ARIZONA CONTEMPORARY MUSIC ENSEMBLE (ACME)
ACME 2014, Simone Mancuso, director
Flute
Kate Mulligan-Ferry
Na Young Ham
Sarah Hartong
Clarinet
Erica Low
Patrick Englert
Guitar
Jase Brown
Percussion
Alexandros Fragiskatos
Eric Retterer
Violin
Clarice Collins
Sarah Off
Piano
Aimee Fincher
Peter Costa
Jacob Hofeling
Cello
Marguerite Salajko
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The Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), directed by Simone Mancuso, is a group devoted to the performance of modern and contemporary chamber music. ACME was founded by Dr. Glenn Hackbarth in 1978. Since then, the group has performed over 700 works, including many world and Arizona premieres. ACME offers selected students the opportunity to perform at the highest professional level, playing the most significant music of our time, from masterworks of the 20th century to the most recent works of this new century, as well as new works by ASU faculty, selected student composers and renowned visiting composers at ASU.
On November 16, ACME will present a concert featuring ensemble music by composers of the American Composers Alliance (ACA) in New York. ACA was founded in 1937 by the famous American composer Aaron Copland. The program features works by Martin Boykan, Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy, Phillip Rhodes, Beth Wiemann, Karl Kroeger, Tom Flaherty, Daniel Perlongo, David Froom and two works by ASU Professor of composition Jody Rockmaker.
ACME will share the stage with the ASU Brass Septet, ASU Graduate Brass Quintet, coached by Professor Deanna Swoboda, with the ASU Clarinet Ensemble, and with Professors Thomas Landschoot (cello), Russell Ryan (piano) and Joshua Gardner (clarinet). Composed within the past few decades, the works on this program provide a view of the varied creative activity of American composers of our time.
---Simone Mancuso
Simone Mancuso, Director (curator for this concert)
Italian-born percussionist Simone Mancuso has been internationally recognized for his interpretations of contemporary classical pieces with prizes including the Kranichstein-Stipendienpreise at the Darmstadt International Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 2002 and the Stockhausen Preise in 2005. He has collaborated with composers including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Salvatore Sciarrino, Klaus Huber, Chaya Czernowin, Edoardo Soto-Milan, Rudolf Kelterborn, Adriana Hölsky, Giovanni Damiani and Glenn Hackbarth among others.
As a soloist he has appeared with the Basel Sinfonietta, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, SONUS Ensemble, and Orchestra da Camera Ungherese under the baton of Alexander Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, Johannes Kalitzke, Giorgio Bernasconi, Denise Fedeli, and Diego Fasolis. In a chamber music setting, he has performed with celebrated pianists such as Martha Argerich, Gabriele Baldocci, Giorgia Tomassi, and Enrico Pompili.
Mancuso’s critically acclaimed, internationally released recordings can be heard on EMI Classics, Stradivarius, Col Legno, Curva Minore, Suisse Grammont Portrait and Chelandia. His solo CD “La Parola al Legno” features the world premiere recording of Il Legno e la Parola for solo marimba by Salvatore Sciarrino. He is a founding member of the Swiss based ensemble Lugano Percussion Group, the jazz/classical crossover duo the Mancuso-Suzda Project, the Sonus Duo with renowned saxophonist Timothy McAllister.
Currently, Mancuso is a member of the percussion faculty at Arizona State University and director of ACME.
THE COMPOSERS
Jody Rockmaker ::
was born in 1961 in New York City and received his Ph.D. in Composition from Princeton University. He has studied at the Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. He studied composition with Erich Urbanner, Edward T. Cone, Milton Babbitt, Claudio Spies, Malcolm Peyton and Miriam Gideon.
He is also the recipient of numerous awards including a Barlow Endowment Commission, Fulbright Grant, two BMI Awards for Young Composers, an ASCAP Grant, the George Whitefield Chadwick Medal from New England Conservatory, and a National Orchestral Association Orchestral Reading Fellowship.
Dr. Rockmaker has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Villa Montalvo, and has been a Composition Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center. He taught at Stanford University and is currently an Associate Professor at Arizona State University School of Music. He served on the board of Earplay New Music Ensemble, and was Assistant Director of the Arizona State University School of Music from 2011-2013.
Martin Boykan studied composition with Walter Piston, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith, and piano with Eduard Steuermann. He received a BA from Harvard University and an MM from Yale University, after which he traveled to Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Mr. Boykan founded the Brandeis Chamber Ensemble upon his return to the US and has performed extensively as a pianist. Featured with soloists such as violinist Joseph Silverstein and mezzo-soprano Jan de Gaetani, he was the pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf from 1964-65. He has composed for a wide variety of instrumental combinations, his works having been performed by ensembles including the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the League ISCM, Earplay, Musica Viva, Collage New Music, and ACME.
Mr. Boykan has been awarded a Rockefeller grant, NEA award, Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a recording award and the Walter Hinrichsen Publication Award from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1994 he was awarded a Senior Fulbright to Israel. He has received numerous commissions from chamber ensembles as well as commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, and the Fromm Foundation. In 2011 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.
At present Mr. Boykan is an Emeritus Professor of Music, Brandeis University. He has just completed his fourth Piano Trio and it will be premiered in New York this month.
Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy ::
graduated from the Julliard School of Music and held a Master's degree from the Converse College School of Music, where she studied composition with Wallingford Riegger.
Commissioned by many contemporary dance companies and chamber groups, she worked with noted choreographers Takehiro Ueyama in New York, Bill Bayles at Bennington College, and Peggy Lawler at Cornell University. Her commissions included the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Cornell University Theater Arts Department, as well as several choreographers. Performances included the Alabama Symphony, Atlanta Chamber Players, Atlanta String Quartet, the Relâche Ensemble of Philadelphia, Eastman School of Music, Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, the Bowling Green College of Musical Arts Festival, The Society of Composers, Inc., the National Conferences at Florida International University and Syracuse University, and features abroad in Paris, Uppsala, and Beijing.
Ms. Fairlie-Kennedy was Composer in Residence for Dance and Theater Arts at Bennington College and Cornell University. Her awards and grants included those given by NEA, NEH, the Georgia Commission on the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the Cornell Council for Creative and Performing Arts. She was a winner in the Philadelphia Classical Symphony/Maxfield Parrish and Women Composers' Showcase, New Jersey City University, competitions, with the work performed here, Desert Echoes.
Phillip Rhodes ::
is Composer-in-Residence and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Carleton College where he joined the faculty in 1974. Born in western North Carolina in 1940, he received degrees from Duke University and the Yale University School of Music.
Rhodes has been the recipient of numerous commissions and composition awards, including grants from the NEA, the NEH, the Rockefeller Fund for Music, a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship, two Fromm Foundation Commissions, and a Bush Foundation Fellowship for Artists.
Mr. Rhodes' compositions are published by C. F. Peters, E.M.I., Presser, J Ballerbach (Syler Music), and Schott, and recorded on labels including CRI, Centaur Records, First Edition (Louisville), New World Records, Vienna Modern Masters, and Innova. Major performances of his works include those by the Atlanta Symphony at Carnegie Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, and the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center. Now retired from teaching, Mr. Rhodes lives and composes in Lake Santeetlah, North Carolina.
Beth Wiemann ::
Raised in Burlington, VT, Beth Wiemann studied composition and clarinet at Oberlin College and Princeton University. Her works have been performed by the New York New Music Ensemble, Continuum, Ensemble 21, Earplay, the Motion Ensemble, Opera Vista, saxophonist John Sampen, singers Paul Hillier, Susan Narucki, D'Anna Fortunato, and others.
Her compositions have won awards from Copland House, the Orvis Foundation, Colorado New Music Festival, American Women Composers, and Marimolin as well as various arts councils, and have been featured on the Capstone, Americus, innova and Albany record labels. Ms. Wiemann teaches composition and clarinet at the University of Maine.
Karl Kroeger ::
Well known nationally as both a composer and musicologist, Karl Kroeger was born in Louisville, KY in 1932. He studied composition and musicology at the Universities of Louisville and Illinois, and received a Ph.D. in musicology from Brown University. For three years in the mid 1960s he was a Ford Foundation composer-in-residence in Eugene, OR, where he composed music for performance by public school ensembles. He has taught at Ohio University, Morehead State University, Wake Forest University, and Keele University in England; he was director of the Moravian Music Foundation for almost a decade, and for almost two decades he was a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His music has been widely performed in the U.S., and in Europe and South America. He currently lives in the greater Chicago area.
Tom Flaherty ::
received degrees from Brandeis University, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, and the University of Southern California; his primary teachers in composition include Martin Boykan, Bülent Arel, Robert Linn, and Frederick Lesemann. He studied cello with Timothy Eddy and Bernard Greenhouse. A founding member of the Almont Ensemble, he currently holds the John P. and Magdalena R. Dexter Professorship in Music and is Director of the Electronic Studio at Pomona College. He has received awards and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Music Center, the Pasadena Arts Council, the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, the Delius Society, the University of Southern California, "Meet the Composer", and Yaddo.
Recent commissions include A Heckuva Job for guitarist David Starobin, When Time Was Young for Lucy Shelton, Moments of Inertia for Dinosaur Annex, and Gleeful Variants for Genevieve Lee. His music has been performed by Dinosaur Annex in Boston, Speculum Musicae and Odyssey Chamber Players in New York, Earplay and Volti in San Francisco, Concorde in Dublin, Gallery Players in Toronto, XTet and Ensemble GREEN in Los Angeles; and by such performers as soprano Lucy Shelton, guitarists David Starobin, Peter Yates and Matthew Elgart, organist William Peterson, pianists Genevieve Lee, Susan Svercek, Charlotte Zelka, and Karl and Margaret Kohn.
Daniel Perlongo ::
attended the University of Michigan where he received both B.M. and M.M. degrees studying composition with George Balch Wilson, Leslie Bassett and Ross Lee Finney. With a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship he continued his studies for two years in Rome at the Academy of St. Cecilia with Gofreddo Petrassi.
Mr. Perlongo and his music compositions have received numerous awards, including the American Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy-National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the NEA. He has been resident composer at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, and Montalvo center for the Arts in Saratoga, California. In 2003, he received Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Distinguished Faculty Award for the Creative Arts, where he taught for over 40 years and is now Emeritus Professor.
Mr. Perlongo's chamber music has been recognized for its finely crafted lyricism and subtle expressiveness. His String Quartet II, performed by the Pro Arte Quartet, was premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall after winning the League of Composers International Society for Contemporary Music competition. Ricercar for wind trio was winner of the International Double Reed Society competition. The Ricercar and Fragments for flute and cello were recorded on Composers Recordings Incorporated (CRI), newly released on New World Records NWCRL453. Also released on MMC is Mr. Perlongo's Sunburst for clarinet and orchestra, commissioned by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and recorded by clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.
David Froom ::
was born in California in 1951. His music has been performed extensively throughout the United States by major orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, including, among many others, the Louisville, Seattle, Utah, League/ISCM, and Chesapeake Symphony Orchestras, The United States Marine and Navy Bands, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the 21st Century Consort, Boston Musica Viva, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, and the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet.
Among the organizations that have bestowed honors on him are the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Academy Award, Ives Scholarship), the Guggenheim, Fromm, Koussevitzky, and Barlow Foundations, the Kennedy Center (first prize in the Friedheim Awards), the NEA, The Music Teachers National Association (MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer for 2006), and the state of Maryland (five Individual Artist Awards). He had a Fulbright grant for study at Cambridge University, and fellowships to the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. He serves on the boards of directors for the American Composers Alliance, the 21st Century Consort, and the New York New Music Ensemble. His music is available on CD on the Bridge, Navona, New Dimensions, Naxos, Arabesque, Capriccio, Centaur, Sonora, Crystal, Opus 3, and Altissimo labels, and is published by American Composers Alliance.
He has taught at the University of Utah, the University of Maryland–College Park, the Peabody Conservatory, and, since 1989, St. Mary’s College of Maryland. David Froom was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and Columbia University. His main composition teachers were Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, Alexander Goehr, and William Kraft.
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