Redirection

Hey folks!

I don’t know if there’s a way to just link the two up, but I’ve directed my personal thought-vomiting, or blogging to my own website, so you can find more up-to-date musings there.

Thanks for visiting!

Justin

Pictorial Proof

Actual blogging will show up someday soon. But for now, play the percentages.

Quiet Company FTW

 

A New Year and a New Panic

Well…the semester starts tomorrow. It should be a good one. If all goes well, I will be taking Atonal Theory (interesting to me, comfortable with it), 18th-Century Music History (“interesting to me”, Huxtable with it), and lessons with Daniel Catan. There wasn’t much of a winter break, between the need to continue working in gainful employment and the delightfully extended family visit. As a consequence, I did not have the opportunity to write as much music as I would have hoped, or any for that matter. But I did a lot of thinking about music, and it has been my experience that this can be almost as invaluable as actually putting notes on a page.

We’ll see what comes of it. The only things that are hard and fast on my plate now are a percussion trio with electronics (~40% done) and revising a piano quintet that’s currently unusable, but which holds a lot of promise. Hopefully, once the semester starts and my time is again regimented I will be able to knock these out swiftly so that I can move on to other projects that might be more professionally beneficial. As it stands, nobody gives a damn about my music, even the parts of it that are good. Somehow that needs to change. I don’t know if that means I have to become hyper-aggressive or just do a bit more begging. Whatever the case, let’s hope I find the right track because I’m working with a limited clock here.

Almost an Anniversary

Composing in the Capital

It has, of course, been nearly a year to the day since I last posted a blog entry on here. That is what blogs do. Like dreams, they vanish silently.

At any rate, tomorrow night some fabulous musicians are going to perform Joy. Even Against Night.,  a string quartet dedicated to my wife’s grandfather in memory of his wife. They were married for more than 55 years when she passed after a battle with cancer. Although I certainly wouldn’t pretend to possess a degree of mastery capable of freezing her life and the attendant emotions surrounding her premature death in musical form, the work stands as a response to both of these things and was a valuable coping mechanism for me, personally.

Details regarding the performance:

• The CLUTCH concert (UT Composition Studio)
• The live stream
• The program
• Program notes
• The score

I hope you’ll have a chance to listen to the concert, and in particular to my piece.

November 11th, 2010

7:30 PM

Bates Recital Hall – Butler School of Music

Dear Lieder — New Song Cycle

Hello, dear void! (“Reader” only really fits if anyone reads it, and judging by the infrequency with which I write and with which people inadvertently stumble upon the blog as they seek personal watercraft or other such non-related items, I doubt there’s much room for the “r”-word here).

Blogs are just like every other hobby, apparently, meant to be met with much excitement and then promptly forgotten and/or abandoned. But, I am excited enough about something going on at the moment to bother writing my first blog post in MANY months.

Intermittently throughout the last year or two, I have been speaking with a friend who I have known for nearly 20 years about the possibility of writing a piece of music for him. He plays trumpet in Europe for the United States Army, and his wife sings with an opera company in Belgium. Finally, I started working on the piece and I’m incredibly enthusiastic about its prospects. I have completed the texts, and they will constitute the remainder of the blog. Let me know what you think of the poetry and the narrative. Is she crazy? Is she not?

I. Waking Up-timism (Youthful

In the morning,
When the day is pregnant –
PREGNANT?!? –
Pregnant with the possibility
That I might awake with the ability
To see your face
There’s hope.
But I don’t.

II. Flowers (Jazz Ballad-ish)

Flowers
Flowers
Flowers everywhere
Gardens
Gardens bloom
Even in winter
Even in my room
There are flowers
Flowers in my hair
That I dream
Were sent by you

III. Sitting in the Park (Patter song)

Sitting in the park
I watch the people passing by
Walking through the park
Together with their only love
Only for a moment maybe
Only for a day
Only for a little while
Will they smile that way

Sitting in the park
I notice birds and bums in love
Dancing through the park
In search of crumbs or warmer gloves
Warmer days will surely come soon
Warmer nights as well
Warmer hearts might follow suit
Only time will tell

Sitting in the park
I eat my sandwich on the bench
Bordering the parkway
Where you sometimes leave your car
Hoping for a glance or wave I’m
Hoping through the hours
Hoping for a loving gaze
And children that are ours

Sitting in the park
I watch the people passing by
Lying through the park
Embracing lust and circumstance
Circumstances come and go, now
Lust may last a day
Circumstance might make you mine
And, Love, you’ll always stay

IV. Countdown

I have a dozen spiral notebooks
Filled with sketches and with
Monogrammed hearts

They’ve claimed the bulk of my
Eleven-hour days for far too long
To keep an accurate account

Ten-minute windows of occupational
Preoccupation with the
Contours of your face

At nine each morning
I arrive at my appointed destination
With a secret in my bag

At eight each evening
I depart to my appointed domicile
With secret safe in tow

A seven block commute
By bike or foot
Made six if as the crow

Up five steep flights I climb to find
The fourth door
On the right

For three years I’ve been living here
Though two of those spent dead
The year I lived was the one
When I welcomed you to bed

V. Metaphoria

Did you ever consider
That it all exists for us?
The universe a metaphor
And its parts all sighmoolaycra
Standing in for words we spoke
Or thoughts we didn’t speak;
For feelings that confounded speech
Or worlds that might have been.

A burst of sudden radiance
From foozion and the will of God
Set this chasing scene in motion
Forever we’re propelled away
From the single-arity of our birth
And the dreamtime in the garden
Where I was crafted from your
Heart’s protective armor

I’m scampering frantically after you,
Ruff-ouse as a consequence of cosmic-celeration.
You’ll never see me cast in blue
Unless you stop and turn around.
I’ve become an also ran in the galactial race
And lack the energy to draw it all back
To the beginning.

VI. Bridge Song

In the quiet,
Nestled in the folds
Of fading memories,
The sounds of space
And death mingle with
The distant chatter
Of the humblegrums and lucky ones.
When I lose myself –
As I often do –
Upon the limen
Between waking and sleeping
Between living and not,
With panicked urgency
I crave to hear you say again
Those precious words
Such simple words…

Like a refrigerator magnet
You tug on my cold metallic heart
And lead me to the place where once
You whispered in my ear
The echo of my deepest
Wishes.
Here I’ve come to hear you
Calling out to me underneath the
Darkness of the bridge,
So my ears can help you carry me
As high as my heart rate
And the altitude from which I’ll never fall.

I revel in the reverberant repartee
I revel in the reverberant repartee
I revel in the reverberant repartee
Until the rush of blushing blood
Forces ‘part my lips
And I cry out –
Inept just like a schoolgirl
Or one without a mother tongue –
I cry out –
Wanting just once more until
The next time to hear you say –
I cry out,
“I love you…”
“I love you…”
“I…”

VII. Cab, away (Cabaret song)

Forgone for a harlot
Or so it seems
So long, little starlet
And pleasant dreams
I hope that you
Can sleep at night
‘Cause you took my man
And that ain’t right

Good night, Casanova
And cab, away
Yes I’m, gonna show ya
What it means to pay
I’d give you everything
That you need
But you took her to bed
So now you’ll bleed

The taxi will take me
To your little den
The key that you made me
Will let me waltz right in
I’ll leave you a letter
So you’ll never forget her
Or the way that your leather
Couch became a monument
To the shameful lies you told

Then the taxi will take me
Back to my home
The cabbie will take me
Anywhere I want to go
He might take my money
And he might take me the long way
He might make me miss my flight
To somewhere far away
But he’ll never take my heart
And break it in two
Like you

Wet Ink, It’s Not All Wet

So — this is a review of the first concert in the 2008-2009 Wet Ink series at the University of Texas, at Austin. It is not in full detail, but it is aimed at providing a loose reaction to the performance, mainly so there exists in some public space a written commentary on student works. It is difficult to get any sort of coverage, so I figure better slightly unprofessional and incomplete than nothing at all.

If I’m wrong, let me know.

———————-
The University of Texas’ Wet Ink concert series offers a venue for the performance of recently completed works by student in the music composition program at the newly christened Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music. With any “new music” concert, the listener may feel a fair bit of trepidation about walking into a performance of unfamiliar music that, on account of its unknown content, runs the very real risk of disappointing. Even a genius like Mozart has works (such as the lesser known “Bagel Symphony”) that don’t find their way onto many programs because they have been determined to lack the sort of compelling musical thought that one finds in his masterpieces. When a concert is presenting music that has not yet been passed through that filter, and worse yet, music by — *gaspshockhorror* — students, the perils of potential disappointment are greatly amplified. Despite this danger, the first Wet Ink program of the 2008-2009 academic year largely managed to champion the consequences of newness and pupility, thusly demonstrating that something definitively worthwhile is happening in the $55 million wonderland.

Under the Radar, by Steve Snowden, began the evening. The piece is a one-movement amusement for viola quartet, punctuated by humorous gestures like the group’s unison throwing of some of the music onto the stage, but it deftly avoids limiting itself to hack parody. Formally, the music is very well balanced, and the alternation of sections emphasizing the use of pizzicato and sections emphasizing the bow offer an enjoyable variation of what could quite easily have been an overly monotonous texture. The Bartokian chaos of the coda is shattered and ended with a single pluck of the string, I believe there may be instructions in the part to perform the last note with the tongue in the cheek.

After the delightful opening gambit, the evening’s lone undergraduate work, Brass Quintet, by Rebecca Jensen, was a sharp left turn. The piece lends the impression that Ms. Jensen has a deep affection for the ensemble, and at times it is quite charming, but the performance was plagued by intonation problems. In a medium like the brass quintet (two trumpets, French horn, trombone, and tuba), which depends heavily upon the clarity of sound obtained by playing in tune, it becomes difficult to overcome, and it steals power from the few inspired harmonic choices that Jensen made. It holds together, but only just, and that’s unfortunate, because a more apt performance may have lent the piece the sort of breezy nostalgic flavor that it so sincerely aims to possess.

Tim Rogers’, Remember Me, a setting of a poem by e.e. cummings for flute, harp, and mezzo-soprano, very clearly established the lush, warm sound world that the composer wanted, but at times the singer was difficult to hear, and it came across as though she was unsure about whether she was singing the correct pitches. Such insecurity introduces an undesirable tension into what is intended to be a relaxing, quasi-meditative work, and it robs the thoughtfully chosen timbral colors. If taken in parts, Remember Me is an impressive, subtle work, but the performance on this evening was too uneven and the piece is perhaps a bit too long. But as the only work involving a singer, it was a welcome addition.

The final piece before intermission was a work for solo piano entitled Drei Stucke, compose by Zack Stanton. Performed — thanks to the gods of segue — by Tim Rogers, the work is full of life and a pleasant blend of enthusiasm and skill. Too often, one or the other of those two traits becomes the crutch upon which a composer leans for a particular piece, but that wasn’t the case here. The opening movement is a Grusin-esque, blues influenced roll about in the hay, and it gives way to a beautiful Americana lullaby dedicated to the composer’s son. Stanton infuses the lullaby with just the right amount of unexpected motion and Ivesian persuasion to prevent it from becoming too maudlin, and he does so without sacrificing the genuineness of his expression – a difficult task for any composer, and a sure sign that the label of “student music” isn’t cause to fear the worst. The only contention I had with the piece is that after the lullaby, the third movement’s dancing was a bit too thickly written at times, and it may have been better served if the piano writing were more closely drawn from the austerity of the previous movement. But, an excellent ending to the first half of the concert.

After intermission, the audience was welcomed by Travis Jeffords’ guitar trio, Something In the Way She Moves, a pedagogical work that was enjoyable and light without being overrun by the nature of its conception as a piece with technical limitations. Jeffords worked very well within his parameters and the end result is an entertainment that was tightly executed and valuable for its character. By this time, one hallmark of the composition output on display here is made clear – these composers, or students, or student composers, are more interested in creating music that has breath and individuality than in music that illustrates by rote the teachings of the academic juggernaut. And that, dear reader (the one person who will read this), is a very good thing.

Ian Dicke’s White Parasol, performed by pianist/composer Franklin Gross is framed as a political piece inspired by a documentary on global warming, and it imparts the sort of anxiety and dread that are apropos of such a response without eschewing brightness of color or caution of composition. The pacing of the work is remarkable and the materials are developed with acute attention to detail. It begins with slowly evolving elaborations around a single pitch, and the first section fully elaborates on this idea before shifting to a section built on rapid arpeggiations that shift over time. To my ear, this may have been the polished gem of the night.

The penultimate performance was of two movements from Absolute, a string quartet by Kwangsun Hwang. While technically brilliant and performed with unimpeachable quality, the work seemed to be missing some of the individuality that made so many of the other pieces memorable and noteworthy. That isn’t to say that I was unimpressed, but a work so rich with promise could be a stratospheric success with just a bit more idiosyncrasy and less effort to make it sound like so many other excellent string quartets. Perhaps the missing movements would alleviate this concern, and maybe it’s just that, a concern. But, it was only the second piece of the evening that reminded me that I was listening to pieces composed by students of the craft.

Hermes Camacho was commissioned to compose Suite Bennington for the 2008 edition of the Chamber Music Conference and Composer’s Forum of the East and was to be for skilled amateur performers in the instrumentation of Stravinsky’s Septet (clarinet, bassoon, French horn, piano, violin, viola, and violoncello). The first movement was playful and vibrant, utilizing asymmetric metrical pulses to create a sense of being off-kilter without falling into the trap of being a slave to the downbeat patterns. Afterward, the second movement’s funereal quality was sobering, but Camacho’s decisions about the distribution of materials allowed for that dignity to seem like an earned counterpart to the first movement’s flippancy. The French horn bears the plaintive melody very well, and at no time does the composer lapse into lazy and clichéd lament writing. The piece and concert concluded with a joyous ragtime movement that both literally quoted Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag and tore the same piece to shreds. It was obvious that the performers enjoyed playing it (even the pianist, whose part strains the definition of “amateur”) and the audience couldn’t help but enjoy listening to such musical wit.

So, what lesson did I learn from the University of Texas’ Wet Ink concert? Despite the name, it’s not all wet.

New Music Box…er…well, it was supposed to be…

So, I had my very first opportunity to be properly published. NewMusicBox asked and intended to publish a piece on the Nevada Encounters of New Music festival held in Las Vegas (NEON), and I fortuned into being the writer. Being sidetracked by fatherhood, work, and out-of-town business, I missed the deadline by a fair margin, and the piece wasn’t carried. But, since I know composers (and all artists, really), want and need to have some words written about their work, I will post here the article that would have run, had I been a bit more punctual.

Enjoy.

————————————

Hammering the Stakes in Vegas

When thinking of Las Vegas, “New Music” (oh yes, those quotation marks and capital letters mean what you think) might rank thirty-eighth on the list of things that come to mind. Might. In fact, it would probably be much lower, and long may it have remained so were it not for the efforts of Drs. Virko Baley and Jorge Villavicencio-Grossmann. These two, composition faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have begun the unlikeliest of annual events in a town where Wayne Newton reigns supreme – a bonafide composition symposium. Nevada Encounters of New Music, affectionately – though in acronymically questionable logic – known as NEON, was held for the first time in March 2007 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Conceived of by Baley and Grossmann, the aim of the symposium was to bring together exceptional young and emerging composers from lands far and wide in an environment where they would have the opportunity to interact with established composers of varied musical tastes and backgrounds.

The faculty in the first year was Steven Stucky, Paul Chihara, Virko Baley and Jorge Villavicencio-Grossmann. George Tsontakis was scheduled to round out the group but was unable to make it on account of bad weather. This year’s installment included Bernard Rands, Chen Yi, Dmitri Tymozcko and Bruce Broughton in addition to the event’s hosts. The cavalcade of composers has been lured, in mystique typical of Baley, by “an offer they cannot refuse. I’ve been around a bit, and I think that they trusted us to make this a good event – and we have not disappointed them so far.” Whatever this offer may be, it has garnered quite an impressive array of teachers for an upstart festival in a city whose idea of cultural refinement is typically a topful dance revue. Although Las Vegas has certainly earned this perception through its colorful history, it may be unfair to thoughtlessly brand the city as such. According to Baley, the public’s attitude toward new music in Las Vegas “is probably not that different from that in most other greater metropolitan areas.” He aptly points out that the arts in any major city derive their support not only from within the city proper, but from the surrounding area as well. In the western United States – and Las Vegas, in particular – this poses an additional challenge, because the cities are so often isolated from each other. Unless the population of a metropolitan area meets a “critical mass…around 2.5 million,” it is difficult for the arts to become self-sustaining without nearby sources of support, and Las Vegas, with roughly 1.5 million people and no real sizeable cities or towns in its sphere of influence (Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego each possess their own orbits and exert greater gravitational force than Las Vegas due to geographical proximity), does not meet this criterion.

Despite the fact that there are certain structural prerequisites that have not yet been established, Baley is certain that “there is an audience for the new here.” The obstacle? Reaching that audience. To do so, he contends that NEON must have the financial resources to cast a broad advertising net that will run from three to four months prior to the festival in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Los Angeles and San Diego. An additional future goal will be the engagement of the tourist market, trying to draw a fraction of the dollars and consumers that flow so effortlessly through the local economy. Once the public relations budget accounts for more than a quarter of expenditures, there is no room for further complaint, and then NEON must uphold its end of the bargain, by providing superb performances of interesting and challenging new music. “Truth in advertising” is the mandate by which Baley believes the festival must be guided.

The metaphorical lights of NEON have not only attracted prestigious faculty but also a fine collection of participants both musically and geographically diverse. Participants and auditors have come from more than ten states and five countries, and it is not difficult to understand why. For the participation fee, composers receive a forty-five minute private lesson with each member of the faculty; they earn access to seminars presented by the faculty composers on their own music or a topic of personal expertise; they attend nightly concerts populated with works by the faculty, participating composers and past winners of the Max Di Julio Prize, the festival’s top honor, a commission for a work to presented at the subsequent edition, this year represented by Shadowings by Matthew Schreibeis; and they receive a high quality performance and live recording of the work chosen for inclusion in the festival. The insistence upon personal, private instruction with the faculty is one of Dr. Baley’s chief dictates for NEON. “Most conferences do only masterclass instruction, where each participating student composer gets fifteen minutes of attention from the visiting faculty. It is not a bad thing, but it does not give each student the kind of attention that one-on-one for forty-five minutes does.” It provides an insight to the genuinely pedagogical intent of the experience for the participants, and is an interesting manifestation of one devoted teacher’s viewpoint. For a man who doesn’t believe that composition – at its most fundamental level – can be taught, it is the intensity of this interaction and discussion of one’s own music with established that provides the greatest value of return. The seminars also render salient and appreciable musical discussion. To hear Chen Yi speak about her youth in the midst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the extraordinary lengths to which she went to gain knowledge of not only music itself, but western musical works, all the while finding the ability to laugh and to produce exquisite music cannot help but be an inspiration to those privileged enough to find themselves in the American loop. Dmitri Tymozcko presented an additional seminar on his theoretical work and Bruce Broughton presented on film music, expanding the scope of seminar topics to other areas of great interest to contemporary composers.

Beyond the instructional elements of NEON, there is a great “lever” in the form of the recording received. The performances and recordings are of professional caliber, with each concert presenting both faculty and student pieces under the eminently capable musical umbrella of the two ensembles-in-residence. NEXTET, UNLV’s new music ensemble is comprised of students, faculty, and alumni. The other ensemble is New York’s Talea Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble under the artistic direction of percussionist Alex Lipowski and “devoted to the advocacy and performance of contemporary music that challenges and inspires performers and listeners alike.” Talea is essentially a reformation of last year’s guest ensemble-in-residence, the East Coast Composers Ensemble, with fantastic young performers bearing impressive new music credentials and hailing from throughout the Northeast Corridor. One of the truly exceptional facets of NEON is the singular commitment to and preparation of every piece or excerpt performed at the symposium. Both groups were already well prepared before the beginning of the event, and they have one or two rehearsals with the composer scheduled throughout the course of things. Of all observations made by participating composers, the one that appears to be universal is the deep satisfaction – even to the point of surprise – that each has with the performance level they received. This is no accident, of course. Baley and Grossmann wanted to bring in an ensemble that would be focused solely on the works being performed in conjunction with NEON, as students and performers of new music are so often over-extended. “[ECCE’s] participation the first year was crucial to the success of the performances. No less so [Talea’s] this year,” Baley said. Of the sixteen pieces performed, Talea Ensemble handled six of those and augmented NEXTET’s forces for three additional works. Due to the aforementioned rehearsal time, each composer is able to “work with the ensembles to insure the most accurate performance, both formally and emotionally.” The embarrassment of riches will only grow more severe next year, as the UNLV Hank Greenspun School of Journalism will be producing a video recording of the 2009 edition of NEON, which will then be made available for broadcast by TNC Recordings.

The formula crafted here is working, and though the festival is new, its roots extend nearly forty years into the past. At a time long before Las Vegas’s current boom and fledgling near-legitimacy, Dr. Baley began an Annual Contemporary Music Festival. From 1971 through the mid-1980’s, the festival was held every year, earning in 1975 the first National Endowment for the Arts grant ever awarded in the state of Nevada to establish the Las Vegas Chamber Players in residence at UNLV. Upon being hired in 2004, Dr. Jorge Grossmann began floating the idea that would eventually become NEON, with the duo first considering some sort of collaboration with other existing organizations that have established annual conferences. Baley says, “We quickly shelved that idea and decided that we wanted to create something particularly our own, with our own profile and own raison d’être.” Both years have been made possible through the generous underwriting of Dean Jeffrey P. Koepp of the UNLV College of Fine Arts. That faith has been rewarded by positive word-of-mouth growth. By Baley’s count, there were 22 applicants to the first festival, and the 56 this year more than doubled that number. Cautious predictions suggest a total nearer 100 for next year, at which point the selection process “will start to become very difficult.” There is a commitment to limiting the number of participating students and auditing students to ensure the quality of all elements remains very high. The potential to win the festival’s competition for the Max Di Julio Composition Prize is another hook with which to catch the interest of potential applicants. The prize is a $1,000 commission awarded by the faculty to one of the participating composers to create a new work for NEXTET at the following NEON. This year, another prize was given for the composition of a work that uses the trumpet as a solo instrument. This was secured by one of UNLV’s senior faculty, Dr. Kenneth Hanlon. Wah-hei Ng and Eun Young Kim were the winners of the former, and latter, respectively, and the premieres of their commissioned works will be part of NEON 2009.

And what significance NEON 2009? “The third year is crucial,” Baley declares. “If the first year goes well, most think that it was luck. The second tends to either confirm that luck – if such a thing exists – was responsible, or it was not. The third year establishes a kind of legitimacy that is very important: we become eligible to start applying for grants. Grants bring an imprimatur that legitimizes the event and makes it an accepted part of the national scene.” He doesn’t foresee any dramatic changes to the format that has worked well so far, but he hopes to snare some additional visibility by incorporating the world premiere of a work by one of the distinguished guest faculty composers. Slyly, he adds: “2009 is also the season that will acknowledge my seventieth year of existence. I may pull rank and have a special event to celebrate that before I dissolve into the mist.”

It is at this point that I am afraid I must make a minor confession. I was a participant in the first edition of NEON. The experience that I had gave me an interesting and unique perspective on this year’s festival, with which I engaged as an observer. The performances and lessons were of unmatched value, and that appears to have maintained into this year, as well. The opening night concert began with the raucous Fire by Stephen Bachicha, one of two UNLV students chosen as festival participants. Shadowings, commissioned from Matthew Schreibeis with the 2007 Max Di Julio Prize was next on the program, and the piece was deserving of its inscription. A delicate and artful realization of “a collection of Japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn, one of the first Americans to document Japanese culture at the turn of the last century.” Schreibeis exploits the timbral characteristics of his chosen quartet to create an ethereal and haunting sound world that captures the essence of pre-special effects terror without merely mimicking the accepted vernacular of horror music. The evening was completed by Chen Yi’s Qi, another cross-cultural exploration of a specific idea, and Dmitri Tymozcko’s Beat Therapy, a jazz and funk influenced piece fun for jazz(-ish) ensemble and computer.

The second evening’s concert was colored by four pieces, dramatically different from each other. Burlesca, by Dante De Silva, was an entertaining and amusing trio that seems to capture an imagined ballroom somewhere in a world where the dancers aren’t strictly governed by the presence of an ever-present metronomic marking. The clarinet and violin cooperate on lines that at times seem to be drawn directly from Piazzola, while the piano glibly pounds on minor seconds in the high register, creating a delightful stylistic counterpoint that suits the post ex facto title. The second piece on the Friday concert was Jason Slaughter’s, The Ayatollah’s Sermon, for piano solo. Slaughter was the second participant from UNLV, and his work, which he states “is not politically motivated”, but rather an indictment of those who would misuse and abuse the power of religious office, is a fiendish piece that opens with a somewhat reserved call to prayer, as it were, and quickly veers into a fiery realm of pianistic virtuosity and venom. Forceful and energetic, the work makes liberal use of the entire range of the piano, drawing an immense sonic weight from the instrument. Bruno Siberchicot’s Changing Lights was a palate cleansing exploration of the different sonorities afforded by the oboe, somewhat reminiscent of a Berio Sequenza. Professor Stephen Caplan captured the subtlety of the work while embracing some of the more savage aspects with due grit and weight. A Primer for Malachi, composed by Bruce Broughton, closed the second evening with a roaming and substantial musical sojourn, performed admirably by members of the Talea Ensemble. The technical demands made of the performers are notable, and the tremendous unity attained by the group is a testament to their musicianship and the adequate rehearsal time allotted for the composer and performers to refine the interpretation of the piece.

Saturday’s concert began with the first of this year’s Max Di Julio prizewinners, Wah-Hei Ng. Sleepless City is a musical representation of a night spent on Tokyo streets among people who were stranded or shuffling about en route to work or some otherwhere. The deftness and lightness in the piano writing creates the impression of electric-lit in-betweenness, and an indubitably cold musical sound. Much like the feeling one might get in the sort of scenario that inspired the piece, in which Ng and his friends missed the last train in Tokyo and spent the night awaiting the first departure of the next morning. The intricate and enticing piano writing continued with Alex Miller’s Actions and Resonances, performed with exacting control and sensitivity by Elena Miraztchiyska. The piece sounds like Keith Jarrett, only less driven by interiority and more shaped by expansive melodic lines that create a very clearly-defined architecture that one can almost see. This is, much to the chagrin of new music’s detractors, beautiful music, plain and simple. Kye Ryung Park, one of the professors responsible for the effective running of the festival, received a world premiere of her work, Erneuerung, a contemplative investigation and self-discussion of her own musical styles that translates into a cohesive blend of conflicting cultural influences, each vying for equal consideration in her writing. Another host’s composition followed. Jorge Grossman’s Three Etudes for piano, commissioned by the Nevada Music Teachers Association, was aptly constructed for the genre implied by the title. Studies of the possibilities afforded by the piano, which the composer acknowledges is an ongoing personal curiosity and investigation. Each of the three possessed a markedly different character, yet they sounded as if they belonged together, which is a tricky line to negotiate. Petroushka Dreams, by John Bilotta, was a delightful reminder of an old favorite, evoking Stravinsky’s Petroushka through direct and abstract musical evocations, imagining life after murder for the famed puppet. Dancelike and faithful to the character of the ballet, the work is an interesting example of the meta-musical world, in which we are now drawing upon the imagined characters of previous works for our own. It makes one wonder about Gaspard.

The final concert ended the festival in grand style. a quiet way, by Eun Young Lee, the other Max Di Julio Prize honoree this year, made use of the ensemble to present a Dickinson song with an appropriate degree of remove, avoiding any tendency toward sentimentality, and instead boiling the materials down to clipped, independent gestures. The treatment was very well suited to the text, and the performers did a magnificent job of capturing the underlying discourse. Movements from Virko Baley’s Dreamtime, an epic cycle for Pierrot ensemble, were next. The movements chosen illustrated an intense dynamism and a lithe gentleness of gesture and texture that successfully draw the listener into another space, where the environs are dictated not by the concert hall, but by the music coming from the stage. Utterly absorbing, in every way, with particularly remarkable playing from cellist, Christopher Gross. The festival was concluded by the other elder statesman, Bernard Rands. Fragments from his Sappho, sounded as if duly encased in gold. An inexpressible depth and lushness permeated the piece, and when the last notes were sounded, it was difficult to accept the finality of it, because it so engendered a desire for more. Impeccably orchestrated and lyrically powerful, it provided a satisfying closure to an unabashedly successful event.

Justin Capps (b. 1980)

Justin Capps is a composer living in Las Vegas, having received his M.M. in Music Composition/Theory from UNLV in December 2007. When not organizing dots on a page or actively chasing musical development with something like abandon, Justin occupies himself with other facets of music, literature, and unceasing admiration of his wife, Emma and his newborn thunder stealer, Zoë Louise Capps.