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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9236344895996053062015-06-08T18:15:40.352-07:00music @ mainfree music programs at the main library : 303 north laura street : jacksonville, florida 32202Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-86126338294218029582015-05-08T03:28:00.005-07:002015-05-08T03:38:55.223-07:00Tuesday, May 12: Conversations with Courtney @ 5:15 p.m.

Courtney Lewis, the music director of the Jacksonville Symphony, is coming to the Main Library Tuesday, May 12, for the second of a two-part series, "Conversations with Courtney." Lewis will talk with attendees about the upcoming concert he will conduct on May 14 and 15, as well as plans for the future. A Meet and Greet reception immediately following will offer the chance for personal conversations with Lewis. Jacksonville Public Library and the Jacksonville Symphony are partnering to provide this free event to the community.

WHEN: Tuesday, May 12
5:15 p.m. – Reception
5:45 p.m. – Program begins
6:15 p.m. – Meet and Greet

WHERE: Main Library, The Lounge at 303 North
303 Laura St. N. – 32202

In October, Lewis will begin his first full season as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony. His new initiatives will include Symphony in 60, a series of three happy hour concerts; a Symphonic Night at the Movies series featuring three films accompanied by the Symphony; six Signature Sunday Masterworks and Pops concerts; and three days of free community concerts to open the season.

Lewis also concurrently serves as the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic through the end of the 2015-16 season. Previous appointments have included associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of Boston's acclaimed Discovery Ensemble.

The Jacksonville Public Library is committed to making its programs accessible to all persons. If you need special accommodations, please call 630-2665 (TTY 630-1999) at least 72 hours prior to the event.

About the Jacksonville Symphony
One of the nation's top regional orchestras, the Jacksonville Symphony offers live symphonic variety in Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts and engages the community with performances throughout the First Coast and statewide. The Jacksonville Symphony is the largest nonprofit provider of youth music education programs in North Florida. Each season nearly 70,000 young people and citizens of all ages benefit from the Symphony's diverse educational and community engagement opportunities. Visit jaxsymphony.org/contents/Educational-Programs.html for more information.

The Jacksonville Symphony announces an historic new era as Courtney Lewis begins his inaugural season as Music Director in 2015-16, bringing to the podium a number of exciting new initiatives. For tickets and information, log on to JaxSymphony.org or call 354-5547. Like the Jacksonville Symphony on Facebook (facebook.com/JaxSymphony), follow on Twitter (@JaxSymphony) and share on Instagram (#JaxSymphony).

About the Jacksonville Public Library
The mission of the Jacksonville Public Library is to enrich lives, build community and foster success by bringing people, information and ideas together. Last year, more than
3.5 million visits were made to Jacksonville Public Libraries, items were checked out more than 6.5 million times, and nearly 11,000 programs and services were offered to Duval County residents at the Main Library and 20 branch locations. For more information about the Jacksonville Public Library, call 630-BOOK (2665) or visit jaxpubliclibrary.org.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-68801294474202288552015-02-11T07:02:00.002-08:002015-02-11T16:56:46.645-08:00Wednesday, March 4 @ 6 p.m.
Promenade! with Jacksonville Symphony Players
In the Lounge at 303 North

Stroll in and enjoy J-Sym instrumentalists performing chamber music against the backdrop of Downtown Jacksonville's First Wednesday Art Walk.

Schedule:
6:00 pm - 6:45 pm:
String Quartet
featuring Anna Genest (violin), Aurella Duca (violin), Merryn Corsat (viola) and Alexei Romanenko (cello)

6:50 pm - 7:35pm:
Woodwind Quintet
featuring Rhonda Cassano (flute), Claudia Minch (oboe), Marci Gurnow (clarinet), Anthony Anurca (bassoon) and Aaron Brask (horn)

7:40 pm - 8:25 pm
String Quintet
featuring Piotr Szewczyk (violin), Patrice Evans (violin), Susan Pardue (viola), Laurie Casseday (cello) and Kevin Casseday (bass)Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-28448193571730518882015-02-04T08:53:00.001-08:002015-02-18T12:46:13.405-08:00Celebrate Year of the River with Al Poindexter

If you want to hear songs about Florida legends, the St. Johns River, colorful characters and backwater places then come hear Al Poindexter perform his own songs, old timey songs and blues tunes backed up on his National steel bottleneck guitar or fast picking claw hammer banjo.

Al is the winner of the 2014 St. Johns Riverkeeper Song Contest and has been a performer and avid collector of Florida folk lore and songs for over 20 years, writing fresh, new tunes about life in old Florida. This program is free and open to the public. This concert is brought to you through the generous support of Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library.

 Music of Florida and the St. Johns River presented by Al Poindexter

Date/Time

Location

Tuesday, February 17

4:30 p.m.

Brentwood Branch

Urban Library Center

3725 N. Pearl St.

Thursday, March 5

10:30 a.m.

CHILDREN'S PROGRAM

University Park Branch Library

3435 University Blvd. N.

Tuesday, March 17

3:30 p.m.

CHILDREN'S PROGRAM

Regency Square Branch

9900 Regency Square Blvd.

Monday, March 30

4:30 p.m.

Brown Eastside Branch

Urban Library Center

1390 Harrison St.

Tuesday, March 31

6:30 p.m.

Highlands Branch

1826 Dunn Ave.

Saturday, April 4

2 p.m.

South Mandarin Branch

12125 San Jose Blvd.

Saturday, April 11

2 p.m.

Beaches Branch

600 3rd St.

Neptune Beach

Wednesday, May 27

4:00 p.m.

Southeast Regional

10599 Deerwood Park Blvd.

Saturday, June 13

2 p.m.

Webb Wesconnett Regional

6887 103rd St.

Tuesday, June 16

6pm

Mandarin Branch

3330 Kori Rd.

Wednesday, July 15

7 p.m.

Pablo Creek Regional Library

13295 Beach Blvd.

TBD

Hemming Park

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-82194479683273442592015-01-15T13:48:00.004-08:002015-02-09T02:19:13.121-08:00Out to Lunch : Wednesday, 3/11/2015 @ 12:30pmFree Lunch-time Concert with the NYC Jazz Duo
The Daniel Bennett Group

Daniel Bennett Saxophone/Flute/Oboe
Nat Janoff Guitar

In the Lounge at 303 North
(just inside the Laura St. entrance).

Attendees may bring a brown-bag lunch to enjoy during the performance.

The Daniel Bennett Group has recently shared concert billings with artists like Bill Frisell, Charlie Hunter, Greg Osby, and James Carter. The band has released five critically-acclaimed albums in the last ten years. In 2013, the Daniel Bennett Group celebrated the release of "Clockhead Goes to Camp" with a sold-out concert at the Metropolitan Room in New York City.

Daniel Bennett Group on NPR

Daniel Bennett Group on June Middleton TV

New York saxophonist Daniel Bennett has been hailed as one of the most original and unpredictable musical voices of his generation. Insite Magazine called Bennett's music, "refreshingly capricious and trippy." The Village Voice raves, "saxophonist Daniel Bennett makes hay with an airy approach that's buoyant enough to conjure notions of East African guitar riffs and Steve Reich's pastoral repetition." Mr. Bennett recently composed the original musical score for the stage adaptation of Frankenstein at the Hudson Guild Theatre in Manhattan. The show was a top pick in The New York Times. Recent Off-Broadway theater performances include the North American premier of Legacy Falls and a revival of Swingtime Canteen at Cherry Lane Theatre. Daniel recently played woodwinds in Blank! The Musical, the first fully improvised Off-Broadway musical to launch on a national stage. The New York Times called the show, "Witty, Likable and Ludicrous!"

Guitarist Nat Janoff is one of the most active jazz players in the fertile New York City music scene. Nat Janoff has performed with artists like Michael Brecker, Matt Garrison, Kenny Burrell and Dave Samuels. In addition to playing with his own groups, Mr. Janoff has performed with the Daniel Bennett Group, R&B legend David "Pic" Conley, pianist Norman Simmons and drummer Victor Jones. Nat can be heard on Atlantic Records' recording artist Debelah Morgan's album, Dance With Me. He has been a guest instructor at the annual William Paterson University summer jazz camp. Nat currently leads his band at the legendary 55 Bar in Greenwich Village every month.

"Saxophonist Daniel Bennett makes hay with an airy approach that's buoyant enough to conjure notions of East African guitar riffs and Steve Reich's pastoral repetition."
- VILLAGE VOICE

"Daniel Bennett Group plays a mix of jazz, folk, and trance."
- BOSTON GLOBE

"Saxist Daniel Bennett airs his lilting, potentially hypnotic compositions"
- TIMEOUT NEW YORK

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-81370650204004141332014-09-27T12:44:00.002-07:002014-09-27T12:44:34.136-07:00Conversations with Courtney
Conversations with Courtney

WHEN: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 @ 5:15-6:30 pm
WHERE: The Lounge at 303 North (inside the Main Library's Laura St. entrance)

Join us as we welcome Courtney Lewis, the new Music Director of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, as he talks about his first week with the orchestra and his exciting plans for the future. In the Lounge at 303 North, Pacjic Promenade, Main Library.

At the reception, enter to win two tickets to Courtney's debut concert on Saturday, Sept. 27. Must be present to win.

Free and open to the public.
Free parking available in the garage at Duval and Main. Bring your ticket to the Ask Here desk on the ground level for validation.

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-73522360536820673622014-06-20T11:58:00.001-07:002015-06-08T18:15:40.383-07:00Intermezzo : Sunday, June 14 @ 3pm

Back by Popular Demand!
The Vivace Trio

Gia Sastre &
Carolyn Snyder-Menke, flutes
Denise Wright, piano

The Vivace Trio will present our Season Finale.

The Star Spangled Banner

J.S. Bach: Concerto in F Major, BWV 1057

Antonio Vivaldi: Il Cardellino (The Goldfinch)

Ian Clarke: Maya

America, the Beautiful

Joachim Andersen: Allegro Militaire, Op. 48

Battle Hymn of the Republic

An accomplished flutist and singer, Carolyn Snyder Menke has an A.A. in Music from College of Marin in Kentfield, California and a B.M.E. with a concentration in flute from Indiana University; she later studied privately with Peter Lloyd, principal flute with the London Symphony Orchestra. Among her voice teachers and coaches, Ms. Snyder Menke sang in a masterclass in Oberlin's Italy program taught by internationally-renowned soprano Elly Ameling, who called Carolyn's performance "perfection!" Among her opera roles, Carolyn has appeared with Atlanta's Harrower Summer Opera Workshop as "Susannah" (Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro), "The Foreign Woman" (Menotti's The Consul), and "Irma" (Charpentier's Louise). She won the Thomas Scott Award in Marin County, 2nd place in the NATS competition, and was a quarter-finalist in Savannah Georgia's American Traditions Competition for Singers. In addition to the Vivace Trio, Carolyn has performed with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the Arabesque flute trio, the Marin County Woodwind Quintet and the Arioso Flute Quartet. She has performed for Body and Soul, the Art of Healing since 2001, and also does freelance work.

Acclaimed flutist Gia Sastre hails from Miami, Fla. and holds an M.M from DePaul University in Chicago, a B.M. from FSU, and pursued a resident course of study in Great Britain with Paul Edmund-Davies, principal flutist of the London Symphony Orchestra. In addition to numerous solo engagements, Ms. Sastre performed with a variety of ensembles in Chicago, and received the Farwell Award from the Musicians Club of Women. In 2009, Ms. Sastre returned to Florida where local performances have included Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf for Jacksonville Public Library, and solo and chamber concerts with the Chamber Music Society of Good Shepherd, Riverside Fine Arts Series, Friday Musicale, Music @ Main, Riverside Presbyterian's Wednesday Happenings and the Advent Series of the First Presbyterian Church of Jacksonville; she also has performed with the Coastal Symphony of Georgia and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Gia works with dedicated and talented students of all ages, serves as member and adjudicator for the Florida Flute Association, and is a founding member of Jax Flutes. Beginning this fall she is teaching applied secondary flute at the University of North Florida, and previously served as flute faculty for the DePaul University Community Music Program in Chicago. Her debut recording, Abellimento, is a collection of flute and harp classics available on Pandora Radio and through online retailers.

Among the First Coast's most sought-after collaborative pianists, Jacksonville native Denise Wright received her Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Samford University (Birmingham, Alabama) and her Master of Music in Piano Performance from Indiana University (Bloomington). She performed many times as a soloist with the orchestras at both universities, as well as in numerous solo and collaborative concerts with a variety of instrumental and vocal soloists and ensembles, including a tour of Europe with Samford's Baptist Festival Singers. She was a Professor of Piano at Bethel College (Mishawaka, Indiana), and was a collaborative pianist at both Indiana University and at St. Mary's College (Notre Dame, Indiana). Returning to Jacksonville in 1991, Ms. Wright assumed the position of pianist at First Baptist Church, and has served as collaborative pianist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts since 2004. She joined the staff of the University of North Florida in 2007, working with several voice studios as well as with the UNF Opera Ensemble. In the summers of 2010-2012, Denise had the opportunity to perform with the Opera Ensemble as part of the European Music Academy in the Czech Republic, and in the historical Mozart Estates Theater in Prague.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Sung to a tune by British composer John Stafford Smith (1750-1836), the famous lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) in 1814 after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Surprisingly, it only became our "official" National Anthem with a congressional resolution passed on March 3, 1931.

The works of the great German Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) are universally identified by the index numbers from the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalog), and among these the Concerto in F Major, BWV 1057 (1738) is typically referenced as "Harpsichord Concerto No. 6." Even so, odds are that if you recognize the music it will be as an arrangement of the more famous Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, BWV 1049 (1721 or earlier), only with the keyboard elaborating on music originally played by solo violin, while retaining the prominent obbligato parts for two "Fiauti d'Echo."

Music historians often refer to the Venetian violin virtuoso Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) as the composer most representative of the mature Italian Baroque style, and in addition to sonatas and sacred choral music he wrote nearly four dozen operas and over 500 concertos. The six concertos of Vivaldi's op. 10 (1728) were among the very first works for the transverse flute (as opposed to the recorder) ever published. The subtitle for the third concerto, Il Cardellino (The Goldfinch), is one Vivaldi supplied himself, as the flute part is meant to suggest birdsong.

The music of British flutist and composer Ian Clarke (b.1964) has been performed across five continents and is a favorite of both professional and student musicians. As a soloist and teacher Clarke has appeared at major conventions and events in Canada, Italy, Brazil, France, Iceland, Slovenia, Hungary, Netherlands and numerous times for the British Flute Society and for the National Flute Association in the USA. He completed Maya in 2000, basing the work for two flutes and piano on an earlier piece called Passage (1986). The composer says the title "maya" is a reference to the Sanskrit word for "illusion" rather than to the Mesoamerican civilization.

When Samuel Augustus Ward (1847-1903) wrote the hymn tune Maderna in 1882, the New Jersey organist could not have dreamed that it would become one of the most recognized melodies in the world, thanks to a poet he never even met. Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929), a professor of English at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, penned America the Beautiful in response to the magnificent panoramas she experienced during a cross-country trip in 1893. First published on July 4, 1895, Bates revised her poem in 1904, and finalized the complete eight stanzas in her 1911 collection entitled, America the Beautiful and Other Poems.

 O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea! 	 O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

Danish composer (Carl) Joachim Andersen (1847-1909) was among the finest flutists and conductors of his generation, and also became a co-founder of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1882. But in 1893, suffering partial paralysis in his tongue, he returned to Copenhagen to concentrate both on teaching and composing. His Allegro Militaire, Op. 48 appeared the following year and originally was for two flutes and orchestra.

At the suggestion of a friend, Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) wrote the words for The Battle Hymn of the Republic in November 1861 after hearing Union troops singing John Brown's Body. Her new lyrics for the folk tune were published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862, and the song has since become the most popular anthem identified with the Civil War. Today's arrangement is by Mark Hayes (b.1953), an American composer and arranger who specializes in sacred choral music.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
 (Chorus)
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my condemners, so with you my grace shall deal";
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
 (Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
 (Chorus)

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-53112858126228696932014-06-20T11:57:00.001-07:002015-05-26T08:09:21.660-07:00Tuesday Serenade : June 2 @ 7pm

Min Young Cho, violin & Eun Mi Lee, Piano

HINDEMITH
Sonata for Unaccompanied Viola, op.25, no. 1

Breit. Viertel

Sehr frisch und straff. (Viertel)

Sehr langsam

Rasendes Zeitmaß. Wild. Tonschönheit ist Nebensache

Langsam, mit viel Ausdruck

SCHUMANN
Adagio & Allegro, op. 70

HUMMEL
Sonata in E-flat Major for Piano with Accompaniment of Viola, op. 5, no. 3
 I. Allegro moderato.
 II. Adagio e cantabile.
 III. Rondo. Con moto

Dr. Min Young Cho is a native of Seoul, Korea, and she has performed with many orchestras in her homeland, including the Korean-American Youth Orchestra, Gwacheon Youth Orchestra, Seoul National Symphony Orchestra, Korean Philharmonic Orchestra and Gangneung Philharmonic Orchestra. Her talent as an ensemble player remains much in demand, and she often serves as concertmaster or assistant concertmaster for many of the orchestras she plays with. She regularly performs with a number of chamber and symphony orchestras in North Florida, including Tallahassee Bach Parley, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonia Gulf Coast, as well as with the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and Panama City Pops Orchestra. As a guest solo artist, other recital engagements have included appearances at Chipola College (Marianna, Florida) and Valdosta State University (Valdosta, Georgia), and Jacksonville Public Library's Music @ Main.

As a winner of the American Fine Arts Festival, Dr. Cho performed at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), and also was awarded an AFAF Summer Music Courses in Europe scholarship. Other competition wins include the Korea Music Competition, the Chungbu Conservatory Competition, and the Music World Newspaper Company's Competition. Dr. Cho received her Bachelor of Music degree from Dankook University in Korea, and both her master's and doctoral degrees from Florida State University, where she also has taught as a Graduate Assistant. Her principal teachers have included Corinne Stillwell, Karen Clarke and Daesik Kang.

In her native South Korea, Eun Mi Lee received a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano from Ewha Women's University, and a Master of Music degree in Piano Accompanying on scholarship at Sungshin Women's University. In 2007, Ms. Lee was accepted into the Master's program at Florida State University's College of Music, working closely with Valerie M. Trujillo, the Grammy-nominated associate professor of vocal coaching and accompanying. Eun Mi Lee is continuing her post-graduate studies at FSU, where she is a doctoral candidate.

A passionate accompanist and teacher, she began working with faculty artists and student performers at Baekseok Conservatory, Muyngji University, and University of Seoul, and she has been a member of Korea Collaborative Pianists Association since 2002. Much in demand as a collaborative artist, Ms. Lee has pursued an interest in performing new music, and recorded Soo Jin Cho's 2-piano work, Exodus, released by the Society of Composers, Inc., in March 2010, on an album entitled Mosaic.

Along with Stravinsky, Bartók and Schoenberg, German composer, teacher, and music theorist Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) is often cited by musicologists as a central figure in music of the first half of the 20th Century, so it is perhaps surprising that performances of his works have become relatively rare. Although some of his first works approached the expressionistic atonality of early Schoenberg, Hindemith's mature style, while still highly chromatic, is decidedly tonal. And although Hindemith frequently used formal procedures of the Baroque and Classical periods, his music is nonetheless removed from the "Neoclassical" movement centered around Stravinsky — whereas Stravinsky parodied earlier styles in an often ironic reaction against the perceived excesses of 19th-Century composers, Hindemith built on tradition as a continuation of the Teutonic musical heritage that runs from the Bach family through Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Reger.
Hindemith was also the virtuoso violist who premiered William Walton's gorgeous Viola Concerto in 1929. Seven years earlier he had written the Sonata for Unaccompanied Viola, op. 25, no.1 primarily for his own recital performances, and he made a recording of it in 1934. Describing the work as "vigorous" might be something of an understatement--Hindemith's performance notes include the observation: Raging tempo. Wild. Beauty of tone is of secondary importance. So, with apologies to Bette Davis, fasten your seatbelts!

The hopes of the great German Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) to become a concert pianist were dashed in his twenties when he permanently damaged his hand, so he redirected his energies to both composing and music criticism. From childhood he was torn between literature and music, but he managed to combine these two loves even in some of his purely instrumental music by using poetry and dramatic narrative to color and direct the musical discourse.
Schumann's Adagio and Allegro, op. 70 is among the numerous and varied works he wrote in 1849. Originally composed to show off the expanding capabilities of the valve horn, Schumann's showpiece has become a frequently-performed favorite of violists and cellists as well.

Though little-known today, during his lifetime Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) was among Europe's most famous and respected musicians. He made his public debut at age nine sharing the concert stage with W.A. Mozart, with whom he studied (and resided) for two years. Joseph Haydn, whom Hummel would succeed as Kapellmeister to Prince Esterhazy, wrote a piano sonata for him when Hummel was barely a teenager, and later accepted him among his few composition students. Hummel became lifelong friends with Haydn's most famous pupil--Beethoven--such that among Beethoven's dying wishes was a request that Hummel perform at his funeral. It was at that sad occasion that Hummel met Schubert, inspiring the younger composer to dedicate his final three piano sonatas to the famous virtuoso; however, the sonatas were not published until after both Schubert and Hummel had died, and the publisher changed the dedication to Robert Schumann.
Hummel was around 20 years old when he composed his Sonata in E-flat Major for Piano with Accompaniment of Viola, op. 5, no. 3. Mozart's influence is unmistakable in the gracious charm it exudes, and Mozart might also have provided the impetus for featuring the viola. Typical of the time, the first two of Hummel's three sonatas comprising his Opus 5 are for piano with obbligato violin, but his change of obbligato in the third sonata was by no means "expected" because use of viola as a solo instrument was uncommon, to say the least. (Bach's sixth Brandenburg Concerto likely was never performed prior to its publication in 1850, and, although Telemann's Viola Concerto is fairly well-known today it hardly would have been a repertoire staple in 1798.) Mozart however, himself a fine violist, had began featuring the viola in his chamber music and especially in the magnificent Sinfonia Concertante (1779), and this may well have inspired Hummel to create what is perhaps the earliest sonata for the modern viola and piano.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-23288962025632986582014-06-20T11:55:00.005-07:002015-05-12T08:46:46.893-07:00Tuesday Serenade : May 19 @ 7pm

Ji Won Hwang, violin
Boyan Bonev, cello (UWF Faculty Artist)

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
Recitativo and Scherzo for Solo Violin, Op. 6

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Sonata for Solo Violin in D Major, Op. 115
I. Moderato
II. Andante dolce
III. Con brio

Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1976)
Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8
I. Allegro maestoso ma appassionato
II. Adagio (con grand' espressione)
III. Allegro molto vivace

INTERMISSION

Edward Lein (b.1955)
"Dark Eyes" for Violin and Cello

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Sonata for Violin and Cello
I. Allegro
II. Très vif
III. Lent
IV. Vif

Korean violinist Ji Won Hwang earned her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea, where she also taught, in addition to conducting the Soongsil Boy's Orchestra. After moving to the United States she became a teaching assistant at The Florida State University while working on her Doctor of Music degree under the guidance of violinist Eliot Chapo. She has performed as a solo artist and with a variety of ensembles in the Big Bend area, including as violinist with the Eppes String Quartet under the sponsorship of Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Ellen Taafe Zwilich. Winner of the top prize of the Korea Germany Brahms Association Competition in 2004, Dr. Hwang has performed throughout Asia, Europe and North America, and recently gave a concert entitled "Russia in New York" at Carnegie Hall. In addition to her solo engagements, she plays for symphony orchestras in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.

Award-winning Bulgarian cellist Boyan Bonev teaches cello and double bass at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, and previously taught in Georgia at Albany State University and Darton College. Dr. Bonev is on the faculty of the Florida State University Summer Music Camps, and performs with the Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, Florida Lakes, and Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestras. Active as a solo and chamber musician, Boyan Bonev has appeared in concert and educational programs for Bulgarian National Television and Radio, in performance at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), and as soloist with orchestras in the United States and Europe. Dr. Bonev holds Doctor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the National Music Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler (1875-1962) is regarded among the greatest violinists of all time. Born in Austria, he moved permanently to the United States during World War II and gained U.S. citizenship in 1943, two years after having been in a week-long coma following a traffic accident in New York City. Although he wrote a couple of operettas and a string quartet, as a composer it is for his solos, cadenzas and encores that he wrote to perform himself that he is most remembered. His Recitativo and Scherzo, Op. 6 is his only work for unaccompanied violin. Published in 1911, Kreisler dedicated the piece to his friend, Belgian virtuoso Eugene Ysaÿe.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a great Russian composer, pianist and conductor admired as one of the finest composers of the 20th century, whose music, including the delightful Peter and the Wolf and the exuberant Classical Symphony, is widely performed and recorded. Prokofiev wrote the Sonata for Solo Violin in D Major, Op. 115 in 1947. Having been preceded by two violin concertos and two violin sonatas, as well as by a Sonata for two unaccompanied violins, his Opus 115 became his last work for the violin as a solo instrument. But, unusually, it was first performed as a piece for unison violins by a group of student players!

Hungarian composer and educator Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) was a pioneering ethnomusicologist who worked closely with his friend Béla Bartók to collect and codify the folk music of Eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th Century. Kodály gained international fame with his 1923 oratorio Psalmus hungaricus, and the orchestral suite from his 1926 opera Háry János continues to hold its place in the world's concert halls. The influence of Kodály's immersion in Hungarian folksong is evident in his Sonata for Cello Solo, op. 8 (1915), one of the most demanding pieces written for the instrument, and one which requires scordatura re-tunings of the two lower strings.

Florida native Edward Lein (b. 1955) holds master's degrees in Music and Library Science from Florida State University. Early in his career he appeared as tenor soloist in recitals, oratorios and dramatic works, and the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following performances by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra of his Meditation for cello, oboe and orchestra (premiered June 2006) and In the Bleak Midwinter (premiered December 2007) his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players for new pieces. This concert marks the first performance of the violin-cello arrangement of Dark Eyes, originally written for piano trio in 2010. Tongue-in-cheek and occasionally bordering on campy, these "Variations in the Form of a Sonatina" are based on Florian Hermann's famous waltz tune, Occhi chorni (Очи Чёрные), popularized by Russian gypsies.

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was a French composer and master orchestrator who maintains a place among the most performed and recorded composers of all time. He is often identified with Claude Debussy (1862-1918) as a chief proponent of musical Impressionism, but Ravel melded exotic harmonies with classical formal structures to create a personal, refined style that transcends a single label. The first movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello appeared in December 1920 in a special commemorative supplement to the journal La Revue musicale honoring Debussy, and the rest of the movements were premiered two years later. Ravel uses recurring thematic elements throughout the movements as a unifying feature, and he also pays tribute to Kodály's 1914 Duo for Violin and Cello. In describing his Sonata himself, Ravel wrote, "The music is stripped to the bone. ... Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody."

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-34248776213446960182014-06-20T11:54:00.001-07:002015-05-08T03:23:57.716-07:00Intermezzo : Sunday, May 10 @ 3pm

Maharlika Trio
Joren Cain, saxophone
David Springfield, trombone
Maila Gutierrez Springfield, piano
Valdosta State University Faculty Artists

Astor Piazzolla: La Muerte del Angel
Bill Schmid: Insomnia (2010)
Tayloe Harding: The Springfield Trio (2005)
 1. Vivace - 3. Allegro
Horace Silver: Peace/The St. Vitus Dance
William Bolcom: Child-Stealer (from Lilith)
Christopher Theofanidis: Netherland (1993)
 2. Brutal; swirling, out of focus
David Springfield: Two Langston Hughes Poems (2006)
 1. The Weary Blues -- 2. The Dream Keeper
Patrick Long: Academic Finale (2005)

The Maharlika Trio is dedicated to performing, commissioning and expanding the literature written for this unique combination of instruments. Formed in 2005, the members are all professors at Valdosta State University, and during the summers they teach gifted high school students in the Georgia Governor's Honors Program. Their repertoire ranges from classical to jazz, original works and transcriptions, and occasionally performing with guest artists. Recent performances include conferences for the Georgia Music Educators Association, the College Music Society and the Southeastern Composers League. The Maharlika Trio is actively involved in arts education and dedicates a substantial amount of time to educational projects.

Joren Cain is a saxophone soloist well-versed in both classical and jazz idioms. A Chicago native, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northern Illinois University, where he studied saxophone with Steve Duke. He continued his studies with Jim Riggs at the University of North Texas, where he was a Teaching Fellow, a member of the 2 O'Clock Lab Band, and earned his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. As an educator, Cain was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northern Illinois University. He is currently Associate Professor of saxophone and director of the New Jazz Ensemble at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia. He has contributed several articles for GIA's "Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz," and he has published articles discussing the saxophone sonatas of Edison Denisov and Fernande Decruck's Sonata in C#. Dr. Cain is committed to the study and performance of contemporary saxophone music and has commissioned over a dozen new works for the instrument. His playing has been applauded by composers Sammy Nestico, Alfred Reed, and Jindřich Feld. He has performed as a soloist across the U.S. and abroad, including Germany and the Czech Republic. Additionally, Dr. Cain served as a member of The United States Army Field Band, the Army's premier touring concert band, for four years. He performed as a featured soloist, acted as staff arranger, and was the soprano saxophonist in the TUSAFB Saxophone Quartet. Currently, he has an active performance schedule as a soloist, a member of the Maharlika Trio, and as a freelance musician throughout the southeastern United States. Joren Cain is proud to be an RS Berkeley artist.

David Springfield, Assistant Professor and Director of Jazz Studies at Valdosta State University, teaches jazz piano, improvisation, arranging, combos and jazz history. He is also a member of the Faculty Jazz Combo and directs the VSU Jazz Ensemble. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Trombone Performance and a Master of Music in Jazz Studies, both from the Eastman School of Music. Since 2004, he has been the jazz instructor for the Georgia Governor's Honors Program. As a performer, Mr. Springfield has appeared with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Savannah, Charleston and Jacksonville Symphony Orchestras. He performs with the Savannah Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Composer's Octet and has appeared with the Georgia Jazz Educators Big Band at the annual GMEA conferences. With the chamber group, Maharlika Trio, Mr. Springfield has performed at national conferences of the College Music Society and the North American Saxophone Alliance.

Maila Gutierrez Springfield is an instructor at Valdosta State University and a member of the Maharlika Trio, a group dedicated to commissioning and performing new works for saxophone, trombone and piano. She can be heard on saxophonist Joren Cain's CD Voices of Dissent and on clarinetist Linda Cionitti's CD Jag & Jersey. MusicWeb International selected Jag & Jersey as the recording of the month for February 2010 and noted that Maila "is superb in the taxing piano part with its striding bass lines and disjointed rhythms". For Voices of Dissent, the American Record Guide describes Maila as "an excellent pianist, exhibiting solid technique and fine touch and pedal work." Twice-honored with the Excellence in Accompanying Award at Eastman School of Music, Maila has been staff accompanist for the Georgia Governor's Honors Program, Georgia Southern University, the Buffet Crampon Summer Clarinet Academy and the Interlochen Arts Camp, where she had the privilege of working with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. She has collaborated with members of major symphony orchestras, including those in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jacksonville. She was awarded a Bachelor of Music degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music.

PROGRAM NOTES

Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992) pretty much single-handedly reinvented the Argentine national dance, the tango, transforming it into a new style aptly called nuevo tango ("new tango"). Born in Argentina, Piazzolla spent most of his childhood in New York, and there he gained exposure to and a fondness for jazz and classical music. But through his father's influence he also gained proficiency on the bandoneón, a type of concertina that is a staple of Argentine tango ensembles, and when he returned to Argentina in 1937 he played with some of the leading bands in Buenos Aires. He also began the serious study of composition with noted composer Alberto Ginastera, and for an early symphony he won a grant in 1953 from the French government to study in Paris with legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger, whose illustrious students ranged from Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter to Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach, found Piazzolla's music was well-crafted but too derivative of Bartók, Stravinsky and Ravel. When she finally got him to play for her some of the music he wrote for his cabaret band, she convinced him to toss out his other works and concentrate on what was uniquely his own. He returned to Argentina in 1955, his "new tango," which infused traditional elements with characteristics of jazz and incorporated contrapuntal techniques and formal elements adapted from his classical studies. The new style was met with resistance in his homeland, but Europeans and North Americans were captivated by it and his international career blossomed. It is estimated that he composed over a staggering 3,000 pieces, and he recorded about 500 of them himself!

Born in Ft. Riley, Kansas, Bill Schmid was raised in Huber Heights, Ohio and learned to play the trumpet from his father. He received a bachelor's degree in music education from the University of Dayton; he then earned a master's degree in music education (jazz pedagogy) and a doctorate in trumpet performance - both from the University of North Texas. During his five years in Texas, his professional playing encompassed classical, jazz and commercial performances in the Dallas/Fort Worth region. Before coming to Georgia Southern University (Statesboro, Georgia) in 1986, Dr. Schmid taught for two years at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia (Canada). He is currently an Associate Professor of Music at GSU and, in addition to teaching trumpet, is the Director of Jazz Studies. Schmid also performs regularly with the Savannah Jazz Orchestra and other groups in the Savannah/Hilton Head area. His big band and combo works have been performed throughout Georgia, including premieres by the Georgia Directors Big Band and at the Savannah Jazz Festival by the SJO.

Tayloe Harding is dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, former interim dean of the South Carolina Honors College, and was president of the College Music Society (CMS) from 2005-2006. An active member of and consultant for National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), CMS, SCI and ASCAP, he is a frequent presenter on issues facing the future of university music units and their leadership. He remains active as a composer, earning commissions, performances and recordings for his works around the world.

Horace Silver (1928-2014) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his distinctive playing style and pioneering compositional contributions to hard bop. He was influenced by a wide range of musical styles, notably gospel music, African music, and Latin American music, and sometimes ventured into the soul jazz genre.

Seattle-born composer and pianist William Bolcom (b.1938), who entered into private composition studies at the University of Washington when he was just 11 years old, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts and four Grammy awards, among many other honors. His works range from solo piano pieces to symphonies and opera, and in 2007 he was named "Composer of the Year" by Musical America magazine.

Grammy-nominated composer Christopher Theofanidis has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the International Masterprize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, six ASCAP Gould Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Tanglewood Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Charles Ives Fellowship, and currently has two opera commissions for the San Francisco and Houston Grand Opera companies. He teaches at the Yale School of Music, and is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School.

David Springfield has had his compositions and arrangements performed by such artists as Branford Marsalis, John Abercrombie, Phil Woods, Allen Vizzuti and Joseph Alessi. He received a Downbeat magazine award for arranging and was a finalist in the 1996 International Thad Jones Competition, sponsored by the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. He was the principal arranger for Klüvers Big Band and his works appear on nine recordings by the band. In addition to his work as a jazz arranger, Mr. Springfield has written for concert band, symphony orchestra, brass quintet and trombone choir. His music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe and is published by Kendor Music and Sierra Music Publications. Recent arrangements have been performed by trumpeter Byron Stripling with the Milwaukee, Houston and Detroit Symphony Orchestras.

A composer, percussionist and teacher at Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA), Patrick Long (b.1968) grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and received degrees in composition from Syracuse University (B.M.) and the Eastman School of Music (M.M., D.M.A.). He has completed over 80 premiered works for orchestra, band, chamber ensembles, soloists, young players, theatre and film. He is best known for his percussion music and for his works that combine live performers with fixed media or interactive electronics. His pieces have been performed in almost all 50 states and throughout Europe and Asia.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-21995169827149776172014-06-20T11:52:00.002-07:002015-05-02T11:22:32.107-07:00Community Standards : Tuesday, May 5 @ 7pmDon Thompson Chorale

Jay Stuckey, Director | Terry Stuckey, Piano

Mark Hayes:
 Psalm of Celebration
Nick Glennie-Smith (arr. Jay Rouse):
 Mansions of the Lord
William H. Monk (arr. Moses Hogan):
 Abide With Me
Pepper Choplin:
 Walking 'Cross the Sea (Soloist: Gary Miller)
Traditional (arr. R. Staheli):
 I Feel Like I'm On My Journey Home
Morten Lauridsen:
 Sure on This Shining Night
György Orbán:
 Nunc Dimittis
--Piano Interlude--
André Thomas:
 Rockin' Jerusalem
David Schwoebel:
 Speak, Lord, in the Stillness
Z. Randall Stroope:
 Go Lovely Rose
Traditional (Caldwell/Ivory):
 John the Revelator
Guy Forbes:
 O Nata Lux
Harry Dixon Loes (attrib.; arr. Mark Hayes):
 I'm Gonna Let It Shine (This Little Light of Mine)
Don Gillis:
 Hymn and Prayer for Peace

The Don Thompson Chorale, Inc., a non-profit volunteer community chorus in Jacksonville, Florida, was formed in 1995 after a Florida Junior College Chorale reunion concert in December, 1994. That event brought Mr. Thompson's former singers together "one last time," or so they thought. After a warm reception by an appreciative and enthusiastic audience, members of the reunion choir were hooked. They promised their director they would organize a choral group and name it after him if he would agree to lead them on an ongoing basis. Thompson selected a governing Board of Directors, which met and developed a vision for the group. One of their collective dreams was "to be flooded with so many applications for membership and invitations to perform that we are unable to accept them all." With 19 years of rehearsals, performances, and recordings under its belt, the group is realizing this dream.

 Soprano
Sarah Cotchaleovitch
Linda Edwards
Gwen Hernandez
Saundra Howard
Anita Jones
Lauren Majure
Anne Miller
Julia Pettigrew
Shari Steele	Alto
Lexi Cluff
Royette Crowder
Nancy Edwards
Holly Gibson
Phyllis Hoskins
Amy King
Lynn Lokken
Ruthanne Mason
Connie Mays
Jeanene McCullough
Pam Roach
Terry Strickland
Barbara Wick 	Tenor
Jhun DeVilla
John Howard
Michael Schriver
Chuck Smith
Peter True	Bass
Arch Copeland
Thomas Cotchaleovitch
Tony Harmon
Lester McCullough
Rich McGauley
Gary Miller
Joe Proctor
Evan Whitehouse

PROGRAM NOTES

Based in Kansas City, Missouri, Mark Hayes is an award-winning composer, arranger, concert pianist and conductor with over 1000 publications in print. Drawing inspiration from Psalm 98, his Psalm of Celebration was commissioned by the Southern Baptist Church Music Conference. It features a contrapuntal "Alleluia" that brings the piece to an exciting conclusion.

Originally written for the 2002 film We Were Soldiers, the text for the patriotic anthem Mansions of the Lord was written by screen-writer Randall Wallace (b.1949) and set to the music by English film composer Nick Glennie-Smith (b.1951). Two years later it was performed by U.S. Armed Services musicians at the funeral of President Ronald Reagan, and soon thereafter this choral version for the general public was prepared by Jay Rouse, who, with over 350 published compositions and arrangements, is considered among the "premier choral arrangers in Christian music."

The text of the popular Christian hymn Abide with Me was written in 1847 by the Scottish Anglican clergyman Henry Francis Lyte three weeks before he succumbed to tuberculosis. Although Lyte also provided a tune for his poem, it is best-known through the 1861 setting written by English composer William Henry Monk (1823-1889) to a tune called "Eventide." American composer and choral director Moses Hogan (1957-2003) made this arrangement for unaccompanied mixed voices in 1999. Before succumbing to cancer, Hogan was much sought after as one of the world's leading interpreters of Spirituals. He arranged and conducted selections for the 1995 PBS television documentary, The American Promise, and his arrangements remain a staple of school, community and professional choirs.

Pepper Choplin describes himself as a "full time composer, conductor and humorist," and has been music minister at Greystone Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, for more than two decades. His more than 230 anthems, 13 cantatas and solo piano music reflect his diverse musical background, incorporating folk, Gospel, classical and jazz styles. Walking 'Cross the Sea is a bluesy rock-Gospel song that depicts the Bible story of Peter joining Jesus in a walk across stormy waters.

Dr. Ronald Staheli is the Choral and Conducting Division Coordinator and the Director of Graduate Studies in Choral Music at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, Utah. His beautiful I Feel Like I'm On My Journey Home is an a cappella setting of the American folk hymn The Saints' Delight first published in an 1835 collection called Southern Harmony, and again in 1860 as an organ piece in The Sacred Harp.

Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 40 years. He likely is the most-performed American composer of choral music worldwide, and his works have been included on over 200 CDs. The National Endowment for the Arts named him an "American Choral Master" in 2006, and the following year he received the National Medal of Arts "for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power and spiritual depth." Sure on this Shining Night, the third of Lauridsen's four Nocturnes (2005), is a setting of the 1934 poem by American author James Agee (1909-1955), made familiar by Samuel Barber's famous song.

Romanian-born composer György Orbán (b. 1947) has been professor of composition at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary since 1983, and in 2014 was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious cultural award bestowed by the Hungarian government. His compositions are almost exclusively choral works described as mixing "traditional liturgical renaissance and baroque counterpoint with intrusions from jazz." That being said, Orbán's gentle setting of the liturgical Nunc Dimittis for unaccompanied mixed voices is unabashedly Romantic in its sensibility.

Latin (Vulgate):
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace:
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum
Quod parasti ante faciem
omnium populorum:
Lumen ad revelationem gentium,
et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.	English (Book of Common Prayer, 1662):
Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart
in peace according to Thy word:
For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,
Which Thou hast prepared before the face
of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and to be the glory of Thy people Israel.

--Piano Interlude--

André Thomas (b. 1952) is the Owen F. Sellers Professor of Music, Director of Choral Activities and Professor of Choral Music Education at The Florida State University, and the director of the Tallahassee Community Chorus. Dr. Thomas has directed choirs throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, New Zealand and Australia, and has been the guest conductor of such distinguished orchestras and choirs as the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England. Distinguished as a composer and arranger as well, he is also a past president of both the Florida American Choral Directors Association, and the Southern Division of ACDA. His spirited Rockin' Jerusalem may sound like a traditional Spiritual, but it's actually an original composition from 1987 on a text by the composer.

David Schwoebel (b. 1957) is Minister at Derbyshire Baptist Church in Richmond Virginia, and has served as the Virginia ACDA Music & Worship Chair, and as an Adjunct Instructor of Music at Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia. In addition to choral music for all ages, his 150+ publications also include instrumental and keyboard works. Speak, Lord, in the Stillness was composed in 1992 for mixed voices and keyboard to verses adapted from a hymn text written in 1914 (and first published 1920) by E. (Emily) May Grimes Crawford (1868-1927), an English-born missionary in South Africa.

Z. Randall Stroope (b. 1953) is a popular American conductor, lecturer and composer whose 140+ published works typically sell over 200,000 copies a year. His conducting takes him all over the world, including recent engagements at the Kennedy Center and the Vatican. Stroope's Go Lovely Rose is a 2014 setting of a text by English poet and politician Edmund Waller (1606-1687), and is also available in a version just for men's voices.

According to the publisher, the traditional Gospel blues song John the Revelator "stems from the Delta Blues tradition, and was recorded by Blind Willie Johnson and Son House during the 1920s and 1930s." This arrangement by Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory was commissioned by the ACDA Central Division's 2002 convention. Caldwell, Artistic Director of the Youth Choral Theater of Chicago, and Ivory, who directs a high school choir and the Symphony Youth Chorus in Grand Rapids, Michigan, began arranging music together in the 1990s while working with a youth choir in Grand Rapids and at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey.

Winner of the 2006 Vanguard Premieres Choral Competition Contest, O Nata Lux by Guy Forbes is an appropriately luminous setting of an anonymous Latin text depicting "light breaking upon a darkened world," used liturgically for the the Feast of the Transfiguration. Dr. Forbes is a professor at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, where he conducts and tours with the Millikin Chamber Chorale.

O nata lux de lumine,
Jesu redemptor saeculi,
Dignare clemens supplicum
Laudes precesque sumere.

Qui carne quondam contegi
Dignatus es pro perditis,
Nos membra confer effici
Tui beati corporis.	O Light born of Light,
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
with loving-kindness deign to receive
suppliant praise and prayer.

Thou who once deigned to be clothed in flesh
for the sake of the lost,
grant us to be members
of thy blessed body.

Though it has the feel of a traditional children's hymn, the music of I'm Gonna Let It Shine (This Little Light of Mine) is attributed to Harry Dixon Loes (1895-1965). Working from an original arrangement of the tune for keyboard, in 2012 Mark Hayes developed it into a lively piece for mixed voices with either two or four-hand piano accompaniment, and featuring stylized vocals, with call and response interplay.

American composer, conductor and teacher Don Gillis (1912-1978) was the radio producer for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and among other teaching posts he was professor/composer-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. Gillis was a prolific composer of opera, choral music, chamber music, and music for band and orchestra, including ten symphonies, plus "Symphony No, 5½, A Symphony for Fun," which became his best-known orchestral work. He wrote his own text for the 1958 Hymn and Prayer for Peace, which gained wide-spread exposure when The Mormon Tabernacle Choir included it on their 1962 album, Hymns And Songs Of Brotherhood.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-33845252139005738432014-06-20T11:51:00.001-07:002015-04-14T08:22:54.960-07:00Tuesday Serenade : April 21 @ 7pmScott Watkins, piano
Jacksonville University Faculty Artist

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Sonata No. 17 in B-flat major, K. 570

 I. Allegro -
 II. Adagio -
 III. Allegretto

FRANZ LISZT
Transcendental Etude No. 9 in A-flat major, "Ricordanza"

Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (from Swiss Years of Pilgrimage)

HOWARD HANSON
Piano Sonata in A minor, Op. 11 (comp. 1918)

 I. Andante espressivo: Quietly with sincerity -
 II. Heroic Elegy: Slowly, quietly, and with finality -
 III. Triumphal Ode: Allegro marziale, with vigor

Scott Watkins, Assistant Professor of Piano at Jacksonville University, is well known to First Coast audiences for his appearances with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, his numerous solo recitals, and his frequent collaborations with many of the areas finest singers and instrumentalists. His 1985 U.S. debut, an all-Bach recital given in Chicago, was broadcast live nationwide, and has been followed by a steady flow of solo and concerto performances in North and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. He has been heard often in the United States and Canada on National Public Radio and Television, and in South America and Europe on The Voice of America. Performances have included the world premieres of Elie Siegmeister's From These Shores and Ned Rorem's Song and Dance.

An active chamber musician, Dr. Watkins has appeared with the LaSalle Quartet and violinist Eugene Fodor, and a performance with violinist Hillary Hahn was broadcast on NPR's Performance Today. Much in demand as an accompanist, he has appeared with soprano Elizabeth Futral and baritone Steven White, and released a disc of late romantic lieder with White. Watkins also released two solo discs, one featuring works from his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, and another, Christmas Cards, featuring music for the holiday season, with works by Bach, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Grainger, and others. A champion of new music, Watkins recently recorded An American Sonata for two pianos and percussion by noted American composer and pianist Gary Smart.

Dr. Watkins is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Philip Sousa Award for Outstanding American Musicians, Rotary Club of Florida's Annual Artistic Merit Award, and France's Jeunesse Musicales. In 1985, he became the youngest winner ever of The U.S. Department of State's Artistic Ambassador Award. His degrees include a Bachelor of Music from the University of Cincinnati, Master of Music from University of South Carolina, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Florida State University.

Notes on the program, by Dr. Scott Watkins

Mozart's Piano Sonata, K. 570 dates from 1789, an otherwise barren year for composition by his prolific standards, the only other major works produced being the final Piano Sonata in D major, K. 576, the first of the "Prussian" string quartets (in D major, K. 575), and the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581. It was also the year of the composer's speculative journey to Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden, a tour that failed to alleviate Mozart's by-then desperate financial straits. Prior to setting off for Germany in the spring, he composed the B flat Sonata, entering it into his thematic catalog during February. His entry for it specifies the work as being a sonata auf Klavier allein (for piano alone), but curiously the sonata was long known in a version for violin and piano. This originated with the first published version, which appeared in Vienna in 1796 with a violin part so lacking in invention that it must have been composed by someone else. It seems likely that, like its immediate predecessor, the so-called "facile" Sonata in C major, K. 545, the sonata was composed for didactic purposes. The opening Allegro is quite light and fluid in character; although on an altogether more modest scale than the sonatas composed earlier in the decade, it is masterful in the way it wrings various structural and contrapuntal implications from its deceptively bare opening. E flat Adagio is a rondo with two episodes that sets out to beguile rather than convey profundity. The final Allegretto bubbles with humor and surprise effects; it is one of the many finales in which Mozart evokes the world of opera buffa. Musicologist Alfred Einstein called the work "perhaps the most completely rounded of...all [the Mozart piano sonatas], the ideal of his piano sonata." Each of the three movements contains repeated notes, an unusual feature in Mozart's keyboard music.

Liszt's Transcendental Etudes are a series of twelve compositions published in 1852 as a revision of a more technically difficult 1837 series, which in turn were the elaboration of a set of studies written in 1826. The Transcendental Études are revisions of his Douze Grandes Études. This third and final version was published in 1852 and dedicated to Carl Czerny, Liszt's piano teacher, and himself a prolific composer of études. The set included simplifications, for the most part: in addition to many other reductions, Liszt removed all stretches of greater than a tenth, making the piece more suitable for pianists with smaller hands and less technical skill. However, the fourth étude of the final set, Mazeppa, is actually more demanding than its 1837 version, since it very frequently alters and crosses the hands to create a "galloping" effect.

When revising the 1837 set of études, Liszt added programmatic titles in French and German to all but the Études Nos. 2 and 10. Editor Ferruccio Busoni later gave the names Fusées ("Rockets") to the Étude No. 2, and Appassionata to the Étude No. 10; however, Busoni's titles are not commonly used or well known. Busoni described Étude No. 9, Ricordanza, as "a bundle of faded love letters." Ricordanza is essentially a love poem with outbursts of passion alternating with delicate and complicated passagework. Liszt's original idea was to write 24 études, one in each of the 24 major and minor keys. He completed only half of this project, using the neutral and flat key signatures.
Franz Liszt's Italian Years of Travel is a suite for solo piano, much of it derived from his earlier work, Album d'un voyageur, which was his first major published piano cycle. The original suite was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842. Italian Years of Travel is widely considered a masterwork and summation of Liszt's musical style. The title Years of Travel refers to Goethe's famous novel of self-realization, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and especially its sequel Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (whose original title Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre meant "Years of Wandering" or "Years of Pilgrimage," the latter being used for its first French translation). Liszt clearly places the work in line with the Romantic literature of his time, prefacing most pieces with a literary passage from writers such as Schiller, Byron or Senancour, and, in an introduction to the entire work, writing:

Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.

According to a note on the first page of the manuscript, Hanson himself performed his Piano Sonata on April 7, 1919. Neither the circumstances under which the performance was given nor the location is known. In 2000, pianist Thomas Labé, in an excellent performance, produced a recording of what was then thought to be the only (and incomplete) version of the work, supplying his own effective completion of the score. The recording on the present disc is a world premiere performance of the work whose manuscript was discovered in 2005 by The Eastman School of Music and subsequently published in 2011.

The Sonata appears to have been with Hanson while he was studying and composing in Italy after winning the Prix di Roma and while living at the Academia Americana. The Sonata's first movement is an expansive, dramatic work with essentially one thematic idea: a rising step, followed by a rising leap, a falling step and falling leap. The harmonies are lush and orchestrally conceived, while the piano writing is idiomatic, despite at times feeling in the hands like an orchestral transcription. The second subject is treated like a gentler variation of the first with softer harmonies and harp-like arpeggiated chords. A dramatic coda recalls the opening theme in its original form.

The second movement might have been inspired by World War One and has the programmatic title Heroic Elegy. The repeating bass figure is reminiscent of funeral drums for a fallen soldier and the whole movement carries the weight of sadness and loss. In the final bars, Hanson has repeated bass octaves (A) including the lowest key on the instrument – almost as a "gun salute" to the fallen.

As final movement's title suggests, Triumphal Ode is a somewhat "heart-on-your-sleeve" musical tribute to victory (perhaps another inspiration from WWI's conclusion in 1918, the same year the Sonata was composed). Within its pages are soaring melodies and heart-wrending, surprising harmonies which would become hallmarks of Hanson's compositional style. The work ends "triumphantly" in the key of C major.

Triumphal Ode is thought to be a transcription of a work by the same name for concert or military band, although Hanson chose to leave out a short 12-bar passage at the end of the development sections for French horns and timpani.

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-51974796371151769162014-06-20T11:49:00.003-07:002015-04-12T11:31:38.150-07:00Intermezzo : Sunday, April 12 @ 3pm

Trio Solis
FSU Faculty Artists

Corinne Stillwell, violin,

Gregory Sauer, cello

Read Gainsford, piano

PARKING UPDATE
Let the attendant know you're going to the Library Concert upon entering. Apparently they are collecting the $10 parking fee up front, which the Library cannot refund.

12:30pm, Sunday 4/12 - The Garage Attendants said there is still plenty of parking availaable, and there are even some on-street spot around.
The One Spark Festival will be winding down, and we recommend coming early in case parking is limited.
The Library has been given special permission to validate FOR CONCERTGOERS ONLY for the public garage on Duval St. at Main St. following the Intermezzo concert. So if you find parking there bring your ticket with you to the concert for validation afterwards.

PIOTR SZEWCZYK: Piano Trio No. 1
 I. Aggressive--II. Dark--III. Energetic
YouTube Recording

EDWARD LEIN: Dark Eyes Variations in the form of a Sonatina
InstantEncore Recording

FRANZ SCHUBERT: Piano Trio No. 1, op. 99, D. 898
 1. Allegro moderato—2. Andante un poco mosso
 3. Scherzo. Allegro—4. Rondo. Allegro vivace
YouTube Recording

With a dynamic combination of energy, creativity, and insight, Trio Solis ("Trio of the Sun") was founded in 2008 by violinist Corinne Stillwell, cellist Gregory Sauer, and pianist Read Gainsford. Already distinguished as solo performers, these musicians have embarked on a journey together to explore the piano trio repertoire with a unique synergy of brilliant technique, probing musicianship and a wealth of experience. Highlights of recent seasons include the Trio's debut on the Seven Days of Opening Nights series in Messiaen's exalted Quartet for the End of Time with internationally acclaimed clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. They were invited to be the featured soloists for the opening of the 2010-11 orchestral season in Tallahassee, performing Beethoven's Triple Concerto in celebration of the extensive renovation of the historic Ruby Diamond Auditorium. Committed to sharing music by living composers with audiences, the group included the Piano Trio of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in their Carnegie Hall debut program, and enjoys playing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy by Paul Moravec. They are also regularly featured artists in the biennial Festival of New Music in Tallahassee, Florida. Beyond their performing activities, the members of Trio Solis are devoted teachers and maintain full studios at Florida State University. Their students have achieved successes in competitions, won positions as teachers and performers, and been accepted at some of the world's top graduate schools. In addition to master classes and school residencies, the Trio's newest initiative, Building Bridges, benefits community organizations through collaborative performances with outstanding young musicians at the beginning of their careers.

PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Polish-born violinist and composer Piotr Szewczyk recently completed his doctorate at The Florida State University in Violin Performance, and holds the B.M. and double M.M. in violin and composition from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He has been a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 2007, and was Composer-In-Residence at the Florida Chamber Music Project in Ponte Vedra for the 2013-2014 season. In addition to multiple awards as violinist, Dr. Szewczyk has won numerous local, national and international awards and competitions for for his compositions, including the Theme Song contest for WJCT's First Coast Connect show with Melissa Ross, and the Jacksonville Symphony's 2008 Fresh Ink competition. His music has been featured on NPR Performance Today and the CBS Early Show, and has been performed by numerous ensembles including the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Alias Ensemble, Dover Quartet, Sybarite 5, Juventas Ensemble, Atlanta Chamber Players, New Music Raleigh and many others. His Apparitions for Violin, Flute, Clarinet, Cello and Percussion, released on Navona records NOVA CD, was called "magical" by Gramophone Magazine. Dr. Szewczyk's Piano Trio No. 1, composed in 2010, won the The American Prize in Composition--Chamber Music (Professional Division) in 2014. The three-movement work exhibits something of a cinematic quality, with the first "Aggressive" movement bustling with nervous excitement interrupted by moments of jazzy, lyric reflection; the second "Dark" movement perhaps suggesting a "film noir" atmosphere; and the final "Energetic" movement seemingly battling through the darkness into an expansive, triumphant dawn.

Florida native Edward Lein (b. 1955) holds master's degrees in Music and Library Science from Florida State University. Early in his career he appeared throughout his home state as tenor soloist in recitals, oratorios and dramatic works, and drawing on this performance experience the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following performances by the Jacksonville Symphony of Meditation for cello, oboe and orchestra (premiered June 2006) and In the Bleak Midwinter (premiered December 2007), his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players for new pieces. His translations of songs and song cycles are frequently published in music program guides in North America and Great Britain, ranging from student recitals to concerts by major orchestras, including Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Utah Symphony; he also contributes articles to the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Encore magazine. Composed and first performed in 2010, the tongue-in-cheek Dark Eyes (Variations in the Form of a Sonatina) is based on Florian Hermann's famous waltz tune popularized by Russian gypsies. Following a fiery introduction, the dancing rhythms of the Polish polonaise and the Cuban havanaise characterize the sonatina's primary and secondary thematic groups respectively; the coda begins with the Dark Eyes tune transformed into a fughetta subject, and the movement ends with a restatement of its opening fanfare.

"One glance at Schubert's Trio and the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again." This is how composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) extolled the ebullient Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, op. 99 (D. 898) by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), the Austrian composer whose tragically short life nonetheless saw the creation of over 600 songs in addition to his numerous symphonies, chamber works, masses, and solo piano music. Likely completed during Schubert's final year, the Piano Trio No. 1 (composed along with his Piano Trio No. 2 and the song cycle Winterreise) became the first piano trio of significance written since Beethoven finished the "Archduke" Trio in 1811. Like Beethoven's famous model, Schubert's trio has four movements. The sparkling first movement includes a paraphrase of the song, Des Sängers Habe (The Singer's Possessions), with a text that reflects Schubert's own circumstances: "Shatter my good fortune to pieces, Take all my possessions from me, But allow me yet my zither And I shall remain happy and rich!" Whereas Beethoven's "Archduke" has the Scherzo second and then a slow movement, Schubert switches the order, placing his lyrical Andante after the opening, followed by a thoroughly Austrian Scherzo that pairs a folksy Ländler with a waltz. Schubert's sunny "Rondo" finale incorporates developmental techniques of a sonata-form, and paraphrases another of his songs, Skolie (Drinking Song, 1815), D. 306: "Let us in the morning light of May Enjoy the flowers of life Before its fragrance fades!"

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-38235538491797294532014-06-20T11:47:00.001-07:002015-03-07T13:35:05.577-08:00CANCELED - Emergence : Tuesday, April 7 CANCELED - Instead please enjoy the One Spark events in Hemming Park
Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-60196955603909672602014-06-20T11:44:00.003-07:002015-03-12T08:01:55.203-07:00Tuesday Serenade : March 17 @ 7pm

Jorge Peña, viola & Bonita Sonsini Wyke, piano

George Enescu: Concertstück (1906)
"Concert Piece"

Robert Schumann: Märchenbilder, op. 113
"Fairy Tale Pictures"
1. Nicht schnell (Not Fast)
2. Lebhaft (Lively)
3. Rasch (Quick)
4. Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck (Slowly, with Melancholic Expression)

Felix Mendelssohn: Viola Sonata in C Minor, MWV Q 14
1. Adagio - Allegro
2. Menuetto: Allegro molto
3. Andante con variazioni

Honduran-born violist Jorge Peña is a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and a former member of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. He has performed for Midwest Clinic, Grand Teton Music Festival, St. Augustine Music Festival and Island Concert Association, as well as at the National Gallery of Art, Tanglewood Music Center, University of North Florida and Jacksonville University. As a solo artist he has appeared throughout the Americas and Europe. With chamber music holding a special place in his career, Jorge and his wife, cellist Jin Kim-Peña, formed and perform with the Movado Quartet, and he often collaborates with a variety of ensembles, such as the Ritz Chamber Players, the Dover Quartet, the Diaz Trio, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta Virtuosi. Mr. Peña is Founder and Artistic Director of the annual St. Augustine Music Festival, the largest free music festival in the United States. Mr. Peña was graduated from Columbus State University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music with degrees in performance and chamber music. He studied with Curtis Institute President Roberto Diaz, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra principal viola Richard Field, and Julliard quartet member Earl Carlys.

Bonita Sonsini Wyke has been an active part of the Jacksonville music community since 1985, and in working with many of the First Coast's leading vocalists, instrumentalists and musical ensembles has earned the reputation as a musician of unsurpassed sensitivity, technical skill and artistry. Originally from Los Angeles, California, she has performed for over four decades as a collaborative pianist and harpsichordist with singers, choral groups, instrumental soloists, and orchestral and instrumental ensembles, and especially enjoys four-hand piano literature. She has been the music director for a wide variety of stage productions, including opera, musical theater and ballet. In addition to coaching seasoned performers, Ms. Sonsini Wyke has helped student musicians hone their craft at a number of area universities and music schools. While maintaining a busy recital schedule, Bonita also currently serves as Staff Choral Accompanist at Florida State College at Jacksonville.

PROGRAM NOTES. by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

 If you ask musicians to name a Romanian composer, unless they draw a complete blank they almost certainly will answer "George Enescu" (1881-1955), or, as the French say, "Georges Enesco." As fate would have it, Enescu was born the same year as the Kingdom of Roumania (the "u" was dropped later), and he became a national hero in his fledgling homeland. Enescu's compatriots have named an international airport after him, and changed the name of the village where he was born to "George Enescu." Among the greatest masters and teachers of the violin, Enescu also was so highly regarded as a conductor that he was considered as Toscanini's replacement for the New York Philharmonic, and he just as easily could have become a leading piano virtuoso.
 Young George's extraordinary musical gifts were recognized early. He earned the silver medal for his prodigious virtuosity when he graduated from the Vienna Conservatory at age 12, and entered the Paris Conservatoire at 14. He completed his studies in Paris in 1899, winning first-prize in violin among the graduates. From 1904-1910, Enesco returned to the Conservatoire as one of the examining jurors. It was in this capacity that Gabriel Fauré, the head of the Conservatoire, invited his former composition student to contribute competition pieces by which the students would be judged, among which the 1906 Concertstück for Viola and Piano has remained a favorite. As one would expect, Enesco's "Concert Piece" demands virtuosic skill, including subtly-varied repetitions of florid passages and rigorous tout l'archet (whole-length bow-strokes) contrasted with legato double-stopping. But besides technical skill the work demands the utmost musicality, such that ultimately it is its evocative and impassioned beauty that preserves the Concertstück's  place in the violist's repertoire--but the fireworks help, too!

 The hopes of the great German Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) to become a concert pianist were dashed in his early twenties when he permanently damaged his hand, so he redirected his energies to both composing and music criticism. From childhood Schumann was torn between literature and music, and his keen literary sensibilities made him one of history's greatest songwriters, such that his finest Lieder rival those of Schubert. Schumann also managed to combine these two loves in his instrumental music by using poetry and dramatic narrative to color and direct the musical discourse, and even pieces not inspired by the written word were "usually given a quasi-literary title or brought into relationship with some literary idea" (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
 Schumann's greatest loves, however, were his wife, virtuoso pianist and composer Clara Schumann, and five children. Unlike the typical, aloofly dictatorial pater familias of his generation, Schumann doted on his children and kept diaries of their shared exploits. Not surprisingly, some of his music reflects his fondness for his children and the innocence of childhood, such as Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood," 1838), op. 15 and Album for the Young, op. 68 (1848), 43 pieces composed for the instruction of his three daughters. Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812) apparently provided source readings Schumann shared with his children, as well as the inspiration for both Märchenbilder ("Fairy Tale Pictures," 1851) for viola and piano, op. 113, and Märchenerzählungen ("Fairy Tales," 1853), for clarinet, viola and piano, op. 132. The published score of Märchenbilder does not include which tales the composer meant to relay, but it's reported that Schumann's journals mention that the first and second movements depict scenes from Rapunzel, the third Rumpelstiltskin, and the fourth Sleeping Beauty.

 The prodigious musical talents of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) rivaled those of Mozart, and like Mozart, Mendelssohn did not live to see his 40th birthday. But his affluent German family provided young Felix with an intellectually stimulating and stable environment, and protected him from the childhood exploitation that Mozart endured. Mendelssohn benefited from an impressively well-rounded education, and in addition to studying piano, violin, viola and composition, he developed skills as a visual artist, evidenced in over 300 surviving paintings and drawings of remarkable quality. Referred to by Schumann as "a god among men," Mendelssohn grew into a superstar composer, pianist, organist and conductor, and also founded Germany's first conservatory in Leipzig. But, in contrast to many of his flamboyant contemporaries, Mendelssohn neither overcame abject poverty, had a string of adulterous affairs nor suffered syphilitic insanity—consequently, after his death his reputation as a "Romantic" suffered among music critics until well into the 20th Century. But his music has never fallen out of favor with concertgoers, and his flawless Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 remains among the most-frequently performed and recorded concertos ever written, and his Elijah (1846) likely has received more performances than any other large-scale oratorio with the exception of Handel's Messiah.
 In terms of achieving his musical maturity, Mendelssohn surpassed even Mozart. Mendelssohn produced his first acknowledged masterwork at age 16, the Octet for Strings, op. 20, and the following year saw the completion of the brilliant A Midsummer Night's Dream concert overture. Predating these (but post-dating the often-performed and recorded 12 Symphonies for String Orchestra from 1821-1823), Mendelssohn's Viola Sonata was composed when he was barely 15 years old. Although it remained unpublished until 1966, the Sonata's 14 February 1824 completion date places it among the earliest solo works composed specifically for the modern viola (Berlioz's symphonic Harold in Italy would not appear for another decade).

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-56937930116875878072014-06-20T11:42:00.003-07:002015-03-02T07:54:17.068-08:00Intermezzo : Sunday, March 8 @ 3pm

Marguerite Richardson, violin
Scott Watkins, piano
JU Faculty Arists

Under Construction - Please check back!

BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor, op. 23
 1. Presto
 2. Andante scherzoso, più allegretto
 3. Allegro molto

BRAHMS: Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, op. 78 ("Rain Sonata")
 1. Vivace ma non troppo
 2. Adagio
 3. Allegro molto moderato
 -BRIEF INTERMISSION-

DVOŘÁK: Sonatina in G Major, op. 100
 1. Allegro risoluto
 2. Larghetto
 3. Molto vivace
 4. Allegro

A member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1990, violinist Marguerite Richardson began her violin studies at the age of four. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music degree from the University of South Carolina, and the Doctor of Music degree from The Florida State University. Dr. Richardson has performed symphonic and chamber music throughout the United States, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and China. She has appeared as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in performances of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, Vivaldi's Summer Concerto from The Four Seasons, and Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins. Dr. Richardson has appeared as recitalist and chamber musician in several venues in the north Florida area, including the St. Augustine Music Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Good Shepherd, and the Friday Musicale. In addition to her extensive performance schedule, Dr. Richardson began and developed the string program at the University of North Florida (1995-2003), teaches with the Prelude Chamber Music Camp, and appears as an Associate Conductor with the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra. In 2007, Dr. Richardson joined the faculty of Jacksonville University, where she is Assistant Professor of Strings and serves as Music Director of the Jacksonville University Orchestra. In the summer of 2012, Dr. Richardson was Visiting Foreign Scholar at Beifang University (Yin Chuan, Ningxia Province, China) and Visiting Professor of Ningxia Teachers University (Guyuan, Ningxia Province, China). Dr. Richardson taught master classes and presented two recitals during her visit.

Scott Watkins, Assistant Professor of Piano at Jacksonville University, is well known to First Coast audiences for his appearances with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, his numerous solo recitals, and his frequent collaborations with many of the areas finest singers and instrumentalists. His 1985 U.S. debut, an all-Bach recital given in Chicago, was broadcast live nationwide, and has been followed by a steady flow of solo and concerto performances in North and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. He has been heard often in the United States and Canada on National Public Radio and Television, and in South America and Europe on The Voice of America. Dr. Watkins is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Philip Sousa Award for Outstanding American Musicians, Rotary Club of Florida's Annual Artistic Merit Award, and France's Jeunesse Musicales. In 1985, he became the youngest winner ever of The U.S. Department of State's Artistic Ambassador Award. His degrees include a Bachelor of Music from the University of Cincinnati, Master of Music from University of South Carolina, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Florida State University.

PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

The Transcendent German-born composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) began his compositional career essentially imitating the styles and forms he inherited from Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and W.A Mozart (1756-1791), but during his "middle" period (ca. 1803-1815) Beethoven expanded and personalized this inheritance, creating works that have come to represent the culmination of the Classical style in much the same way that the works of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) represent the culmination of the Baroque. During Beethoven's "late" period (ca. 1815-1827), he discovered new paths toward still more personal, even intimate, musical expression, and, despite the gradual and eventually total degeneration of his hearing, he forged the way beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic.

Beethoven began work on both his 4th and 5th violin sonatas in the summer of 1800, while he also worked on his Symphony No. 2, Op. 21 and the ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43. The two violin sonatas were intended as contrasting companion pieces and initially were grouped together as the composer's "Opus 23." But the violin part of the brightly lyrical Sonata No. 5 in F major (now known as the "Spring" Sonata) mistakenly was printed using an oblong format rather than the tall format used for the darkly dramatic Sonata No. 4. This made it impossible to bind the two sonatas together, and it was cheaper to assign them separate opus numbers rather than re-engraving them. Thus, the fifth sonata became "Opus 24," while the fourth kept the original work number.

Although Beethoven's Sonata No. 4 dates from his "early" period, contemporary critics were already making note of the composer's originality, even when they didn't quite understand his innovations. The key of A-minor was a rare choice for chamber music compositions, made even more unusual by Beethoven's retention of the minor mode for the first movement's "second subject," which is introduced in E-minor rather than in the "expected" relative major key centered on C. And although Beethoven retains the 3-movement outline favored by his mentors rather than using the 4-movement scheme with an added scherzo movement that he later seemed to prefer (and which he uses in the "Spring" Sonata No. 5), he nonetheless interjects the jesting spirit of a scherzo into the slower-paced middle movement.

SCORE (pdf): Beethoven Sonata No. 4, Op. 23

At a time when it was fashionable to write programmatic music that illustrated specific scenes, poems or stories, the great German composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was recognized by his admirers as "Beethoven's true heir" (Grove Concise Dictionary of Music) by demonstrating that established abstract formal procedures could be used to organize musical discourse without sacrificing the passion and deeply individualistic expression that defines 19th-Century Romantic music. Thus, Brahms joined Bach and Beethoven as one of the great "Three B's" of classical music.

For many of us, summer vacations might provide a good time to "vegetate," in the sense of "idly lulling about." But for Brahms sunny rural retreats sparked his musical inspiration to "bloom and grow" into some of his most ingratiating works, including his three violin sonatas. Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in G Major, op. 78 was written in response to Italian sojourns during the summers of 1878 and 1879. Among his most ingratiating works, it has been nicknamed the "Rain" Sonata because Brahms used thematic material drawn from his Regenlied ("Rain Song").

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) is an immensely popular Czech composer who fused melodic and rhythmic elements of Bohemian folk music with classical symphonic forms. As his international reputation flourished, Dvořák was invited to New York City to become director of the National Conservatory of Music from 1892 to 1895. He used the opportunity to familiarize himself with indigenous American music, especially African-American work songs and Spirituals and melodies and drum rhythms of Native Americans. Dvořák wrote several newspaper articles promoting the idea that these could support a uniquely American style of concert music. He put his theory to the test in his most famous work, the New World Symphony, op. 95, as well as in the "American" String Quartet, op. 96 and "American" String Quintet, op. 97, all composed in 1893.

Completed that same year, Dvořák wanted his "opus 100" landmark to have personal significance, so he wrote it for his children, and his daughter Ottilie and son Toník premiered the work in a private performance in their home. Although the Sonatina, op. 100 lacks the "American" nickname it is infused with similar New World characteristics, such a syncopated dance rhythms and tunes derived from the pentatonic scale (like you get when you play only the black keys of the piano) and with repeated notes said to be reminiscent of Native tom toms. Neatly laid out in the tidy, four-movement "sonata" structure that Beethoven had popularized, it has become Dvořák's most popular work for violin and piano.

When presenting the work to his publisher, Dvořák commented that it is "intended for young people (dedicated to my children) but grown-ups, too, let them get what enjoyment they can out of it." Having no doubt that grown-ups would indeed enjoy it, the publisher (Simrock) also issued the second-movement Larghetto separately (without the composer's permission) as "Indian Canzonetta." Called "Indian Lullaby" by Fritz Kreisler and also performed as "Indian Lament," it's said that Dvořák jotted the main tune on his shirt sleeve while visiting Minnehaha Falls in Minnesota.

SCORE (pdf): Dvořák: Sonatina, op. 100
Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-61835699207623416492014-06-20T11:41:00.001-07:002015-02-27T07:25:52.415-08:00Emergence : Tuesday, March 3 @ 7pmDouglas Anderson School of the Arts Piano Students
Vera Watson, Faculty Coordinator

HAYDN: Sonata in C, Hob XVI:1. I. Allegro
 Anne McMullen
DEBUSSY: En Bateau
 Daniel Nabert and Viann Yu
CLEMENTI: Sonatina in D, op. 36, no. 6. I. Allegro con spirito
 Paige Hammock
HAYDN Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI:34. I. Presto
 Bethany Roberts
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No, 8 in C Minor, op. 13 "Pathétique." II. Adagio cantabile
 Annika Lundberg
CHOPIN: Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor, op. posth. 72, no. 1
 Hannah Scales
MACDOWELL: Elfin Round
 Jessica Wu
CHOPIN: Mazurka  in F-sharp Minor, op. 6, no. 1
 Janine Albrecht
DEBUSSY: Page d'album (Album Leaf)
 Emma Webber
HOVHANESS: Macedonian Mountain Dance
 Dalton Thrift
CHOPIN: Prelude No. 6 in B minor, op. 28, no. 6
 Bailey Montgomery
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 13 in E-flat, op. 27, no. 1 "Quasi una Fantasia." I. Andante-Allegro-Andante
 Sen Valeski
ALBÉNIZ: Cataluña (from Suite española, op. 47)
 Tatiana Rusli
CHOPIN: Waltz in D-flat Major, op. 64, no. 1 "Minute Waltz"
 Riley Despres
JOPLIN: Maple Leaf Rag
 Noah Higgins
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 4 in E-flat, op. 7 "Grand Sonata." I. Allegro molto con brio
 Kierstyn Granzow

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts is a Duval County Public School for students grades 9 through 12 with a desire for intensive study in the arts. Established as an arts school in 1985, the school attracts students from all parts of North Florida and South Georgia who have talent in dance, instrumental or vocal music, performance or technical theater, film and video production, creative writing, and visual arts. A high academic standard, coupled with broad arts curriculum, offers students an opportunity to excel in a chosen discipline while preparing them for post-secondary education.

Douglas Anderson's Piano Program
In 2000 DA's Piano program was recognized as the best music program in Northeast Florida and was awarded the Jacksonville Symphony Association's Harmony Grant. The Piano Department offers serious young pianists a unique opportunity to be in an intensive and varied program and to work with internationally acclaimed guest artists.

Vera Watson has been Chair of the Piano Department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts since 1999. She holds National Certification in piano from the Music Teachers National Association and a Florida Professional Educator's Certificate. Under her leadership the DA piano program was recognized as the best music program in Northeast Florida by the Jacksonville Symphony Guild in 2001, for which Douglas Anderson received the Harmony Grant. In 2003, Ms. Watson received the Surdna Foundation Grant in New York City, in recognition of her achievements among the best arts teachers in the United States. In 2010, Friday Musicale presented Vera Watson with the Carolyn Day Pfohl Music Educator Award for Outstanding Achievements. She is especially proud of her many students who have been accepted into prestigious music conservatories, and have become successful artists.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian
 In Alphabetical Order by the Composers' Last Names

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) is among the best-known proponents of Music Nationalism of Spain. He gave his first public concert when he was four years old and during his teens became known as the greatest prodigy from his homeland. In 1883, Albéniz settled in Barcelona where he met Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922), a musicologist and composer who convinced him that it was important for Spanish composers to write music based on the characteristic folk songs and dances of their homeland. This turned out to be very good advice—although Albéniz also continued to compose music in a cosmopolitan style, it is for his Spanish-flavored music that he is most remembered, such as Cataluña, from his Suite española, op. 47.

The Transcendent German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) started out imitating the styles and forms he inherited from Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and W.A Mozart (1756-1791), but during his "middle" period (ca. 1803-1815) Beethoven expanded and personalized this inheritance, creating works that have come to represent the culmination of the "Classical style" in general. During Beethoven's "late" period (ca. 1815-1827), he discovered new paths toward still more personal musical expression and forged the way beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic. Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas are regarded among the most significant set of piano works ever composed, and along with his string quartets provide a testament to his compositional evolution. Nicknamed "Grand Sonata" at the time of its publication in 1797, Sonata No. 4 is said to reflect Beethoven's love of nature, and later became known also as Verliebte ("Woman in Love"). Composed the following year, the "Pathétique" Sonata (No. 8) remains one of the best-loved of Beethoven's works. Completed in 1801, Sonata No. 13 still falls within Beethoven's "early" period, but contemporary critics were already commenting on the composer's highly individual approach to musical discourse.

The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities of the piano as we know it, and rightly has been called the "Poet of the Piano." Much of all piano music by subsequent composers shows his influence, and his revolutionary use of chromatic harmonies and unusual key relationships profoundly influenced composers of symphonic music and operas as well, such as Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner—thus Chopin's importance in the development of the "Romantic" style in general cannot be overestimated. Spanning two decades of Chopin's short life, the Nocturne No. 19 (1827), Mazurka, op. 6 , no. 1 (1830), Prelude, op. 28, no. 6 (1839), and Waltz, op. 64, no. 1 (1847) not only provide examples of the forms for which the composer is best known (adding also the polonaise), they demonstrate that the 17-year-old composer already displayed characteristics that define the works of his maturity.

At the end of the 18th Century, only Haydn was held in higher regard as a composer than was Muzio Clementi 1752-1832), and Beethoven credited the Italian composer with providing the foundation upon which he built his own piano technique. Additionally, Clementi was one of the most-celebrated concert pianists in Europe, and became successful as a music publisher and piano manufacturer as well. His six Sonatinas, Op. 36 (1797) are nicknamed "Progressive Sonatinas," indicating the playing becomes more challenging as you go through them.

 Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a quintessentially French composer, pianist and music critic whose own revolutionary music ushered in many of the stylistic changes of the 20th Century, and he is universally identified as the chief proponent of musical Impressionism. Just as Chopin's piano music has influenced many subsequent piano works, Debussy's body of piano music has had a similar effect on the works of his successors. The first movement in Petite suite ("Little Suite," 1889) for piano 4-hands, En Bateau ("Onboard Boat") was inspired by a poem of the same title by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). Debussy composed Page d'album ("Album Page") in 1915 to help raise money for a WWI relief organization, Le Vêtement du Blessé ("The Dressing of the Wounded").

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the "Classical" style that his two younger contemporaries Mozart and Beethoven built upon, and by the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely-celebrated composer in Europe. Haydn started out as a choirboy and never developed into a keyboard virtuoso, so his 52-62 keyboard sonatas (depending on who's counting) were mostly composed in the early part of his career for the instruction and amusement of his noble patrons. Piano Sonata, H. XVI:1 (aka, No. 10 in the Robbins-Landon listing), was likely composed in the early 1770s (and perhaps by someone other than Haydn, according to the Grove Dictionary). Piano Sonata, H. XVI:34 (L. 54, ca. 1784) is one of only seven piano sonatas Haydn wrote in a minor key.

American composer Alan Hovhaness (born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian, 1911-2000) is perhaps best known for his early works that reflect his Armenian heritage, but his evolving, highly-original style eventually incorporated influences from a wide variety of ethnic music from around the world, especially from India and the Far East. With over 500 works to his credit, he was among the first composers to include aleatoric or "chance" passages in some of his works, and he has been credited with anticipating both the minimalist techniques of composers such asAmerican composer Alan Hovhaness (born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian, 1911-2000) is perhaps best known for his early works that reflect his Armenian heritage, but his evolving, highly-original style eventually incorporated influences from a wide variety of ethnic music from around the world, especially from India and the Far East. With over 500 works to his credit, he was among the first composers to include aleatoric or "chance" passages in some of his works, and he has been credited with anticipating both the minimalist techniques of composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and the mysticism of John Taverner, Arvo Pärt and Henryk Gorécki. Hovhaness wrote his Macedonian Mountain Dance for piano solo in 1937 (revised in 1962), and orchestrated it ca. 1964.

Texas-born composer Scott Joplin (1867 or 8-1917) began his career as a touring musician during his teens, and went on to become known as the "King of Ragtime" for his compositions. First published in 1897, The Maple Leaf Rag remains Joplin's most famous piece and is frequently cited as the best-selling and most-influential composition in the history of ragtime music, placing its creator among the earliest African-American composers to gain international recognition. Hoping to find backing for Treemonisha, his second opera, Joplin moved from the Midwest to New York City in 1907. Completing and self-publishing the opera in 1911, Joplin was unable to secure a staged performance during his lifetime, but following the first full-scale production by the Houston Opera in 1975, Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American music.

Although he was born and died in New York City, Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) studied piano and composition in Europe at the Paris and Frankfurt conservatories, and began his teaching career in Germany. He returned to the U.S. in 1888, and the following year appeared as soloist in the premiere of his enduringly-popular Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 23, considered his most successful large-scale work. In 1896, he founded the music department at Columbia University where he remained until 1904, the same year he was elected as one of the first seven members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As a composer MacDowell is held in highest regard for his piano miniatures, including An Elfin Round, the last of his 6 Fancies, op. 7, first published in 1898.

SELECTED RELATED LIBRARY RESOURCES
786 G665h 1996
 A history of keyboard literature : music for the piano and its forerunners / Stewart Gordon.
786.2193071 TUNSTALL 2008
 Note by note : a celebration of the piano lesson / Tricia Tunstall.
M20 .F275 1996 [MUSIC SCORE]
 Favorite piano classics : 83 best-loved works / edited by Ronald Herder.

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-87202073811965283632014-06-20T11:38:00.001-07:002015-02-09T06:25:46.091-08:00Tuesday Serenade : February 17 @ 7pmLauren Burns Hodges, viola
Douglas Jurs, piano

Faculty Artists from Valdosta State University & Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College*

Under Construction - Please Check Back!

Joseph Haydn
Piano Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI/50 (L. 60)

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro Molto

Anton Rubinstein
Nocturne for Viola & Piano, op. 11, no. 2

Alexander Scriabin
Poème in F-sharp Major, op. 32, no. 1 (Piano solo)

Claude Debussy
General Lavine-Excentrique (Piano Préludes, Book 2, no. 6)

Claude Debussy
L'Isle joyeuse (Piano solo)

Ernest Bloch
Suite for Viola and Piano (1919)

Lento

Allegro ironico

Lento

Molto vivo

*Presented with very special thanks to Dr. Hodges and Dr. Jurs for stepping in when the originally-scheduled artist became unable to perform due to illness

Lauren Burns Hodges currently serves as Lecturer in Viola at Valdosta State University, Principal Viola of the Valdosta Symphony, violist of the Azalea String Quartet, and Director of the South Georgia String Project, winner of the 2011 NSPC String Project of the Year. During the summers, she is a faculty artist at the Premier Orchestral Institute in Jackson, Mississippi and the Schlern International Music Festival in South Tyrol, Italy. Recent orchestral, chamber and solo performances have taken her to Périgueux (France), Graz and Bad Leonfelden (Austria), Havana (Cuba), and seventeen cities in China.

As a founding member of the Hausmann Quartet, Dr. Hodges performed throughout the United States and was a young artist-in-residence on the Lyrica Boston Chamber Music Series, and at Kent State University in Ohio as a teaching assistant to the Miami String Quartet. She was a fellow at Norfolk and Kent/Blossom summer music festivals, and has performed in the Eastern Music Festival Faculty Orchestra as well as a summer concert in the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom. She has been Principal Viola in the Ohio Valley Symphony, Lyrica Chamber Orchestra (Boston and NJ) and in the Manchester Chamber Music (VT) and Texas Music Festival orchestras, and has also performed with the Albany, Mobile, Tuscaloosa, Mansfield, Lancaster, New Hampshire, Brockton, Augusta, and South Carolina Philharmonic orchestras, and in the AIMS - Graz, Aspen and Brevard Music Festival orchestras.

Winner of the Narramore Fellowship, Dr. Hodges received her doctoral degree from the University of Alabama. She earned a master's degree at Peabody Conservatory as a winner of the prestigious Jacob K. Javits national fellowship, and her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina.

Chicago-born pianist Douglas Jurs was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano and Music Theory at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Fall 2012, having previously served on the piano faculties at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and Edgewood College. Dr. Jurs has performed solo and collaborative recitals throughout the U.S. and abroad in cities like Vienna, Nice, and Milan and at festivals such as the Holland International Music Sessions, Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Centre d'Arts Orford in Quebec, among others. He won First Prize at the 2004 Lee Biennial Piano Competition, and was winner of the University of Wisconsin Beethoven Competition in 2010.

Dr. Jurs is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Blue Horse Music Festival in Woodstock, Vermont, a biannual winter/summer concert series that features acclaimed musicians performing in the intimate Blue Horse Inn music parlor. A committed teacher, Dr. Jurs has over ten years of private piano teaching experience and his pre-college students have won competitions at the local, state and national levels. In past summers, he has worked as an Artist Teacher at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. As a long-time advocate for arts outreach, Dr. Jurs has performed in correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals and as a past Associate Artist with Cleveland Opera, in over 100 public schools throughout Ohio. He was one of the first teachers to work with the University of Wisconsin Piano Pioneers program, an initiative that brings affordable music lessons to low-income students.

Dr. Jurs' music degrees are from the University of Wisconsin (DMA), Cleveland Institute of Music (MM), and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music(BS-OF), where he was a Friends of Music Scholar, double major in Piano and English Literature, and rider for the Cutters cycling team.

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the "Classical" style that his two younger contemporaries Mozart and Beethoven built upon, and by the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely celebrated composer in Europe. Haydn started out as a choirboy and never developed into a keyboard virtuoso, so his 52-62 keyboard sonatas (depending on who's counting) were mostly composed in the early part of his career for the instruction and amusement of his noble patrons. Not so, however, with his Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI/50 (L.60), which is the first in a group of three sonatas written "expressly for" the English virtuoso Terese Jansen (aka Mrs. Bartolozzi in the dedication), and the last piano sonatas Haydn would write. Not only are they more technically challenging than many of his earlier forays in the genre, they also incorporate a wider pitch range owing to the contemporary advances in the construction of English pianos (one of which the composer carried back to Vienna). Written during Haydn's second visit to London (1794-1795), the C-major Sonata demonstrates Haydn's characteristic wit and good humor. The first movement is built around single theme and combines aspects of a sonata-form movement with theme and variations. The middle Adagio, thought to pre-date the other movements, is followed by a brief rondo that recaptures the high spirits of the opening.

Composer, pianist, conductor and educator Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) was a central figure in Russian musical life during the late 19th Century. He was the first director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and as a pianist he was considered the equal of Liszt. As might be expected, he composed hundreds of pieces for his own instrument, but he also wrote symphonies, concertos, songs, choral works and operas, the best-known of which is The Demon (1871). His Nocturne, the second of Three Pieces for Viola and Piano, op. 11, was composed in 1854.

Russian pianist, composer and mystic Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) was a classmate of Rachmaninoff at the Moscow Conservatory. But unlike his famous friend who retained the stylistic traits of Russian Romanticism throughout his career, Scriabin developed a unique musical language that progressed beyond early lyrical musings directly inspired by Chopin and Liszt into a non-tonal vocabulary that has lead some to call him the "progenitor of Serialism." The popular Poème in F-sharp Major is the first of two such works comprising Scriabin's opus 32. Composed in 1903, its fluid, Late-Romantic harmonic language shares more with the Impressionism of Debussy than with the increasingly nebulous sound-world into which Scriabin soon would journey.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a quintessentially French composer, pianist and music critic whose own revolutionary music ushered in many of the stylistic changes of the 20th Century. Debussy was a great fan of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and he even edited a French edition of the Polish composer's piano music for publication. Debussy proved himself to be a true successor of Chopin in writing for the piano, and his 24 Préludes, composed between 1909 and 1913 and grouped into two books of 12 each, may be regarded as a tribute to the Pole. Like Chopin, Debussy continued a Baroque tradition with his Préludes while expanding the harmonic language and piano technique of his contemporaries in ways previously unimagined. General Lavine-Excentrique (Book 2, No. 6) is written "in the style and movement of a Cake-Walk," thus paying homage to American popular music of the era.

Debussy's effervescent L'isle joyeuse was inspired by L'Embarquement pour Cythère ("The Embarkation for Cythera"), by French painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). The painting depicts an amorous boating party visiting the supposed birthplace of Venus, complete with Cupids flitting about. Writing to his publisher Debussy observed, "This piece seems to embrace every possible manner of treating the piano, combining as it does strength with grace, if I may presume to say so." It begins with a glittering haze of whole-tone harmonies and eventually ends in A major, harmonically bridged with Lydian modal inflections (like a major scale but with a raised fourth). Debussy's music captures the sensuous excitement depicted in Watteau's excursion, but it's hardly a vacation for the pianist. As Debussy himself observed, "Lord, but it's difficult to play!"

Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) was educated and began his teaching career in Europe, but he moved to America in 1916 and became a U.S. citizen in 1924. His teaching posts included directorships at the Cleveland Institute of Music (which he helped found in 1920), and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and his students included Roger Sessions, George Antheil, Douglas Moore, Quincy Porter, Randall Thompson, and Leon Kirchner. Although Bloch's diverse (but essentially Romantic) output includes some works which adapt atonality and serialism into his own style, his most widely-known works are those which draw inspiration from his Jewish heritage, such as Schelomo, for cello and orchestra (1916).

Bloch's Suite for Viola and Piano won first prize in the Berkshire Chamber Music Competition in 1919, for which the composer provided the following notes:

First of all, my SUITE does not belong to my so-called 'Jewish works,' although perhaps, in spite of myself, one may perceive here and there in a few places a certain Jewish inspiration. It is rather a vision of the Far East that inspired me: Java, Sumatra, Borneo — those wonderful countries I so often dreamed of, though never was fortunate enough to visit in any other way than through my imagination. I first intended to give more explicit — or picturesque — titles to the four movements of the work, as: (1) In the Jungle; (2) Grotesques;(3) Nocturne; (4) The Land of the Sun. But those titles seemed rather incomplete and unsatisfactory to me. Therefore, I prefer to leave the imagination of the hearer completely unfettered, rather than tie it to a definite programme.

The following, however, is what I believe that I myself saw in the music:
1) Lento — Allegro — Moderato

The first movement, the most complicated in inspiration and in form, aims to give the impression of a very wild and primitive Nature. The introduction, Lento, begins with a kind of savage cry, like that of a fierce bird of prey, followed immediately by a deep silence, misterioso, and the meditation of the viola. Other motives follow, and a small embryonic theme that later assumes very great importance. All these motives will be recalled later, either in the first movement or in the following ones, with more or less transformation.

The following Allegro brings a motive of joyful and perhaps exotic character which is answered by the viola. There is a new motive for the viola, and there are transformations of earlier material. The second part of the Allegro begins with a new idea — perhaps a little Jewish, in my sense. There is a climax worked out from the most important themes. Then follows a decrescendo that leads to the conclusion of the Allegro — again in silence and in slumbering mood. Like a sun rising out of clouds, in the mystery of primitive Nature, one of the earlier viola motives arises in a broader shape, Largamente, and the movement ends, as it began, with the meditation of the viola.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-20672737963959389982014-06-20T11:37:00.001-07:002015-01-23T14:12:12.665-08:00Intermezzo : Sunday, February 8 @ 3pm
Tony Steve, percussion
Jacksonville University Faculty Artist

Assisted by
Dr. Michael James Olson, piano
The JU Marimba Band
 Amy Dagenais, Anthony Akapnitis, Sara Simonovska, marimba
 Evan Peterson, bass marimba
 Aaron Jennings, drums and percussion

Tony Steve (b. 1959)
 Surge for Solo Marimba (1990)
 Biscuit Crux (Solo Marimba) (2014)
 I'll Ask That Question Suite (2014-2015)
 1. You Are My Agenda
 2. Your Death Will Be Humane

John Luther Adams (b. 1953)
 Red Arc/Blue Veil (2002)
 with Dr. Michael James Olson, piano

Harry Breuer (1901-1989)
 Three Novelty Xylophone Rags
 Back Talk (1936)
  Bit-o-Rhythm (1932)
  Chicken Reel (1936)

Percussionist and composer Tony Steve is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music and Percussion at Jacksonville University. He has performed with the Jacksonville Symphony, Israeli Festival Orchestra, Glimmerglass Opera Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, North Eastern Pennsylvania Symphony, Greenwich Symphony, and Bridgeport Symphony. He toured with A Chorus Line in Europe, appeared as marimba soloist with the Brooklyn Percussion Ensemble in Korea, and performed as percussionist at Madison Square Garden for A Christmas Carol, and also has worked with Henry Mancini, Lou Rawls, Sheri Lewis and The Xavier Cugat Orchestra. Tony's works are published by Media Press, Keyboard Publications and Percussion Arrangers, and he has won numerous ASCAP writers awards for his compositions, which are performed in America as well as in Europe and Asia. His degrees include a Bachelor of Music from Jacksonville University and a Master of Music from Ithaca College, and he is completing a doctorate at Florida State University.

Dr. Michael James Olson is a composer, producer, and musician whose concert music has been performed throughout the world. Michael has received numerous awards including ASCAPLus Awards (2007-2012), Finalist for the ASCAP/SEAMUS Commission, and First Prize at the Georgia Southern Research Awards. Michael's music, performance, and production can also be heard on more than 15 albums spanning the genres of folk to pop, on numerous record labels. His music has been featured in films and television, and his records have received radio airplay on more than 200 stations across the U.S, Canada, and Australia. Michael has toured extensively throughout the U.S. with acts such as Everclear, Semisonic, Violent Fems, Rick Springfield, Better Than Ezra, Eve6, and Josh Turner. He holds a B.M. from Minnesota State University, an M.M. from Georgia Southern University, and a Doctorate from Ball State University. Michael currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Jacksonville University where he teaches classes in music theory and commercial music, and is the Director of the Dolphinium Records label.

PROGRAM NOTES by Tony Steve & John Luther Adams

Surge for Solo Marimba (1990) was written while I was at Ithaca College. The piece is rhapsodic in form. The pitch material is based on four pitch sets and those are developed throughout the course of the piece.

Biscuit Crux (2014) was commissioned by Connor Stevens. He will be performing the work later in the spring. He graciously allowed to premier the piece on January 31, 2015. In many of my works small harmonic cells are developed throughout the span of the piece. This work has the performer making large kinesthetic shifts on the instrument while the piece moves between frenetic and placid.

I'll Ask That Question for video, soundscape and live musician takes on a few subjects that are on the minds of many people. How often is each of us the point of someone's cloaked inquiry to our life? Is it really good to eat all that food that large corporations are giving us with pesticides and hormones? Do large corporations lie to us about what they are doing to make the world a better place? If corporations are "people" would one not have a conscience and treat people equally? If a corporation is indirectly part of a heinous war crime, would the corporate leaders be held responsible for continuing the lie?
You Are My Agenda and Your Death Will Be Humane use live percussion and follow the video and soundscape to underpin the questions posed above. The percussion instruments used in Your Death Will Be Humane are mostly found in the kitchen supply section of a supermarket. Hopefully, the works will have you asking more questions and not accepting the face value of everything you are told to believe. Otherwise, keep eating the food given to you by people without a conscience.

-- Tony Steve

Red Arc/Blue Veil (2002, commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Sirius) is the first piece in a projected cycle exploring the geometry of time and color—what Kandinsky called "those inner sounds that are the life of the colors." As in all of my recent music, I imagine the entire ensemble (piano, percussion, and processed sounds) as a single instrument, and the entire piece as a single complex sonority. The processed sounds are derived directly from the acoustical instruments. In Red Arc/Blue Veil the electronic sounds are layered in tempo relationships of 3, 5 and 7, while the piano and mallet percussion trace a single arc, rising and falling from beginning to end.

-- John Luther Adams (American composer; Winner, 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music)

Novelty Ragtime Pieces for the xylophone have a history dating to the cylinder recordings of Thomas Edison. Scott Joplin, the father of ragtime, would mark on his scores not to play ragtime too fast. This direction allowed the listener to hear the interweaving rhythms in the pieces. Novelty ragtime xylophone was often a part of a radio hour. Harry Breuer was a virtuoso xylophonist that appeared on numerous national radio programs during the mid-century heyday of live radio.
Back Talk, Bit O' Rhythm and Chicken Reel are windows into the past of America's vast network of entertainment for the masses.

-- Tony Steve

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-9573677170530129292014-06-20T11:35:00.003-07:002015-02-04T02:14:13.648-08:00Emergence : Tuesday, February 3 @ 7pm
Jacksonville University Chamber Ensembles
Dr. Marguerite Richardson, faculty coordinator

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)
 Piano Quartet No. 1in G minor, K. 478: I. Allegro
Yelena Sakara, violin, Ian Rodgers, viola, Brendan Kohler, violoncello & Jackson Merrill, piano
Dr. Shannon Lockwood, faculty coach

Ervin Monroe
 Brian Boru's March (Traditional Irish Tune)
Ernesto Lecuona
 Malaguena (arr. by Ann Cameron Pearce)
JU Flute Ensemble
Evan Brown, Paige Dyjack, Anne McKennon, Kimberly Trumbull, Delisa Youngblood & Les Roettges
Les Roettges, faculty coach

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
 The Old Castle  (From Pictures at an Exhibition, arr. By Rik Pfenninger)
Bob Mintzer (b. 1953)
 Swingin' (from Three Pieces for Saxophone Quartet)
JU Saxophone Quartet
Joshua Gaudino, alto saxophone, Sarah Lee, alto and soprano saxophone, Daniel Powell, tenor saxophone & Ian Vargas, baritone saxophone
Prof. John Ricci, faculty coach

Eric Ewazen (b. 1954)
 Colchester Fantasy: III. The Dragoon - IV. The Red Lion
JU Honors Brass Quintet
Triston Hanson, Ben Tino,Trumpets, Michael Ryan, Horn, Erik Blomgren, Trombone & Cody Wheaton, Tuba
Prof. Christopher Creswell, faculty coach

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)
 String Quintet No. 2 in G major, op. 77: I. Allegro con fuoco - II. Scherzo (Allegro vivace)
JU Honors String Quintet
Edward Latimer, Joseph Schmidt, violins, Mamie Lue Small, viola & Tim Stephen, violoncello; Anna Thompson, string bass
Dr. Marguerite Richardson, faculty coach

Jacksonville University is a comprehensive, private university with more than 70 respected academic programs that attract nearly 3,000 students from all over Florida, across the nation, and around the world. Working closely with a distinguished faculty of professional performing artists and researchers, students can focus and refine their skills while deepening an appreciation for the musical arts. Music students at Jacksonville University may pursue a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.), Bachelor of Music (B.M.), Bachelor of Music Education (B.M.E.), or a Bachelor of Science (B.S.).

The Chamber Music Program at Jacksonville University includes a wide variety of players and instrumental combinations. Each student group is coached on a weekly basis by a faculty member, in addition to student-run rehearsals during the week. The Division of Music presents three chamber recitals during the course of the academic year featuring these groups. Among the chamber groups are three Honors Ensembles (String Quartet, Woodwind Quintet and Brass Quintet), which provide the students selected to participate in them with full-tuition scholarships.

 Jacksonville University Symphony Orchestra

ABOUT THE FACULTY COACHES

Dr. Shannon Lockwood (B.M. Summa cum laude, U. of Denver; M.M. and D.M.A., University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) is a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and an Adjunct Applied Instructor (violoncello) at JU. Formerly principal cellist of the Richmond Indiana Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Lockwood is an avid performer as soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician throughout the United States, England and France.

Ohio native Les Roettges (B.M., New England Conservatory; M.M., Juilliard) has been principal flute for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1986 and for the Eastern Music Festival since 2002. He also appears on PBS as a member of Gerard Schwarz's Emmy-winning All-Star Orchestra project. Among numerous appearances around the country, Les has performed locally for the Amelia Island Chamber Festival and the Saint Augustine Festival, and with the San Marco Chamber Music Society.

JU's Director of Jazz Studies and Artist in Residence John Ricci (B.M., U. of Tennessee at Knoxville; M.M., FSU) has been a performer, jazz educator, composer and clinician in the North Florida area for over eleven years. Among his many awards he received a Downbeat Magazine award in 1995, and won the jazz song category of the 8th Annual Independent Music Awards in 2009. John has performed with a myriad of top recording artists and as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Pops Orchestra. Festival appearances have included the Jacksonville Jazz Festival, the Savannah Jazz Festival and the Knoxville Jazz Festival, and he and his quartet were invited to headline the Inaugural Jacksonville Jazz Series.

Christopher Creswell (B.M. in Trombone Performance, UNF; M.M. in Jazz Studies, Manhattan School of Music) has been Artist in Residence and Director of Athletic Bands at Jacksonville University since 2012. Chris has performed and recorded with many of today's top pop and jazz artists, including Mariah Carey, John Pizzarelli, Will Smith and Arturo Sandovale, and remains active as a trombonist in the Jacksonville music scene performing at festivals, corporate events, and with various jazz and chamber ensembles. He also has composed numerous original compositions and arrangements for jazz ensemble, including a commission for the 2008 Jacksonville Jazz Festival.

Dr. Marguerite Richardson (B.M., Cleveland Institute of Music; M.M. U. of South Carolina; D.M., FSU) joined the faculty of Jacksonville University in 2007, where she is Assistant Professor of Strings and Music Director of the JU Orchestra, and, prior to her appointment at JU, Dr. Richardson founded the string program at the University of North Florida. She has been a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1990, and is Associate Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra. Dr. Richardson regularly performs both as a soloist and chamber musician, including recitals in China as a Visiting Foreign Scholar and Visiting Professor.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Austrian-born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), unquestionably one of the greatest composers in history, began his career touring Europe as a 6-year-old piano prodigy, and he absorbed and mastered all the contemporary musical trends he was exposed to along the way. Written in 1785, Mozart's Piano Quartet No. 1, KV 478, is the earliest masterpiece for a surprisingly rare performance ensemble combining piano with string trio—Haydn wrote nothing for piano quartet and Beethoven never returned to the medium after three very early Piano Quartets, WoO 36 (coincidentally also written in 1785 when Beethoven was only 14). Mozart was originally commissioned to write a set of three quartets suitable for amateur musicians, but the publisher canceled the order for the last two quartets because the first one was too difficult for amateurs, and he feared the new quartets would be unlikely to return a profit. Nonetheless, this Quartet is one of Mozart's finest creations, and the great Czech Romantic Nationalist composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) borrowed the opening theme for the finale of his String Quintet, Op. 1. Always strapped for cash, Mozart luckily got to keep the advance payment from the commission, but even with the commission canceled Mozart found the instrumentation artistically rewarding, enough so that he returned to it 9 months later, producing his Piano Quartet No. 2, KV 493.

Ervin Monroe was principal flute of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for over 40 years, and has been heard on more symphonic radio broadcasts than any other American principal flutist. He has numerous solo and chamber music recordings, and has performed with such renowned artists as the late Jean-Pierre Rampal. Formerly president of the National Flute Association, Monroe founded The Flutist Quarterly and was the flute professor at Wayne State University for more than three decades; he also has served as musical director of several orchestras in Michigan. Among Monroe's numerous published arrangements and original compositions, his Brian Boru's March is based on a catchy Celtic tune named for the medieval Irish King who founded the O'Brien dynasty.

With such lasting hits as Andalucia and Siboney, Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963) is perhaps the most famous Cuban composer and pianist of the 20th Century, and his influence among Latin American composers has been compared with George Gershwin's in the U.S. Many of his 600+ compositions were written for theatrical and film productions, and his Always in My Heart was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song in 1942 (losing to Irving Berlin's White Christmas). Originally composed as part of Suite Andalucia for solo piano in 1924, Malagueña is likely Lecuona's most famous composition, with recordings and performances by innumerable jazz and pop artists, as well as marching bands and drum corps. As a performer, Ann Cameron Pierce (b. 1949) specializes in contrabass flute. Like many of her 79 flute choir arrangements and compositions, Pierce's 2012 arrangement of Malagueña received special recognition from the National Flute Association's Newly Published Music Competition.

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was among "The Five" leading composers of the Russian Romantic Nationalist movement of the late 19th Century. Along with Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui, and their mentor Mily Balakirev, this "Mighty Handful" formed a group of young composers who strove to create forms and melodies born of Russian folk music rather than Germanic symphonic traditions. In addition to Boris Godunov (1874), the quintessential Russian opera, and the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain (1867-80, edited and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886), Mussorgsky is most remembered for his Pictures at an Exhibition (1874). Originally for piano solo, Ravel's famous orchestral version of the suite became an instant classic in 1922, and his version of The Old Castle caused quite a stir when he assigned the principal melody to saxophone, previously considered almost exclusively as a jazz instrument. Rik Pfenninger, a Professor of Music at Plymouth State University (New Hampshire) specializing in jazz studies and music technology, goes a step further in his 1998 arrangement, eliminating the need for either piano or orchestra!

Equally active as composer, arranger and educator, saxophonist Bob Mitzer (b. 1953) tours with the Yellowjackets and his own quartet and big band, and is guest conductor and soloist with large and small bands all over the world. At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Mitzer teaches jazz composition, saxophone and directs the Thornton Jazz Orchestra. He also gives workshops around the world, has authored books on a variety of musical subjects, and plays on countless recordings every year. His compositions and arrangements include works for big bands, concert bands, orchestra and saxophone quartets. Swingin' is the first of Mitzer's Three Pieces For Saxophone Quartet (2006), commissioned by Frank Masseo and The New Jersey Saxophone Quartet.

Since 1980, Ohio-born Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) has been a composition professor at The Juilliard School, where he received both his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees after having received his B.M. from the Eastman School of Music. Among others, his principle teachers included Modernist composers Milton Babbitt and Joseph Schwantner, but Ewazen's post-Modern style is more closely aligned with Copland's populism and Barber's neo-romanticism. The recipient of numerous composition prizes and prestigious international commissions, Dr. Ewazen has been lecturer for the New York Philharmonic's Musical Encounters Series, Vice-President of the League of Composers--International Society of Contemporary Music, and Composer-In-Residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City. His four-movement Colchester Fantasy  dates from 1987 and has been recorded by the American Brass Quintet.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) is an immensely popular Czech composer who fused melodic and rhythmic elements of Bohemian folk music with classical symphonic forms. As his international reputation flourished, Dvořák was invited to New York City to become the director of the National Conservatory of Music from 1892 to 1895, during which time he wrote the famous New World Symphony. What is now known as the String Quintet No. 2 in G major, op. 77 first appeared as Dvořák's opus 18 in March 1875, originally a five-movement work with which he won a chamber music competition in Prague. This was just two months after the 34-year old composer had won an even greater prize: a stipend for composing from the Austrian government. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was one of the three jurors who unanimously recommended the virtually unknown Czech for the stipend, and Brahms also helped Dvořák secure a publishing deal with Simrock, a leading music publishing house. In preparing the Quintet for its 1888 publication, among a few minor changes Dvořák removed his original second-movement, which was published separately as the Nocturne for Strings, op. 40. It's said Dvořák wasn't happy that Simrock changed the Quintet's opus number from 18 to 77 because he didn't want his early efforts confused with the works of his maturity. Even so, when it was composed Dvořák had already moved away from his early "Wagnerisms" in favor of the more folksy style that has made him perhaps the most popular of all the composers called "Romantic Nationalists," regardless of nationality.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-70809128677151994052014-06-20T11:31:00.000-07:002015-01-19T15:48:55.554-08:00Tuesday Serenade : January 20 @ 7pm

Ann Adams, oboe
Ted Shistle, bassoon
Angelo Goderre, viola
Rose Shlyam Grace, piano

Lein: Fanfare (Oboe & Viola)

Lein: The Prayer (Oboe, Viola & Piano)-PREMIERE

Loeffler: Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola & Piano
 No. 1. L'Étang (The Pond) — No. 2. La Cornemuse (The Bagpipe)

Previn: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon & Piano
 Lively - Slow - Jaunty

Ann Adams is the Band Director at LaVilla School of the Arts, and recently joined the faculty at The University of North Florida where she teaches applied oboe and chamber music. Previously Professor of Oboe and Music Education at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, she received the D.M., M.M., and M.M.E. degrees from Florida State University studying with Dr. Eric Ohlsson, and the B.M. degree from Western Michigan University studying with Dr. Robert Humistson. In addition to solo appearances, Dr. Adams performs on oboe, oboe d'amore and English horn with various orchestras and chamber ensembles in Central and Northeast Florida. She is active as a clinician and in a number of professional organizations, including IDRS, CMS, MENC, FMEA, NBA, and FBA.

Ted Shistle is the band director at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, and the Concert Music Committee Chairman of the Florida Bandmasters Association. Previously he was Fine and Performing Arts Department Chair and Director of Bands at University High School (Orange City, Fla.), as well as Adjunct Instructor of Bassoon at University of Central Florida. Mr. Shistle has performed as 3rd bassoon with the Jacksonville Symphony, and Contrabassoon/3rd Bassoon with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra.

Angelo Goderre is the orchestra director at LaVilla School of the Arts, and also maintains a private teaching studio. He earned a Bachelor of Music from Stetson University, and his M.M. from Boston Conservatory, studying under Patricia McCarty, Dr. Jesus Alfonzo and Routa Kroumovitch-Gomez. He regularly performs with the Florida Lakes Symphony, Villages Philharmonic, Coastal Symphony of Georgia, Orlando Philharmonic, and Solisti Chamber orchestras. Mr. Goderre also performs frequently along the First Coast, including with the Chamber Music Society of Good Shepherd, Friday Musicale and the St. Augustine Music Festival.

Russian-born pianist Rose Shlyam Grace has concertized throughout the United States in solo and chamber music recitals, and has been featured as a guest artist at the Krannert Art Center in Champaign-Urbana, the Skaneateles Music Festival, the National Flute Convention, The International Double Reed Convention, and Florida State Music Teachers Conferences. Dr. Grace was an Assistant Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music and taught at the Interlochen Center for the Arts Summer Camp. In August 2009, She joined the music department at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida as an Assistant Professor of Piano. Dr. Grace is an active member in the Florida Music Teachers Association, and a member of the Advisory Council Board for the Daytona Beach Symphony Society. She holds a B.M. in Piano Performance and Musicology from the Oberlin Conservatory, an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Chicago, and a Doctorate in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Florida native Edward Lein (b. 1955) holds master's degrees in Music and Library Science from Florida State University. Early in his career he appeared throughout his home state as tenor soloist in recitals, oratorios and dramatic works, and drawing on this performance experience the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following performances of pieces by the Jacksonville Symphony, including Meditation for cello, oboe and orchestra (premiered June 2006) and In the Bleak Midwinter (premiered December 2007), his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players for new pieces. His translations of songs and song cycles are frequently published in music program guides in North America and Great Britain, ranging from student recitals to concerts by major orchestras, including Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Utah Symphony; he also contributes articles to the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Encore magazine. After 28 years as the Music Librarian for the City of Jacksonville, Ed retired from full-time employment in July 2014, but still produces Jacksonville Public Library's Music @ Main concert series. The brief Fanfare was composed in 2011 at the request of Jacksonville Symphony players Eric and Ellen Olson for a one-minute piece to open the San Marco Chamber Music Society's annual concert to benefit juvenile diabetes research. Prepared specially for today's concert, The Prayer is adapted from a 1997 sacred anthem for mixed voices and organ. The text of the original is by American Transcendentalist poet and clergyman Jones Very (1813-1880), and moves from a lonesome longing for divine visitation to an epiphany on the restorative power of faith.

With decided affinity to Debussy and Ravel--including a shared interest in Russian exoticism, American Jazz, and Gregorian chant--one might guess that Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) was himself French. But he was born in Germany, with Russia, Hungary and Switzerland also claiming segments of his childhood. As a teenager he studied violin with Joseph Joachim (friend and advocate of Brahms) and also studied in Paris. At age 20 Loeffler moved to New York for a year before becoming assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a post he retained for two decades before ultimately concentrating on teaching and composing from 1903 forward. His Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano (1901) started out in 1898 as songs for bass voice, clarinet and piano on verses by the French symbolist poet Maurice Rollinat (1846-1903). L'étang (The Pond) describes a fetid pond replete with blind fish and consumptive frogs in which the moon's reflection appears as a skull, and La cornemuse (The Bagpipe) concerns the weeping groans of a haunted bagpipe. Despite the morbid themes, composer and writer Jessie Rothwell has noted a "sweetness and even cheerfulness throughout the music," further observing that "the sound of the Two Rhapsodies brings together both mysticism and folksong, French, German and American tradition, glassy, floating sonorities along with rich, Romantic harmonies."

Conductor, pianist and composer André Previn, KBE (b. 1929 or 30) ranks among the most versatile and accomplished individuals in the history of music. Born into a German-Jewish family who fled to America in 1930, Previn came to international prominence as a jazz pianist during the 1950s and is now also regarded among the world's finest classical collaborative pianists, as well as a top international orchestra conductor. With over 50 film scores to his credit, he has won four Academy Awards (plus another nine nominations), and his multitudinous recordings in various styles have garnered 10 Grammys (plus an 11th for Lifetime Achievement). Among numerous other awards, Previn is both a Kennedy Center honoree and an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His catalog of compositions includes two operas, solo and chamber music, songs, five concertos and numerous other works for orchestra. While maintaining his jazz "cred," in his recordings of 20th and 21st-Century music Previn has mostly avoided the avant-garde in favor of more tonal composers like Prokofiev, Barber, Britten and Walton. These same sensibilities color Previn's 20-minute Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon, with hints of Poulenc, Stravinsky and Bernstein, seamlessly blended with jazz-like inspirations. Completed in 1994, the Trio was commissioned by The Orchestra of St. Luke's, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mary Flager Cary Charitable Trust. The St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble premiered the work in 1996.

SELECTED RELATED LIBRARY RESOURCES

788.7 B328o 1975
 The oboe : an outline of its history, development, and construction / Philip Bate.

788.8 L287b 1971
 The bassoon and contrabassoon / Lyndesay G. Langwill.

787.1071 M549v 1976
 Violin and viola / Yehudi Menuhin and William Primrose .

780.92 P944n 1991
 No minor chords : my days in Hollywood / André Previn.

Music @ email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-25946916940222265432014-06-20T11:28:00.001-07:002015-01-12T03:05:15.508-08:00Intermezzo : Sunday, January 11 @ 3pm

Cliff Newton Trumpet
Jonathan M. Lacey Trombone
Bill Prince Trumpet, Sax, Clarinet, Flute
Dennis Hunsicker Accordion
Bonita Sonsini Wyke Piano

BORIS BLACHER: Divertimento for Trumpet, Trombone and Piano

FRIGYES HIDAS: Fantasia for Solo Trombone

ERIC EWAZEN: An Elizabethan Songbook for Trumpet, Trombone and Piano

ALLEN VIZZUTTI: The Enchanted Trumpet

DARIUS MILHAUD: Selections from Saudades Do Brasil

MILY BALAKIREV: Georgian Song (from 20 Lieder nach Verschiedenen Dichtern)

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA: Three Tangos (arr. by Aníbal Troilo)

Under Construction - Please check back!

Although Cliff Newton retired from the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra after 32 years as Principal Trumpet, in addition to teaching he maintains a busy and varied performance schedule that out-paces what most college freshmen could handle. Formerly a member of the NORAD Band in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he currently is Acting Principal Trumpet for the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra and performs as soloist with the Belle Fleur String Quartet and the Palm Court Society Orchestra. He also is co-founder and an active member and of the Ancient City Brass Band, as well as of The One Step Ahead of the Law Brass Band (Edelweiss Piraten), a polka/oompah ensemble. A native of Central Florida, Cliff began studying trumpet at age 12 and received Bachelor degrees in Music Performance and Music Education from the University of South Florida. He later earned a Master's degree in Trumpet Performance with an emphasis on college-level teaching from the University of Northern Colorado. Mr. Newton has been an instructor of trumpet at the Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, as well as at Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida, and currently teaches through the North Florida Conservatory. An aficionado of early jazz, Argentine tango and American Civil War era brass band music in addition to classical, Cliff and his wife, J-Sym violinist Glynda Newton, have provided live music for both private and public functions since 1978 through their company, Newton Musical.

A native son of Albany Georgia, Jonathan M. Lacey is bass trombonist with the Savannah Philharmonic and Valdosta Symphony orchestras, and also performs with the St. Augustine Symphony and Ancient City Brass Band. Mr. Lacey previously has performed with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Macon Symphony Brass, the Ocala Symphony Orchestra, the Voyager of the Seas Orchestra, and Italy's Rome Festival Orchestra. He toured Florida and Georgia as a founding member of the Valdosta State University Presidential Brass Quintet, and as a jazz artist has performed with the Ed Barr Jazz Orchestra, and at the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Montreaux Jazz Festival. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Bass Trombone Performance from Valdosta State University, where he currently teaches while completing his Master's degree. He is researching the history and development of the trombone, which he plans to continue while working toward a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Bill Prince, professor emeritus at the University of North Florida, has performed with numerous bands and orchestras including Buddy Rich, Billy Maxted, Pee Wee Hunt, the NORAD Band, the Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Jacksonville Symphonies, the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Xavier Cugat, Ray Anthony, Tex Beneke, Les and Larry Elgart, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Louis Bellson. He has appeared in televised broadcasts in the United States, Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador, and has performed on over 70 albums including his "The Best Kept Secret in Jazz." His performing instruments include trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano, and electric bass. For his own CD, "Happy Thoughts," he composed, arranged and performed all the parts himself. Bill holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with a major in Theory and Composition from the University of Miami. He has taught at Florida Atlantic U, the U of Colorado/Denver, St. Francis Xavier U, Nova Scotia, the U of North Florida, and served as a visiting lecturer in South Africa. Dr. Prince has appeared in all 50 states and 80 countries, and his compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by professional and student jazz ensembles throughout the United States and Canada.

Dennis Hunsicker began his musical career studying concert accordion at the Neupauer Conservatory of Music in Philadelphia. During this time he was a member of the PAO Orchestra in Philadelphia as well as a featured pearformer with the Allentown and Lancaster symphonies. After graduation he joined the US Navy CINCLANT (NATO) band where he toured the Eastern US, Spain, Italy, Greece and France. Dennis continues his eclectic musical interests and performs with a wide variety of musical groups including the River City Continentals, the renaissance band La Dolce Vit, the Palm Court Society Orchestra, One Step Ahead of the Law Brass Band and Bella Voce Cabaret. He also teaches, and has performed several seasons with the Amelia Island Music Festival, the "Georgia Artists in the Schools" program, and the Madison Georgia Chamber Music Festival.

Bonita Sonsini Wyke has been an active part of the Jacksonville music community since 1985, and in working with many of the First Coast's leading vocalists, instrumentalists and musical ensembles has earned the reputation as a musician of unsurpassed sensitivity, technical skill and artistry. Originally from Los Angeles, California, she has performed for over four decades as a collaborative pianist and harpsichordist with singers, choral groups, instrumental soloists, and orchestral and instrumental ensembles, and especially enjoys four-hand piano literature. She has been the music director for a wide variety of stage productions, including opera, musical theater and ballet. In addition to coaching seasoned performers, Ms. Sonsini Wyke has helped student musicians hone their craft at a number of area universities and music schools. While maintaining a busy recital schedule, Bonita also currently serves as Staff Choral Accompanist at Florida State College at Jacksonville.

The son of an international banker, German composer Boris Blacher (1903-1975) spent his childhood and teens in China and Siberia. In 1922 he moved to Berlin, first pursuing mathematics and architecture before switching his studies to music. Despite having his "un-German" musical style condemned by the Nazi's, Blacher began teaching composition at the Dresden Conservatory in 1937. But he was dismissed two years later and soon went into hiding, fearing his grandfather's Jewish heritage might be discovered. After the War Blacher taught until his retirement in 1971. By the 1950s he had followed many other academic composers into what became the 12-tone Mainstream, but his breezy Divertimento, op. 31 was written in 1936, when his somewhat jazzy cosmopolitan style reflected more the Neoclassicism of Stravinsky, Poulenc and Milhaud.

The catalog of 135 works by Hungarian composer and conductor Frigyes Hidas (1928-2007) includes operas, ballets, concertos and other orchestral works, and vocal and choral music. But it is for his band music and chamber music for wind instruments that he is most famous, and 67 of his compositions feature brass instruments. The first of several works commissioned by Hungarian trombonist Gusztáv Höna, Hidas's Fantasia for Solo Trombone was written in 1977 (according to Höna) and published in 1979. Very popular among trombonists, the 3-1/2 minute piece has been recorded more than 20 times.

Since 1980, Ohio-born Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) has been a composition professor at The Juilliard School, where he received both his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees after having received his B.M. from the Eastman School of Music. Among others, his principle teachers included Milton Babbitt and Joseph Schwantner, but Ewazen's own style has evolved into one perhaps more closely aligned with "populist" style of Aaron Copland. The recipient of numerous composition prizes and prestigious international commissions, Dr. Ewazen has been lecturer for the New York Philharmonic's Musical Encounters Series, Vice-President of the League of Composers--International Society of Contemporary Music, and Composer-In-Residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City. He arranged his Elizabethan Songbook (1998) from vocal duets originally for mezzo-soprano and tenor with piano.

American trumpeter, composer and music educator Allen Vizzutti (b. 1952) earned a B.M., M.M., Performer's Certificate, and the only Artist's Diploma ever awarded to a wind player from the Eastman School of Music—where as a freshman he already was touring with the faculty brass quintet. Equally comfortable in jazz, pop and classical idioms, Vizzutti has performed with international artists and ensembles ranging from Chick Corea and Doc Severinsen to a multitude of major symphony orchestras on every continent except Antartica. Originally included in a collection of eight pieces entitled Explorations, the hauntingly beautiful The Enchanted Trumpet dates from 2002 and is also sometimes performed with organ accompaniment.

Modernist French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) rose to fame as one of Les Six, a group of young Parisian composers linked to Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. Inspired by a visit to South America in 1917-18, in 1920 Milhaud composed his wistful Suadades do Brasil (Yearnings for Brazil), a piano suite that features polytonality (i.e., playing in different keys at the same time). Based on Latin-American tango and samba rhythms, each of the suite's original 12 movements is named for a different neighborhood in Rio De Janeiro.

Although Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) laid the foundation for Russian Romantic Nationalism in music, it was composer, pianist and conductor Mily Balakirev (1837-1910) who became the movement's chief architect during the second half of the 19th Century. Except for the monstrously difficult Islamey for piano solo, Balakirev's music is now mostly neglected, but by age 25 he had become the cornerstone of The Five (aka "The Mighy Handful"), a group of young composers who strove to create forms and melodies born of Russian folk music rather than Germanic symphonic traditions. Georgian Song (1863) is the 19th of Balakirev's 20 Songs after Various Poets. Inspired by an often-set poem of Alexander Pushkin ("Do not sing for me, my beauty, Your sad Georgian songs of yore…"), Balakirev conjures an appropriately "oriental" atmosphere by using florid embellishments and exotic melodic gestures—which musicologist Richard Taruskin says are actually more akin to Armenian, Turkish and Persian folk music than to Georgian.

Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992) pretty much single-handedly reinvented the Argentine national dance, the tango, transforming it into a new style aptly called nuevo tango ("new tango"). Born in Argentina, Piazzolla spent most of his childhood in New York, and there he gained exposure to and a fondness for jazz and classical music. But through his father's influence he also gained proficiency on the bandoneón, a type of concertina that is a staple of Argentine tango ensembles, and when he returned to Argentina in 1937 he played with some of the leading bands in Buenos Aires. He also began the serious study of composition with noted composer Alberto Ginastera, and then in Paris with legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. When he returned to Argentina in 1955, his "new tango," which infused traditional elements with characteristics of jazz and incorporated contrapuntal techniques and formal elements adapted from his classical studies, was met with resistance in his homeland, but Europeans and North Americans were captivated by it and his international career blossomed. It is estimated that he composed over a staggering 3,000 pieces, and he recorded about 500 of them himself!

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-2343984940669930192014-06-20T11:26:00.000-07:002015-01-07T02:59:51.374-08:00Emergence : Tuesday, January 6 @ 7pmKaisar Anvar, piano (FSU)

Under Construction - Please check back!

Domenico Scarlatti:
 Sonata in D minor, K1/L.366 (2:30)[See below for YouTube performance]
 Sonata in E major, K20/L.375 (3:30)
 Sonata in D minor, K141/L.422 (3:30)
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 16 in G Major, op. 31, no. 1 (25:00)
Carl Vine: Five Bagatelles (1994) (10:30)[See below for YouTube performance]
Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, op. 58 (30:00)

Uyghur pianist Kaisar Anvar, from Karamay, Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in Northwest China, began playing at the age of seven. During a 2006 master class, the late Dr. Richard Mercier from Georgia Southern University encouraged Kaisar to continue his high school studies in the United States at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. After graduation from Interlochen, Anvar was accepted into the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and then continued his studies with Dr. Mercier at Georgia Southern. In 2013 Anvar moved to Tallahassee to study at The Florida State University with Dr. Read Gainsford. The winner of FSU's 2013 Young Artist Competition, Anvar recently performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the University Philharmonia. Among earlier awards, Anvar placed first in the Michigan Music Teachers Association's Piano Concerto Competition in 2007, third in the Lennox National Piano Concerto Competition in 2009, and won the Georgia Southern University Piano Competition in 2011.

In the beginning of his career Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) concentrated mostly on vocal music, following in the footsteps of his famous father, Alessandro. But in 1719 Domenico resigned his position in the Vatican, and moved first to Portugal in 1720, as music master to the Portuguese royal family, and then to Spain in 1729, following one of the Portuguese princesses after she married. It was after he left Italy that he began to concentrate more on keyboard music, and it is for his 555 one-movement keyboard sonatas that he now is most remembered. Scarlatti's energetic Sonata in D Minor, K1 (L.366) and playful Sonata in E Major, K. 20 (L.375) were published in 1739 among his 30 Essercizii per Gravicembalo (K1-30). The toccata-like Sonata in D minor, K141 (L. 422, ca.1756-57)) is regarded as one of his finest--and most technically challenging--compositions, and imitates the mandolin in its use of rapidly-repeated notes.

The Transcendent German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) started out essentially imitating the styles and forms he inherited from Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and W.A Mozart (1756-1791), but during his "middle period" (ca. 1803-1815) Beethoven expanded and personalized this inheritance, creating works that have come to represent the culmination of the Classical style in much the same way that the works of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) represent the culmination of the Baroque. During Beethoven's "late period" (ca. 1815-1827), he discovered new paths toward still more personal, even intimate musical expression, and despite the gradual and eventually total degeneration of his hearing he forged the way beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic. Beethoven completed three piano sonatas in 1802 that would be published together as his Opus 31 the following year. Forming a bridge between his early and middle periods, the sonatas were the first works in which Beethoven made a conscious attempt to develop a "new" style that could be recognized as uniquely his own. He still had a way to go before achieving this goal, but he does introduce characteristics more common in his later works. In his virtuosic Sonata No. 16 in G major, op. 31, no. 1 Beethoven's own ironic (sometimes sardonic) sense of humor is much on display, and there are some original technical devices that depart from Haydn's models. Among these in the sonata-form first movement are abrupt shifts of tonal centers and a fluctuation between B major and B minor tonalities in the second subject rather than the "expected" dominant key of D major. The second movement is often described as "uncharacteristic" among Beethoven's slow movements as it parodies the style of a perhaps overly-ornamented Italian bel canto opera aria, then all the rage throughout Europe. The finale returns to the high spirits of the first movement, and marries the rondo form with theme-and-variations techniques.

Australian composer and pianist Carl Vine (b. 1954) first came to prominence with his 25 dance scores, and his catalog now also includes seven symphonies, ten concertos, music for film, television and theater, electronic music and numerous chamber works. Since 2000 he has been the Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia, the world's largest entrepreneur of chamber music. In 2006, Vine also became the Artistic Director of the Huntington Estate Music Festival, Australia's most prestigious annual chamber music event. He has been honored with at least twenty major awards in his homeland, including the Don Banks Music Award (the highest honor available to musicians through the Australia Council for the Arts) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Australia. The composer provides the following note about his Five Bagatelles (1994):

The Australian National AIDS Trust asked me to play the piano at their annual fund-raising dinner in 1994. As I hadn't performed professionally since 1989 it was hard to think of a suitable work that would be both appropriate and easy enough for my dwindling keyboard skills. I decided it was simplest to write a short work just for the occasion, and Threnody was born. Having grown fond of the work, it seemed wasteful not to have a context in which it might be useful, so I made it the last in this set of Five Bagatelles.

The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities and coloristic potential of the piano when it was a still-developing keyboard instrument, and he rightly has been called the "Poet of the Piano." Much of all piano music by subsequent composers shows his influence, and his revolutionary use of chromatic harmonies and unusual key relationships profoundly influenced composers of symphonic music and operas as well, including Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner; thus Chopin's importance in the development of the "Romantic" style in general cannot be overestimated. Composed in 1844, Chopin's extremely demanding Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, op. 58 is a work of his full maturity. Rather than breaking with tradition as Beethoven had intended with his op. 31 sonatas, Chopin consciously moves closer to the "traditional" sonata (as Beethoven had redefined it)—a tradition Chopin had all but ignored in his earlier forays in the genre. Chopin concedes greater use of motivic development in his first movement, but never at the sacrifice of his melodic and harmonic sensibilities. And, as in his own second sonata, Chopin places his Scherzo before the nocturne-like Largo, rather than placing it in the more traditional spot between the slow movement and his ultimately triumphant Finale.

Kaisar Anvar performing Scarlatti's Sonata in D Minor, K1

Kaisar Anvar performing Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 16, 1st movement

Kaisar Anvar performing Carl Vine's Five Bagatelles

Kaisar Anvar Performing Chopin's Etude Op. 10, No.4
Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-28538097253801874872014-06-20T09:57:00.001-07:002014-12-08T18:10:11.819-08:00Community Standards : Tuesday, December 16 @ 7pm
Ancient City Brass Band
William McNeiland, Director

Holiday Fare
Traditional Carols & Jazz Renditions of Seasonal Favorites

Trumpets
 Cliff Newton, Bill Prince,
 Gene Moniot & Susan Hunter
Horns
 Laurie Flynn & Bonnie Cranmer
Trombone
 Roger Peck
Euphonium
 William McNeiland
Tubas
 Carl Clark & Jim Williamson

The Ancient City Brass Band is an ensemble of First Coast musicians spear-headed by retired Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra Principal Trumpet Cliff Newton and retired JU Professor and former J-Sym bassist William McNeiland. The Band's volunteer members perform in a variety of ensembles including a British brass band, an historical ensemble using Civil War-era instruments, and modern brass quintets and quartets.

Texas native William McNeiland began playing tuba and string bass in junior high school, and while in high school began playing double bass with the Amarillo Symphony. He earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees in music education from the University of Illinois, and taught band and orchestra in elementary and secondary schools in Texas and Illinois. In 1969, Mr. McNeiland joined the music faculty at Jacksonville University. Following a year as Resident Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony, he continued with the Symphony as Principal Bass and Assistant Conductor for over 25 years. He also conducted youth orchestras and all-state orchestras in Alabama and Florida, and for six years was resident conductor at the Sewanee Summer Music Center in Tennessee. Additionally, Mr. McNeiland has served as president of the Delius Association and the Florida Orchestra Association, and has been much in demand as clinician and adjudicator at district and state music festivals. Retiring from Jacksonville University in 2007, he accepted a three-year appointment as orchestra conductor at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and now serves as conductor of both the St. Augustine Community Orchestra and the Ancient City Brass Band.

Prior to his retirement Cliff Newton was Principal Trumpet with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for 32 years, during which time he had many opportunities to shine as soloist while performing in a variety of classical and jazz styles. Formerly a member of the NORAD Band in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he currently performs as a soloist with the Belle Fleur String Quartet and the Palm Court Society Orchestra, and is co-founder of the Ancient City Brass Band. A native of Central Florida, Cliff began studying trumpet at age 12 and received Bachelor's degrees in Music Performance and Music Education from the University of South Florida. He later earned a Master's degree in Trumpet Performance with an emphasis on college-level teaching from the University of Northern Colorado. Mr. Newton has been an instructor of trumpet at the Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, as well as at Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida. He continues to teach, both in his private studio and at the Northeast Florida Conservatory. In addition to classical music, he is an aficionado of early jazz, Argentine tango and American Civil War era brass band music.

Bill Prince, professor emeritus at the University of North Florida, has performed with numerous bands and orchestras including Buddy Rich, Billy Maxted, Pee Wee Hunt, the NORAD Band, the Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Jacksonville Symphonies, the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Xavier Cugat, Ray Anthony, Tex Beneke, Les and Larry Elgart, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Louis Bellson. He has appeared in televised broadcasts in the United States, Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador, and has performed on over 70 albums including his The Best Kept Secret in Jazz. His performing instruments include trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano, and electric bass. For his own CD, Happy Thoughts, he composed, arranged and performed all the parts himself. Bill holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with a major in Theory and Composition from the University of Miami. He has taught at Florida Atlantic U, the U of Colorado/Denver, St. Francis Xavier U, Nova Scotia, the U of North Florida, and served as a visiting lecturer in South Africa. Dr. Prince has appeared in all 50 states and 80 countries, and his compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by professional and student jazz ensembles throughout the United States and Canada.

SELECTED RELATED LIBRARY RESOURCES

782.42163 H732 1992 [MUSIC SCORE]
 Holiday Songbook / by Jerry Silverman
782.421723 LANKFORD 2013
 Sleigh rides, jingle bells, & silent nights : a cultural history of American Christmas songs / Ronald D. Lankford, Jr.
264.23 C
 Stories behind the best-loved songs of Christmas / Ace Collins
788.9 C178 2002
 The Cambridge companion to brass instruments / edited by Trevor Herbert and John Wallace.
CD XMAS CANADIAN 2013
 Christmas time is here [sound recording] / the Canadian Brass.
CD XMAS C212 C555 PHILIPS 1990
 The Christmas album [sound recording] / Canadian Brass.

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-46305738169406077382014-06-20T09:54:00.002-07:002014-12-02T07:39:38.829-08:00Intermezzo : Sunday, December 14 @ 3pmHoliday Excursion with Gary Smart and Friends

 University of North Florida Faculty Artists

Dr. Gary Smart, piano

Marilyn Smart, soprano

Dr. Bill Prince, clarinet

JB Scott, trumpet

Dave Steinmeyer, trombone

Dr. Marc Dickman, tuba

 and with Brandon F. Mosley, UNF Senior clarinet major

MUSICALS SELECTIONS

Ave Maria (with Brandon Mosley)

Gary Smart: Improv-fantasy on Christmas Hymns

Adolphe Adam: O Holy Night (with Marilyn Smart)

Duo Improvisations on Holiday Favorites

A Dixieland Christmas (with Bill Prince, JB Scott, Dave Steinmeyer & Marc Dickman)

Gary Smart is a composer, classical and jazz pianist, and teacher, and may be the only pianist to have studied with Yale scholar/keyboardist Ralph Kirkpatrick, the great Cuban virtuoso Jorge Bolet, and the master jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. Smart's work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Music Educator's National Conference, the Music Teacher's National Association and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been performed in major venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Dr. Smart's compositions are published by Margun Music (G. Schirmer) and his work has been recorded on the Capstone and Albany labels. He spent two residencies in Japan, and taught in Indonesia as "Distinguished Lecturer in Jazz" under the auspices of the Fulbright program. Gary Smart is currently a Presidential Professor of Music at the University of North Florida, where he served as Chairman of the Music Department from 1999-2003.

Brandon F. Mosley, clarinetist, is a Music Performance major at the University of North Florida. An active member of the school's top ensembles, he has performed as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the UNF Wind Symphony. He has given master classes at Fletcher High school, NFC summer camp and UNF summer camp. In 2013, Brandon participated in the prestigious Vianden International Music Festival located in Luxembourg. This fall he was a finalist in the Northwest Florida Concerto Competition. He is a proud recipient of numerous scholarships, some of which include the Adam W. Herbert scholarship and the Tonsfeldt Music Scholarship, in addition to Florida Bright Futures. He currently studies with Dr. Sunshine Simmons, and past teachers have included the Jacksonville Symphony's principal clarinetist Peter Wright, Dr. Guy Yehuda and Dr. Boja Kragulj. Brandon is an active freelancer, performing at various churches and venues around the city of Jacksonville.

The musical career of Marilyn Smart has been both active and diverse. She has worked with such luminaries as Robert Shaw, Seiji Ozawa, and Dave Brubeck, and has sung in unique venues in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Smart's singing has delighted audiences not only in public and university concert halls, but also in rural American schools, special cultural outreach venues in Japan, and even Eskimos villages in northern Alaska. Awarded a special citation by the Ford Foundation's Contemporary Music Project, she has long championed the work of contemporary composers and, with her husband, composer-pianist Gary Smart, is recognized for their performances of American art song. A former student of Margaret Harshaw, Josef Metternich, and Phyllis Curtin, Smart has taught at the University of Wyoming, Kobe College, and Osaka University. Since joining the faculty of UNF in 1999, she has performed as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, for the Friday Musicale, the St. Cecelia Society, and many other local musical organizations. At UNF, Marilyn Smart teaches Applied Voice, French, Italian, and German Diction, as well as Vocal Literature.

Bill Prince, professor emeritus at the University of North Florida, has performed with numerous bands and orchestras including Buddy Rich, Billy Maxted, Pee Wee Hunt, the NORAD Band, the Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Jacksonville Symphonies, the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Xavier Cugat, Ray Anthony, Tex Beneke, Les and Larry Elgart, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Louis Bellson. He has appeared in televised broadcasts in the United States, Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador, and has performed on over 70 albums including his "The Best Kept Secret in Jazz." His performing instruments include trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano, and electric bass. For his own CD, "Happy Thoughts," he composed, arranged and performed all the parts himself. Bill holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with a major in Theory and Composition from the University of Miami. He has taught at Florida Atlantic U, the U of Colorado/Denver, St. Francis Xavier U, Nova Scotia, the U of North Florida, and served as a visiting lecturer in South Africa. Dr. Prince has appeared in all 50 states and 80 countries, and his compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by professional and student jazz ensembles throughout the United States and Canada.

When he received his B.A. in Music, J.B. Scott became the first graduate of the acclaimed jazz program at the University of North Florida; he later earned an M.S. Degree in Music Ed. at Florida International University. While still in college he performed with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, toured Japan with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and performed regularly in the Walt Disney World theme parks. He did a three year stint with the Dukes of Dixieland and was featured in the PBS special, "Salute to Jelly Roll Morton." He has performed professionally with the Mickey Finn Show and numerous Latin bands led by such legends as Eddie Palmieri, Paquito D'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval. Now Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at UNF, he is President-elect of Florida Jazz Educators and a member of both JEN (Jazz Education Network) of MENC and the Florida Band Masters Association. Prof. Scott was a member of the International Association of Jazz Educators for 20 years, serving as the IAJE Florida Secretary for six of them. In addition to numerous international solo engagements, he has been featured in TV and radio commercials, and has released several successful CDs with vocalist Lisa Kelly. Prof. Scott is highly regarded as an adjudicator and guest artist/clinician for secondary to collegiate music programs, competitions and music camps.

Dave Steinmeyer, trombone, spent 28 years as a musician in the United States Air Force, with 24 of those years playing lead trombone with the world famous Airmen of Note (the big band started by Glenn Miller) and the last 10 years of his tenure as the "Note's" director. During his days with the "Note" the band traveled to Los Angeles three times a year to record albums with famous musicians including Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Patrick Williams, J.J. Johnson, Lou Rawls and Diane Schuur. Dave has appeared as a performer and clinician at most of the major universities in the United States, and he has performed for eight United States Presidents. Dave has been a featured artist at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Kennedy Center and the White House, and has appeared on numerous television productions and studio projects. In addition to receiving the Lowell Mason Award for Education, Dave is an Adjunct Professor of Applied Trombone at the University of North Florida School of Music in Jacksonville.

Dr. Marc Dickman, from Valdosta, Georgia, is a founding member of the acclaimed Jazz Studies Program at the University of North Florida. Dr. Dickman earned degrees from Troy State University, McNeese State University, and the University of North Texas. His versatility on euphonium, trombone, bass-trombone and tuba in both classical and jazz styles places him in much demand in the United States. At UNF he teaches applied low brass and jazz ensemble. His students have won awards in the jazz and classical areas. Dr. Dickman was a featured jazz artist at the 2000 International Tuba Euphonium Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, the 2001 ITEC in Lahti, Finland, the 2002 ITEC in Greenville, NC, and the 2004 ITEC in Budapest, Hungary, and the 2005 and 2008 U.S. Army Tuba Euphonium Conference. Dr. Dickman is a founding member of the groundbreaking jazz ensemble, the Modern Jazz Tuba Project. The MJT Project has two critically acclaimed releases: "Live From the Bottom Line" and "Favorite Things." Marc's CD, "A Weaver of Dreams,"is the first jazz euphonium recording to be available through popular services such as iTunes and Real Networks. Dr. Dickman has performed in the USA, Japan, Finland, Hungary, Paraguay, Uruguay, Canada, Honduras and Columbia.

Music @ firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-923634489599605306.post-83855557940614504792014-06-20T09:52:00.002-07:002014-11-24T09:31:55.751-08:00Community Standards : Tuesday, December 2 @ 7pmWinter Gifts: A Choral Offering

The Heritage Singers of Jacksonville
Michael Dell, Artistic Director
Ashley Wilkinson, pianist
Shannon Palmer, Sign Language Interpreter
heritagesingersjacksonville.com/

THE RAREST GIFT arranged by Edwin Fissinger

EL NOI DE LA MARE (CAROL OF THE GIFTS) arranged by John Rutter

WE THREE KINGS by John Henry Hopkins, Jr., arranged by Darmon Meader

WHAT SWEETER MUSIC by John Rutter

MARY'S LITTLE BOY CHILE by Jester Hairston
—Rosemarie Bacher, soprano

THE GIFT by Joseph Brackett, Jr., arranged by Bob Chilcott

THOU WHO WAST RICH arranged by Molly Ijames

THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY by Davis, Onorati & Simeone, arranged by Philip Kern
—Barbara Ebers, soprano

GIFTS FOR THE CHILD OF WINTER by Bob Chilcott
—Greg McMillan, tenor

BETELEHEMU Olatunj & Whalum, transcribed by Jonathan Crutchfield

HABARI GANI (WHAT'S THE NEWS?) by Wesley Whatley, arranged by Larry Hochman —Cedric Williams, tenor

LIGHT THE LEGEND, A SONG FOR CHANUKAH by Michael Isaacson

I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS by Walter Kent, arranged by Mark Hayes

THE MAN WITH THE BAG/SANTA BABY arranged by Paul Langford

THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS arranged by Bob Chilcott
—Ana Lugo, percussionist

THE WORLD FOR CHRISTMAS by Anders Edenroth

SELECTED RELATED LIBRARY RESOURCES

782.42163 H732 1992 [MUSIC SCORE]
Holiday Songbook / by Jerry Silverman

782.421723 LANKFORD 2013
Sleigh rides, jingle bells, & silent nights : a cultural history of American Christmas songs / Ronald D. Lankford, Jr.

782.280723 M542jo 2001
Joy to the world : sacred Christmas songs throughout the ages / Albert J. Menendez

782.281723 S933chr 1995
The Christmas carol reader / William E. Studwell

783.6 R 1959
The English carol / Erik Routley

264.23 C
Stories behind the best-loved songs of Christmas / Ace Collins

The Heritage Singers of Jacksonville is a nonprofit organization of gifted singers dedicated to enriching the community through the preparation and performance of high quality choral music that is reflective of our common and individual heritages. By fostering admiration and respect throughout its ranks, the Heritage Singers is in the very best sense a community chorus. heritagesingersjacksonville.com

Jacksonville native Michael Dell received a Bachelor of Church Music degree from Stetson University (DeLand, Florida) and a Master of Church Music degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Fort Worth, Texas). He has served churches in Texas, Alabama and Florida, and currently is the Organist/Director of Music at South Jacksonville Presbyterian Church. Mr. Dell also teaches piano and organ, is a composer of organ music, hymns and choral works, and is a collaborative pianist with Jim Goodell's Bella Voce Cabaret. In addition to conducting and his many solo and collaborative performances on piano and organ, Michael has appeared as organ soloist with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra (Alabama) and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra.

Ashley Wilkinson, an Information Systems Analyst for Gibraltar Industries, has been the pianist and organist at Arlington Congregational Church since 2006. In addition to accompanying the church choir, he makes arrangements for weekly worship services and special celebrations. His current passion is composing works for piano and choir, including the cantata The Sounds of Christmas (2011) on original verses interspersed with scriptural texts.

Shannon Palmer earned a degree in Deaf Education from the University of Texas, Austin, and has worked at the Texas School for the Deaf and the Tennessee School for the Deaf. She has been an interpreter for over 20 years, and enjoys pairing the beauty of sign language with the rhythms of music

The Heritage Singers of Jacksonville

SOPRANOS
Rosemarie Bacher, Real Estate Broker
Erin Barnes, Teacher
Rebecca Black, Attorney Immigration Law
Barbara Davis, Telecommunications, Artist and Vocalist
Barbara Ebers, Teacher, Duval County Public Schools
Bonnie Cowling, Master Artist, Cultural Council Jacksonville
Ann Marie Grymes, Process Manager for AT&T
Jan Hiland, Global Workforce Manager, CDC, Retired
Juliet Johnson, Writer
Karen Koster Burr, Intellectual Property Attorney
Mary Ann Lindsey, Flight Attendant, Retired
Karen Pabian, Teacher, Palmer Catholic Academy
Nancy Silki, Registered Nurse, Healthcare Mediator
Debbie Snead, Management Assistant of Business Services, Mayport
Laurie Sparks, Music Education, Duval County Public Schools
Susan Takis, PC(USA) Minister of Word and Sacrament
Barbara Vanderhoff, Poet, Storyteller
Ann Wingate, Interior Designer
ALTOS
Linda S. Andrews, Music Teacher, Choir Director, Retired
Deborah Dell, Owner, Sage Advice Vitamins and Consignment
Robin Fennell, Advertising
Sally Goodyear, State Farms Claims, Retired
Faye Harrington, Administrative Assistant
Rosanna Kelly, Music Education, Duval County Public Schools, Retired
Ana L. Lugo, Gift Planner, ELCA Foundation
Martie May, Dental Hygienist, Retired
Sally Offen, Executive Assistant
Melissa McCrosky, School Counselor, Clay County Public Schools
Carmen West, Choir Director, School Teacher, Retired
Doris Whalen, French Instructor, Retired
Jane Wytzka, Career and Executive Coach, Career Cabal
TENORS
David Dunkley, Sr., Banker, Retired
John Kauffman, Database Administrator
Greg McMillan, Interior Arranger
Ronald Pabian, Banker
Cedric Williams, Church Musician
BASSES
Earl M. Barker, Jr., Lawyer, Slott, Barker & Nussbaum
Steve Benz, Presbytery Executive, Presbytery of St. Augustine
Claude Cassady, Naval Sea Systems Command, Retired
Charlie Eddins, President, Renco Corporation
Aaron Scott Long, Minister of Music, Village Church
John Ruvane, Retired

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian
(Click on the selection titles for online recordings or samples available on YouTube or elsewhere)

During his 45-year-long career, conductor and composer Dr. Edwin R. Fissinger (1920-1990) wrote over 180 choral works, in addition to orchestral, piano and vocal compositions. A student of noted composer Leo Sowerby, Fissinger taught at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, the University of Illinois and the North Dakota State University. The Rarest Gift is his 1977 arrangement of the 15th-Century French carol, Noël nouvelet (Christmas Comes Anew), one of the earliest European carols still regularly performed today. Fissinger's version is for mixed voices (SATB) and percussion, on an English text of the composer's own devising.

British composer and conductor John Rutter (b. 1945) is perhaps the most successful choral composer of his generation, with works such as his Gloria (1976) and Requiem (1986) firmly established as staples of the repertoire. He founded the Cambridge Singers in 1981 to perform and record his own compositions as well as a variety of choral works by other composers, and he also founded his own record label, Collegium Records. El Noi de la Mare (Carol of the Gifts) is an arrangement of a Catalan lullaby for either solo or unison voices, published in 2009.

American clergyman and hymnist John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (1820-1891) wrote the words and music of his enduringly-popular We Three Kings for a Christmas pageant sung by his family members, most likely in 1857. The pageant was given at the General Theological Seminary in New York City where Hopkins taught music after having been graduated from the Seminary himself. Composer, arranger, vocalist and jazz saxophonist Darmon Meader is the founder and music director of New York Voices. His lively version of Hopkins' carol dates from 2004, and is an a cappella arrangement for mixed voices (SATB) with optional percussion.

What Sweeter Music (1988) is an original carol by John Rutter on a popular Christmas text by English poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674). Originally for mixed voices with keyboard or orchestral accompaniment, Rutter also prepared a version just for sopranos and altos.

In addition to being a composer, songwriter, arranger and choral conductor, Jester Hairston (1901–2000) was an actor who appeared in more than 20 movies and more than a dozen television shows, including the recurring role of "Rolly Forbes" in the NBC sitcom Amen (1986-1991). He got his start as a performer on Broadway as a member of the Hall Johnson Choir, but almost got fired because his Boston accent made his pronunciation of the required Southern-African-American dialect rather unconvincing. The Choir made the move to Hollywood for film work in 1936, and soon thereafter Hairston entered into a 30-year collaboration with film composer Dimitri Tiomkin. Among other honors and awards, the U.S. State Department made Hairston a Goodwill Ambassador in 1961. First recorded by Harry Belafonte for a best-selling 1956 release, the tune for Mary's Little Boy Chile started out as a calypso-inspired birthday song, but Hairston reworked it to fill a request for a new Christmas piece from The Voices Of Walter Schumann, a Hollywood choral group.

Bob Chilcott (b. 1955) practically grew up in a choir loft so it is fitting that he frequently is identified as "a contemporary hero of British Choral music." Chilcott sang with the Choir of King's College (Cambridge, England) as a boy soprano soloist, and beginning in 1985 he sang tenor for a dozen years with the world-famous King's Singers. From 1997-2004 he was conductor of the chorus of The Royal College of Music, and he has been the principal guest conductor of the BBC Singers since 2002. Chilcott's The Gift is a 1989 arrangement of the Shaker dancing song Simple Gifts that Aaron Copland made famous in Appalachian Spring (1944). Although the tune is frequently identified merely as "traditional," the original words and melody were actually written around 1848 by Joseph Brackett, Jr. (1797-1882), an Elder in the Shaker community. Chilcott's version for mixed voices makes use of new lyrics by Tony Vincent Isaacs, and has an optional piano part.

A graduate of Bob Jones University, since 2006 composer Molly Ijames has been an editor at SoundForth, the music-publishing branch of BJU Press. She has won several awards for her choral music, including the 2008 John Ness Beck Foundation Award, and gives workshops in congregational and choral accompanying. Thou Who Wast Rich is an arrangement of the traditional French carol Quelle est cette odeur agréable? (Whence is that goodly fragrance flowing?, often cited in hymnals as "Bergers" or "Fragrance"), a tune John Gay used in 1728 in his Beggar's Opera. Ijames's version is for mixed voices and piano, and uses the text by Frank Houghton (1894-1972) that is included in a number of English-language hymnals.

Written in 1941 by Katharine Kennicot Davis (1892-1980) and originally published as Carol of the Drum, The Little Drummer Boy is based on a traditional Czech carol. In 1958, record producer Henry Onorati and choral conductor Harry Simeone (1911-2005) prepared a slightly-altered version that has since become the standard. The present arrangement for mixed voices is by Philip Kern, an Associate Professor of Music and choral conductor at Marian University (Indianapolis, Indiana), who earlier in his career worked as a conductor and keyboard player for Broadway musicals in New York City.

First published in April of this year, Gifts for the Child of Winter is a new original composition by Bob Chilcott featuring tenor solo with choral accompaniment. The text is by award-winning British poet Dr. Charles Bennett, who regularly collaborates with the composer.

Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji (1927-2003) came to the United States in 1950 on scholarship to study Diplomacy at Morehouse College in Atlanta. While there he worked with choral director Wendell P. Whalum (1931-1987) on Betelehemu (Bethlehem), an adaptation of a Nigerian Christmas carol on a Yoruba text. Now a staple of the choral repertoire, their original version from the mid-1950s was for men's voices and percussion. Composer Jonathan Crutchfield (b. 1959), the current Minister of Music at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, prepared his transcription for mixed voices for a 2002 publication.

Awa yi o ri Baba gbo jule,
Awa yi o ri Baba fehinti.
Nibo labi Jesu, nibo labi bii?
Betelehemu ilu ara,
Nibo labi Baba o daju.
Iyin, iyin, iyin nifuno.
Adupe fun o jooni,
Baba olo reo.
We rejoice in having a trustworthy Father,
We rejoice in having a reliable Father.
Where was Jesus born, where was He born?
In Bethlehem, that wondrous city,
That certainly is where the Father was born.
Praise, praise, praise be to Him.
We thank You for this day,
Gracious Father.

Subtitled "A Song to Celebrate Kwanzaa," Habari Gani (What's the News?) was composed by Stetson University graduate Wesley Whatley in collaboration with lyricist William Schermerhorn. Whatley, a two-time Emmy nominee and a 2011 Emmy Award winner, is creative manager for Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group, for which Schermerhorn is creative director. Composer and arranger Larry Hochman (b. 1953), himself a winner of four Emmys and a Tony Award, prepared this 2012 arrangement for mixed voices and percussion, also allowing for a string bass part.

Composer, arranger, conductor, producer and educator Michael Isaacson, Ph.D. (b. 1946) has been honored as "one of the ten most influential living composers of Jewish music." The founding Artistic Director of The Israel Pops Orchestra and the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, he has published over 600 Jewish and secular compositions, and produced over 50 CDs and album recordings. Written on a text by Susan Nuremberg, Light the Legend, A Song for Chanukah, was first published in 1974 as a song with piano accompaniment, with the choral version following in 1978.

The popular standard I'll Be Home for Christmas became an instant hit for crooner Bing Crosby when originally released in 1943, so it's hard to imagine that composer Walter Kent (1911-1944) had been unable to find a publisher prior to convincing his golf buddy to record it. Composed during the height of World War II to lyrics by Kim Gannon (1900-1974), the song was championed by the U.S. War Dept. and became among the most-requested songs during USO shows for the troops. Yet in spite of its success with the Yanks, the "...if only in my dreams" ending caused the song to be banned from airplay in Great Britain for fear that the melancholy tone would be demoralizing to their troops! Based in Kansas City, Missouri, Mark Hayes is an award-winning composer, arranger, concert pianist and conductor with over 1000 publications in print. This arrangement for mixed voices (SATB) and piano is one of several versions he published in 2010.

Paul Langford is a Chicago-based singer, arranger, keyboardist, producer and conductor. He has arranged for and performed with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicagoland Pops, and the Pensacola and LaCrosse Symphony Orchestras. He also has played Walt Disney World, and has performed or recorded with Celine Dion, David Foster, Kenny Rogers and Yolanda Adams, among many others. For this jazzy arrangement Langford combines two pop hits about Jolly Old St. Nick. Written in 1950 by Irving Taylor, Dudley Brooks and Hal Stanley, (Everybody's Waitin' for) The Man with the Bag was a big success for Kay Starr; three years later Eartha Kitt immortalized the saucy Santa Baby, written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer.

No concert about "Winter Gifts" would be complete without the traditional English carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. By counting off the days between Christmas and Twelfth Night (Epiphany) with increasingly extravagant presents (at least in terms of poultry and live entertainment...), it gives Santa Baby a grand jeté for the money. For his version of the holiday classic, Bob Chilcott provides a flexible arrangement including one or two pianos with or without one or two percussionists—and a bunch of surprise "guest" appearances along the way. (And with the final "Hobbit" film installment waiting in the wings, Chilcott seemingly makes is own bid as "Lord of the Rings"!)

The World for Christmas is an original work for a cappella mixed voices (with optional piano) by Swedish composer Anders Edenroth (b. 1963). Written in 2012 on an English text by the composer (and with a nod to Clement Clarke Moore), it presents the tender prayer of a newborn infant whose Christmas wish list has only one item: a world spared from wasteful destruction so it can be enjoyed for—and by—generations to come.

Music @ email@example.com