CNM Commissions and Works by UI Students
Clapp Recital Hall, Sunday, February 10, 2002, 8:00 pm

Program

Notes & Bios

MICHAEL CASH

Stile Antico

is a piece that has resulted in a process I underwent four years ago to write a large work. I wrote many themes and motives for different characters and ideas and then spun those small sketches into small chamber pieces. This piece is from themes and motives that relate to an ancient king and his hall. I wrote  Stile Anticoas a sort of courtly dance. As the title suggests, it is in the old style, so to speak. The technical use of pastiche was done for fun, I enjoyed writing this piece.

Michael Cash is a graduate composition major at the University of Iowa.

JOHN RITZ

The Sun (2001)

Presented here is the third section of a three section work entitled  The Sun.This piece was written for dance in collaboration with the choreographer Jennifer Medina. The piece was inspired by the first chapter of John Steinbeck's novel  The Grapes of Wrath.

John Ritz (b. 1978, Iowa) studies composition with Lawrence Fritts at the University of Iowa. Composing since the age of 17, he has written many works drawing upon his experience in a variety of genres, including classical, jazz, rock and improvised music. Ritz feels most inspired by the tradition of the Avant Garde, those artists that strive to explore new paths through agonizing self examination.

DIMITRI PAPAGEORGIOU

For Hermann Markus (2001)

In the past years I have composed a series of pieces based on an empirical compositional approach in an attempt to pursue "what the Greeks did not know: uncertainty." I wanted to put aside the convenience that systems, methodologies and theories provide to a composer, although I still think that they are useful exercises for the mind. For the act of composing, however, infinite time, empty space, twelve notes (more or less), memory, and desire should be more than enough.  For Hermann Markusis a similar attempt on a large scale. Those who are familiar with my music will recognize the use of repetitive patterns, faint occasional notes and temporal accents in an empty space, textural variations on one note, the abnegation of thematic/motivic elaboration, and layers of textural streams. To those I added some other features: events are occasionally called forth and dissolve in an instant and abrupt positions within the narrative of the work.

For Hermann Markusis my dissertation composition, which has haunted me for the past two years. The work is dedicated to Hermann Markus Pressl, my dearest friend and first composition teacher in Austria, who died in 1994.

GERARDO DIRIÉ

Anjo Breve for bassoon and string quintet

I had met bassoonist Benjamin Coelho in Bloomington almost a decade ago, as he was presenting some remarkable programs of contemporary Latin American works for his instrument. A frequent guest in the concerts of the Latin American Music Center, he became a good friend and an inspiring performer for all his colleagues. It has been a long time since we had been considering to collaborate artistically, and it was thanks to the commissioning program of the Center for New Music at The University of Iowa that this possibility became a reality. The background for the creation of this work includes a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987) and a  mementoto Bahian novelist Jorge Amado (1912-2001), who died on the day I started drafting the second movement. These two magical minds in the arts of Brazil provided me with two contrasting images. The Preambule (introductory movement) carries the ethereal and tender reflections of Andrade's poem  Anjo ["Angel"] ("There are moments when I become an angel / The angel is small / he does not speak, he does not tell where I come from./ He moves slow, musical.").The second movement, A Bengala Zunio no Ar ["the cane whistled in the air"]makes reference to a fight that breaks between Pedro Gordo, armed just with a thin flexible cane, and a group of gangsters and thugs in Jorge Amado's famous novel  Tent of Miracles.Although these images are very rich indeed, my hope is that the audience could simply enjoy the contrast of free flowing gestures and active, energetic, and driving music.

This composition is dedicated to Benjamin Coelho, who premiers it in tonight's concert.

A native of Cordoba, Argentina, composer Gerardo Dirié is also an accomplished conductor, performer, scholar, educator, and arts administrator.

As a composer, he has had many acclaims and performances in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. In July 1994, he was a prize-winner in the National Tribune of Electroacoustic Music in Argentina. As a result, his piece  Tu casa o este océanowas selected for performance at the 1994 International Tribune of Electroacoustic Music in Paris and at the International Tribune of Composers (UNESCO) in Finland. He received a similar award in 2000 for his  Villancico al Nacimiento,and in 1998 for his chamber work  Lo colore son amore.His choral work  Canto de Amores Entre Ausenciaswon the Honorary Mention in the NISSIM ASCAP International Composition Competition in 1993. In 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1996 he was distinguished with the Standard Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for the performance of his compositions. These included the performances of  Puerto de Cántarosby the Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra with Tania León conducting, in Town Hall, New York;  Two Impromptusfor two pianos, in Caracas, Venezuela;  El baile del quinto díafor solo violin in Spain; and a retrospective concert of his music for soloists and live electronics performed by The Hueco Ensemble in Manhattan at the Greenwich School of Music. During the most recent years his music has also been performed in India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Turkey, Colombia, Venezuela, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark.

During 1992 and 1993, he served as Associate Artist for the Indiana Repertory Theatre. As a member of the designers' team he has continued collaboration with this theater, writing the music for the stage productions of "Yerma", "The Cherry Orchard", "A Thousand Cranes", "Much Ado About Nothing", "The Magnificent Ambersons", and "An Almost Holly Picture". He co-designed and directed with choreographer Emily Stuart Acoustic Invocations and Night of the Four Moons, two successful multi-arts events. Highly favorable comments on the impact of his music have appeared in The New York Times, The Milwaukee Journal, Huizmuziek of The Netherlands, and La Voz del Interior of Argentina. His essays and poetry have been published by Pauta magazine in Mexico, McGraw Hill in New York, and Huizmuziek, in The Netherlands.

Dirié holds Master and Doctor in Music Composition degrees from Indiana University, where he studied with John Eaton and Eugene O'Brien. He came to Indiana University from Argentina in 1987 after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship and Monica Mourier Archibald Grant to study composition. Prior to coming to Indiana, he attended the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, where he earned the degree of Licenciado en Composición --the highest graduate degree offered at this institution. Whilst there, he studied composition with Atilio Argüaut;ello, Oscar Bazán, and C&ezcute;sar Franchisena. During this time he was also awarded the International Encounters in Contemporary Music Scholarship to study Contemporary Choral Music Conducting Techniques in Buenos Aires, as well as the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Scholarship to study and research on "Music and Mathematics."

CHRISTOPHER D. BRACKEL

Four Japanese Death Poems* (2001)

Christopher D. Brakel, a native of Minnesota, studied composition at the University of Minnesota, where he earned the B.A. in Music in 1999. He is currently a Master's candidate in the composition department at the University of Iowa. In 1998, he was a participant in the Czech-American Summer Music Institute held in Prague, Czech Republic, where he studied with the award winning Czech composer Ladislav Kubik. His other teachers have included Alex Lubet, Jeremy Dale Roberts, and most recently David Gompper. Brakel's music has been performed across the United States, in France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. His current research interests include musical semiotics and the relationship between music and poetry. He recently served as Co-editor of the SCI Newsletter (1999-2001) and is currently the President of the Society of Composers Student Chapter at the University of Iowa.

LEWIS NIELSON

Double (2001)

was written after the manner of a  Jeu Partie(also called  partimenor  tenzone), poetic forms of the High Middle Ages consisting of two or three sections: the first section consisted of a poem professing a particular viewpoint or asking a question calling for an answer on a courtly (secular) subject, to be provided by one or more other poets; the second section presented a response to the first poem. If necessary artistically, a third poem might attempt to resolve differences between the two poems. The present work (titled equally after the "doubles" of the Renaissance and Baroque dance movement pairs), contains two contrasting movements that are a composing out of the same basic material. The ghostliness and mournful quality of the first movement forms creates an atmosphere quite different form the robust, bravura second.

 Doublewas written on a commission from the University of Iowa Center for New Music for the Iowa Brass Quintet and is dedicated to the IBQ.

Lewis Nielson (b. 1950) studied music at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, Clark University in Massachusetts and the University of Iowa, receiving a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition in 1977. He is a member of the American Composers Alliance and his works, over ninety in number, are published by Seesaw Music Corp. and through American Composers Edition. He has received numerous grants and awards for his works, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delius Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Groupe de Music Expèrimentale de Bourges in France, and the Ibla Foundation, Sicily. He has received many commissions, including ones from the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, the University of Georgia Bicentennial Commission and from many important chamber ensembles and solo performers. His works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe. Among the more notable performances of his large works he has received have been performances by the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, the American Composer's Orchestra, the Fresno (CA) Philharmonic; and recent CD recording/performance projects with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra of Bratislava, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Tchaikovsky Symphony of Moscow Radio. His chamber music and electronic compositions are equally widely performed and recorded. He served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Georgia, where he directed the nationally recognized University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, for 21 years. In 2000, he joined the composition faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.