Third Annual Composition Festival

Exchange of MidWestern Collegiate Composers (EMCC)
Universities of Missouri-Kansas City, Colorado-Boulder and Iowa

FESTIVAL CONCERT IV

Saturday, April 14, 2012, 7:30 pm
Riverside Recital Hall (map)

Program

Program Notes

Ryan T. CONNELL

3 Dye Vignettes, for organ solo

are studies in some of the color combinations that I find most fascinating on the organ. The organ, being a self-contained orchestra, has a nearly infinite amount of sound combinations to explore. Furthermore, each organ is different. With this in mind I have registered each piece with the most common stops that are available on most professional instruments. The first and third pieces in the set are dominated by static color fields that consistently reshape themselves over time. The second piece in the set is more contrapuntal in nature employing the wide dynamic range of the organ.

Ryan T. Connell's formal education includes two summers of study at Indiana University Summer Piano Academy, and a B.M in Piano Performance and Music Composition from the University Of Louisville. He is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Music Composition at the University of Colorado Boulder. In the summer of 2000, Ryan studied in Salzburg, Austria. He focused on a critical review of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas in addition to studying German. In Spring 2004 he was invited to perform and present at the new music festival of The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland, where he premiered his trumpet ensemble piece Watta Flipt Watta. His composition for string quintet, "...her image deeply lies..." was also featured. In the past few years Ryan has focused on performing new classical music on the piano and organ.

Zach ZUBOW

Hiking the Cascade Creek Trail

The Cascade Creek hiking trail in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska sports a luscious array of natural environments that include water front beaches, forest, waterfalls, cliffs, and mountains in just four miles of hiking trails. One of the highlights of the trail are the high, dense trees that form a canyon-like atmosphere around the trail as well as the beautiful views of cliffs and waterfalls that can be seen from the trailhead at Swan Lake. Hiking the Cascade Creek Trail was inspired by this magnificent trail and represents the change in environment that is all connected by a common element. The piece calls for found, non-resonant percussion instruments to symbolize the isolation of the trail among these changing environments, while the music maintains a common theme that is developed throughout the piece.

Zach Zubow's music has been featured on many new music conferences and festivals throughout the United States and abroad. Zach was named regional winner in the 2011 SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Commission Award for his string quartet, Sundown, which also received the 2012 College Music Society Mid-Atlantic Composition Award. He has also received awards from the 2011 Five College Composition Competition and the 2012 College Music Society Southern Region's Composition Competition. Zach has received degrees from Luther College, Illinois State University and is now pursuing a PhD in music composition at The University of Iowa. For more information please visit www.zachzubow.com.

Jeff BOROWEIC

Variations on F

LOSERS (after Leonard Cohen) is a three-movement solo piano work completed in 2011, structured loosely around Leonard Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers. The second movement, Variations on F, is a set of twelve continuous variations. Each variation contains a fixed registral position for each of the twelve pitches, and these positions shift from variation to variation, except for the pitch F, which stays in the same register throughout the piece.

Jeff Borowiec is a composer and pianist from Rochester, New York. Having earned degrees from the State University of New York at Fredonia and James Madison University, Borowiec is currently pursuing a DMA in Composition from the UMKC Conservatory. He has studied composition with Donald Bohlen, Karl Boelter, John Hilliard, Jason Haney, Matthew Burtner, James Mobberley, Zhou Long, and Chen Yi, and Piano with Nathan Hess and Eric Ruple.

Leonid IOGANSEN

Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano

Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano is a result of the challenges and fears that I have experienced while pondering about the nature of my own existence. It is composed in a state of perceiving the world and existence as unreal. The Trio is in AB form. It is filled with various moods and levels of intensity, such as horror and peaceful lyricism.

Born in St. Petersburg Russia in 1981, Leonid Iogansen started playing violin at the age of seven. As a violinist, he has won a number of competitions and has performed at numerous venues in the United States (where he moved seventeen years ago), as well as abroad. As a composer, Leonid has received a number of commissions, most notably from Shuang Yin International Arts Festival in Taiwan, where served as a composer-in-residence in 2006. He has written much solo, chamber and orchestral music. Leonid holds a Summa cum laude Bachelors of Music in violin performance and composition from Boston University, where he was a Trustee Scholar in 2001-2003, and a Masters degree with the same majors from Peabody Conservatory.

Tyler HARRISON

Concerto for Piano, Winds and Percussion

is the only work I have written that is not programmatic. It is not about an event or occurrence in my life. If I had to say this work is "about" enjoying, I would say it is about enjoying life to its fullest, and never taking a moment for granted. The first movement, marked "Joyful," is a reflection on the joys of life, and the humor in life. The second movement is quiet and introspective, and stands alone without excess. It is a moment of meditation that at least attempts to speak for itself. The following cadenza slowly storms in, and is essentially the sum of the first two movements thematically. The beginning of the fourth movement, functioning somewhat as an extension of the cadenza, is a transition back to the original statement of the theme and the following coda.

Tyler Harrison has composed and performed his own works in the United States and abroad, including performances in Montana, Oregon, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, France. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Montana, and a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music. He is currently continuing his studies at the doctoral level at the University of Colorado at Boulder studying with Kevin Beavers. His teachers include Carter Pann, David Maslanka, Susan Botti, J. Mark Stambaugh, and Charles Nichols.