The Slee Sinfonietta is the professional
chamber orchestra in residence at the University at Buffalo and the flagship
ensemble of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music. The
Sinfonietta’s first concert of the Fall Semester at UB will feature Solo and Chamber
Music by David Felder, Nathan Heidelberger, Tomek Arnold, Harrison Birtwistle,
Heinz Hollinger, and John Cage. The performance will take place on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 7:30 PM in Lippes
Concert Hall.
David Felder has long been recognized as a leader in his generation
of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading
international festivals for contemporary music, and earn continuing recognition
through performance and commissioning programs. Felder's work has been broadly
characterized by its highly energetic profile, through its frequent employment
of technological extension and elaboration of musical materials (including his Crossfire video series, and
the video/music collaboration Shamayim), and its lyrical qualities. Felder’s composition, Colección Nocturna (Chamber Version) (1982-83), will be performed by the
trio of Michael Tumiel, Clarinet; Wei-Han Wu, Piano; and Robert Phillips, electronics.
Wei-Han Wu, Pianist
Wei-Han Wu, piano, will be joined by Soprano Julia Cordani
in the performance of UB alum Nathan Heidelberger’s composition Descriptions
of the Moon (2011). Recent musical
preoccupations of Heidelberger's have included lists and repetition, text, distance, and ephemerality,
and the distortion of traditional musical objects. Nathan received his
PhD from the University at Buffalo in 2015. He also holds undergraduate
degrees in Composition and English from Oberlin College and Conservatory, where
he was awarded the Walter E. Aschaffenburg Composition Prize. His primary
teachers have included David Felder, Lewis Nielson, and Richard Carrick. About Descriptions
of the Moon, Heidelberger writes:
“Descriptions of the Moon grew
out of my desire to work with a few unusual quotations from a Jorge Luis Borges
story. The quotes are demonstrations of how to refer to the moon in two
hypothetical languages that the author imagined – one consisting only of
adjectives and another only of verbs and adverbs. I wanted to write a more
substantial piece than just those quotes would allow, however, so the idea of a
larger moon-themed cycle was born. My process for selecting additional texts
was, I supposed, rather haphazard: I leafed through all the books I happened to
have on my bookshelf, scanning for any reference to the moon I could find. I
compiled a list of a few dozen texts, confirmation of my theory that any book
of poetry I opened would probably have a poem about the moon in it. After
wading through the clichés, I arrived on the nine texts at hand, in part for
their originality (it’s not every day you hear the moon described as a
“luminous polyp”) and in part because most of them focused specifically on
moonlight.”
UB Alum, Dr.
Nathan Heidelberger
Current University at Buffalo PhD. Student Tomek Arnold will
also be having a piece performed at the Slee Sinfonietta Solo and Chamber Music
Concert. Tomek Arnold is a Krakow-born musician currently working and living in
the US. His areas of work include: composition, percussion performance (solo and
collaborative), electronic music and improvisation. In his work he tries to
develop a language of understanding that can function across varieties of
genres and musical expressions. He will be joined by fellow percussionists Tom
Kolor and Steve Solook to perform his work, Out of Service – Ruthless Positions!
(make them study, so they can be musicians) (2018) for percussion trio.
Tomek Arnold writes very briefly about the piece, stating:
“There are times when you are forced
to teach subjects that you don’t really believe in yourself. Writing a piece
about it could be a solution to relieve some of the tension between artistic
ideologies and teacher’s obligations.”
Harpist Rosanna Moore will be featured on two compositions
for solo Harp; Harrison Birtwistle’s Crowd (2005) and Heinz Hollinger’s
Sequenzen über Johannes I, 32 (1962). Originally
hailing from the UK, award winning harpist Rosanna Moore is equally at home on
stage as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. She was the first
harpist ever to become a finalist in the Royal Northern College of Music’s Gold
Medal Weekend (the highest accolade offered for solo performance), the first
harpist to be awarded the Stan Barker Memorial Prize for jazz improvisation,
and was placed third in Europe’s first Jazz and Pop Harp competition. More
recently she was awarded the Robert Wayne Barlow Award for excellence in harp
performance and was awarded third place in Tierra47’s pedal harp competition.
Birtwiste’s Crowd is an
exploration of resonance, and in the essential nature of the earliest harps. Crowd
(etymologically related to the Celtic words crwth, cruit & crot) was
the English term used for instruments of the lyre class, & ultimately
for a frame harp from pre-Christian to medieval times.
Harpist Rosanna
Moore
The concert will close with a performance of John Cage’s
composition for solo violin, Eight Whiskus (1985), by violinist Lynn
Giam. The title of this work combines
"Whistlin' is did" by Chris Mann (source text for the vocal version)
and “Haikus.” In the original version for voice, Cage assigned syllables of the
text to the notes of the F-minor scale. After consulting with Malcolm
Goldstein, Cage reworked the composition "such that the vowel and consonant
qualities of the poem are transformed into various bowing positions, gradations
of bowing pressure, and forms of articulation.”
General Public Tickets: Online - $15 plus $2.18
fee and minimal credit card charge at www.eventbrite.
In person, in advance - $19 at UB’s Center for
the Arts (Tue-Fri, 12pm-6pm), At the door (one hour before concert time) - $22
Seniors/UB faculity, staff, alumni/non-UB
students Tickets: Online - $10 plus $2.18 fee and minimal credit card charge at
www.eventbrite.
In person, in advance - $14 at UB’s Center for
the Arts (Tue-Fri, 12pm-6pm), At the door (one hour before concert time) - $17
All UB students with a valid ID will receive one
complimentary ticket to all UB Music Department events.
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