Robert Blocker, Dean

Yale Percussion Group

december 10, 2010Morse Recital Hall

robert van sice Director

music ofDe MeyNodaReichViñaoWood

Robert van Sice and the Yale Percussion Group would like to thank Adams/Pearl and Vic Firth for their long standing support of Yale School of Music’s percussion program.

Musique de Tables (1987)

Michael CompitelloJohn CorkillRobert van Sice

Village Burial with Fire (1989)

Yun-Chu Candy ChiuMichael CompitelloLeonardo GorositoAdam Rosenblatt

Sextet (1985)

Yun-Chu Candy ChiuMichael CompitelloJohn CorkillLeonardo GorositoIan RosenbaumAdam Rosenblatt

intermission

Khan Variations

Ian Rosenbaum

Quintetto Mattinata

Yun-Chu Candy Chiu, marimbaAleksey Klyushnik, double bassDariya Nikolenko, fluteAnouvong Liensavanh, flutePeng Zhou, flute

Thierry De Meyb. 1956

James Woodb. 1953

Steve Reichb. 1936

Alejandro Viñaob. 1951

Teruyuki Nodab. 1940

december 10, 2010Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall · 8 pm

Robert van Sice, director

Yale Percussion Group

Founded in 1997 by Robert van Sice, the Yale Percussion Group has been called “something truly extraordinary” by composer Steve Reich. It is composed of talented and dedicated young artists who have come from around the world for graduate study at the Yale School of Music.

Members of the YPG have gone on to form the acclaimed quartet So Percussion and to perform with Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two, the Carnegie Hall Academy Ensemble, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Yale percussion students and grad- uates have recently won the Linz (Austria) International Marimba Competition and the Concert Artist Guild Competition.

Recent alumni teach at institutions such as Cornell, Dartmouth, Michigan State, SUNY Stonybrook, Umass Amherst, Baylor, and the Conservatoire de Genève (Switzerland).

The members of the Yale Percussion Group are Yun-Chu Candy Chiu, Michael Compitello, John Corkill, Leonardo Gorosito, Ian Rosenbaum, and Adam Rosenblatt.

the yale percussion groupRobert Van Sice, director

Percussionist Robert van Sice has premiered more than one hundred works, including con-certos, chamber music, and solos. He has made solo appearances with symphony orchestras and given recitals in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Far East. In 1989 he gave the first full- length marimba recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has since played in most of Europe’s major concert halls, with many broad- casts by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, WDR, and Radio France.

He is frequently invited as a soloist with Europe’s leading contemporary music ensembles and festivals, including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps, and L’Itinéraire and the Archipel, Darmstadt, and North American new music festivals. From 1988 to 1997 he headed Europe’s first diploma program for solo marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatorium.

Mr. van Sice has given master classes in more than twenty countries and frequently visits the major conservatories in Europe as a guest lecturer. He joined the Yale faculty as a lecturer in percussion in the fall of 1997.

Thierry De MeyMusique de Tables (1987)

Thierry De Mey refers to his Musique de Tables as “an exploration of the relationship between movement and sound.” Conceptually it is more a ballet for three pairs of hands than a conventional percussion ensemble piece. The architecture of the piece is like a miniature Baroque suite, com- plete with an overture, rondo, fugato, and galop.

Belgian composer Thierry De Mey works in numerous different media including film, theater, dance, and composition.

James WoodVillage Burial with Fire (1989)

Paul Klee used to refer to his own work as “abstract with memories.” I hope he will allow me to borrow the term, at least in this instance.

Here the memories are of a Hindu, princely funeral ceremony - for two months the villagers have been making preparations - hundreds have turned out wearing their most lavish and colourful clothes, and carrying offerings of food on their heads. First there is the noisy procession down to the river for purification of the soul, then a short ceremony, and then the vast funeral pyre is set alight. At this moment it seems as though the whole village has exploded into music and dancing - soon, some go into trance. Gradually the physical form of the pyre disintegrates, and the spirit of the deceased is formally set free to mingle with the spirit world. In the evening, when the festivities have moved on to another place, some mourners lament beside the glowing embers.

Village Burial with Fire was commissioned by the Hungarian percussion group Amadinda for the 1989 Arts Council Contemporary Music Network, with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. The first nine perfor-mances were given by Amadinda during their Arts Council tour of Britain during November 1989 in London, Leicester, Winchester, Cheltenham, Bristol, Manchester, Durham, Sheffield and Huddersfield.

– James Wood

program notes

Steve ReichSextet (1985)

Sextet is in five movements played without pause. The relationship of the five movements is that of an arch form, A-B-C-B-A. The first and last movements are fast, the second and fourth moderate and the third, slow. Changes of tempo are made abruptly at the beginning of new movements by metric modulation to either get slower or faster. Movements are also orga-nized harmonically wit the chord cycle for the first and fifth, another for the second and fourth, and yet another for the third. The harmonies used are largely dominant chords with added tones creating a somewhat darker, chromatic and more varied harmonic language were suggested by The Desert Music (1984).

Percussion instruments mostly produce sounds of relatively short duration. In this piece I was interested in overcoming hat limitation. The use of the bowed vibraphone, not merely as a passing effect, but as a basic instrumental voice in the second movement, was one means of getting long continuous sounds not possible with piano. The mallet instruments (marimba, vibraphone etc) are basically instruments of high and middle register without a low range. To overcome this limit the bass drum was used doubling the piano or synthesizer played in their lower register, particularly in the second, third and fourth movements.

Compositional techniques used include some introduced in my music as early as Drumming in 1971. In particular the substitution of beats for rests to “build-up” a canon between two or more identical instruments playing the same repeating pattern is used extensively in the first and last movements. Sudden change of rhyth-mic position (or phase) of one voice in an

overall repeating contrapuntal web first occurs in my Six Pianos of 1973 and occurs throughout this work. Double canons, where one canon moves slowly (the bowed vibraphones) and the second moves quickly (the pianos), first appear in my music in Octet of 1979. Techniques influenced by African music, where the basic ambiguity in meters of 12 beats is between 3 groups of 4 and 4 groups of 3, appear in the third and fifth movements. A rhythmically ambiguous pattern is played by vibraphones in the third movement, but at a much faster tempo. The result is to change the perception of what is in fact not changing. Another related, more recent techniques appearing near the end of the fourth movement is to gradually remove the melodic material in the sythesizers leaving the accompaniment of the two vibraphones to become the new melodic focus. Similarly, the accompaniment in the piano in the second movement becomes the melody for the synthe-sizer in the fourth movement. The ambiguity here is between which is melody and which is accompaniment. In music which uses a great deal of repetition, I believe it is precisely these kinds of ambiguities that give vitality and life.

Sextet was commissioned by Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians and by the French government for the Nexus Percussion Ensemble.

– Steve Reich

Alejandro ViñaoKhan Variations

For some years I have listened to the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He was perhaps the greatest exponent of Qawwali, the music of the sufi mystics. This music in general, and Ali Khan’s singing in particular, are characterized by remarkable rhythmic and melismatic subtlety.

The Khan Variations are a set of 8 rhythmic variations based on a traditional theme from Qawwali music as sang by Ali Khan. The basic pulse and ‘feel’ of the music has lingered in my mind ever since I first heard the recording in the early 90’s. I developed each of the eight varia-tions – which are played as a continuous piece – exploring a different rhythmic and melodic aspect of the original theme. However, from the harmonic point of view the piece is rather static, respecting the lack or harmony – in the Western sense – of the original traditional theme.

As I look at the score now, I can recognize a range of influences from Conlon Nancarrow, tango music, and my own previous pieces for marimba. All these influences have one thing in common: the articulation of pulse, or multiple simultaneous pulses to create a dramatic musi- cal discourse.

Khan Variations was jointly commissioned by Bogdan Bacanu, Michael Burritt, Ricardo Gallardo, Eduardo Leandro, Nanae Mimura, William Moersch, Peter Prommel, Gordon Stout, Jack Van Geem, Robert Van Sice, Nancy Zeltsman, and Alan Zimmerman, with the assistance of New Music Marimba. Nancy Zeltsman was the project organizer.

– Alejandro Viñao

Teruyuki NodaQuintetto Mattinata

I composed this piece in 1968 as the result of a commission from Keiko Abe for her first recital. This was a time at which I just completed a symphony and was taking my first steps as a composer. It was also an important period dur-ing which Miss Abe was in the course of opening up a new page in the history of the marimba.

It seems like only yesterday that I talked so excitedly with Mss Abe into the early hours of the morning about the future, the possibilities, and her aspirations for the marimba. The unusual combination of instruments used in this piece came about inevitably in the course of our discussions. Miss Abe proposed the idea of employing two flutes, an idea which I augmented through addition of another flute and a double bass.

The work consists of three movements. The first, entitled Prologue, is a brief movement performed at a fast tempo marked Presto (eighth note = 138). The principal interval relationships, themes, and other musical material which appear throughout the work are presented in this movement.

The second movement, Monologue, is in a Molto Lento tempo, and features gentle recita-tion by the marimba accompanied by the other instruments. A marimba cadenza appears at the center of the movement.

In the third movement, Epilogue (quarter note = ca. 88), contrast is created through the incor-poration of a metrical pulse into a non-metrical “moto perpetuo” sense of motion. A chorale is presented in the course of the movement by the flutes, and is taken up again at the end of the

program notes

movement by the marimba, combining with a re-turn to material presented in the first movement.

Miss Abe astonished us by performing from memory this and the other works which had been composed for her recital and completed with little time to spare. Her enthusiasm gave a clear hint of the future which lay ahead for the marimba. The enthusiasm which we felt at this time was truly the enthusiasm which is the lost prerogative of youth. - Teruyuki Noda

upcoming Visit music.yale.edu for full listings

December 12 yale percussion group in nyc

Sunday at 8 pm, Zankel Hall at Carnegie HallThe Yale Percussion Group, directed by Robert Van Sice, returns to Carnegie Hall. Thierry de Mey: Musique de Tables; Steve Reich: Sextet; James Wood: Village Burial with Fire; Mauricio Kagel: Dressur. Tickets $15–$25 at www.carnegiehall.org or 212 247-7800.

December 13 liederabend

Monday at 8 pm, Morse Recital HallAn evening of Russian art song by Tchaikovsky and many others, featuring the rising stars of Yale Opera. Emily Olin, piano. Doris Yarick Cross, artistic director.Free admission.

December 15 lunchtime chamber music

Wednesday at 12:30 pm, Morse Recital HallFree admission.

December 15 guitar chamber music

Wednesday at 8 pm, Morse Recital HallBenjamin Verdery, director. Music by Kathryn Alexander, David Lang, Astor Piazzolla, and Juan Brouwer. Free admission.

yale school of musicRobert Blocker, Dean

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