|
|
Southwest Chamber Music
Press Release
|
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE press@swmusic.org
May 2, 2012 626.685.4455
(Press contact) |
|
LA INTERNATIONAL NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL
Premieres by Hyo-shin Na, Gabriela Ortiz,
Vu Nhat Tân, Kurt Rohde in first two concerts
May 9 and 12
The Colburn School
Los Angeles - The inaugural LA International New Music Festival's first two concerts take place on Wednesday, May 9 and Saturday, May 12 at 8:00 p.m. at The Colburn School. Presented by two-time Grammy® Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music, the concerts are preceded at 7:00 p.m. by a discussion with the concert's composers and musicians moderated by Southwest Artistic Director Jeff von der Schmidt.
The May 9 concert includes four premieres. The US premiere of Gabriela Ortiz' Rio de las Mariposas will be performed by Southwest musicians Alison Bjorkedal and Allison Allport, harps, and Lynn Vartan, percussion. In the LA premiere of Kurt Rohde's Concertino for Solo Violin & Ensemble, Shalini Vijayan is the soloist. The LA premiere of Hyo-shin Na's Ocean Shore 2 is for clarinet and string trio. Southwest players are joined by Hans Wesseling, mandolin, a founding member of the Nieuw Ensemble from Amsterdam, in Unsuk Chin's Akrostichon Wortspiel, and Elissa Johnston is the soprano soloist.
On May 12, Wesseling and and Helenus de Rijke, guitar, also a founding member of the Nieuw Ensemble, participate in Vu Nhat Tân's Rain Flower (LA premiere) and Arnold Schoenberg's Serenade; Abdiel Gonzalez is the baritone soloist. 20th century icons Lou Harrison and Milton Babbitt are represented by the Varied Trio and Homily respectively. The world premiere of Na's Morning Study, commissioned by Southwest, is for mixed ensemble, and von der Schmidt will conduct.
The entire Festival presents 23 works, which include 14 Los Angeles or west coast premieres, two US premieres, and four world premieres. In addition to Morning Study, Southwest has commissioned two other works to be presented later in the festival: The Song of Napalm and Cracking Bamboo by Vietnamese composer Vu Nhat Tân.
Monday, May 21, and Saturday, May 26, are the concluding concerts of the festival. Highlights to come include Alexandra du Bois' Night Songs, written for the Kronos Quartet and based on the diaries of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew living in Amsterdam during WWII. The festival pays homage to three composers whose passing has been marked in the last year: Milton Babbitt, Los Angeles composer Daniel Catán, whose opera Il Postino was premiered by the LA Opera, and New York composer Peter Lieberson.
Southwest is pleased to present the west coast premiere of the 103-year-old Elliott Carter's Three Explorations with bass-baritone Evan Hughes, and the world premiere of Tôn Thât Tiêt's Miroir, Mémoire, presented as a gift to Southwest. The world premiere of The Song of Napalm by Vu Nhat Tân, with the virtuoso dan bau, dan tranh and Tr'ung performer Vân Ánh Vanessa Vơ, is based upon the poem by Vietnam veteran Bruce Weigl and concludes the festival on May 26.
For composers' notes on the premieres scroll to Background below.
Link to brochure.
For interviews/photos please contact:
Heidi Lesemann: heidi@swmusic.org (626) 685-4455
|
|
Concert Information and Listing
LA International New Music Festival
Presented by Southwest Chamber Music
The Colburn School.
All concerts begin at 8 p.m.
Pre-concert talk: 7 p.m. prior to each concert
Festival package: 30% off regular ticket prices!
4 concerts: $105 general; $75 seniors; $25 students with full time I.D.
Single Tickets: $38 general admission, $28 seniors over 65, and
$10 students with full-time I.D.
For tickets or information: 1.800.726.7147 or www.swmusic.org
Wednesday, May 9
Hyo-shin Na - Ocean Shore 2 (LA Premiere)
Gabriela Ortiz - Rio de las Mariposas (US Premiere)
Unsuk Chin - Akrostichon Wortspiel (LA Premiere)
Kurt Rohde - Concertino for Solo Violin & Ensemble (LA Premiere)
Vu Nhat Tân - Kư Úc Saturday, May 12
Lou Harrison - Varied Trio
Vu Nhat Tân - Rain Flower (LA Premiere)
Hyo-shin Na - Morning Study (World Premiere)
Milton Babbitt - Homily
Arnold Schoenberg - Serenade Monday, May 21
Anne LeBaron - Solar Music
Gabriela Ortiz - Aroma Foliado
Igor Stravinsky - Elegy for JFK
Elliott Carter - Three Explorations (West Coast Premiere) Milton Babbitt - Concerto Piccolino (West Coast Premiere) Daniel Catán - Encantamiento
Peter Lieberson - Forgiveness (LA Premiere)
Gabriela Ortiz - Atlas Pumas
Vu Nhat Tân - Cracking Bamboo (World Premiere)
Saturday, May 26 Gabriela Ortiz - Rio Bravo (US Premiere)
Tôn Thât Tiêt - Miroir, Mémoire (World Premiere)
Alexandra du Bois - Night Songs (LA Premiere)
Vu Nhat Tân - The Song of Napalm (World Premiere)          Top L to R: Composers Anne LeBaron, Vu Nhat Tân, Unsuk Chin, Gabriela Ortiz, Kurt Rohde; Bottom L to R: Alexandra du Bois, Tôn Thât Tiêt. Hyo-shin Na, Elliott Carter. |
|
|
Location, Parking and Tickets
Parking is available on the street and at Disney Hall parking garage. For more information,
or call 1-800-726-7147
(please use this number in all published materials).
|
|
Background information
A word about the premieres
(notes by the composer except as noted)
MORNING STUDY by HYO-SHIN NA (WORLD PREMIERE)
Several years ago I began to notice everyday at dawn and dusk a series of very short high metallic sounds; it took me some time to realize that the sound was coming from a pair of California Towhees that had nested in our backyard. This birdsong became for me just as dependable a part of each day as the change of light from night to morning and then, again, from evening back to night. Morning Study is related in various ways to this fluctuation between darkness and light and to the way the sound of the Towhees had become a part of this fluctuation. The piece was commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music and was written in the mornings between March and September, 2011.
OCEAN SHORE 2 by HYO-SHIN NA (LA PREMIERE)
Ocean/Shore 2 follows Ocean/Shore written in 2002 for chamber orchestra and piri (Korean bamboo oboe) solo. The Ocean/Shore series is a study on the use of diverse materials and on the coexistence, within a piece of music, of various instruments. As in the meeting and interaction of water and land, these instruments can have fundamentally very different characters (piri and violin, or clarinet and cello), yet shouldn't lose their basic nature in the interests of harmony, or even beauty. Ocean/Shore was made of diverse elements: sounds of the piri and the western chamber orchestra, songs of the Indians of Northern California and impressions of the coast of California itself - water, rain, fog, mist, light, trees, grasses, hills and rocks. Ocean/Shore 2 was commissioned by the Zellerbach Foundation for Earplay to celebrate the 100th year of Korean American immigration. It was premiered at the 2003 San Francisco International Arts Festival.
RIO DE LAS MARIPOSAS by GABRIELA ORTIZ (US PREMIERE)
The title of this piece is inspired by the legendary Mexican river; Papaloápan or best known as "Rio de las Mariposas" (River of Butterflies). The town of Tlacotlalpan located in the state of Veracruz, meets the margins of the river Papaloápan where as a child and teenager I discovered the local folk music played so many times. Images and memories of those journeys are the ones that feed my desire to explore and play with musical material in a very simple and personal way. Furthermore, I also liked to focus on the harp, not only inside the context of occidental European music, but as an instrument that has always been linked to our roots. This piece was written for the Venezuelan harpists, Annete León and Isabel Santos, and Mexican percussionist, Ricardo Gallardo, and commissioned by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, for the Second Latino American Encounter of Harp.
CONCERTINO FOR VIOLIN AND SMALL ENSEMBLE by KURT ROHDE (LA PREMIERE)
Cast in three movements, my Concertino is modeled on an augmentation of the Baroque concerto grosso concertino technique. In these early ensemble works, the concertino was a subset of solo instruments drawn from the larger, full ensemble. They would play extended passages in their concertino role as soloists, playing elaborate versions of the full ensemble's tutti music. In practice, these ripieno (tutti) passages would alternate with the concertino (small group of soloists) passages, giving an impression of the grandiose and "public" (ripieno) alternating with the intimate and "private" (concertino). In my piece, there are never any ripieno passages: it is all concertino. Concertino for Violin and Small Ensemble was composed in Rome and San Francisco during 2009-2010, and is dedicated to Axel Strauss.
RAIN FLOWER by VU NHAT TÂN (LA PREMIERE)
Rain Flower was composed by Vu Nhat Tân while he was at the University of California San Diego studying with Chinary Ung. A brilliant duo for flute and guitar, it bends pitches in ways that are quite similar to the patterns of Vietnamese speech and also displays an impressive technical command of virtuosic proportions. --Jeff von der Schmidt
|
|
LA International New Music Festival - Performers
Guest artists include Elissa Johnston, soprano; Hanh Weigl, speaker; Bruce Weigl, poet; Abdiel Gonzalez, baritone; Evan Hughes, bass-baritone; Hans Wesseling, mandolin; Helenus de Rijke, guitar; Vân Ánh Vanessa Vơ, dan bau, dan tranh; Vu Nhat Tân, piano.
Ensemble: Shalini Vijayan, violin; Lorenz Gamma, violin; Jan Karlin, viola; Peter Jacobsen, cello; Tom Peters, bass; Larry Kaplan, flute; Lisa Edelstein, flute; Diane Alancraig, alto and bass flutes; Jonathan Davis, oboe; Jim Foschia, clarinet; Helen Goode, bass clarinet; Gary Boyver, contrabass clarinet; Adam Bhatia, trumpet; Daniel Rosenboom, trumpet; Marissa Benedict, trumpet; Rob Schaer, trumpet; Bill Booth trombone; Al Veeh, trombone, Terry Cravens, trombone; Alison Bjorkedal, harp; Allison Allport, harp; Ming Tsu, piano, prepared piano; Genevieve Lee, piano; Lynn Vartan, percussion; Ken McGrath, percussion; Jeff von der Schmidt, conductor. For biographies on Southwest Chamber Music, please visit www.swmusic.org/about_us/musicians.
|
|
|
Southwest Chamber Music
638 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 201
Pasadena, CA 91101-2006
|
|
|
626.685.4455
press@swmusic.org
www.swmusic.org
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
