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.
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…)
Sō Percussion receives grant from Chamber Music America
Faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis among those commissioned by CMA grant recipients
Chamber Music America (CMA) announced today that it will award $181,500 in grants for ten commissioning projects in six states. The commissions, made through CMA’s Classical Commissioning Program, are funded by a generous multi-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Since its creation in 1982, the CMA Commissioning Program has made more than 100 grants. Works that have been funded include Yale faculty member Aaron Jay Kernis’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Quartet No. 2 (“Musica Instrumentalis”); George Tsontakis’s String Quartet No. 4 (“Beneath Thy Tenderness of Heart”), recipient of the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award; Joan Tower’s Night Fields; Richard Danielpour’s Urban Dances; and Steve Mackey’s Indigenous Instruments.
Among the grant recipients is the ensemble Sō Percussion, whose membes – Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting – are all graduates of the Yale School of Music. The quartet has commissioned Steve Mackey to composer an extensive work for percussion quartet. (more…)
New Music New Haven features Aaron Jay Kernis
The Yale School of Music features faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis in a New Music New Haven concert at 8:00 pm on Thursday, March 5 in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. The program features Kernis’s Two Movements (with Bells), performed by violinist Wendy Sharp and pianist Julie Nishimura. Also on the program is Arcadiana, a seven-movement work by British composer Thomas Adès which will be performed by the Jasper Quartet, the graduate quartet-in-residence at the School of Music. Yale graduate composers Jordan Kuspa and Richard Harrold are also featured, with Kuspa’s Flying Solo for solo flute and a guitar duo by Harrold. New Music New Haven is under the artistic direction of Ezra Laderman.
Admission to the recital is free. For more information, visit the Yale School of Music website, music.yale.edu, or call 203 432-4158.
Among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation, Grawemeyer- and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis has been on the faculty at the Yale School of Music since 2003. He has been commissioned by sopranos Renee Fleming and Dawn Upshaw, violinists Joshua Bell and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, guitarist Sharon Isbin, and institutions including the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Proms, Los Angeles, Walt Disney Company, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Rose Center for Earth and Space at the Museum of Natural History. Recent recordings include song cycles by soprano Susan Narucki (Koch) and orchestral works by the Grant Park Festival Orchestra (Cedille). He has received the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Stoeger Prize, Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and multiple Grammy nominations, and was Composer-in-Residence for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Public Radio, and American Composers Forum. He is New Music Advisor for the Minnesota Orchestra and chairman and co-director of its Composer Institute.
FOR CALENDAR EDITORS
Yale School of Music presents
New Music New Haven
Aaron Jay Kernis, featured faculty composer
Program: Kernis, Two Movements (with Bells); Thomas Adès: Arcadiana for string quartet; Jordan Kuspa: Flying Solo for solo flute; Richard Harrold: Guitar Duo. With Wendy Sharp, violin; Julie Nishimura, piano; and the Jasper String Quartet.
Date/time: Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Venue: Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
470 College Street, New Haven
Tickets: Free
Phone/web: 203 432-4158 • music.yale.edu
