"It was beautifully
played by violist Scott Rawls and Peter Jarvis on snare drum and xylophone."
March 22, 2002
Shea Center for the Performing Arts
9:30 - 11:30 - Open Rehearsal
12:30 - Concert
2:00 - 3:00 - Panel Discussion
Admission is $3.00
Angstwagen (1971 revised
1981) - Rolv Yttrehus
for Soprano and Percussion
Al Cerulo – Vibraphone and Marimba, Richard
DeCicco – Percussion
Judith Nicosia – Soprano
Peter Jarvis - Conductor
Explorations - Rolv
Yttrehus
for Piano Solo
David Holzman
Sonata for Percussion and Piano (1988) - Rolv Yttrehus
Richard
DeCicco – Xylophone, April McCloskey – Vibraphone,
Al Cerulo – Percussion, Anton Vishio – Piano
Peter Jarvis - Conductor
Program Notes
In an interview with James Boros, published in Perspectives of New Music (Volume 26 Number 2), Rolv Yttrehus described his overall approach to composition. The discussion turned to the high level of energy found in his music. His response was:
Related to all this is the matter of inspiration, which really means energy. If one thinks of a composer as a cyclotron, one can say that he must attack the raw material of music (i.e., a twelve tone set) with great energy. When this is done successfully, the resulting music will reflect this energy. For example, if one were to take an inert looking collection of pieces...and subject it to energetic and sustained attacks, the notes would splatter all over the page...
Yttrehus’s music jumps off the page at the listener, and the listener is struck by the enormity and profound originality of the music. Like James Joyce (a favorite author of Yttrehus), Yttrehus creates a complex art form where each image has multiple meanings. However, once the listener is able to find his or her way through the images and discover the “keys” to the matrix, the chaotic world becomes ordered. Although the musical landscape is constantly changing, we begin to see familiar landmarks and the relationships between them become clear.
Angstwagen was written in 1971 and revised in 1981. The text (by the composer) is as follows:
Original form Modified retrograde Translation
Angstwagen Negavtsnya Anguish wagon
Geht langsam Masnyal theg moves slowly
Immer zu Uz remy ever onward
Both versions of the text are used as sound-sources for interplay with the percussion. Throughout the piece, the syllables of the text and its retrograde are combined in various ways; only at the end of the piece do we hear the text in its original form. The interplay between the voice and the percussion is somewhat reminiscent of scat singing. (Yttrehus began his musical career as a jazz drummer). Sounds such as “go” and “ge” are used to imitate the tom toms, and “s” and “z” are often extended to imitate the various cymbals.
In Angstwagen we see many devices that Yttrehus will use in his more recent works. There are surprising rhythmic shifts, similar to what we find in the Sonata for Percussion and Piano. Here we see the “splattering” of notes all over the page, usually moving through the percussion instruments at a rapid pace. Finally, we realize that Yttrehus’s music is incredibly complex, written for virtuoso performers.
Explorations, Yttrehus’s largest work for solo piano, is a virtuosic display for the medium. It is a highly-charged work, constantly spreading outwards in all directions. Yttrehus has suggested an alternate title for the work: How Music Should Go In Our Time: Being a Joyful, Albeit Hard-Won Romp Through The Fertile Fields of Dodecaphony. Here, the work reveals the fertile fields to be a somewhat chaotic landscape, and so the journey becomes a way of viewing this in a somewhat coherent manner. This sense of “organized chaos” is what Umberto Eco calls “chaosmos” in his studies of James Joyce. The “chaosmos” of Explorations is presented in a one movement work which explores the vestigial sonata form complete with a recapitulation (at the inversion) and a coda.
The
Sonata For Percussion And Piano was originally written as a duo for
percussion and piano and was actually performed that way at its premiere at the
McMillin Theater in New York on October 25, 1983. The pianist was Robert
Pollock. Gordon Gottlieb heroically met the challenge of performing the
percussion parts as a single player.
Later, it was determined that the work should be revised for
several percussionists, so that the percussionists would have enough time to use
a variety of mallets and effectively dampen their instruments. The xylophone and
vibraphone act usually as an interconnected unit, as do the timpani and the left
hand of the piano. One of the more interesting features of this piece is the
frequent shifts of surface rhythm: at any given moment, one will find all of the
instrumentalists dividing the beat in the same way (by five or six, for
example). However, the way of dividing the beat is constantly changing,
sometimes in the most unpredictable manner. The result is a work of extreme
originality and excitement.
- Notes © 1993 Anthony Cornicello
Biographical Information
Rolv Yttrehus, born
March 12th, 1926, in Duluth, Minnesota,
U.S.A.,
holds degrees from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, the
University of
Michigan,
and in 1962, received a Diploma from the Accademia Di Santa Cecilia in
Rome. He studied harmony with Nadia Boulanger,
and composition with Ross Lee Finney, Roger Sessions, Aaron Copland, and
Goffredo Petrassi. He has received numerous awards, including grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
His music has been performed on the Fromm Festival in Tanglewood, the ISCM World
Music Days USA, by The Louisville Orchestra, at the Darmstadt Festival in
Germany, by the Augsburg Philharmonic in Germany, and frequently in New York by
such groups as The Juilliard Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, The Group
for Contemporary Music, Parnassus, and
Ensemble 21. His Plectrum Spectrum received its first performance in
January, 2001 by the Cygnus Ensemble at Merkin Hall in
New York.
His piano piece- Explorations, is recorded by David Holzman
on Centaur CD, CRC 2291.
The Warsaw National
Philharmonic, conducted by Joel Suben, performed Mr. Yttrehus’s Symphony
Number One, on the Warsaw Autumn Festival in September, 1998. Mr. Suben also
recorded this work with the Polish National Radio Orchestra. The recording is
included on a compact disk – The Music of Rolv Yttrehus, CRI CD 843 which
was issued in January of 2000.
He is now Professor of Music Emeritus, having retired from
teaching at Rutgers University in the fall of 1996
The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble was founded in 1968 by Raymond DesRoches, who co-directs the group with Peter Jarvis and Gary Van Dyke. The acclaimed group is made up of professionals and students from William Paterson University, where it has been in residence since 1972. Because of the ensemble's commitment to the performance and development of percussion repertoire, numerous pieces have been written for, premiered by and recorded by it. The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble has appeared in the United States and Europe as guests of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Composers Guild of New Jersey, the San Francisco Symphony, the Gaudeamus Foundation, Radio Denmark, and countless others. The group can be heard on Nonesuch, Composer's Recording Inc., Music and Arts, Koch International, Desoto, New World, NAXOS, the Composers Guild of New Jersey and Capstone recording labels.
Hailed
as "a master pianist" (Andrew Porter, The New Yorker), David Holzman
has won acclaim both for his recitals and his recordings. He has performed the
20th Century's most challenging keyboard masterpieces at Festivals and Museums
throughout the world. He has recently appeared at the Schoenberg Festival in
Vienna, the International Stefan Wolpe Symposium at Northwestern University, the
Kosciuszko Foundation of New York in an all-Martino program, and the Curtis
Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Future appearances are at the Storm King Music Festival in
June as both chamber musician and soloist and at Merkin Hall in October in an
all-Wolpe recital sponsored by the Stefan Wolpe Society. His all-Wolpe CD will
be released in early April on the Bridge label. Mr. Holzman is a frequent
performer in New Jersey. He performed last spring at the African Museum and
will perform again next Fall. Both concerts include works commissioned by
Holzman and the Composers Guild of New Jersey in association with Meet The
Composer.
Further information on David Holzman can be obtained on his
web site: www.battlemuse.com
Peter Jarvis studied percussion
with Raymond DesRoches at William Paterson University, Wayne New Jersey. As
co-director of the acclaimed New Jersey Percussion Ensemble Jarvis is active as
a percussionist, conductor, administrator and educator. He has played with the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, the
Contemporary Chamber Ensemble of Piccolo Spoleto, the Composers Guild of New
Jersey Performance Ensemble, New Band, New York Art Ensemble, and many others.
As conductor, Jarvis has appeared with Saint Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Cygnus
Festival Orchestra, Composers Guild of New Jersey Performance Ensemble, Ensemble
21, and others. Jarvis has appeared in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Asia,
Russia and Europe. He can be heard on Nonesuch, CRI, Koch International,
Composers Guild of New Jersey, October Music, Capstone, Naxos, Gram recording
labels.
In addition to performing, Jarvis has been active as a
teacher, having taught percussion at Fairleigh Dickinson University and
currently at William Paterson University.
Judith Nicosia is Associate
Professor in the Mason
Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University,
where she teaches voice, musicianship, and vocal literature classes. Prof.
Nicosia has been an invited clinician at local, regional, and national levels
for the National Association of Teachers of Singing and the American Choral
Directors Association, and has served as a choral and solo adjudicator for
numerous festivals in
Canada and the U.S. She enjoys giving master classes and clinics at for both
students and teachers throughout the
Eastern U.S., and is particularly active
in this regard in New Jersey. Formerly a member of the Editorial Board of the
Journal of Singing, she is now President of the New Jersey Chapter of ACDA.
A specialist in contemporary music, soprano Judith Nicosia
has performed works by Olivier Messiaen, Ned Rorem, and Haskell Small with the
composers at the piano, and recorded for the Orion, DR, C.R.I., Albany and
Centaur labels. She has been a guest artist with the New Jersey Percussion
Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Performer's Committee for
20th-Century Music, the Composers Guild of New Jersey, the
New York New Music Ensemble, and the Alliance for American Song. Having
premiered and recorded Charles Schwartz' crossover jazz symphony "Riding High"
as well as his latest work "Rhymes and Fables," she has also sung the first
performance of numerous works by New Jersey composer Laurie Altman, a recent
Grammy nominee. Ms. Nicosia has been a soloist with the Opera Orchestra of New
York, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and Mississippi Opera, as well as the
Montreal,
Quebec,
Hartford, Nashville and Colonial
symphonies, among others.
Winner of the 1981 Montreal International Voice Competition,
Ms. Nicosia has received numerous awards including: First Prize for Woman's
Voice and Second Prize for the performance of Darius Milhaud songs at the Paris
International Voice Competition, a career award from the National Institute for
Music Theatre, a Sullivan Foundation grant, and three consecutive fellowships to
Tanglewood. She made her debut at the Piccolo
Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, with the New Jersey Percussion
Ensemble in 1995.
The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble is in Residence at William Paterson University.
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