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Rebecca Clarke: Composer,
Violist, New Yorker

March 8, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

The Pen and Brush
16 East 10th Street, NYC

A lecture by Christopher Johnson with music performed by NYVS members.

On Sunday, March 8, 2009, at 5:00 p.m., the New York Viola Society presents the conductor and pianist Christopher Johnson, who will speak on the life and works of the composer and viola-player Rebecca Clarke (b. Harrow, England, 1886; d. New York City, 1979). One of the greatest violists of her time—a pioneering soloist and a much-sought-after partner in chamber music—Clarke was also, as one eminent critic put it, “almost certainly the finest composer ever to have also been a woman.” Her compositions include some of the finest songs of the twentieth century and a broad array of brilliant, deeply poetic solos and ensembles for stringed instruments. Timothy Deighton, Associate Professor of Viola at Penn State University, and other outstanding players will perform four of Clarke’s most important pieces during the lecture: the early masterpiece Morpheus (1917), now a cornerstone of the viola repertoire; the spare, evocative Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale, for clarinet and viola (1941); the smoky, gypsy-inspired Dumka, for violin, viola, and piano (also 1941); and Clarke’s tender arrangement of the Scottish folk-song “I’ll Bid My Heart be Still” (1944). In addition, Johnson will share his personal reminiscences of Clarke (she was his great-aunt by marriage) and will discuss controversies that have arisen over Clarke’s works since her death.

Works being performed:

Morpheus (1917) for Viola and Piano
“I’ll Bid My Heart be Still” (1944)
performed by violist Timothy Deighton and pianist
Ann Deighton

Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale
performed by violist Ann Roggen and clarinetist
Suzanne Gekker

About the Participants and the Music

Christopher Johnson is Music Director of Chelsea Community Church in New York City. He was previously Director, Music (USA), at Oxford University Press, where he also conducted the OUP Choir and co-founded and served as managing director of the Oxford Summer Institutes, an annual music festival and training-ground for composers, singers, and conductors. He was also choral director at St Paul’s Church, Brooklyn, where he led premières of works by Libby Larsen and Rebecca Clarke. An expert on Clarke, Johnson has edited many of her compositions for publication and has given lectures and lecture recitals on her life and works at the Royal College of Music, London, and at universities and conservatories throughout the United States. In the theatre, he has acted in classic and contemporary plays and musicals and has directed music for Marat/Sade, The Tempest, Salad Days, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Johnson studied acting at Boston University’s School of Fine and Applied Arts, music at the Manhattan School of Music, and musicology at the City University of New York.

Timothy Deighton is Associate Professor of Viola at Penn State University where he teaches viola, chamber music, viola literature, pedagogy, and orchestral excerpt classes, and directs the Penn State Viola Ensemble.
His first solo CD, featuring music for viola by New Zealand composers, was released in 2002 on the Atoll label. His playing on this disc was described in The Strad as "brilliant and differentiated," and the New Zealand Listener ranked it one of the Top Ten classical recordings of the year. In the same year the Pennsylvania-Delaware String Teachers Association recognized him as Outstanding String Teacher of the Year. He directed Penn State's ViolaFest, a three-day event involving more than 200 violists from across North America and abroad.
Having long held a fascination for new music, he has commissioned and performed the premieres of more than fifty works for viola, including many composed for his viola and saxophone duo The Irrelevants. In the summers he serves on the faculty of the International Musical Arts Institute in Maine. His performances have been heard on U.S., European, and Australasian radio, and he is a National Recording Artist for Radio New Zealand. His articles have appeared in many national and international music periodicals.

Ann Deighton has served as an adjunct instructor of piano and piano class and as a staff accompanist at Penn State University. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1990. She continued her studies at the University of Kansas, where she earned a Master of Music degree in Piano and Piano Pedagogy in 1993 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano in 1997. Her teachers have included Nathaniel Patch, Michael Zenge, and Jack Winerock. Dr. Deighton is active in the central Pennsylvania area as an accompanist and chamber musician, and also teaches music at the Montessori School of the Nittany Valley, where her two sons have been students.

Suzanne Gekker, clarinetist, was born in New Orleans and received her music degrees from Yale University, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and North-western State University (Louisiana). She studied with David Shifrin, Joaquin Valdepenas, Ron De Kant and Carmine Campione. In the DC area she performs regularly with National Philharmonic, Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, National Cathedral Chorus, Wolf Trap Opera, Alexandria Symphony, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Embassy Series and the Fessenden Ensemble. She has previously performed with the Aspen Music Festival, Cincinnati Ballet, American Symphony (NYC), Stamford Symphony (CT), Broadway pit orchestras (NYC). Ms. Gekker currently teaches at the Washington Conservatory of Music in Washington DC.

Violist Ann Roggen has been awarded grants from Chamber Music America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with whom she has performed and recorded extensively for labels such as Sony, Telarc and Deutsche Gramaphon, including many “Live from Lincoln Center” broadcasts.
In recent seasons, Ms. Roggen has also performed with the American Ballet Theater, Cirque de Soleil, the New Jersey Symphony, and is a member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony.
She maintains an active and vital studio in New York City where she teaches viola and coaches chamber music. As a member of the Bennington College faculty, she has had great success in developing interdisciplinary cultural events designed to combine music with literature, history, dance and language in performance. Ann was recently elected to the national Board of the American Viola Society, and she serves as Vice President of the New York Viola Society. She has been successful in creating imaginative performance opportunities in New York City for dedicated violists to explore repertoire both old and new. Highlights of recent seasons include an evening of multiple viola repertoire with members of the London Symphony Orchestra, solo performances with the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra (Croatia), as well as recitals and master classes under the auspices of the American Cultural Centres in Zagreb and Vilnius, Lithuania. Ms. Roggen received her musical training at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and the Juilliard School. Her principal teachers and mentors have included Karen Tuttle, Lillian Fuchs, Joseph Fuchs and the Juilliard String Quartet.