“In An Expanding Universe” is a sextet’s answer to the question: is our world now smaller or bigger? As we all stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we can no longer make music with those outside our own households, but we can explore music and ideas with people and cultures around the world and look out into the galaxy for a sense of meaning and wonder.
Featuring solo and chamber works by composers from Cuba, Poland, Syria, and Australia, composers of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean descent, and works inspired by Armenia and the stars and galaxies, “In An Expanding Universe” presents global musical perspectives in honor of Resonance Works’ commitment to equity by sharing music by creators of multiple genders, races, nationalities, and sexual orientations.
Program:
Nathan L. Lam — 77 Canonic Variations on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", Book 2 (2020)
Cholong Park, piano
1. Theme, variation (b. 1991)
2. Syncopation
3. Let’s swap!
4. Semitones scherzo
12. Romance
22. Cholong Cholong
67. Syncopation (4:1)
68. Set up (2:2)
69. Reveal (2:1)
70. In memoriam-those lost to COVID-19
Andy Akiho (b. 1979) — Stop Speaking (2011)
Keith Hendricks, snare drum
Grażyna Bacewicz — Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin (1958) I. Adagio - Allegro (1909 - 1969)
Justin Burel, violin
Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) — How to be a Deep Thinker in Los Angeles (2009)
Keith Hendricks, percussion
Eve Beglarian (b. 1958) — I Will Not Be Sad In This World (2009)
Lindsey Goodman, alto flute and electronics
Kinan Azmeh (b. 1976) — The Fence, The Roofop, and The Distant Sea (2016)
Anastasia Christofakis, clarinet
Justin Page, cello
What Is Noise is an award-winning ensemble that has performed throughout the United States. The ensemble made its Carnegie Hall debut in May of 2014 as part of their “American Stories” concert tour that included performances in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and New York. Their debut album Equivocal Duration was released in 2019 through Centaur Records. What Is Noise is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is passionate about building community through music by performing culturally relevant concerts that connect audiences with musicians and composers of their time. The sextet remains a strong advocate for new music and educational outreach.
What Is Noise has worked with composers Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Don Freund, Lansing McLoskey, David T. Little, Edward Knight, Tania Leon, Katherine Hoover, and Jennifer Higdon, among others. The ensemble has performed at a variety of venues including concerts at the Florida State University Biennial Festival of New Music, Berklee College of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina at Asheville, George Mason University, Furman University, the University of Missouri, Longy School of Music at Bard College, and Hope College, among others. What Is Noise was featured as artists-in-residence with the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County in Maryland for 2018-2019, ensemble-in-residence at the 2015 Taneycomo Festival Orchestra in Branson, Missouri, and the guest artist in residence for the 2016 Young Composers Competition at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.
What Is Noise have been described as an ensemble that is “precise, expressive, and convincing” (composer Joshua William Mills). An ensemble that “demands your attention again and again” (violinist Benjamin Sung). What Is Noise has “the kind of energy and ability to project ideas that really captivates an audience” (composer Don Freund). “Their technical skill and nuanced expression left me speechless” (composer Al Kovach).
Members of What Is Noise hail from Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and South Korea. The ensemble’s name comes from an idea expressed by Jacques Attali in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music that music has lost some of its inherent social value, as it has increasingly become a commodity. He expresses that there is intrinsic importance in the connection of the composers and performers with their shared community, and this is the way to obtain meaning through new composition.
What Is Noise is Justin Burel, violin; Anastasia Christofakis, clarinet; Lindsey Goodman, flute; Keith Hendricks, percussion; Justin Page, cello; and Cholong Park, piano.
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PROGRAM NOTES:
Stop Speaking: Written for snare drum and digital playback, the electronic voice heard is Vicki, from Apple’s Speech Preference Center. Akiho created the playback using a Microsoft Word Document read by Apple’s Vicki. There is no meter in this piece, which calls on the performer to play many different tempi without having a notated tempo, making it difficult since many passages are the same, just at varying speeds. Another challenge of this piece is the lining up of Vicki’s voice to the snare drum while performing
difficult techniques, such as thumb rolls, the use of varying sticks, and finger-playing, on the contrary, some parts require the performer to compliment Vicki’s voice in an accompaniment fashion. This piece demands the player to use orchestral, rudimental, and drum set style playing.
Described as “trailblazing” (Los Angeles Times) and “an imaginative composer” (New York Times), Andy Akiho is a composer and performer of new music. Recent engagements include commissioned premieres by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Oregon Symphony with soloist Colin Currie, American Composers Orchestra, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, LA Dance Project, and experimental opera company The Industry. Akiho has been recognized with many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. Additionally, his compositions have been featured on PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer and by organizations such as Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival. Akiho’s recordings No One To Know One (innova Recordings) and The War Below (National Sawdust Tracks) features brilliantly crafted compositions that pose intricate rhythms and exotic timbres inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan. Akiho was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and is currently based in New York City and Portland, Oregon.
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Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin was written in 1958 and explores new musical forms and tonality along with experimental bowing techniques and a wide range of dynamics. It is rumored that the piece is largely influenced by the violin sounds that Bacewicz heard while serving as a judge with David Oistrakh and Louis Persinger for the third Wieniawski International Violin Competition in 1957 and at the first Tchaikovsky Violin Competition in 1958.
Grażyna Bacewicz was an accomplished Polish composer, violinist, and pianist. Born in Łódź, Bacewicz began her formal musical training in composition, violin, and piano at the Warsaw Conservatory while also studying philosophy at the Warsaw University. After graduating in 1932, Bacewicz traveled to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger and violin with André Touret. She returned to Łódź briefly for a teaching position, but soon returned to Paris to study violin with Carl Flesch in 1934. An accomplished violinist, Bacewicz served as the principal violinist of the Polish Radio Orchestra at the request of conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg from 1936 to 1938 while also maintaining an active career as a concert violinist throughout Europe. Bacewicz has been recognized for her accomplishments in composition having won several prizes including: the International Chopin Competition for Composers in Warsaw in 1949 for her Piano Concerto; first prize at the International Composers’ Competition in Liège in 1951 for her String Quartet No. 4; first prize in the orchestral section at UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in 1960 for her Music for Strings, Trumpets, and Percussion; and the Gold Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels in 1965 for her Violin Concerto No. 7. Bacewicz’s early music features folk melodies and traditional forms in a neoclassic style. In the 1950s, she embraced contemporary techniques, often ignoring traditional
harmonies and forms in favor of greater chromaticism and post-tonal aesthetics. Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin demonstrates this later style while still embracing the rhythmic energy that dominates her entire catalogue.
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77 canonic variations on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", Book 2: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”’s stepwise regularity teases at canonic potential, but the leaps and change in scalar direction often create contrapuntal problems. Mozart’s own “Variation 9” features a mix of free and strict imitations, but he never sets the whole tune in canon. “Fossils” from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of Animals illustrates one problem. In the last bar of the excerpt, the chromatic A-flat replaces F, narrowly avoiding parallel fifths with the bass. Similar issues occur across the tune; my canons show a number of tricks that circumvent this. Var. 22 “Cholong Cholong”’s title comes from Cholong’s name which is “twinkle twinkle” in Korean. The high register, 2:3 rhythm, and grace notes depicts the twinkling of eyes and stars and Var. 70 "In memoriam” is dedicated to those lost to COVID. I finished work in early 2020 amid the global pandemic and Hong Kong protests; the mood of the last few variations grew darker as a result. Var. 70 is dedicated to those lost to COVID. -NL
Nathan L. Lam is a music theorist and composer who teaches music theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a PhD in music theory from Indiana University in Bloomington. His research focuses on musical scales and symmetry in Western and Chinese music and so do his compositions; for him, the two activities are inextricably intertwined.
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How to be a Deep Thinker in Los Angeles: At the beginning of 2009, I wanted to write a solo percussion piece, and to ease my way into it, I decided to use spoken text. Kendall A. wrote a sestina called “How to be a Deep Thinker in Los Angeles,” and with permission I was able to use it. A sestina is a highly-structured poem form consisting of six six-lined stanzas followed by a tercet for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time. These six words then appear in the tercet as well. This structure creates a cyclical poem, and therefore, the poem creates a cyclical piece. Each percussion instrument is specifically used to match certain events in the poem, and the listener can track the rotations. - JJ
Jennifer Jolley's work draws toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, has been described as "the ideal soundtrack and perhaps balm for our current 'toxic'…times" by Frank J. Oteri of NewMusicBox. Her piece Blue Glacier Decoy, written as a musical response to the Olympic National Park, depicts the melting glaciers of the Pacific Northwest. Her partnership with writer Scott Woods, You Are Not Alone, evokes the fallout of the #MeToo Movement. Jennifer's works have been performed by ensembles worldwide including the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Wind Symphony, Dulciana (Dublin, Ireland), Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra (New York, NY), and the SOLI Chamber Ensemble (Alba, Italy residency). She has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Quince Ensemble, and many others. Jennifer deeply values the relationship that is created between composers and the communities with whom they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at Brevard College, University of Toledo, the Vermont Symphony, the Central Michigan University School of Music, and the Alba Music Festival in Italy. Most recently, she was the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in 2019. She promotes composer advocacy and the performance of new works through her opera company North American New Opera Workshop, her articles for NewMusicBox, and her work on the Executive Council of the Institute for Composer Diversity and the New Music USA Program Council. Jennifer’s blog—on which she has catalogued more than 100 rejection letters from competitions, festivals, and prizes—is widely read and admired by professional musicians. She is particularly passionate about this project as a composition teacher, and enjoys removing the taboo around “failure” for her students. Jennifer joined the composition faculty of the Texas Tech School of Music in 2018 and has been a member of the composition faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp since 2015.
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Originally written for alto (or bass) flute, I will not be sad in this world is based on the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova’s song Ashkharumes Akh Chim Kashil. The piece is often played on the duduk, and the flute playing responds to the ornamentation, intonation, and vibrato of traditional duduk playing. I wil not be sad in this world is part of my ongoing project, A Book of Days. Thanks to Marya Martin, who commissioned the piece for the Flute Book for the 21st Century. Many thanks to my dear friend and colleague Margaret Lancaster, who tried out the piece for me and advised me about notation. Thanks also to the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, who were my generous hosts while I was writing. -EB
According to the Los Angeles Times, composer and performer Eve Beglarian “is a humane, idealistic rebel and a musical sensualist.” A 2017 winner of the Alpert Award in the Arts for her “prolific, engaging and surprising body of work,” she has also been awarded the 2015 Robert Rauschenberg Prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for her “innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation.” Beglarian’s current projects include a collaboration with writer/performer Karen Kandel about women in Vicksburg from the Civil War to the present, a piece about the controversial Balthus painting Thérèse Dreaming for vocalist Lucy Dhegrae, and a duo for uilleann pipes and organ that was premiered by Renée Louprette and Ivan Goff at Disney Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary celebrations. Since 2001, she has been creating A Book of Days, “a grand and gradually manifesting work in progress…an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements.” (Los Angeles Times) In 2009, “Ms. Beglarian kayaked and bicycled the length of the Mississippi River [and] has translated her findings into music of sophisticated rusticity… [Her] new Americana song cycle captures those swift currents as vividly as Mark Twain did. The works waft gracefully on her handsome folk croon and varied folk instrumentation as mysterious as their inspiration.” (New York Times) Beglarian’s chamber, choral, and orchestral music has been commissioned and widely performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the American Composers Orchestra, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the California EAR Unit, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Sequitur, loadbang, the Guidonian Hand, Newspeak, the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, and individual performers including Maya Beiser, Sarah Cahill, Lauren Flanigan, Marya Martin, and Mary Rowell. Highlights of Beglarian’s work in music theater includes music for Mabou Mines’ Obie-winning Dolhouse, Animal Magnetism, Ecco Porco, Choephorai, and Shalom Shanghai, all directed by Lee Breuer; Forgiveness, a collaboration with Chen Shi-Zheng and Noh master Akira Matsui; and the China National Beijing Opera Theater’s production of The Bacchae, also directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. She has collaborated with choreographers including Ann Carlson, Robert LaFosse, Victoria Marks, Susan Marshall, David Neumann, Take Ueyama, and Megan Williams and with visual and video artists including Cory Arcangel, Anne Bray, Vittoria Chierici, Barbara Hammer, Kevork Mourad, Shirin Neshat, Matt Petty, Bradley Wester, and Judson Wright. Recordings of Eve’s music are available on ECM, Koch, New World, Canteloupe, Innova, Naxos, Kill Rock Stars, CDBaby, and Bandcamp.
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The Fence, The Roofop, and the Distant Sea began with a moment. Years ago, Azmeh was sitting on a rooftop in Beirut, Lebanon. He was staring out past a fence at the distant sea. As his mind skimmed the waves, he entertained a series of images from Damascus, the hometown he had been separated from. How far was home, or how close? He used a mental map to reconstruct ways of getting from his parents’ house to the opera house, where the traffic lights would be, which corners were where. Later, he composed music for the four
sectioned piece in which two characters turn over the complex notions of what is home, when you have it, when you lose it, how you recreate or reconstitute it. “In the beginning of the piece, the search for home is complicated and fraught,” he says. “As the music continues, one realizes the best are simplest memories; the music ends almost in the form of a lullaby.”
Hailed as “intensely soulful” by The New York Times and “spellbinding” by The New Yorker, Winner of OpusKlassik award in 2019, composer Kinan Azmeh has gained international recognition for his distinctive compositional voice across diverse musical genres. Originally from Damascus, Syria, Kinan Azmeh brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer, and improviser. Kinan’s compositions include several works for solo, chamber, and orchestral music, as well as music for film, live illustration, and electronics. He was composer-in-residence with Classical Movements for the 2017 - 2018 season. His recent compositions were commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Silkroad Ensemble, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Elbphilharmonie, Apple Hill String Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Quatuor Voce, and Bob Wilson’s recent production of Oedipus Rex. He serves as artistic director of the Damascus Festival Chamber Players, a pan-Arab ensemble dedicated to contemporary music from the Arab world. Kinan is frequent guest faculty at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music and is on the advisory board of the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra. He is also a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, whose 2017 Grammy Award-winning album Sing Me Home features Kinan as a clarinetist and composer. Kinan Azmeh is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard School as a student of Charles Neidich and of both the Damascus High institute of Music where he studied with Shukry Sahwki, Nicolay Viovanof, and Anatoly Moratof, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering. Kinan earned his doctorate degree in music from the City University of New York in 2013.