For Immediate Release
January 4, 2001
Contacts:
Gloria Gottschalk, New School University, (212) 229-5667, ext. 239
Patricia A. Neely, Mannes College of Music, (212) 580-0210, ext. 228
NewMusicMannes, one of the leading new music ensembles, directed by Madeleine Shapiro at Mannes College of Music, will present an evening of contemporary music on Thursday, January 25, 2001 at 8 PM at the Concert Hall at Mannes, 150 West 85th Street, NYC.
The program will feature Incantation for solo violin (1995) by Augusta Read Thomas, The Cresset Stone for solo violin (1993) by Hillary Tann, Fu for string quartet (1983) by Ge Gan-ru Fu, Cursive (1963) by Chou Wen-Chung, and Central Park Reel for violin and piano (1987) by Lukas Foss. The concert is free and open to the public. For further information, call (212) 496-8524.
Cursive (1963) by Chou Wen-Chung refers to the type of script in which the joined strokes and rounded angles result in expressive and contrasting curves and loops. This script epitomizes the Chinese calligraphic art as its expressiveness hinges on the spontaneous movement of the brush under the calligrapher’s control to project density, texture and poise. Musically, the cursive concept influences the use of specified but indefinite pitches and rhythm, regulated but variable tempo and dynamics, as well as various timbres possible on the two instruments. The piano serves as reflection of the flute by "extending" its range into the lower register and by matching the flute’s varied, timbral resources, such as microtonal trills and flutter tonguing, using plucked piano strings and foreign materials between these strings.
The Cresset Stone (1993) by Hillary Tann received its first performance on September 2, 1994 with Krzysztof Smietana at the Presteigne Festival in Wales. A cresset stone is a medieval method of lighting — a hollowed-out stone, filled with oil, with a lighted wick. Near the composer’s home in Ferndale, Wales, the ancient cathedral at Brecon contains a remarkable example of such a stone. It was this stone, in its stone cathedral context, which directly inspired the composition. The Cresset Stone is a meditation on stone and light which begins and ends in stillness. The inner sections contain references to the final Kyrie of an eleventh-century Gregorian chant.
Incantation (1995) by Augusta Read Thomas was composed for and is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Catherine Tait. It was composed as a work that would activate the beautiful, elegant, sensuous, musical and enchanted spell that she cast with her violin.
Central Park Reel (1987) for violin and piano by Lukas Foss is a zany take-off on a Virginia Reel.
The next performance for NewMusicMannes will take place on Thursday, April 26, 2001 at 8 PM at Mannes College of Music and will be part of the annual Mannes Contemporary Music Festival.
Mannes College of Music, a division of New School University, was founded in 1916. It is one of the world’s major conservatories of music. Mannes offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs, as well as a Professional Studies Diploma program. Joel Lester is Dean of the College.
# # #
BIOGRAPHIES
Chou Wen-Chung was born in China in 1923. Urged to help rebuild war-torn China, he studied civil engineering, earning a baccalaureate. He came to the U.S. in 1946 on an architecture scholarship at Yale University, but gave it up to pursue music instead, studying with Varese, Martinu, Slonimsky, and Luening and attending the New England Conservatory of Music and Columbia University. A teacher for three decades at Columbia (1964-1991), Chou Wen-Chung became its first Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition (1984). He also served as academic dean of its School of the Arts (1976-1987) and chairman of its doctoral composition program (1969-1989). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, honorary member of the Asian Composers League, and the International Society for Contemporary Music. He has written widely on Chinese music.
Lukas Foss was born in Berlin in 1922. He studied in Berlin and Paris before settling in the United States, where he studied at the Curtis Institute. He studied composition with Randall Thompson and Paul Hindemith. Foss’s early music, such as Song of Songs (1947) for soprano and orchestra , is neoclassical. In the late 1950s, he turned to serialism, chance and improvisation, and the use of mathematical probabilities with pieces as Time Cycle (1959-1960) for soprano and orchestra and Baroque Variations (1967) for orchestra. From 1963 to 1970, Foss was conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1971, he was named conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1981, he has also conducted the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983.
Ge Gan-ru was born in 1954 in Shanghai, China, and is China’s first avant-garde composer. He received degrees in violin and composition from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he also served as Assistant Professor of Composition. In 1983, he was awarded a fellowship to attend Columbia University in New York where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung and Mario Davidovsky and obtained the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Ge Gan-ru has composed for a variety of media, including concert music and music for theater, dance, documentaries, and feature films.
His music has been heard internationally in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America and has been performed by, among others, the New York Philharmonic, BBC Scotland Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, the American Composer’s Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and Speculum Musicae. He has received many commissions and awards from various organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Lincoln Center, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer. His music reflects his deep interest in almagamating Eastern and Western musical aesthetics. "I try,"remarked Ge Gan-ru, "to combine contemporary Western compositional techniques with my Chinese feeling and experience along with Chinese musical characteristics inherited from thousands of years ago, so as to set up a universal music world expressing natural and primitive beauty."
Hilary Tann, from Wales, received her B. Mus. Degree from the University of Wales at Cardiff. In 1972, she was appointed a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, where compositional studies with James K. Randall and Carlton Garner led to a Ph.D. in 1981. Since 1980, she has been on the faculty of Union College in Schenectady, New York, where she chairs the Department of Performing Arts. Active on behalf of women’s music, Hilary Tann serves on the Executive Board of the International League of Women Composers. She has received support from Meet the Composer, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Memorial Trust, the Welsh Arts Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Her works for both chamber ensemble and full orchestra have received performances and broadcasts in Europe and Australia, as well as throughout the U.S.A. Recent commissions include Water’s Edge for piano duet; The Cresset Stone for solo violin, and With the heather and small birds for the European Women’s Orchestra to open the Cardiff Festival (Wales) 1994.
Augusta Read Thomas is on the composition faculty at the Eastman School of Music and is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Conductors Daniel Barenboim, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pierre Boulez, and Seiji Ozawa have programmed her work. Her recent projects include Words of the Sea, commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez conducting, in December 1996; Chanson for cello and orchestra commissioned by Mstislav Rostropovich and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa conducting, in April 1997; Concerto for Orchestra — Orbital Beacons commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, premiered by Pierre Boulez conducting, on November 27, 1999; and Ring Out Wild Bells To The Wild Sky (text by Tennyson) for chorus and orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Washington Choral Arts Society on February 25, 2000 at the Kennedy Center. Other recent projects have included Aurora, a piano concerto for Daniel Barenboim, commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonic, and a new work for chorus and orchestra for the Cleveland Orchestra. The New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the National Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, and others have performed her orchestral works.
# # #