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In 1996, La Jolla Music Society commissioned a new work for SummerFest, with an invitation to acclaimed composer, conductor and pianist André Previn. The new work, Vocalise, was a highlight of that summer‘s festival. Now, 13 years, later, LJMS remains unwavering in its commitment to refresh and renew the chamber music repertoire with music by the most important composers of our time. The Society‘s role as an advocate for new music – and for the future of classical music – has been acknowledged and praised nationwide, and the list of organizations that have joined us as co-commissioners is an impressive one, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, the Norfolk Music Festival and the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, to name only a few.
The list of composers who have made new works for LJMS SummerFest is equally prestigious: Bright Sheng, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, John Harbison and Leon Kirchner. In 2003, the breadth of commission projects expanded to include great artists working outside the classical music discipline, starting with Chick Corea and later including Wayne Shorter, whose work for wind quintet in 2006 was premiered by the Imani Winds at SummerFest.
During SummerFest 2009, three highly esteemed composers have created new works that will receive premières during the festival. Pulitzer Prize recipient Gunther Schuller‘s new Horn Quintet will be heard on the August 16th Poetry and Divinity program. On the concert specially devoted to SummerFest commissions on August 21, a new violin sonata by Grammy®-nominated composer Paul Schoenfield will be played by SummerFest Music Director Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon Kimura Parker and Stimulus Package, a new piece by Charles Ives Award winner George Tsontakis will receive its first hearing. Both composers will be present to participate in a pre-concert interview and talk about their new pieces.
SummerFest has also taken an important step in diversifying our commission projects by extending an invitation to rock legend (and Golden Globe-nominated film composer) Stewart Copeland to join our composer roster. Not only will attendees at the August 21st concert hear Copeland‘s LJMS-commissioned piece Retail Therapy, but a selection of his other compositions as well.
New music is, of course, a challenge: to our ears, certainly, and sometimes to our understanding. The key to enjoying it is simple and easy: open your mind, abandon constraints of any kind (including preconceived notions), and delight in the new experience – sometimes the new sounds, always an interesting viewpoint – that the music brings from its composer directly to you. Think how amazing it must have been to hear the new compositions of Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Brahms and enjoy being a part of history, witnessing the miracle of musical genius and creativity at first hand.
Stimulus Package (2009)
GEORGE TSONTAKIS
Born 1951
The inspiration for the title of my work, Stimulus Package might seem more than obvious now, but I am hoping that in a short time, the phrase will have but an anachronistic if not nostalgic ring to some and the universal meaning to others. While I don‘t think that this piece for Real Quiet will in any way allay the world‘s current economic woes, it‘s fun to be part of current events creatively, if only in title. I must report however, that the commission for this work, for the La Jolla and Santa Fe music festivals, has certainly stimulated my own package and I have all the commissioning principals (not Congress nor even the president) to thank for it.
As one might imagine, I am often asked what kinds of music have influenced my composing style. Among the many idioms I could point to, the music of Crete – which I grew up hearing as a Cretan (Greek) American – stands out among the most vivid and most powerful. It is also, instrumentally, the most economical, as it is formed, in almost all cases, by two instruments – the Lyra (Lyre) and the Lauto (Lute, or Oud) – with vocals, as sung by one or the of the other players.
Traditionally played by two men dressed in Cretan garb – black outfits which include baggy pantaloons and a headband of tassels – the music is driving and incessantly repetitive, surging in short, looping melodic fragments which reoccur in myriad fragments. The lauto creates the fanciful dance rhythms, similar to a rhythm guitar while the lyra (played on the knee with a bow, similar to a viola da gamba but with a much brighter tone and a “whine” which reminds me of a folk clarinet as much as it does a violin) prances with the vocal line, a seemingly strophic setting of text on the surface, but with most intriguing rhythmic inventions, following the text faithfully and poetically in a kind of chant-song. There is no other music I have heard quite like it.
While this music has always informed an aspect of my music, in Stimulus Package, it comes to the forefront, especially in Part One. When I was asked to write for Real Quiet, the idea of their unique trio combination of cello, piano and percussion had me thinking immediately of “them” as an abstraction of the Cretan essential duo. I “heard” the cello as a rather oversized lyra and the piano as the lauto. The percussion jockeys back and forth between the two, adding at once, the bright lyra-like overtones to the cello and then, coloring the piano attacks with a glint or ping here and there. And of course, the piano gets to strum a bit and the musicians get to chant.
In “What Papou Heard,” I might be trying to imagine what my very Cretan, old world grandfather and namesake “really heard” when he listened to me improvising my earlier, more abstract and modernist music on the piano; that some would call angular, atonal and a-rhythmical. Glancing backward, I might catch him strangely involved in a Zorba-like Greek dance while holding high a shot of Metaxa. It begins with an “Ison” (a sustained-pedal “chant tone”) over which the cello floats a “melismatic” melody in the tradition of a moaning “tahimi.” With the super-wide vibrato I‘ve called for (as well as a tuning down an interval to loosen the tension of the A string) the result might be more like the sound of the “yiali-tambour” than the lyra, another bowed instrument sounding in the violin family.
In “Cheer Me Up.” and for this section I indulged myself, writing something that would do me just that – although I think my papou would like it just as well.
The temperament shifts in the second part, “Odyssey.” A less Cretan, but essentially “eastern” ambience remains. Rhythms broaden, time coasts in a harmonic liquid but swell up in undulating waves of arpeggios and tremolos. Verging on eastern “new age,” perhaps, but hopefully steering clear of it (this is not Yianni) the movement features a middle section of a more active and quixotic nature before it returns to its aquatic voyage, ending with a hint of Cretan music.
Stimulus Package was co-commissioned by Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and La Jolla Music Society SummerFest for Real Quiet and I am ever grateful for the opportunity to write the work.
Sonata for Violin and Piano (2009)
PAUL SCHOENFIELD
Born 1947
My most recent composition for violin and piano was begun in the fall of 2008 and completed the following spring. It‘s a twenty minute work consisting of four movements: Vanishing Point, Intermezzo, Romanza and Freilach.
Vanishing Point, the title of a novel by David Markson strongly reflects the author‘s influence. Short comments and particular assertions (here musical motives) are stated which through various references integrate snippets into an anecdotal whole.
The Intermezzo is a through-composed movement, very Sibelius-like in procedure. As the movement unfolds new music is constantly being generated from what was previously heard.
Much of the Romanza‘s material is based on a violin and piano piece I was drafting in my late teens. The work was never completed and the sketches have long since disappeared. Nevertheless, a 6-tone Berg-like motive and one of the melodic lines became instilled in my memory and permeate the movement.
Freilach, is a Yiddish word denoting a joyous song or dance. This movement is a rondo which combines gypsy violin writing, a Transylvanian wedding song and well-known 18th century contrapuntal devices.
Celeste (2008)
STEWART COPELAND
Born 1952
Celeste was commissioned in 2008 by the violinist Daniel Hope, for him and me to perform at the Savannah Music Festival. Right now Celeste is in the audience, no longer sneaking into her big sisters‘ rooms to play with their toys. She is the Princess of Siam.
Retail Therapy, “La Jolla”(2009)
Commissioned for tonight‘s concert by the La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest, this was written in hotel rooms as an escape from the Rock Monster that ate 2008. I was on tour with my band and found solace in friendly emporiums across the land. This tune is one of the least strange objects that ended up in my suitcase.
Kaya (1997)
Kaya was written as a two hander for piano and mallets but has mostly been played by percussion ensembles, who spread it out for many hands. Tonight‘s version has been arranged for tonight‘s ensemble by my music professor Chris Rozé. Any over-decoration that you might hear is the result of me adding more stuff when his back was turned.
The Gene Pool (1994)
The Gene Pool was commissioned by Ensemble Bash in 1994. It‘s about the struggle for survival of selfish chromosomes. This work was written solely for drums and mallets.
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