CONCERT 4 Saturday New Music at The Steinway Gallery Tampa

SATURDAY, MARCH 7, at 10 am

Better Than One James Larkins

Katherine Weintraub, saxophone

I have sometimes heard composers express a certain anxiety about writing pieces which have only two movements. The problem seems to stem from questions of balance, proportion, and difference – can a pair exist without one member outweighing the other? Even more problematic is the question of partitioning – when does a pair of sections become a pair of movements or pieces? We often find ourselves reformatting our ideas into the social realities that we exist within, carving and shaving at them until they fit. Against this impulse toward the flattening of difference, this piece embraces the irregularity of a lopsided form – one movement has hardly anything, and the other has far too much.

James R. Larkins (b. 1999) is a composer and cellist from North Carolina, USA, who uses music to explore multiplicity, collective memory, and the human impact of continuum and rupture. James is a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, currently studying composition under Kurt Rohde. In the past, James has also studied with composers including David Dzubay, Laurie San Martin, and Mika Pelo, and has collaborated with musicians and ensembles including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Dal Niente Ensemble, Nuntempe Guitar Quartet, Chris Froh, Nick May, Orange Road String Quartet, Empyrean Ensemble, Earspace, and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. James also holds bachelor’s degrees in music and chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having studied composition there under Allen Anderson and cello under Brent Wissick.

E U R Y D I C E Alex Burtzos

Eunmi Ko, piano

E U R Y D I C E was composed for the outstanding pianist Vicky Chow. The title of this work comes from Greek myth: Eurydice was, of course, Orpheus’s wife and the goal of his ill-fated rescue mission to the underworld. However, the piece was also strongly influenced by Thomas Hardy’s 1914 poem The Voice. Like Orpheus, the protagonist of Hardy’s poem has lost their beloved, and they imagine that they can hear her voice echoing towards them over the heath. This music, consequently, consists of a series of echoing events, which become increasingly insistent before exploding into a cascade of shimmering emotional release.

Alex Burtzos is an American composer, conductor, and educator based in New York City and Orlando, FL, whose music has been performed across four continents by some of the world's foremost contemporary musicians and ensembles. Alex is the founder and Artistic Director of ICEBERG New Music, a New York-based composer collective, and the endowed chair of composition studies at the University of Central Florida. His music is published by Just a Theory Press, NewMusicShelf, and others, and can be heard on the Sono Luminous and Ravello Records labels.

Caesium Tears Phil Pierick

Katherine Weintraub, saxophone

Sini Virtanen Cabaoglu, violin

Caesium (atomic number 55) is one of few elemental metals that is liquid at or near room temperature – its melting point (83.3° F) is just below the temperature of the human body. What would tears of caesium sound like? Caesium Tears entwines double-stopped violin harmonics with haunting saxophone dyad multiphonics, both instruments flirting with an expressive microtonality and sharing a haunting central melody that is always finding new ways – and reasons – to shed a tear.

Classically trained and experimentally minded, Chicago-based saxophonist and composer Phil Pierick has been called “the Swiss Army knife of saxophonists.” His compositions explore unexpected sound pairings, silence, additive processes, and the rhythmically unexpected. He has commissioned more than 35 new works and presented over 60 premieres. I CARE IF YOU LISTEN calls his duo Ogni Suono's album SaxoVoce “a tour de force of new possibilities for saxophone and voice.” Phil is also the Manager of the Grossman Ensemble. Phil has taught at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Illinois, Butler University, the College of Wooster, and as a guest at more than 40 universities and conferences around the world. He studied at Eastman (DMA), the University of Illinois (MM, BM), and in Vienna and Paris. Phil is a Vandoren Performing Artist.

Les chants du déversoir Jean-Patrick Besingrand (poèmes d’Arthur Teboul)

I – À mon réveil

II – Soulagement

III – Au sommet se soumet

IV – Le Labyrinthe

V – Lumière, silence Même autorité

VI – Une main

VII – À Quai

Jamie Jordan, voice

Eunmi Ko, piano

Chants du Déversoir is a collection of five songs and two micro-interludes on the “minute” poems by Arthur Teboul. Each poem taken from the anthology Le Déversoir was written using the free writing technique, capturing the present moment. The musical writing of Chants du Déversoir employs this free writing technique not only to capture the present moment, but also to capture the inherent style of Arthur Teboul. Thus, each song’s musical material comes from a free-form sketch similar to a freehand drawing. This sketch is then developed and integrated into a specific sound world related to the text.

Each song explores the different timbres of the voice and the piano as well as their relationship to each other. The voice and the piano search for each other, clash, complete each other, and sometimes blend, echoing the construction of the text.

Text with English translation by the composer - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dhY7QimQuwEkh2m6vSBLH82VJiVmwWuy/view?usp=sharing

Originally from Bordeaux, Jean-Patrick Besingrand is a French-American composer and musicologist based in Washington DC. From his formative years as a keyboardist and guitarist in rock and heavy metal bands, Jean-Patrick has kept a particular interest for noise and distortion. In his music, he seeks to combine these timbral interests with an extended conception of silence and other absences in order to create contrasting and evolving sonic landscapes. As a composer he received several awards and recognition in France and abroad. His music has been performed around the globe by ensembles such as the Orchestre National Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Court-Circuit, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Dal Niente, Linéa, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Klangforum Wien, Mivos Quartet, JACK Quartet, Platypus, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Suono Giallo, Mise-En. Jean-Patrick holds a PhD in composition from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Since 2018, he has served as co-artistic director and co-founder of the composers' collective Tesselat. His music is published by Artchipel.

CAMPGround26 People

Board: Eunmi Ko, Kevin von Kampen, Katherine Weintraub, Zach Hale

Technical Director: Zach Hale

Live Streaming/Video: Robert Voisey

Photo: Patrick Chin Ting Chan

Intern: Wren Whalen, YoungJun Lee, James Larkins

Head Usher/Volunteer: Hannah Lanese

Volunteer: Sean Mcbride, Demetrius Galindez