| Tuesday, August 28, 2001, 8 pm | back | |
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Janacek Conservatory, Concert Hall Soloists of the Ostrava Center For New Music Thomas Buckner, Baritone (USA) Erin Flannery, Soprano (USA) Vítězslav Kuznik, Violin (Czech Republic) Lenka Zupkova, Violin (Czech Republic) Dusan Ondruska, Viola (Czech Republic) Pavel Kuznik, Viola (Czech Republic) Jan Haliska, Violoncello (Czech Republic) Juho Laitinen,Violoncello (Finland) Ariane Lallemand, Violoncello (France) Eniko Ginzery, Cimbalom (Slovakia) Joseph Kubera, Piano (USA) Petr Kotík, Conductor (USA) |
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Thomas Buckner, baritone, has been recognized for his varied accomplishments over the past 30 years as a leading performer, producer and promoter, of some of the most creative and challenging music of our time. He has performed his own concerts, as well as in association with a large number of ensembles, throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.Buckner's interest in the study and practices of improvisation has lead him to establish ongoing, long-term relationships with many prominent improvisation oriented performers from a wide range of backgrounds. In addition to his work with these distinguished colleagues, Buckner has also pursued his own course of self-discovery by developing a series of solo voice improvisations. These works, which continually evolve, have been performed live in concert in a variety of settings, as well as recorded.
Soprano Erin Flannery was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, earning a bachelors degree in Vocal Performance in 1998. For the past two years Erin has lived in New York City, singing regularly in concert and recital both in the United States and Europe. She recently completed a recital tour of Italy with Mikael Eliason and Joan Patenaude of the Curtis Institute of Music, and has sung numerous opera roles of composers such as Britten, Menotti, Rossini and Kurt Weill. Vitezslav Kuznik was born in Ostrava. He is a well known violinist, playing both solo and chamber music. He is a Prof. at Janacek Conservatory and teaches at University of Ostrava. He is a member of Musici Moravienses chamber ensemble and the soloist of Janacek Chamber Orchestra. Lenka Zupkova studied in Ostrava, Brno and Hannover and works as violinist playing classical, contemporary, improvisations and jazz music throughout Europe. -L. Zupkova Dusan Ondruska is a Prof. at Janacek Conservatory in Ostrava. He is well known as a performer of contemporary music playing both solo and chamber music. Pavel Kuznik is a member of the Janacek Philharmonic and Camerata Janacek Chamber Orchestra. He graduated in Janacek Conservatory and Studied University of Ostrava. Jan Haliska is a member of Musici Moravienses chamber ensemble. He has premiered number of contemporary music pieces for example Cello Concerto by Cestmír Gregor. He teaches cello at Universitz of Ostrava. He is a Director of the Janacek Philharmonic. Juho Laitinen graduated from the conservatory of Turku, Finland in 2000 and is currently commencing his studies with Jerome Pernoo at the Royal College of Music in London. Juho enjoys playing music of diverse genres and frequently performs with leading Scandinavian jazz musicians. With his own ensemble "group seven" he often plays with improvising dancers . When not playing, Juho's interests also include musicals and cooking. -J. Laitinen Born in Besancon, France, Ariane Lallemand has studied at the Paris and Boulogne Conservatoires, and at the Freiburg Musikhochschule with Christoph Henkel. In 1993 she won a full scholarship to further her studies at the Mannes College in New York, studying with Timothy Eddy. Ariane has given solo performances with numerous orchestras and has been a prizewinner in the Epernay Cello Competition, the Cologne Sonata Competition and the Five Towns Competition of New York. She has also won the UFAM competition in Paris, the Mendelssohn Competition, the Special Award at the Epernay Competition, the "Bourse Lavoisier" from the French Ministry of Culture and the Mannes Concerto Competition, from which her performance of the Elgar concerto was broadcast on WQXR New York. As an orchestral musician, she has played under the baton of Bernhard Haitink, Carlo Maria Guilini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Mstislav Rostropovitch, and is a regular member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain under Pierre Boulez. In America, she plays with the New York Metamorphoses orchestra, the SEM New Music Ensemble and the Jupiter Symphony, among others. Eniko Ginzery is a virtuoso dulcimerist. She graduated the Musical Conservatory in Bratislava and at the Academy of Ferenc Liszt in Budapest, Hungary. with Prof. Ludmila Dadaková, and Ilona Gerencser Szeverényi. In 1995 she obtained award as the best participant of the International Youth Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Three consecutive years she participated in interpretation courses given by Gyorgy Kurtag in Szombathely, Hungary. In 1997 Eniko Ginzery became the absolute winner/laureate of International Dulcimer Competition in Valasske Mezirici. Since 1995 Eniko has performed regularly in Europe as a solist or with orchestra. She plays chamber music with various musical instruments (harpsichord, clarinet, flute, harp, piano, string instruments, shakuhatchi) and her singer. repertoire includes pieces/compositions of medival, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary composers. She became universal interpreter of old and contemporary music. Surprising sound and expression possibilites of dulcimer and Eniko's astonishing virtuoshity inspired many contemporary composers to create original pieces for this instrument. Eniko's Ginzery regularly participates in introduction of new compositions of domestic and foregin composers as I.Zeljenka, J.Benes,J.Pospisil, Ch.Meijering and D. Biro. Hailed by Village Voice critic Kyle Gann as one of "new music's most valued performers," pianist Joseph Kubera has gained international renown as a major interpreter of contemporary music. Recently he appeared as soloist at the New England Conservatory, at MELA Foundation's Memorial Concerts of music of Richard Maxfield and Terry Jennings in New York, and with Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin. He has performed at major festivals in the U.S. and Europe and has been awarded grants through the NEA Solo Recitalist Program, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and other arts organizations. A leading proponent of the music of John Cage, he is one of the few pianists performing the difficult works from the 50s through the 70s; he has recorded the complete Music of Changes and the Piano Concert, and has toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Cage's invitation. Joseph a core member of S.E.M. Ensemble, the Downtown Ensemble and Roscoe Mitchell's New Chamber Ensemble, and he has performed with a broad range of New York ensembles. He has worked closely with such composers as Anthony Coleman, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, La Monte Young and "Blue" Gene Tyranny. Solo recordings include Cage's Music of Changes on Lovely Music and Cowell's Nine Ings on New Albion. He has also recorded for the Wergo, O.O. Discs, 1750 Arch and Opus One labels. Gyorgy Kurtag was born in 1926 to Hungarian parents in Romania. He graduated in piano and chamber music at Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and later studied composition with Sandor Veress and Ferenc Farkas, piano with Pal Kadosa and chamber music with Leo Weiner. In 1967 he became a Professor at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest where he teaches till 1993. Kurtag has been awarded by many prestigious prizes in Europe and has been invited to teach in Paris, Berlin and Vienna. In 1999 Kurtag was invited for two years stay in Paris by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Conservatoire of Paris, the Cite de la Musique, and the Festival d'Automne a Paris. Alvin Lucier about his piece Fruits and Vegetables - As a remembrance of exquisite meal we had in Prague's Maly Buddha restaurant with Joseph Kubera and Thomas Buckner and as a gesture to their passionate vegetarianism, I decided to use as my shapes a collection of fruits and vegetables. In the early Sixties in Venice, while on a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy, I had encountered the paintings of Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli (b. Milan 1527) and had been entranced by the beauty and richness of the fruits and vegetables that often framed his paintings. I am reminded, too, of Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's Vegetable Garden (c. 1590) in which a bowl of vegetables, when viewed upside down, becomes a face with a hat. I am aware of the ridicule I may encounter for using such a title, but I will use it nonetheless. First I traced each vegetable and measured it lengthwise and vertically, getting a rough idea of its size. For each inch along its length I apportioned four measures of 4/4 time. For example, the red pepper, lying on its side, measured 5", producing a 20 -measure piece. At a tempo of a quarter note equals 52", I got a 1:36" song. I used the height of each as a rough guide, or sometimes not at all, to the range of the sweeps. The pepper was about 3" at its widest; I started with a 3-octave spread. It had a bulge along its length, so I drew two horizontal ridges outlining that bulge, at not quite equidistant intervals --two minor sixths, a fifth apart. There are four oscillator tones, then: two for the outline of the shape-F 87.3 cps on the bottom, F 349 on top-and two for the ridges-D146.8 and A 220. The outside tones sweep inward at slightly different speeds; the inner ones at about half those speeds, for over a minute, then abruptly curve into a perfect fourth at the end of the piece. In general, if an object showed no horizontal lines or striations, I simply drew an outline of the shape. If it had lines, I used that number of oscillator tones. For example, the celery stalk had twelve horizontal lines along its length; correspondingly, I used twelve oscillators. Jean-Yves Bosseur was born in Paris in 1947. He studied composition at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne (Germany) with K.Stockhausen and H.Pousseur and received Doctorate in Philosophy of Art at University of Paris I. Bosseur is a Director of Research at C.N.R.S. and musicology teacher at University of Paris IV. Besides that he is a producer at Radio-France. Jean-Yves Bosseur said about his work: "Each piece represents, for me, a new research. I begin a piece by analyzing, as strictly as possible, the conditions which are given by instrumentation, the type of form I wish to develope. It usually takes a long time for me to mature a score. I compose my music without trying to make it attractive. I have musical convictions and would of course like to transmit them to the audience. But without forcing anything or anyone. One of these conviction is to invite people to live in a certain complexity, which becomes rarer and rarer in our 'society of divertimento'. For each new score, I have a priority ; construction is one of them. But it can also be the communication between the musicians, the discovery of acoustic fields, the relation with another form of music (ancient, traditional) I should wish to explore…My compositions are the consequences of the multiple interests that I cross in my life, especially in relationship with the different arts. Once more, each piece of mine has its specific basis and I don't exclude any point of view. I only demand that this basis should be out of academic conventions". Sonata for Cello and Piano was commissioned by Ariane Lallemand in the Fall of 2000 for her concert at the Greenwich House Music School on February 8, 2001. The approximately 20 minute piece was composed in January 2001. Like other Petr Kotík's works for solo instruments, the music follows a linear concept of independent lines, organized according to a graphically sketched plan. The unifying element is a pulse to which all durations are related. The exception is a coda (solo cello). His compositional method is largely based on the relationship between random occurrences and conscious control and can be described as a game in which regulated chance leads to situations that require controlled compositional steps. Earle Brown's Special Events for cello and piano was completed in 1999, in Leipzig. As a result of Dorothea von Albrecht and Christine Olbrich recording Music for Cello and Piano (1954-55) earlier, they requested and produced a commission for a new work. Unlike the Music for Cello and Piano , Brown did not make a highly prganized "pre-compositional plan"; he very much composed Special Events in an extremely spontaneous and intuitive manner. Like several other works in his ouvre it is a kind of "stream of consciousness"; instantly imagined and notated work. For most of Brown's works, especially large works, he does a great deal of pre-conpositional sketching and structuring. This is an example of taking instant dictation from himself and writing it down. He thinks that it has that kind of "free" feeling. |