SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
Fast and The Furies
8pm, Saturday, May 5, 2018
St. Mark's Lutheran Church,
1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and John Kendall Bailey, conducting
Program
John Beeman (b. 1954)
Introduction and Dance (2018)
I. Flowing
II. Allegro
Michael Kimbell (b. 1946)
Chaconne (2018) on a Theme from Henry Purcell's "When I Am Laid in Earth"
[Dido and Aeneas, 1680]
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Funf Stucke fur Orchester (Five Pieces for Orchestra), Op. 10 (1913)
I. Sehr ruhig und zart (Very quiet and tender)
II. Lebhaft und zart bewegt (Liveley and tenderly moving)
III. Sehr langsam und ausserst ruhig (Very slow and extremely quiet)
IV. Fliessend, aussert zart (Flowing, extremely tender)
V. Sehr fliessend (Very flowing)
Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
ROMAN DE FAVVEL (The Horse-Ass Novel), Op. 276 (2018)
after Gervais de Bus's Roman de Fauvel, 1314, Book I, Folio 1-2
I. Favellandi vicium et fex avarcie (Horse-Ass's fits and sex-greed)
II. Mundus a mundicia (This lying world)
III. Quare fremuerunt (Why do the nations rage)
IV. Super cathedram, sub ypocrisi (This modern world, a flock of hypocrisy)
V. Scariottis geiniture viperera (The scar of reproduction)
VI. Heu, quo progreditur prevaricacio! (Oh, how the progress of prevarication!)
VII. In mari miserie (In the sea of misery)
VIII. Ad solitum vomitum (The usual vomit)
Intermission
Michael Cooke (b. 1970)
Open-Ended (2003)
Davide Verotta (b. 1958)
Sinfonietta (2018)
Quarter = 160
Adagio
Allegro
SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold Associate Music Director
John Kendall Bailey Associate Conductor
Michael Cooke Assistant Conductor
Piccolo / Flute / Alto Flute
Harry Bernstein
Bruce Salvisberg
Oboe
Philip Freihofner
Piccolo Clarinet / Clarinet / Bass Clarinet
Tom Berkelman
Michael Kimbell
Bassoon / Contrabassoon
Lori Garvey
Michael Garvey
Trumpet
Michael Cox
Horn
Bob Satterford
Piano
Davide Verotta
Percussion
Victor Flaviani
Benedict Lim
Anne Szabla
Violin I
Kristen Kline
Violin II / Mandolin
Corey Johnson
Viola
Kat Walsh
Cello
Ariella Hyman
String Bass / Guitar
John Beeman
MARK ALBURGER (b. 1957) studied with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. He is Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and The Opus Project, Conductor of San Francisco Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, Professor in Music Literature and Theory at Diablo Valley College, and Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal. Alburger has been the recipient of many honors, awards, and commissions -- including yearly ASCAP Standard Awards; grants from Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, MetLife, and Theatre Bay Area; funding from the Marra, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Getty Foundations; and performances by ensembles and orchestras throughout the world. Alburger's concert and dramatic compositions combine atonal, collage, neoclassic, pop, and postminimal sensibilities -- often in overall frameworks troped on pre-existent material. His complete works (277 opus numbers to date) are being issued on recordings from New Music. 500+ videos of his compositions can be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as many other websites. Samson and Delilah (The Frank Judges), Op. 65 (1998), will be heard at Diablo Valley College Music Building on Saturday, May 26, 8pm, as part of The Opus Project presents Opus 65.
ROMAN DE FAVVEL
(The Horse-Ass Novel -
Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability, Envy, Laxity), Op. 276 (2018)
after Gervais de Bus's Roman de Fauvel (Faus Vel - Falseness), 1314
Book I, Folio 1-2
I. Favellandi vicium et fex avarcie obtinet nunc solium summumque locum curie
(Horse-Ass's fits and sex-greed now occupy the seat of the Supreme Court
… 2-voice expanding isorhythmic motet)
II. Mundus a mundicia (This lying world… 2-voice Notre Dame conductus hybrid motet)
III. Quare fremuerunt (Why do the nations rage… 2-voice new conductus motet)
IV. Super cathedram Moysi latita sub ypocrisi /
Presidentes in thronis seculi sunt hodie dolus et parina / Ruina
(This modern world is hidden under a flock of hypocrisy /
Presiding over their seats in today's world, fraud and extortion / Ruins… 3-voice motet)
V. Scariottis geiniture viperera / Jure quod in opere / Superne matris gaudia
(The scar of reproduction / Right in the act / The holy mother's joy
… 3-voice assassination commemoration motet)
VI. Heu, quo progreditur prevaricacio! (Oh, how the progress of prevarication!
… monophonic conductus [in 14-voice canon])
VII. In mari miserie / Manere (In the sea of misery / Stay… 2[3]-voice motet)
VIII. Ad solitum vomitum / Regnat (The usual vomit / Rules… 2-voice Latin motet, c. 1200)
JOHN BEEMAN (b. 1954) studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master’s degree. His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table was produced on National Public Radio. Orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, Santa Rosa Symphony, and the Peninsula Symphony. Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers’ Symposium, the Bard Composer-Conductor program, the Oxford Summer Institutes, and the Oregon Bach Festival and has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Compositions have been performed by Ensemble Sorelle, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, the Ives Quartet, Fireworks Ensemble, Paul Dresher, the Oregon Repertory Singers and Schola Cantorum of San Francisco.
INTRODUCTION AND DANCE (2015) "uses some material from a previous work for woodwind quintet. Living near the ocean has inspired me to include a great deal of ocean imagery in this composition. Rolling rhythms in 6/8 meter are reminiscent of the flowing movements of the sea. Shimmering sun on water is suggested by high-pitched woodwind figures. The ebb and flow of the ocean is brought to mind by rising and falling musical phrases. This movement winds down and ends softly in anticipation of the Dance to follow. The second section, Dance, is written in 7/8. It begins with a playful melody accompanied by viola and cello. Rhythms of two are often set against figures of three. This melodic line soon evolves into a contrasting legato phrase. The music builds up to forte then descends into a lilting duet with violin and viola. This is followed by a flute and cello passage that grows into a fortissimo section then briefly returns to the original theme. Dance ends with an energetic coda."
Multi-instrumentalist MICHAEL COOKE (b. 1970) is a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy, ASCAPLUS Award and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner plays a variety of instruments: you can hear him on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and of course composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies. Michael has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began published many of Michael's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The San Francisco Beacon describes Michael's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching by Cooke Quartet, Statements by Michael Cooke and The Is by CKW Trio. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped.
OPEN-ENDED (2003) "is a very versatile work that is composed live before your eyes and ears. Based on Rova‘s Radar techniques, Open-Ended is less of a composition and more of a color or tool palette. It is an ever-growing collection of rules and games for the performers that are triggered by hand signals by the conductor/composer. The conductor/composer then composes the piece live using these hand signals to guide the performers. The ability to compose with what happens in the moment, in real time, is what is required to produce this piece. This similar to the “Soundpainting” language was created by Walter Thompson in Woodstock, New York in 1974. Open-Ended has no set instrumentation and can be played by any number of performers. It also has no set length; the piece could last 5 minutes or 24 hours. Open-Ended has been performed several times, including performances in 2005 and 2009 by the SFCCO, but every time it is a world première and unique performance that can never be repeated."
MICHAEL KIMBELL (b. 1946) earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1973 at Cornell University, where he studied composition with Robert Palmer and Karel Husa. He has had many works performed by SFCCO and the Golden Gate Symphony, and his chamber works have been performed in Canada, Germany, France, Austria and Hungary. Recent premieres include Remembering for Atonement for chorus and orchestra, and Into the Stars, a toccata and fugue on B-A-C-H for solo harp.
The CHACONNE (2018), originally written for a quartet of viols, is modelled on French Baroque chaconnes, particularly those that conclude the operas of Rameau, although there are also elements of English viol consort style as well as classical string quartets.
DAVIDE VEROTTA (b. 1958) was born in a "boring Italian town close to Milano and moved to the much more exciting San Francisco in his late twenties." He studied piano at the Milano and San Francisco Conservatory, and privately with Julian White, and composition at San Francisco State University (MA) and the University of California at Davis (PhD), as well as having a parallel-track academic life in mathematics as a professor at the University of California at San Francisco. He is actively involved in the new music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches piano and composition privately and at the Community Music Center in San Francisco. He is a multiple recipient of ASCAP Plus awards and Zellerbach foundation grants (Dieci Giorni and Il Ponte) and a fiscally sponsored affiliate of SF Friends of Chamber Music. For more information, please visit his web site at www.davideverotta.com.
SINFONIETTA (2018) is a relatively short piece characterized by an imperious introduction that is amplified to almost martial statements at the end of the piece. After the introduction ends the horn and trumpet introduce a winding, soothing motive that is variously picked up by the oboe, flute and clarinet. The quite idyllic parenthesis does not last, broken by the return of the imperious motive. The interruption leads into a rather long dramatic march-like section that eventually brings back a variation of the soothing motive. Tension rises and conflagrates into an ostinato figuration that leads to the end of the first section of the piece. An Adagio (slow section) follows. A duet of vibraphone and glockenspiel is joined by the winds in a very sparse and rarified atmosphere. An Allegro (fast section) restarts the piece. First lead by the strings it eventually builds and builds to propel into the final, as I mentioned, almost martial section of the piece. "The piece was originally titled Furies, and was designed to represent the blind rage of a supernatural being. Somehow I could not find the energy to do so, and I so settled for the much tamer title Sinfonietta."
Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and colleague Alban Berg, ANTON WEBERN (1883-1945) was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Ernst Krenek and Theodor W. Adorno. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Křenek, and even Schoenberg himself. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism.
FUNF STUCKE FUR ORCHESTER (FIVE PIECES FOR ORCHESTRA), Op. 10 (1913), requires less than five minutes to perform. The movements are not particularly thematically connected, and only abstractly allude to traditional formal plans and tonal relationships. What they do contain is probably the most convincing utilization of Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody) ever and apply an aphoristic approach to composition for orchestra for the first time. These pieces are the last orchestral works Webern published before his adoption of the 12-tone method. His Op. 1 Passacaglia for Orchestra was post-Brahmsian and his Op. 5 orchestral works were atonal, sectional, and hint at the initial implications of the new musical language. Op. 10 expresses only the raw components of musical sound: notes, intervals, scraps of ostinato, rhythms, attack, volume, and tone color. While the Op. 5 was written in brief enough sections and durations to be considered miniatures, Op. 10 does away with the conventions of a traditional orchestral narrative. The result is an aphoristic approach that condenses the sound into one, hyper-expressive text. The result is a spilling over of artistic idea that is undeniable, immediate, and difficult to articulate. What can be discerned is a flow of tone-color that is continually associative. For example, a plucked violin relates to the harp heard earlier. A horn can function as color conduit between a flute and a trumpet. This is in addition to tempos changing and recurring and many other basic, identifiable materials, such as register. With so much going on in a very brief period, the spirit of the movements harness a precariousness that might be the closest to the Expressionist oeuvre among Webern's instrumental works. The function of each musical signpost is always fluctuating, further abstracting the surface and underlying structure. A painstaking order is obviously at work in these movements. This music pushes the traditional limits of perception and yet exhibits strikingly lucid, even candid intentions. Webern's mastery of this language is palpable, but this is hardly a comfort. Webern was primarily concerned with the contours of natural phenomena, which follow a logic separate from the world humanity has created for itself. The premiere of Op. 10 was on June 22, 1924, over 10 years after its completion. Webern conducted the five pieces himself, in Zurich, during the fourth festival of the International Society for Contemporary Composers. Critics had time to absorb Webern's approach to music by then, and wrote favorably, even glowingly, of the work. Music reporters from Berlin, who had lambasted him in the past, described the composer as "a true musical poet," and provided many similar accolades as well. The concert catapulted the composer to international fame. In terms of winning respect from the music world, this concert may have been the most successful evening of Anton Webern's career.
***
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Superb show!
On a day beginning with errands about down,
then
burning
down
the
freeway
with Harriet to CopyWorld, printing the program
and
vaulting
over
to San Francisco for the
marvelous warm-up. 42nd day of summer, high down 4 to 80 (Berkeley, 58 / SF, 56)...
editing system 102 new-edition Mice and Men, Op. 45
and doing page 5 instrumentations / score-study / etc. re
Opus 65 Orchestrations, Op. 279 (2018)
I. Vincent D'Indy - Minuet on the Name of Haydn (1909)
(after Symphony on a French Mountain Air)
II. Sergei Prokofiev - Music for Children (1935): X. March
(after The Love for Three Oranges)
Igor Stravinsky - Violin Concerto (1931): I
Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 8, Op. 65 (1943): III
Alan Hovhaness - Avak the Healer, Op. 65 (1946): I
Mark Alburger - Samson and Delilah (The Frank Judges), Op. 65 (1998):
SCENE 1 - Start: I. Digits (Adonibezek)
Up late, designing an alternative poster for Goat Hall Productions' Reading Project re Giorgio Spagnoli's Serniors at Play (John Gehl) -- 2pm, Saturday, May 6, 2131 Broadway, Oakland -- and
Facebook parody profile picture re same...
