Here is the program:

• Wolfgang Rihm: Will Sound (2006)
• Giacinto Scelsi: Prânam II (1973)
• John Cage: Dance Music for Elfrid Ide (1940)
• Benjamin Broening: like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment (2005)
• Caleb Burhans: oh ye of little faith…(do you know where your children are?)(2008)

Saxton Rose, director
Tadeu Coelho, Oskar Espina Ruiz, guest conductors

Saturday, October 27, 7:30 pm
Watson Hall
UNC School of the Arts

January 29th, 7:30pm, Watson Hall
Email: boxoffice@uncsa.edu
Phone: (336) 721-1945

Program

Enemy Wind by Will Dixon b. 1995)

String Quartet in D by Derek Arnold (b. 1983)

Return to Me by Cheyne Runnells (b. 1994)

Sleeping City Sidewalk by Clayton Davidson (b. 1972)

From Afar by Dak van Vranken (b. 1992)

ÉPOPTEIA by Quinn Dougherty by (b. 1992)

INTERMISSION

Whirlwind by Bruce W. Tippette (b. 1985)

Pop Mutations by Nicholas Rich (b. 1984)

Students of UNCSA composition faculty Lawrence Dillon, Kenneth Frazelle and Michael Rothkopf.

Program Notes
WILL DIXON: ENEMY WIND
Of Enemy Wind, the composer writes: “I began this piece with two ideas in mind. The first was a slow theme that echoes how a zephyr or chill might blow softly through the woods at night. The second idea was sort of a rhythmic dance, very dissonant in nature, raucously transferring from instrument to instrument, much like how a storm knocks around what is in its path. The title comes from a place name in the most recent National Book Award winning novel by Louise Erdich. The place is on an Indian reservation in the West, and I imagined that my two winds might find their place there.”

Now a senior in high school, Will Dixon has been a student at School of the Arts since his freshman year, beginning his studies as a cello major with Brooks Whitehouse. After three years, Will now studies composition with Lawrence Dillon.

DEREK ARNOLD: STRING QUARTET IN D
Derek Arnold’s String Quartet in D (of which you will hear the first movement) is written in the style of the Classical Period, a style Derek is very passionate about. In the words of the composer, “This way of writing offers the composer the opportunity to suggest a wide range of human emotion without sacrificing the pleasurable listening experience. It is my goal to compose music that a person can listen to and hum later, and in this sense I feel my audiences will get double their money’s worth.”

Derek Wesley Arnold was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on February 24th, 1983. He began learning music at the age of 4 with the help of his father (Harvey Dalton Arnold: bassist for The Outlaws) and an old upright piano. In 1990 his family moved to Clayton, North Carolina. At the age of 10 he began playing drums. In middle school he played clarinet and bass clarinet in band, studying the theories of Pete Fountain and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart alike.

In high school he started the group Blue Dust Box with 3 of his classmates. This band charted at number 8 for two weeks on the Australian un-signed charts. Derek was the primary songwriter for the group. At age 19, he moved to Raleigh and learned to play guitar and bass. He was often referred to as the “best bassist in Raleigh” while he was living there.

While based out of Raleigh, Derek Wesley Arnold played with Ivan Hampden (Luther Vandross/Chaka Khan), John Custer (Columbia/Sony Records), Kenny Soule (Nantucket/DAG), Daniel “Slick” Ballinger (Oh Boy Records), Nathan Davis (Custer Studios), world renowned blues legend Skeeter Brandon, Iggy Cosky (The Lollipops), Josh Preslar (Diunna Greenleaf), world renowned blues legend John Dee Holeman, Wade 3 (Wade Durham), Nick Hagelin (Interscope Records/Carolina Ballet), and lots more.

Derek now lives in Winston-Salem and is earning his Bachelor’s Degree in Music Composition.

CHEYNE RUNNELLS: RETURN TO ME
Return to Me is a piece written to emulate the contemporary acoustic band, while combining it with chamber music instrumentation. It combines writing influenced by both American and Japanese contemporary music. The piece focuses on the theme of unfulfilled yearning over distance and time, with optimism crushed by reality.

Cheyne Runnells has lived almost his entire life in Kill Devil Hills, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with his mother and younger sister. His interest in music sparked in eighth grade, when he began learning to play electric guitar. He joined the marching/symphonic band when he started high school, playing the alto saxophone. After taking a music theory class his sophomore year, Cheyne began writing music of his own and decided to pursue a career in composition. For hobbies, Cheyne reads and writes, watches television and movies, plays video games and snowboards when possible. Although a fan of a wide variety of genres, his music is influenced by composers such as Eric Whitacre, Yoko Kanno and Nobuo Uematsu; and contemporary progressive rock artists Fall of Troy, Protest the Hero and Nightwish.

CLAYTON DAVIDSON: SLEEPING CITY SIDEWALK
Sleeping City Sidewalk is scored for oboe, english horn, electric guitar, viola, cello and musique concrete. This piece is an attempt to translate a specific moment: the last few minutes of sleep, when outside sounds begin to intrude upon your consciousness and worm their way into your dream landscape. Those sounds change and transform, molding themselves into the architecture of the sleeping mind. The title comes from a line in the Kris Kristofferson song Sunday Morning Coming Down.

Composer and guitarist Clay Davidson grew up in North Carolina. Early musical influences include organ and choir music, folk music, and the far-flung explorations of the electric guitar in contemporary music. He has been a part of different musical projects as a composer, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, and recording engineer. He is currently a part of the electric guitar and kit drums duo Hi-Rollers. Hi-Rollers have released one CD, Hear B Monsters, and are in the process of recording their second. In the summer of 2012 he composed the incidental music for the play The 27 Club by Thomas Trull, which was performed at the Kraine Theatre for the New York International Fringe Festival. He is currently studying composition under Dr. Michael Rothkopf at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

DAK VAN VRANKEN: FROM AFAR
Of From Afar, the composer writes, “Everyone has wanted something—needed something—and come away empty-handed. From Afar is about desire; it’s about surrendering to the hunger for something that is just out of reach, and learning to find happiness in deprivation.

Dak Van Vranken has been writing music for seven years. Several of his compositions accompanied his high school’s drama productions, including Trojan Women, for an adaptation of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women,” and La Familia, for Scott McPherson’s “Marvin’s Room.” Dak has collaborated with students in Los Angeles and scored two student films, “Blue” and “No. 5.” In 2009, Dak’s composition Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity: A Centennial Tribute to the FBI was the featured musical theme for the FBI Centennial Celebration at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C.; the Society of Former Special Agents Centennial Gala at the Newseum in Washington D.C.; and the FBI Academy Centennial Celebration. Dak attended the Berklee College of Music in the Fall of 2011 and continued his studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in the Fall of 2012.

QUINN DOUGHERTY: ÉPOPTEIA
Of ÉPOPTEIA, the composer writes: “this doesn’t really contribute much beyond just imitation Messiaen. texts stolen from byron emerson and arrabal. melodies stolen from robins wood thrushes mourning doves meadowlarks and bluebirds. “i call architecture frozen music” said goethe to schiller, he makes it sound like the ‘freezing’ is an abstraction, a cheap imitation, or even a violent appropriation. consider, though, that composers are undisciplined astrophysicists and music is an abstraction imitation and appropriation of the actual depth of the sphere(s). gk chesterton said “the poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. it is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” the secret is that emerson understood stardust theory ON BEING ASKED WHENCE IS THE FLOWER

Quinn Dougherty is a college freshman studying composition with Lawrence Dillon. He provides the following biographical information: “the language for describing the Fire of Everything doesn’t exist. and i’m going to find it. This is the Being of the Storm. i am into films theatre spaces and concert halls. i am documented on vimeo and soundcloud (.com/quinndougherty)”

BRUCE W. TIPPETTE: WHIRLWIND
Of Whirlwind, the composer writes, “When I was a member of the “Cirkus Theatre Project” sponsored by Cirque du Soleil in the summer of 2012, our process of creating began with a central idea or title and then we worked outward. Before this project, my compositional process did not typically happen in this way. For Whirlwind, I began with the title and worked outward, creating motivic development, rhythmic passages, and fast repeating patterns that resemble a whirlwind in my mind.”

Bruce W. Tippette is an active composer, performer, and educator. He has composed a large volume of works in various styles, instrumentation, and difficulty. He actively receives commissions, including Christmas Night by the Raleigh Boychoir in 2008. His work Unconquered for orchestra won the “2012 Mary Starling Composition Competition” and received four subsequent performances by the Winston-Salem Symphony. Alfred Publishing, BRS Music, and Brass Chamber Music Press currently publish Tippette’s compositions.

Tippette is currently studying to earn his Master’s degree in Music Composition from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts under the direction of composer Lawrence Dillon. He earned his Bachelor’s of Music in both Music Composition/Theory and Music Education from Appalachian State University in 2007, graduating Magna Cum Laude. As an educator, he gives weekly piano and voice lessons to a growing studio. He is the pianist for Shady Grove United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, NC.

Bruce Tippette was born in Garner, North Carolina and currently lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with his wife, Elizabeth, and son, Liam.

NICHOLAS RICH: POP MUTATIONS
Pop Mutations is a planned three-movement concerto for piano and chamber orchestra (the first movement is still under construction). Each movement examines and caricatures an interesting phenomenon found in popular music.

The middle movement, Cool Clear Water, takes as its source material a Western song that has been covered almost continually since its first recording in 1936. The song has been covered by such a diverse array of artists (including Johnny Cash, Odetta, Fleetwood Mac, Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell, Leo Kottke, and the Muppets) for such a long period of time that it has transformed from a singular musical performance to a cultural archetype. “Cool Clear Water” is my “cover” of the song. In it I use the techniques most characteristic of my recent elecro-acoustic work. The ensemble acts like a live looping unit and effects processor for the piano, supplying echo and reverberation to the piano’s gestures, and occasionally feeding back uncontrollably.

The final movement, Chaconne: 1984, addresses the harmonic language of pop music in the 1980s. In the music I like most from this period (Tears for Fears, Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, Howard Jones, UB40), the chord progressions are incredibly colorful and often cycle endlessly without identifiable regions of tension or arrival. In Chaconne: 1984, I took this phenomenon literally by constructing the movement around a repeating chord progression. Another indispensable feature of 80s pop music is its rhythm. Many of these songs have rather sophisticated interlocking patterns, composite 16th-note rhythms spread across the band in a jagged, hypnotic groove. My chaconne gradually transforms into a nameless 1980s pop song, complete with that unmistakable New Wave dance beat.

Nicholas Rich is a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music that examines the intersections of music, memory, language, culture, and nature. His work spans multiple genres and media, from traditional large ensembles and chamber music to laptop orchestras and music for dance. Born into a family of musicians who played Country-Western, Americana, and Rock, his music frequently carries strong associations with American popular music. Rich has a specialty in computer music, with many pieces for solo instrument and computer, solo laptop, and laptop orchestras. He is a founding member of GLOrk (Greensboro Laptop Orchestra), the first ensemble of its kind in the state. His music has been presented at numerous new music festivals around the country and internationally, including the American Dance Festival, the Hey, Mozart! festival in Bogota, Colombia, and the Society of Composers National Convention. Rich earned a B.M. at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where his principle teachers were Mark Engebretson and Alejandro Rutty. Currently he is pursuing an M.M. at UNCSA, studying with Lawrence Dillon.

KAILEY MILLER
Kailey Miller is a second-year piano major, and this is her second semester at UNCSA after transferring in from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has been studying piano for fourteen years and is currently a student of Dr. Dmitri Shteinberg.
Kailey received an honorable mention at the Music Teachers National Association’s state competition in Virginia in 2010. She placed third in the Richmond Music Teachers Association’s Bach Competition that same year. She has served as pianist in numerous churches and currently holds a position at Wallburg Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. Her other interests include songwriting, arranging, and accompanying.

Something will sound because it wishes to sound. The composer acts upon its will to be and notes down the spaces in between. There emerges a form, which is the imprint of the energy that demands a form for itself. An imprint? Yes, a trace, a coagulated shadow. Just as this text is an imprint of the will not to write it. I don’t understand this. Just as well… It’s better to listen to the piece. It is short. It will sound…

-Wolfgang Rihm

The prolific composer Wolfgang Rihm’s music is unpredictable, with wide mood swings and shocking juxtapositions between harsh utter violence and gentle, lovely sounds. He began composing at the age of 11. In 1968, he began studying at the State Hochschule fur Musik in Karlsruhe where his composition teacher was Eugene Velte. He also attended a special course in Humanities on modern composition with composer Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle, one of the best-known British composers using Schoenberg’s 12-tone system. In 1969, Rihm went to the German center of avant-garde music, Darmstadt, to attend a course in new music. He graduated from the conservatory in Karlsruhe in 1972. After that, he pursued further independent study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, then attended classes with composer Klaus Huber and musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. From 1973 to 1978, he was a member of the faculty of the Hochschule fur Musik in Karlsruhe and, in 1978, was a lecturer at the Darmstadt Festival courses. He wrote two chamber operas, Faust und Yorick (1976) and Jakob Lenz (1977-78), which were given in Hamburg in 1979. He gained considerable recognition, including the Hamburg City Prize, the Berlin Arts Prize, the Darmstadt Kranichsteiner Music Prize, and Freiburg City Reinhold Schneider Prize, and the German Prix de Rome, which carried with it a residency at the Villa Massima of Rome. In 1985 he was named professor of composition at Karlsruhe. He has continued to win awards and prizes, such as the 1986 Rolf Lieberman Prize for his opera Hamlet-Machine (1983-86), the 1997 Prince Pierre of Monaco Prize for Musical Composition, the Jacob Burckhardt Prize of the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation (1998), and an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. He has gone on to write the operas Oedipus (1986-87); Die Eroberung von Mexico (1987-91); Andere Schatten, (1985) which is what he called a “musical scene”; and Seraphim (1994), designated “music theater without a text.”

He tends to follow the 12-tone system as used by Anton Webern, Luigi Nono, the later composers William Killmayer and Helmuth Lachenmann, as well as being influenced by the music of Stockhausen and Morton Feldman. Rihm has become one of the most influential composers of the generation born after the Second World War, and was among those who effected a paradigm shift in German musical culture, replacing his predecessors’ essentially intellectual and structuralist conception of art with one giving freer rein to emotion, adopting a more flexible approach to structure. To this end, Rihm’s music often appeals to the highly expressive sound worlds of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century composers, with Mahler and Bruckner being particular favourites. Rihm’s output is extremely large and includes highly influential stage works, as well as orchestral compositions, chamber music, and songs.

oh ye of little faith…(do you know where your children are?) (2008)
Caleb Burhans epitomizes the eclectic New York that I love. While Caleb is at home in innumerable musical styles, his own compositions show strong roots in post-rock and ambient music. This piece also reflects the role of improvisation in Caleb’s work: its second half is based on an improvised loop comprised of a violin line and six electric bass parts. The title speaks to Caleb’s complex relationship with religion as an agnostic who—working as a professional church musician—has attended Mass every Sunday since he was 11-years-old.
-Alan Pierson, music director, Alarm Will Sound and Brooklyn Philharmonic

Composer, violinist, violist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist was born in Monterey, CA, and has lived in New York with his wife, Martha Cluver, since 2003. He has been heralded by the New York Times as, “animated and versatile,” being a, “sweet voiced countertenor” as well as a “new music virtuoso.” Caleb’s early musical influences were widespread both musically and geographically, ranging from his father (who in the 60’s and 70’s played with Ray Charles, Kenny Rogers and the Everly Brothers), to his training as a boy soprano in Houston, TX, to his early studies in Janesville, WI, where he studied violin, piano, music theory and composition, as well as picking up viola, cello, bass, percussion, mandolin, guitar, electric bass, and conducting. He is a regular member of groups including ACME, Alarm Will Sound, Beyondo, Bleknlok, Escort, itsnotyouitsme, Newspeak, Signal and the Wordless Music Orchestra.

His compositions benefit from the synergy of writing for people he plays with, and his performances of other works draws from his insights as a composer. His compositions have often been premiered by (and commissioned by) ensembles he works with, including his setting of Psalm 118 (for mixed choir, children’s choir, brass, and organ) commissioned by Trinity Church, Wall Street; his arrangement of John Adams’s “Coast” from Hoodoo Zephyr commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Alarm Will Sound; and oh ye of little faith… (do you know where your children are?) commissioned by Lincoln Center for the re-opening of Alice Tully Hall. He has also been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, clarinetist Bill Kalinkos, Dogs of Desire, Fuma Sacra, Janus, the King’s Park High School String Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Abby Fischer, percussionist Payton MacDonald, Scalene, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (Rochester, NY), Tarab Cello Ensemble, trombonist James Hirschfeld, violinist Yuki Numata, violists John Graham, Eric Nowlin, and Nadia Sirota. His music has been performed throughout North America and Europe.

like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment (2005) is scored for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello piano, percussion and electroacoustic sounds. This piece is a reaction to Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun which Debussy described as “a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poem.” Longing, desire, fantasy and dream states are central to the poem, to Debussy’s musical reaction to it and to Broening’s evocation of Debussy’s work. It is these terms that the title might best be understood – not as a literal exploration of statistics! Broening doesn’t quote Debussy’s Prelude at all in the piece. Rather, the musical correspondences are subtler and consist of materials that are harder to pin down: characteristic intervals, transitional strategies and timbral associations. The way the electroacoustic sounds, which all started out as recordings of acoustic instruments, combine with the live instruments creates a space where it’s not always entirely clear what is dream, what is the expression of desire or what is the memory of longing.
-Thomas Link

Benjamin Broening’s music couples his interest in the expressive power of sound with a sense of line derived from his background as a singer. Active as a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, Broening has written pieces for soloists and ensembles such Zeitgeist, eighth blackbird, Camilla Hoitenga, Tim McAllister, Richard Hawkins, Charlotte Symphony, the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, the Band and Orchestral Division of Yamaha Corporation of America, the Arts Now Series at North Carolina State University, Ensemble U, duo runedako, and the Connecticut Choral Society, among many others. In the past few years his music has been performed across the United States and in eighteen other countries. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, Broening has also received recognition and awards from the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program, American Composers Forum, Virginia Commission for the Arts, ACS/Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Presser Music Foundation.
Recombinant Nocturnes, Broening’s 2011 Innova CD of piano music performed by duo runedako has been called a “gorgeous disc of music” and “thoughtful, eloquent, and disarmingly direct” by New Music Box, “deep, troubling” by François Couture and “Lovely, delicate, calming” by Los Angeles’ KFJC. Trembling Air, a disc of Broening solo and chamber music recorded by eighth blackbird was released in September 2012, by Bridge Records. Other recordings have been released by Ensemble U in Estonia and on the Centaur, everglade, Equilibrium, MIT Press and SEAMUS record labels. Broening is founder and artistic director of Third Practice, an annual festival of electroacoustic music at the University of Richmond, where he is Associate Professor of Music. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Cambridge University, Yale University and Wesleyan University.