Friday, June 17, 2011 7:30pm

ACA Summer Festival 2011
Symphony Space Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
New York, NY 10025

"PAIRINGS"

Friday, June 17, 2011   7:30pm - Buy Tickets

David Fulmer - Himmelfahrt in die Tiefen der Nacht - Second Instrumental Unit
Lansing McLoskey - blur - Michael Shane, clarinet; Lisa Preimesberger, Basset horn; video by Rita Blitt
Jan Gilbert - Suite for String Quartet and Veena - SIU Quartet, with Nirmala Rajasekar, veena
Elliott Schwartz - Darwin's Dream II - Bowdoin New Music Ensemble,  recorded sounds, and visual projections
Edith Borroff - Sonata for Horn and Piano - Second Instrumental Unit: Michael Atkinson, French horn; Steven Beck, piano
Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy - Jabberwocky and High Flight - Anthony Pulgram, tenor; Marcia Eckert, piano; Sam Budish and Jonathan Smith, percussion

---

David Fulmer - Himmelfahrt in die Tiefen der Nacht  (2011) - for flute, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, piano, solo soprano saxophone, violin, cello. Sooyun Kim, flute; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Gareth Flowers, trumpet; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Jeremiah Campbell, cello; Michael Truesdell and Sam Budish, percussion; Steven Beck, piano; Eliot Gattegno, solo soprano saxophone; David Fulmer, conductor.

Program Note: Himmelfahrt in die Tiefen der Nacht – “Ascension into the depths of the night”, was composed especially for saxophonist Eliot Gattegno and the Heidelberger Frühling Festival.  Articulated in a single movement, the work traverses through a variety of different ensemble formations and textures.  The ensemble often creates sonic cohesion or opposition with and against the timbres and extended techniques of the solo saxophone.  Following a cadenza near the conclusion of the work, the full ensemble joins the saxophone in episodes of ascending gestures that eventually decay into the serene textures of metallic percussion and multiphonics (harmonic chordal sonorities of the saxophone).

Biography: Composer, violinist, and conductor David Fulmer is emerging as one of the most unique musicians of his generation – his bold compositional aesthetic combined with his thrilling performing abilities have garnered him numerous international accolades. He is the winner of the 14th International Edvard Grieg Competition for Composers; the first American ever to receive this highly acclaimed award. He is also a winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, a BMI Composer Award, and the Charles Ives Award (Scholarship) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Other honors and awards include a special citation from the Minister of Education of Brazil for his cycle of musical lectures and presentation, the Hannah Komanoff Scholarship in Composition (2006-07) and the 2005 Dorothy Hill Klotzman Grant from the Juilliard School, and the highly coveted 2004 George Whitefield Chadwick Gold Medal from the New England Conservatory.
This season Fulmer makes his European debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performing and recording his Violin Concerto under the direction of Matthias Pintscher. After rave reviews following the premiere of his violin concerto at Lincoln Center, Fulmer was immediately engaged to perform the work with major orchestras and festivals throughout Europe, North America, Scandinavia and Australia. Upcoming performances of his music will be featured at the Grieg Festival in Oslo, the Mozarteum Summer Festival in Salzburg, Heidelberger Frühling Internationales Musikfestival, Tanglewood Music Center, and others. Current commissioned projects include a new violin concerto with chamber ensemble (Sydney, Australia; “101 Commissions for 100 Years Project), a cello concerto for celebrated cellist Fred Sherry, a chamber work for the National Gallery of Oslo, a new work for the Cygnus Ensemble featuring soprano Tony Arnold, and an extended triptych entitled Himmelfahrt in die Tiefen der Nacht for solo soprano saxophone and chamber ensemble featuring Eliot Gattegno. He received his DMA from Juilliard, and has been on the faculty of Columbia University since 2009.

Eliot Gattegno, saxophone: Hailed by Fanfare Magazine as a “hugely sensitive musician” and the Boston Globe as “having superior chops backed up by assured musicianship,” Eliot Gattegno is the only saxophonist and one of the few Americans to ever win the “Kranichsteiner Musikpreis”, widely considered the most prestigious prize for the interpretation of new music.

He also is the winner of the Tourjee Alumni Award and the John Cage Award from the New England Conservatory, the Fine Arts Award from Interlochen Arts Academy, and after a series of events including concertos, recitals, and lectures earned an special citation for cultural exchange and artistic excellence from the Brazilian Government. As winner of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project concerto competition, he performed and recorded Elliott Schwartz’s Chamber Concerto IV for a release on BMOP/Sound. These performances led the esteemed Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer to announce, “there is no question the future of his instrument is in safe hands.”

Second Instrumental Unit:Residing in New York City, the Second Instrumental Unit is currently beginning their seventh season. Throughout past seasons, the Unit has been featured both as Resident-ensemble, and as Guest-artists at Queens College, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Rutgers, Ball State University, Bates College, University of Western Michigan, University of California San Diego, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, and the Boston Conservatory. The Unit has developed a very special relationship with Queens College (Aaron Copland School of Music), where they have just completed their fifth season as ensemble-in-residence for the composition department, astonishingly commissioning and premiering over 120 new works by student composers. The Unit has also had an annual engagement at the Monadnock Music Festival. In the late summer of 2007, the Unit was invited to lecture, present, and perform in Porto Alegra, Brazil at the Universidad. As a result of the tour to Brazil, the Arts Council and Minister of Education of Brazil issued a special citation to David Fulmer and Eliot Gattegno (co-directors) for their outstanding artistic excellence. The Unit made its Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall in the spring of 2006 in a 90^th birthday celebration concert in tribute of American composer Milton Babbitt. The American Composers Alliance (ACA) has also embraced the ensemble, choosing to showcase the Second Instrumental Unit at their annual festival for the past four years.

---

Jan Gilbert - Suite for String Quartet and South Indian Veena - Zukofsky Quartet (Aaron Boyd and Miranda Cuckson, violins; David Fulmer, viola; Alberto Parrini, cello), with special guest artist, Nirmala Rajasekar, veena

I.  Alapana   (Raga Mayamalavagaula)
II. Thillana   (Raga Sanmukhapriya)
III.  Alapana  (Raga Risabhapriya)
IV.  Thillana    (Raga Rasikapriya)
V.  Alapana      (Raga Jhalavarali)

Program Note: Suite for String Quartet and South Indian Veena explores the beauty and color of five unique ragas. These melodic modes are the cornerstones of classical Carnatic music.  Supported by the drone pitches on Sa and Pa (scales degrees 1 and 5), every note of the raga is embellished with highly ornamented lines of ascent and descent.   There are over 2000 ragas available in South Indian music.  The five chosen for this work are mayamalavagaula  E F G# A B C D# E; sanmukhapriya E F# G A# B C D E; risabhapriya E F# G# A# B C D E; rasikapriya E G G# A# B D D# E; jhalavarali E F F# A# B C D# E.

The veena is tuned in E with four main strings, plus three strings used for rhythmic accompaniment; all pitches are tuned to E or B.

The alapanas are slow movements -  improvisatory in nature and filled with individual cadenzas.  The thillanas are quick rhythmic compositions.

The quartet is asked to improvise in Movement IV in a thillana created by Nirmala Rajasekar.  The work juxtaposes the textures of eastern and western string instruments, combining classical improvisation on the veena with melodic and harmonic interpretation of the ragas by the string quartet.

Nirmala Rajasekar, veena: Nirmala Rajasekar is a world renowned Carnatic veena virtuoso and educator of South Indian Music. She has performed in venues throughout the world and is a recipient of many awards including a Bush artistic fellowship, a McKnight fellowship, Rotary Vocational Excellence award and Best Senior Veena Artiste.  She is known for her talents in exploring South Indian Classical (Carnatic) to create collaborative projects with other music traditions including western classical and jazz. The press has often described her as a "Carnatic Ambassador", as she has introduced Carnatic Music to many other art forms of the world.
Zukofsky QuartetSIU Quartet: Comprising four individuals of outstanding solo and chamber music experience, Miranda Cuckson and Naho Tsutsui violins; David Fulmer, viola; and Alberto Parrini, cello. Individually, the members have participated in the Marlboro, Sante Fe, Prussia Cove, Seattle, and Ravinia festivals, and have collaborated with the Amadeus, Guarneri, Juilliard, and Orion quartets, as well as the Beaux Arts Trio.

---

Edith Borroff - Sonata for Horn and Piano (1950) - Michael Atkinson, French horn; Steven Beck, piano

Edith Borroff (b. 1925) was born in New York City into a family of well-known professional musicians.  She was performing recitals, and composing songs and piano pieces before she was six.  In spite of overwhelming obstacles put in her path as a female determined to compose classical music, Borroff earned the Bachelor of Music (1946) and Master of Music degrees (1948) in Composition at Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music. Her minor studies focused on organ, and voice performance. Undergraduate studies also included two years at Oberlin with Claire Coci.  Borroff earned her Ph.D. in the history of music at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1958, where she wrote for the Ann Arbor News as their Contemporary Music Critic.

In addition to her renown as a composer, Dr. Borroff taught at a number of colleges and universities, including SUNY-Binghamton, where she spent the bulk of her career. Her areas of research centered on 17th-century French music, American and contemporary music, music education, and pre-history. Borroff  has authored numerous books including the first history of music to include American composers.  Her book, Three American Composers (1986), traces the power shift from the apprentice/conservatory system of training composers to the university system, which took place in the United States from 1925-1975, and describes how this change influenced the works of three renowned American composers: Irwin Fischer, Ross Lee Finney, and George Crumb. Edith Borroff’s papers are housed in the Newberry Library in Chicago, and include her writings, musical compositions, correspondence, research materials, and lectures as musicologist and composer.

Program Notes* for Sonata for Horn and Piano by Edith Borroff

I had been hired for a job in Milwaukee-Downer College around 1950.  I taught music theory and other courses there for four years.  I didn’t teach composition because at that time only men were considered composers and therefore only men could teach composition.  The head of the department was Helen Henry, a fine horn player. Helen asked me to accompany her in recitals.  That went so well, that we kept on collaborating for the entire time I was working there. 

Helen had a great feel for phrasing with a line!  We didn’t talk about it at all as we worked together-- I put all that into the music-- the feeling and what would happen naturally.  Of all the things I wrote, and there were many, that was the one I felt the most emotional about,  because she had such a stunning ability to phrase things.  I studied her technique before I wrote the sonata. I asked her what would be the highest note I could write without any hesitation, the lowest note and going down to it. 

The work isn’t a sonata for horn with accompaniment, it’s a sonata for horn and piano, as equals. It’s a duet. I’m a slow composer, I didn’t write it fast.  We didn’t work on it until I was finished.  We had toured together for three years and played most of the music written for horn and piano; most of which features the horn, with the piano as support.  I wanted to write it so that both the short term phrases and the long term movement were engaged. I always had the view that composers were thinking of either the short term phrasing or the long term movement. I tried to combine them, and I think I did. 

*Excerpt from conversation with Dr. Borroff at her home in Durham, North Carolina, May 2011. --Anna Ludwig Wilson

 

 

 

"High Flight" is a poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr. an American who joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1940 to be of service in World War 11. During further training in the UK he wrote "High Flight" at age 19, jotting it on the back of a letter to his parents, in September, 1941, but three months later, on December 11, 1941, he was tragically killed in a mid-air collision with another student. This poem is the official poem of the Royal Air Force. John's beautiful and spiritual words inspired my composition.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
No 412 squadron, RCAF

Anthony Pulgram, Tenor: London Opera News calls American tenor Anthony Pulgram "a commanding and charismatic singer, with rich, lyric tone." The Atlanta native has performed in major opera houses throughout the US, Canada and in Europe, including Paris, Vienna, Geneva, Belgrade and Palermo. His roles as principle tenor at the New York City Opera include Pinkerton in MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Don Jose in CARMEN(cover), Apollo in DAPHNE(cover), Commissioner in DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES and Alpheus in LYSISTRATA. Other recent portrayals include Apollo in DAPHNE with Pacific Opera Victoria in British Columbia, Bacchus in ARIADNE AUF NAXOS with Des Moines Metro Opera, Narraboth in SALOME with Orlando Opera, Cavaradossi in TOSCA with Opera North, and Florestan in a concert performance of FIDELIO with One World Symphony.

Mr. Pulgram has appeared as a soloist with the Temple Symphony in Texas, the New York Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and the Harrisburg Symphony. His concert repertoire includes Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Handel's MESSIAH, Mendelssohn's ELIJAH, and the Mozart and Verdi REQUIEMs. He is a frequent recitalist, and has performed in various cities including New York, Salzburg and Florence. Mr. Pulgram made his Carnegie Hall solo debut in 2005 singing music of Mozart and Basler with Mid-America Productions.

A champion of contemporary music, he has created several operatic roles of world premieres in New York City, including Arjuna in ARJUNA’S DILEMNA with American Contemporary Opera, Sir Gawain in GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT with American Opera Projects, and the poet Sean in David Strickland's PHOENIX PARK (A POET'S JOURNEY) for Theatre for the New City.

An alumnus of Duke University and the Manhattan School of Music, Mr. Pulgram has won awards from the International Belvedere Competition in Vienna, the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation in New York, the Rosa Ponselle International Vocal Competition in New York, and the Atlanta Pro Mozart Society. He has been a member of the Voice Faculty at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus since 1999.

Marcia Eckert, pianist: "Eckert...showed herself to be a pianist of impressive skill and sensitivity, the sort of keyboard collaborator that every instrumentalist dreams of."  Scott Cantrell, Albany Times-Union

A native of Terre Haute, Indiana, Marcia Eckert is active as piano soloist and collaborative artist and has appeared in the Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as at Merkin, Alice Tully, and Weill concert halls, and London’s Leighton House.  She has traveled throughout the United States presenting lecture-recitals on piano music by women composers and on the music of Charles Ives.  The Ehrlich/Eckert Duo, a violin and piano duo, recorded music of Germaine Tailleferre which was released on the Cambria label in March, 1995.  Ms. Eckert recorded Songs by Women with soprano Susan Gonzalez for Leonarda Records, and 20th-Century Music for Recorder and Piano with Anita Randolfi.  She has performed with Blue Door, Albany Chamber Players,  Polyhymnia, Sarasa, Dulcinea Piano Trio and the Eckert/Gilwood Piano Duo.  She has given numerous premieres, including works by Eleanor Cory, Ursula Mamlok, Roger Zahab, Kevin McCarter and Jacob Goodman.  Ms. Eckert has served on the keyboard, chamber music and theory faculty of Hunter College, where she was a 1998 recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.  She has been teaching piano and chamber music in the Mannes College of Music Preparatory Division since 1983 and is the director of Pianophoria!, and Teen Pianophoria!, summer piano intensives.

 

 

Lansing McLosekyLansing McLoskey - blur  (2009) 
Michael Shane, clarinet; Lisa Preimesberger, Basset horn; video by Rita Blitt.

Program Note: blur is an exploration of the blurring of boundries. Blurring the boundries between solo and duet; between consonance and dissonance; between the clarinet and Basset Horn; between contrasting musical ideas; and blurring the boundries of expectation. International award-winning artist Rita Blitt painted a series of paintings based on the piece and created a video that is projected while the piece is performed live.

Biography: Described as "A major talent and a deep thinker with a great ear" by the American Composers Orchestra and "an engaging, gifted composer writing smart, compelling and fascinating music with a bluesy edge and infectious punch" by Gramophone Magazine, Lansing McLoskey came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial "Three B's" for him were not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but rather The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag.

His first experiences in composition were not exercises in counterpoint, but rather as the guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1980's. It was actually through these years in the visceral world of punk that he first developed a love for classical music (but that's another story). McLoskey’s music has been performed across the U.S. and in twelve other countries on six continents, and has received more than two dozen national and international awards. In 2009 he became the first composer in the 43 year history of the ISU Contemporary Music Festival to win both the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition and the “Music Now” Competition, both blind-juried.

Other awards include the 2009 newEar Composition Competition, the 2009 American Composers Forum-LA National Composition Competition, the Omaha Symphony International New Music Competition, the Kenneth Davenport National Competition for Orchestral Works, Charles Ives Center Orchestral Composition Competition, the Paris New Music Review International Composition Competition, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and an Astral Career Grant from The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

Lisa Preimesberger, Basset Horn: Austrian-born bass clarinet and Basset horn player, specializes in new music.  During high school she was a two-time Winner of Austria´s Young Artist Competition, Prima la Musica. After earning her Bachelor´s degree from the Anton Bruckner University in Linz, Ms. Preimesberger enrolled at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern (Switzerland) to study with bass clarinet virtuoso Ernesto Molinari.  She has lived in New York City and earned her Master´s degree in Contemporary Performance from Manhattan School of Music under the guidance of Michael Lowenstern. During this time she received coachings from: Tara Helen O´Connor, flute; David Krakauer, clarinet; Martin Kuuskmann, bassoon; Fred Sherry, cello; Mark Steward, guitar; and played numerous concerts with the Tactus Ensemble in New York City.  In February 2010 Ms. Preimesberger premiered Evan Ziporyn´s "Tsmindao Ghmerto" on basset horn in close collaboration with the composer. Lisa is a DMA candidate at the State University of New York in Stony Brook studying with Alan R. Kay.  This past March she performed in the US premiere of Stockhausen's "Bijou" for alto flute, bass clarinet and electronics with the Da Capo Chamber Players at Merkin Concert Hall, receiving coachings from Stockhausen specialist Suzanne Stephens.
Michael Shane, clarinet: A newcomer to New York, clarinetist Michael Shane began his professional career as an interim player with the Cleveland Orchestra shortly before graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2007. Since then he has collaborated with some of the world's finest musicians and conductors in concert halls across the United States and abroad at venues including Severance Hall, the Blossom Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Musikverein in Vienna. He also joined the Cleveland Orchestra for residencies in Miami and at the Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals. Michael has performed with the New World Symphony and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and serves as second clarinet of the Erie (PA) Philharmonic. He has been heard in concert with notable conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnányi, James Gaffigan, Giancarlo Guerrero, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Paavo Järvi, Sir Neville Marriner, Bobby McFerrin, David Robertson, Julius Rudel, Michael Stern, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman.

---

Elliott Schwartz, 2008Elliott Schwartz - Darwin's Dream II - Bowdoin New Music Ensemble, recorded sounds, and visual projections.
Performance in celebration of the composer's 75th birthday this year -

Program Note: In the summer of 2009 the June Fitzpatrick Gallery (Portland, Maine) presented an exhibition of prints and drawings by my wife Dorothy Schwartz, all of the works inspired by and related to Charles Darwin in honor of his bicentenary that year.  Of course she had been working on that show for a number of years. Similarly, the idea of creating a musical “soundscape” connected to Darwin, and incorporating it into Deedee’s art show, first occurred to me as early as 2007, when we were living in Cambridge and paying occasional visits to Darwin’s home at Down House, Surrey. The most imposing object in the Down House drawing room is a large, lovely Broadwood piano. As we read about the house, we learned that Mrs. Darwin – apparently a fine pianist who had studied for a time with Chopin – would play for her husband each evening on that very piano. We also discovered that the piano played a prominent part in Charles Darwin’s last experiment, one that involved pots of worms being placed on the piano while she played. (They responded to the vibrations, although they could not “hear” the sounds.)

The idea of a worm reacting to sounds led me to imagine a worm actually making sounds; that fantasy, in turn, brought back memories of a 1950s pop song I had heard as a teenager which was premised on the same fantasy – “the sound that’s made by worms.” (In fact, that’s a line from the lyrics.)  As I began to assemble materials for my Darwin piece, I thought it might be nice to use a fragment of that old tune.

The primary idea behind my composition is that of generating a musical process and seeing what happens to it: not necessarily “evolution” in the scientific sense, but a brand of musical “development” – organic growth and gradual change. Accordingly, Darwin’s Dream begins with a perky little electronic motive (created on an ARP synthesizer at Bowdoin College some 30 years ago). It is quite repetitive at first, almost minimalist, but gradually a few other layers of sound from my memory bank (literally, early works of mine taken from my tape collection) are added to the mix, altering the course of the soundscape.  Whenever a fairly dense texture is reached, I return to the original electronic tune and add a completely different set of sound-memories, leading to another altered fabric. The very last of these alterations produces the most complex texture of all, and segues into a snatch of the 1950s worm music – only to fade away to my original little tune.

On another level entirely, rising from background to foreground and then fading again, one can occasionally hear fragments of nineteenth century piano music (passages from the Kinderscenen of Robert Schumann) perhaps as played by Emma Darwin in the drawing room of Down House 150 years ago. I chose the Schumann because it’s very likely Mrs. Darwin would have played this suite – it is domestic, technically easy, and therefore perfect for a parlor piano of that era – and because the individual movement titles seemed so fitting. “Of Strange Lands and Peoples”…”Dreaming”… “The Poet Speaks.”

The composition Darwin’s Dream, designed to be heard during the art exhibition opening (and through the month-long duration of the show) lasts 45 minutes, and loops back to the beginning for an infinitely seamless “performance.” It has since been shortened to a 30 minute version (which will be included on an Albany CD of my music), and shortened even further to create the platform for a multi-media work incorporating live performance and projected visual images from the 2009 art show. In the latter format, Darwin’s Dream II was performed with violin solo (by Peter Sheppard Skaerved) at Cambridge University in November 2010; this ACA Festival performance is the first to use a chamber ensemble.

Biography: Elliott Schwartz (born 1936, New York City) studied composition with Otto Luening, Jack Beeson and Paul Creston at Columbia University; informal contacts at the Bennington Composers Conference with Henry Brant and Barney Childs were equally important to his development. He is the Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emeritus at Bowdoin College, where he taught from 1964 to 2007, including twelve years as department chair; He has also held extended residencies and/or visiting professorships at the Ohio State University, University of Minnesota, the University of California (San Diego and Santa Barbara), Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and Tufts. 


Performances of Schwartz’s music include orchestras, chamber ensembles and festivals in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Weimar, Tokyo, Hong Kong and San Francisco. His compositions are published by Lauren Keiser Music, Theodore Presser, Margun (AMP), Carl Fischer, and ACA. Compact disk recordings of his music can be heard on the Albany, Innova, Capstone/Parma, Metier, O.O. Discs, Folkways-Smithsonian, North-South Consonance, and GM labels.

Honors and awards include a Gaudeamus Prize (Netherlands), as well as grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  He is author or co-author  of five books, including the widely used text Music since 1945.  During 2006, Schwartz’s 70^th birthday was celebrated with concerts and guest lectures at Oxford, the Royal Academy of Music (London), the University of Minnesota, the ACA Festival (NYC) and the Library of Congress, the latter to celebrate the acquisition of his collected papers and archival materials. His 75^th birthday, earlier this year, was highlighted by the Portland Symphony premiere of his new orchestra work Diamond Jubilee. He is presently composing a flute concerto, to be premiered by the Verge Ensemble (Washington, DC) in September.

The Bowdoin New Music Ensemble:The Bowdoin New Music Ensemble was founded by five students (listed below) in 2008;  its concerts have featured music written expressly for the group by Elliott Schwartz, Peter McLaughlin, and Akiva Zamcheck, as well as works by Frederick Rzewski, Joshua DeScherer, Olivier Messiaen, Barney Childs and others. The BNME participated in last summer’s ACA Festival, performing Elliott Schwartz’s  Collage Concertante.

Peter McLaughlin, percussionist: Peter McLaughlin originally from greater Boston, is composer and percussionist, based in Portland, Maine. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College, and has studied with Elliott Schwartz, Tyshawn Sorey, Frank Mauceri, and Steve Grover. His compositional output and performance activity reflect the great eclecticism of his musical interests: from Babbit to Bjork, hip-hop to Hindustani, Schoenberg to Sun Ra. The Portland Phoenix has nominated McLaughlin’s band The Milkman’s Union as Best Indie band of 2010. 

Abriel Ferreira,trumpeter: Abriel Ferreira began her study of trumpet at the American School of the Hague, and then crossed the Atlantic to attend Bowdoin College, where she studied trumpet with Allen Graffam and played first trumpet in the Bowdoin Brass Quintet, Orchestra and Pep Band. During her summers, she has worked as a piano accompanist and music teacher at Maine camps, and performed with the College Light Opera Company on Cape Cod. Since graduating in 2010, Abriel has kept busy balancing work at an energy consulting company, performing, and teaching trumpet and piano.

Katie Cushing, pianist: Katie Cushing, a Boston native, studied piano with Elizabeth Kavash at the New England Conservatory prep division, and did further work with Joyce Moulton and Annie Antonacos at Bowdoin College. She has performed at the last two ACA summer festivals – not only in 2010 as a member of the BNME, but as piano soloist in Elliott Schwartz’s The Seven Seasons in 2009. An English and Education major at Bowdoin, Katie held a high-school teaching internship at Portland’s Casco Bay H.S. immediately after graduation, and now works in the Development Office of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Akiva Zamcheck, guitarist: Akiva Zamcheck is a guitarist and composer from the Bronx. He studied music at LaGuardia High school of Music and Art, Bowdoin College, and now at NYU where he is pursuing a PhD in musicology. Akiva began his research into early music while hosting the popular radio program "Renaissance Dance Party", and has written on and performed in sundry other types of musical projects in classical and contemporary styles, including his rock ensemble D.T.ROTBOT. He is delighted to perform with Elliott Schwartz once again.

Olivia Madrid, clarinetist: hails from Hong Kong and Scottsdale, AZ, and majored in music at Bowdoin, with special interests in composition, electroacoustic music, performance (piano, clarinet, percussion) and sculpture. Since graduating from Bowdoin, Olivia has relocated to Washington, D.C. She is currently interning with a public policy think tank, where she does research in international development and public health.

 

---

 

---