Music of Dane Rudhyar by pianist Ron Squibbs, Sept. 20th

Sun - September 20, 2015, 8:00 pm

 

Music of Dane Rudhyar by pianist Ron Squibbs, Sept. 20th

 

Date and Time: September 20, 2015 @ 8 pm

Location: von der Mehden Recital Hall, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Tickets: Free

 

Pianist Ron Squibbs, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut (Storrs), will perform music composed by ACA composer Dane Rudhyar (1895 - 1985) on September 20, 2015 at UCONN’s von der Mehden Recital Hall.

 

Squibbs’ scholarly and performance interests are focused on the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has performed the music of Yuasa, Xenakis, Rudhyar and others in recitals and lecture-recitals and has presented his research at conferences in the North America and Europe. His articles on the music of Xenakis have appeared in Perspectives of New Music, Contemporary Music Review, in the books Présences de Iannis Xenakis (Paris: CDMC) and Xenakis Matters (New York: Pendragon Press), and elsewhere. He has recorded piano music by Yuasa and Rudhyar for Aucourant Records.

 

Rudhyar was an important and enigmatic figure in American modernism. By the time he emigrated from France to the United States in 1916, he had already established himself as a composer and music critic. Within a few years after his arrival in the United States, he became active in organizations for the promotion of American modernist music, including the International Composers’ Guild, New Music Society, and the Pan American Association of Composers. In numerous articles, he advocated for the cause of progressive musical aesthetics, pointing out links between the music of his favorite European composers—among them Debussy, Scriabin, and Stravinsky—and that of the leading composers in America in the 1920s, especially Varèse and Ruggles.

 

Composed near the end of his long career, Autumn one of a number of Rudhyar’s late works that have been published in manuscript facsimile by the American Composers Alliance (ACA). Performances of these works have been rare, perhaps due in part to the difficulty of deciphering the elderly composer’s manuscripts. Recently, music performance and composition major Jonathan Schmieding undertook a transcription of the manuscript of Autumn into music notation software. This project, which was supported by a Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) grant (administered by UConn’s Office of Undergraduate Research), yielded the edition of Autumn that was used in the preparation of the upcoming September 20th performance.

 

Most of the music programmed for this recital relate in some way to the theme of autumn. Works by Debussy [Brouillards and Feuilles mortes (from Préludes, 2e livre, 1913) and Cloches à travers les feuilles (from Images, 2e série, 1907)] and Peter Garland [Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us, 2003)] round out the concert program.