Welcome to New Music Works!

Ivan Rosenblum At the beginning of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke roamed the streets of Paris fascinated by the parade of prostitutes, beggars, the maimed, etc. His poetic response was “The Voices” (part 2 of the Book of Images-1906). A hundred years later, composer Ivan Rosenblum’s “Rilke On Radio,” frames these poems as snapshots of “homelessness,” creating a contemporary slant on Rilke’s empathy for those in need. The composer thanks the following people for their help and support in bringing "Rilke on Radio" to completion: Richard Goode, Michael Rosenblum, Ryan Daniele, Vito Victor, Aude Castagna, Susan Stuart, David Swanger, Dennis Morton, Anne Lober, Phil Collins and Trader Joes (shopping cart).
— notes by the composer

Ivan Rosenblum, pianist-teacher-composer-taught education and music at U.C.S.C. from 1970-80. He has a B.A. from Queens College, N.Y.C., and a Masters and Doctorate from Harvard University. He studied piano and chamber music with Robert Hagopian and Menahem Pressler, and composition with Hugo Weisgall and Vittorio Rieti. Mr. Rosenblum's compositions have been performed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, The Oakland Museum of Art, Berkeley Repertory Theater, as well as on radio stations KPFA, KKHI, KQED and KUSP. As pianist for The Wolford/Rosenblum Saxophone-Piano Duo, he has performed extensively in Northern California and toured Northern Italy. He is pianist and arranger for the CD” Kabarett: Songs of Kurt Weill” on Laurel Records and “More Than Sax: Baroque, Blues & Beyond” on the Gliddon label. He maintains an active piano and chamber-music coaching studio in Santa Cruz. The San Francisco Examiner has written: ”Rosenblum was a solid and supportive accompanist at the piano, and added much to the proceedings with his genial introductory comments. ”

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Messiaen composed Quartet for the End of Time while he was interned in a German prison camp. The eight-movement work was premiered on January 15, 1941 before an audience of 5000 fellow prisoners, with Messiaen on piano, and fellow prisoners playing clarinet, violin and cello. The form of the Quartet is based on rigorous musical planning and a complex spiritual narrative that was inspired by a passage in the Book of Revelation (chapter 10). According to the composer, the Quartet was intended to be a kind of musical extension of the Biblical account, and of the concept of the end of Time as the end of past and future and the beginning of eternity. In a preface to the score, Messiaen commented on each of the movements. The following was written about Abyss of the birds, the third movement of the Quartet: Abyss of the birds. Clarinet alone. The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite of Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.
— notes by Philip Collins

Olivier Messiaen studied at the Paris Conservatoire (1919-30) with Dukas, Dupré and others, and taught there from 1941-78 while also serving as organist of La Trinité in Paris (1931-92). His pupils include many distinguished musicians such as Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis. Messiaen quickly developed an original and unique style which included innovations in harmony and melody (such as modes with limited transposition capabilities); rhythm (including developments such as palindromic rhythms and rhythms with added values); color (Messiaen had mild synaesthesia that caused him to see colors when he heard music); and orchestration (including the use of the ondes martenot and many unusual percussion instrument). Messiaen experimented with electronic music and serialism, but made no sustained use of either.
His Roman Catholic faith was deep and lasting, and much of his music has an explicitly religious program. He believed that all his music was written to glorify God and developed a sophisticated sign system with which to evangelize. Messiaen was an ardent ornithologist. He incorporated birdsong transcriptions using his own ‘style oiseau’ into much of his music (Catalogue d'oiseaux, 1958). He wrote music in every major genre, making special contributions to the organ repertoire, and to the piano repertoire, due largely to the skills of his second wife Yvonne Loriod. His output includes several large-scale orchestral works (Turangalîla-symphonie, 1948), and an opera, for which he also wrote the libretto (Saint François d'Assise, 1983). — © Andrew Shenton, 2006

Arthur Cooley I was always daunted by astrophysics, relativity and nuclear physics, so finally I decided to just sit down and try to learn the subjects. Two starting points were "Einstein's World" and Hawkings' "A Brief History of Time." Somewhere after a long study I got the idea of trying to retell the essence of the subjects in some manner. I chose music. To me, even though I am quite deaf, music is a very vivid storyteller.
The next decision was — what part do I tell? I decided to tell it all. This included the birth of the Universe, the birth of the earth, the origin of life, the origin of a sense of self, the march of civilization up to the time of Mozart, and the development of aesthetics.
I decided to recall the text of the story from memory only because I wanted to keep it short. If I had looked up the details, there would probably have been a very long composition. It came out as three and one half paragraphs. Following this, I put all the events into cartoon drawings, along with words like "bam, splat, splop." Then the composition was started.
As this story unfolds, there is no prejudice for either the scientific explanation or the creation explanation. You will hear three sections of music, constructed of sequences of large chords, using the whole ensemble that proclaim there has to be more than this physical explanation alone for our story. Also, the baritone-narrator emphasizes at the end that "no one knows where the singularity," (the initial presumed substance of the universe), came from."
— notes by the composer

Arthur Cooley (b. Palo Alto,1931) grew up on the San Francisco Peninsula-and the Monterey Peninsula. Cooley obtained his BA and MD at Stanford University in Oriental Philosophy and Psychology during the 1950s after which he ran a successful private practice in Saratoga, CA and taught for 43 years at Stanford University. Cooley moved to Aptos, CA in 2005, served as Mayor of Seascape for 5 yrs and is currently serving on the board of directors for New Music Works and Santa Cruz Symphony Board.
Cooley studied music composition at Cabrillo College and is currently a student of Phillip Collins. He draws inspiration from the history of western music and all its associated forms of structure from Bach to Schoenberg. His compositions have been played at home recitals, Cabrillo college student recitals. His “Latin American Dance Suite” was performed by the New Music Works Ensemble for Sound Horizons at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz.

Philip Collins Reqiues Ranarum eulogizes six frog species that were declared extinct on the 1994 World Checklist of Threatened Amphibians and Reptiles: Discoglossus nigriventer, (Israel) Rana tlaloci, (Mexico), Bufo Periglenes, (Costa Rica), Rana Fischeri, (Vegas Valley, USA), and Arthroleptides dutoiti, (Kenya); and three sub-species of the Eleutherodactylus genre, E. Karlschmidti, E. jasperi, E. eneidae (Puerto Rico). The genesis of this work began when my friend Frank Foreman gave me a copy of the Smithsonian Folkways recording of "Sounds of North American Frogs.” The remarkable variety of timbres, rhythms, tunes and personalities featured on the recording enchanted me and I soon found myself thinking about compositional applications involving the NMW Ensemble and recorded frog calls. Saddened as I was, and continue to be, by the dramatic population declines among frog populations worldwide, my music instinct was moved to compose an homage to the fallen frogs; a requiem of sorts.The lyrics of the sung portions for soprano voice consist solely of the Latin names of the six extinct frog species, and each of them is represented in a separate movement in the piece. I originally incorporated narrated portions from the Smithsonian recording, spoken by Charles Bogert. I based the overall form of the work on a Protestant-style memorial service, which suited Mr. Bogert's beguiling Kentuckian drawl better than the more formal Catholic Requiem service.

Reqiues Ranarum was premiered by New Music Works in 1999 at UC Santa Cruz, with the composer conducting. For a performance of the work in 2004, the piece was recast in a structure based on the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. In November 2008 the present version - drawing from 1999 and 2004 versions- was premiered by the Blueprint Festival, conducted by Nichole Paiement. For tonight's performance, Charles Bogert's narration from the Smithsonian recording will be performed live for the first time.
— notes by the composer

Philip Collins (b. in San Mateo, California) has lived in Santa Cruz since 1976. In 1979 he co-founded New Music Works and has served as the organization’s Artistic Director and Conductor since 1982. Collins has guest-conducted numerous ensembles and has performed residencies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and at Vassar College on a the Martha Farmer Fellowship. His orchestral and chamber works have been played throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has also composed and conducted for numerous theatre companies and colleges including, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Western Stage, Mount Madonna Players, UC Santa Cruz, and Cabrillo College. As a lecturer, Collins has been hosted by numerous schools and conferences, including the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the American Composers Forum, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and in February 2007 he lectured in Wellington, New Zealand, for the ACL (Asian Composer League). Awards include: First Prize (Air), 1996 International Clarinet Society Composition Competition; First Prize (Sappho Songs), 1994 L’ARCIM Festival in Montreal; The Gail Rich Award; and Dramalogue Award for Best Musical Direction. Collins studied composition with Edwin Dugger, Lou Harrison, and Henry Onderdonk. He studied conducting under Nicole Paiement at UC Santa Cruz; classical guitar with Stanley Beutens; and jazz guitar with Jerry Hahn. He holds a Bachelors in Music Composition from San Francisco State University and a Masters in Music (conducting) from University of California Santa Cruz.

Timothy Bell (b. 1951) composes music in a variety of idioms and styles for eclectic media. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Quincy, Illinois. He holds a B.A. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and pursued graduate studies in music theory and composition with composer-teachers Will G. Bottje, Heidi Von Gunden and Wilson Coker at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

He helped found and co-direct the New Music Works in Santa Cruz, California during its first decade. He co-scripted and wrote music for several NMW music-theater productions, including Death of the Avant-Garde: A Wake, Cabaret Verite, and Clear Nuclear. He has been a radio announcer/programmer for an FM radio station, road manager for a touring electric jazz band, and sound board operator for folk music festivals. He has been a music library cataloguing assistant, and served as circulation supervisor for the Santa Cruz, CA city-county library system.

He currently teaches classical guitar at Lewis Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, performs with the College's jazz ensembles, and directs its guitar ensemble. He performs on guitar and electric bass both solo and with various classical, jazz and folk music ensembles. He also works for the circulation department of the Neill Public (city) Library in Pullman, Washington. He resides in Moscow, Idaho with his wife Marian Murta Bell.

Jennifer Higdon (b. Brooklyn, NY, December 31, 1962) is one of America's most frequently performed composers. She is the recipient of awards, including a Pew Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. The Telarc release of Higdon: Concerto for Orchestra / City Scape won a GrammyTM award in 2005. Her work blue cathedral is one of the most-performed orchestral works by a living composer (150 orchestras have performed the work since its 2000 premiere). Some of her recent commissions include works for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Chicago Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, eighth blackbird, Tokyo String Quartet, and Ying Quartet. Upcoming projects include a new violin concerto for Hilary Hahn. A solo disc of her chamber music was recently released by Naxos. She is on the composition faculty at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies.

www.jenniferhigdon.com

David Lang (b. 1957, Los Angeles, California) currently lives in New York City. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, composed in 2007 and based on the children's story by Hans Christian Andersen. Together with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, Lang co-founded Bang on a Can in 1987. His first recognition came from the BMI Foundation's Student Composer Awards in 1980 and 1981.

Lang sometimes gives his concert pieces strange and even iconoclastic titles such as Eating Living Monkeys (1985) and Bonehead (1990). His music can be in turn comic, abrasive, and soothing, and it usually retains elements of conceptualism. It is also informed by modernism, minimalism, and rock -- and can perhaps be best described as postminimalism. He was a major contributor to the music performed by the Kronos Quartet in Requiem for a Dream. He is also well known for his work with Édouard Lock and La La La Human Steps. In 1999, Lang based his opera The Difficulty of Crossing a Field on a short story by Ambrose Bierce, about an Alabama planter named Williamson who purportedly vanished while walking across a field in 1854.

Lang holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and Yale University (DMA, 1989). His teachers have included Donald Jenni, Richard Hervig, Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze, and Martin Bresnick. Lang's music has been released on the Argo/Decca, BMG, Cantaloupe Music, Chandos, CRI, Point, and Sony Classical labels. His scores are published by Red Poppy Music (available from G. Schirmer, Inc.)

www.bangonacan.org/about_us/david_lang

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. His charismatic and versatile musical personality, coupled with the world-wide spread of performances has meant that he reaches an unusually large and varied public. His theatrical works include Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot which have both become contemporary classics. His orchestral works include eight symphonies, which The Times has called “the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich”, the last of which being the Antarctic Symphony, for which he visited the Antarctic in 1997. Maxwell Davies has recently finished ten years as Composer/Conductor of both the BBC Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, and is Composer Laureate with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Maxwell Davies has been recently concentrating his compositional efforts on chamber music, including the cycle of ten string quartets which were commissioned by the CD company Naxos and are called the Naxos Quartets. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in March 2004.

www.maxopus.com

Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938, Westfield, Massachusetts) began his a career as a performer of new piano music in the 1960s. Rzewski's development in composition and performance is strongly influenced by his early friendship to Christian Wolff and David Behrman, and his acquaintance with John Cage and David Tudor. In Rome in the mid-sixties, together with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, he formed the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) group, which quickly became known for its pioneering work in live electronics and improvisation. Bringing together both classical and jazz avant-gardists, MEV developed an esthetic of music as a spontaneous collective process. Rzewski's works are largely inspired by socio-historical themes and feature improvisational elements. One of his best-known works is The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a 50- minute set of piano variations. Rzewski's largest-scale work to date is The Triumph of Death (1987-8), a two-hour oratorio based on texts adapted from Peter Weiss' 1965 play Die Ermittlung (The Investigation). Nicolas Slonimsky in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians describes Rzweski as " a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument."

Rzewski has taught Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege in Belgium, the Yale School of Music, the University of Cincinnati, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California at San Diego, Mills College, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, the Hochschule der Kuenste in Berlin, and the Hochschule fuer Musik in Karlsruhe.

newalbion.com/artists/rzewskif/

Chris Pratorius is a composer, music educator and accompanist who works in the greater Bay Area. He received both his B.A. and M.A. from UCSC and has lived in Santa Cruz for almost 20 years. Chris’ works have been performed in Istanbul, New York, Boston, Manitoba, New Haven, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Omaha, Annandale VA, Tempe AZ, Guatemala and in the greater Santa Cruz area. In addition to composing he has taught at UCSC as a lecturer in theory, musicianship, ear training, music literature and piano. Currently Chris is Staff Accompanist at The Studio, School of Classical Ballet in Soquel and teaches theory at the Longay Conservatory of Guitar in Santa Clara.