Ithaca College Wind Ensemble

Musgrave, Jonathan

English

Ithaca College

Ithaca CollegeDigital Commons @ ICAll Concert & Recital Programs Concert & Recital Programs4-10-2011Graduate Conducting Recital: Jonathan Musgrave,conductorJonathan MusgraveIthaca College Wind EnsembleFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programsPart of the Music CommonsThis Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Concert & Recital Programs at Digital Commons @ IC. It has been accepted forinclusion in All Concert & Recital Programs by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ IC.Recommended CitationMusgrave, Jonathan and Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, "Graduate Conducting Recital: Jonathan Musgrave, conductor" (2011). AllConcert & Recital Programs. 167.http://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programs/167Graduate Conducting RecitalIthaca College Wind EnsembleJonathan Musgrave, conductorErik Kibelsbeck, organFord HallSunday, April 10, 20114:00 p.m.PROGRAMMillennium Canons (2001) Kevin Matthew Puts(b. 1972)arr. Mark Spede8'Figures in the Garden (1991)1. Dancing in the Dark2. Susanna in the Rain3. A Conversation4. Barbarina Alone5. The Countess Interrupts a Quarrel6. Voices in the Garden7. Nocturne: Figaro and SusannaJonathan Dove(b. 1959)18'IntermissionPostcard (1991) Frank Ticheli(b. 1958)6'The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart(1953)Percy Aldridge Grainger(1882-1961)13'Erik Kibelsbeck, organZion (1994) Dan Welcher(b. 1948)10'This Graduate Recital is in partial fulfillment of the degree Master of Music inConducting Performance.  Jonathan Musgrave is from the studio of StephenPeterson.NOTES ON THE PROGRAMKevin Matthew Puts - Millennium CanonsKnown for his rich and distinctive voice, Kevin Matthew Puts has been hailed by thecritics as one of the most important composers of his generation.  His work has beencommissioned and performed by leading orchestras in the United States and abroad.Puts' orchestral catalog includes four symphonies as well as several concertos writtenfor some of today's top soloists.  In 2005, Mr. Puts received the honor of a commissionin celebration of David Zinman's 70th birthday, and the result was Vision, a celloconcerto premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra.  During thesame year, his Percussion Concerto was premiered by Evelyn Glennie with the Pacificand Utah Symphonies.  Puts has received awards and grants from the American Academy in Rome, theGuggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI andASCAP. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Mr. Puts received his Bachelor's Degree fromthe Eastman School of Music, his Master's Degree from Yale University, and a Doctorof Musical Arts at the Eastman School of Music. Since 2006, he has been a member ofthe composition department at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.    Puts writes: "I wrote Millennium Canons to usher in a new millennium with fanfare,celebration and lyricism. Its rising textures and melodic counterpoint are almost alwayscreated through use of the canon, which also provides rhythmic propulsion at times.   "Funding was provided by the Institute for American Music of the Eastman School ofMusic of the University of Rochester. The premiere took place in June 2001 atSymphony Hall, Boston with the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of KeithLockhart. The version for wind ensemble was arranged by Mark Spede for theUniversity of Texas at Austin, Jerry Junkin, director."Jonathan Dove - Figures in the GardenFew composers working today have embraced the modern opera house as consistentlyand successfully as Jonathan Dove. His incomparable catalogue of more than twentydiverse operatic works is indicative of a practical and lively theatrical mind, steeped inoperatic experience. In all his music, Dove has a strong desire to communicate, toentertain, and to provoke transformative experiences. His musical language is at onceimmediately appreciated by listeners new to the concert hall and has providedperformers, audiences and directors with rich possibilities for interpretation; several ofhis major operatic works have been performed in multiple productions all over theworld, and his list of commissioners includes some of the world's greatest musicians.He is one of the only living composers able to write successful comic opera, to sustain acompany through 150 performances of a single opera, or to captivate a million viewerswith a single performance.   Outside of the concert hall and opera house, Dove has provided many scores for majortheatrical productions. He is an Associate of the National Theatre (most recentlyproviding music for His Dark Materials and Oedipus), and for many years was MusicAdvisor to the Almeida Theatre. He was also written for the Royal ShakespeareCompany, and for the New York Shakespeare Festival.   About Figures in the Garden, Dove writes: "For their 1991 Mozart bicentenarycelebrations, Glyndebourne commissioned five composers to write wind serenades.Each serenade was to be musically connected in some way with one Mozart's operas,and to be played outdoors before the performance of the opera. I was asked to composea piece to precede The Marriage of Figaro.  "Although Mozart's comic masterpiece needs no introduction, musically or otherwise, Iwas attracted by the aptness of playing a serenade in the garden before performances ofan opera whose last act is set in a garden, and which itself includes a number ofserenades: Voi che sapete, Deh vieni, non tardar, and Susanna and the Countess'letter-writing duet Canzonetta sull'aria.  "I had the idea that with all the performances of The Marriage of Figaro that had takenplace at Glyndebourne, sounds from the opera had in some way impregnated thegarden: snatches of recitative, musical figures, instrumental colours. I didn't want tooverwork Mozart's tunes - it would be disastrous if the audience were tired of thembefore the opera had even begun - but each movement of Figures in the Garden isdeveloped from a musical idea in the opera. Here and there an alternative scenarioemerges: Susanna sings her aria in the rain (because it's an English garden), and Figaroand Susanna finally enjoy a moment of shared tranquility that is denied them in theopera."Frank Ticheli - PostcardFrank Ticheli's music has been described as being "optimistic and thoughtful" (LosAngeles Times), "lean and muscular" (New York Times), "brilliantly effective" (MiamiHerald) and "powerful, deeply felt crafted with impressive flair and an ear for strikinginstrumental colors" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel).  Ticheli (b. 1958) joined the facultyof the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where heis Professor of Composition.  From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was Composer in Residenceof the Pacific Symphony, and he still enjoys a close working relationship with thatorchestra and their music director, Carl St. Clair.  Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have becomestandards in the repertoire. He is the winner of the 2006 NBA/William D. RevelliMemorial Band Composition Contest for his Symphony No. 2. Other awards for hismusic include the Charles Ives and the Goddard Lieberson Awards, both from theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize, and FirstPrize awards in the Texas Sesquicentennial Orchestral Composition Competition,Britten-on-the-Bay Choral Composition Contest, and Virginia CBDNA Symposium forNew Band Music. He is a national honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Phi MuAlpha Sinfonia, and he was named by the American School Band Directors Associationas the 2009 recipient of the A. Austin Harding Award, bestowed to individuals "whohave made exceptional contributions to the school band movement in America."  Ticheli received his doctoral and masters degrees in composition from The Universityof Michigan. His works are published by Manhattan Beach, Southern, Hinshaw, andEncore Music, and are recorded on the labels of Albany, Chandos, Clarion, Klavier,Koch International, and Mark Records.  Ticheli writes: "Postcard was commissioned by my friend, colleague, and formermentor, H. Robert Reynolds, in memory of his mother, Ethel Virginia Curry. Herequested that I compose not an elegy commemorating her death, but a short energeticpiece celebrating her life. In response, I have composed this brief "postcard" as amusical reflection of her character - vibrant, whimsical, succinct.   "It is cast in an ABA' form. The primary theme, first heard in the flute and clarinet andused in the outer sections, is a palindrome - that is, it sounds the same played forwardsand backwards. This theme honors a long-standing tradition in the Reynolds family ofgiving palindromic names (such as Hannah and Anna) to their children. H. RobertReynolds' first name is Harrah. The theme's symmetry is often broken, sometimes beingelongated, other times being abruptly cut off by unexpected events.   "The B section is based on a five-note series derived from the name Ethel: E (Enatural) T (te in the solfeggio system, B-flat) H (in the German system, B natural) E(E-flat this time) L (la in the solfeggio system, A natural). The development of thismotive can be likened to a journey through a series of constantly changing landscapes.   "The A' section is articulated by the return of the main melody. This section is notidentical to the A section, but is close enough in spirit to it to give the effect of alarge-scale palindrome surrounding the smaller ones. Postcard was completed in thesummer of 1991. Its first performance was on April 17, 1992, at Hill Auditorium in AnnArbor, Michigan, by the University of Michigan Symphony Band conducted by H.Robert Reynolds."Percy Aldridge Grainger - The Power of Rome and the Christian HeartPercy Grainger was one of the most significant composers for winds during the earlypart of the twentieth century. Born in Australia, Grainger immigrated to the UnitedStates in 1914 (after years in Germany and England), and during World War I enlistedas a bandsman in the U.S. Army, where he learned to play most of the wind andpercussion instruments and developed a special love for the saxophones. Grainger was apioneer in music, using irregular rhythms before Stravinsky, championing folk music atthe same time as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Béla Bartók, and predating EdgardVarèse in experimentation with electronic music. He composed, set, arranged, andedited some 400 works, with the number of all versions of these works exceeding 1,000.Grainger wrote many significant compositions for winds, including Lincolnshire Posy, Colonial Song, Irish Tune from County Derry, Shepherd's Hey, and Children's March.  The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart was Grainger's last published work,and has a curious history. He began composing the work in 1918, at the same time thathe was writing his early band masterworks, including Molly on the Shore and Children's March. This work, however, required a much longer gestation period.Originally conceived for orchestra and organ, Grainger completed this version in 1943.The band version was commissioned by the Goldman Band in honor of Edwin FrankoGoldman's seventieth birthday, and premiered on January 3, 1948. When asked why hearranged an old work rather than writing a new one, Grainger quipped, "As it takes meabout 20 years to finish a tone-work, the best thing I could do was to fix up my Powerof Rome so it could be played without strings." The piece was "premiered" again onJune 22, 1953, perhaps in a revised version, and was published shortly thereafter.   The title of the work is another curiosity. In an early program note, Grainger wrote,"Just as the early Christians found themselves in conflict with the power of ancientRome so, at all times and places, the Individual Conscience is apt to feel itselfthreatened or coerced by the Forces of Authority - and especially in wartime. Men whohate killing are forced to be soldiers, and other men, though not unwilling to be soldiers,are horrified to find themselves called upon to fight in the ranks of their enemies. Thesight of young recruits doing bayonet practice in the First World War gave me the firstimpulse to this composition which, however, is not in any sense program music anddoes not portray the drama of actual events. It is merely the unfoldment of musicalfeelings that were started by thought of the eternal agony of the Individual Soul inconflict with the Powers That Be."Dan Welcher - ZionWriting in High Fidelity in 1974, critic Royal S. Brown said "on the basis of this work(Concerto for Flute and Orchestra), I would say that Welcher is one of the mostpromising American composers I have ever heard". Born in Rochester, New York, in1948, composer-conductor Dan Welcher has been fulfilling that promise ever since,gradually creating a body of compositions in almost every imaginable genre includingopera, concerto, symphony, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chambermusic. With over one hundred works to his credit, Welcher is one of the most-playedcomposers of his generation.  Dan Welcher first trained as a pianist and bassoonist, earning degrees from theEastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He joined the LouisvilleOrchestra as its Principal Bassoonist in 1972, and remained there until 1978,concurrently teaching composition and theory at the University of Louisville. He joinedthe Artist Faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 1976, teaching bassoonand composition, and remained there for fourteen years. He accepted a position on thefaculty at the University of Texas in 1978, creating the New Music Ensemble there andserving as Assistant Conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1990.It was in Texas that his career as a conductor began to flourish, and he has led thepremieres of more than 120 new works since 1980. He now holds the Lee Hage JamailRegents Professorship in Composition at the School of Music at UT/Austin, teachingComposition and serving as Director of the New Music Ensemble.   His works for symphonic wind ensemble, notably Zion (which won the ABA/OstwaldPrize in 1996) and Symphony No. 3 ("Shaker Life") have earned him new accolades innon-orchestral venues. Newer works for the wind band include Perpetual Song (2000),commissioned by the West Point Band, Songs Without Words (2001), commissioned bythe College Band Directors' National Association, and Minstrels of the Kells (2002),commissioned by the bands of the Big Twelve Universities. His most recent work forwind ensemble is Symphony No. 4 ("American Visionary"), commissioned in honor ofGeorge Kozmetsky by the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas, which waspremiered in November of 2005.  Welcher writes: "Zion is the third and final installment of a series of works for WindEnsemble inspired by national parks in the western United States, collectively called"Three Places in the West." As in the other two works (The Yellowstone Fires and Arches), it is my intention to convey more an impression of the feelings I've had in ZionNational Park in Utah than an attempt at pictorial description. Zion is a place withunrivaled natural grandeur, being a sort of huge box canyon in which the traveler isconstantly overwhelmed by towering rock walls on every side - but it is also a placewith a human history, having been inhabited by several tribes of native Americansbefore the arrival of Mormon settlers in the mid-nineteenth century. By the time theMormons reached Utah, they had been driven all the way from New York state throughOhio and through their tragic losses in Missouri. They saw Utah in general as 'a placenobody wanted' but were nonetheless determined to keep it to themselves. AlthoughZion Canyon was never a 'Mormon Stronghold,' the people who reached it and claimedit (and gave it its present name) had been through extreme trials.   "It is the religious fervor of these persecuted people that I was able to draw upon increating Zion as a piece of music. There are two quoted hymns in the work: 'Zion'sWalls' (which Aaron Copland adapted to his own purposes in both Old American Songsand The Tender Land) and 'Zion's Security,' which I found in the same volume whereCopland found 'Zion's Walls' - that inexhaustible storehouse of nineteenth-centuryhymnody called The Sacred Harp.  "My work opens with a three-verse setting of 'Zion's Security,' a stern tune in F-sharpminor which is full of resolve. (The words of this hymn are resolute and strong, rallyingthe faithful to be firm, and describing the 'city of God' they hope to establish.) Thismelody alternates with a fanfare tune, whose origins will be revealed in later music,until the second half of the piece begins: a driving rhythmic ostinato based on a 3/4-4/4alternating meter scheme. This pauses at its height to restate 'Zion's Security' one moretime, in a rather obscure setting surrounded by freely shifting patterns in the flutes,clarinets, and percussion - until the sun warms the ground sufficiently for the secondhymn to appear. 'Zion's Walls' is set in 7/8, unlike Copland's 9/8-6/8 meters (theoriginal is quite strange, and doesn't really fit any constant meter) and is introduced by awarm horn solo with low brass accompaniment. The two hymns vie for attention fromhere to the end of the piece, with the glowingly optimistic 'Zion's Walls' finallyachieving prominence. The work ends with a sense of triumph and unbreakable spirit.  "Zion was commissioned by the wind ensembles of the University of Texas atArlington, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Oklahoma. It isdedicated to the memory of Aaron Copland."ITHACA COLLEGE WIND ENSEMBLEJonathan Musgrave, conductorStephen Peterson, directorPiccoloElizabeth HamiltonFluteAmelia BaranElizabeth HamiltonDana MiragliaAndrea Reges*OboeVirginia DodgeAmy Kleinsmith*Julia PerryEnglish HornVirginia DodgeE-flat ClarinetKelsey PaquinB-flat ClarinetJennifer GreenleafTerrance GriswoldBrittany GuntherKatherine HurdMichelle McGuireKelsey PaquinEmily PecoraroMichael ReinemannBrianne Remaley*Jacqueline WidunAlto ClarinetBrendon LucasBass ClarinetAlyssa BarnaEmily PecoraroContralto ClarinetAlyssa BarnaBassoonJames ConteJudith OlsonNoah Wolfinger*ContrabassoonJames ConteSoprano SaxophoneEric TroianoAlto SaxophoneEli HoldenRachel PerryEric Troiano*Tenor SaxophoneSara EmeryBaritone SaxophoneErika St. DenisBass SaxophoneAndrew HorwitzTrumpetAudrey BaronAlex SchwindSam ThurstonEthan Urtz*Jenna VeverkaEmily WaltzHornMegan CarpenterElizabeth Meade*Robert OldroydEmma StaudacherDrew WelkieTromboneJeff DunnAlex KnutrudMark Neville*Eddie SteenstraBass TromboneJeff ChiltonMichael NaveEuphoniumJennifer StrayerSteve Vaughn*TubaWilliam Connors*Kevin KozikPercussionAndrew DobosJon KeefnerDarren LinJulia Ross*Marco SchirripaTimpaniSean HarveyDouble BassBen DowsPianoBrian DillerHarpMyra KovaryGraduate AssistantsBrian Diller Jonathan Musgrave*Principal

Graduate Conducting Recital: Jonathan Musgrave, conductor

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&context=music_programs

Graduate Conducting Recital: Jonathan Musgrave, conductor

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Ithaca College