Notes – Friday, April 1st

Confluences – Jay Coble (trumpet), Tom Brantley (trombone) & Corey Jane Holt (piano) – was formed in 2002. The trio has played numerous dates throughout the Southeast since their inception, as well as a 2003 performance in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The trio plays standard repertoire (as standard as it comes for such instrumentation), pieces with a jazz influence and contemporary music. The performers have commissioned several pieces for the trio from composers around the United States. Dr. Coble & Mr. Brantley currently teach at the University of South Florida. Ms. Holt is a freelance musician in the Tampa Bay area.

The University of South Florida Percussion Ensembles are known throughout the United States for their performances of new music and sophisticated chamber repertoire. With several CD recordings to their credit, the USF Percussion Ensemble is among the most recorded groups of its genre. A CD of music written especially for the ensemble, entitled Premiers Vol. I, was released by C. Alan Publications of Greensboro, North Carolina. Other recordings include numerous Bonk Festival compact discs, a CD with NYC flutist Margaret Lancaster in 1999, and a 2003 disc of Houston-based composer Dan Adams' works for percussion ensemble. The percussion program normally maintains an enrollment of 20 majors. These students also play in a variety of other ensembles, wind groups, orchestras and jazz groups, studying and performing on all the major percussion instruments.

Hailed as the “leading exponent of the avant-garde flute” (Kyle Gann, Village Voice), Margaret Lancaster has built a large repertoire of new works that employ extended techniques, dance, drama, multi-media, and electronics. Her acclaimed solo CD Future Flute is a collection of electro-acoustic works written for her. Lancaster is a member of Essential Music and the Downtown Ensemble and a recurring performer at Spoleto Festival USA, Bonk Festival of New Music, Three Two Festival, and Santa Fe New Music. She has appeared as a lecturer/soloist at many sites including Stanford, Dartmouth, Princeton, Bennington and the National Flute Association. She is the recipient of a Meet the Composer Commissioning Music/USA grant and plays the role of Helene in the Obie-winning Mabou Mines production DOLLHOUSE. Lancaster resides in New York City where she acts, dances, choreographs, and plays the flute...www.margaretlancaster.com

Kim McCormick is an assistant flute professor at the University of South Florida. She appears frequently as a soloist and chamber music performer and may be currently seen in eight episodes of "Issues in Music" on WUSF-TV Channel 16. She has appeared on National Public Radio and Television, and has a CD on the market entitled Premiers Plus One for flute and percussion. She also has recordings with Tampa Bay Master Chorale and pop icon Tiny Tim, and has frequently appeared as a soloist and chamber music performer at the Spoleto Festival. Recent performances include the National Flute Association (New York, Orlando, Phoenix), Percussive Arts International, International Society of Music Education, International Double Reed Society, and the Florida Flute Fair. McCormick is a board member of the Florida Flute Association and a Yamaha Performing Artist.

Currently, R. Wayne Woodson serves at the Manager of Education Services for The Florida Orchestra. In addition to these responsibilities, he maintains a fairly active performing and conducting career. This season he has recitals scheduled in Detroit, Atlanta, and Denver. After receiving a BA in Music (Voice and Choral Conducting) from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, Mr. Woodson attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. His career has taken him across the United States, as well as Russia, Poland, and Bermuda. Before moving to Tampa Bay, he was the Founding Artistic Director of the Voices of Unity Chorale in Boston. This group presented standard choral repertoire, as well as lesser known works by African-American composers. He has presented workshops on African-American music in many cities around the country, and continues to program this music in all of his endeavors.

Berceuse is a gentle lullaby, written especially for the USF Percussion Ensemble with Kim McCormick and Margaret Lancaster. When a tree falls…

David Rogers has been a core composer/performer (horn, accordion and other instruments) with Tampa’s Bonk Festival of New Music since 1994, helping coordinate the festival since 1996. He holds degrees in composition and theory from the Eastman School of Music (B.M., Ph.D.) and New York University (M.A.). Rogers taught theory and composition courses at the University of South Florida from 1998-2004, and since January of 2004 has worked on the operations staff of the Florida Orchestra. His music has been described as “too cerebral” and “lacking international flavor.”

Sputter was written in the fall of 2004 for the outstanding Confluences trio. Comprised of several short sections, all of the material in the piece was derived from a single difference equation.

Drew Krause has written over 50 works for instrumental and electronic media. His music is published by Frog Peak and has been recorded by Innova, New Ariel, Frog Peak, and Bonk Records. He has received grants from Harvestworks, The MacDowell Colony, The Wurlitzer Foundation, and Meet the Composer, and residencies at Stanford University and Brooklyn College. A composition graduate of Juilliard (MM) and the University of Illinois (DMA), his principal teachers were Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano, Vincent Persichetti, Bernard Rands, and Stuart Smith. Dr. Krause has performed piano music and conducted works by Boulez, Xenakis, Braxton, Varese, Webern, Stockhausen, Lachenmann and others, as well as collaborations encompassing music theatre, improvisation, and live electronics with the Thump Piano Duo, the Performer's Workshop Ensemble, and many others. From 1988 through 1995 he led seminars in computer music and experimental composition at the University of Illinois. He has served as resident pianist for the Bonk, ThreeTwo, New Music Miami, and SubTropics festivals, and was musical director of FUNMusic in Urbana from 1993 to 1996. Active as a composer and pianist of contemporary music, he lives and works in New York City.

The Lancaster Overture was composed for that Lancaster who is not Burt, that percussion ensemble that is not the US Navy, and that Bob who is not Robert Blake. The music, which unfairly pits a solo flute against a percussion ensemble, presents the composer's best attempt at "come hither" music, penned with all the grace of a porcupine trying to have sex with an empty can of Coke. Although many overtures can be made to Margaret Lancaster, this one sets the standard for bad taste. Accept no substitute.

Eric Lyon has composed music that you never dreamed of in your worst nightmare. After this evening's performance, his music will be in your dreams, forever.

Taking Liberties was commissioned by the noted chamber music ensemble Confluences for the tidy sum of $3500. Support for this commission is gratefully acknowledged from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hillsborough Arts Council, Meet The Composer, The George Harrison Memorial Fund, The RAND Corporation, The Pulitzer Prize Committee, and the Stop Eric Lyon from Composing Solo Piccolo Music Fund. The composer notes that the fee schedule for “Taking Liberties” works out to less than $1000 per minute of music.

Flaming Walls (2005) for trumpet, trombone and piano was commissioned by Confluences for premiere at the 14th Annual Bonk Festival of New Music. This composition continues a series of works written over the last several years that explore the application of magic squares to musical structure. The 5x5 “Magic Square of Mars” provides the framework for the composition.  The title refers to the “walls” that divide the music of the 45 sections produced by the 9 routes through the magic square.

Zack Browning is an Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of Illinois. He received his Bachelors Degree from Florida State University and his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Illinois. Recent awards include a 2001 Illinois Arts Council Composer Fellowship and a 2002 Chamber Music America Commission for “Back Speed Double Circuit” for the Bang On A Cans All-Stars. Recent performances include the Bonk Festival of New Music in Tampa, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in Miami, the Electronic Music Midwest Festival in Chicago, the Spark Festival in Minneapolis, the University of Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival and the Three Two Festival in New York City. “Network Slammer” was performed at the 2004 Gaudeamus Music Week in Amsterdam and Browning’s recent CD “Banjaxed” on Capstone Records contains eight of his original compositions for voice, instruments and computer-generated sounds. He is presently working on a CD of his music and the music of Sever Tipei for Centaur Records.

White House 1980 is the name of a love hotel in Gifu, Japan.  It is also the name of a love hotel in Washington, D.C.  This piece is a thank you note for all the forms of love we have received, spiritual, emotional, and oral during an unusually (em)pathetic administration which was on its way out of town just as my "Cantata of Love" was being composed.

Directions was written in 1992 for the Armin Rosin Trio, as a commission from New Day Chamber Music of Braunschweig. The work is in nine movements, played without pause.

Werner Heider was born in Germany in 1930. Artistic Director of the Ars Nova Ensemble in Nuremberg since 1968, Heider is a free-lance composer, pianist and conductor.

Notes – Saturday, April 2nd

“Zungenspitzentanz” (Tip-of-the Tongue-Dance) is an episode from “Lucifer’s Dance,” 3rd scene of the opera Samstag aus Licht (Saturday from Light). The miming, gesturing, dancing and speaking in this composition are all structurally related, or make reference to the structure of the dance as a whole. The music evokes magic: it haunts in rushing noises, in whirring loops, in ring-modulated voice, in unearthly pulse tones, whizzing whistling: to project oneself - while listening - into the dancing tip of the tongue...

Karlheinz Stockhausen has composed over 300 works , appearing on well over 100 compact discs. Since 1977, he has been engaged in the creation of the operatic cycle Licht (The Seven Days of the Week), of which Samstag aus Licht (Saturday from Light) was the second to be completed and performed in 1984. Stockhausen has been at the forefront of European modernist compositional thought since his first pointillistic works in the early 1950s. In an age when modernism is passé and musical conservatism is considered avant-garde, Stockhausen’s music stands as a uniquely provocative body of creative work reflecting most major innovations in Western composition during the last half of the 20 th century.

The Inevitable Rift was composed.

Timothy Cunnane received his BA from New College of Florida where he studied under Robert C. Constable Jr. From 2001-2003, he was the teaching assistant for New College’s electronic music program and helped to maintain the Slavin Electronic Music Studio in Sarasota, Florida. As a result of his studies in electronic and computer music, he subsequently landed a prestigious job as the night desk clerk at the New York Yacht Club. He currently lives and works in Connecticut.

The Death of García-Lorca. This music-theater composition for flutist-dancer and electronic sounds explores the final hours of the great XX Century Spanish poet, Federico García-Lorca, who was brutally murdered by the Fascists at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in 1936. Lorca was betrayed to the Falangist execution squads by a family in Granada where the poet was arrested, transported to a ravine and shot to death in the company of other supporters of the legitimate Republican Government. The myriad thoughts that pass through a doomed person’s mind, the sounds that he or she perceives around themselves, the aromas of fear that permeate their immediate surroundings: all appear in the dynamic play between flutist-dancer and the electronic soundscape.

As is wont in Francis Schwartz’s works, the audience will be actively incorporated into the composition at specially chosen moments. This is a type of communion in the Art Space that has been a major preoccupation of the composer for the past 4 decades.

Francis Schwartz was born in the United States in 1940 and grew up in Texas, where he studied with the eminent pianist Patricio Gutierrez. Pursuing advanced studies in piano and composition, he received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at The Juilliard School, where his principal teachers were Lonny Epstein, Louis Persinger and Vittorio Giannini. Subsequently, he was awarded a Ph.D. summa cum laude in musical aesthetics from the University of Paris. Schwartz was the Dean of the Humanities College of the University of Puerto Rico from 1995 to 1999, where he has also held major academic and administrative positions throughout the past three decades. His music is regularly performed around the world, and he is noted for his music-theater works and innovative performance strategies. He frequently incorporates the attending public as active participant in the artistic experience, stating: “I wish to give both the performer and the public the opportunity to explore new ways of enjoying and discovering an artwork. During the past centuries, we have become too rigid, too fearful of the total art experience. I want the players to bathe in the wonders of their corporeal expressiveness, to savor the communicative power of facial gesture as much as they delight in a beautifully produced vocal or instrumental sound. Both artist and public grow in this discovery.”

Mark Applebaum writes: “Brian Ferneyhough’s Funerailles for seven strings and harp requires that its two versions be performed on the same concert but not consecutively. In this regard my series of solo works, Entre Funerailles, are hypothetical interludes to his two versions; as autonomous compositions, they may be performed independently. These pieces serve as both homage and curious aesthetic intrusion. Entre Funerailles IV is dedicated to Helen Bledsoe who premiered it in Amsterdam in 2001. Its form is a continuous variation in which each measure can be heard as a transformation of the previous one. However, in the ultimate work, much of the narrative is missing; measures were removed and although the remaining pieces were sewn together in time, a discursive gap remains. The gap increases incrementally and then shrinks until it disappears. The process is repeated but with a degenerating maximum gap. The idea, then, is that the narrative distance between adjacent measures expands and contracts, producing moments of logical consequence as well as incongruous, surreal ones. As the maximum gap contracts, so decays the ambit of narrative incongruity. In response to the assumption that music changes either gradually or suddenly, this piece oscillates progressively between gradual changes and sudden ones.”

Mark Applebaum received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, electro-acoustic, and electronic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia with notable premieres at the Darmstadt summer sessions. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Vienna Modern Festival, Zeitgeist, MANUFACTURE (Tokyo), the Jerome Foundation, and the American Composers Forum, among others. In 1997 Applebaum received the American Music Center’s Stephen Albert Award and an artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo artist colony in Northern California. Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist and builds electro-acoustic instruments out of junk, hardware, and found objects for use as both compositional and improvisational tools. His music can be heard on recordings on the Innova and Capstone labels. Applebaum is assistant professor of composition and theory at Stanford University. Prior to his current appointment, he taught at UCSD, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College.

Toneland Security - Taking as its juxta/superposed sources fragments of several protest songs combined with tectonic layerings of duplicate rhythmic templates appropriated from an Ewe war song (Ghana), the embedded counterpoint of this brief quodlibet may or may not correspond with appropriate protective or sanctioned musical responses to international crises. Though severe, frankly, it is imagined that one day the highly pointed coagulation of such disparate materials will no longer be required in any guarded arena, and that authorities will take proactive steps to reduce the currently necessary low-level vulnerability of pitch and rhythmic materials to such nonspecific threats.

Paul Steenhuisen. His name means “small stone house” BORN 01/09/65 (the year Varèse died) @vancouver, CAN*studies w/| Andriessen | Hamel | Murail | Finnissy | amsterdam-van-paris-london- recipient, Governor General’s Gold Medal as top student in all faculties, UBC. Dr. Was composer in residence: toronto_symphony_orchestra’98-00. Now UAlb prof, writer, & defenseman for The Morningstars Hockey Club. Commissions/performances/broadcasts by the strange worldwide. Info/writings: http://members.shaw.ca/steenhuisen.

Once-a-thon - The saying 'You only go around once in life' does not seem to apply to the many levels of cognition, intellect and emotion through which we gather experience. These levels are constantly changing, affecting one another. The experience is never the same, despite our every effort to quantize and label. This is intensified by the age of information and communication. Never before has the information been so immediate and abundant. So, given our experience, is the music completely different, or has our perception of it changed? Are we feeding the baby or are we cleaning the shotgun? Sort using a different keyword and obtain a different set of results. Repeat this process until the results are acceptable. You are a patient person. Once-a-thon was written for Margaret "Flute Lady" Lancaster.

Rob Constable was born in New York City and moved to Pinellas County at the tender age of 13.  In 1984, he left Florida for graduate school in New York, swearing never to return to the sunshine state.  In 1993, thru an unmentionable twist of fate, he returned to Florida to live.  Rob studied music composition, and has been composing and performing both classical and pop/rock music for over 25 years.   His classical music is sometimes difficult to distinguish from his pop/rock music, due (according to experts) to his simultaneous obsessions with Led Zeppelin and Igor Stravinsky as an early teenager.  His music (in both genres) has received such accolades as "unlistenable", "excruciating" and "inappropriate".  His dream (yes, he has dreams) is to compose music that actually causes genetic changes in key political figures.  He performs with Tampa pop/rock group Handshake Squad (www.handshakesquad.com) and is president of the bay area's BonkK Festival of New Music (www.bonkmusicfest.com).

Jarak Jauh is inspired by the saluang tradition of West Sumatra, in which two flutes play a single melody in close unison; subtle differences in each saluang’s tuning and rhythm create a shimmering filigree. In Jarak Jauh, Margaret plays against a recorded doppelganger of herself, which begins in distant canon. Slowly, the flutes become one. Sumatran saluangs also enter the mix, further blurring the distinction between live musician and recording. The piece is influenced by the keening, chromatic tradition of some Western Sumatran music, in which the singer often bemoans the fact that one’s “other half” is missing or distant. In the matrilineal culture of West Sumatra, men tend to merantau, or travel far away in search of a livelihood, leaving the women to sing about their absence. “Jarak jauh” means long distance.

Nick Brooke composes for a variety of musical media, from orchestras to computers to instruments he builds himself. His works have been performed by the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble of London, Orchestra 2001, and New York’s Gamelan Son of Lion. His opera Tone Test recently premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival, and he has received awards and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, ASCAP, the Rockefeller Foundation, Djerassi, and the MacDowell Colony. In a two-year fellowship to Central Java, he studied gamelan and collaborated on musical projects with Javanese composers, dancers, and visual artists. He holds degrees from Oberlin and Princeton, and teaches at Bennington College.

Lipstick for amplified flute/alto flute and ghetto blaster (1998) was written for Eleonore Pameijer. I was inspired to write this piece by the remarkable hoop-like dance sculptures of the Israeli-Dutch sculptor Naom Ben-Jakov. The visual, repetitive aspect of these unfolding sculptures has been translated musically in echoes. The tape is based on acoustic ready-mades from American talk shows: desperate conversations about human relationships, but also a rare interview with Billy Holiday, in which she recites the text of her favorite song “Don’t Explain,” about a lover who has been deceived:

Skip that lipstick
And I know you cheat
And what love endures

‘You are jumping all those hoops,’ spoken by a psychiatrist with a heavy French accent, is another important line in the sample. The word ‘hoop’ or ‘whoop’ has many meanings, all of them somehow connected with sculptures: hoop, arch, ring, encircle, but also with the vocal samples: cry, cough. Lipstick is in three parts: fast slow fast.

Jacob ter Veldhuis (b. 1951) began his career in rock music, studied composition and electronic music at the Groningen Conservatory and was awarded the Dutch Composition Prize in 1980. He made a name for himself during the 1980s with melodious and effectful compositions, straight from the heart. From his past as a rock musician he kept his interest in sound and a lively stage presentation as means of expression. He is a virtuoso in using electronics and sampling techniques involving items like the Gulf War, Chet Baker or the Jerry Springer Show, as can be heard on his new CD Heartbreakers, a colourful mixture of 'high and low culture'. Still a controversial figure amongst some established exponents of Dutch musical life, he has become one of the most frequently performed composers of the Netherlands today. He makes a stand against the 'faded avant-garde' and tries to escape from the isolated new music ghetto by writing in a straight – sometimes even provocative – style, banning the 'worn out dissonant', a completely devalued means of expression to his ears. The Dutch music magazine Luister offered this comment on the CD of his three string quartets: ''A perfect example of sober Dutch 'New Spirituality'. One can safely leave off idolizing Pärt, Kancheli and the other deep and religious Eastern Europeans, for we have Ter Veldhuis. He manages to achieve equally impressive, 'meditative' results without resorting to all manner of mystical mumbo-jumbo.''

Trois siécles d’Amour (Tricycles of Love) was composed in 1994-95. The translation/reinterpretation of this beer slogan might be traced back to one Mr. Wilson Smith, formerly of New York City, though in the fog of old age I can neither confirm nor deny that assertion. What is certain, however, is that when love, beer and wheels come in threes there can be nothing but trouble. Performance instructions stipulate that each player ignores one of the others for the duration of the piece, and none are allowed to see the music more than 24 hours before performance. The conductor should be a bass player, and is required to be of sufficient weight to have completely destroyed his mobile podium by the end of the piece.