Stephen Gosling
Frequent ACA performer Stephen Gosling to perform ten vignettes of New York City
Stephen Gosling performs Brian Schober's “Manhattan
Impromptus” (1995-96) for solo piano, a sprawling panorama of New
York impressions that features a bold mix of styles in many musical
spheres -- including classical, avant-garde, and jazz.
Performer: Stephen Gosling, piano
Brian Schober's ACA Composer Page
Cornerstone Center at Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church
178 Bennett Avenue (one block west of Broadway at 189th Street)
New York, NY 10040
Box office hours: One hour prior to the performance
About the Composer
Brian Schober
has pursued an active career as a composer and performer throughout the
United States and abroad. A native of New Jersey, Schober pursued his
musical studies at the Eastman School of Music where his teachers
included Samuel Adler and Joseph Schwantner in composition and Sue Seid
and Russell Saunders in organ. He furthered his studies in Paris,
studying composition with Olivier Messiaen and Betsy Jolas at the Paris
Conservatory of Music while studying organ privately with Jean Guillou
and André Isoir. Schober’s music spans all instrumental and vocal
media. His music has been performed by the Gregg Smith Singers, The New
York Treble Singers, Voces Novae et Antiquae, the Kitos Singers, nexus
Arts, Palisades Virtuosi, the percussion ensembles of The Juilliard
School, Mannes School of Music and the University of Buffalo, and the
New York Percussion Quartet. As a performer of organ music of all
styles and periods, he has toured both the U.S. and Europe, particularly
presenting concerts of new organ music. He has also performed with the
new music group Speculum Musicae. He is the recipient of many prizes
and awards including those from BMI, Editions Salabert, the French
Cultural Ministry, the National Endowment of the Arts, The American
Music Center and twice from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. In
1984-5, he was composer-in-residence at the Center for Computer Music
and Research at Stanford University under a Rockefeller Foundation
Grant. A CD of works for chorus and organ recorded by the Gregg Smith
Singers and the New York Treble Singers is issued by Ethereal
Recordings, Manhattan Impromptus for piano, performed by Stephen Gosling, has been released by Capstone Records. His Wind-Space
for alto flute, bass clarinet and piano was commissioned by the
Palisades Virtuosi and recorded by them for Albany Records. His chamber
opera, Dance of the Stones, was premiered by Nexus
Arts in November 2010 at Theatre 80 in New York City to great acclaim
and sold out houses. He is currently Music Director of the First
Congregational Church in Park Ridge, New Jersey.
About the Performer
Pianist Stephen Gosling enjoys
a varied career as soloist and chamber musician with a particular focus
on the music of our time. Mr. Gosling is a member of New York New Music
Ensemble, Ensemble Sospeso, American Modern Ensemble, Orchestra of the
League of Composers, and Ne(x)tworks. He has also performed with the New
York Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Dutch Radio
Philharmonic, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus, the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center, Bang on a Can, and Speculum Musicae, among
many others. His work has garnered consistent critical acclaim, and he
was profiled by the New York Times in October 2005.
A native of Sheffield, England, Mr. Gosling relocated to New York in
1989 to begin studies with Oxana Yablonskaya at The Juilliard School.
Upon graduation from the Bachelor of Music program in 1993, he was
awarded the Mennin Prize for Outstanding Leadership and Excellence in
Music. Earlier that year he performed John Corigliano's Piano Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, and gave the European premiere of Paul Schoenfield's Four Parables with
the Dutch Radio Philharmonic under Lukas Foss. In 1994 Mr. Gosling
received his Master's degree from Juilliard and was awarded the Sony
Elevated Standards Fellowship. He subsequently enrolled in the Doctor of
Musical Arts program, from which he graduated in 2000. While at
Juilliard, he was featured as concert soloist an unprecedented four
times. Mr. Gosling was for three years pianist of the Aspen
Contemporary Ensemble, and appeared in several seasons of the
Summergarden series at MOMA. He has also performed at the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C., the Grant Park Festival in Chicago, the Bang on a
Can Marathon, Bargemusic, the 2001 Great Day in New York festival, and
the PAN festival in Seoul, Korea. Mr. Gosling has been heard on the
NPR, WNYC and WQXR radio networks, and has recorded for New World
Records, CRI, Mode, Innova, and Rattle Records.
About the Program
Manhattan Impromptus
were composed in 1995-96 for piano solo and consists of ten pieces of
varying character and moods. When one thinks of the word “impromptu”,
especially in a musical sense, one thinks immediately, of course, of the
various improvisatory-like pieces composed in the 19th Century by
Schubert and Chopin among others. However, “impromptu” can also mean
something that is done on the spur of the moment or is unplanned. This
latter interpretation, for me, captures much of the quality of life and
experience in New York City where many seemingly incongruous elements
are often thrown together with little, if any, foresight and are made to
exist together. This in true in many areas: architecturally,
culturally, socially, linguistically, etc. All of these wide-ranging
concepts find their way into the music of this work with its
proliferation and frequent juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas.
In a sense, it is also my reaction to much of the polarization of
musical ideas and techniques which existed during much of my musical
matriculation during the 1960’s and 1970’s (tonal vs. serial, uptown vs.
downtown, etc.), which has always seemed to me to be frivolous and
short-sighted.
This dichotomy exists from the very beginning,
in the first piece, where tonal and atonal ideas are made to exist side
by side in a highly rhythmic and jazz-like context, increasing in
intensity and dynamic range until the very end which employs the
extremes of the keyboard. The second piece offers a complete contrast
in its slow moving, static melody and simple harmonic accompaniment.
The third piece is an homage to the player piano music of Colon
Nancarrow, which has always fascinated me by its invention and
rhythmical complexities. Many intricate rhythmic patters (including
frequent use of a gradual increase and decrease of note values) are
superimposed on each other to give an effect of an “out-of-kilter”
barrel organ. The fourth piece is the most Chopinesque of the set,
based mostly on simple triadic motives, and ending again with a dramatic
flourish. The fifth again offers a complete contrast with what has
preceded. This time, however, it unfolds with an ostinato of slowly
moving harmonies.
The sixth piece is perhaps the most
characteristic of the set and is a type of perverted Bach two-part
invention. Here, a rather banal and perfectly tonal melody is put
through all the manipulations of classic serial technique (prime,
inversion, retrograde and retrograde-inversion), while appearing in each
of the 12 major keys. This melody is accompanied by another single
voice – disjointed, free and mostly atonal. The seventh piece was
inspired by James Joyce’s famous quote from the last paragraph of Finnegan’s Wake
-- “Soft morning city” and is based on a slow ostinato of gradually
increasing note-values played on a single note – the lowest D on the
piano. The eighth piece was inspired by someone who I just happened to
hear playing and improvising on the saxophone off in the distance while
walking through Central Park late one evening. The ninth piece is
another dramatic and highly virtuosic piece, based on a number of
elements, in particular the fast repetitions of certain chords. The
tenth and final piece brings the work to a quiet and peaceful conclusion
with its long soulful melody, melodic ostinato and chorale-like coda.
