The Phoenix Concerts

"Minimalism. Term applied from the early 1970's to various compositional practices, the features of which—static harmony, patterned rhythms and repetition—aim radically to reduce the range of compositional materials."

—The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, s.v. "minimalism"

"minimalism. Term applied to style of music which began in 1960s involving repetition of short musical motifs in a simple harmonic idiom. The minimum of material is repeated to maximum hypnotic effect."

—The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. "minimalism"

"Early minimalist works from the 1960s have a modernist unity, yet, as minimalism entered its second decade, the diversity of elements included... led to a style sometimes referred to as "maximal minimalism" in the 1980s and 1990s."

—Jane Piper Clendinning, Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought,
ed. Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner (New York: Routledge, 2002), 130.

"Unlike Copland's sepia-toned prairie, minimalist vistas are filtered through new ways of seeing and hearing that relate to the technology of speed. They evoke the experience of driving in a car across empty dessert, the layered repetitions in the music mirroring the changes that the eye perceives—road signs flashing by, a mountain range shifting on the horizon, a pedal point of asphalt underneath."

—Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 475.

Both drawing from and influencing popular music, minimalism's effects are embedded in the fabric of American culture today.

"Open-ended, potentially limitless"(Ross, 2007), we can trace the wide-reaching threads of its influence to any number of distinct and often starkly contrasting ends.

This evening, in one hour, we trace those threads over the span of four decades, beginning today with the premieres of the next generation—one that takes for granted minimalist techniques and borrows from them freely; shifting back to 2001 with post-minimalist composer Michael Torke's coolly rapturous cycle Five Songs of Solomon; touching down briefly in 1997 with a song ("Autumn Dusk") from St. Paul composer Edie Hill's cycle Between the Limbs, Music; confronting 1982 with David Lang's fierce duo for violin and piano Illumination Rounds; and, finally, ending our tour in 1974 with Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditation I "Teach Yourself to Fly"—a directed improvisation.

Seven composers, seven distinct threads, traced—some linearly, some less directly—from a shared point of origin. I hope you enjoy.

—Gilda Lyons

ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
The song, Autumn Movement, was written while in residence at the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts in August 2008. Due to an unfortunate hard drive crash while in Virginia, the song (and a few others) had to be rewritten the following fall in Brooklyn and later revised.—C.C.

Autumn Movement I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the
northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.
—Carl Sandburg (1918)

CHRIS CZUBAY, born in 1988 on Long Island, New York, began his studies in music at an early age. After beginning violin lessons, he was led to study cello, viola, percussion, and voice. By 11, Chris began to write his first compositions. While in high school, Chris pursued studies in composition with Herbert Deutsch and eventually with Daron Hagen, his current teacher. Recently, he was a resident of the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Autumn Dusk tempers the carefree youthfulness of a Hummingbird. This song is about mature love —a love that has endured. —E.H.

Autumn Dusk
Night enters the lake With its black tongue As slender reeds
Rouse the wind. In outlying fields, The harvested earth
Folds itself in darkness And the gold lights Of farmhouses
Turn on, one by one, Like thoughts Before sleep.

Lie down beside me In the shore’s Deep shade
Where high leaves Swirl and surrender To the grass.
We will blend More quietly With autumn’s weight.
When we wake To frost under These chestnut branches

Geese will be passing In strict formation Overhead, flying
In pairs away from This common dream.
— Joan Wolf Prefontaine

EDIE HILL (b. 1962, New York City) has been distinguished by the St. Paul Pioneer Press as "one of the Twin Cities best know young creators" and is the recipient of numerous grant/awards, including being named a two-time McKnight Composer Fellow, a 2001 Minnesota State Arts Board Fellow and receiving awards from ASCAP, Meet the Composer and the Jerome Foundation.

Woman with the Guitar, written by my good friend Josh Ziemann, is an ekphrastic poem after the Picasso paining of the same name. He uses only 24 words to evoke his enthusiasm and love for the painting, and the song takes the same approach. —E.M.

Woman with the Guitar
Woman with the guitar your books, your apple your faint frown
bookish, frowning guitar play your music, your faint music, oh woman
draped with the guitar I love your neck, your curling face draped with love with
my love, oh faint love my curling apple play music play guitar books play
my face, faint with the frown oh you are my music with my curling glass love
frowning you play out music woman you play out love music, fainter
draped with the curling frown of fainter love you play my neck
you play out your love with the neck, oh my music, oh your music
—Josh Ziemann

ERIC MALMQUIST is a young composer who lives, performs, and composes in Chicago, Illinois. He is a founding member of the Chicago-based Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles (SEMC) New Music Trio, performing on double bass and electric bass guitar as well as composing for the ensemble. Eric was selected to be a Composer Fellow in the first-ever composer's workshop at the Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, Washington in October 2008. While there, he won the Seasons Festival Orchestral Composition Prize, and his orchestral work Adventus was premiered by the Yakima Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Brooke Creswell. Eric is currently composing a one-act opera, titled Zoe, with librettist Ben Hjertmann, to be premiered in April 2009.

***

Old Meeting-House Bell is the first in a cycle of four songs for soprano voice and piano. The text was written by the transcendental writer, Henry David Thoreau. In the song, the sound and image of a large church bell is invoked not only by the text but concurrently through broadly sweeping “bell-shaped” gestures in the piano. —B.B.

Old Meeting-House Bell
Old Meeting-House Bell I love thy music well
It peals through the air Sweetly full & fair
As in the early times When I listened to its chimes.
—Henry David Thoreau

BRIAN BAXTER’s music focuses on colorful timbres, unique rhythmic textures, and the juxtaposition of different sound worlds. Baxter currently resides in Chicago where he is pursuing an MM in music composition at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. He received a BM in music composition from Illinois Wesleyan University. His principal teachers have included; Stacy Garrop, Daron Hagen, David Vayo, Mario Pelusi, and Garrett Byrnes. Baxter is also an active performer (percussion, piano) in several groups around the Chicagoland area including the Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles, Chicago's most exciting up-and-coming new music trio. Brian originally hails from Geneva, IL.

Illumination Rounds, for violin and piano from 1982, is the earliest piece on [Lang's collection: Are You Experienced?] and also the most directly inspired by outside experience. Writing for Juilliard students, who, Lang says, were particularly excited by the physical nature and technology of playing their instruments, the composer modelled the roles between violin and piano on a type of bullet that was used in the Vietnam War. After being fired, an illumination round leaves a phosphorescent residue in the air, allowing gunners to aim by following a vapor trail. Likewise, in this score of violent gestures and fierce counterpoint, the violin and piano trade off being either image or echo, while the result experienced has something of both the exhilaration and terror of combat. —Mark Swed

"There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed about the Pulitzer Prize winning American composer DAVID LANG, but audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of his work: in performances by such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; at Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the Sidney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin, Strasbourg and Huddersfield Festivals; in theater productions in New York, San Francisco and London; in the choreography of Twyla Tharp, La La La Human Steps, The Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Ballet; and at Lincoln Center, the South Bank Centre, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music festival, Bang on a Can.

***

Five Songs of Solomon for soprano and piano (2001) These songs were written for the soprano Margaret Lloyd, commissioned by the 92nd Street Y in New York City, and premiered there February 18, 2001. My desire was to find five verses from the Biblical Song of Songs, that told a small story, and devise each of the songs to have the same form, with only small harmonic and melodic changes expressing the moods of each verse. A young girl singing about searching for her lost love made me think the setting should be simple, and that the piano accompaniment not get in the way (as so often happens in contemporary song cycles). The individual songs cannot be performed alone; they make sense only as a large, structural chord progression from the first song to the last, and the listener best appreciates the wisdom of the final verse, “I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up love before its own time”, by understanding the consoling, alternating harmony in relation to the harmonic treatments that came in each of the four songs before.
—M.T.

Five Songs of Solomon
1. On my Bed
On my bed at night I sought him
whom my heart loves—
I sought him but did not find him.

2. I Will Rise
I will rise then and go about the city;
in the streets and crossings I will seek
Him whom my heart loves.
I sought him but did not find him.

3. The Watchmen Came
The watchmen came upon me
as they made their rounds of the city:
Have you seen him whom my heart loves?

4. I had Hardly Left Them
I had hardly left them
when I found him whom my heart loves.
I took hold of him and would not let him go
till I should bring him to the home of my mother,
to the room of my parent.

5. I Adjure You
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles and hinds of the field,
Do not arouse, do not stir up love
before its own time.
—Song of Songs 3:1-5

With his two best known early pieces, Ecstatic Orange and Yellow Pages, written in 1985 while still a composition student at Yale, MICHAEL TORKE practically defined post-Minimalism, a music which utilizes the repetitive structures of a previous generation to incorporate musical techniques from both the classical tradition and the contemporary pop world. At 23, Torke cut short his graduate study to begin his professional career in New York City, where he was soon signed by Boosey and Hawkes (the publisher of Stravinsky and Copland), became an exclusive recording artist with Argo/Decca Records, and began his five-year collaboration with Peter Martins and the New York City Ballet.

Highlights since then include: Color Music (1985–89), a series of orchestral pieces that each explore a single, specific color; Javelin, recorded both for Argo and for John William’s Summon the Heroes, the official 1996 Olympics album; Four Seasons, a 65-minute oratorio commissioned by the Walt Disney Company to celebrate the millennium and premiered by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic; Strawberry Fields, whose “Great Performances” broadcast was nominated for an Emmy Award; and two evening-length story ballets, The Contract, and An Italian Straw Hat, for James Kudelka and the National Ballet of Canada.

In 1998 Torke was appointed Associate Composer of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Naxos released an album including Rapture, his percussion concerto, and An American Abroad, a tone poem, both of which were commissioned and performed by the RSNO.

Upcoming projects include opera commissions from the Metropolitan Opera, the Skylight Opera, and a tap concerto for Savion Glover.

***

Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations is not a score in the traditional sense. It is a collection of verbal instructions written by the composer, who "has abandoned composition/performance practice as it is usually established today for Sonic Explorations" (Oliveros Sonic Meditations, 1974). Oliveros' imagery is evocative; the meditations read more like poetry than prose: Sonic Meditation V, Native, reads "Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become your ears." The collection creates a space for sound exploration on a deeply personal level and, while it is intended more as a starting point for intimate "tuning of mind and body", we offer up this public version of Sonic Meditation number 1 for you this evening. —G.L.

Instructions for "Teach Yourself to Fly":
"...Begin by simply observing your own breathing. Always be an observer. Gradually allow your breathing to become audible. Then gradually introduce your voice. Allow your vocal cords to vibrate in any mode which occurs naturally. Allow the intensity of the vibrations to increase very slowly. Continue as long as possible, naturally, and until all others are quiet, always observing your own breath cycle. Variation: translate voice to an instrument."

PAULINE OLIVEROS is one of America's most vital composers. Deep Listening®, her lifetime practice, is fundamental to her composing, performing and teaching. She serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY; Darius Milhaud Artist-in-residence at Mills College, Oakland CA; and president of the Deep Listening Institute in Kingston NY.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Jocelyn Dueck is a member of the Phoenix Players. To read her biography, please click [here].

Gilda Lyons is a member of the Phoenix Players. To read her biography, please click [here].

Soprano ERIKA RAUER (www.erikarauer.com) is acclaimed for the "dark and sultry" (Schenectady Daily Gazette) sound she brings to both concert and operatic literature. For her performance of Abigail Williams in The Crucible at Opera Boston, the Boston Globe commended her "great stage face and strikingly individual timbre." Her performance of Shostakovich's 14th Symphony with the Franciscan Chamber Orchestra was praised by Schenectady Daily Gazette stating, "Rauer's voice is perfectly suited for a modern score and she sang with unbridled passion."

During the 2008-2009 season Ms. Rauer makes her debut in Germany performing the title role in Salome at Oper Bremen (Bremer Theater). In 2008 she performed Fiordiligi in a concert version of Così fan tutte with the dell'Arte Ensemble in New York and sang Belinda and Second Witch in Dido and Aeneas with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. She also performed excerpts from La Bohème, Carmen, and Cendrillon with New York City Opera Education.

During three seasons at the Tanglewood Music Center, Ms. Rauer appeared as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, La Chatte, L'Écureil, and Un Pâtre in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, and sang chamber music ranging from Zemlinsky's Maiblumen blühten überall to Crumb's Madrigals. Previously a mezzo soprano, Ms. Rauer's European operatic debut was as Dorabella in Così fan tutte at the Snape Proms Festival in Aldeburgh, England. She was a member of Glimmerglass Opera's prestigious Young American Artist's Program in 2002, covering Meg in Mark Adamo's opera Little Women and singing Britten's Phaedra in recital.

A native of Dover, Delaware, Ms. Rauer received her Bachelor's Degree from Swarthmore College in religion and her Master's Degree in voice from the Yale School of Music.

ERIC MOE (www.ericmoe.net), composer of what the NY Times calls "music of winning exuberance", has received numerous grants and awards for his work, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship; commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, and Meet-the-Composer USA; fellowships from the Wellesley Composer's Conference and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Bellagio, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, the Montana Artists Refuge, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, and the American Dance Festival.

Also a pianist and keyboard player, Moe has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers, from Anthony Davis to Stefan Wolpe. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, Albany, and AK/Coburg labels in the music of John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, Jay Reise, and Felix Draeseke, in addition to his own. His solo recording The Waltz Project Revisited - New Waltzes for Piano, a CD of waltzes for piano by two generations of American composers, was recently released on Albany. Gramophone magazine says in its review of the CD, “Moe’s command of the varied styles is nothing short of remarkable.” A founding member of the San Francisco-based EARPLAY ensemble, he currently co-directs the Music on the Edge new music concert series in Pittsburgh.

the phoenix concerts | the phoenix commissions | the phoenix players | the phoenix mission