MARK ALBURGER, 2014: June 7 - Across Time and Space

SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director

Across Time and Space

8pm, Saturday, June 7, 2014
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger, John Kendall Bailey, and Martha Stoddard conducting

Program

Martha Stoddard Variations on a Short Theme for Flute and Strings

Roberto Becheri        Bridges: An American Short Cantata
                    for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
                    (Droomgole, Longfellow, Pollock, Rhodes, Strauss)

Maria Mikheyenko, Soprano

Davide Verotta Rehem

Intermission

Michael Cooke Triangles

Brian Holmes            Two Songs from "The Trumpet"
                    I. Higgins is Gone (Donald Justice)
                    II. To Musick, to Becalm his Fever (Robert Herrick)

                    Brian Thorsett, Tenor

John Beeman            Ishi Emerges (Carla Brooke)
                    Scene 1

                    Adam Flowers, Ishi
                    Chorus of the Ancestors

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger                    Music Director and Conductor

Erling Wold                        Associate Music Director
John Kendall Bailey                    Associate Conductor
Martha Stoddard                    Associate Conductor

Flute
Harry Bernstein

Bruce Salvisberg

Oboe
Mark Alburger

Stardust

Clarinet
Rachel Condry
Michael Kimbell

Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Michael Garvey
Lori Garvey

Trumpet
Michael Cox

Horn
Brian Holmes

Soprano
Jennifer Brody

Maria Mikheyenko
Diana Pray

Alto
Valentina Osinski
Gabriela Estephanie Solis
Nicole Takesono

Tenor
Will Betts
Adam Flowers
Jimmy Kansau
Brian Thorsett

Bass
Jefferson Packer
Daniel Pickens-Jones
David Varnum

Piano
Davide Verotta

Percussion
Victor Flaviano
Martha Stoddard

Anne Szabla

Violin I
Monika Gruber

Violin II
Hande Erdem

Viola
Nansamba Ssensalo

Cello
Ariella Hyman

Double Bass
John Beeman

ROBERTO BECHERI received his Doctorate in Composition, at the Conservatory of Florence, Italy, and also a degree in Literature from the University of Bologna. His Composition studies were with Gaetano Giani Luporini, Carlo Prosperi, Armando Gentilucci, and Giacomo Manzoni. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatory of Florence. He also teaches musical analysis with the Guido D'Arezzo Foundation, in Arezzo. His compositions include works for theater, and "microtheatrical" works, a musical genre he created, characterized by music purposefully bare of all elements of lyric opera.   Roberto Becheri is currently collaborating on Italy's National Edition of the Works of Palestrina. He is the author of In attesa dell'alba a treatise on the intersection of his various interests (philosophy, aesthetics, history of religions, acoustics, and harmony).

BRIDGES: AN AMERICAN SHORT CANTATA FOR SOPRANO AND CHAMBER ORCHESTRA is intended to build an ideal bridge between the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, where Becheri resides, and Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Bridges has its World Premiere. The text comes from American poems by Will Allen Droomgole, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edward Pollock, William Henry Rhodes, and Joseph Baermann Strauss -- and has been arranged to build a poetic bridge. Verses from Droomgole’s The Bridge Builder stay as pillars and maintain the principal theme, an ascending-descending melodic bridge permeating the entire cantata. Between pillars flows the river, pictured initally by Longfellow’s The Old Bridge at Florence and subsequently in the Golden Gate Bridge dedication collection. The overall rondo scheme both of poems and music is A B A' C A''.

     An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
(Dromgoole, The Bridge Builder, Part I)

Taddeo Gaddi built me. I am a bridge
Six centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles. I behold
Its glistening scales.
I can remember when the Medici
Were driven from Florence; longer still ago
The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Florence adorns me with her jewelry;
And when I think that Michael Angelo
Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself.
(Longfellow, The Old Bridge at Florence )

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
(Dromgoole, The Bridge Builder, Part II)

The air is chill, and the day grows late,
And the clouds come in through the Golden Gate,
(Pollock, The Golden Gate)

Resplendent in the western sun
The Bridge looms mountain high;
(Strauss, The Mighty Task is Done)

Into the clouds my towers soar,
And where the waters never sleep,
I guard the California shore.
(Strauss, The Golden Gate Bridge)

The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
(Dromgoole, The Bridge Builder, Part III)

No giant can tear from their pillars away,
The Golden Gate of his glory,
For a long as the winds and the waters play,
It shall swing on its hinges hoary.
(Rhodes, The Golden Gate)

High overhead its lights shall gleam,
Far, far below life’s restless stream,
For this was spun its lithe fine form,
To fear not war, nor time, nor storm,
For Fate had meant it so.
(Strauss, The Mighty Task is Done)

JOHN BEEMAN studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington, where he received his Master’s degree. His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table, was produced on National Public Radio. Beeman's orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, and the Santa Rosa Symphony and Peninsula Symphonies. Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers’ Symposium, Bard Composer-Conductor program, Oxford Summer Institutes, and the Oregon Bach Festival -- and has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. his compositions have been performed by Ensemble Sorelle, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, the Ives Quartet, Fireworks Ensemble, Paul Dresher, the Oregon Repertory Singers, and Schola Cantorum of San Francisco.

ISHI EMERGES (Carla Brooke) pertains to the last survivor of the Yahi tribe, who was found barely alive in 1911, shaking and emaciated, wandering down from Mt. Lassen to Orville, CA. Following the massacre of his people two years previously, he had lived alone in the wilderness. Ishi was brought to the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco, where he became a full-time resident and educated people about Native- American life. At first it was challenging for Ishi to assimilate into a culture so radically different from his own, and to receive so much public attention. During these last five years of his life, Ishi developed close friendships with anthropologists and their families. His gentle and insightful manner had a transforming effect on those who knew him. The composer and librettist chose to convey the deep wisdom of his heroic life through opera, an art form that evokes powerful emotions through voice. Scene 1 takes place as Ishi emerges from Deer Creek, surrounded by the witnessing voices of nature. Echoing chants of ancestors continue to harmonize with voices of nature, as Ishi pantomimes his story through gestures of mourning. Floating remains of Ishi’s family are witnessed by the chorus as Ishi appears -- the sole survivor of the Yahi tribe. He spins in circles, while the chorus tells his story of living in hiding for 40 years, hearing gunshots. As he sings alongside the chorus, Ishi counts down in Yahi from seven to one, seven survivors to only one. The chorus exits and Ishi remains alone on stage and sings: “The last one...”
CARLA BROOKE has collaborated with her husband John Beeman, as an author, librettist, and lyricist. Besides writing the libretto for his opera, The Answering Machine, Brooke also wrote the text for the choral Angel of Peace, performed at the Oregon Bach Festival. She co-authored Foam, a musical-dramatic work, and wrote the book and lyrics for the children's musical El Condor. As an author and poet, Carla has written Artfelt, a guide for helping children deal with grief, and recently, Hanai and I, a children’s story. Her poetry and essays have been published by Insight Meditation Center in a collection called Passing It On.

CHORUS: Where are you? Where are you?
          Where are you? Where are you?
          Where are you? Where are you?
    The one we kept safe, so alone.
    The one that was alone for so long.
            Here beneath our branches
           you stare out and see
        all that remains, all that disappears, all that grows again!
           The one we kept safe for so long
    hiding beneath us.

    Echoes of a distant drum, one beating heart.
    Only silence touches upon
    Thin white bones that float    ,
    Along the river, along the river.

    Remains of your family drifting along with you
    The last one, the last one, the last one!

    Where are you? Where are you?
    Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

MEN: He came down with three others from the north.
    Two had drowned and the other one was eaten by coyotes.
    He singed his hair close to his head in mourning for his lost companions.
    He is alone and the last of his people.

                Chanting “Journey for the dead”
WOMEN: They go south through the hole to the other world.
    They go down to the ground or to the sky and ride the wind.

MEN: You stand and walk away from our sheltering arms,
    legs shaking with hunger,
    tongue burning with thirst,
    so alone, so alone,

        We bless you on nature’s endless journey,
        not forsaken.

        Coyote Tale
WOMEN: Coyote is going about.
    He bathed them and picked up his children.
    He bathed them and picked them up again!
    He was left alone, abandoned.

ISHI slowly emerges from the wilderness

MEN: Once there were only seven of them left.
    He lived with his family, hiding out for forty years.
    He heard gunshots, he heard cries.
    He ran, not knowing where to go.
    The spirits rise, pointing the way between life and death.

        (Sung against men’s chorus, ISHI holds up fingers and counts down from seven to one)
ISHI: Uhmami, baimami, djiman, daumi,
    bulmitsi, uhmitsi, baiyu! (“one”)

CHORUS: Su, Su, Suway,
    Su, Su, Suway. (“thus it is”)

             Chorus moves offstage and exits. ISHI is alone on stage.

    Here, here, alive,
    Here, here, alive,
    Here, here, alive!
    Here, here, alive!
    Here, here, alive, the last one!
    The last one.

Two-time Emmy, ASCAPlus, and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award-winner MICHAEL COOKE plays a variety of instruments, including soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones; flute; soprano and bass clarinets; bassoon; and percussion. A cum-laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory, and composition. In 1991, Cooke began his professional orchestral career, performing in many North Texas area symphonies. He has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began published many of Cooke's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Cooke began the jazz label Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The San Francisco Beacon describes Cooke's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching, Statement, and The Is. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto, and percussion -- creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped.

TRIANGLES is a composition in line with Pollock, which the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra premiered12 years ago. The present work uses guided improvisation and colorist techniques to create its soundworld. The title comes from the triangular number sequence that inspired the form of the piece. There are three large sections, lasting four minutes each. These large partitions are themselves made up of three subdivisions A (modal runs), B (intervalic movements), and C (chordal sustains). Each of these parts (A, B, C) are also made up of three variants, each lasting a value in the triangular number sequence (ex: 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45). One could also look at Triangles as a quasi rondo: A, B, C, B1, C1, A1, C2, A2, B2. While three is the magic number for this composition, the numerics are just the glue for the work. With sound-washes of runs, thick Ruggle-esque chords, and intertwining spontaneous melodies -- Triangles aims to paint pictures in the mind.

BRIAN HOLMES prefers to compose for solo voice or chorus. His works include three short operas, two musicals, a requiem mass, two extended cycles of carols for chorus and orchestra, eleven song cycles, and approximately 80 choral pieces. He is Composer-in-Residence of Vivace Youth Chorus in San Jose, and has fulfilled a like role in three other groups, including the San Francisco Choral Artists. Holmes has won numerous awards and prizes, mostly notably the 2012 American Prize in Choral Composition for Amherst Requiem. His publishers include Hal Leonard, William Thorpe, Santa Barbara Music, Roger Dean, Brichtmark, and Thompson Edition. During the last two years, he has completed commissions for the Masterworks Chorale of San Mateo, Vivace Youth Chorus, Ragazzi Boy’s Chorus, and Graham Middle School of Mountain View. He has written two pieces for Brian Thorsett: The Jolly Hunter for horn and tenor; and There was an Old Man for violin and tenor.

The TWO SONGS, Higgins is Gone (Variations for Two Pianos, Donald Justice, 1925-2004) and To Musick, to Becalm his Fever (Robert Herrick, 1591-1674), have been arranged FROM the song cycle THE TRUMPET. The premiere was by tenor John Bellemer and the Peninsula Symphony in 1995.   A chamber version of Higgins (high voice, violin, tenor, and piano) has been published by Thompson Edition. Before taking up poetry, Pulitzer Prize-winner Justice (Selected Poems, 1980) studied music with Carl Ruggles. This poem, used by permission, deals with an actual incident, in which Thomas Higgins was denied tenure at the University of Central Arkansas. Herrick (1591-1674) was an English poet and cleric.

Variation for Two Pianos
for Thomas Higgins, pianist

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.

Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart's for his pupils, the birds.

There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?

Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.

To Musick, to Becalm his Fever

CHARM me asleep, and melt me so
With thy delicious numbers,
That, being ravish'd, hence I go
Away in easy slumbers.
      Ease my sick head,
      And make my bed,
Thou power that canst sever
      From me this ill,
      And quickly still,
      Though thou not kill
        My fever.

Thou sweetly canst convert the same
From a consuming fire
Into a gentle licking flame,
And make it thus expire.
      Then make me weep
      My pains asleep;
And give me such reposes
      That I, poor I,
      May think thereby
      I live and die
        'Mongst roses.

Fall on me like the silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptim o'er the flowers.
      Melt, melt my pains
      With thy soft strains;
That, having ease me given,
      With full delight
      I leave this light,
      And take my flight
        For Heaven.

Hailed as “a strikingly gifted tenor, with a deeply moving, unblemished voice” (sfmusicjournal.com), BRIAN THORSETT is excelling in opera, oratorio, and recital across the world. Since taking to the operatic stage in 2001, he has been seen and heard in over 100 diverse operatic roles. As a concert singer Brian fosters a stylistically diversified repertoire of over 250 works, which has taken him to concert halls across the US and Europe. His voice has been featured in film and commercials, being the artist for Soundiron studio's Voice of Rapture: The Tenor. Brian's first solo album will be released fall 2014, featuring works of Frank Tours, Idabelle Firestone, Victor Herbert and their contemporaries arranged for salon orchestra. He will also contribute the Rossetti Songs of David Conte to a recording of that composer's music. Thorsett is a graduate of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Glimmerglass Opera’s YoungAmerican Artist program, American Bach Soloists' Academy, the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh, England and spent two summers at the Music Academy of the West. Brian has recently been named Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech and previously served on faculty at Santa Clara University and University of California at Berkeley.

MARTHA STODDARD has been the Artistic Director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra since 1997. She is Director of Instrumental Music at Lick-Wilmerding High School and Director of the John Adams Young Composers Program at the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley, California. Recent engagements include conducting opera premieres by Lisa Prosek and John Bilotta. She has appeared frequently as associate conductor, flutist and composer with the San Francisco Composers' Chamber Orchestra. Recent commissions include works for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Sierra Ensemble, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Community Women's Orchestra, and the San Francisco Wind Festival.   Stoddard is a four-time recipient of ASCAPlus Awards and holds music degrees from Humboldt State University and San Francisco State University. She is published by Tetractys of London, UK.

VARIATIONS ON A SHORT THEME FOR FLUTE AND STRINGS (a.k.a. Short Variations for Flute and Strings) began as a quartet commissioned by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble for their inaugural Intersection Project. It is expanded here to string orchestra with flute. The variations are based on an eight-bar theme and ground bass in 5/8, and was inspired by the finale passacaglia to Brahms's Fourth Symphony. Lilting mostly in odd- meter patterns, with a few phrases of steady ensemble eighth notes, it progresses through a series of 13 variations, ending with the theme and ground bass imbedded in driving 16th-note patterns.

DAVIDE VEROTTA was born in a boring Italian town close to Milano and moved to the much more exciting San Francisco in his late twenties. He studied piano at the Milano and San Francisco Conservatory, and privately with Julian White, and composition at San Francisco State University (MA) and the University of California at Davis (PhD), as well as having a parallel-track academic life in mathematics as a professor at the University of California at San Francisco. He is actively involved in the new music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches piano and composition privately and at the Community Music Center in San Francisco. Recent compositions include works for orchestra with the Berkeley Symphony, different solo instruments, percussion, and various chamber ensembles including the recent Il Ponte (The Bridge): Concert-length piece for Sextet that was premiered in Berkeley on May 10, and will premiered in San Francisco on June 28. He is a multiple recipient of ASCAP Plus awards and Zellerbach foundation grants (Dieci Giorni and Il Ponte) and a fiscally sponsored affiliate of SF Friends of Chamber Music. For more information, please visit his web site at www.davideverotta.com.

REHEM is a piece for orchestra that takes inspiration from Shostakovich’s production from the early 1950's. The piece was original a much shorter solo cello composition, that metamorphosed into a quartet, a sextet, and finally this current version. It has a rather complex form generated by two main sections: A (the beginning slow section) and B (the following faster section), where each is in turn organized around a different group of recognizable motives. The sections are exposed in sequence and then intertwine in an overall ABABAB form (exposition of materials A, faster tempo section B, elaboration of materials found in A, restatement/elaboration of materials B, short reappearance of A, ending with B). The title reflects a sort of personal fascination with the God Hermes (Rehem is an incomplete anagram of his name): the trickster, the messenger between mortals and gods, the protector of the arts and thieves.

DONATIONS:

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Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
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To make a tax-deductible donation, please send a check made out to:
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Please include a note saying you want the money to go to the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.

***

Fantastic show, as is our norm, of course! Before this, composition of page 13 re Cristobal Colon, on the hottest day of the year thus far: high 99 (86th of summer -- 35th at 80-or-more, 12th 90-and-beyond) heading off to ATT, first with Jessica's inspection of the iPhone 3G,

then

proceeding

to purchase,

via Patricia,

a new 4s (99 cents, with a two-year contract),

successfully transferring over the last photos from the old unit (rather miraculously)

and the number (thanks to a rendezvous with Harriet).

Lots of new bells and whistles (two views for camera stills and video),

with some challenges (thanks to Erling for an introduction to panoramas; and, while phone will connect with MacBook iPhoto -- 'twill not re iTunes, such that the newer desk-bound MacBook Pro will)...