The 24th annual meeting of the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium showcases original graduate scholarship and performances, seeking to interrogate “Music(s) at the Margins” of graduate study.
MGMC 2020 Concert
by The Center for New Music Ensemble
David Gompper, director
Friday, March 6, 2020 at 6:30p in the Concert Hall
View: Post Concert Group Photo
Program
Quarrel (2019) YoungJun LEE
Adrian Gomez, violoncello
brunetto (2018) Baldwin GIANG
Luciana Hontila, violin I
Joshua Palazzolo, violin II
Donghee Han, viola
Adrian Gomez, violoncello
Fernanda Lastra, conductor
Ripples in Infinity (2017) Daniel WHITWORTH
Ana Maria Locke, clarinet
Luciana Hontila, violin
Adrian Gomez, violoncello
Anthony Capparelli, piano
Nick Miller, percussion
Fernanda Lastra, conductor
Quiet Whirlpool (2019) Zhengtong XU
Ana Maria Locke, clarinet
Karina Glasinovic, piano
Sabrina Gatfrick and Nick Miller, percussion
Luciana Hontila, violin I
Joshua Palazzolo, violin II
Donghee Han, viola
Adrian Gomez, violoncello
Fernanda Lastra, conductor
Leidenfrost: More Than a Cold Shoulder (2019) Matt MASON [BIO]
Ana Maria Locke, clarinet
Irene Tang, horn
Ciarra Krist, trumpet
Tom Kelly, trombone
David Mercedes, tuba
Anthony Capparelli, piano
Luciana Hontila, violin I
Joshua Palazzolo, violin II
Donghee Han, viola
Adrian Gomez, violoncello
Garrett Hilliard, double bass
Fernanda Lastra, conductor
Program Notes
YoungJun Lee
Quarrel
Quarrel - When I was writing this piece, I was really interested in the patterns that I found during a quarrel. Between lovers or any two people, arguments or quarrels started with very small topics. When quarreling gets intense, people started yelling each other and becoming absurd. They brought many different topics from the past that are not even related to the topic of quarrel. The more they argue, the more they started not listening to each other. Most of the time, one of the person leaves the conversation because he or she found out that it doesn't make any sense to continue the conversation. This piece doesn't contain specific contents of conversation. Instead, it is more focused on the format or pattern of quarreling.
Baldwin Giang
brunetto
brunetto - The allegorical arc of Dante Aligheri's masterwork The Inferno is towards a complete rejection of sin, which Dante achieves by representing famous sinners in Hell from across his account of history, as well as his personal life. As Dante descends further into Hell, so does he show more open contempt for those he encounters. The most notable bend in this trajectory can be found in Canto XV, when Dante encounters the sodomites in the seventh circle. Gazing across a burning hot desert on which Dante's afflicted are punished to walk for eternity without stopping, Dante is approached by a familiar face—Ser Brunetto Latini, his former schoolmaster, mentor, and known homosexual in Florence. Dante bestows upon Latini the most respect given to anyone in Hell, calling him a radiance among men," and remarks on his profound gratitude for Latini's example as a poet, thanking him for teaching him "how man makes himself eternal." Scholars have argued that given his treatment of Latini, the relatively light punishment of sodomites compared to other groups of sinners in a similar depth of Hell, Dante held relatively progressive views toward homosexuality for his time.
brunetto takes the complex emotional content of this exchange between Dante and Latini as its starting point. Dante shows remarkable tenderness towards his former mentor, yet ultimately still casts him down. Dante pays tribute to Latini and simultaneously immortalizes him in history as someone who deeply violated his religious code. The way Dante finds the familiar and ultimately love for the other in an encounter with a group of people who hold divergent ethical and religious views is a practice that reaches across history to find relevance in our current political situation. Rather than attempting a programmatic depiction of this scene from Dante, brunetto seeks to stage an encounter with the other with similarly nuanced emotional content for the contemporary concert hall.
Baldwin is a graduate of Yale University, earning a B.A. with Honors in both Music and Political Science, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, earning a M.A. as a Regents Fellow. He has been awarded the Fondation Maurice Ravel’s Prix Ravel, New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Prize, Yale’s Beekman Cannon Friends Prize, and the University of Pennsylvania’s David Halstead Prize. Baldwin is currently a PhD student and fellow at the University of Chicago, where he is studying with Anthony Cheung and Sam Pluta. His previous teachers have included Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Kathryn Alexander, Konrad Kaczmarek, Michael Klingbeil, and Stephen Gorbos.
Daniel Whitworth
Ripples in Infinity
Ripples in Infinity is inspired by the paintings of Lee Krasner, who was an innovative and influential abstract-expressionist painter. She was a brilliant artist, but her career was often compromised by her role as ‘supportive wife’ to Jackson Pollock, as well as by the male-dominated art world. During her lifetime, Krasner found herself being ignored and devalued despite her invaluable contributions to the abstract-expressionist movement. This piece is a celebration of Krasner and depicts one of her most iconic paintings, Shattered Color. This painting is striking to me because of its seemingly infinite layers – on the surface it’s vibrant and colorful, but underneath, there are glimpses of something dark and stormy with an almost unyielding intensity. Contrastingly, the vivid pinks and yellows dancing across the foreground have a whimsical, playful character to them. Ripples in Infinity portrays the splattering of paint onto the canvas and the multitude of different characters that weave in and out of the painting’s ostensibly endless texture. It also tells the story of a woman, who like so many others, had to struggle to build the timeless legacy that she deserved.
In the summer of 2019, Daniel served as the composer-in-residence at the Lake George Music Festival after his piece Ripples in Infinity won the Lake George Composition Competition. Other recent awards include being selected in the 2019 Verdant Vibes and 2019 What Is Noise Call for Scores and winning first prize in both the 2018 Frost International Composition Competition and the 2018 Wisconsin Alliance for Composers Composition Contest. Daniel’s music has been recently performed by groups such as the NOW Ensemble, Verdant Vibes, What Is Noise, Ensemble Ibis, Else If Else, and the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble.
Daniel is working towards a master’s degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University with a major in both Composition and Scoring for Film and Multimedia.
Zhengtong Xu
Quiet Whirlpool
Quiet Whirlpool - People cannot forecast when a whirlpool will emerge on the surface of the sea. Before it arrives, we do not know how deep or how large the whirlpool will be, even if it looks still and quiet. In this piece, I use several tonal centers with their neighbors to describe the soft water ripples, and change the density of sounds and rhythms to describe how the ripples of water breathe. After some time, water ripples become stronger and stronger. At this point, the music becomes more rhythmic, continuous, and powerful to show the strong water ripples until the climactic arrival of the whirlpool.
Matt Mason
Leidenfrost: More Than a Cold Shoulder
The Leidenfrost Effect occurs when two objects of vastly opposing temperature (one usually molten hot and one a solid or liquid) meet. The moisture instantly evaporates creating a protective field that briefly protects the second object. Leidenfrost: More Than A Cold Shoulder is an imaginative expression of this occurrence, connecting it with the idea of human connection. Often, we present barriers when meeting new people that can often result in conflict (at the most volatile) or a brief period of “warming up” to someone (at the least volatile). This work mixes the scientific and the human through the integration of extended techniques and peculiar sounds into a more traditional pitch-centric landscape, where volatility and dissonance must temper into warmer, mellowed consonance. As well, the idea of warming up is shown through the progressive slowing of the piece through a large-scale proportional ritardando, achieved through meter and tempo.