Tag Archives: National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network

EarShot Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Readings

February 22-24, 2012
Feb. 23 at 7pm: Free & Open to the Public.
Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY

February 22 – 24, 2012, EarShot (the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network) and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO), JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, presented the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Readings at Kleinhans Music Hall (3 Symphony Circle, Buffalo). On Thursday, February 23 at 7pm at Kleinhans Hall, the public witnessed a behind-the-scenes look at the process of bringing brand new orchestral works to life, as music by the four selected composers was read by the BPO under the baton of associate conductor, Matthew Kraemer. The composers – Stephen Gorbos, Elizabeth Lim, David Marenberg, and Daniel Schlosberg – were selected through a national call for scores, and during the Readings received feedback from mentor composers Margaret Brouwer, Sebastian Currier, and Derek Bermel, the conductor and BPO principal musicians.

Over the decades, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has matured in stature under the leadership of William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Julius Rudel, Semyon Bychkov, Maximiano Valdes, and now Music Director, Maestro Falletta. Since 1940, the Orchestra’s permanent home has been Kleinhans Music Hall, a National Historic Site with an international reputation as one of the finest concert halls in the United States. The BPO presents more than 120 Classics, Pops and Youth Concerts during a 37-week season and its award-winning education programs reach over 35,000 students per year. During the tenure of Maestro Falletta, the orchestra has rekindled a distinguished history of broadcasts and recordings, including the release of 15 CDs of a highly diverse repertoire on the NAXOS and Beau Fleuve labels. The BPO’s recording of composer John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, featuring soprano Hila Plitmann, on the NAXOS label, won Grammys in two categories. Its concerts are heard regularly in over 200 cities across the U.S. on American Public Radio’s Performance Today. As Buffalo’s cultural ambassador, the BPO has toured widely across the United
States and Canada including a recent tour to Florida, the first multi-city tour since the 1988 European tour and the first outside of the region since Maestro Falletta led the ensemble at Carnegie Hall in 2004, its 22nd appearance there.

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Music Readings are a part of EarShot, the nationwide network of new music readings and related composer-development programs. The goals of the program are to create the nation’s first ongoing systematic program for identifying emerging orchestral composers, to provide professional-level working experience with orchestras from every region of the country, and to increase awareness of these composers and access to their music throughout the industry. EarShot is a partnership among American Composers Orchestra, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the League of American Orchestras, and Meet The Composer. Through EarShot, 24 composers so far have been selected for programs with the New York Youth Symphony, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and the Pioneer Valley Symphony (MA).

Stephen Gorbos: Bounce

Stephen Gorbos composes music that navigates a wide palette of genres and influences as diverse as American rhythm & blues, western classical music, and Javanese gamelan. He has been called “one of the bright stars of his generation of post modernists… an original, compelling and witty voice.” Gorbos’ music has been performed by Minnesota Orchestra, the New England Philharmonic, and the Cuarteto Latinamericano, and commissioned by the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, MD. He is cofounder of Collide-O-Scope Music, an ensemble dedicated to mixed media performance, and has received awards ASCAP, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, and Amercian Composers Forum. He has been composer-in-residence at Copland House, and a fellow at Tanglewood the Aspen Music Festival. Gorbos is assistant professor of composition and theory at the Catholic University of America. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Yale School of Music, and Cornell University. His teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra and Martin Bresnick.

According to the composer, “Bounce owes its name to the literal ‘bouncing’ of the first notes in the piece: the instruments that open the piece play an energetic tune that jumps between high and low notes. Much of what happens in the piece from that point forward is built from canonic techniques, where a copy of a melody that was just played is echoed back at a slightly later interval of time. Aside from a slow middle section, the music is overtly danceable, with an audible beat that should keep toes tapping for most of the piece. The lively and exuberant nature of the music was inspired by my nephew James, a firecracker of a little boy who, with glittering eyes, bounces around my sister’s house.”

Elizabeth Lim: Disharmony of the Spheres

Elizabeth Lim is a doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, where she studies with Robert Beaser. According to her teacher, she possesses “…imagination which communes with the past and engages with the present.” Born in San Francisco, Lim began composing at age five. Her music has received honors from ASCAP, BMI, the Society of Composers, Inc., the National Association of Composers, USA (NACUSA), and the Society for New Music. Lim completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where she was awarded the Hugh F. MacColl Prize in composition, the John Green Fellowship in composition, and named one of her class’s “Most Outstanding Seniors in the Arts.” She was a participant in the Berkeley Symphony Emerging Composers Program, the Albany Symphony’s Composer-to-Center-Stage program, Palo Alto Youth-to-Youth Commissioning Project, Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra Composers Competition, and the University of Nebraska’s Iron Composer Competition. Lim was named winner of the Juilliard Orchestra Composition Competition in 2009.

Since the time Lim first began composing, she has had an interest in dance music. One of her earliest compositions paid homage to Viennese waltzes, attempting to deconstruct the waltz into something of her own. Disharmony of the Spheres is a more mature take on a similar idea. Written during the fall of 2011, it borrows the traditional Scherzo and Trio form but quickly devolves into something entirely different. The “scherzo” section resembles a danse macabre, and the “trio” is ethereal and light; however the delineation between the two sections disintegrates as themes collide. This collision sets a course for chaos, redirecting the classical “harmony of the spheres” to disharmony.

David Marenberg: The Abyssal Zone

David Marenberg is a Los Angeles-born concert and multimedia composer living in New York. He studied at Amherst College, where he won the Eric Sundquist Prize for his first symphony. He recently completed his Masters Degree in Scoring for Film and Multimedia at New York University. Marenberg participated in the film scoring workshop at the Aspen Music Festival in 2010, and was recognized by the Songwriters Hall of Fame as one of the Best New Songwriters of 2011. His orchestral style infuses turn-of-the-century impressionist aesthetics with modern tropes of sound design and electroacoustic effect. His teachers include Eric Sawyer, Marc Antonio Consoli, and David Spear, who says Marenberg’s music shows, “…a mastery of many musical styles, while vibrating with infectious energy and originality.”

The composer says, “Deep down in the Abyssal Zone, 13,000 feet below the surface, a strange menagerie of marine life manages to survive the crushing ocean pressures and freezing temperatures. Shrouded in total darkness, bioluminescent creatures thrive on geothermal vents, while large-jawed anglerfish and giant squid sift through the sediment for food. On the 23rd of January, 1960, the Swiss research bathyscaphe Trieste became the first (and only) manned vessel to reach an area of the zone known as the Challenger Deep. The Abyssal Zone is a monument to explorers of the unknown, a slow descent into a region filled with beauty that defies its inhospitable landscape. Safe within the bathyscaphe, the listener EarShot & Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Readings, February 22-24, 2012 is witness to the marvelous and dangerous deep. At the same time, it pays homage to other musical explorers who took the plunge into uncharted depths. Harmonically and formally, the piece mirrors the voyage of the Trieste, descending from the familiar to the bizarre and back again. The primary theme is a scalar descent of two perfect fourths, and its contour generates most of the harmonic material of the piece. While writing The Abyssal Zone, Marenberg held to his belief that a composer’s responsibility is not simply to explore uncharted waters but to “report back” in such a way that the listener can best imagine the journey for his or herself.

Daniel Schlosberg: Grosse Concerto

Originally from Philadelphia, composer and pianist Daniel Schlosberg has had works premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Encompass New Opera Theater, counter)induction, the Lorelei Ensemble, and New Triad for Collaborative Arts, and his first work for large orchestra was premiered by the Yale Symphony Orchestra in October 2010. Schlosberg has won awards from Yale, NFAA, and ASCAP. His choral piece Poor Richard’s Almanack Excerpts was performed by Singing City at the national celebration of Ben Franklin’s 300th birthday and he has appeared on From the Top, the Today Show, and in two PBS documentaries. Schlosberg is currently in his first year of a Masters degree in composition at the Yale School of Music, studying with Christopher Theofanidis, who says, “Daniel has a great talent for working with his musical material in a way that is both developmentally satisfying and still very playful.”

The composer says, “Grosse Concerto began as my personal struggle with the symphonic genre, and specifically the overwhelming body of work that is the German symphonic tradition. Given this genre’s de facto—and seemingly never-ending—status as the ‘pinnacle’ of Classical music, I felt it was important to confront it head-on. The title alludes to the Baroque form of concerto grosso and serves as a metaphor for the entire piece, which is a kind of ‘big concerto’” or concerto for orchestra. The work features a broad array of styles that waft in and out, as if having a conversation through time. I wished to explore the ways in which these seemingly disparate styles interact and form a cohesive musical narrative. A main theme in the full orchestra alternates with musical episodes played by subsections, which are embedded solos for various instruments. Each of the episodes features music echoing a past time period, such as Baroque, jazz, and modernist pointillism. This adds up to what are often very sharp contrasts—rapid shifts without any transition, like an abrupt cut between scenes in a film or a sudden change of lighting in a play.”

Matthew Kraemer, associate conductor
Recognized for his “musical sensitivity” and “energized sense of interpretation”, conductor Matthew Kraemer enters his second season as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2010. In this role he appears regularly on each of the orchestra’s major series, including subscription weeks, Pops, Family, and summer concerts. He plays a vital role in the BPO’s award-winning education and community engagement programs, in addition to assisting Music Director JoAnn Falletta during recording sessions and on tour. Upcoming season highlights include performances of Miguel del Aguila’s The Fall of Cuzco, a fully-staged production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and tour performances with Idina Menzel in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Long Island, Miami, Orange County, St. Louis, and West Palm Beach. Kraemer additionally appears this season as guest conductor with the Atlanta, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Virginia symphony orchestras.

Recipient of the distinguished Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship and the Bruno Walter Career Development Grant, Mr. Kraemer served a residency with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival during the summer of 2006. His conducting engagements include appearances with the symphony orchestras of Akron, Asheville, Baltimore, Canton, Jacksonville, and Richmond (IN), the Reno Chamber Orchestra, and in Europe with the Vidin Philharmonic and the Orquesta de Cadaqués. Equally at home in the ballet pit, he has led fully-staged productions with Virginia Ballet Theatre, Ohio Ballet, Neglia Ballet Artists, and Todd Rosenlieb Dance. Mr. Kraemer has collaborated with many leading artists, including Awadagin Pratt, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Philippe Quint, Jennifer Koh, Ben Folds, Chris Botti, Idina Menzel, and Richard Stolzman, among others.

Prior to his appointment in Buffalo, Mr. Kraemer completed a highly successful, three-year tenure as associate conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. He has held positions with the Akron Symphony and the Akron Youth Symphony orchestras, leading the AYS into its 50^th anniversary season with a performance in Carnegie Hall. Increasingly recognized for his passionate advocacy for music education and his devotion to audience development, he has created numerous arts education programs and continues his work with young musicians as conductor, clinician and lecturer at many music festivals and in public schools.

An Indiana native, Mr. Kraemer studied conducting in Vienna, Austria with Salvador Mas Conde and was twice a fellowship conductor at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. He has additionally participated in the National Arts Center Conductor’s Program in Ottawa, Canada. His conducting teachers include David Zinman, Robert Spano, Stanley DeRusha, and Jorma Panula. Mr. Kraemer is a graduate of Butler University and the University of Nevada, Reno, where he assisted former Cincinnati Symphony concertmaster Phillip Ruder. An accomplished violinist in his own right, he was a member of the Nightingale String Quartet. Fluent in German and French, his principal violin teachers include Phillip Ruder, Herbert Greenberg, and Larry Shapiro. When he is not performing, Mr. Kraemer enjoys cooking, running, and reading. He and his wife Megan reside in Buffalo, NY.

EarShot is made possible with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

EarShot: Nashville Symphony Orchestra New Music Readings

Nashville Symphony New Music Readings
April 7-8, 2010
Schermerhorn Symphony Center

photo credit: Harry Butler

On Wednesday and Thursday, April 7–8, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., EarShot, the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, and Nashville Symphony Orchestra (NSO) presented the Nashville Symphony Orchestra New Music Readings. Four composers, selected from a national call for scores, heard their works read and received feedback from NSO music director Giancarlo Guerrero, mentor composers Jennifer Higdon and Edgar Meyer, and Nashville Symphony Orchestra principal musicians. The four composers, selected by Mr. Guerrero, Ms. Higdon, and Mr. Meyer, are Chiayu Hsu, Ryan Gallagher, Michael Rickelton, and Daniel Temkin.

Led by Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero and President and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the Nashville Symphony is today regarded as one of the nation’s most creative and innovative orchestras. With more than 140 performances annually, the Nashville Symphony is Tennessee’s preeminent cultural institution, offering a range of classical, pops, and jazz concerts; special events; children’s concerts; and education and community engagement programs. One of the most active recording orchestras in America, the Nashville Symphony has released a plethora of highly regarded recordings since its relationship with Naxos began in 2000. A champion of American music, the orchestra regularly commissions, premieres and records work by many of this country’s most important composers. The Symphony’s recent Naxos recording of Joan Tower’s Made in America received three GRAMMY® Awards, including Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance. That recording was the orchestra’s first at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, known worldwide for its world-class acoustics.

The Nashville Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Readings are a part of EarShot, the nationwide network of new music readings and related composer-development programs. The goals of the program are to create the nation’s first ongoing systematic program for identifying emerging orchestral composers, to provide professional-level working experience with orchestras from every region of the country, and to increase awareness of these composers and access to their music throughout the industry. EarShot is a partnership among American Composers Orchestra, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the League of American Orchestras, and Meet The Composer. Through EarShot, 24 composers so far have been selected for programs with the New York Youth Symphony, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. On April 16-17, 2010, EarShot and the Pioneer Valley Symphony (MA) will also present new music readings; composer participants to be announced.

Chiayu Hsu: Shan Ko

Chiayu Hsu was born in Banciao, Taiwan in 1975. She was the winner of music+culture 2009 International Competition for Composers, the Sorel Organization’s 2nd International Composition Competition, the 7th USA International Harp Composition Competition, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Awards, the Maxfield Parrish Composition Contest, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Awards among others. Her work has been performed by Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Toledo Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, and Prism Quartet. Prior to entering Duke University, she studied at Yale University School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, David Loeb, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Kelley, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe.

Shan Ko employs material derived from Hakka music [the Hakka are an ethnic group of Chinese who live in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi Provinces]. There are various types of Hakka mountain songs, with an abundance of lyrical content. The type of song associated with Shan Ko is called Lao-shan-ko (old mountain songs), which are among the oldest and simplest of Hakka folksong-types. Lao-shan-ko is the name of one such tune, which is referenced in the work. The composer says, “I am particularly drawn by its use of the minor triad and the libre feeling of the original tune. As a result, many minor triads juxtaposing with the predominantly pentatonic harmony are deployed to explore various timbres between different instrumental groups in the piece. Many times, the melodic fragments are stretched and heavily decorated. Sometimes the echoes of those fragments are produced between instruments. It is the spirit of freedom and spacious acoustics in the mountains that I have tried capture.”

Ryan Gallagher: Grindhouse

Ryan Gallagher (b. 1984) is in his third year of graduate studies at Cornell University, where his teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2007, where he studied with Christopher Rouse. A native of Wooster, Ohio, he studied composition with his father, Jack Gallagher of The College of Wooster during high school.

Awards include a 2009 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a First Music commission from the New York Youth Symphony in 2008, four ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards, winner of the 2007 Arthur Friedman Prize for outstanding orchestral composition at Juilliard, and winner of the 2006 New York Federation of Music Club’s Brian Israel Prize. His music has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, The Juilliard Orchestra, eighth blackbird, New York Youth Symphony, New Juilliard Ensemble, and Society for New Music.

“Grindhouse refers to the term for a movie theater that specializes in showing exploitation films,” Gallagher explains. “While the piece shares its title with the recent motion picture directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, it is not related to the plot of that film in any way. I did, however, hope to effect during my work a similar sense of mental and emotional anxiety, as well as over-the-top energy, experienced while watching films found in the exploitation genre. My goal was to compose a piece that exaggerated the different extremes of an orchestra, including the registers of instruments, rhythmic durations, and dynamic ranges. As a result, the work presents substantial challenges to the performers in terms of stamina. It is a sort of miniature concerto for orchestra, featuring every instrument and/or section of the ensemble at least once during the course of the piece.”

Michael Rickelton: And After the Dark

Michael Rickelton (b.1983), a native of Charlotte, NC, earned a Bachelor of Music degree in music education from Lipscomb University where he studied composition with Jerome Reed. In the summer of 2005, Michael attended the European American Musical Alliance program at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, France, studying with Claude Baker and Narcis Bonet. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in composition from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he is a student of Michael Hersch. In addition to his work as a composer, he remains active as a singer. He currently resides in Baltimore, MD, with his wife, Emily.

Composed in the fall of 2007, And After the Dark depicts feelings of rage juxtaposed with periods of contentment, elements of frustration relieved by triumph, the calming of the convulsive, and darkness succumbing to clarity. The composer’s goal in this work is to connect these disparities on levels including the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual. And After the Dark explores the interaction among multiple varying figures presented throughout the orchestra. The piece focuses on three distinctly contrasting motives that provide the foundation for the work’s harmonic, rhythmic, and textural development. These three figures, a rising minor third, a sextuplet comprising the pattern of four consecutive pitches followed by a rest and falling second, and a contrasting lyrical melody all take on independent roles that aid in the contrast of each motive’s character. In And After the Dark, the individual qualities of each figure are linked to create a sound world rich in diverse character and color. The intended result is a work that hinges on the relationships of the contrasting; both evidently presented in the music and the allusive.

Daniel Temkin: Regenerations

Daniel Temkin (b. 1986) is currently a graduate fellow at the New England Conservatory. His music has been performed in Alice Tully Hall, and many of his works have been performed professionally across the U.S. In 2010, he will have pieces premiered by the UNLV Brass Ensemble and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra. He is a Theodore Presser Scholar and the recipient of a 2009 ASCAPLUS! Award.

Originally a percussionist, Temkin has performed on numerous occasions with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble and the Mostly Mozart Festival’s Riverside Choral Society. He has played chamber music with Sarah Chang and Orli Shaham, and worked under David Zinman, James Conlon, and Leonard Slatkin. An alumnus of the Eastern, Brevard, and Aspen Music Festivals, Daniel studied percussion with She-e Wu, Chris Deviney, and Jonathan Haas. He has studied composition with Michael Gandolfi, Charles Fussell, Kevin Puts, Robert Aldridge, and Sydney Hodkinson.

Temkin describes Regenerations as “a colorful work for full symphonic orchestra in which a simple five-note motive becomes the basis for nine contrasting variations. Throughout the piece, the musical elements stated in the first variation are continually intertwined and developed to create an evolving sonic tapestry. In the midst of this regenerating musical material listeners are exposed to many different textures. At the opening long brass lines are placed upon gentle string chords, while in other sections wind chorales and canonic lines slowly build to form rich polyphonic textures. In the most energized moments long singing lines in the woodwinds and brass are placed on top of rapid pulsations in the strings, while the harp, piano, and a large percussion section are continually utilized to augment the orchestra’s colors.

“Overall the work slowly evolves, winding in and out of various musical regions and exploring different areas of harmonic stability and musical tension. Only at the very end of the piece do the musical ideas finally come into full counterpoint with one another, at which point the evolution of the regenerating motives stops and the piece builds to a final, triumphant, tutti ending.”

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

2009-10 marks Giancarlo Guerrero’s first season as music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. A champion of new music, Guerrero has collaborated with and championed the music of several of America’s most respected composers, including John Adams, John Corigliano, Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Michael Daugherty, and Roberto Sierra. A new CD on Naxos of music by Michael Daugherty, with the Nashville Symphony, was released in September 2009.

As a guest conductor, Guerrero recently made two debuts abroad: his European debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, where he was immediately invited to return, and his UK debut with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He has also recently made successful debuts with several major American orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra (where he was invited back for a subscription week and tour), the Seattle Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra. Other recent orchestral engagements in the U.S. include appearances with the orchestras of Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio, and San Diego; the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and at the Grant Park Festival.

Also in demand in Central and South America, Guerrero conducts regularly in Venezuela with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, with which he has had a special relationship for many years. His debut at the Casals Festival with Yo-Yo Ma and the Puerto Rico Symphony in 2005 was followed by return engagements in 2006 and 2007. He also made his debut at the Teatro Colón in Argentina in 2005. Elsewhere he is a regular guest conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand.

Equally at home with opera, Guerrero works regularly with the Costa Rican Lyric Opera and in recent seasons has conducted new productions of Carmen, La bohème and most recently a new production of Rigoletto. In February 2008, he gave the Australian premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s one-act opera Ainadamar at the Adelaide Festival, to great acclaim.

In June 2004, Guerrero was awarded the Helen M. Thompson Award by the American Symphony Orchestra League, which recognizes outstanding achievement among young conductors nationwide. Guerrero holds degrees from Baylor and Northwestern universities. He was most recently the Music Director of the Eugene Symphony. From 1999 to 2004, Mr. Guerrero served as associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra. He made his Minnesota Orchestra subscription debut in March 2000, leading the world premiere of John Corigliano’s Phantasmagoria on the Ghosts of Versailles. He returned on subscription every subsequent season during his time there. Prior to his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra, he served as music director of the Táchira Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela.

EarShot is made possible with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

EarShot: Memphis Symphony Orchestra New Music Readings

Four Emerging Composers Heard in Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Readings

May 20-21, 2009
The Clark Opera Memphis Center

Memphis Symphony Orchestra and EarShot, the newly formed National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, presented the works of four selected composers in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra New Music Readings held on May 20 and 21, 2009, in Memphis, TN. The Readings, conducted by David Loebel, were an outstanding artistic and professional-development opportunity for emerging composers and gave the selected composers wider visibility in the field of orchestral music. The four composers were Jean Ahn, Christian Baldini, Patricio Da Silva, and Andreia Pinto-Correia.

The Memphis Symphony Orchestra was organized in 1952 and is well established as the Mid South’s largest performing arts organization. The MSO presents a 39-week season of Masterworks, Pops, and Chamber subscription concerts. Historic collaborations with other arts agencies and organizations allow the MSO to serve diverse regional audiences. Having recieved numerous ASCAP awards for adventerous programming, MSO’s mission is to create meaningful experiences through music, and its vision is to artistically engage. MSO artists are vital members of the Memphis community, providing rich musical experiences for all ages.

The Memphis Symphony New Music Readings are a part of EarShot: the nationwide network of new music readings and related composer-development programs. The goals of the program are to create the nation’s first ongoing systematic program for identifying emerging orchestral composers; to provide professional-level working experience with orchestras from every region of the country; and to increase awareness of these composers and access to their music throughout the industry. EarShot is a partnership between American Composers Orchestra, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the League of American Orchestras, and Meet The Composer.

Jean Ahn: Salt

Born in Korea, Jean Ahn began to study piano and composition at a very early age. She finished her B.A. and M.M. at Seoul National University under professor Baek Byoung Dong and received a Ph.D. in 2008 from UC Berkeley, where her teachers included Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, David Wessel, Jorge Liederman, and Richard Felciano.

Her creative output includes works ranging from solo instruments to full orchestra, as well as choral, dance, and electroacoustic music. Recent awards for her compositions include First Prize from the Renee Fisher Award and Competition, the Korean National Music Composers Award, First Prize from the Sejong Korean Music Competition, UC Berkeley’s the De Lorenzo Prize, and the Pan Music Festival Award. Ahn’s music was featured at Aspen Music Festival (Susan and Ford Schumann Composition Fellow), June in Buffalo, the Oregon Bach Festival, Music 07, SCI conferences, IAWM Beijing Congress, the Spark Festival, the Fresno New Music Festival, University of Central Missouri New Music Festival, New York City Electronic Music Festival, IAWM Festivals, among others. Her work has been performed by Ensemble Sur Plus, pianist Lisa Moore (Bang on a Can), pianist Shannon Wettstein (Zeitgeist), Berkeley Contemporary Players and others. She is currently a Lecturer at UC.Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two young children.

Salt was premiered by the UC Berkeley’s University Symphony, under the baton of David Milnes in May 2008. The composer says of the piece, “Salt began its life in 2005, when I found myself driven by a chord of six notes…. In short, I experimented with all the possibilities opened up by this one chord. The idea of transforming a single chord without losing its fundamentals, combined with the sparkling image of the ornaments, reminded me of the properties of salt. Thus was born the title of the composition. Just as salt preserves its taste no matter what it is mixed with, the essence of the original chord of the piece is not lost throughout the entire work. In order to enhance the metaphor, the electronics used in the piece-built on the resonance model of the main chord with spectral transformation-employ the actual sound of dropping, spreading and touching salt. Finally, the title Salt also reflects my Christian faith and my musing on the words ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ Thus the piece has the touch, taste and also the meaning of salt.”

Christian Baldini: elapsing twilight shades

Christian Baldini’s work as a conductor and composer has gathered recognition in several International Competitions around the world (South Korea, USA, Brazil, Argentina-UNESCO). His music has been performed in festivals and venues throughout Europe, South America, North America and Asia by orchestras and ensembles including the Southbank Sinfonia (London), New York New Music Ensemble, Daegu Chamber Orchestra (South Korea), Orchestre National de Lorraine (France), Chronophonie Ensemble (Freiburg), the American Brass Quintet, the Barton Workshop (Amsterdam), the National Polyphonic Choir of Argentina, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Kreisler Ensemble (London) and the Illegal Harmony Ensemble (Scotland).

Christian is currently the Music Director and Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He regularly guest conducts in South America, England (Aldeburgh Festival) and the USA. Most recently he was invited by Leonard Slatkin to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, DC). This summer he will be conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra working with Martyn Brabbins, and will be a featured composer and conductor in Edenkoben (Germany). In the Fall 2009, Christian will begin his appointment as the director of orchestras at the University of California at Davis.

elapsing twilight shades reflects my particular interest in creating sonic structures that behave in a quasi cubist fashion. In fact, listening to the piece is a bit like looking at an abstract painting. One idea is presented from several different perspectives. The “space” around the idea is manipulated, folded and viewed as if through a kaleidoscope, repeated by many different lenses. This is the starting point for a work that gradually becomes inflected by a few humorous moments and a delight in symphonic tradition. There are two main critical arrivals in the piece, where the previous music is expanded into a more rhapsodic and quite different dimension. For me these moments represent a special ideal of collective beauty, achieved only through hope and freedom.

Patrício da Silva: Three Pieces for Orchestra

Patricio da Silva

Patrício da Silva (b. 1973) received formal musical training at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa where he studied piano with Jorge Moyano and composition with António Pinho Vargas (B.M. in piano, 1995). He then pursued his composition studies in the US, first as a recipient of the Betty Freeman Foundation Scholarship in Composition with Morton Subotnick, Stephen L. Mosko, and Mel Powell at the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 1999), and later, with support from the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (Portugal), he completed the Ph.D. program in composition at the University of California (2003), having studied composition with William Kraft, computer music with Curtis Roads, and algorithmic composition and music with Artificial Intelligence with David Cope.

Further studies include work with Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, Sydney Hodkinson, Augusta Read Thomas, Bernard Rands, Helmut Lachenman, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His post-doctoral work as invited researcher at IRCAM in France was followed in the UK by a research grant for computer music by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology. Awards include the International Barto Prize, the Gould Family Foundation Composers Award, the Ojai Festival Music for Tomorrow, the Otto Eckstein Family Fellowship, the Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His music has been recently heard at Tanglewood, Ojai Music Festival, Aspen, Ruhr Festival, Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal, Bayer Erholungshaus, London Festival of American Music, Piano Spheres, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Zipper Hall, Cistermúsica, International Music Festival Póvoa do Varzim, Yamaha’s YASI, SCRIME, and Los Angeles Sonic Odyssey. A new CD, Hyper-Counterpointt, is scheduled for release in May of 2009.

Andreia Pinto-Correia: Acanto

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Andreia Pinto-Correia is currently pursuing a composition doctoral degree at the New England Conservatory, studying with Michael Gandolfi, after having received her Master’s degree there as student of Bob Brookmeyer. She started her musical studies in Lisbon at the Academia de Amadores de Música. Originally a performer, she dedicated herself to composition in 2002, after being unable to perform due to an accident.

Recent recognitions include a 2009 Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship, the 2009 NEC Contemporary Ensemble Composition Award, the 2008 Toru Takemitsu Award by the Japan Society, a 2008 Composers Conference Fellowship, a 2008 Orquestra do Algarve Young Composer Fellowship, a 2008 NEC Merit Award, a 2008/9 Luso-American Foundation Scholarship, and a 2008 ASCAPLUS Award, among others.

Acanto is an architectonic ornamentation inspired by the leaves of a plant native to Mediterranean humid climates (acanthus mollis). In Portuguese or Spanish language it may also be written as a canto meaning as in ‘to sing’. The idea for this piece derives from the manipulation of a simple melodic cell, an ornament that travels through the work appearing in different instruments or combination of instruments, registers, and pitch/rhythmic mutations. Thus, the three movements represent varied textural realizations of the same ornament. Sometimes I use particular features of a movement across movement boundaries, resulting in an organic use of the concept of memory and anticipation. The third and last movement, Adagio molto, is modeled after the third movement of Three Places in New England by Charles Ives. Here, the use of ornamentation is expanded to form a simple lullaby played by the vibraphone while the rest of the orchestra plays transformations, mainly textural, of my original cell.

David Loebel, conductor

David Loebel has been Music Director and Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for the past ten years. Prior to his appointment in Memphis, he enjoyed a decade-long association with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, serving as Associate and then Associate Principal Conductor, as well as Artistic Director of its summer festival, Classics in the Loop.

As a guest conductor, David Loebel has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also conducted the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, and Syracuse, the North Carolina Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, Symphony Silicon Valley, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic, among many others.

Internationally, Maestro Loebel made his debut in Japan with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and toured Australia to great acclaim, leading the Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Western Australian, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras. He has led family and educational concerts at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Operatic engagements include productions at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Opera Memphis and he has appeared at summer festivals including the Grant Park Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, and Woodstock Mozart Festival.

Active in the training of young musicians, Maestro Loebel has been Conductor-in-Residence of the New World Symphony and Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. He has also conducted the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the National Repertory Orchestra, and at conservatories including The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Indiana University. As a mentor to conductors, he has served on the faculties of the League of American Orchestras’ Conducting Workshop, the Kennedy Center’s National Conducting Institute, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Prior to joining the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Loebel served as Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. A native of Cleveland, he is a graduate of Northwestern University, which in 2000 honored him with an Alumni Merit Award.

Tickets & Info

The Memphis Symphony Orchestra Readings Sessions were held at The Clark Opera Memphis Center, 6745 Wolf River Parkway in Memphis and were free and open to the public. The Wednesday, May 20 readings were held from 7:30 to 10:00 PM and the Thursday, May 21 readings were held from 1:30 to 4:00 PM.

EarShot: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra New MusicReadings

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Readings
February 8 – 10, 2011

EarShot, the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) will present the Buffalo Philharmonic New Music Readings. Four composers, selected from a national call for scores, will hear their works read by the BPO under the baton of associate conductor Matthew Kraemer, and will receive feedback from mentor composers David Felder, Steven Stucky, and Robert Beaser, and the conductor and BPO principal musicians. The four composers selected are Michael-Thomas Foumai, Austin Jaquith, Nathan Kelly, and Carl Schimmel. The public is invited to a free reading session on Wednesday, February 9, 2011, no ticket is necessary.

Over the decades, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has matured in stature under the leadership of William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Julius Rudel, Semyon Bychkov, Maximiano Valdes, and now Music Director, Maestro Falletta. Since 1940, the Orchestra’s permanent home has been Kleinhans Music Hall, a National Historic Site with an international reputation as one of the finest concert halls in the United States. The BPO presents more than 120 Classics, Pops and Youth Concerts during a 37-week season and its award-winning education programs reach over 35,000 students per year. During the tenure of Maestro Falletta, the orchestra has rekindled a distinguished history of broadcasts and recordings, including the release of 15 CDs of a highly diverse repertoire on the NAXOS and Beau Fleuve labels. The BPO’s recording of composer John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, featuring soprano Hila Plitmann, on the NAXOS label, won Grammys in two categories. Its concerts are heard regularly in over 200 cities across the U.S. on American Public Radio’s Performance Today. As Buffalo’s cultural ambassador, the BPO has toured widely across the United States and Canada including a recent tour to Florida, the first multi-city tour since the 1988 European tour and the first outside of the region since Maestro Falletta led the ensemble at Carnegie Hall in 2004, its 22nd appearance there.

Michael-Thomas Foumai: The Light Bringer

Michael-Thomas FoumaiMichael-Thomas Foumai (b. 1987, Honolulu, HI) earned a bachelor in music composition from the University of Hawaii and currently studies at the University Michigan. His music has been performed in the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. His mentors include Robert Beaser, Tristan Murail, Michael Gordon, Xu Shuya, Jia Daqun, Neil McKay and Jon Magnussen. He has studied with Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Peter Askim, Byron Yasui, Donald Reid Womack, Takeo Kudo and Thomas Osborne. Recent performances of his music have been presented at the Osaka College of Music, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival, Thailand International Composition Festival, MidWest Composers Symposium, Fresno New Music Festival and the Calarts Theatre at Disney Hall. This performance of The Light-Bringer marks the first time Mr. Foumai’s work has been performed by a professional orchestra.

The Light-Bringer symphony is inspired by the biblical fall of Lucifer and the title ofthe work is taken from the translation of Lucifer’s Latin name meaning, bringer of light or bearer of light. The work is based on manipulations of the infamous “number of the beast,” six hundred and sixty six and so the number six is embedded within the structure of the work. This can be heard on a small level with musical motives and sonorities being repeated six times, melodic and harmonic intervals of 6ths, a melody or harmony of six pitches and a progression of six chords. On a larger level, the work is built on six major sections with the main climax occurring roughly 666 seconds (11 min and 6 seconds) into the work. On a visual and performance level, tempo markings are all multiples of six.

Austin Jaquith: Blaze of Autumn

Austin Jaquith, a native Californian, began studying composition in High School with Jack Perla in Oakland, CA. In 1999 he enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Margaret Brouwer and graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Music in composition. From 2003 to 2005 he attended the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, where he studied with Robert Smith and graduated with a Master of Music in composition. While at the Moores School he received the Seraphim composition prize, for his String Quartet No. 2, and participated in SCI’s region VI conference in San Antonio. In the fall of 2005, he began doctoral studies at Indiana University where he studied with David Dzubay, Chinary Ung, Richard Wernick, Claude Baker, and P.Q. Phan. Upon graduation, Dr. Jaquith was hired as an Assistant Professor of Theory and Composition at Cedarville University in Ohio, where he continues to teach and compose. Blaze of Autumn is the first of Mr. Jaquith’s works to be performed by a professional orchestra. Recent performances include Shades of Red, performed at the ITG 2010 Conference in Sydney, Australia, Kinesis by the El Paso Youth Symphony Youth Orchestra, Andy Moran Conductor, and Quintet for Brass by the Mirari Brass Quintet on their southwest tour.

Blaze of Autumn (Five Images from Fall) was inspired by fall in the Midwest. After spending my formative years as a native Californian, I was very impressed with the beautiful fall colors found in Ohio, where I moved for college. This work seeks to capture the magnificence found in autumn as green explodes into radiant reds, oranges, and yellows. There are five brief movements, each an image of a fall scene. I. Dawn’s Revelation, II. Breath of Frost, III. Indian Summer, IV. Frost’s Bite, V. Blaze of Autumn.

Nathan Kelly: Legend of Pecos Bill

Nathan Kelly is a film and concert composer and professional orchestrator. Working in Broadway, television and film, some of his orchestrating credits include The Tony Awards, Curtains, Dionne Warwick, Sir André Previn, Nickelodeon Television, Sarah Brightman, The Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Music Studios, Radio City Music Hall, Lea Salonga, Stephen Schwartz’s Opera and Andrea Bocelli. He studied at The University of Texas, North Texas, The Juilliard School, The University of Southern California and privately with the orchestrators of Stephen Sondheim and Alan Menken. He has composed two symphonies, a violin concerto, a harp concerto, a mass, and works for vocalists. He has received several commissions from orchestras around the world. The Legend of Pecos Bill is Mr. Kelly’s first work to be performed by a professional orchestra.

While a composer-in-residence in Wyoming, I wanted to capture the landscape of the open prairies and quiet nights that seemed to inspire memories of my favorite American tall-tales that I heard when I was a kid growing up in Texas, the Legend of Pecos Bill was one of them. After abandoning the idea of using a narrator, I decided to approach this idealized, highly energetic, and larger-than-life hero by depicting some of his tall-tales through the suggestive use of orchestrating and harmonizing a singular short theme which could be continually altered throughout the set of 5 attaca movements which feature the main characters and dramatic elements of the stories: I. Pecos Bill Shows Off, II, The Appearance of Slue-Foot Sue, III. Lightning, The Horse, IV. The West, and V. Finale (which is a coda that is reminiscent of the beginning, and serves to bookend the piece).

Carl Schimmel: rite. apotheosis.

Carl Schimmel Winner of Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize and the 2010 Lee Ettelson Award, Carl Schimmel has received honors and awards from many organizations, including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, the Seoul International Composition Competition, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the New York Youth Symphony First Music Awards, NACWPI, SCI, and ASCAP. His works have been performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Merkin Hall in New York, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and at other venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has received performances and commissions from the California EAR Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, North/South Consonance, saxophonist Taimur Sullivan, bass clarinetist Henri Bok, Line C3 Percussion Ensemble, Cross Sound Music Festival, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Lucy Shelton, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, Flexible Music, counter)induction, and many others. A graduate of Duke University (Ph.D. Music Composition) and the Yale School of Music (M.M. Music Composition), he is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Illinois State University in Normal, IL. Please visit http://www.carlschimmel.com.

rite. apotheosis. is an experiment in (melo-?) drama. The frenetic and exaggerated gestures in the work are typical of my recent music, and some have termed me an “expressionist.” I frequently dabble in humor, but this work seems to have little of it – although the sparse “cha-cha-cha” sections are light and tiptoed; maybe they will make some in the audience smile. The musical material is drawn from and moves across a special set of seven-note scales (major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, and quasi-octatonic). But my building materials are less relevant than the emotional import of the music. There is no plot to this music per se, but the title reflects the general narrative progression and shift of mood that takes place.

Matthew Kraemer, associate conductor

Matthew Kraemer Recognized for his “musical sensitivity” and “energized sense of interpretation”, conductor Matthew Kraemer enters his second season as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2010. In this role he appears regularly on each of the orchestra’s major series, including subscription weeks, Pops, Family, and summer concerts. He plays a vital role in the BPO’s award-winning education and community engagement programs, in addition to assisting Music Director JoAnn Falletta during recording sessions and on tour. Upcoming season highlights include performances of Miguel del Aguila’s The Fall of Cuzco, a fully-staged production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and tour performances with Idina Menzel in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Long Island, Miami, Orange County, St. Louis, and West Palm Beach. Kraemer additionally appears this season as guest conductor with the Atlanta, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Virginia symphony orchestras.

Prior to his appointment in Buffalo, Mr. Kraemer completed a highly successful, three-year tenure as associate conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. He has held positions with the Akron Symphony and the Akron Youth Symphony orchestras, leading the AYS into its 50th anniversary season with a performance in Carnegie Hall. Increasingly recognized for his passionate advocacy for music education and his devotion to audience development, he has created numerous arts education programs and continues his work with young musicians as conductor, clinician and lecturer at many music festivals and in public schools.

EarShot: Colorado Symphony Orchestra New Music Readings

Colorado Symphony New Music Readings
July 16-17, 2009
Boettcher Concert Hall

EarShot, the newly launched National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (CSO) held their first New Music Readings on Thursday, July 16 and Friday July 17, 2009, at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver, CO. Four composers, selected from a national call for scores that yielded 180 scores, heard their works read by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra conducted by Delta David Gier and Fergus Macleod, who is a conducting fellow at Aspen Music Festival this summer. Advice from a team of mentor composers comprising American Composers Orchestra’s (ACO) Artistic Director Robert Beaser, Derek Bermel, and Roberto Sierra, along with feedback from Gier, Macleod, and CSO musicians, and workshops by music industry experts provided an outstanding artistic and professional-development opportunity for emerging composers. The Readings also offered a first-class way for emerging composers to gain visibility in the field of orchestral music and for audiences to hear music by the next generation of innovative American composers. The four composers were Yotam Haber, Angel Lam, Jeremy Podgursky, and Tim Sullivan. The region’s only full-time professional orchestra, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra embraces a tradition of musical excellence by presenting a wide variety of symphonic performances—from classical repertoire to innovative new forms—in Boettcher Concert Hall. Established in 1989 as the successor to the Denver Symphony, the CSO is Colorado’s only resident orchestra composed of professional musicians employed to play symphonic music on a full-time basis. In April 2004, the CSO appointed Jeffrey Kahane, music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and music director laureate of the Santa Rosa Symphony, as the ninth music director in the 82-year history of the Denver and Colorado Symphony Orchestras.

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Readings are a part of EarShot: The nationwide network of new music readings and related composer-development programs. The goals of the program are to create the nation’s first ongoing systematic program for identifying emerging orchestral composers, to provide professional-level working experience with orchestras from every region of the country, and to increase awareness of these composers and access to their music throughout the industry. EarShot is a partnership among American Composers Orchestra, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, the League of American Orchestras, and Meet The Composer.

As part of the effort to increase awareness of these emerging composers, EarShot invited them to participate in ACO’s SoundAdvice blog and other online social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. To provide a variety of perspectives on the Readings, other personnel involved also be contributed to the blog. To read first-hand about the experience, visit the blog or use Twitter by searching on the tag #ESCOread and follow ACO @AmerCompOrch.

Yotam Haber: Forward Ornament

Yotam Haber, 32, was born in Holland and is a citizen of Israel and the U.S. After attending Indiana University, studying with Eugene O’Brien and Claude Baker, he completed a doctorate in composition at Cornell University in 2004, studying with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky. He has been awarded two ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Awards and also won the second bi-annual ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize for the wind ensemble work Espresso, which was performed at Carnegie Hall and consequently recorded for release in the fall of 2005.

He has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, studying with George Benjamin and Osvaldo Golijov; the Aspen Music Festival, studying with Christopher Rouse and Nicholas Maw; and has been in residence at the Aaron Copland House, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and MacDowell Colony. His music has been performed in prestigious halls throughout Germany, Italy, Ireland, Holland, and across the U.S. Haber resides in New York City and is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. He was a 2007-08 Rome Prize Fellow in Music at the American Academy in Rome where he researched the music of the Jewish community of Rome as well as collaborating in Berlin with Bulgarian-American artist Daniel Bozhkov on the 30th anniversary of the first German in space; in Holland with Dutch artist Maria Barnas on a Stendhal Syndrome project; and in Switzerland with architect Peter Zumthor on two works to be premiered in 2009 in a newly designed chapel.

Forward Ornament is a fast, sleek, short burst of energy that explores, fights, dissolves, and re-forms Baroque notions of symmetry, clarity, harmony, ornamentation, and line. Its inspiration comes from the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures of Italo Calvino. With this work, the composer began a series of pieces that meditate on the six characteristics that Calvino prized and valued above all others: lightness, quickness, visibility, exactitude, multiplicity, and (the unfinished) consistency. Ornaments—those rapid musical flourishes that are not really necessary but serve to decorate a melody, harmony, or line—take center stage in this piece. Like the singing of birds, these musical crystals are ornate, yet clear, clean, and light.

Angel Lam: In Search of Seasons

Angel Lam, 30, grew up in Hong Kong and Los Angeles and is a doctoral candidate at Peabody Conservatory and an artist diploma candidate at Yale University. She is a two-time winner of the Carnegie Hall emerging composer commission, working one year with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project, and another year with Osvaldo Golijov and Dawn Upshaw. These two collaborations, together with the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, culminated in two Carnegie Hall premieres. Most recently, her composition Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain was performed by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on an international tour and recorded by the same ensemble on the Sony/BMG CD “New Impossibilities.”

Her upcoming collaborations include commissions from Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Yale Cellos, Hong Kong Arts Festival 2010, and a cello and orchestra composition written for Yo-Yo Ma to premiere this fall with the Atlanta Symphony in Atlanta and at Carnegie Hall. Lam has received five ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, two National Association Composers of U.S.A. Young Composer Awards, First Prize in Millennium Music Competition for Woodwind Quintet Composition awarded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Audience Prize for Best Composition at the Seoul International Competition for Composers, among others.

The composer says of In Search of Seasons, “As we grow older, we start to associate seasons with people that we once knew, events in the past, and most of all, memories. As time goes by, we start to lose track of the seasons passing by us, and we forget the magic of seasonal changes, how ravishing it was to experience the first warm fragrance of spring from a deep, contemplative winter, the pulsating liveliness of summer, the soft caress of southern tropical winds on our bare skin, the resistance of autumn’s arrival in summer’s presence, and the dance of golden and scarlet leaves in November, its wind replete with memories of the past. Seasonal changes mark the passing of time—to witness the majesty of seasons on our own is not enough; we have a need to share it with someone, to witness together the beauty and glory in each other’s life. — Have you found your favorite season yet?”

Jeremy Podgursky: our bliss, it comes in waves

Jeremy Podgursky, 33, received a B.M. in music composition/piano from the University of Louisville, studying privately with Fred Speck, Marc Satterwhite, and Steve Rouse. In 2007, he completed the Grawemeyer Fellowship in music composition (M.M.) at the University of Louisville under the guidance of Steve Rouse and John Gibson. In August 2009, he will begin a Jacobs School of Music Doctoral Fellowship (D.M.) at Indiana University. Upon completion of his master of music degree, he taught music theory/aural skills and private composition lessons at the University of Louisville.

His teaching experience sparked an interest in pre-collegiate composition instruction, which led to teaching after-school composition programs in Louisville-area public high schools. His music has been featured in venues and festivals in the United States, the Netherlands and Japan. He has received performances by professional groups such as the Arsenal Trio, Lost Dog Ensemble, Juventas! New Music Ensemble, cellist Dana Winograd, and the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra. Recent awards include first-place winner of the 2007 National SCI/ASCAP commissioning award and honorable mention in the 2008 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute. He is also the founder/singer/songwriter/guitarist for the psychedelic/indie rock band The Pennies, who have entertained audiences all over the country and in Europe.

our bliss, it comes in waves is his first full-length piece for orchestra. In describing the work, the composer says that it “explores contrasting musical and thematic elements in hopes of peacefully achieving a sense of compromise. Conceptually and aesthetically, I found myself reconciling disparate qualities such as liquid vs. solid, diffused vs. concentrated, transparent vs. translucent (and/or opaque), exposed vs. obscured, rigid vs. flexible, primal (body) vs. transcendental (spirit), and diatonic harmony vs. pentatonic harmony.”

Tim Sullivan: Polychrome

Tim SullivanTim Sullivan, 37, holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Music Theory from the University of Michigan, a dual M.M. in Music History and Music Theory/Composition from the University of Northern Colorado, and also a B.M. in Music Theory and Composition from UNC. He has studied composition with Bright Sheng, William Bolcom, Betsy Jolas, and Karen Tanaka. Additional lessons and master classes have included Georges Aperghis, Toshio Hosokawa, Dieter Mack, Helmut Lachenmann, and Beat Furrer.

His compositions have received performances via American Opera Projects, 2008 NASA conference, Etcetera Festival of New Music, World Saxophone Congress XIII, 2004 Society of Composers National Student Conference, and the University of Nebraska New Music Festival. He has received awards from ASCAP and Downbeat magazine, and two of his works for saxophone are published by Dorn Publications, Inc. Sullivan is the co-founder of the Re-source Ensemble, a composer’s collective based in Ann Arbor, MI. He was also the co-founder and director of the Colorado Contemporary Music Consort, as well as filling the role of conductor and percussionist for the group from 1997 to 2002. Also an accomplished jazz drummer, he has several recordings as a member of the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble and has performed with Ron Miles at jazz festivals throughout the U.S.

In talking about his piece, the composer explained, “Polychrome literally means ‘being of many or various colors’ —in this work, I wanted to explore this idea in a dramatic context. The ‘colors’ of the work are bold and bright and often come together in explosive combinations. In a formal sense, I fashioned the work out of shifting blocks of music. The first half of Polychrome features the alternation of two contrasting colors, the first is dazzling and bright, while the second is coarse and dark. With each return, the ‘color’ of the music is shaded differently, like it is being viewed through a prism. After one final flash of brilliance, a shrieking chord in the woodwinds and strings signifies the beginning of the second half of the work. There are two ‘primary’ colors in this section as well: bold, dramatic chords, which gradually migrate from the woodwinds to the whole orchestra; and a softer hue introduced by the lyrical oboe solo and hushed string chords. Gradually, these colors are brought together, and the climax of the work occurs where the roles become reversed – the music of the oboe solo is exploded into cacophonous bursts of woodwinds and strings, and the whole orchestra collapses onto a single note. After these incredibly violent collisions, the music fades away into slow, sustained echoes of earlier sounds.”

Delta David Gier, conductor

Delta David GierDelta David Gier has been called a dynamic voice on the American music scene, recognized widely for his penetrating interpretations of the standard repertoire and his passionate commitment to new music. In summer 2000 he conducted the New York Philharmonic in what were described as “splendid performances … exploiting the subtlety of the timbrel combinations and expressive devices with a zeal not usually found.” Gier came to national attention in 1997 while conducting a tour of Carmen for San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theater. For the past six seasons, Mr. Gier has served as an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic and recently for the Metropolitan Opera as well.

As a Fulbright Scholar (1988-90) Gier led critically acclaimed performances with many orchestras of Eastern Europe. He was invited to the former Czechoslovakia to conduct Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony in celebration of the 100th anniversary of its premiere. Gier took this opportunity to introduce Eastern European audiences to many American masterworks, such as Barber’s Violin Concerto with the Presidential Symphony of Ankara, and Copland’s Appalachian Spring with the Bucharest Philharmonic.

Gier earned a Master of Music degree in conducting from The University of Michigan under Gustav Meier. As a student at Tanglewood and Aspen he studied also with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Erich Leinsdorf, and Seiji Ozawa, and was later invited by Riccardo Muti to spend a year as an apprentice at the Philadelphia Orchestra. At the invitation of the League of American Orchestras he participated in their National Conductor Preview, a highly selective showcase for young conductors. Mr. Gier has been increasingly in demand as a teacher and conductor in many highly regarded music schools. Within the last two years he has served as a visiting professor at the Yale School of Music, the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, the San Francisco Conservatory, and SUNY Stony Brook.

Fergus Macleod, conductor

Fergus Macleod is currently a student at Cambridge, where he conducts the Cambridge University Music Society in the major symphonic repertoire, in addition to his role as Music Director of the new and cutting-edge contemporary Ensemble CB3, with whom he gave several world premieres at the West Road Concert Hall and other venues around Cambridge.

Macleod has also conducted the National Youth Orchestra Sinfonietta and, earlier this year, his first opera, Handel’s Xerxes, for the newly formed Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera company, with two performances in Cambridge and two at the Theatre Royal in Bury St. Edmunds. In August 2008 he was selected as one of only three conductors to work with Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He has also led performances at St. John’s Smith Square in London, the CBSO Centre and the Royal Northern College of Music, and, for the past two summers, the Consonance Players at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.