New Music for Orchestra Dec. 11 features music by David Lang
The Yale School of Music presents a concert of new music for orchestra, performed by the Yale Philharmonia under the direction of Shinik Hahm, on Friday, December 11 at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall. The concert highlights two works by David Lang: International Business Machine and Grind to a Halt.
International Business Machine, subtitled “an overture for Tanglewood,” was written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Boston Globe called the piece “a brisk, elegantly-fashioned work depicting today’s post-industrial computer age.” Grind to a Halt is dedicated to the memory of Jacob Druckman, Lang’s composition teacher and a longtime member of the Yale School of Music faculty. According to Lang, “One of the things that interests me very much is how certain mechanical musical tasks force players – and listeners – into a kind of concentration that can be spellbinding. The intense concentration necessary to coordinate the ensemble in Grind to a Halt is a kind of virtuosity in itself.”
Lang, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has said: “The world needs happy tunes. But for me, the interesting ideas are where those happy tunes aren’t. The interesting things are in the dark places, or in the ugliness, or in the noise or the grit.” (more…)
Chamber Music Society at Yale presents Bach’s Six Brandenburg Concertos in one evening
Fifth concerto will be played on period instruments
The Yale School of Music will present the complete set of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, performed by a conductor-less chamber orchestra led by renowned faculty performers. The set of Brandenburg Concertos, first performed in 1721, is regarded by many as the pinnacle of Baroque instrumental composition. Each concerto is scored differently and inventively, and features different instruments or sets of instruments. The impressive cast of faculty performers who will bring these masterpieces to life includes violinists Ani Kavafian, Syoko Aki, Robert Mealy, and Wendy Sharp; violist Ettore Cause, flutist Ransom Wilson, clarinetist David Shifrin, oboist Stephen Taylor, bassoonist Frank Morelli, hornist William Purvis, and harpsichordists Avi Stein and Ilya Poletaev. The fifth concerto will be performed on period instruments with baroque bows, featuring performers from the Yale Baroque Ensemble.
The concert will take place on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 8 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven) and is part of the Chamber Music Society at Yale’s concert series, directed by David Shifrin. The series occasionally expands its programming to present small chamber orchestras that play without a conductor. (more…)
Thomas C. Duffy & Stephanie Hubbard honored for “Rap for Justice”
Thomas C. Duffy, left, and Stephanie Hubbard, right, with Nora Dannehy, United States Attorney, District of Connecticut
On October 23, 2009, Thomas C. Duffy, director of Yale Bands, and Stephanie Hubbard, business manager of the bands, received special recognition from the United States Attorney’s Office, District of Connecticut for their role in presenting “Rap for Justice” on May 6.
The “Rap for Justice” concert attracted around 1,000 high school students from seven Connecticut cities to Woolsey Hall to hear the concert’s message of non-violence and respect – and to hear raps from Duffy and Robert Blocker, dean of the Yale School of Music. The concert featured performances by the Yale Concert Band, the rap group 4Peace, and three winners of a statewide rap contest, as well as a screening of a film on teen crime.
The film, based on actual events, offered information about the criminal justice system, pointing out, among other messages, that a juvenile record is counted against an adult convicted of a crime. For his first offense as an adult, the protagonist of the movie gets tried in federal court and sentenced to 15 years. The last act of “Rap for Justice” featured performances by the three students who had won a statewide contest for the best rap lyrics promoting peace.
Sponsored by Yale, the concert was an innovative collaboration among Yale Bands, the U.S Department of Justice, and 4PEACE founders Twice Thou and Edo G.
A slideshow of the “Rap for Justice” concert is available here.
Obituary: Isabelle DeWitt, first editor of Music at Yale Magazine
Isabelle Hollister Tuttle DeWitt, the first editor of Music at Yale Magazine, died Saturday, September 26th at her home in New Haven, Conn. She was 82 years old.
Mrs. DeWitt was born November 14th, 1926, in Boston, MA, to Isabelle Hollister Tuttle and H. Emerson Tuttle. She spent much of her childhood in New Haven, where her father was the first Master of Yale’s Davenport College. Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle were artists whose etchings and paintings have been shown and collected worldwide.
Mrs. DeWitt was educated at the Foote School in New Haven, St. Timothy’s School (Catonsville, MD), and the Yale School of Music. She married H. Daniel DeWitt, MD, in 1960. They settled in New York City, where their three children were born, and spent summers on Nantucket, where the couple first met. After Dr. DeWitt died in 1969, Mrs. DeWitt returned with her children to New Haven. There she became the founding editor of both Music at Yale and Foote Prints, alumnae periodicals for her alma maters.
She was the senior accompanist for New Haven’s Classical Ballet Academy during the 1970s and taught piano at various times in her life. Mrs. DeWitt also flourished as a New Haven real estate agent, working with the late Barbara B. Tower and H. Pearce Company. She retired from real estate in 2007 after more than 25 years in the business. (more…)
Yo-Yo Ma premieres cello concerto by Angel Lam ’10AD
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of music director Robert Spano, will present the New York premiere of Angel Lam’s Awakening from a Disappearing Garden on Saturday, November 7, at Carnegie Hall. The piece, a concerto for cello and orchestra, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and was first performed in Atlanta Symphony Hall on October 15 and 16, 2009. This is Lam’s third commission from Carnegie Hall, which describes her as “a young composer whose work sounds both Chinese and Western, contemporary but also timeless.” (more…)
Members of the Berlin Philharmonic to work with YSM students
Klaus Wallendorf, horn
The Yale School of Music is pleased to announce a special Philharmonia session with members of the Berlin Philharmonic on Tuesday, November 10 at 2:30 pm. Nine members of the Berlin Philharmonic will travel to Yale to lead the Philharmonia in sectional coachings, followed by a side-by-side reading of the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in D minor.
School of Music students who are not participating are invited to observe the reading session, which will take place in the Glee Club Room from 4:00 to 5:15 pm. (more…)
Poet, translator Peter Cole to give pre-concert talk
The poet and translator Peter Cole will give a free talk on Friday, November 6 at 7 pm about the texts for Aaron Jay Kernis’s Symphony of Meditations. The talk precedes the 8pm performance, which features Kernis himself conducting the Yale Philharmonia, Yale Camerata, Yale Glee Club, and Yale Schola Cantorum in the symphony’s East Coast premiere. Cole translated the texts that Kernis used in the Symphony of Meditations. The original Hebrew texts, by the 11th-century Andalusian poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol, are a lyrical meditation that addresses the universal themes of life, death, and one’s relationship to God. Kernis was introduced to Gabirol’s work in Cole’s translations after the death of his parents, and he considers the work – the first symphony he has written in 17 years – “a statement of my Jewishness.” Kernis reflects, “[the work] has made me ruminate and meditate a great deal upon how it is that we human beings and our souls are created and shaped, and what makes us into our own selves.”
Peter Cole (b. 1957, Paterson, NJ) is the author of three books of poems, most recently Things on Which I’ve Stumbled (New Directions, 2008). His many volumes of translations from Hebrew and Arabic include The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 (Princeton), Aharon Shabtai’s J’accuse (New Directions), Taha Muhammad Ali’s So What: New & Selected Poems 1973-2005 (Copper Canyon), and Hebrew Writers on Writing (Trinity). Cole who lives in Jerusalem and co-edits Ibis Editions, has taught at Yale University, Wesleyan University, and Middlebury College.
Cole has received numerous honors for his work, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, the Association of American Publishers’ Hawkins Award for Book of the Year, the PEN Translation Award for Poetry, the MLA Scaglione Translation Award, and a TLS Translation Prize. In 2007, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Yale Baroque Ensemble performs experimental music of the 17th century
Concert features Yale’s new baroque instruments
The Yale Baroque Ensemble presents Stylus Fantasticus, a concert of experimental music from the seventeenth century on Tuesday, November 10 at 8 pm in Sprague Hall. The evening’s program reawakens an era when composers were experimenting with formal invention and creating the first sonatas of Western music. This repertoire ranges from the avant-garde music of the early part of the seventeenth century to the contrapuntal ingenuity of Henry Purcell at the end of the century. With works for one, two, and three violins with basso continuo, the program will include music by composers such as Gabrieli, Castello, Uccellini, Biber, Schmelzer, Purcell, and others. Robert Mealy is the director of the Yale Baroque Ensemble, whose members are Benjamin Charmot and Katherine Hyun, baroque violins; Daniel Lee, baroque violin and viola; Laura Usiskin, baroque cello; and Avi Stein, harpsichord. (more…)
New Music New Haven 11/19 features composer Jack Vees
Program includes Vees’s “Party Talk” and premieres by other Yale composers
The Yale School of Music presents a New Music New Haven concert featuring composer Jack Vees on Thursday, November 19 at 8 pm in Sprague Hall. The highlight of the concert will be Vees’s Party Talk, a piece written in 1996 for narrator and mixed ensemble of winds, brass, percussion, piano, organ, strings, and electric bass. The concert will also premiere music by student composers, including excerpts from Chris Cerrone’s opera Invisible Cities, Jordan Kuspa’s Piano Trio, Adrian Knight’s Work for Sixteen Strings, and Feinan Wang’s Pisces Monodrama–Chapter VII. Christopher Theofanidis is the artistic director of the New Music New Haven concert series. (more…)
Imani Winds performs with Jasper String Quartet
The Grammy-nominated Imani Winds will join guest ensemble the Jasper String Quartet for a concert on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8 pm in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven). The renowned wind quintet will perform a colorful variety of music – Bozza’s Scherzo for Wind Quintet, Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, and Villa-Lobos’s Woodwind Quintet. The Jasper Quartet, the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, will play Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 76 No. 1. The concert will culminate in a piece featuring all the performers: Sierra’s Concierto de Camara, a nonet for winds and strings. Along with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Imani Winds commissioned the Concierto de Camara from the Puerto Rican-born composer Roberto Sierra in 2008. At the work’s premiere, critic David Stabler of The Oregonian wrote: “Sierra’s exuberant nonet fairly danced off the stage… preserving the integrity of each ensemble while demanding intricate interplay among individual players. The cross-court volleys amid the rushing scales were exhilarating to behold.”
The name Imani, which means “faith” in Swahili, reflects the African-American and Latin American ancestry of the ensemble’s five members: Valerie Coleman, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mariam Adam, clarinet; Jeff Scott, horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon. The members of the Jasper Quartet, named for Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, are J Freivogel and Sae Niwa, violin; Sam Quintal, viola; and Rachel Henderson, cello. (more…)
Wendy Sharp in Sunday afternoon recital Nov. 15
Violinist Wendy Sharp will join with pianist Julie Nishmura in a Faculty Artist Recital featuring a broad range of music from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Several pieces on the program are based on earlier music, including the opening work: Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, based on his ballet Pulcinella, which in turn reworked music of the Italian baroque. Flow, my tears, by Yale faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis, references John Dowland’s 1596 air of the same name. Dvorak’s Four Romantic Pieces for violin and piano are arranged from his own Miniatures for two violins and viola. Mozart’s Sonata in A major, K. 526, provides a classical anchor. The program will conclude with Jennifer Higdon’s String Poetic, a piece praised by the New York Times as “striking.” The San Francisco Chronicle noted its “rhetorical clarity and dexterous interplay between the two instruments.” The recital will take place on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 4 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall (470 College Street, New Haven).
Admission to the recital is free. For more information, visit the School of Music’s website or call the Yale School of Music concert office at 203 432-4158. (more…)
Alumni success in San Antonio International Piano Competition
Ryo Yanagitani ‘04MM, ‘05AD, ‘08MMA and Andrea Lam ‘04AD won major prizes in the Tenth San Antonio International Piano Competition. Yanagitani won the Gold Medal – the competition’s top prize – and Lam won the Silver Medal. In addition, Yanagitani was awarded prizes for the best performance of a Romantic work and of a work by a Latin American composer, as well as the prize of the junior jury. Lam was awarded prizes for the best performance of a Classical composition and best performance of a Russian work.
As the gold medal winner, Yanagitani will appear in performances with the San Antonio Symphony, St. Mark’s Music Series, and Symphony of the Hills (Kerrville).
The San Antonio International Piano Competition is a non-profit organization formed in 1983. Once every three years, it presents a unique series of events, held over a one-week period, featuring some of the finest young rising pianists to be found in the world of music. (more…)
Composer John Adams to lecture on campus Oct 28-29
New Haven, Conn. — Master American composer John Adams will deliver the 2009 Tanner Lectures on Human Values on October 28 and 29 at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street. His first talk, “Doctor Faustus and His Composition: Reflections on Thomas Mann’s Fictional Composer,” will be held on October 28, and his second, “Doctor Atomic and His Gadget: Composing the American Mythology,” on October 29. Both talks will take place at 4:30 pm.
Recognized worldwide for the expressive depth, technical range, and compelling themes of his work, Mr. Adams has broadened the aesthetics of contemporary American concert music, moving it away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, profoundly humanist musical language. His groundbreaking compositions include the symphonies Harmonium, Grand Pianola Music, Harmonielehre, and El Dorado as well as the politically controversial operas Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, based on a 1985 terrorist hijacking and murder, and Doctor Atomic, about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. His multilingual nativity oratorio, El Niño, was written to mark the millennium. On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and won three Grammys, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Mr. Adams’s recent memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, has been lauded as an explication of the creative process and named a New York Times Notable Book. In his teaching, writing, and composition, Mr. Adams has been hailed as a “philosopher/craftsman, attempting to reflect and render the truth as he observes and feels it, in all its complexity and its simplicity.” (more…)
Yale to host National Collegiate Choral Organization conference
Yale University will host the third National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO) conference on November 5-7, 2009. The event will feature a broad variety of activities: concerts by Yale and visiting choirs, open rehearsals, lectures, panel discussions, and meetings of national officers and board members. One of of the weekend’s featured events will be the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s new choral symphony, the Symphony of Meditations, on Friday, November 6. Kernis himself will conduct the performance, which will bring together the Yale Philharmonia, Yale Camerata, Yale Glee Club, and Yale Schola Cantorum. The concert will take place in Woolsey Hall at 8 pm; click here for more details.
Visiting choirs include the Vassar College Women’s Chorus (Christine Howlett, conductor), Centenary College Camerata (Julia Thorn, conductor), the Colorado State University Chamber Choir (James Kim, conductor), Indiana University of Pennsylvania Chorus (James Tearing, conductor), SUNY Oneonta Chamber Singers (Timothy Newton, conductor), the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum (Jameson Marvin, conductor), the Smith College Glee Club (Jonathan Hirsh, conductor), the University of Maryland Chamber Singers (Edward Maclary, conductor), Mansfield University Concert Choir (Peggy Tettwiler, conductor), the University of Missouri University Singers (R. Paul Graham, conductor), Utah State University Chamber Singesr (Cory Evans, conductor), and the California State University Long Beach Chamber Choir (Jonathan Talberg, conductor).
The NCCO is an organization serving college and university choral conductors. It held its first conference in 2006 in San Antonio, and the second conference took place in 2008 at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. With a membership of over 400, the organization’s mission is to address the specific needs of college and university choral musicians. Click here for a conference schedule, or visit the NCCO’s website.
East Coast premiere of new Aaron Jay Kernis symphony
Yale presents the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s major new work, the “profoundly spiritual” Symphony of Meditations
The Yale School of Music, Institute of Sacred Music, and Glee Club will present the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Symphony of Meditations, a major new work in the repertoire for orchestra and chorus, on Friday, November 6 at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall. Kernis himself will conduct the performance, which will feature the Yale Philharmonia (Shinik Hahm, conductor), the Yale Camerata (Marguerite L. Brooks, conductor), the Yale Schola Cantorum (Masaaki Suzuki, director), and the Yale Glee Club (Jeffrey Douma, director). The vocal soloists, all emerging artists in the Yale Opera program, are Amanda Hall, soprano, Joseph Mikolaj, tenor and David Pershall, baritone. The performance will take place during the 2009 convention of the American Collegiate Choral Organization, hosted by Yale University.
The hour-long, three-movement Symphony of Meditations was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. After its first performance in June under the baton of Gerard Schwartz, the piece was warmly received by the audience and hailed by the press. The Examiner called it “a complex, ambitious and, overall, brilliant undertaking… there is much to praise about this multi-textured, profoundly spiritual composition.” Gathering Note said, “Kernis has constructed a major new symphony that gives notice to everyone that the form is not dead …nothing less than a serious and worthy composition.” (more…)
Fall Opera Scenes: the plots
On October 30 and 31, Yale Opera will present two evenings of opera scenes. To whet your appetite, here are synopses of the scenes to be performed. All synopses are by Grant Meachum. Tickets to the Opera Scenes range from $8 to $12 and are available online or at the box office (203 432-4158).
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO Act II
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, KV 492
Prior to the scene: Figaro and Susanna are to be married. Susanna is troubled by the Count’s romantic interest in her, but Figaro is confident the Count can be outwitted. The Count is frustrated by Cherubino’s constant flirtations. Marcellina, Basilio, and Bartolo are plotting to force Figaro to marry Marcellina to settle an old debt.
The Countess laments that her husband no longer loves her. Figaro and Susanna hatch a plot to change the Count’s behavior: they will schedule a romantic meeting between the Count and Susanna but send Cherubino (disguised as a women) instead of Susanna. Cherubino sings a love song he has written for the Countess and Susanna begins to dress him as a woman for the meeting with the Count. Before the dressing is finished, the Count arrives; Cherubino hides in a closet, but the Count is suspicious that the Countess is hiding a lover there. The Countess claims Susanna is in the closet but refuses to open the door. As the Count leaves to get tools to break down the door, Susanna sneaks into the closet and helps Cherubino escape out a window. (more…)
Alfred Brendel lecture with musical examples
Unique program by legendary pianist on November 11 will be followed the next day by a public master class
The Horowitz Piano Series at the Yale School of Music presents a lecture by the eminent pianist Alfred Brendel on Wednesday, November 11 at 8 pm in Sprague Hall. Titled “On Character in Music,” the lecture will argue that atmosphere is no less important in music than elements such as form and structure. Brendel will focus on the music of Beethoven as seen through the comments of Czerny. Brendel compares the pianist’s task to that of a character actor identifying with different roles, with an ever-widening awareness of the staggering emotional and psychological variety great music has to offer. Though Brendel has retired from full-time performing, his lecture will include musical examples he will perform on the piano.
The next day, Thursday, November 12, Alfred Brendel will work with graduate pianists from the Yale School of Music in a public master class on the stage of Morse Recital Hall. (more…)
Guitarist, lutenist John Schneiderman at Collection of Musical Instruments
The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments will present a recital by the critically-acclaimed John Schneiderman, a virtuoso on plucked instruments and a specialist in eighteenth-century lutes and nineteenth-century guitars. Based in California, Mr. Schneiderman is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician collaborating on recordings and performances throughout North America. Schneiderman will perform in the intimate venue of the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, one of the foremost institutions of its kind, on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 3 pm. (more…)
Yale Opera announces spring repertoire
Winter production of The Marriage of Figaro
to be followed in April by a double-bill of Carmen and Le Rossignol
A scene from Yale Opera's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Shubert Theatre, February, 2009. Photo by Jennifer Lester.
Yale Opera and artistic director Doris Yarick-Cross are pleased to announce the repertoire for its winter and spring productions. The winter production, which will take place at New Haven’s historic Shubert Theater in February, will be an Mozart’s popular The Marriage of Figaro. The opera will be performed in the original Italian with projected English translations. This production by Robert Driver will feature a creative team including stage director Vera Lúcia Calábria, set designer Boyd Ostroff, and lighting designer William Warfel. Christoph Campestrini will conduct the Yale Philharmonia.
The month of April will bring a double-bill of Bizet’s La Tragédie de Carmen and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol. Both productions will be performed in their original languages – French for Carmen and Russian for Le Rossignol – with projected English translations. Mark Streshinsky will provide stage direction, Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin will provide musical direction and accompaniment, and William Warfel will design the lighting. The performances will take place April 16 and 17 at 8 pm in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall. (more…)
Yale Philharmonia to perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 4
Concert opens with Brahms, including the Variations on a Theme of Haydn
Music director Shinik Hahm will lead the Yale Philharmonia in a program of Brahms and Mahler on Friday, October 23 at 8 pm. The free concert will take place in historic Woolsey Hall, where nearly 100 years ago (in February of 1910) Mahler himself conducted the illustrious New York Philharmonic in a concert of music ranging from Bach to Berlioz. Mahler will be represented by his Symphony No. 4. The last movement of this popular work will feature the Korean soprano Jihee Kim, a young artist in the Yale Opera program. Two well-known pieces by Johannes Brahms comprise the first half of the concert: the Academic Festival Overture and Variations on a Theme of Haydn. (more…)
Organist Brian Harlow performs music from Bach to the present day
Program features Widor’s masterful Symponie Romane
The organist Brian Harlow, director of music at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, NJ, will perform a recital on the celebrated Newberry Memorial Organ in Yale’s Woolsey Hall on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 8pm. The program will open with J.S. Bach’s Toccata in C major, BWV 564. It continues with Mytò, written in 1981 by the Dutch composer Ad Wammes, and Herbert Howells’s De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine (Ps. 130:1) from the Psalm-Preludes. The most recent work on the program is the 2002 Toccata for Organ by the American composer Gerre Hancock. The recital, one of the final requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music, will conclude with Charles-Marie Widor’s masterpiece for the organ, the Symphonie Romane, Op. 73. (more…)
YSM launches new Community Engagement Think Tanks
The Yale School of Music is pleased to launch its new Community Engagement Think Tanks, in which visiting lecturers will bring their expertise to small-group conversations with graduate students in music.
The Community Engagement Think Tanks are designed to focus on broad topics led by recognized leaders in the field of classical music. Each Think Tank will pose a series of questions intended to spark discussion among participating students and visiting lecturers.
Topics covered will include vital issues such as audience development, marketing, education programs, technology, and new ways to present concerts. This is an important opportunity for Yale School of Music students to engage with experts in the field and help create solutions to issues relevant to classical music in the twenty-first century. Getting the broader community engaged in this work is part of the School’s goal of shaping the field of classical music and ensuring its success in the coming years. (more…)
Jasper Quartet performs Haydn, Auerbach, and Smetana
The up-and-coming Jasper String Quartet, rapidly becoming a favorite with audiences and critics alike, will offer a free recital on Monday, October 19 at 8 pm. The performance will feature the music of Haydn, Auerbach, and Smetana and will take place in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall. The evening will open with Haydn’s Quartet in G major, Op. 76, No. 1 and will continue with Lera Auerbach’s third quartet, the Cetera desunt – Sonnet for String Quartet, in which the structure of a sonnet influences the internal rhymes of the music. Concluding the program is Smetana’s introspective, deeply personal String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life.” The Jasper Quartet is the Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music, where they study with the Tokyo String Quartet. The members are J Freivogel and Sae Niwa, violin; Sam Quintal, viola; and Rachel Henderson, cello. (more…)
Yale Percussion Group wins PAS Competition
The Percussive Arts Society (PAS) has announced the winning ensembles from the PAS International Percussion Ensemble Competition and the inaugural World Music Percussion Ensemble Competition. The Yale Percussion Group, which is directed by faculty member Robert van Sice, is among the select group of winners. As a result of their success, the YPG is scheduled to perform a Showcase Concert at the PASIC 2009 conference in Indianapolis, IN.
In addition to the Yale Percussion Group, the college/university winners were from the University of North Texas (Mark Ford, Director), and Northern Illinois University (Dr. Gregory Beyer and Robert Chappell, Directors).
