Monday, January 12

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 Reveals the Unheard

Lou Harrison

Songs in the Forrest, 1951, revised 1991

Tod Brody, Lisa Weiss, Ward Spanglerand Karen Rosenak

Jorge Liderman

Swirling Streams, (World Premiere, Earplay Commission) 2003

David Tanenbaum, Peter Josheff, Terrie Baune, Ellen Ruth Rose, Thalia Moore and Mary Chun

INTERMISSION

Hans Werner Henze

Neue Volkslieder Und Hirtengesänge,

(U.S. Premiere) 1983 revised 1998

David Tanenbaum, Rufus Olivier, Terrie Baune, Ellen Ruth Rose, Thalia Moore

Louis Karchin

Orpheus

(World Premiere, Earplay Commission) 2003

Dominic Inferrera, Angela Jones, L. Jonathan Collins, Tod Brody, Peter Josheff, Lisa Weiss, Dan Reiter, Karen Rosenak, Ward Spangler and Mary Chun

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 Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, the Bernard Osher Foundation, the California Arts Council, New York University, the San Francisco Foundation, the San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Fund. Funding from Meet The Composer, Inc. is provided with the support of National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Virgil Thomson Foundation.

Piano services provided by Sherman-Clay Concert Events Services.

Information: www.earplay-sf.org

Next concert:

Earplay Prizes and Premieres

Monday, May 17, 2004

Program Notes

SONGS IN THE FOREST

(heart's dead place--now we cross)

And where is She

Her breath stirs shadows here,

Her undermurumur moves among

The humming wind of dusk--

Bats' velvet flutters, owls'down,

Hoots mild & sly--

She's in her wisdom

here in the trees

Sunfall, whose hawks fly screeching skyward

Casts shadows on the lonely.

Who is it waits here

Among the blueberries

Amid the golden hoverance of bees?

III

No one knows

How this can be;

Seed's light, compact

Eternity.

The heart veers out

& stalkward down

to think of god

close in the ground

--Lou Harrison

N.Y.C./Black Mountain 1950 (Aptos 1991)

LOU HARRISON (1917-2003) has for fifty years been in the vanguard of American composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundaries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world.

Born in Portland, Oregon, on May 14, 1917, Lou Harrison grew up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. There he was influenced by Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chants, and the music of California's Spanish and Mexican cultures. Harrison also developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music through early recordings.

SWIRLING STREAMS, Earplay Commission,

(2002), scored for guitar, bass clarinet, and string trio, is a one movement work which oscillates between gradually unfolding streams of sound and whirling successions of events. Although the guitar and bass clarinet have a prominent role in the piece, the string trio actively interacts with the duo producing varied instrumental surfaces.

Swirling Streams is dedicated to David Tanenbaum, with whom I have collaborated on several occasions. It is also dedicated to Earplay bass clarinetist, Peter Josheff, who has performed my music in the past and has shown a great interest in a new piece for this instrumental combination.

---Jorge Liderman

JORGE LIDERMAN (1957- ) Born in Buenos Aires, Jorge Liderman began his musical studies at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, under Mark Kopitman. In 1988 he received his doctorate in composition from the University of Chicago, where he worked with Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran. A year later, Liderman, joined the composition faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

NEUE VOLKSLIEDER UND HIRTENGESÄNGE (New Folk Songs and Pastorals)

The idea for this music is closely tied to the period during the 80's when I was stimulating cultural activity in smaller towns and villages in Styria. During that time, I had compiled a good number of sketches of

Styrian folklore, (which I particularly liked) and had composed songs for an amateur theatre performance given by young, artistically ambitious local people.

From this and other similar material, I put together this small chamber work, in the form of a folk-song, out of a necessity to preserve something of the mood and atmosphere of this melancholy region, just as dream or painful memory. ---Hans Werner Henze

HANS WERNER HENZE (1926-) was born in Germany where he began his musical studies. In 1953 he moved to Italy, where he still lives. Beginning during his early years as a freelance composer and continuing right up to the present day, Hans Werner Henze has also written a whole series of solo concertos, as well as piano pieces and chamber music, including five string quartets, works for small mixed ensembles, cantatas, a full-length oratorio entitled Das Floß der Medusa, and several shorter orchestral compositions, most notably Fraternité and Scorribanda Sinfonica. This last-named work will receive its first performance in Hamburg on 29 June 2001 under Peter Ruzicka.

Between 1972 and 1996 Hans Werner Henze also left his mark on the world of European music through his activities as a teacher, and for many years taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Musikhochschule in Cologne, and at the Tanglewood Festival. During this period he was also involved in youth music and in working with young musicians, two activities that led to the founding of the Cantiere at Montepulciano (Siena), the Deutschlandsberg Jugendmusikfest (Styria), and the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre. For Montepulciano Hans Werner Henze wrote Pollicino, a Spieloper intended to be performed by children and amateurs.

ORPHEUS`

Orpheus is a Masque for baritone voice, chamber ensemble, and dancers. It is based on a poem, In the Dark House, by the distinguished poet Stanley Kunitz, America's Poet Laureate for 2000-01. I've chosen to recreate the legend partially through dance, with the baritone narrating the story through his singing, and the dancers enacting selected episodes during instrumental interludes surrounding the sung stanzas. The work follows Orpheus on his youthful journey with the Argonauts, through revels with his followers, to Eurydice's death and Orpheus' journey to the underworld to bring her back. It concludes with the death of Orpheus at the hands of the Thracian Maenads.

Orpheus is about 25 minutes in length, and scored for an ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano and harp. It was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, and completed in 2003.

Synopsis:

1. Eurydice, married to Orpheus, flees the unwanted attentions of Aristaeus. Running through the woods, she stumbles, is bitten by a snake, and dies.

2. Baritone solo

3. Orpheus mourns Eurydice and imagines she comes back to life.

4. Baritone solo; Orpheus decides his lyre is the key to his salvation, and that his abilities will unlock death's door.

5. Orpheus calms the demons and beasts of Hades with his music, and is allowed to bring his love to the surface.

6. Baritone solo; Orpheus and Eurydice journey through Hades. Orpheus, instructed not to look back, does so at the last moment, and Eurydice is thrust back into the void.

7. Baritone solo; Orpheus is alone and meditates on his fate.

8. Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Thracian women.

9. Orpheus and Eurydice are re-united in death, but his music must be left behind.

---Louis Karchin

"In the Dark House"

People had celebrated him as a god

because his art, they said, was magical,

sweeter to them than the soft spring rains

that blew off the lilac mountains,

secret as the wind whispering through the olives.

Eurydice, his lissome bride!

He made a caressing music

out of the vowels of her name.

All that he ever wanted was to sing of his love.

Where had they gone, that ragtag minstrel band,

those merry dancers, with whom he strolled

at the green earth's invitation,

their ranks swelling at each crossroad?

How young they were

who crowned him king of their carnival!

And the news raced ahead that at his passing

trees broke into blossom out of season,

nightingales and owls perched on his shoulders.

And down the winding country roads

processions of wild beast,

great spotted cats, weasels, and wolves

tagged meekly at his heels, tamed by his song.

If he could reinvent those melting chords

struck from his nights of loneliness and need

that won reprieve in Hades' rancid halls,

would he rejoice again to see

the dark lord shed a cold, permissive tear?

He dared not look behind, nor could he guess

how distantly she trailed: that was the Law,

senseless and cruel, but still

the Law, imposing separate silences

on two who struggled up the fetid slope,

gasping for breath, through swirls of sulphur clouds

that parted to reveal, in oozing light,

covens of Harpies roosting on the walls,

and smoldering on the rock-strewn course ahead

bonfires that seemed to plead with writhing arms.

At the blackened gate, a single step removed

from sunlight, birdcalls, and the heady air

he waited for her to join him

and to catch his hand, perhaps to murmur

the lost, impetuous, redemptive word.

Instead he heard her shrill, inhuman wail,

a tunnel-echo locked into his ears,

the cry of souls unsuited for this life,

having been touched by evil past forgiveness.

Yes, he had turned, as anybody would,

as certainly she knew he would, and saw her,

in that instant she was whisked away,

clawing at the shawl that hid her from the world

to show him the ravaged face of all farewells

and the blank pennies of her defeated eyes.

As he sat in the dark, in the shuttered house,

Orpheus heard the women hooting in the street

outside, raving against him, blaming him

for their sister's loss. Apollo's priceless gift

lay dusty at his feet, so much a part of him

he wondered why its strings did not crack for grief.

How could he deny that frenzied mob,

not to be assuaged except by blood,

when his own heart cried worse?

He listened for the trampling on the stairs.

- Stanley Kunitz

LOUIS KARCHIN (1951- )--- 2001 winner of both a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Barlow Endowment Commission, has received significant acclaim for a compositional portfolio of over 50 works. The Academy, in its most recent citation to the composer, singled out the "unparalleled

sense of line and unity" in Karchin's music. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and Harvard University; his principal teachers have included Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Fred Lerdahl, and Earl Kim. At the conclusion of his first summer at Tanglewood, Karchin was awarded the center's prestigious Koussevitzky Tanglewood Award. Karchin became Assistant Professor of Music at New York University in 1979, and is now Professor of Music in NYU's Faculty of Arts and Science, directing an advanced graduate program in composition, which he organized in 1989.

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:

L. JONATHAN COLLINS began dancing at The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts at the age of 18. After graduating, he studied under Stefan Wenta (Warsaw Opera), John Magnus (Joffrey Ballet School), David Howard, Fabrice Herrault, and Lupe Serrano. Professional credits include The Dance Theatre of Harlem, Connecticut Ballet, Florida Ballet, and The Grand Rapids Ballet Company. Currently, Mr. Collins dances for The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, The Rebecca Kelly Ballet in New York City, and is a guest artist for the Joffrey Ensemble Dance Company.

DOMINIC INFERRERA (Baritone) is enjoying great success in many regional opera companies across the country. He won critical acclaim in the role of The Son in Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters in Search of an Author with Opera Festival of New Jersey, where Opera News noted that "Taking over the role of the Son after rehearsals for Weisgall's opera had begun, baritone Dominic Inferrera sang strongly." Other roles with Opera Festival have included Moralès (Carmen), Sciarrone (Tosca), Wagner (Faust), Nicholas (Vanessa), Marquis d'Obigny (La Traviata), and The Keeper of the Madhouse (The Rake's Progress). Recent engagements include Lescaut in Opera Memphis's production of Manon Lescaut with soprano Kallen Esperian, and Guglielmo in Capital City Opera's acclaimed intimate setting of Così fan Tutte.

ANGELA JONES (dancer/choreographer/aerialist) in New York City who is known for her "powerful stage presence" and "wild energy" (NY Times) as well as her "compelling images" (Backstage). She has performed at venues Uptown (Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall) to Downtown (Joyce SoHo) throughout the United States, and Worldwide from Holland to Mexico. She has had the privilege of collaborating with all kinds of artists, among them prima ballerina assoluta Eva Evdokimova and tapper Barbara Duffy. She has also received support from Manhattan Community Arts Fund and the Meet the Composer Fund.

As a professional aerialist, she works as part of the duo act, Luminosity, performing their silk artistry at commercial venues around the globe. She graduated from Stanford University in Sociology, and is happy to be back in the Bay Area performing again.

RUFUS OLIVIER (bassoon) is the principal bassoonist with the San Francisco Opera, and the San Francisco Ballet. He was bassoonist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Olivier has been guest soloist with numerous orchestras throughout the country and Japan, premiered new works for the bassoon and was featured in live radio recitals in Los Angeles. As well as being a member of the opera and ballet, he is also a founding member of the Anchor Chamber Players, The Midsummer Mozart Orchestra, and the Stanford Wind Quintet and has recorded many movie, video, CD and TV soundtracks including Disney’s "Never Cry Wolf" and San Francisco Opera’s Grammy nominated CD Orphee et Euydice and won a Grammy for the soundtrack Elmo in Grouchland

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 has included 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.

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.

DAVID TANENBAUM (Guitar) is recognized internationally as an outstanding performing and recording artist, a charismatic educator, and a transcriber and editor of both taste and intelligence, and is one of the most admired classical guitarists of his generation. He has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, the former Soviet Union, and Asia, and in 1988 he became the first American guitarist to be invited to perform in China by the Chinese government. He has been soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, the Oakland Symphony, and Vienna's ORF orchestra, with such eminent conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kent Nagano.

LISA WEISS (Violin) A Bay area native, Weiss has earned international recognition as a chamber musician, including awards in the Portsmouth and Coleman competitions, and as a participant in the Marlboro Festival. She performs as concertmaster and soloist with Philharmonia Baroque, 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.