religious and erotic; the overall tone
throughout is of joyful adventure and pleasure. I had to leave out so many
possibilities—including being chased by a wild bull in heat, a pool of green
snakes, and so on—but I hope the steaming summer heat is audible. I was
interested to discover that Mount Athos had been occupied by the Germans
during the war, and our hero wore a discarded German uniform when his
own clothes became too ragged, still a somewhat dangerous disguise in the
1950s.
Charles Fussell (born 1938) was an important figure in the musical life of
Boston for more than 20 years. He has served on the composition faculty of
Boston University, was artistic director of the contemporary music festival
New Music Harvest, and was cofounder of the New England Composers
Orchestra. His music has been performed by Boston-area ensembles, in
particular Collage New Music, the Cantata Singers, and the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project. Fussell attended the Eastman School of Music, where he
studied with Thomas Canning and Bernard Rogers, and later with Boris
Blacher at the Berlin Hochschule. In addition to a Fulbright Scholarship, he
has received a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters and grants from the Ford Foundation and the Copland Foundation.
Fussell’s major works include six symphonies and three operas. Recent
recordings include Specimen Days and Being Music, two commissions for
the Walt Whitman 1992 centennial available on Koch Records. Symphony
No. 5, The Astronaut’s Tale, and Right River (a concertino for cello and
string orchestra) are available on Albany Records. High Bridge, Prelude
for Orchestra, and Wilde Symphony No. 4 for Baritone Solo and Orchestra
have been released by The Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Fussell
teaches composition at Rutgers University and is president of the Virgil
Thomson Foundation.
DAVID WOLFSON
The Particle Songs
Five Songs for soprano and Pierrot ensemble
The Electron
The Neutrino
The Photon
The Gluon
The Higgs Boson
The Particle Songs imagines the physical characteristics of five elementary
particles—the electron, the neutrino, the photon, the gluon, and the newly
discovered Higgs boson—as analogues for human traits. Even if you know
nothing about particle physics, however, the songs are a collections of
character portraits. The music draws from varied styles and sources to
illuminate the characters. The cycle is dedicated to soprano Sara Paar, who
wanted to sing the word quark.
David Wolfson is enrolled in the PhD program in composition at Rutgers
University. His recent premieres include “I Wish I Were …” for flute,
clarinet, and cello by Nouveau Classical Project at Rutgers University;
“Escape/Delete/Space/Enter/Home” for voice and piano on the Composer’s
Voice concert series in New York City; and “Four Distractions” for two
married violinists by the Pit Stop Players. He is enjoying an eclectic career,
having composed opera, musical theater, touring children’s musicals, and
incidental music for plays; choral music, band music, orchestral music,
chamber music, art songs, and music for solo piano; and comedy songs,
cabaret songs, and one memorable score for an amusement park bigheaded, costumed-character show.
Wolfson’s album Seventeen Windows, featuring the solo piano suite
“Seventeen Windows” and “Sonata for Cello and Piano” is available from
Albany Records and on iTunes and amazon.com. For more information,
visit davidwolfsonmusic.net.
GREGG ROSSETTI
Contemplation for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano
Contemplation for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano began as a piece of
absolute music for solo guitar, then was arranged for the current ensemble
when more musical colors were needed. The main theme of the piece, first
heard in the lyrical high register of the cello, is a subtle melody in E major,
yet the harmonies suggest otherwise. These sonorities, which go through
many transformations, eventually end up as a voice of their own.
Gregg Rossetti is a multi-instrumentalist, teacher, and producer of many
styles of music who is currently pursuing a PhD degree in composition. His
interest in music began at a young age; he would write music of mixed
instrumentation and play in various bands. While at Muhlenberg College,
he had his first concert pieces for both jazz and classical ensembles
performed. During the years he worked on his MA degree at Montclair
State University, he wrote two compositions for large orchestra and several
chamber pieces, including a microtonal piece for the Harry Partch
Ensemble. He is active in his own music production facility, where he
produces his own material and does freelance work (i.e., music for websites
and films). As a teacher, he has a steady roster of students in various
musical disciplines; he is also a professor at Montclair State University,
where he lectures on popular music history and teaches composition.
LIZA SOBEL
Glimmer
Glimmer is a four-movement piece. Originally, I conceived the piece as
four separate movements. As I continued working on it, however, the
movements became more and more interrelated so that I eventually decided
to make the movements continuous.
The title refers to the frequent hocketing (alternating notes back and forth)
between different instruments which creates the melodies. The hocketing
creates “glimmering” sounds where the listener hears one instrument
briefly play a note or two, followed by another instrument continuing the
melody. In addition to the melodies glimmering, the individual notes often
glimmer when one instrument begins the initial attack while another
instrument sustains the note.
In addition to the hocketing melodies, which are reminiscent of music from
the Renaissance and Middle Ages, the use of contrapuntal melodies,
especially canons, also references early music. On the other hand, the fast
pace and strong sense of rhythm were influenced by rock music.
Liza Sobel is a composer and singer studying for an MA/PhD degree in
composition at Mason Gross. She is studying composition with Tarik
O’Regan and voice with Judith Nicosia. Sobel earned a bachelor’s degree
at Cornell University and studied at Manhattan School of Music as an
exchange student. Her composition teachers have included Steven Stucky,
Richard Danielpour, and Derek Bermel. Sobel has participated in the
Aldeburgh Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, the Brevard Music
Center, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the nief-norf Summer
Festival, and the Chamber Music Institute.
The players and ensembles that have performed Sobel’s music include
Cygnus; Ekmeles; West Point Woodwind Quintet; Nouveau Classical
Project; and Joseph Lin, first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet. Her
Requiem won the 2013 American Prize in the choral division and was a
finalist in the 2013 BMI Student Composers Award. Sobel has won a
Fulbright scholarship and was Cornell’s endorsed candidate or finalist for
the Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Keasbey scholarships.
CHARLES WUORINEN
Big Spinoff
for 16 players
Composer Charles Wuorinen has received a MacArthur Foundation
Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize. His compositions encompass every form
and medium, including orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet, and
stage. Wuorinen has written more than 260 compositions to date. His most
recent works include an opera on Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain,
premiered at the Teatro Real (Madrid) in January 2014. About that
premiere, the Australian said, “Madrid has just seen the biggest audience in
its history, local and global, for Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain.”
His other recent works include Time Regained, for Peter Serkin, James
Levine, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; Eighth Symphony, for the
Boston Symphony Orchestra; and Metagong for two pianos and two
percussion, for the New York New Music Ensemble. Wuorinen has been
described as a maximalist, writing music that is luxuriant with events,
lyrical, expressive, and strikingly dramatic. His works are characterized by
powerful harmonies, offering at once a link to the music of the past and a
vision of a rich musical future.
Wuorinen has worked with many contemporary performers as both a
composer and a performer (conductor and pianist), and his works reflect
the virtuosity of his collaborators. They have been recorded on nearly a
dozen labels, including several releases on the label Naxos and Albany
Records (Charles Wuorinen Series, and two releases on John Zorn’s Tzadik
label. Wuorinen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
ANQI LIU
Attimo
Attimo is the Italian word for “moment.” The inspiration for the piece came
from a winter’s night when I first met someone whose smile ignited my
whole life. That single moment was enough to warm up that cold winter’s
evening. You will hear that attimo in my piece Attimo, however, Attimo is
just like its name, a fleeting moment, one that can not last. Like starlight in
the dark sky, like sunlight before dawn. No matter how unbelievable it is,
no matter how touching it is, and no matter how beautiful it is, I will let go
of this attimo in the near future.
Anqi Liu, a native Chinese composer, received a BA degree from Xiamen
University. She is pursuing a master’s degree in composition at Mason
Gross, where she is studying with Gerald Chenoweth, Charles Fussell, and
Robert Aldridge. Liu started playing piano at age 4, receiving training in
classical music. As an undergraduate, she traveled throughout China
collecting Chinese folk music in distinct minority areas of the country.
During Liu’s time in the United States, she has been influenced by various
acoustic elements in contemporary composition. She creates music that
fuses elements from both Eastern and Western traditions. Liu’s music has
been performed by Nouveau Classical Project, Rutgers Percussion
Ensemble, and HELIX! New Music Ensemble. She has collaborated with
many choreographers, and her music has been featured in the 2013 and
2014 Mason Gross BFA Senior Solo/Duet dance concerts. To listen to
Liu’s music, visit soundcloud.com/anqiliu.
NICO MUHLY
By All Means (2004)
By All Means was commissioned by The Juilliard School and the Royal
Academy of Music in celebration of their concurrent anniversaries. Each of
the six commissioned works was meant to respond in some way to
Webern’s Concerto for 9 Instruments, op. 24. My own response to this
curious guideline was to focus on the opening three pitches of the row
Webern uses, which, to me, produce a very diatonic outline of a B-flat
major chord. One of the most delicious psychological reactions I have had
to most serial music is that my brain tries to turn 12-tone music into postWagnerian tonal harmonies: thick, rich chords brimming with meaning and
profound significance. I suffer from this disorder even when presented with
the thorniest Wuorinen or the most inscrutable Babbitt. Listening to the
row from op. 24, I was immediately reminded of the cross relations in
Weelkes motets, where a G-major chord and a G-minor chord can appear in
the same bar a split second apart. By All Means is a large arch of several
textures in which both Weelkes and Webern can coexist and collaborate:
the scattered points of Webern’s orchestration organized together by a
Tudor resolution, or the shimmering counterpoint of Weelkes sent astray by
sudden chromatic variation. By All Means should last nine minutes and is
scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello,
and piano.
Nico Muhly has composed a wide scope of work for ensembles, soloists,
and organizations, including the American Symphony Orchestra, the
Boston Pops, Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony, countertenor Iestyn
Davies, soprano Jessica Rivera, violinist Hilary Hahn, choreographer
Benjamin Millepied, the New York City Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the
New York Philharmonic, and designer/illustrator Maira Kalman. Among
his most frequent collaborators are his colleagues at Bedroom Community,
an artist-run label headed by Icelandic musician Valgeir Sigurðsson.
Bedroom Community was inaugurated in 2007 with the release of Muhly’s
first album, Speaks Volumes. In spring 2012, Bedroom Community
released Muhly’s three-part Drones & Music in collaboration with pianist
Bruce Brubaker, violinist Pekka Kuusisto, and violist Nadia Sirota.
Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Muhly
graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English literature. In
2004 he received an MM degree from The Juilliard School, where he
studied with Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano. His writings and full
schedule can be found on the website nicomuhly.com.
STEVEN KEMPER
Mystification
Mystification explores the juxtaposition between simplicity/complexity,
consonance/dissonance, and clarity/distortion. This piece consists of two
contradictory trajectories. The acoustic instruments move from a highly
complex and dissonant texture to a relatively simple and consonant one. At
the same time, the computer processing begins by simply amplifying the
instruments. Over the course of the piece the computer begins to alter the
sounds of the instruments, processing them with increasing complexity.
The result is a kind of mirror form with different versions of
simplicity/complexity, consonance/dissonance, and clarity/distortion at
either end.
Steven Kemper creates music for acoustic instruments, instruments and
computers, musical robots, dance, video, and networked systems. His
compositions have been performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra
Project, NOW ensemble, and the Grupo Sax-Ensemble. They have been
presented at SMC, ICMC, SEAMUS, SIGCHI, 12 Nights, Third Practice
Festival, Pixilerations, American Composers Alliance Festival of American
Music, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival. Kemper won
the ICMA 2010 Student Award for Best Submission for his work
“Shadows no. 5,” part of a collaborative series of pieces for belly dance,
electroacoustic music, and RAKS System. His research has been presented
at the International Computer Music Conference and Korean ElectroAcoustic Music Society and published in Organized Sound. He is a
cofounder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, a musical robotics
collective, and codesigner of Movable Party, a bicycle-powered system for
interactive electroacoustic music. Kemper received a PhD degree in
composition and computer technologies from the University of Virginia, an
MM in composition from Bowling Green State University, and a BA in
music from Bowdoin College. He is assistant professor of music
technology and composition in the Music Department at the Mason Gross
School of the Arts. His website is stevenkemper.com.
GERALD CHENOWETH
O(b)stinato Interruptus (2013)
O(b)stinato Interruptus was composed for the distinguished cellist
Jonathan Spitz. About the title: O(b)stinato is a play on two similarly
understood words and, when combined with Interruptus, fundamentally
describes the process of the work. As it says in the score, the music is
meant to be “truly obsessive.”
Gerald Chenoweth (b. 1943) received a BM degree and an MM degree
from the University of Massachusetts and a PhD degree from the
University of Iowa. His works have been performed extensively in the
United States and Europe, and he has conducted contemporary music
ensembles at Mason Gross and the University of Iowa. Chenoweth’s
compositions have been recorded for CRI, the Smithsonian Collection of
Recordings, and Access.
ROBERT ALDRIDGE
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano
Movement IV: Presto
Grammy Award-winning composer Robert Livingston Aldridge (b. 1954)
has written more than 60 works for orchestra, opera, music-theater, voice,
dance, string quartet, solo, and chamber ensembles. His music has been
performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Aldridge has received many fellowships and awards for his music from the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Guggenheim
Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National
Endowment for the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, among
many others. His opera Elmer Gantry, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis
and with a libretto by Herschel Garfein, was given its fully staged world
premiere by Nashville Opera in November 2007. The Naxos CD of Elmer
Gantry was released in July 2011 and received two Grammy Awards in
2012 in the categories Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best
Engineered Classical Recording. In 2014, Aldridge’s oratorio Parables was
released on DVD by Naxos International.
Aldridge has been composer-in-residence at the Brevard Music Festival
since 2006. He was an American Orchestral League/Music Alive
composer-in-residence and has been composer-in-residence at the
American Dance Festival, the University of Minnesota, and Colorado
University. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony on five
occasions since 1987. His compositions are published exclusively by
Edition Peters (CF Peters Corporation).
Aldridge received a PhD degree in composition from the Yale School of
Music, a master’s degree in composition from the New England
Conservatory of Music, and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from
the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was professor of composition
at Montclair State University from 2000 to 2012, director of the John J.
Cali School of Music at Montclair State from 2006 to 2009, and chair of
the music department at that school from 2005 to 2011. He is now
professor and director of music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at
Rutgers University.
ARTISTS
KYNAN JOHNS – Artistic Director and Conductor
Kynan Johns is director of orchestras and associate professor of conducting
at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. He has been hailed by the New York
Times as “incisive ... first rate ... brilliant.” Le Monde de la musique has
noted that “his direction breathes theater ... attentive to the singer, lively,
aerial and sensual.” A protégé of Maestro Lorin Maazel, Johns has
conducted more than 100 orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic, the
Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber
Orchestra, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Netherlands Radio Symphony
Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony, and the New Zealand Symphony
Orchestra. He has worked at London’s Covent Garden and conducted at
Italy’s La Scala. Johns has spent four seasons at the Palau de les Arts Reina
Sofia in Valencia, Spain, working with Maazel and Zubin Mehta; two
seasons with the New York City Opera; and works frequently in France
and Germany. His opera credits include Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly,
Luisa Miller, Don Carlos, Turn of the Screw, La Bohème, La Traviata,
Faust, Adès’s Powder Her Face, and Offenbach’s La Périchole. Johns was
awarded the inaugural Centenary Medal from the Australian government
for his service to music.
KELLY CRANDELL – Conductor
Although Kelly Crandell’s abilities range from those of pianist to composer
to visual designer to arts administrator, he has chosen to focus on
conducting works involving voice. Among the many operas he has
conducted in recent years are Verdi’s Falstaff, Mozart’s The Abduction
from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute, Puccini’s La Bohème, Bernstein’s
Candide, Menotti’s The Medium, Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagonny, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Crandell was most
recently chorus master for the Mason Gross production of Delibes’s Lakmé.
His teachers include American choral master Vance George, a longtime
mentor with whom he has published a new performance edition of
Brahms’s Nänie, op. 82, available through GIA Publications. Crandell has
studied conducting with Jørgen Fuglebæk and Giancarlo Andretta at the
Royal Danish Academy of Music (Copenhagen), and with Janos Fürst,
Kenneth Kiesler, and, currently, Kynan Johns. At Mason Gross, he assists
in conducting Rutgers Symphony Orchestra and HELIX! New Music
Ensemble. Crandell is a co-adjunct professor in the Music Department at
Mason Gross and is an adjunct professor on the voice faculty at Montclair
State University. In addition, he coaches privately in Manhattan and runs a
small media company for performing artists internationally.
DAVID JEONG – Conductor
Born in Korea and raised in Russia, David Jeong is in his third year of
doctoral studies in orchestral conducting at Mason Gross, where he is
studying with Maestro Kynan Johns. Most recently, he was invited to join
Maestro Lorin Maazel’s Castleton 2014 Music Festival (Virginia) as an
associate conductor. At the festival, Maazel called Jeong a conductor with
“surprising talent.” As a composer and pianist, he previously studied at the
Moscow Gnessin Special Music School and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
Jeong earned both a BM degree in piano performance and an MM degree in
conducting at the New England Conservatory. He has been acclaimed in
Russia, Hungary, Austria, Canada, and the United States for his debut
piano albums, published by Sony Music and Universal Music of Korea.
HEEJIN OH – Conductor
Since 2002, Heejin Oh has been a band officer in the Korean Army (rank:
major), where she has conducted the army band’s sixth, 22nd, 35th, and
39th infantry divisions. She was a platoon leader of the Korean Army
Headquarters Band from 2002 to 2013. Oh has conducted for various
national ceremonies, including the Pyungchang Winter Special Olympics
torch, the Memorial Day ceremony, and the June 25 Korean War memorial
ceremony. She was granted a special leave of absence from the Korean
Army band to study orchestral conducting with Kynan Johns. Oh earned a
BM degree in piano from Mokwon University and an MM degree in
performing arts from Dankook University (both in Korea).
JASON MOORE – Conductor
Jason Moore is completing the final semester of his master’s degree in
orchestral conducting at Mason Gross, where he has served as assistant
conductor of Rutgers Sinfonia for the past two seasons. He earned a degree
in organ performance at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a degree in
choral conducting from the University of Arizona. Moore was appointed
apprentice conductor with the Mendelssohn Club Chorus of Philadelphia
under the supervision of Maestro Alan Harler. He has served as head of
instrumental and vocal ensembles for Philadelphia University. Moore
currently leads a large church music program in the Philadelphia suburbs.
GUEST ARTISTS
PAMELA STEIN – Soprano
Praised by the Boston Globe for her “rich dramatics,” soprano Pamela Stein
has earned a reputation for bringing passion, intelligence, and style to her
performances. She has worked with the composers David Lang, Tristan
Perich, Lesley Flanigan, Jacob Cooper, and Daniel Felsenfeld. Stein has
participated in the Yamaha Young Concert Artist Series, the Britten-Pears
Young Artist Programme, the Yale School of Music’s New Music New
Haven series, the Saratoga Fine Arts Festival, American Opera Projects,
Beth Morrison Projects, the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass
MoCA, Rhymes With Opera at the National Opera Center, and many
others. She can be heard as a vocalist on minimalist composer Alexander
Turnquist’s latest album, Flying Fantasy, which was released this past June
on the Western Vinyl label. Stein received a master’s degree in vocal
performance from the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins
University. She can next be seen premiering one of her own compositions
at TEDx CarnegieLake (Princeton, New Jersey) on April 25.
Stein and the composers Lisa Bielawa and Aaron Jay Kernis recently
launched Your Music Bus (yourmusicbus.org), an educational project to
benefit college and university composition students throughout the country.
Her website is pamelastein.net.
ELENA CHERNOVA-DAVIS – Violin
Prizewinner at the Aleksander Glazunov International Competition (Paris),
Elena Chernova-Davis has enjoyed a multifaceted career as soloist,
chamber musician, and concertmaster in her native Uzbekistan and
throughout the United States. After graduating with honors as a fullscholarship student from Tashkent State Conservatory, she came to the
United States to continue her studies with soloist Elmar Oliveira and first
violinist of the Vermeer Quartet, Shmuel Ashkenasi. Chernova-Davis is a
recipient of the Irene Alm Memorial Award for excellence in performance
and scholarly research and has worked with conductors such as Bernard
Haitink, Esa Pekka-Salonen, and Jeffrey Tate. She has served as principal
second of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and a member of Florida Grand
Opera, Artosphere Festival Orchestra, and Princeton Symphony. ChernovaDavis’s teaching philosophy is to guide development and tailor an
individual approach to each student that encourages growth, curiosity, and
motivation.
JONATHAN SPITZ – Cello
Jonathan Spitz has served on the Mason Gross faculty since 2002. He has
performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral principal. Spitz
has been principal cello of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since
1991, and he tours internationally as a member of the Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra, where he also serves as co-artistic director. He also performs as
principal cellist of the American Ballet Theater Orchestra and the
American Symphony Orchestra at the Bard Music Festival. Spitz has
appeared as a soloist with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra on
numerous occasions, including performances of the cello concertos of
Schumann, Dvorák, and Haydn, Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, and
Brahms’s Double Concerto with New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
concertmaster Eric Wyrick. An active chamber musician, he was a
participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed with artists
such as Rudolf Serkin, Benita Valente, Felix Galimir, and Oscar Shumsky.
Spitz serves on the artist faculty of the Brevard Music Center and Sommer
Sinfonie (Valdres, Norway). He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of
Music, where he studied with David Soyer. Spitz has recorded for Deutsche
Grammaphon, EMI, Decca, Nonesuch, and Blue Note, among others. He
performs on a 2011 Grubaugh and Seifert cello.
MIN KWON – Piano
A Steinway Artist, Min Kwon made her debut with the Philadelphia
Orchestra in 1987, performing the Prokofiev Concerto No. 3. She has since
performed more than two dozen concerti with major orchestras on four
continents, collaborating with conductors such as Alan Gilbert, James
Conlon, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. As a recitalist and chamber
musician, she has appeared on the stages of New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, London, Vienna, Prague, Copenhagen, London, Sydney, Seoul,
Singapore, and Hong Kong, among many other cities.
Kwon has taught master classes at conservatories and festivals in China,
Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Austria, England, Finland, Germany, Italy,
Luxemburg, and at many universities in the United States. She earned a
DMA degree and an MM degree at The Juilliard School and a BM degree
at the Curtis Institute of Music. She completed her postdoctoral studies in
Salzburg, Austria. Kwon is chair of keyboard programs at Mason Gross,
where she has served on the faculty since 2002. She is a codirector of
Vienna ConcertoFest, and founder and artistic and executive director of the
Center for Musical Excellence (New York City), a nonprofit dedicated to
mentoring gifted international young pianists.
HELIX! NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
HELIX!, directed by Kynan Johns, is the resident new music ensemble at
the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. A versatile,
adept modular group with a Pierrot ensemble at its core, HELIX! focuses
solely on the music of living composers. From solo works to works for 16
players, HELIX! can adapt to the needs of almost any piece. World
premieres by Rutgers faculty and students—along with works by leading
composers worldwide who are defining new trends in composition—are the
ensemble’s staples.
Natasha Loomis, flute
Wei Wang, oboe
Dena Orkin, clarinet
Anthony Ciccone, clarinet
Wen Hsieh, bassoon
Jessie Mersinger, horn
Arthur Zanin, trumpet
Matthew Walley, trombone
Greg Riss and Paul Nalesnik, percussion
Michael Bulychev-Okser and Inga Kashakashvili, piano
Xinou Wei and Yujin Oh, violin
Jen-Hsuan Liao, viola
Joon Whan Kim, cello
Emilio Guarino, bass
Kelly Crandell, David Jeong, Jason Moore, and Heejin Oh, conductors