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Program Notes
enter data sequence (2022)
Kevin Day (b.1996)
Program Note:
Written for The Estrella Consort saxophone quartet, enter data sequence is a high-energy contemporary work that depicts a series of codes that quickly run through an electronic computer system, allowing for that complex system to execute its tasks seamlessly. The “codes” used in the quartet are brought to life by utilizing a twelve-tone matrix, going through each row in a myriad of directions and combinations.
Composer Bio:
Kevin Day (b. 1996) is an internationally acclaimed composer, conductor, and jazz pianist based in San Diego, California. Known for his exuberant, introspective, and groove-oriented composition style, Mr Day’s music fuses genres such as jazz, contemporary classical, R&B, Soul, and more. He has been performed by some of the world’s top instrumental soloists, wind bands, chamber ensembles, and symphony orchestras. He has composed over 250 works, nine concerti, and has had performances throughout the United States, Canada, Austria, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and more.
Mr. Day is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship for Music Composition, a winner of the BMI Composer Award, the TCU Alumni Outstanding Young Professional Award, a three-time ASCAP Morton Gould Finalist, a finalist for the ABA Sousa-Oswald Award, and a finalist for the NBA Revelli Award. His most recent works include his acclaimed Concerto for Wind Ensemble, as well as a double concerto for trombone and piano entitled Departures, which will be premiered later this year by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Cincinnati Opera recently announced the launch of The Black Opera Project, a ground-breaking three-opera commissioning initiative that engages Black creators to develop new works celebrating Black stories. Mr. Day’s original opera, LALOVAVI: An Afro-Futurist opera in Three Acts, will be the first work to be featured.
A native of Arlington, Texas, Mr. Day holds degrees from Texas Christian University (TCU), the University of Georgia, and is ABD completing his doctorate in composition from the University of Miami Frost School of Music. He has studied composition with Dorothy Hindman, Charles Norman Mason, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Emily Koh, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Neil Anderson-Himmelspach.
Variations saxophoniques
pour quatuor de saxophones (1939)
Fernande Decruck (1896 - 1954)
Movements:
I. Andante espressivo
II. Stesso Tempo, molto espressivo e sostenuto
IV. Come prima (con flessibilita, senza rigore)
V. Allegro moderato energico
VI. Allegro ma non troppo
VII. Lento espressivo (molto cantando)
VIII. Tempo flessibile e vivo di filatosa
XII. Fugue - Allegro moderato con ritmo
Visit the link below to learn more about Fernande Decruck
Flight of Icarus (2012)
Stacy Garrop (b.1969)
Program Notes:
One of the first pieces I composed was a short saxophone quartet named Soaring Eagle. I was eighteen and played the alto saxophone in high school, so it was quite natural to write a piece that my marching band classmates could play. While that early work has long been forgotten, I have always remembered feeling exhilarated at hearing those four saxophones dipping and weaving around each other as they played the piece's main theme. When the Capitol Quartet commissioned me for a new work, I decided to revisit the topic of soaring, to see if I could capture the essence of exhilaration once again. Additionally, I recently wrote a choir piece on the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. One of the poems, Not They Who Soar, came to mind as I began this piece; the haunting theme of that setting serves as the basis for the musical material.
Flight of Icarus is based on the Greek legend of Daedalus, an architect and engineer, and his son Icarus. On the island of Crete, Daedalus had built a maze for King Minos. Minos imprisoned a Minotaur (a half-bull, half-human creature) within the maze and annually sacrificed fourteen Athenians to the creature. Being an Athenian himself, Daedalus was upset with this arrangement and helped another king to successfully navigate the maze and kill the Minotaur. Minos sent his army after Daedalus in retaliation, but Daedalus was prepared. He and his son Icarus affixed wings crafted of wax and feathers to their backs and took to the sky. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too low, so the waters would not weigh down the feathers, nor too high for the sun to melt the wax. Icarus, however, was so elated with the thrill of flying that he drew too close to the sun. The wax melted, and Icarus fell to his watery demise.
Flight of Icarus consists of two movements. Icarus Ascending follows Icarus' flight toward the sun and subsequent fall; Daedalus Mourns depicts a father's grief for his lost
son.
-S.G.
Composer Bio:
Dr. Stacy Garrop is an award-winning, internationally recognized freelance composer and lecturer whose music is centered on dramatic and lyrical storytelling. Her catalog covers a wide range of genres, with works for orchestra, opera, oratorio, wind ensemble, choir, art song, and various sized chamber ensembles. Dr. Garrop has received numerous awards and grants including an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fromm Music Foundation Grant, Barlow Prize, and three Barlow Endowment commissions. Notable commissions include Forging Steel for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Battle for the Ballot for the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Goddess Triptych for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Berko’s Journey for the Omaha Symphony, Forged by the Sea for the U.S. Navy Band, The Transformation of Jane Doe for Chicago Opera Theater, In a House Besieged for The Crossing, Give Me Hunger for Chanticleer, Glorious Mahalia for the Kronos Quartet, Rites for the Afterlife for the Akropolis and Calefax Reed Quintets, and My Dearest Ruth for voice and piano with text by the husband of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Dr. Garrop has served as the featured composer of the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival and the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival, as well as a mentor composer for the Cabrillo Conductors/Composers Workshop, LunART Festival Composers Hub, and Chicago a cappella’s HerVoice Emerging Women Choral Composers Competition. She was the inaugural Emerging Opera Composer for Chicago Opera Theater’s Vanguard Program (2018-2020), and Composer-in-Residence with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, funded by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras (2016-2019).
Theodore Presser Company publishes her works. Her music is frequently recorded by Cedille Records, with works commercially available on several additional labels. For more information, please visit her website at www.garrop.com
Nocturne for saxophone quartet (2021)
Zhou Tian (b.1981)
Program Notes:
Nocturne is a chorale for saxophone quartet conceived on a cold, winter night. Lyrical and reflective, the music carries a strong sense of romanticism, and strives to convey a sense of spiritual bliss. The piece was originally written as a middle movement of my first string quartet.
— Zhou Tian
Composer Bio:
Grammy-nominated Chinese-American composer Zhou Tian (JOH TEE-en) seeks inspiration from different cultures and strives to mix them seamlessly into a musically satisfying combination for performers and audience alike. The Wall Street Journal states his works “accomplish two important things: They remind us of how we got from there to here, and they refine that history by paying belated tribute to contributors who might otherwise be forgotten.”
His music — described as “absolutely beautiful…utterly satisfying” (Fanfare), “stunning” (the Cincinnati Enquirer), and “a prime example of 21st-century global multiculturalism” — has been performed by leading orchestras and performers in the United States and abroad, such as Jaap Van Zweden, Yuja Wang, Manfred Honeck, Long Yu, the New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony, “The President’s Own” US Marine Band, Dover Quartet, and Shanghai Symphony, where he recently served as the Artist-in-Residence. His Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned and recorded by Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony, earned him a GRAMMY Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2018, making him the first Chinese-born composer and the second Asian composer (following Tōru Takemitsu) honored in that category. In 2019, Beijing Music Festival named him “Artist of the Year.” In 2022, he became the first Asian-American composer to win the coveted Sousa-ABA-Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association for Sinfonia.
Born into a musical family in 1981 in Hangzhou, China, Zhou moved to the US when he was 19. Trained at the Curtis Institute (B.M.), the Juilliard School (M.M.), and the University of Southern California (D.M.A.), he studied with some of America’s finest composers, such as Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Rouse, and Stephen Hartke. He is professor of composition at Michigan State University.
Worthless (2018)
Part III: Retrospect and Conclusion: The Dilemmas of Heroism
What is the Heroic Individual?
Jeffrey Loeffert (b.1982)
Program Notes:
This composition serves as my musical representation of the ideas that were conveyed by Ernest Becker in the book titled The Denial of Death. Facing the nearness of death himself, Becker gifts his philosophy that human behavior is shaped by our need to deny the terror of death in a world where we all must inevitably die. For this reason,
humans invest their lives searching for immortality. We create a hero system in which we will survive death by
engaging in something of lasting worth.
"This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings,
an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression--and with all this yet to die." - Ernest Becker
Composer Bio:
Jeffrey Loeffert serves as Professor and Director of the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech and Executive Director of The College Music Society. Loeffert previously served as Director of the Michael and Anne Greenwood School of Music at Oklahoma State University.
Loeffert is a very active chamber musician. As a founding member of the h2 quartet, Loeffert has won numerous chamber music prizes including First Place at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, First Place at the North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition, and First Place at the Union Française des Artistes Musiciens Chamber Music Competition (France), among others. Loeffert is featured on seventeen commercially available discs and a DVD, as well as on a PBS television episode of Backstage Pass. His recording of Groove Canon by Marc Mellits was recently used as the monologue theme music for the Broadway show The Heidi Chronicles, starring Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) and Jason Biggs (Orange is the New Black).
Loeffert graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Music double major in Saxophone Performance and Jazz Studies. At Northwestern, Loeffert received the Program Honors Award for his graduating class. A Frank Huntington Beebe Scholar, Loeffert studied in Paris at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise where he received the Médaille d'Or à l'Unanimité - Saxophone, and the Médaille d'Or à l'Unanimité - Musique de Chambre. Loeffert also studied at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt where he received the diploma Cycle d'Orientation Professionnel. Loeffert completed graduate studies at Michigan State University (MSU) as the recipient of a University Distinguished Fellowship. He received a Master of Music degree and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Saxophone Performance as well as a Master of Music degree in Music Theory Pedagogy. At MSU, he was awarded the Paul Harder Award for music theory and composition.
Loeffert is a Yamaha and Vandoren Performing Artist and plays exclusively on Yamaha saxophones and Vandoren reeds, mouthpieces, and ligatures.
Quietly Revealed (2018)
Marilyn Shrude (b. 1946)
Program Note:
Quietly Revealed was written in memory of my teacher Alan Stout who died in February 2018. Stout was an unassuming individual, whose vast knowledge of music served to inspire a generation of composers who worked under his guidance at Northwestern University. Deeply embedded in the harmonic fabric of the piece is a chord progression from his Suite for Saxophone and Organ (1973) written for the wedding of John Sampen and Marilyn Shrude. Quietly Revealed was premiered in July 2018 at the World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb, Croatia by John Sampen, Brianna Buck, Claire Salli, Drew Hosler and Jonathan Kierspe.
Composer Bio:
The music of composer Marilyn Shrude is characterized by its warmth and lyricism, rich timbre, multi-layered constructions, and complex blend of tonality and atonality. The result is a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world that is at once both powerful and fragile. Her concentration on color and the natural resonance of spaces, as well as her strong background in Pre-Vatican II liturgical music, give the music its linear, spiritual, and quasi-improvisational qualities.
Shrude received degrees from Alverno College and Northwestern University, where she studied with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. Among her more prestigious honors are those from the Guggenheim Foundation (2011 Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America/ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Sorel Foundation (Medallion Winner for Choral Music 2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music (1984) and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music (1998). Her work for saxophone and piano, Renewing the Myth, was the required piece for the 150 participants of the 3rd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Belgium (2002).
Active as a composer, pianist, teacher, and contemporary music advocate, Shrude has consistently promoted American music through her many years as founder and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music (1987-99) and as chair of the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory at Bowling Green State University (1998-2011). She joined the faculty of BGSU in 1977, has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory and Heidelberg College, and was a faculty member and chair of the Composition and Theory Department at the Interlochen Arts Camp (1990-97). She has received four Dean’s Awards for Service and for the Promotion of Contemporary Music on the Campus of BGSU (1994, 1999, 2005, 2011) and a 2008 BGSU Chair/Director Leadership Award. In 2001 she was named a Distinguished Artist Professor of Music. Together with saxophonist, John Sampen, she has premiered, recorded and presented hundreds of works by living composers both in the United States and abroad.
Shrude’s compositions have been recorded for New World, Albany, Azica, MMC, Capstone, Orion, Centaur, Neuma, Access, and Ohio Brassworks, and are published by C. F. Peters, Editions Henry Lemoine (Paris), American Composers Alliance, Neue Musik Verlag Berlin, Southern Music, and Thomas House. She has had the honor to work with the impressive musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fromm Music Series, St. Louis Orchestra Chamber Series, Brave New Works, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Icicle Creek Trio, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ravenna Festival, Music Today, Spectrum Trio, Lost Dog Ensemble, Ryoanji Duo, Studio for New Music of the Moscow Conservatory, Flexible Music, CORE Ensemble, Duo Montagnard, Azmari String Quartet, Chicago Saxophone Quartet, New Music Chicago, Quatuor Apollinaire, Tower Brass, Masterworks Choral and Voices of Ascension. Her works for orchestra, wind symphony and choir have led to collaborations with conductors such as Emily Freeman Brown, Yuval Zaliouk, Stefan Sanderling, Andrew Massey, John Paynter, Robert Spano, Henry Charles Smith, Christophe Changnard, Kate Tamarkin, Steven Smith, Ed London, Bruce Moss, Mark Kelly, Steven Gage, Octavio Mas-Arocas, Grzegorz Nowak, Janna Himes, Robert Fitzpatrick, Vladimir Valek and Dennis Keene. Works featuring soloists have lead to rich opportunities with distinguished leaders in the field: saxophonists John Sampen, Frederick Hemke, Donald Sinta, Jean-Marie Londeix, Jean-Michel Goury (to mention but a few); sopranos Julia Bentley, Ekaterina Kicheegina, Ann Corrigan, Dawn Padula; violinists Maria Sampen, Stephen Miahky, Timothy Christie, Miranda Cuckson, Movses Pogossian, Jennifer Caine, Ioana Galu; flutists Judith Bentley, Nina Assimakopoulos; oboist Jacqueline Leclair; tubists Velvet Brown, Ben Pierce, Charles Guy; organists Karel Paukert, Emma Lou Diemer; pianists Robert Satterlee, Winston Choi, Hugh Hinton, Anne-Marie McDermott, Joan Tower; cellists Katri Ervamaa, Norbert Lewandowski, Andrea Yun, Andrew Mark; and percussionist Michael Parola. Guest appearances as a pianist and composer include tours to Russia, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Canada, South America, and Armenia, as well as numerous performances in the United States.
Octet for Saxophones (2000)
Jun Nagao (b. 1964)
Program Note:
Octet for Saxophones was written for a joint concert with the Aurelia Quartet from the Netherlands, commissioned by the Trouvere Quartet. It was composed in October 2000 and premiered in Amsterdam that December, followed by performances in Tokyo and Hiroshima.
The composition is not for eight saxophones because of this background; it is written for two quartets (S.A.T.B). Imagine a scenario from the distant past where two groups of traveling musicians meet on a street corner. They decide to perform together and engage in a friendly competition, each trying not to be outdone by the other. As they play, they get drawn into each other's music, and this intensifies their passion for the performance. I wrote with such a scene in mind, and I hope that the joy of ensemble playing is felt above all else when it is performed.
(Jun Nagao)
Composer Bio:
Born in 1964 in Ibaraki Prefecture, Nagao graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music, where he also completed postgraduate work. He studied composition with Masayuki Nagatomi and Teruyuki Noda, and received the 2000 Toru Takemitsu Award and the 24th Japan Symphony Foundation composition award.
Noteworthy compositions include four commissions from Yamaha Symphonic Band: “Nami no Ho”, “Souten no
Shizuku”, “La lumineuse du vent vert” and “Fluttering Maple Leaves”; wind works “Symphony”, “Réminiscence”, “Der Glücksdrache”, “The other garden” (euphonium and band), “Die Heldenzeit” (alto saxophone and band), and “Symbiosis” (trumpet and band); orchestral music “Mille courants qui rentrent”, “L'été - L'oubli rouge”, “Le printemps - L'illusion bleue”, “L'automne - La permanance blanche”; chamber music “Octet” (saxophone), and solo music “La lune en Paradis” and “Futarishizuka”.
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