Earplay Outside Korea

Monday, September 8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

7:15 pm pre-concert talk, 8 pm concert

Tickets: Call (415) 978‑ARTS/978‑2787.

$18 General

$12 Members and Students (i.d. required)

Earplay Outside Korea

Isang Yun

Espace I, 1992

Thalia Moore and Karen Rosenak

Younghi Pagh-Paan

Die Insel Schwimmt

(U.S. premiere), 1997

Karen Rosenak and Tim Dent

Hyo-shin Na, Ocean/Shore #2

(World Premiere, Earplay Commission) 2003

Peter Josheff, Terrie Baune, Kurt Rohde and Dan Reiter

INTERMISSION

Earl Kim

Scenes from a Movie, Part 1, The Seventh Dream, 1986

Ki Yeon Cho, Hugh Russell, Karen Rosenak, Lisa Weiss, Thalia Moore, and Mary Chun

Hi Kyung Kim

At the Edge of the Ocean, 2001 revised 2003 (Premiere)

Tod Brody, Peter Josheff, Terrie Baune, Kurt Rohde, Thalia Moore,

Victor Avdienko, Ward Spangler and Mary Chun

Earplay Outside Korea is presented in cooperation with the Consulate General of Korea, San Francisco.

Hugh Russell appears courtesy of the San Francisco Opera Center.

Earplay is funded in part by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University , the American Composers Forum. Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the Bernard Osher Foundation, the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Fund.

Earplay Outside Korea celebrates the 100th year of the Korean American immigration.

Piano services provided by Sherman-Clay Concert Events Services.

The San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF), featuring the San Francisco World Music Festival, takes place from September 4–21, 2003. The inaugural SFIAF will involve artists from at least fifteen countries in the disciplines of dance, music, film, opera, theater and circus. Events will be held in venues throughout San Francisco, including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater and Forum, the War Memorial Opera House, the Asian Art Museum, the African American Art & Culture Complex and site specific locations throughout the City. SFIAF 2003 is the first step towards creating an annual flagship event that celebrates San Francisco as an international city of art and culture. Tickets can be purchased at the SFIAF/YBCA Box office at 415.978.ARTS (2787) or www.YerbaBuenaArts.org. For more information, please visit www.SFIntlArtsFest.org.

Program Notes

Espace I

This late piece features the timbers of the cello's high range and suggests a French sensibility.

I-Sang Yun's Espace Ifor cello and piano is a prime example of the composer’s hard-won tone of voice. This beautiful piece is also quite accessible and could well earn Yun many new admirers. It unfolds in continuous alternations and relaxations before reaching a moving coda of great beauty.--- Hubert Culot

ISANG YUN (1917-1995) I-Sang Yun's oeuvre rests upon the flexible, vibrant tone of his native country's traditional music and includes more than a hundred works, among them four operas and a number of instrumental concertos. Isang Yun was born on September 17, 1917 near the southeastern seaport Tongyông, at a time when the Korean peninsula was under Japanese occupation. Yun took part in the resistence against Japan, and in 1943, he was imprisoned and tortured. After receiving the Seoul City Culture Award in 1955, he was able to study in Paris and Berlin from 1956 to 1959. While in Germany Yun was able to establish contact with and was a part of the international avant-garde. In 1967 Yun was abducted form Berlin to Seoul by the Korean secret police, and was tortured and charged with high treason. In a political show trial he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance, but released in 1969 after international protests. In 1971 he became a German citizen.

DIE INSEL SCHWIMMT (The Island Floats)

Die Insel schwimmt was composed in 1997 and received its premiere that

same year in Cologne. It is based on a poem by the writer and lyric poet

Rose Auslander (1907 - 1988) in which we can read the lines "Die Insel

schwimmt an meine Brust, Ich streichle goldene Baume" (the island floats

toward my breast, I caress golden trees). --CD notes Duo Konflikt

YOUNGHI PAGH-PAAN-- Born 1945 in Cheongju (South Korea), Ms. Pagh-Paan studied music theory and composition at the Seoul National University and continued her studies at the Academy of Music Freiburg with a DAAD-scholarship. Her teachers include Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Foertig, and Edith Picht-Axenfeld. Ms. Pagh-Paan's work is recognized (In1995 she was awarded the Heidelberger Kunsterlinnenpreis) and performed throughout Germany including the Donaueschinger Musiktage (1980, 1987, 1998), at numerous festivals for modern music, at the Weltmusiktage of the IGNM and in broadcast concerts. In addition, she has taught composition as a guest professor for at the Academy of Music, Graz and Karlsruhe. Since 1994 Ms. Pagh-Paan has been professor for composition at the Hochschule for Kunste, Bremen, where she founded the "Atelier Neue Musik". Ms. Pagh-Paan currently divides her time between Bremen, Germany and Panicale, Italy.

OCEAN/SHORE 2, Earplay Commission

Ocean/Shore 2, for clarinet, violin, viola and cello, follows Ocean/Shore, written in 2002 for chamber orchestra and piri (Korean bamboo oboe) solo. The Ocean/Shore series is a study on the use of diverse materials and on the coexistence, within a piece of music, of various instruments. As in the meeting and interaction of water and land, these instruments can have fundamentally very different characters (piri and violin, or clarinet and cello), yet shouldn't lose their basic nature in the interests of harmony, or even beauty.

Ocean/Shore was made of diverse elements: sounds of the piri and the western chamber orchestra, songs of the Indians of Northern California, impressions of the coast of California itself - water, rain, fog, mist, light, trees and grasses, hills, rocks.

Ocean/Shore 2 was commissioned by Earplay to be premiered at a concert celebrating the 100th year of the Korean American immigration.

---Hyo-shin Na

HYO-SHIN NA

As a recipient of the Korean National Composers Prize (1994) and the Asian American Arts Foundation Fellowship (2000), Hyo-shin Na has had her music performed world-wide; at festivals and concert series in her native country as well as throughout Europe, North America, Africa and the rest of Asia. Her works have been performed in California (where she currently resides) by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Earplay, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Chamber Symphony, New Music Works, Music Now, Citywinds, Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet, and the Stanford and Del Sol String Quartets, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio, the BBC, Korean Broadcasting System, German Radio and Belgian Radio. Her musical studies were at Ewha University (Seoul, Korea), Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she received her doctorate.

SCENE FROM A MOVIE, Part 1, The Seventh Dream

Mr. Kim is especially well-known for his extensive work in the idiom of music theatre, specifically on texts by Samuel Beckett. Scenes from a Movie is based upon text by Rainer Maria Rilke with the English translation by G. Craig Houston. Following is an excerpt:

I looked for the girl. I found her in a long narrow room, in which the morning light was just breaking. She was sitting on a chair and was smiling almost imperceptibly.

Beside her, not more than a pace distant was another chair, on which a young man was sitting, leaning back stiffly, it seemed as if the two had passed the night in this way.

……

EARL KIM (1920-1998)---Throughout his career, Mr. Kim received considerable recognition as a composer, including commissions from the Fromm, Koussevitzky and Naumburg Foundations, from the University of Chicago and Boston University, from individuals and performing organizations.

Earl Kim was born in Dinuba, California, the third son of immigrant Korean parents. He was educated at Los Angeles City College, the University of California-Los Angeles, and Harvard University. His principal teachers included Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch and Roger Sessions.

AT THE EDGE OF THE OCEAN

"The title, At the Edge of the Ocean, came to my mind when I was driving along California’s Highway 1, along the Pacific coast. The endlessly vast Pacific Ocean led me to imagine the end of the ocean, which would be connected to many Asian countries. I thought of all of the Asian countries that are connected at the edge of this great ocean. This gave me the peaceful thought that we all can be united as one big land, rather than fighting over some little bubbles." -- Hi Kyung Kim

This is the first performance of the 2003 revision. At the Edge of the Ocean (2001) was written for a special project, Hun Qiao (Bridge of Souls), Commemorating World War II. Written for Yo-Yo Ma and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota and Commissioned by the Meet the Composer/ Commissioning USA Grant.

HI KYUNG KIM---Hi Kyung Kim received a B.A. in composition from Seoul National University, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. As a recipient of the U.C. Berkeley’s George C. Ladd Prix de Paris, she worked at IRCAM and École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1988-1990. Her composition teachers were Andrew Imbrie, Olly Wilson, Gérard Grisey, and Sung-Jae Lee. Currently she is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is an artistic director of Pacific Rim Music Festival.

Her honors/awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award, Commissioning USA grant from Meet the Composer, Tanglewood Music Center, MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Cleveland Dodge Foundation, Korea Foundation, American Music Center, grants from the University of California InterCampus Arts Program for the Pacific Rim Music Festival and others.

Performers

TERRIE BAUNE (Violin) In addition to being a member of Earplay, Baune is Associate Concertmaster of the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, and a member of the Empyrean Ensemble. Her professional credits include concertmaster positions with the Women's Philharmonic, Fresno Philharmonic, Santa Cruz County Symphony and Rohnert Park Symphony. She was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra for four years. She spent two years as a member of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra of New Zealand, where she toured and recorded for Radio New Zealand with the Gabrielli Trio, and performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

TOD BRODY (Flute) was a member of the Sacramento Symphony for many years, where he was frequently featured as a soloist on both flute and piccolo. A specialist in new music, Mr. Brody is principal flutist for Earplay, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the Empyrean Ensemble.

MARY CHUN (Conductor) Ms. Chun has created the premieres for many composers, including John Adams's earthquake romance "I was looking at the Ceiling and then I saw the Sky" which she conducted in Paris, Hamburg and Montreal. She is a frequent guest conductor with opera companies in Europe and the United States and conducted the world premiere CD recordings of orchestral music by San Francisco composers Peter Allen and James Berenholtz.

PETER JOSHEFF (Clarinet) Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Josheff is active both as a composer and musician. He is a founding member of Earplay, a member of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble and the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players. He has performed with most of the new music ensembles in the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Composers Inc.

THALIA MOORE (Cello), attended the Julliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1979 and 1980. Since 1982, Ms. Moore has been Associate Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and in 1989 joined the cello section of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.

ELLEN RUTH ROSE (Violin) relocated in 1998 to the Bay Area after having spent several years in Cologne, Germany, where she first became immersed in contemporary music. As a member of the experimental ensembles Musik Fabrik and Thürmchen Ensemble, and frequent guest with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, she toured throughout Europe, premiering and recording countless works. She has performed as soloist with the West German Radio Chorus and appeared at the Cologne Triennial, Berlin Biennial, Salzburg Zeitfluß, Brussels Ars Nova, Venice Biennial and Budapest Autumn festivals. Ms. Rose holds degrees in viola performance from the Juilliard School and the Northwest German Music Academy in Detmold, Germany; and a degree in English and American history and literature from Harvard University.

KAREN ROSENAK (Piano) is an almost native of the Bay Area. She was founding member/pianist of the Bay Area new music groups EARPLAY and the Empyrean Ensemble, and currently performs with those groups as well as with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. She studied modern piano with Carlo Bussotti and Nathan Schwartz, and credits Margaret Fabrizio with introducing her to and teaching her the fortepiano during her graduate work in early music at Stanford University. She has found the balance between old and new music and old and new pianos to be an ongoing, most satisfying pursuit. She has been on the faculty at UC Berkeley since 1990, where she teaches musicianship and contemporary chamber music.

Guest Artists:

VICTOR AVDIENKO (Percussion) is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he earned a Master of Music degree. His teachers include Roland Kohloff and Elden Bailey of the New York Philharmonic. Prior to that, he earned his degree with top honors from San Jose State University, studying with Anthony J. Cirone of the San Francisco Symphony.

As a busy freelance percussionist and timpanist, he can be heard performing and recording with orchestras, chamber groups, and opera companies throughout San Francisco, the Bay Area, and beyond. As first-call extra with the San Francisco Symphony, Victor has recorded and toured with the Symphony regularly since 1996.

KI YEON CHO (soprano), a native Seoul, Korea, graduated from Boston Conservatory of Music in 2001 with GPD in Opera. Previously, she earned a bachelor’s degree from New England Conservatory of Music and attended University of Denver. Her roles include the title role from Madama Butterfly in Cinnabar Opera and Zerlina in Don Giovanni; Lucy in The Telephone in Longwood Opera. At the conservatory, Celie in Signor Deluso; Silverpeal in Impressario; Amore in L’Egisto and Four Saints in three Acts. Also Ms. Cho has sung the roles Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro; Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos; Hero in Beatrice and Bebedict; Zdenka in Arabella; Juiliet in Romeo et Juiliet. With the Lamont Opera Company, Ms Cho has appeared in comprimario roles in Suor Angelica, Christopher Columbus, Twelfth Night, Cabaret, Die Fledermaus. She has appeared in Don Carlos and La Boheme in Boston Lyric Opera in 2001 and 2002. Recently, she has performed as a soloist in Beethoven #9 choral at Davies Symphony Hall in 2003. In her native country of Korea, she has appeared as a soloist with Corigliano Quartet in 1997 and 2002. Other appearances have included in solo New York debut recital in Carnegie Weill Hall in 2000 and as a soloist with Longwood Opera Orchestra and with KBS and MBC Symphony Orchestra of Korea. Her awards included the International Artist New York Debut Competition, the International Young Artist Peninsular Music Competition, Friday Woodmere Music Club, NATS. She was a participant in Daniel Ferro’s Vocal Program, International Young Artist Peninsular Music festival and Yongpyung Music Festival in Korea. Ms Cho has performed in master classes for Stephen Lord, Stephen Krammer, and Nico Castel, Upcoming roles include Despina with San Francisco Lyric Opera, Cio- Cio San with Livermore Valley Opera, Violetta with Cinnabar Opera. She is studying with Sheri Greenawald, Mark Morash, Kathy Cathcart, and Alessandra Cattani for Italian.

TIM DENT (percussion)

Tim Dent, percussion, received degrees in music from the University of Oregon and the San Francisco Conservatory of music where he was a student of Jack Van Geem. Since graduating he has been freelancing with many of the Bay Areas orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble, Earplay, Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, California Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Santa Cruz County Symphony and Santa Rosa Symphony among others. he recently recorded the David Rakowski piece Cerberus with the Empyrean Ensemble and has also recorded with the Berkeley Symphony under Kent Nagano. Last fall he toured the U.S. with the Western Opera Theater in their production of Puccini's La Boheme . He can also be seen with Nik Phelps and the Sprocket Ensemble playing an eclectic mix of music set to contemporary animation.

HUGH RUSSELL (Baritone), a Canadian baritone has won praise for his handsome voice, incisive musicianship, and strong stage presence. While an Adler Fellow with San Francisco Opera, Mr. Russell has appeared in Il barbiere di Siviglia Ariadne auf Naxos and in the company's celebrated production of Saint François d’Assise. As a member of the Pittsburgh Opera Center he sang many roles, including Malatesta in Don Pasquale

In summer 2003 Mr. Russell sings Carmina Burana with the San Francisco Symphony. His other orchestral credits inlude Britten's War Requeim, Nielsen's Symphony no. 3, and the premiere of Tobias Picker's Tres sonetas de amor with L'Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. In the winter of 2003-2004 Hugh Russell will return to New York Festival of Song for programs in Washington and New York. He has also been presented on San Francisco's Schwabacher Debut Recital series.

Hugh Russell is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, Brandon University, and the Eastman School of Music,

Hugh Russell appears courtesy of the San Francisco Opera Center.

DAN REITER (Cello) is principal cellist with the Oakland East Bay Symphony (OEBS), Festival Opera Orchestra, Diablo Ballet Orchestra and Fremont Symphony. His solo work includes Leonard Bernstein's Three Meditations (OEBS, 2000) and Robert Schumann's Cello Concerto (Fremont Symphony, 2002). Dan is also a former Earplay member (1989-90).

As a composer, Dan has written varied chamber works. In 1999 he won an Izzy Award for his composition Raga Bach B Minor featuring dancer Robert Moses. He has had the privilege of working with India's master musician Ali Akbar Khan and has recorded two CDs (Garden of Dreams and Legacy) with Khansahib. In addition, Dan produced Cello and Harp, a CD of his own compositions for cello and harp with his wife, Natalie Cox.

KURT ROHDE (viola)

Mr. Rohde is an active composer whose work is performed by numerous orchestras and music ensembles to critical acclaim. In addition to his composing career, Kurt Rohde is a violist with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the New Century Chamber Orchestra and other ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area, and artistic director of the Chamber Music Partnership. He is the 2001 recipient of the Walter Hinrichson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition, Mr. Rohde has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and commission awards from the Hanson Institute for American Music, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, and the Koussevitzky and Fromm Music Foundations. A winner of the Lydian String Quartet Composition Contest, he has participated in the Tanglewood Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. Mr. Rohde is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music.

WARD SPANGLER (Percussion) is principal percussionist with the Berkeley Symphony, Fremont Symphony and Oakland East Bay Symphony, and a member of the Marin Symphony. He also plays the Cabrillo Music Festival each summer and is an active freelancer around the Bay Area.

LISA WEISS (Violin) A Bay area native, Weiss has earned international reconition as a chamber musician, including awards in the Portsmouth and Coleman competitions, and as a participant of the Marlboro Festival. She performs as concertmaster and soloist with Philharmonia Barogque, and is also a member of the American Bach Soloists, the Arcadian Academy and BMV 2000. As a guest artist, she has appeared with many chamber ensembles including the Artaria Quartet, Musica Pacifica, American Baroque and Philomel.