Program Notes

Club Concert
7:00 | February 5, 2008 | Moonshine Room at Club Café

William Norine 3 Fugues for Drumset (1979)
1. Allegro e Marcato
2. Marcato Swing
3. Andante Maestoso
Donald Crockett  "to be sung on the water" for violin and viola (1988)
Lisa Bielawa "Synopsis #10: I Know This Room So Well" for solo English horn (2008)
Jacob Ter Veldhuis "Lipstick" for flute, alto flute, and boombox (1998)

Intermission

Lisa Bielawa "Synopsis #9: I Don't Even Play the Bassoon" for solo viola (2008)
Luciano Berio "Sequenza VIII" for solo violin (1976)
Eric Moe "Eight Point Turn" (2001)

Gil Rose, Conductor
Host: Lisa Bielawa, Composer in Residence

Program Notes

Without revealing too much of my private life, I can confess that Synopsis #9: I Don't Even Play the Bassoon is directly related to a recurring anxiety dream I have. While I was writing this viola synopsis for Kate Vincent, I realized that the uncanny sense of the absurd that seemed to have taken over my mood had partly to do with the fact that we were in rehearsals for Michael Gandolfi's Bassoon Concerto, and I was having a déja-vu. For some strange reason, Kate understood this and has been able to empathize. This has been helpful.

Then, while working on Synopsis #10: I Know This Room So Well, for Jennifer Slowik on English horn, I found myself looking back as well - this time to an opera I never finished around 15 years ago. I was working with the very gifted playwright Erik Ehn, and we completed a very lyrical aria for our eponymous heroine Vireo, a 14-year-old girl visionary whose adolescence spans several centuries. She eventually gets thrown in jail as a witch, where she sings an aria about how happy and comfortable she is there. Erik gives her these words: "If in the dark a chair has moved, I can move around it. I know the room so well." In this little English horn piece I dip back into that aria, and into those feelings of comfort and familiarity we all have in our various jails, virtual and real.

- Lisa Bielawa

Eight-Point Turn was named after an experience on a forest road near Jack Mountain in Montana and scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, viola, bass, percussion and piano. About 12 minutes long, it continually passes through and reexamines the same obsessive material, taking it in a new direction each time. The work is dedicated to the late Henry Onderdonk, composer and friend. Eight-Point Turn was commissioned by Relâche, a Philadelphia-based new music ensemble; I am also grateful to the Montana Artists' Refuge, where the work was completed in June 2001

- Eric Moe

Artists

Sarah Bob, piano, hailed as "sumptuous and eloquent" by The Boston Globe, is an active soloist and chamber musician noted for her charismatic performances, colorful playing, and diverse programming. A strong advocate for new music, she is also the founding director of the New Gallery Concert Series, a series devoted to commissioning and uniting new music and contemporary visual art with their creators. Top prize winner of the Gaudeaums International Interpreters Competition and original member of many Boston based groups including the Firebird Ensemble, Primary Duo, and Radius Ensemble, Sarah can be heard playing the music of Lee Hyla on the Tzadik label and Curtis K. Hughes on Cauchemar Records. For more information, please go to www.sarahbob.net.

Sarah Brady, flute, is recognized in Boston as an avid performer of contemporary music. Ms. Brady has premiered new music from concert stages as great as Carnegie Hall to venues as hip as the Middle East club in Boston. She performs regularly with BMOP and is a member of Brave New Works. Ms. Brady has collaborated with new music ensembles such as the Firebird Ensemble, the Fromm Players at Harvard, Just in Time Composers, and Longitude. In 2000, Ms. Brady was invited to premiere and record new chamber music with the Silk Road Project at Tanglewood. The workshop was created and run by Yo-Yo Ma. Ms. Brady earned performance degrees from the University of Connecticut and the Longy School of  Music, where she was a student of Robert Willoughby.

Grabiela Diaz, violin, began her musical training at the age of five, studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her father. Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, a type of lymphatic cancer. As a cancer survivor, Ms. Diaz is committed to cancer research and treatment. She has lent her talents to a wide range of related programs and organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Hasbro Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, The Race for the Cure, OnCare, Inc., the Columbus Medical Center, and the Egleston Children's Hospital at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2004 Ms. Diaz was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. This grant enabled Ms. Diaz to begin organizing a series of chamber music concerts in cancer units at various hospitals in Boston called the Boston Hope Ensemble. In addition to these hospital concerts, Ms. Diaz organized two benefit concerts for cancer research organizations.

Susan Hagen, bass, received both her Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Double Bass Performance from Boston University, studying with Ed Barker, and was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1998 and again by invitation in 1999. Susan is a substitute player with the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as with the Utah Symphony and is an active free-lancer in the Boston area performing with the Boston Pops/Pops Esplanade Orchestra, BMOP, Emmanuel Music of Boston, Opera Boston, New England String Ensemble, Collage New Music, and the Chamber Orchestra of Boston. Susan has a private teaching studio, is currently on faculty at the Gordon College Music Department, and is the bass coordinator for the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras.

Karen Heninger, clarinet, is an active freelancer in Boston and New England. She has performed with groups such as Boston Lyric Opera, National Lyric Opera, Opera North, New Hampshire Music Festival, Landmark Orchestra and the Portland Symphony. She teaches clarinet and chamber music at Brown University and The Rivers School Conservatory.

Gregory Newton, bassoon, has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Musica Viva, New Hampshire Symphony, Portland Symphony, Boston Philharmonic, Granite State Symphony, Nashua Symphony, the Boston Classical Orchestra, and BMOP, and has also performed with the Bolshoi Ballet Orchestra and the Prague Radio Symphony. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied with Sherman Walt, former principal bassoonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Robert Schulz, percussion, has become a familiar face to Boston audiences, known for his multi-faceted performances with many of the areas premier ensembles. The Boston Globe has referenced his virtuoso work as "subtle, with cat-like alertness", his musicianship as "dazzling" and his performance as "spellbinding". Highly sought after by instrumentalists, composers and conductors alike for his collaborative skills, his percussive expertise extends through the traditional symphonic repertory, contemporary solo and chamber ensemble works to jazz, improvisational forms, and world music.

Jennifer Slowik, English horn and oboe, is a committed performer of new music and has worked closely with composers Robert Ceeley, Alla Cohen, and John Harbison. She has appeared with Boston's Auros Ensemble for New Music, New York's Sequitur Ensemble and with the group Alarm Will Sound as part of a week-long residency at Harvard University. A founding member of the award winning Southspoon Winds, she has also performed on Chicago's Dame Myra Hess and Washington D.C.'s Phillip Collection Series, and was a recipient of a grant from the Midori Foundation's Outreach Program in New York

Katherine Vincent, viola, originally from Perth, Western Australia, is the Artistic Director and Violist of the Firebird Ensemble - a Boston based new music ensemble. In addition, Ms. Vincent is the Associate Principal Violist of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and has performed as both Principal and Associate Principal Violist with groups such as Emmanuel Music, Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and Opera Boston. As well as performing, Ms. Vincent has been involved in several projects as a photographer, including a recorded anthology of Central Asian Music, which was recently released by Smithsonian Folkways.

Lisa Bielawa is Composer in Residence with BMOP. Her three-year residency, which will yield several new works and culminate in a recording of her orchestral music, is part of Music Alive, a joint program of Meet The Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Ms. Bielawa has received grants, fellowships and awards from the Alpert-Ucross Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation, ASCAP, and the Fondation Royaumont in France. An enthusiastic advocate for the field, Ms. Bielawa is Artistic Director of the MATA Festival, serves on the Board of the American Music Center, and is Assistant Director and teaches composition through the New York Youth Symphony Making Score program.