SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
Music of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water
8pm, Saturday, October 4, 2014
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and Martha Stoddard conducting
Program
Michael Kimbell
Front Line (Emmanuel Williams)
I. Front Line Man
II. The Soldier's Tale
III. Sanctuary
Lisa Scola Prosek
Interludes from "The Lariat"
I. The Ventana Wind
II. Hualala and the Crickets
III. Variations on a Modoc War Song
Mark Alburger
Abducted by Aliens, Op. 222 (2014)
I. 1965 Gemini VII Bogey
II. 214 BC Livy / 74 BC Plutarch
III. 1561 Nuremberg Celestial Phenomenon
IV. 1897 Aurora, TX, UFO Incident
V.1944 Foo Fighters / 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting /
Roswell UFO Crash
VI. 1948 Thomas Mantell / Gorman Dogfight
VII. 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter
VIII. 1957 Gordon Cooper / Antonio Vilas-Boas /
1961 Betty and Barney Hill Abduction
IX. 1966 Portage County UFO Chase
X. 1973 Pascagoula Abduction / 1976 Tehran UFO Incident /
1986 Japan Air Lines
Intermission
Stardust
Railway Sonata
Loren Jones
Raven and Panther
I. Grandfather Tree
II. Raven
III. Panther
IV. The Hunt
V. Sunset
VI. Epilogue
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
Piccolo / Flute
Harry Bernstein
Bruce Salvisberg
Martha Stoddard
Oboe
Stardust
Clarinet
Michael Kimbell
Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Michael Garvey
Contrabassoon
Lori Garvey
Tenor Sax
Michael Cooke
Trumpet
Michael Cox
Horn
Brian Holmes
Speaker
Emmanuel Williams
Soprano
Lisa Scola Prosek
Harp
Anna Maria Mendieta
Piano
Lisa Scola Prosek
Davide Verotta
Percussion
Mark Alburger
Victor Flaviano
Carolyn Seagren
Megan Sing
Martha Stoddard
Anne Szabla
Violin I
Monika Gruber
Violin II
Hande Erdem
Viola
Nansamba Ssensalo
Kristy Venstrom
Cello
Leighton Fong
Double Bass
John Beeman
MARK ALBURGER (b. April 2, 1957, Upper Darby, PA) studied with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. He is Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and The Opus Project, Conductor of San Francisco Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and Instructor in Music Literature and Theory at Diablo Valley College. As Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Monthly Journal (21st-centurymusic.com and 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com), Alburger has interviewed many composers, including Charles Amirkhanian, Earle Brown, George Crumb, Alan Hovhaness, Steve Mackey, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich. He has recently updated and expanded the articles on John Adams and Philip Glass for Grove Online and The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition. Alburger has been the recipient of many honors, awards, and commissions -- including yearly ASCAP Standard Awards; grants from Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, MetLife, and Theatre Bay Area; funding from the Marra, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Getty Foundations; and performances by ensembles and orchestras throughout the United States. Alburger's concert and dramatic compositions combine atonal, collage, neoclassic, pop, and postminimal sensibilities -- often in overall frameworks troped on pre-existent material. His complete works (232 opus numbers to date, including 16 concerti, 26 operas, nine symphonies) are being issued on recordings from New Music. 500+ videos of his music may be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as on many other websites. Alburger's Duo Sonata No. 1 ("Hyphenated") was recently featured on programs in Argentina and Paraguay, and his Pictures at Rodie's Exhibition and Portraits of ___ (Some Multiple of 3) Women will be premiered this spring in Jerome, AZ.
ABDUCTED BY ALIENS, Op. 222 (2014), is star-charted over Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, with additional ISO's (Identified Sounding Objects) including Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, Claude Debussy's Nocturnes, Zoltan Kodaly's Hary Janos, Jacapo da Bologna's Non al suo Amante, Dave Grohl's Times Like These (Foo Fighters), Alexander Courage's Star Trek, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, Camille Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre and Carnival of the Animals, George Crumb's Black Angels, George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Igor Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles, W.A. Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose, and Gustav Holst's The Planets -- all subject to various comedic / eclectic / minimalist observations.
LOREN JONES, a native of San Francisco, began composing as a child. He studied with Tom Constantine and Alexis Alrich, and is currently with David Conte at the SF Conservatory of Music. His work has been performed by his own chamber group, by the SFCCO, and by students and teachers from around the Bay Area. He has produced many recordings, worked in radio and film, including creating a sound track for an animated short which won a special Academy Award. He was the recipient of a 2007 Meet the Composer Grant. Selections from Dancing on the Brink of the World, for chamber orchestra and period instruments, based on the history of San Francisco, has been an ongoing part of the repertoire of the past six seasons of San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra concerts.
RAVEN AND PANTHER is the story of two animals, born on the same day and bound by a deep life-long friendship. The piece was inspired by Jennifer S. Holland's Unlikely Friendships.
I. Grandfather Tree - Raven and Panther were born in the Jungle the same day. Grandfather Tree was their home. Raven began life in the canopy and Panther in a den deep in the roots. From the first days that they began venturing out of nest and den they became best friends.
II. Raven - Like most of his kind, Raven was crafty, wild and comical. He was also extremely intelligent and a loner. After he left the nest he rarely spent time with his own kind. There was something about the big black cat that attracted him.
Ill. Panther - Panther remembered the day at the stream where the hunters killed her mother. Raven had warned them both, and Panther had run up into the rocks to hide, but her mother did not understand Raven’s warning and had been shot with a poison arrow at the stream. When either one was ill or hurt, the other would supply the food, water and care. Panther was a formidable and powerful killer, but always kind, gentle and protective of Raven.
IV. The Hunt - Raven would accompany Panther on hunting expeditions, and his ability to fly high and spot game made it easy for Panther to track down pray. Raven, often in the lead, had the job of disrupting a heard of monkeys in the trees and beginning the chase. Eventually a younger or weaker monkey would become separated from the rest and Raven would surprise it, knock it from canopy to the ground below where Panther was waiting.
V. Sunset - At sunset after a day of adventures the two would settle into a spot high in the branches of Grandfather Tree to spend the night.
VI. Epilogue - For their whole lives Raven and Panther lived together in the jungle and shared a bond of friendship and love.
MICHAEL A. KIMBELL (b. 1946) studied composition with John Davison, Alfred Swan, Robert Palmer, and Karel Husa, and received his DMA in composition from Cornell University in 1973. Ten of his orchestral compositions have been performed by the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and San Francisco Sinfonietta. His Arcadian Symphony won the 1998 Southern Arizona Symphony Competition and was also performed by the San Jose Mission Chamber Orchestra. Kimbell's Poème for Violin and Harp has been performed in Austria and Germany and at the 2011 World Harp Congress in Vancouver. Other chamber works as well as songs and the short opera The Hot Iron have received numerous performances.
FRONT LINE was premiere this past June 8 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. A three-movement work for narrator, mezzo soprano and chamber orchestra, it features narrator Emmanuel Williams and soprano Lisa Scola Prosek "This is a very dark work, incorporating three war poems by Pacifica poet Emmanuel Williams," Kimbell said. "Emmanuel will recite his own poetry with orchestral accompaniment. The orchestra illustrates and amplifies the poetry. The use of a speaker instead of a singer was pioneered by the Czech composer Georg Benda, a contemporary of Mozart, whose 'melodramas' inspired my own work. My own music uses traditional formal, dramatic and contrapuntal gestures, combining them with more expanded modern harmonic idioms." This work came about after Kimbell and Williams met each other at Florey's Book Co. in March of 2013. The beloved bookstore on Palmetto hosts many events, including book signings and poetry nights. This particular poetry event featured Williams — a published poet, author, actor, riddle-maker, multi-media director, dramatist, photographer, and longtime Pacifican (by way of South East England). "I was immediately struck by the power and polish of Emmanuel's work and also the excellence of his delivery," Kimbell said, "so much so that I asked him to be the narrator for my work, Time Does Not Move. This piece was also written for speaker and orchestra and it uses poetry written by Swiss poet Gottfried Keller." Using Kimbell's compositional skills and Williams' poetic skills, the two men decided to collaborate on a miniature Benjamin Britten War Requiem, and Front Line was born.
LISA SCOLA PROSEK is a graduate of Princeton University in Music Composition. Her teachers include Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt, Lukas Foss, and Gaetano Giani Luporini. Scola Prosek is the recipient of numerous grants, commissions and awards, including The NY Center for Contemporary Opera "Atelier" Award for The Lariat. Scola Prosek has composed and produced eight operas with librettos in Italian and English. In 2012, Daughter of the Red Tzar, written for acclaimed tenor John Duykers, premiered in San Francisco to capacity audiences, and is currently on the outreach season with Long Beach Opera. Scola Prosek serves as General Manager of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, since 2001. Other awards have been from Theatre Bay Area, the LEF Foundation, The Argosy Contemporary Music Fund, Meet the Composer, the Hewlett Foundation, the American Composers Forum, The San Francisco Arts Commission, The Center for Cultural Innovation, The California Arts Council, the NEA and the Zellerbach Foundation.
THE LARIAT was written in collaboration with Tribal Chairwoman and linguist, Louise Miranda Ramirez and other members of the tribe. The performance will be based on the novella of the same name by Jaime De Angulo, writer and anthropologist for UC Berkeley who lived and worked extensively with American Indian tribes along California’s Central Coast during the 1920's and 30's. The orchestral excerpts are based on California birdsongs, recorded and notated by the composer in the coastal highlands, and included in opera as interludes. The Lariat will premiere at the World Theatre at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) on February 8, 2015. The university is located at Ford Ord on traditional Esselen territory.
STARDUST started writing music in 2011 with little formal training in composition. His orchestral and chamber works have been performed as part of the Opus Project and at Humboldt Chamber Music Workshops. Stardust plays the oboe and the angled (English) horn.
Inspired by and composed during a transcontinental train journey, RAILWAY SONATA incorporates everything from orchestral sound effects to nouveau folk and jazz melodies to convey a sense of traveling on the train.
DONATIONS:
Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold
Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Anne Baldwin
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta
Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Connie & George Cooke
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Marilyn Hudson
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
James Schrempp
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc
Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Roberta Robertson
Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater
To make a tax-deductible donation, please send a check made out to:
Erling Wold's Fabrications
629 Wisconsin Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Please include a note saying you want the money to go to the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.
***
A good time is seemingly had by all -- before, during, and after excellent performances.
The day starts out with a shearing,
followed
by
the
sheer
joys
of
the
commute
and concert, concluding,
on this 203rd day of summer (high 97 -- 92 for SF -- 146th inland re 80-and-beyond, 78th 90+), with composing page 7 re Portraits of ___(Some Multiple of 3) Women: XXI. Who Is She?
