Shades of Ice, for clarinet, cello and electronics (2012)

not-being-us (2024) - premiere

Concerto Grosso, for clarinet, piano, violin solo, and string quintet (2024)

Clarinet Concerto (1996)

Grammy award winner, Michael Norsworthy, has been heard in major concert halls around the globe and is a recognized educator, technician and consultant. His personal approach to presenting, developing and nurturing the artistic possibilities around him have resulted in partnerships with world class musical collaborators, schools of music and manufacturers. As soloist with numerous orchestras around the USA and abroad, as a captivating recitalist and chamber music performer and as one of the most celebrated champions of the modern repertoire having premiered over 150 new works at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall, The Casals Festival and the Aspen Festival, Norsworthy has defied categorization, dazzling critics and audiences alike.  His discography, numbering over 80 releases, can he heard on Naxos, Mode, Gasparo, Albany, New Focus, New World, BMOP/sound, ECM, Navona, Nonesuch, Canteloupe and Cauchemar records. He is the owner of New York City Woodwinds and is a proud performing artist for Selmer Paris and Vandoren.

Agata ZUBEL (b. 1978)
Shades of Ice, for clarinet, cello and electronics (2012)
     The electronic part was created from recordings made on an Icelandic glacier, described thus: With an area of 8.5 thousand square km, Vatnajökull takes up one twelfth of Iceland, and its ice cap is up to 1 km thick. This is the world's largest glacier this side of the polar circle. Its ice volume is larger than the aggregate volume of all the European glaciers.
     When Vatnajökull begins to breed, it fills the lake called Jökulsárlón with small icebergs. The landscape on the surface of the ice cap is far from monotonous - it is speckled with ragged ridges, with crevasses, with a whole palette of colours from dirty black to crystalline "icy" blue.
     Typical of the Icelandic landscape are also the roaring waterfalls appearing where rivers flow out of the glaciers. Geologists have found evidence of at least two catastrophic glacial floods in the valley of the Jökulsá River since the end of the last ice age. During those periods, at least 400 thousand cubic metres of water flowed down the valley every second - more than three times the maximum volume of flow in the Amazon. —After the “Insight Guide” to Iceland

Agata Zubel, composer and vocalist. Known for her unique vocal range and the use of techniques that challenge stereotypes. 
     Zubel gives concerts throughout the world and has premiered numerous new works. As a singer and composer, Agata Zubel has collaborated with several dozen philharmonic companies, such as: Carnegie Hall in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Konzerthaus in Vienna, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Musikgebouw in Amsterdam, Musikverein Wien, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall in London, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Philharmonie in Berlin, Cologne, Luxembourg, Casa da música in Porto, Seattle Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony.
     She lives in Wroclaw where she works as a Professor at the University of Music. Together with the composer and pianist Cezary Duchnowski, she established the ElettroVoce Duo.

Ramin ROSHANDEL (b. 1987)
not-being-us (2024)

          Out of our hands, to install it on some monstrous, near
          Peak, too close to ignore, too far
          For one to intervene? This otherness, this
          “Not-being-us” is all there is to look at

      The title of this composition is not meant to create a direct relationship between the poem and the meaning it conveys. However, this short phrase profoundly resonated with me in my own thoughts and made me use it as the title of my piece.

     Ramin Roshandel is a composer and setar player. His compositions have been performed by Benjamin Coelho, Anna Elder, Nicole Esposito, Will Fried, Daniel Schreiner, The JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Kamratōn Ensemble, and LIGAMENT duo, as well as in festivals such as Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), NYC Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, MOXSonic, TurnUp Multimedia Festival, the Society of Composers’ Summer Student Mixtape. Roshandel was the setar soloist in Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris in its premiere. He was awarded The University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and is a Summer Institute for Contemporary Music Practice (SICPP) and New Music On the Point alumnus.
     Ramin’s collaborative album with Jean-François Charles, titled Jamshid Jam, was nominated in the World Music and Crossover Productions categories of Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award). It has also received the Global Music Awards Silver Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Ramin has two analytical papers about Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues published in Persian journals.
     Ramin holds a PhD in Music Composition from The University of Iowa. The piece in this program is his dissertation.

Jessie MONTGOMERY (b. 1981)
Concerto Grosso, for clarinet, piano, violin solo, and string quintet (2024)
     Concerto Grosso is a two-movement work for mixed ensemble with a featured solo violin part. It is a contemporary take on the baroque practice of solo against ripieno dynamics, and improvisation in the solo part. The piece is composed in a way that allows the soloist to decide in the moment either to play what is on the page or to depart and add their own flourish against the ensemble backdrop — a kind of “choose your own adventure” spontaneity that can either blend or add unexpected textures.
     The single wind instrument becomes a secondary solo line at times, adding color and counterpoint to the solo violin line. Both movements are shaped primarily by interweaving melodic lines that provide the form and build their emotional evolution. (Jessie Montgomery)
     Jessie Montgomery is a Grammy Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life,” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world. In June 2024, she concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.
     A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists and underrepresented composers to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.
     Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. She serves on the Composition and Music Technology faculty at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.

Eliott CARTER (1908-2012)
Clarinet Concerto (1996)
     When asked by the Ensemble InterContemporain of Paris, which has performed repeatedly a large number of my works to write a second piece for it, I decided on a clarinet concerto, knowing how wonderful an artist its clarinettist, Alain Damiens, is. Besides, many clarinettists who had played my works and liked my writing for the instrument had been asking me for a concerto.
     To my mind, the soloist in a concerto must be heard clearly whenever playing, so I was especially interested to write for a smaller group the Ensemble InterContemporain proposed which could be taken on tour. Its main problem is that it is composed of only five solo strings and then many other instruments that cover them easily. Thinking this over, I decided to divide the work into six short sections, each separated by a tutti, associating the clarinet with a group of instruments of similar sound adding a seventh in which the entire orchestra participates. Thus, after a brief tutti, the clarinet is associated with the harp, piano, marimba, vibraphone and in the next section with the unpitched percussion and so on. Each section, of course, has its own expressive character and also forms a foreground for short comments by the other parts of the orchestra.
     This work was first performed in Paris by the clarinnetist, Alain Damiens and the Ensemble InterContemporain (to whom it is dedicated) conducted by Pierre Boulez at the Cité de la Musique on January 10 and 11, 1997. It was part of a concert celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Ensemble. (Elliott Carter, 1996)
     Elliott Carter—Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, one of the few composers ever awarded Germany's Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made "Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the Government of France, as well as receiving the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor in 2012, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized as one America’s leading voices of the classical music tradition. He was a recipient of the Prince Pierre Foundation Music Award and was one of the few living composers to be inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame during his lifetime. Carter was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Committee for the first time in 1960 for his groundbreaking String Quartet No. 2. Igor Stravinsky hailed Carter’s Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano, and two chamber orchestras (1961) and Piano Concerto (1967), as "masterpieces."
     Carter’s prolific career spanned over 75 years, with more than 150 pieces, ranging from chamber music to orchestra to opera, often marked with a sense of wit and humor. His astonishing late-career creative burst resulted in a number of brief solo and chamber works, as well as major essays such as Asko Concerto (2000) for Holland’s ASKO Ensemble. Some chamber works include What Are Years (2009), Nine by Five (2009), and Two Thoughts About the Piano (2005-06), widely toured by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Carter showed his mastery in larger forms as well, with major contributions such as What Next? (1997–98), Boston Concerto (2002), Three Illusions for Orchestra (2004), called by the Boston Globe "surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated," Flute Concerto (2008), a piano concerto, Interventions (2007), which premiered on Carter's 100th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall with James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (December 11, 2008), and the song cycle A Sunbeam’s Architecture (2011). Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.