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Collegial Concert II

April 1, 2007, 3:00 p.m.

The Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew
263 West 86th Street (between Broadway and West End Avenue)

Admission: New York Viola Society members: Free
General Admission: $15, Seniors: $10, Students: $5
More information: (212) 592-7785

Program

Michael Kimber - Celebration Fanfare

Paul Seitz - Animas (There is a Wild River...)

Robert Gardner - View from the Rear Window

Michael Kimber - Three Quirky Pieces

Penn State Viola Ensemble, Tim Deighton, Director

Intermission

We will have a selection of handmade leather mutes available for sale during the intermission as well as post-concert. These mutes are beautifully crafted by Marcel St. Cyr, former cellist of the Orford String Quartet, and have wonderfully varied tone. We invite the audience to try any of these mutes on April 1. For more information, visit www.leathermutes.com

About the Artists:

Penn State Viola Ensemble

The Penn State Viola Ensemble was formed in 1999 and has since appeared regularly on campus in studio recitals, the Bachís Lunch concert series, Musica Nova concerts, and at the Penn State ViolaFest. The ensemble performs a wide range of repertoire including original works and transcriptions for viola ensemble. It has performed numerous new compositions including the world premieres of several works commissioned specifically for the ensemble. Repertoire ranges from chamber pieces, for two or three violists, to large conducted works for a dozen or more players. The Penn State Viola Ensemble is directed by Tim Deighton. A list of repertoire performed by the ensemble is available at www.music.psu.edu/prospective/violaensemble.

The ensembleís appearance at the New York Viola Societyís Collegial Concert on April 1st marks its first off-campus performance and will feature the world premieres of two works commissioned for the group: Animas (There is a wild riverÖ) by Paul Seitz and View from the Rear Window by Robert Gardner. The program will also feature two short pieces by a well-known contributor to the viola ensemble repertoire: Michael Kimber.

The current members of the Penn State Viola Ensemble are: Erin Ambrose, Marlina DeFelice, Alysa Harder, Tsung-Hui Huang, Nathan Johnson-McDaniel, Katharine Kauffman, Rebecca Lewis, Emily Mechling, Lauren Morrow, Hannah Sams, Eric Schoon, and Ofir Tomer. They will be joined, in Animas, by conductor Francisco Varela.

Benjamin Grossman, a sophomore at Ridgewood High School, began his musical career under the instruction of Yvonne Cohen on the violin at age 10. Two years later, he took up viola and began studying with Christine Ims, and is now also studying the piano with Allison Franzetti. Last summer, Ben performed the Dohnanyi Serenade at the ASTANJ Chamber Music Program, and in April will be performing the Mendelssohn Octet at Alice Tully Hall in a program sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Erik Grossman is a sophomore at Ridgewood High School and originally played violin before studying viola with Christine Ims. He plays in the Bergen County and Sussex County Youth Orchestras, as well as the New Jersey Regional and All-State orchestras. Erik will be performing the Mendelssohn Octet this spring at Alice Tully Hall in a program sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and will also be performing it with members of the New Jersey Symphony in their chamber music outreach program.

Isabel Hagen, age 15, is a student of Kenji Bunch at the Juilliard Pre-College and a sophomore at Saint Annís School. She started violin studies at the age of 5 at the Third Street Music School Settlement. She began studying the viola at age 10 and has been a student in the Pre-College since 2004. Isabel was awarded scholarships from the New York Viola Society in 2002 and 2006. She has spent the past four summers playing chamber music at Greenwood Music Camp in Cummington, Massachusetts. She is a member of the Juilliard Pre-College Symphony and has played in the New York Youth Symphony.

With recent performances at the K–ln Musik Triennale and the Moers Festival, Ron Lawrence has performed as a chamber musician and soloist on four continents. A New York City freelance violist, he can regularly be heard with the Orchestra of St. Lukeís and the Sirius String Quartet, and has performed with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Ron, a champion of new music, has collaborated with composers from John Adams to John Zorn. He has recorded extensively with the Dave Soldier Electric String Quartet and Quartet Indigo, a jazz ensemble. Other recent projects include recordings with Kathleen Battle, Robert Craft, Andre Previn, Regina Carter, Lee Konitz, and the rock band Dr. Nerve. One of Ron's most exciting projects was journey to Alaska to record John Luther Adams multi-media spectacular, "Earth and the Great Weather -- A Sonic Geography of the Artic". Despite a rigorous performance schedule during the six-week stint, he was able to break away each evening to cross-country ski under the Northern Lights.

Eddy Malave, violist, received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in music from the Juilliard School as a student of the late William Lincer. He has participated in many music festivals and master classes and has been a member of many orchestras throughout the USA, Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
During his career, Eddy has performed in a wide variety of musical roles. He performed for President Clinton during the Mideast peace talks as well for numerous other dignitaries at the United Nations. Locally he has been heard as a performing and recording artist on the Yamaha electric viola and many chamber groups and orchestras. Eddy has held the principal viola chair with the Prince George and Kamloops Symphony Orchestras (both in B.C., Canada), the Orquestra Filharmonica de Lima (Lima, Peru), and the Key West Symphony (Florida, USA).
Mr.Malave is also a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, and was invited to present the technique at the British Columbia Music Conference in Surrey, B.C., Canada, at the American Institute of Musical Studies, in Graz, Austria, at the National Conservatory of Music in Amman, Jordan and has recently joined the faculty at NYU teaching the technique in the music department at the Steinhardt School of Education.
He also received his teaching certification of the Suzuki method from The School for Strings, and serves on the faculty of the Soyulla Performing Arts Program, the Westchester Conservatory and the Port Jefferson Music Academy.

With her ìfocused, beautifully centeredî playing (Allan Kozinn, the New York Times), violist Jessica Meyer is a versatile performer who has been featured as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player throughout the world.
As an advocate of new music, Ms. Meyer has been involved with many different projects around New York City. She has premiered pieces for solo viola at Merkin Concert Hall and the MATA Festival, and is the co-founder of the critically-acclaimed contemporary music ensemble counter) induction. Equally at home with many other styles of music, she has also appeared with tap dancer Savion Glover and his jazz band at the Joyce Theater, B.B. Kingís Blues Club, and many other venues throughout the country.
Jessica performs a wide variety of chamber music with various ensembles in the New York area, including Piaclava (a touring clarinet, viola, and piano trio), and the Musicians of Lenox Hill. She is also currently the principal violist of SONYC (the String Orchestra of New York City), a conductor-less ensemble that has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and across the United States.
Passionate about education, Jessica conducts many workshops for both public school students and adults throughout the area for the Lincoln Center Institute, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Little Orchestra Society, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.
Ms. Meyer earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School where she studied with William Lincer and served as the teaching assistant to Heidi Castleman and Misha Amory.

Daniel Perret, 15, was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and has been playing viola for six years. He began his studies with Claire Chan, and has been studying with Elizabeth Chang at the Juilliard PreCollege Division for the past three years. For the past four summers, he has attended the Greenwood Chamber Music Camp. Daniel additionally plays piano and guitar, and is currently making his first instrument.

Violist Ann Roggenís talents stem from a wide range of solo and chamber experience. She has been awarded grants from Chamber Music America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and as a member of the Orchestra of St. Lukeís, has recorded extensively for the Telarc, Sony and Deutsche Gramophone recording labels. In recent seasons, Ms. Roggen has been heard with the New York Philharmonic and the St Louis Symphony. She maintains an active and vital studio in New York City where she teaches viola and 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. Ms. Roggen is a tireless advocate for unique and unusual repertoire for the viola in combination with other instruments and voice. In her role as Vice President of the New York Viola Society, she has been successful in creating numerous performance opportunities in New York City for dedicated violists to explore this repertoire, both old and new. In October 2006, Ms. Roggen arranged an event with members of the London Symphony Orchestra, in an evening of works for multiple violas. Highlights of the 2006-2007 season include 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.

Liuh-Wen Ting, a member of the Meridian String Quartet from 1996~2001, has collaborated with artists across many different spectrums, most recently the Cassatt String Quartet, and a series of sold-out concerts with the renowned Persian vocal master Shahram Nazeri and his son Hafez Nazeri. A proponent of the contemporary music, Liuh-Wen has performed in festivals such as The Prague Spring Music Festival, Ostrava New Music Days in Czech Republic, The Warsaw Autumn Music Festival in Poland, Primavera en la Habana international electro-acoustic music festival in Cuba, and Etnafest in Italy. She has been on the staff of the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at the Wellesley College since 1993. Ms Ting has recorded chamber music works for labels such as Deutsche Gramophone, Sony, Capstone Record, and a new CD of music by Frances White will be released in 2007 on the Mode label.

About the Works:

Michael Kimber - Celebration Fanfare

Celebration Fanfare was composed in 2003 as a string quartet for students at the Heartland Chamber Music Academy in Kansas City, where it was premiered. In 2004 it was arranged both for string orchestra (premiered by the Iowa City Community String Orchestra) and for viola quartet (premiered by the Iowa City Viola Quartet). The Cedar Rapids Symphony String Quartet has performed it as a concert opener for hundreds of pre-school and elementary school children during the past two years.

Paul Seitz - Animas (There is a wild river...)

As a composer and as a violist, I love the incredible array of individual colors among violas: an ensemble made up entirely of violas produces deeply variegated colors and textures unlike any other string ensemble. And yet, the opportunity for violists to play in such an ensemble occurs all too rarely. So when it does, it's an opportunity for a kind of intense delight, and I wanted to celebrate that spirit of concentrated play. As I began exploring these ideas in sketches, I happened to learn of a wild river, the Animas (Spanish for "you animate"), that runs southward from Silverton, Colorado into New Mexico and is very popular with teams of extreme whitewater rafters. I loved the name, which reminded me, also, of the concept of anima à the unique inner spirit of each person. And I imagined that a trip down this river might have much in common with the kind of experience I wanted to offer this ensemble of violists. And so, Animas (There is a wild river...) composed for the Penn State Viola Ensemble, Tim Deighton director, is written with all of these ideas in mind à the notion of a cooperative adventure, the river itself à with its enveloping asymmetry, unpredictable rhythms, sudden changes of direction and moments of calm beauty, and the powerful inner spirit of each violist who will animate this score.

Robert D. Gardner - View from the Rear Window (2006) for nine-part viola ensemble

The thematic material and structure of this piece was inspired by a vision of a person traveling in the back seat of a car on a long trip. It is not a programmatic portrayal of any particular journey, but rather it is only meant to convey an impression of the feelings one experiences during such an excursion. It is an incidence most of us in the modern age can recall because of the fact that we tend to travel long distances in a car for events of special significance, such as weddings, sporting events, funerals, or vacations.

The outer sections of the piece portray the unique experience of being a passenger in a car driving on the highway. One experiences a journey very differently when driving because of the need to concentrate on the tasks at hand and the route to be traveled. When you are a passenger, however, you are confined to a relatively small space and your mind is free to think about what it wishes.

The constant sonic hum of the engine and the road permeate a relatively still environment inside the car, which is juxtaposed with the visual realization that you are moving down the highway very quickly. You look down to watch the edge of the road rush by, and then you focus outward to observe the distant scenery. The accented rhythmic motive, which is constant throughout the outer sections of the piece, symbolizes the steady mechanical motion and sound. The primary melodic theme, as well as the accented leaps that emanate from different parts of the ensemble, represents those interesting aspects of your surroundings that catch your eye and inspire your thoughts.

In the middle of the first section, for a few moments everything goes dim as you travel under the hillside through a tunnel. The dynamics drop, and the accompanying instrumentalists play close to the bridge to create a thin, steely timbre. Then suddenly all themes are presented in full tone and dynamics, representing when the bright sunlight floods your eyes as you leave the tunnel and again see the sprawling landscape.

As you stare out the window, you see something in particular that triggers a significant memory, such as a farm, a building, or a valley. Your awareness of the surroundings slowly fades away in the middle section of the piece, and you are now totally inside our own thoughts. The driving rhythm is now absent, and is replaced by rubato melodic themes and complex chordal harmonies, flowing through unpredictable time signatures. Again, the music is not meant to reveal a specific memory, but just to convey the sensation of what it is like when you are lost in your own thoughts and daydreaming about a meaningful scene from your life.

Finally, the sounds of the car slowly return, and you are once again aware of your surroundings. The final section of the piece is a return to the melodic and rhythmic motives from the first section, although in the opposite order. The piece reaches a dynamic climax as the tonality shifts for the last time, and then the car travels slowly away, fading smoothly into the sunset towards its destination.

Michael Kimber - Misbehaving March

Misbehaving March is the third of Three Quirky Little Pieces composed for and premiered at the University of Iowa's 2006 ViolaFest MidWest. The piece begins with an interrupted quotation of a Sousa march. When things seem to be going awry, the performers shout "one - two!" as if to get back on track. The music itself seems to taunt us and even laugh at us. Who says viola music has to be sombre and serious?

Moto Osada - Kaguyama Dance

Composed during the latter half of 2003, Kaguyama Dance was written expressly for the Shmuel Katz - Dmitri Shteinberg duo. The title draws directly from Japanese mythology and refers to the celebrated tale of the Sun Goddess Amateras-Ohmikami, the ìGreat and August Deity of the Shining Heavensî.

Angered by her impetuous brotherís incessant abuse, Amateras-Ohmikami takes cover behind a large rock thus plunging the world into complete darkness. The other gods, greatly troubled by this event, devise a plan to goad the Sun Goddess out of her hiding place; they plot to host a raucous, unruly affair of banging drums, feet stomping, and singing on top of Mount Kaguyama. As the celebration intensifies, the Sun Goddess asks the gods what might be causing the clamor to which they answer: "Another great goddess has appeared and we're dancing and singing in her honor." Unable to contain her curiosity, the Sun Goddess moves the rock slightly ajar, at which point the other gods pull her out from behind it, and daylight finally shines on the world again. This festival is said to be the beginning of entertainment in Japan.

This story has been a source of great inspiration for some time. I have often imagined what the festivalís music may have sounded like ñ primitive, ancient... Although Kaguyama Dance is not necessarily rogrammatic music based on the story described above, it draws on characteristics from this and other Japanese legends, notably their primal energy and barbaric beauty.