NEXTET Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, composer-in-residence Virko Baley, music director and conductor

College of Fine Arts presents
NEXTET
The New Music Ensemble for the 21st Century
Virko Baley, music director and conductor
Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, composer-in-residence
Duo Damiana: Molly Barth, flutist and Dieter Hennings, guitarist
Jason Thorpe Buchanan, guest composer
PROGRAM
Jason Thorpe Buchanan
(b. 1986)
…durat(A)ions: “broken landscape” (2013)
Paul De La Torre, percussion
Samuel Friend, percussion
John Melton, percussion
Eduard Yervinyan, percussion
Dimitri Carabas
(b. 1990)
Impressions for solo piano (2014-15)
Jae Ahn-Benton, piano
G Liu
(b. 1978)
Piano Trio (2014-15)
Introit
Adagio
Scherzo – Allegretto
Adagietto
Passacaglia – Andante
Samantha Ciarlo, violin
Katharine Smith, violoncello
Jae Ahn-Benton, piano
Thea Musgrave
(b. 1928)
Narcissus (1987) for flute and digital delay system
Anastasia Petanova, flute
INTERMISSION
Hebert Vázquez
(b.1963)
El jardín del pasaje púrpura (1995)
Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon
(b. 1962)
Nuestro Polvo (2014)
Cantiga del Merolico II (1990; rev. 2014)
Soflama
I
II
III
IV
Toru Takemitsu
(1930–1996)
Toward the Sea (1981)
The Night
Moby Dick
Cape Cod
Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon
Candelabra IV (2015)
Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon
Video showing of Comala
A selection of excerpts from a 2013 performance
of this work at the Teatro Degollado of Guadalajara
Monday, April 13, 2015
7:30 p.m.
Dr. Arturo Rando-Grillot Recital Hall
Lee and Thomas Beam Music Center
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
BIOGRAPHIES
The music of Mexican-born composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon is characterized by its detailed sculpting,
“kaleidoscopic” counterpoint, and lyricism. Mexican literature has provided the point of departure for many of his
compositions, such as yo no / tú sí / yo tú / sí no, on poems by Raúl Aceves, the miniature opera NiñoPolilla, on a
libretto by Juan Trigos senior, and the scenic cantata Comala, based on the novel Pedro Páramo, by the noted
Mexican writer Juan Rulfo. Comala was selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. Other honors include
the 2011 Lillian Fairchild Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Camargo Foundation, and
México’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, among others. His works have been commissioned by noted
institutions in the U.S. and abroad, such as the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, Meet the Composer,
Festival A•DEvantgarde, and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. His works have been performed internationally, and
recorded on the Bridge, Verso, CRI, Ravello, Tempus, and Quindecim labels. He received a Ph.D. in composition
from the University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teacher was George Crumb. He taught at the School of
Music of the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, and the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati,
before joining the Eastman School of Music composition faculty in 2002.
Jason Thorpe Buchanan is an American composer of operatic, orchestral, chamber, and electroacoustic music.
His works have been described as “an unearthly collage of sounds”, “sharply-edged”, and “free jazz gone wrong”,
commissioned and performed internationally by conductors and ensembles such as Brad Lubman, Alan Pierson,
Jean-Philippe Wurtz, Marc Lowenstein, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Interface (Germany), Ensemble Nikel
(Israel), Ensemble Linea (France), Nonsemble 6, Iktus Percussion, the [Switch~ Ensemble], The Industry, wild
Up, OSSIA, ensemble39, Brevard Music Center Orchestra, Fiati 5 (Italy), Sound ExChange Orchestra, Eastman
Musica Nova Ensemble, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, TAD Wind Symphony (Japan), among others.
Nominated for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, his works will be presented by Insomnio, Nadar Ensemble, and
Slagwerk Den Haag at Gaudeamus Muziekweek in September 2015. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship (2010-11)
at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg (Germany) as a visiting scholar, he was recently selected
as Artist-in-Residence by USF Verftet and the City Council of Bergen, Norway to complete work on the opera
Hunger in late 2015. Additional honors and awards include the ASCAP Morton Gould Award (2014), and Howard
Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014) for Asymptotic Flux: Second Study in Entropy (2013) commissioned by the
Mizzou International Composers Festival for Alarm Will Sound, a commission from the International Horn Society
& ASCAP Morton Gould Award (2015) for Double Concerto (2014). For more information, visit:
www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com
Duo Damiana: Guitarist Dieter Hennings and flutist Molly Barth met through a mutual friend, Ricardo Zohn
Muldoon. One of Ricardo’s major projects is an opera titled Comala. Of Comala, Ricardo writes, “The orderly flux of
time has been derailed, and the borders between past, present, life, and afterlife have dissolved. Therefore, the
dead and the living interact continuously. The living characters express themselves in normal speech, while the
dead characters, including Damiana Cisneros, sing. The living act under the pressure of time, and seek immediate
communication, whereas the dead, free from the bonds of time, reflect endlessly in song.” After both Dieter and
Molly worked on Comala with Ricardo, they began to explore further the name Damiana (Latin meaning: one who
tames; subdues. French and Greek meaning: untamed), discovering that the name aptly describes both musicians.
Duo Damiana is focused on broadening the cutting-edge body of repertoire for flute and guitar. Composers
featured include Chen Yi, David Lang, Hebert Vazquez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Shafer Mahoney, Jean-Michel
Damase, Michael Fiday, and Toru Takemitsu. Future plans include commissions and performances of works by
Jesse Jones, Luca Cori, Marc Satterwhite, and Scott Perkins. In summer 2014, Duo Damiana mentored 97 young
composers and numerous performers at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, and performed at the
National Flute Association Convention in Chicago, IL. The 2014-15 season includes tours through KY, OH, TN, IN,
and IL. Past tours have taken Duo Damiana throughout the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest regions of the
United States. The musical endeavors of Dieter Hennings span from new music on guitar to early music for lute,
baroque guitar, and theorbo. Mr. Hennings has been a soloist with Canada’s New Music Concerts Ensemble, Tito
Sccipa Orchestra of Lecce, Italy, Eastman BroadBand Ensemble, Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, the
University of Arizona Philharmonia, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Monterrey among many others. Mr. Hennings has
won several prestigious competitions including the 2008 Aaron Brock International Guitar Competition, 2005
Eastman Guitar Concerto Competition, the 2002 Villa de Petrer, Alicante (Spain) International Competition, the
2001 Portland Guitar Competition, among others. Dieter is an active proponent of new music, particularly that of
Latin America, having recently worked with composers Mario Davidovsky, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Juan Trigos
and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. Hennings has received grants from the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music
and the Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes to commission and premiere contemporary works for guitar.
Described as "ferociously talented" (The Oregonian), Grammy-Award winning flutist Molly Alicia Barth specializes
in the music of today. In demand as a soloist, Molly has recently performed in Australia, Korea, and Mexico and has
played solo recitals and led clinics at esteemed institutions including the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music,
Oberlin Conservatory, Cincinnati Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory and Northwestern University Bienen
School of Music. Contemporary chamber music is Molly’s primary musical interest, and she is currently involved
with three ensembles. Formed by Molly Barth and guitarist Dieter Hennings, Duo Damiana is focused on
broadening the cutting-edge body of repertoire for flute and guitar. As co-founder of the Beta Collide New Music
Project, Molly has collaborated with individuals from a broad spectrum of disciplines such as dance, art, sound
sculpture and theoretical physics. With Beta Collide, she has recorded two CDs and one DVD with Innova Records.
Molly is the Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Oregon, where she is a member of the Oregon Wind
Quintet. The Oregon Wind Quintet, which regularly tours throughout the Pacific Northwest, performs a large body of
contemporary music along with standard wind quintet repertoire. As a founding member of the new music sextet
eighth blackbird from 1996-2006, Molly won the 2007 “Best Chamber Music Performance” Grammy Award,
recorded four CDs with Cedille Records, and was granted the 2000 Naumburg Chamber Music Award and first
prize at the 1998 Concert Artists Guild International Competition.
Rich and powerful musical language and a strong sense of drama have made Scottish-American composer Thea
Musgrave one of the most respected and exciting contemporary composers in the Western world. Her
compositions were first performed under the auspices of the British Broadcasting Corporation and at the Edinburgh
International Festival. As a result her works have been widely performed in Britain, Europe and the USA, and at the
major music festivals, such as Edinburgh, Warsaw Autumn, Florence Maggio Musicale, Venice Biennale,
Aldeburgh, Cheltenham and Zagreb; on most of the European and American broadcasting stations; and on many
regular symphony concert series. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 27 May 1928, she studied first at the University of
Edinburgh and later at the Conservatoire in Paris, where she spent four years as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, before
establishing herself back in London as a prominent member of British musical life with her orchestral, choral,
operatic, and chamber works. In 1970 she became Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
which anchored her increasing involvement with the musical life of the United States. In 1971 she married the
American violist and opera conductor Peter Mark, and has resided in the U.S. since 1972. In 1974 she received the
Koussevitzky Award, resulting in the composition of Space Play, which after its London premier was performed in
New York by the Lincoln Center Chamber Players. She has also been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, in
1974-75, and again in 1982-83, and was recognized with honorary degrees by Old Dominion University (Virginia),
Smith College, Glasgow University and in May 2004, the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She was
awarded a C.B.E. on the Queen's New Year's Honour List in January 2002. As Distinguished Professor at Queens
College, City University of New York from September 1987-2002, Musgrave has guided and interacted with many
new and gifted young student composers. Musgrave has consistently explored new means of projecting essentially
dramatic situations in her music, frequently altering and extending the conventional boundaries of instrumental
performance by physicalizing their musical and dramatic impact. As she once put it, she wanted to explore dramatic
musical forms: some works are dramatic-abstract, that is without programmatic content and others project specific
programmatic ideas (such as the paintings in The Seasons and Turbulent Landscapes, the poems in Ring Out Wild
Bells, Journey through a Japanese Landscape, and Autumn Sonata, and the famous Greek legends in Orfeo,
Narcissus, Helios, and Voices from the Ancient World); -- all extensions of concerto principles. In some of these, to
enhance the dramatic effect, the sonic possibilities of spatial acoustics have been incorporated: in the Clarinet
Concerto the soloist moves around the different sections of the orchestra, and in the Horn Concerto the orchestral
horns are stationed around the concert hall. Thus the players are not only the conversants in an abstract musical
dialogue, but also very much the living (and frequently peripatetic) embodiment of its dramatis personae. With such
a large and varied career and catalogue, Thea Musgrave is frequently interviewed and questioned about being a
"woman" composer, to which she has replied; "Yes, I am a woman; and I am a composer. But rarely at the same
time."
The final two NEXTET concerts of this season:
May 4, 2015 Michael Hersch, composer-in-residence and guest violoncellist Daniel Gaisford. Final
concert of the season.
May 13, 2015 Timothy Hoft, pianist performing the third in his series devoted to Ukrainian and
Ukrainian-American compositions.