SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
Fellow Travelers
8pm, Saturday, November 9, 2013
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and John Kendall Bailey, conducting
Program
Davide Verotta
Invitation
Davide Verotta, Piano
Philip Freihofner
Filled with Moonlight
Philip Freihofner, Oboe
Davide Verotta, Piano
David Sprung
Haiku for Tenor, Wind Quintet, and Piano (2013)
Michael Desnoyers, Tenor
Lisa Scola Prosek
The Lariat
I. El Vaquero
II. Las Otno Ayam
Desirae Harp, Soprano
Eduard Prosek
The Curse (2013)
Eduard Prosek, Voice and Guitar
Mark Alburger
Double Piano Concerto ("Fellow Travellers"), Op. 204 (2012)
I. Allegro troppo
Eytan and Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman, Piano
SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold Associate Music Director
John Kendall Bailey Associate Conductor
Martha Stoddard Associate Conductor
Flute
Bruce Salvisberg
Oboe
Phil Freihofner
Peter Lemberg
Clarinet
Rachel Condry
Michael Kimbell
Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Michael Garvey
Lori Garvey
Trumpet
Eduard Prosek
Horn
Brian Holmes
Jan Pusina
Soprano
Desirae Harp
Tenor
Michael Desnoyers
Mark Alburger
Baritone
Eduard Prosek
Guitar
Eduard Prosek
Harp
Samantha Garvey
Piano
Miles Graber
Davide Verotta
Percussion
Victor Flaviano
Violin I
Monika Gruber
Violin II
Harry Bernstein
Viola
Nansamba Ssensalo
Cello
Ariella Hyman
Bass
John Beeman
MARK ALBURGER (b. April 2, 1957, Upper Darby, PA) 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, and Instructor in Music Literature and Theory at Diablo Valley College. As Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Monthly Journal (21st-centurymusic.com and 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com), Alburger has interviewed many composers, including Charles Amirkhanian, Earle Brown, George Crumb, Alan Hovhaness, Steve Mackey, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich. He has recently updated and expanded the articles on John Adams and Philip Glass for Grove Online and The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition. 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 United States. 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 (220 opus numbers to date, including 16 concerti, 23 operas, nine symphonies, the 12-hour opera-oratorio The Bible, and Day 1-3 of The Decameron) are being issued on recordings from New Music. 500+ videos of his music may be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as on many other websites.
DOUBLE PIANO CONCERTO ("FELLOW TRAVELLERS"), Op. 204, was written for and is dedicated to Eytan and Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman in thanks for their wonderful work with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra over several years. The piece is mapped over Francis Poulenc's Double Piano Concerto, taking in interlopers from Japanese, Hispanic, minimalist, and rock-n-roll traditions. The first movement features a Dorian pentatonic scale (D E F A B).
PHILIP FREIHOFNER has been a regularly performing member of SFCCO since 2004. He has a Bachelor's degree in Music from UC Berkeley.
FILLED WITH MOONLIGHT was written to fulfill a commission for a new duet for oboe and piano by the ensemble Dolci. Oboist Ted Rust and pianist Viva Knight premiered the work December, 2012. The music takes inspiration from the novel Blackberries in the Dream House, by San Francisco poet Diane Frank, a romance set in 1850's Japan. In designing the musical world of this piece, the sources included elements of Japanese music and esthetic theory, of Poulenc's fabulous chamber works for winds and piano, and of the Koto work of Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner.
EDUARD PROSEK is a 22-year-old Californian native now residing in Brighton, UK. His debut EP California (2012) gained him a strong online following, with its title track receiving over 40,000 YouTube views. Following this initial interest, Prosek's cover of Paul Simon's Homeward Bound was chosen as the soundtrack to a major TV advertisement for Cathedral City last year in the UK taking Prosek to a national audience. His latest release, Willow Tree, showcases his impressive abilities as composer and arranger. A full UK tour and album are set for release in 2014.
THE CURSE is the second track on Prosek's newest EP, Willow Tree, released September, 2013.
We're all born innocent, it's how you lose it,
that keeps me interested in you
and you speak so softly I don't catch a thing but,
when you take a breath, the angels sing.
So I'll take it as it comes, win or lose I'd
rather nothing at all, then to choose
between the one I love, or my instincts
so I'll keep my mouth shut, and keep listening.
She's a blessing but, just like any curse she's
so beautiful it, makes it so much worse.
She's a blessing but, just like anything you
never have enough, and when you do it's all too much
LISA SCOLA PROSEK is a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in Music Composition, her teachers include Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt, Lukas Foss, Margherita Kalil, and Gaetano Giani- Luporini. Scola Prosek has composed and premiered seven operas with librettos in Italian and English.
Excerpts from THE LARIAT, a new opera by Scola Prosek, based on Jaime De Angulo’s 1927 novella, with a poetic libretto in Esselen by Louise Miranda Ramirez, Tribal Chair of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, sung by Desirae Harp. The work will premiere in 2014, at the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York, and in 2015 with the San Francisco International Arts Festival. The piece is made possible by a grant from Theatre Bay Area.
Bear, you have taken my love Koltala name yukla nish kolo! I cannot live without him, Eni anpapiake cha’a anhuyake huniki! Creator, take me too. Las Otno Ayam yukla nicha.
Louise Miranda Ramirez is Esselen, Chumash and Yaqui. She is an enrolled member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, from the Greater Monterey County and the current Tribal Chairwoman. Her goal as a linguist is to work to return the Esselen language, which she says, “Has been sleeping for over 100 years.” Supported by the California Indigenous Language Survival (ACILS), she attended the Breath of Life Program and Language is Life Conference. ACILS supports research, for California Indian Languages with no speakers that is held at the University of Berkeley. In collaboration with linguist David L. Shaul she worked at reviving the Esselen Language and created a dictionary translated from oral stories and prayers. She has subsequently made pamphlets and books in the Esselen language.
Desirae Harp (Ashi Akxi, The Esselen Girl) is a descendant of the Mishewal Wappo Tribe and Dine Nation and is a multi-talented singer and songwriter. Her songs include themes that focus on decolonization of mind, body and spirit. She sings with numerous groups including Audiopharmacy and is a community activist and mentor for urban youth programs throughout the bay area. She is also a co-founder of the Mishewal Wappo Language Revitalization Project. She is currently attending San Francisco State University.
DAVID SPRUNG (b. Jersey City, NJ) was raised in New York City. An honors graduate from Queens College, where he studied composition with Vittorio Rieti and Luigi Dallapiccola, Sprung also has a Master’s Degree in Composition from Princeton University, where his mentors were Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. He has had a dual track career as educator and performer, having served on the faculties of Queens College, City College of New York, Wichita State University, Sonoma State University and California State University, East Bay where he now holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Music. Additionally, Sprung has been a prominent French horn player, having played principal horn with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Wichita Symphony, Chautauqua Symphony, and most recently, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. Formerly, he was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Since retiring from active teaching and playing, he has been devoting himself to composing and conducting.
Composed in 2013 and being performed for the first time, the texts for HAIKU come from the collection Japanese Haiku (1956, Peter Pauper Press). In a prefatory note, translator Peter Beilenson notes: “There are only seventeen syllables in the haiku; the first and third lines contain five, the second seven. There is almost always in it the name of the season, or a key word giving the season by inference ….. But there is also, in a good haiku, more than a statement of feeling or a picture of nature: there is an implied identity between two seemingly different things.” The mood of the music is intended to reflect these ideas, although with elaborations using text repetitions and complementary thematic material. For the entire set, there is a high degree of musical integration; motives and other musical gestures recur throughout, as a means of providing stylistic unity.
I
IN THESE DARK WATERS
DRAWN UP FROM
MY FROZEN WELL….
GLITTERING OF SPRING
Ringai
II
STANDING STILL AT DUSK
LISTEN… IN FAR
DISTANCES
THE SONG OF FROGLINGS!
Buson
III
I DREAMED OF BATTLES
AND WAS SLAIN…
OH SAVAGE SAMURAI!
INSATIABLE FLEAS!
Kikaku
IV
ARISE FROM SLEEP, OLD CAT,
AND WITH GREAT YAWNS
AND STRETCHINGS…
AMBLE OUT FOR LOVE
Issa
V
DARTING DRAGON-FLY…
PULL OFF ITS SHINY
WINGS AND LOOK…
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD
Kikaku
VI
[Reply: follows V without pause]
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD…
IT NEEDS BUT SHINY
WINGS AND LOOK…
DARTING DRAGON-FLY!
Basho
VII
A WHITE SWAN SWIMMING…
PARTING WITH HER
UNMOVED BREAST
CHERRY-PETALED POND
Roka
VIII
ROARING WINTER STORM
RUSHING TO ITS
UTTER END…
EVER-SOUNDING SEA
Gonsui
IX
AH! I INTENDED
NEVER NEVER
TO GROW OLD…
LISTEN: NEW YEAR’S BELL!
Jokun
DAVIDE VEROTTA 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 (as soloist, chamber player, member of SFCCO, National Composer Association, SF, Irregular Resolutions, co-organizer of the Festival of Contemporary Music). He teaches piano and composition privately and at the Community Music Center in San Francisco. Recent compositions include works for orchestra with the Berkeley Symphony, chamber opera, dance, piano solo, percussion, and various chamber ensembles. Upcoming in Spring 2014 is the "tone poem" Il Ponte, for piano, percussion and strings. For more information, please visit his web site at davideverotta.com.
INVITATION is a short piece for piano, that is the introduction of a large work for piano, percussion, strings,and voice, Il Ponte -- which will be presented in the Bay Area in the Spring of 2014. As the title indicates the piece represents an invitation to the player and the audience, a luring to enter a different place, leaving behind for a while normal everyday realities.
DONATIONS:
Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold
Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Anne Baldwin
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta
Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Connie & George Cooke
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Marilyn Hudson
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
James Schrempp
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc
Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Roberta Robertson
Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater
To make a tax-deductible donation, please send a check made out to:
Erling Wold's Fabrications
629 Wisconsin Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Please include a note saying you want the money to go to the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.
***
An amazing, excellent concert --
adjectives which could be ascribed to the entire day (222nd of summer, high 73, the summit every other day since November 5) as well, which begins with another page (40) composed for Double Piano Concerto ("Fellow Travellers"): III,
before heading down to
Berkeley's Fantasy Studios to
record with
The Awesome Orchestra.
From here,
hop
over
to
San
Francisco
to
get
shorn at
Louie's,
then
coastwise,
heading
down
to
Pacifica
with
Harriet
for
a
repast
at
Nick's,
looping back for the
evening's soundcheck
before the tremendous show.
