Program Notes

Mu Phi Epsilon District Conference

Music Program Notes

Carol Worthey

An Iridescent Splash in Liquid Time

Flute and Piano Version, World Premiere

Carol Worthey began composing at age three and a half (after being inspired by a musical weekend at Tanglewood where family friend, the young and charismatic Leonard Bernstein, was studying with Conductor Serge Koussevitsky.) At age ten she had a piano work world-premiered in Carnegie Hall by pianist Vivian Rivkin. Carol went on to study with Darius Milhaud at Aspen Music Festival and Walter Piston, Vincent Persichetti and Elliott Carter at Dartmouth School of Performing Arts and Otto Luening and Henry Cowell at Columbia University, where she won First Prize in Composition. She was the second woman graduate of the Contemporary Composing and Arranging Program at Grove School of Music. Ms. Worthey has had eight choral world-premieres at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and her works have been performed in seven countries to date: France, Italy, England, Germany, Mexico, Japan and the United States. She is listed in Who's Who in Classical Music and Who's Who in The World. In 2001 Carol combined painting and music in an interactive statue that was shown at the Music Center, Angel of Music, an educational artwork sponsored by her Mu Phi Epsilon Chapter. In March of 2003, Elegy (cello-piano version) was world-premiered at St. Martin-in-The-Fields by fellow Mu Phi Cellist Joyce Geeting. Elegy, written in response to 9-1-1 and designed to be a tribute to those lost and a healing work for those left behind, was performed numerous times in three countries to critical and public acclaim. Carol, a child prodigy in painting as well as in composing, is now a working in both art forms and teaches piano and composition from her Hollywood Hills home. Please visit www.carolworthey.com

Program Notes on "An Iridescent Splash in Liquid Time"

Carol Worthey says, "The original version of "An Iridescent Splash in Liquid Time" was inspired by the rich, glowing sonorities inherent in the instrumental blend of the world-renowned Debussy Trio (Flute, Viola & Harp) who premiered the work in two university concerts in October 2005 on behalf of NACUSA. I wanted splashes of color and free, flowing rhythm to take the listener on a magical excursion. Although the title sounds a bit wild, it is actually an accurate description of the color, motion and fluidity of this work. What you will hear today began as a transcription for Flute and Piano, but in order to create as close a replica of the contrapuntal textures, interlocking motifs and changes of harmonic color with the different setting and timbres, this work you will hear world-premiered today for Flute & Piano is in essence a new work unto itself with some elements that are totally unique. May its joyousness heal the cares and woes of daily life. There is an additional insight into the work which I prefer not to explain in these Program Notes because I don't want it to color your experience while listening --- but feel free to ask me after the concert and I will be glad to share it with you."

C.W. von Gluck

O del mio dolce ardor from Paride ed Elena (Paris and Helen)

“Beloved, I have not seen you yet, but you must be nearby!” The person who sings this is Paris, a prince of Troy, in the opera Paris and Helen.

According to the Greek legends told in Homer’s Iliad, three goddesses asked Paris to judge which of them was most beautiful, and each offered him a bribe. Paris choose Aphrodite, goddess of love, and his promised reward was the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, Queen of Sparta. As the opera begins, Paris arrives on a beach within sight of Sparta, and he joyfully anticipates seeing the woman of his dreams. (Later, Paris carried Helen away with him to Troy, and this caused the Trojan War.)

O del mio dolce ardor bramato oggetto!

L’aura che tu respiri alfin respiro.

Ovunque il guardo io giro

Le tue vaghe sembianze

Amore in me dipinge,

Il mio pensier se finge

Le più liete speranze,

E nel desio che così m’empie il petto

Cerco te, chiamo te, spero e sospiro!

O of my sweet desired object!

The air which you breathe at last I breathe.

Wherever my glance I turn

your lovely features

love for me paints;

My thought imagines

the most happy hopes

and in longing which thus fills my bosom.

I seek you, I call you, I hope and I sigh!

Franz Schubert

Heidenröslein (Heather rose)

Sah einKnab ein Röslein stehn,

Röslein auf der Heiden,

War so jung und morgenschöen,

Lief er schnell, es nqh zu sehn,

Sah’s mit vielen Freuden,

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein, rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Knabe sprach: ich breche dich,

Röslein auf der Heiden,

Röslein sprach: ich steche dich,

Dass du ewig denkst an mich,

Und ich will’s nicht leiden.

Und der wilde Knabe brach

S’ Röslein auf der Heiden;

Röslein webrte sich und stach,

Half ihr doch kein Weh und Ach,

Musst es eben leiden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein, rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

A lad saw a little rose growing,

Little red rose on the heath;

It was as young and fair as the morning,

He ran quickly to have a close look at it,

And gazed at it in delight,

Little rose, little rose, little red rose,

Little rose on the heath.

The lad said: “I will pick you,

Little rose on the heath!

The little rose said: “I will prick you,

So that you will always remember me,

And I won’t suffer you to pick me.

And the cruel lad picked

The little red rose on the heath;

The little red rose defended itself,

But its wails and sighs were of no avail,

It had to suffer just the same,

Little rose, little rose, little red rose,

Little rose on the heath.

Alex Shapiro

Desert Tide for soprano saxophone and electronic soundscape

Alex Shapiro has become one of southern California's best known composers of acoustic and electroacoustic chamber music. Performed and broadcast weekly across the U.S. and internationally, Alex's music is expressive and often rhythmically driven, favoring combinations of modal and chromatic harmonies. Born in New York City in 1962, Alex was educated at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, where she was a composition student. Earlier composition studies from age fifteen were at Mannes College of Music and at the Aspen Music School. An accomplished pianist, Ms. Shapiro is an active guitarist as well.

Ms. Shapiro is the recipient of national honors and awards including those from The American Music Center, ASCAP, the American Composers Forum and Mu Phi Epsilon, and she has been awarded artist fellowships from The California Arts Council and The MacDowell Colony.

An enthusiastic leader in the southern California new music community, Alex is President of the Board of Directors of The American Composers Forum of Los Angeles, Chairperson of ACF/LA’s Advisory Council, and has served as an officer on the boards of national music organizations including NACUSA, The College Music Society, and The Society of Composers & Lyricists. As presenter, Ms. Shapiro has appeared at a wide variety of music events, including NARAS' Grammy® in the Schools, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's First Nights series, and IAWM's International Congress of Women in Music. Alex is the popular moderator of ACF/LA’s Composer’s Salon series as well as its Composer to Composer series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and she is a familiar guest lecturer at many colleges and universities.

Ms. Shapiro says, “Desert Tide, its counterpart for 5-string electric violin Desert Waves, its partner version for winds, Desert Notes, and its version for piano trio, Desert Passage, is some of the most programmatic music I've composed, to the point where even the score itself contains maniacal little outbursts describing the visions that swept through my mind as the music wrote itself. The scene: the desert's arid stillness and the weight of the morning's expanding heat. A sudden rainstorm overtakes the landscape, forming instant pools of water over the cracked earth. The storm passes as quickly as it arrived, and as the birds and reptiles emerge to greet the fleeting moisture, the music ends as flowers strain upward against the bluest sky for those few passionate moments of their fullest bloom.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

Voi che sapete from the opera Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)

Voi che sapete
che cosa è amor,
donne vedete
s'io l'ho nel cor.
Quello ch'io provo
vi ridirò;
è per me nuovo,
capir nol so.
Sento un affetto
pien di desir,
ch'ora è diletto,
ch'ora è martir.
Gelo, e poi sento
l'alma avvampar,
e in un momento
torno a gelar.
Ricero un bene
fuori di me.
Non so ch'il tiene,
non so cos'è.
Sospiro e gemo
senza voler,
palpito e tremo
senza saper.
Non trovo pace
notte, nè dì,
ma pur mi piace
languir così.
Vio che sapete
che cosa è amor,
donne, vedete
s'io l'ho nel cor.

English lyrics by Charlotte Church

Tell me what love is,

what can it be

What is this yearning burning me?

Can I survive it,

will I endure?

This is my sickness,

is there a cure?

First this obsession seizing my brain,

Starting in passion,

ending in pain.

I start to shiver,

then I'm on fire,

Then I'm aquiver with seething desire.

Who knows the secret,

who holds the key?

I long for something –

what can it be?

My brain is reeling,

I wonder why;

And then the feeling I'm going to die.

By day it haunts me,

haunts me by night.

This tender torment,

tinged with delight!

Tell me what love is,

what can it be?

What is this yearning,

burning in me?

Adrienne Albert
Climate Control for horn and piano

Adrienne Albert is a graduate of UCLA in music and the child of European trained professional violinists. She began studying the piano at age 4 and composition at 10. She had the good fortune to have had great teachers: for piano, Jacob Gimpel and Aube Tzerko in Los Angeles, Joanna Graudan at the Aspen Music School and early composition studies with Saul Kaplan and Leonard Stein. After enjoying a lengthy hiatus performing other people’s music, she returned to studying composition with Stephen “Lucky” Mosko at CalArts and orchestration with Albert Harris.

Long a collaborator with other composers, Ms. Albert began composing her own music in the early 1990’s. In less than a decade, her concert works have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Thailand, and South Africa. Her most recent commission is from the National Endowment For The Arts and The American Composers Forum for The Continental Harmony Project in Alaska. Ms. Albert will compose a three movement work for orchestra and choir to be performed by The Kenai Peninsula Orchestra and chorus in the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska in 2006 and 2007. Previous commissions include the Henry Mancini Institute at which she conducted the premiere at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, CA. in August of 1997, several orchestral commissions from the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra and The Wagner Ensemble of which she was composer-in-residence. She has received several Meet The Composer grants and consecutive ASCAP Awards grants as well as several Margaret Jory Music Assistance Program grants.

Climate Control for horn and piano was commissioned by Jeannie Pool and given its premiere in April, 2001.

Ms. Albert says, “Since most of my music is programmatic by nature, the titles of each movement reflect the moods created within them. The first movement “Spring Time” is a play on the words and a work that is sprightly and springy like a child’s Slinky toy. The rhythmic imbalances draw the listener to find the challenges within. The second movement, “Dewpoint” has a brooding, moody quality that is like mist on a landscape. In the final movement, which you will hear today, the piano has a cascading motif of triplets and swirls like a great “Windswept” pattern across the plains.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Concerto for Horn K495 3^rd mvt. Rondo

Entertainers Michael Flanders and Donald Swann collaborated on several occasions as a comedic team. They performed on the stages of London and Broadway and recorded several LP's. On their second album recorded in 1964 (At The Drop of Another Hat) they created words to the popular Rondo of Mozart's Horn Concerto K.495. Dr. Shannon added the words to the development section of the piece and created her own edition of the work that Flanders and Swann lovingly entitled ILL-WIND. Enjoy!

Mary Lou Newmark

DVD project Street Angel Diaries Retrospective

Mary Lou Newmark is an electric violinist, composer, and poet living in Los Angeles, California. Mary Lou has a traditional classical background with undergraduate and graduate degrees in violin performance from Southern Methodist University and the University of Southern California, and a masters degree in composition from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her compositions are far from traditional, as she bridges the gap between current electronic trends and the virtuosic violin techniques of the past. Her works encompass a wide range of styles and techniques, incorporating live performance, original poetry and electronically generated sounds into unique pieces that inhabit their own sound worlds. Ms. Newmark has given lecture/demonstrations of her music throughout the United States. Additionally, her works have been performed at international festivals in Corfu, Greece and Montreal, Canada. Her music has been featured on radio stations throughout the United States and Canada, as well as Sydney, Australia, New Zealand, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Zagreb, Croatia.

Ms. Newmark has received numerous awards for her talent as a performer and composer, including annual ASCAP Awards, a Subito Grant from the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Composers Forum, a Mu Phi Epsilon Grant, and recognition in the Luigi Russolo Competition for electronic music. Ms. Newmark is a 2004 "Alpert Award in the Arts" nominee for mid-career artists doing “exceptional work within their discipline.”

Ms. Newmark’s interest in combining media and expanding her own creativity has lead to collaborations with poet and linguist, Laurel Airica, novelist, Ranbir Sidhu and percussionist/composer, Joseph Benzola. She plays freely improvised music with electric guitarist, Ed Nunnery and percussionist, John T. Coker in the band, "Natural Music." Ms. Newmark was commissioned by the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra to write an electric violin concerto. She premiered as soloist, "Canto de Luz - Song of Light, A Concerto for Electric Violin and Orchestra" in Vermont, March 15 and 16, 2003 to rave reviews. Currently, Ms. Newmark is in development with Zebulon Projects, Inc. to bring her multimedia work about the homeless, “Street Angel Diaries” to the Boston Court Performing Arts Complex, Pasadena, California in a new theatrical production. The “Street Angel Diaries Retrospective” DVD uses some of the original images, words and music of the theatrical multimedia production about the homeless, “Street Angels Diaries.” This work looks at homelessness from the point of view of the people experiencing it, with all the revealing complexities, poignancy and beauty involved. Visit StreetAngelDiaries.com for details.

Ms. Newmark is proud to be an elected member of the Executive Board of the International Alliance of Women in Music, and serve as the Chair of the "Search for New Music" Committee. In addition, she is the treasurer of the Los Angeles Alumni Chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon.

Emma Lou Diemer

Spirituals

Emma Lou Diemer is a native of Kansas City, MO. She received her degrees in composition from the Yale School of Music (BM, MM) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.), with further study in composition and piano on a Fulbright Scholarship in Belgium, and in composition at the Berkshire Music Center.

She was composer-in-residence in the Arlington, VA schools under the Ford Foundation Young Composers Project and was later on the theory/composition faculty of the University of Maryland. In 1971 she joined the theory/composition faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is Professor Emeritus at that institution. She is a keyboard player and her church positions as organist began at the age of 13 in Warrensburg, MO, and later she was organist in churches in New Haven, CT; Rochester, NY; Kansas City, MO; Washington, DC; and Santa Barbara, CA. She has given recent recitals of her own music at Washington National Cathedral, Grace Cathedral and St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, and Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles in Los Angeles.

Diemer’s music has been published since 1957 and encompasses many mediums from choral works and hymns to chamber and orchestral music. A number of her chamber, vocal, and orchestral works have been recorded, labels including Albany Records (the organ concerto recorded by Marilyn Mason in 2004), MMC Recordings (piano concerto, orchestral work), Contemporary Record Society (orchestral work, chamber music, keyboard works, songs), and others. She has been the recipient of awards from ASCAP (annually since 1962), the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards (for her piano concerto), the NEA (for electronic music), Mu Phi Epsilon (Award of Merit, 1995), the AGO (1995 composer of the year), the Santa Barbara Symphony (composer-in-residence 1990-92), and others.

The arrangements of spirituals are intended to be light pieces for recital or church or just for pianists to play at home.

Williametta Spencer

Axis Mundi, The Divine Eye of Day

Williametta Spencer attended High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her A.B. degree was in piano and composition from Whittier College and her M.M. and PhD degrees were from the University of Southern California where she studied with Ernst Kanitz, Halsey Stevens, Ingolf Dahl and Arend Kolle. A Fulbright Scholarship in composition followed for study in Paris, France. Winner of numerous national awards in composition, she has works published with Associated Music Publishers, National Music Publishers, Avant Music, Shawnee Press and Southern Music Inc.

Recent performances include her Suite for Flute Orchestra, for the 60^th birthday celebration of James Galway in London. New commissions include a new choral work commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for the National Convention 2004, and three new choral works for Santa Margarita High School. Mrs. Spencer has served as visiting scholar at Ohio University and recently as visiting composer in residence at Whittier College. She also serves as organist and director of music at Whittier Presbyterian Church.

Axis Mundi and The Divine Eye of Day are parts I and IV of a larger work entitled The Cosmos

Axis Mundi

The concept of the cosmic axis is part of a complex cosmological and mythological tradition. The axis mundi symbolizes the separation between the earth and the heavens as well as the connection between the two realms. It can take the form of a tree, pillar, pole, ladder or even mountains. This composition begins with the strength of the axis, and notwithstanding the earthly interruptions, it gradually ascends upwards beyond recognition.

The Divine Eye of Day

The title is a quotation from the Greek playwright Sophocles. The composition is somewhat programmatic beginning with a slow, meditative section like the opening of day, proceeding through a complete unfolding of the “eye of day”, with a swirling vortex-like section in the middle. From there it reverts to the final close of time.

Grigore Nica

Homage

Wedding Waltz

Grigore Nica was born in Ploesti, Romania in 1936 and received his Masters in Composition, Conducting and Teaching from the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania. He also worked as a music editor for the Romanian Radio Station from Bucharest, and he came to the US in 1990 as a political refugee from Romania.

Mr. Nica is a member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), and MTAC (Music Teachers Association of California). A prolific composer, Mr. Nica has written concertos, concertinos, cantatas, symphonic poems, chamber music, songs, choir music, and one symphony. His award-winning compositions have been performed in Romania, Germany, France, Holland, and the United States. In some of his works he uses simple music techniques and languages, weaving Romanian folk melodies with his own original themes and using modal elements of Byzantine origin. In other works, he creates interesting serial-modal syntheses, combining languages and contemporary sound structures in a variety of orchestral dresses in which colored timbre combinations play an important role. The Beach Cities Symphony has performed several of Mr. Nica’s compositions, including Five Movements for Symphonic Orchestra, Celebration for Choir and Orchestra, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Elegia for Violin and Orchestra.

Mr. Nica lives in Torrance, where he teaches violin, viola, piano, and composition.

Homage was originally written for solo violin and piano and was recently revised as a violin duet with piano. Wedding Waltz was composed as a wedding gift to the composer’s daughter and new son-in-law. Both pieces are meant to be light works suitable for student and adult performance.

Morten Lauridsen

Dirait-On

From Les Chansons des Roses

Lyrics by Rainer Maria Rilke

Abandon surrounding abandon,

Tenderness touching tenderness…

Your oneness endlessly caresses itself, so they say;

Self-caressing

Through its own clear reflection.

Thus you invent the theme

Of Narcissus fulfilled.

Antonin Dvorak: Rusalka’s Song to the Moon

Lyrics by Jaroslav Kvapil

Moon high above in the summer sky

He, too, is watching your shining,

Speak to his heart from up on high,

Tell him I’m lonely and pining.

Moon high above him, shining,

Tell him, oh, tell him I love him,

Moonlight above him, shining,

Tell him, oh, tell him I love him.

Carry my thoughts in your silver light,

Tell him I’ll love him forever,

Can he be thinking of me tonight,

Dreaming of when we’re together?

Tell him I’m longing for him, silver moon,

Bring him, oh bring him to me soon,

Tell him I’m longing for him, silver moon,

Bring him, oh bring him to me son, bring him.

If by chance he thinks of me

Let the thought of me awake him.

Moonlight, forsake me not, stay with me,

Moonlight, stay with me.

Marshall Bialosky is a graduate of Syracuse University and Northwestern University. He has been president of the Society of Composers, Inc. from 1974-77 and regional chairman of five Western States and Southern California of the same organization in 1971-74 and again from 1994 to the present. He has been a student of Lionel Nowak, Luigi Dallapiccola, Ernst Bacon, Robert Delaney, and Roy Harris. His catalogue of music includes works for almost every wind and string instrument, chorus, voice, piano, and chamber ensembles. In 1983 he began his own publishing company, the Sanjo Music Co., named after his wife. He has taught at the University of Chicago, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and was the Founding Chairman of both the Music and Art Departments at the California State University, Dominguez Hills, in Los Angeles.

Marshall Bialosky

Limericks