James Falzone's Ricercar in Sixth Tone Harmony

Program Note

Falzone's piece searches for a new harmony by revisiting the sixth-tone system, developed over a hundred years ago in the first modernist efflorescence of microtonality, but worthy of a fresh reconsideration. It seeks to answer the question, "By expanding the gamut of available pitches," [that is, by "adding more notes,"] "can we both create interesting relationships of dissonance in addition to expanding the acoustic framework of harmony?"

Behind the Score:

Recently released on New World Records is a portrait album of Falzone's music, featuring performances by ensembles with a variety of instrumental forces, including the Arditti Quartet and ELISION Ensemble, as well as an orchestral work for the Ostrava New Orchestra. Taken together, these pieces investigate how unexpected but compelling results might emerge from seemingly euphonious and otherwise familiar materials.

About the album:

Falzone has a unique approach to music, and the result is multilayered. Recommended for the adventurous! —Fanfare

The music has a sensuous and imaginative quality that goes beyond the purely cerebral. —Fanfare

 

 

Brian Caswell's Arrow Through the Window

 

 

Program Note

This work is an answer to a question that I have long been asking: how can multiple meters happen at the
same time?

Arrow Through the Window has two groups of musicians. The two groups share a common pulse, or beat. But the larger groupings of that pulse – or in other words, the meter – differ.

What you are hearing tonight is an excerpt of the piece. It is the first major section of the piece. There are three more major sections to follow.

 

Behind the Score:

Brian Caswell has spent his time at UB exploring diverse musics such as Jazz and Latin drumming and pipe organ playing. He has written Minimalist process pieces, and Neoclassical pieces. Brian's approach was to use this time to continually search. This cycle of exploration has led back to where he started: Jazz composition and piano playing. However, his approach to this music is entirely different than where he was five years ago. It might be better categorized as "Third Stream," which describes a music in between Jazz and Classical. His piece Arrow Through the Window is an arrival point for the composer, which embraces the foundations of his musical practice.

Brian's music can be found on Bandcamp.

William Brobston's SOJOURN

Program note:

SOJOURN is a meditation on a variety of musical gestures that are loosely based on the sounds emanating from a particular kinetic sculpture that I was fascinated with as a child in Birmingham, Alabama. The sounds become increasingly familiar as the tension of the piece unfolds, ultimately driving toward their impending cessation. 

Behind the Score:

Much of my compositional interest lies in the musical parameter of time. The way in which my work often explores this parameter is through the sequencing of repeated musical fragments. These fragments may act as interjections within a musical texture or they may occupy space harmoniously, depending on the nature of the piece. I am interested in the multitude of ways in which these small musical units can combine to create larger networks of sound, while also playing with the listener’s sense of time, memory, and expectation. Sojourn is an example of a piece that relies on a dense texture composed of several recurring fragments, but just as crucial to the composition is the sudden cessation of these sounds once they become familiar. 

Will supplied the following track as an example:

https://open.spotify.com/track/0LKWhvxKi0NH02F2XiNa2v?si=2e962c40689e472b

To explore more of his music, visit Will Brobston's website.

Thomas Little's Two Visions of the Prophet Ezekiel

 

First on the Sinfonietta's program is Thomas Little's Two Visions of the Prophet Ezekiel.

 

Program Note

This tone-poem is based on the first and thirty-seventh chapters of the Book of Ezekiel. The opening section sets Ezekiel (the oboe) against a foreign landscape of strings, before the heavens open to visions of the heavens, strange creatures with multiple faces, and wheels within wheels. The hymn tune “Helmsley” leads to the horn’s vox Dei, empowering Ezekiel on his mission. He soon encounters the second vision: the valley of dry bones, where God commands Ezekiel to prophesy and raise an army of skeletons from the earth. But as the second vision fades, will the people listen?

Behind the Score

The 21st-century composer comes on the heels of a vast and productive era of experimentation. Originality is no longer about generating a style sui generis; one can come up with a personal idiom by mixing and matching different things from different eras, depending on what the piece requires. To that end, Two Visions has the late-Romantic tone poem as a large-scale structure, and fill that mold with an Ivesian approach in textural layering (particularly between the oboe and strings, which bookend the piece), use of a hymn tune at a culmination point (the first vision), and the organ-esque orchestration at the beginning of the coda.

The second vision uses one of my own techniques. I call it “post-ergodic,” after James Tenney's term “ergodic form,” which describes static music of consistent parametric values. My post-ergodic music usually moves faster and consists of fragmentary material. This was taken to the limit in my percussion/electronics piece … as the sparks fly up [embedded below], where a digitized score re-composes itself for each performance, all based on an analysis of the starting motive. In the second vision of Two Visions, similar techniques control the relationships between different kinds of skittering, “bony” material across instruments. This allowed me to write fast music that never exactly repeats, and that can be as long or as short as the pacing of the music requires, and freed me to think more about how and when to tweak these parameters to shape the structure of that vision.

...as the sparks fly up 

 

 Premiered by UB faculty member Tom Kolor at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

Thomas Little’s work can be explored on his website, lentovivace.com.

His educational video series about classical music, Classical Nerd, can be seen on YouTube.

 

Concert! Slee Sinfonietta, March 11, 2025

The Robert & Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, with the Slee Sinfonietta conducted by Matthew Chamberlain, will premiere four pieces by UB graduate student composers on March 11, 7:30pm in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall.

Program:

Thomas Little, Two Visions of the Prophet Ezekiel

William Brobston, SOJOURN

Brian Caswell, Arrow Through Time

~~Intermission~~

James P.A. Falzone, Ricercar in Sixth-Tone Harmony

Falzone, in particular, takes the Sinfonietta to new places, as he utilizes his newly devised sixth-tone tuning system. The work features three separate pianos (tuned differently!) for the first time in the Sinfonietta’s history, and will show the ensemble in its largest formation in over a decade.

Brian Caswell’s work Arrow Through Time is also in an ‘absolute music’ vein and features polymeter, a technique in which different musical parts play at the same time but using different meters, or time signatures, for a richly complex rhythmic effect. 

William Brobston’s SOJOURN is a hefty revision of work presented at June in Buffalo 2024, and plays with time, memory, and expectation as fragments morph and return in unexpected ways.

Leading off the concert, and writing from specific extramusical inspiration, Thomas Little’s work Two Visions of the Prophet Ezekiel is a tone poem based on the first and 37th chapters of the Biblical book of Ezekiel.

Tickets may be purchased here ($10, or free with student ID).

Stay tuned for program notes, further details into the composers’ processes, and extra behind-the-score info this week!

June in Buffalo 2025: Slee Sinfonietta

We are excited to announce that the Slee Sinfonietta will continue its annual residency at June in Buffalo 2025. The 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 ensemble presents a series of concerts each year that feature performances of challenging new works by contemporary composers and lesser-known works from the chamber orchestra repertoire. This year, programming includes a concert of four premieres by the University at Buffalo PhD composers, including a dissertation work which features the novel sixth-tone tuning system devised by James Falzone and three (three!) pianos tuned to different pitch levels.

Founded in 1997 by composer David Felder and comprised of a core group including UB faculty performance artists, visiting artists, national and regional professionals and advanced performance students, the group is conducted by leading conductors and composers. This ensemble has produced world-class performances of important repertoire for over 25 years, and its activities include touring, professionally produced recordings, and unique concert experiences for listeners of all levels of experience.

The ensemble has been conducted by major figures including Brad Lubman, Case Scaglione, Charles Wuorinen, Matthias Pintscher, Jim Baker, Harvey Sollberger, Robert Treviño, and Gil Rose. Featured soloists have included, among many, sopranos Laura Aiken, Julia Bentley, and Lucy Shelton; bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood; bass Ethan Herschenfeld; violinists Jaime Laredo, Tim Fain, and Viviane Hagner, Yuki Numata Resnick, and Irvine Arditti; pianist Ursula Oppens; flutists Pierre-Yves Artaud, Mario Caroli, and Tara Helen O'Connor; and French hornist Adam Unsworth. UB faculty member performers have included Jon Nelson (trumpet), Tom Kolor (percussion), Eric Huebner (piano), Tiffany DuMouchelle (soprano), and Jonathan Golove (cello, current Artistic Director of the Center for 21st Century Music). Music recordings include releases on Mode Records, Coviello Records (recently here), and Albany Records.

The Slee Sinfonietta is an ensemble of flexible size. For June in Buffalo 2025, the Slee Sinfonietta will present programs mixing solo works, chamber music, and larger groupings.

June in Buffalo 2022 Resident Ensemble: Slee Sinfonietta

We are pleased to welcome the Slee Sinfonietta as one of the resident ensembles at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

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 presents a series of concerts each year that feature performances of challenging new works by contemporary composers and lesser-known works from the chamber orchestra repertoire.

Founded in 1997 by composer David Felder, and comprised of a core group including UB faculty performance artists, visiting artists, national and regional professionals and advanced performance students, the Slee Sinfonietta is conducted by leading conductors and composers. This ensemble has produced world-class performances of important repertoire for fourteen years, and its activities include touring, professionally produced recordings, and unique concert experiences for listeners of all levels of experience.

 

Jeu de Tarot 2 Rehearsal

 

The Slee Sinfonietta rehearsing Jeu de
Tarot 2 on March 7, 2022

The view from the percussion section

Irvine Arditti Residency, Jeu de Tarot 2, and Student Composer Recordings

Irvine Arditti

Irvine Arditti Residency

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to announce a residency by Irvine Arditti on March 6-10, 2022. He will be joined by the Slee Sinfonietta, conducted by Daniel Brottman, to perform David Felder's violin chamber concerto Jeu de Tarot 2.

 Jeu de Tarot 2

 Jeu de Tarot 2 was commissioned by Ensemble Mise-En, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts. Like its predecessor, Jeu de Tarot (details below), the work is a violin chamber concerto based on selected cards from the Tarot. The work is scored for flute (doubling), oboe (doubling), B-flat clarinet (doubling), F Horn, Bass Trombone, Percussion, Harp, Piano (with sampler), violin, viola, cello, contrabass, and the solo violin. The composition is in 6 movements, numbered 8-13, in this way contiguous with the first Jeu. The movements are:

The Chariot, from the Tarot

8. Death

9. Judgement/Resurrection

10. Temperance

11. The Wheel

12. The Tower

13. The Chariot 

Student Composer Recordings

In addition, these four students will have works recorded:

Alex Buehler - Diffraction Grating 

With this piece I wanted to combine the individual instruments into larger meta-instruments and approach the piece as if I was writing for a contemporary jazz combo. I was particularly inspired by the sounds of Matana Roberts and her album “Coin Coin Chapter two: Mississippi Moonchile”. I was also interested in a sound I was introduced to by trombonists David Whitwell and Kalun Leung in which they used an individual karaoke mic to generate feedback that  could be controlled with the left hand and the trombone. By using the trombone sound as a type of filter, the sounds of the meta-instruments and the combo are altered and replace each other.

  

Tyler Adamthwaite - Jesture

 

Ka Shu (Kenneth) Tam - Path of Earth

"Path of Earth" is one of the three pieces in my "Cosmic Trinity" series. The trinity includes the Heaven, the Earth and the Mankind. This three ideas form the skeleton of the Taoist philosophy about the universe. In these pieces, I attempted to articulate the irresistible nature (force majeure) of the universe with an entropic composition process derived from the western scientific concept "entropy," a quantity of disorder in a system.

(Richard) Ruixing Wang - TBA

 

Jeu de Tarot

 

Jeu de Tarot is a chamber violin concerto commissioned by Ensemble LINEA, and its conductor J.P Wurtz, with solo violinist extraordinaire Irvine Arditti, and is dedicated to these musicians. The work was composed in 2016-17, and is in seven movements. It is scored for flute, doubling, oboe doubling, clarinet doubling, horn, percussion, harp, and keyboard (piano, harpsichord, keyboard controller for electronic samples), solo violin, violin (doubling mandolin optionally), viola, cello, and contrabass.

The composition is in seven movements titled after seven selected cards from the twenty-two major arcana of the Tarot deck. They are:

The Juggler

The Fool

The High Priestess

The Hermit

The Empress (Whorld)

The Hierophant 

Moonlight 

Performance:

 

Hanna Eimermacher: On Movement and Space

Hanna Eimermacher

Continuing our profiles of June in Buffalo faculty composers, we look at the music of Hanna Eimermacher.  Eimermacher has studied in Bremen, Graz, Frankfurt, and Buffalo, with Younghi Pagh-Paan, Beat Furrer, Pierluigi Billone, Mark Andre, and David Felder.  She has received a number of prestigious prizes and awards, including the Berlin-Rheinsberger Kompositionspreis (2012), a scholarship of the Deutsche Bundesregierung for Villa Massimo Rome (2014), and, most recently, a scholarship to study in Villa Concordia in Bamberg where she currently resides.  She has had works commissioned by SWR Südwestrundfunk, MaerzMusik Berliner Festspiele, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Frankfurt Opera, and has worked with new music ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Interface, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, and Klangforum Wien, for whom she is currently composing a music theatre piece.

Much of Eimermacher's music focuses on, in the composer's words, "the relationship between ear and eye:  sound, light, movement, picture, and space."  For her, this stems from the observation that "composition includes all these elements and the deep connection between them."  Such ideas manifest in a variety of different ways.  For instance, Hommage an den Klimerkasten (2011) takes its influence from a sculpture by the Swiss surrealist/existentialist artist, Alberto Giacometti.  The piece examines the ways that the perception of space can be impacted by the articulation of sounds in the quietest dynamic ranges.  Such sonic subtlety requires extremes of focus on the part of both the audience and the performer—for whom the fragility of these sounds require significant instrumental skill—and such sounds will be perceived differently in different spaces, indeed, in different locations in the same space.  "The piano fixes the axis of the piece, leading the other instruments in relationships of contrast and fusion with the details of their sonorities."  Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the piece can be heard below in a performance by Ensemble Linea.

A related focus on space can be seen in Überall ist Wunderland, a large-ensemble work in which the twenty-three performers are positioned across a wide stage in a symmetrical manner.  The piece takes advantage of the spatial positioning to create canons and dialogues that move back-and-forth across the performance area.  When the performers are not playing, they stand still and stare forward in a statuesque manner, creating a ritualistic character to the overall performance (a factor most apparent during the final silence during which they all lean slightly toward stage right).  The work therefore explores the relationship between body, movement, and stage, and in a larger sense, between sound, location, and form.  (A live performance can be seen here.)

Audiences at June in Buffalo will hear the Slee Sinfonietta perform Eimermacher's Luftpost für L. (2012) for two 'celli and percussion, a work marked by even greater subtlety than the two pieces above, as soft 'cello oscillations encircle one another, occasionally undergirded by erratic bass drum pulses.  Ensemble Uusinta's program will feature two of the composer's works:  Transparenz (2003) for three percussionists playing glass bottles, accompanied by fixed media electronics; and Kannst du diesen verkehrt iegenden Vogel sehen? (2008) for bass flute and accordion.  Both works have a unique mix of innocence and sophistication—the former in the understated simplicity of their materials (most apparent in the delicate austerity of the bottle sounds in Transparenz), the latter in the way these materials are developed and incorporated into the composer's ongoing explorations of movement, space, and form.



We're looking forward to hearing not only Eimermacher's music, but also to hear her elaborate on these explorations during her lecture (June 9th, 10:00am).  Her perspective will be a valuable one to fellow composers and interested audiences alike.

Josh Levine: Imagination and Memory

June in Buffalo has been an international festival since its inception, attracting composers, performers, and other artists from around the world.  Its aesthetic has always been a broad one, where one is likely to hear American experimentalists programmed alongside the European avant garde.  It is for this reason, that Josh Levine makes a perfect addition to the JiB faculty, as he is an American composer with significant international ties, and a broadly cosmopolitan aesthetic.

Josh Levine

While he was born in Oregon, Levine originally trained as a classical guitarist in Basel, Switzerland.  He continued his musical studies in the same country as he switched to composition, studying with Balz Trümpy.  He later studied at the Paris Conservatory with Guy Reibel, and worked at IRCAM, later returning to the US to earn his PhD from UC San Diego, where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough.  Since then, his music has been internationally recognized and has received several awards, including First Prize and a Euphonie d'Or at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition.  His works have been commissioned by widely-recognized soloists including Aiyun Huang, Marcus Weiss, and Jürg Wyttenbach, as well as ensembles such as the soundSCAPE Trio, Calliope Duo, Ensemble Contrechamps, and Les Solistes de l’Ensemble Intercontemporain.  He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at Oberlin.

For Levine, music is a locus where the unity of imagination and memory can be found.

The musical work is, for me, a site where the irrational and the rational, the sensual and the conceptual, and, most basically, sound and silence, spar and dance and transcend their seeming dichotomies.  Through ever-evolving interpretations of recurring musical materials, I explore the unity of memory and imagination—remembering as an act of imagining, and imagining as an act of remembering.  My composing is inspired by movement and the contemplation of change, whether in the physical world or in the psyche.

Despite the abstractness of such conceptual imagery, Levine's music is dynamic and rooted in the concreteness of the physical gesture.  "The physicality of musical performance and our emotional identification as listeners with its energy, gestures, and implicit drama are among its further driving forces."  His early work in the field of electroacoustic music led to an interest in temporal fluidity and harmonic nuance, as well as an attention to detail that seeks to bring "a richer resonance to every moment."  Such temporal and timbral examination can be heard in Levine's recent acousmatic piece, Oneirograph, which uses violin samples as its source material, but pulls open these sounds, finding vast resonant soundscapes within.  The piece's title refers to an instrument for measuring dreams—dreams, of course, being another site in which the divisions between memory and imagination become suspect.

This year's festival will see the performances of three of Levine's pieces.  The Slee Sinfonietta will present two of these.  The first, Four places, many more times (2011), is a percussion quartet which revolves around twelve specially tuned metal pipes.  Continuing Levine's interest in flexible perceptions of time, the composer describes the work as a series of "'sound objects' [which] shift and spin through space and different time zones in a kind of timbral kaleidoscope."  The second, Former Selves, for solo guitar, ensemble, and electronics features JiB special guest Magnus Andersson.  Approaching the idea of memory from a different angle, this work incorporates elements from several of the composer's earlier works, both as musical gestures articulated by the performers, as well as samples which are transformed by the electronics—even to the extent of incorporating recorded material from the piece's own 2007 premiere.  Levine describes the relationship between the soloist and ensemble:  

[The ensemble's music moves in largely homophonic blocks, like forms emerging from a void and receding again for no apparent reason.  The guitar does not participate in their creation, but passes between them.  As the homophony gradually unravels, the guitar in its turn begins to find openings into the ensemble, eventually (re)discovering there the full sound of its voice.

Levine, Former Selves (2007)

Finally, the Uusinta Ensemble will open their program with Levine's Glimpses (1986), an earlier work which reverses the play of memory found in Former Selves:  rather than pulling from previous works, Glimpses consists of material that would preoccupy the composer for years to come—that is, musical ideas that would be continuously remembered.  "The listener 'glimpses' moments of parallel musical narratives, aural images whose incompleteness leaves their possible pasts and futures to the imagination.  Much of the material is heard again in new contexts, but it rarely seems the same."  This work also features Andersson on guitar, who whispers a description of this material during the work's own performance, referring to them as "points of embarkation on a bankless river."

As a guitarist himself, it is no surprise that Levine's work often emphasizes that instrument, and as a performer, Levine has performed with the likes of Ensemble Contrechamps, the Basel ISCM Ensemble, the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, SONOR, and members of the sfSoundgroup.  He has recorded works by Mark Applebaum and Kristian Ireland on the Innova label.

As a dedicated teacher, Levine takes great joy in hearing the different approaches the students embrace in their own music.  As he explains:

I love it when a student comes in to the lesson, puts the music on the music stand, and it may be—in fact, it's almost surely going to be—in a style, or with a particular aesthetic orientation that doesn't correspond to what I personally would write.  But it's so fascinatingly done—it explores in such a beautiful way certain ideas, instrumental colors, or sounds that I've never quite explored in that way, and yet that I can empathize with and communicate with both through the score and through my personal relationship to them.

There is perhaps no better place for Levine to encounter the varied aesthetic orientations of young artists than at June in Buffalo, and we are excited for the composers who will learn from their dialogues with him, as they reckon with their own imaginations and memories.

Slee Sinfonietta: On Mobiles and Dances

This week, the Slee Sinfonietta presents their first concert of the Spring season, conducted by UB Percussion Professor, Tom Kolor.  The program brings together two works from a pair of seminal American experimentalists:  John Cage and Earle Brown.  The Sinfonietta's program combines two large-scale works by these artists which, while less well known than some of their more famous pieces (e.g., Imaginary Landscapes or Folio), offer a distinct and unique perspective on the insights and accomplishments of these two important composers.

Earle Brown - Novara

The program begins with Brown's Novara (1962), for flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, piano, and strings.  The piece was originally commissioned by Lukas Foss for a Fromm concert at the Tanglewood Festival, where the premiere was conducted by Brown himself.  The conductor plays a unique role in Novara:  in this "open form" or "mobile" piece, all the musical possibilities are notated by the composer and laid out before the performers as a series of events (in numbered boxes).  The conductor, as the composer explains, "is free to conduct the events in any sequence or juxtaposition, in changing tempi, loudness, and in general mold and form the piece."  The virtuosity of Brown's compositional technique is on display in the flexibility and malleability of his musical material.  In the Sinfonietta's performance, Kolor will guide the ensemble in spontaneous, on-the-spot decisions about how to realize the piece.  The work therefore becomes a collaboration between composer and conductor—and the specific realization changes from performance to performance.  This open approach to form, while still relying on a fixed underlying structure, was something Brown found inspiration from in other media:

The concept of the elements being mobile was inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, in which, similar to this work, there are basic units subject to innumerable different relationships or forms.  The concept of the work being conducted and formed spontaneously in performance was originally inspired by the "action-painting" techniques and works of Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s, in which the immediacy and the directness […] produces such an intensity in the working and in the result.

Merce Cunningham & John Cage

The concert will conclude with Cage's Sixteen Dances (1951), for flute, trumpet, four percussionists, piano, violin, and cello.  This 50-minute work was originally used to accompany Merce Cunningham's dance piece, Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three.  Cunningham's choreography was concerned with expressive behavior, specifically, as the artist explains, "the nine permanent emotions of Indian classical aesthetics, four light and four dark with tranquility the ninth and pervading one."  The piece's structure is designed to feature or illustrate each emotion (alternating light/dark) with interludes acting as bridges between each movement (i.e., each emotion).  Cage's compositional approach in the Sixteen Dances was unique—it being the last piece he composed before turning emphatically toward chance procedures.  For this work, he created a "sound gamut", a collection of 64 isolated sound events which he laid out on an 8x8 chart.  Then, as James Pritchett explains, "Composition […] became a matter of moving from place to place on the chart, picking one sound out after another, then stringing them together rhythmically into phrases."  The resulting piece is generally sparse in texture, but often rhythmic, quickly-moving, and light on its feet (as one would expect of a dance).  It's whimsy and levity are often underscored by a poignant mystique characteristic of much of Cage's early work, with frequent repetition and subtle variations underscoring the objectivity of the musical material.  

It was the aforementioned act of composing according to chart movements that eventually led Cage to chance music:  "Somehow, I reached the conclusion that I could compose according to moves on these charts instead of according to my own taste."

After this exciting program, the Sinfonietta is only getting started.  They will also be among the many resident ensembles at June in Buffalo 2016, where they'll perform a full concert of works by JiB faculty composers.  Meanwhile, members of the Sinfonietta will help realize new works by the participant composers.  It will be an exciting week in which the ensemble continues to live up to its mission to bring important works, new and newer, to fruition.

Saariaho, Fagerlund, and others celebrate FinnFest

Next week will see the beginning of FinnFest 2015 in Buffalo, an annual festival celebrating Finnish culture and heritage, which includes a variety of cultural and educational activities and events.  Due to Finland's rich musical history, the week-long festival will feature a variety of exciting musical performances, including a pair of concerts by the Buffalo Philharmonic in Kleinhans Music Hall (itself designed by Finnish architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen).  "Echoes of Sibelius" (October 9-10) will feature the first symphonies of Sibelius and Einojuhani Rautavaara, with the US premiere of Jaakko Kuusisto's Violin Concerto; "Northern Lights" (October 3-4), will feature Sibelius's Fifth Symphony and Grieg's famous Piano Concerto, alongside the US premiere of Isola, by Sebastian Fagerlund.  Both Fagerlund and Kuusisto will be present for their respective premieres, and will give preconcert talks.

Sebastian Fagerlund

The Center is also excited to welcome Fagerlund as the first guest in this season's Visiting Lecture Series, with his presentation on October 2.  Fagerlund's rich, vibrant music often carries existential themes, and has been described as "post-modern impressionism depicting mental landscapes."  Combining elements from Eastern and Western musics, minimalist electronica and Scandinavian black metal, big band and Boulez, his diverse output—while oscillating between extremes—errs on the side of rhythmic drive and unceasing energy.  "A sort of primitivism is present in many of my works, [and] as a result, rhythm, in particular, has become very important [to me]" he explains.  Isola represents these ideas well, featuring an often violent approach to the orchestra which combines performative aggression with harmonic and textural sophistication.

Kuuisto will also present at the Visiting Lecture series, the following week.  The violinist-composer began studying at the Sibelius Academy at the age of 12 and quickly made a name for himself by winning several international competitions.  As a violinist, he has performed with the Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne Orchestras, the Hannover NDR Orchestra, and the Belgian Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as most of the major Finnish orchestras.  As a composer, his output includes chamber and vocal music, orchestral works, film music, and operas—including his most well-known work, the "family opera," Koirien Kalevala, which was presented at the Savonlinna Opera Festival to a full house for three consecutive seasons.  We look forward to hearing his insights into his work.

Kaija Saariaho

The Center's contributions to FinnFest do not end there.  We are excited to also host the residency of famed Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, and to present a special Slee Sinfonietta / Ensemble SIGNAL concert  of some of the composer's most significant works on October 6.

Saariaho's music has always been marked by a fascination with color and texture, with timbre and harmony being the foundational elements.  While her earliest works showed the influence of late-modernist post-serialism—an idiom she eventually found to be constraining—her outlook shifted after being exposed to the music of Grisey and Murail while studying at Darmstadt.  As her aesthetic began to take shape during a period of research at IRCAM in Paris, Saariaho developed new expressive techniques based in analysis of the sonic spectra of instrumental sounds.  Her first computer-assisted composition was Lichtbogen, for 9 instruments and live electronics (1986), a piece whose point of departure lies in the spectrum of high harmonics which burst forth from a cello when bow pressure is increased (hence the title, which translates as "light-bow").

Paul Gauguin - NoaNoa

NoaNoa (1992), for flute and electronics, was composed in close collaboration with flautist Camilla Hoitenga, who will perform the work during next week's Sinfonietta concert.  The composer describes the work, which was inspired by the Paul Gauguin woodcut of the same title, as stemming from a desire to "write down, exaggerate, even abuse certain flute mannerisms that had been haunting me for some years."  The piece itself has become a key work in the contemporary flute repertoire and a signpost in the solo-instrument-plus-electronics genre.  Prés (1992), for solo 'cello and electronics, is also inspired by a Gauguin work (the painting, By the Sea), and pairs the string instrument with an electronic doppelgänger consisting of synthesized tones, manipulated 'cello sounds, and real-time processing of the live 'cello with resonant filters.  The piece will be played by SIGNAL executive director, Lauren Radnofsky.

The concert's most recent work is 2001's Aile du Songe, a concerto for flute, string orchestra, and percussion (also to be played by Hoitenga).  Like so much of the Saariaho's work, the piece is written in exquisitely detailed notations featuring harmonics, microtonal coloring, and a wealth of expressive markings.  Listeners will be privy to her slow timbral transformations as well as the sensitive lyricality which has been an increasingly present element in the composer's work since the late 1990s, when she began a series of operatic and vocal works.  Still marked by a sparsity characteristic of much of her earlier music, ("I don’t believe in austerity," the composer has said, "but I do [believe] in purity"), the work is sure to illustrate why the Denver Post has called "one of the most original compositional voices of our time."

The festival will include other intriguing musical events, including the Buffalo Chamber Music Society's hosting of the Carpe Diem String Quartet, who will perform a concert of Finnish works in Kleinhans' Mary Seaton room, including Sibelius's Andante Festivo, Rautavaara's first quartet, and Erkki Melartin's "The Sunflower."  In addition, Buffalo contemporary music ensemble Wooden Cities will present "A Kalevala Duo:  Playing Bones" a collaborative concert with performance artist Pia Lindman, which will feature the ancient Finnish technique of "bone-setting" set to music by recent UB-graduates Nathan Heidelberger and Brendan Fitzgerald.

Mivos Quartet

If that's not enough music for you, next week the Center will host the Mivos Quartet for a concert of new works for string quartet (including works by Taylor Brook, David Felder, Martin Stauning, and Helmut Lachenmann).  This concert (October 5) was rescheduled from last season after a blaze of Buffalonian thundersnow (read more about the program here), so don't miss your second chance to see these amazing works played by the quartet the Chicago Reader has called "one of America's most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles."