THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents the
21st Biennial Festival of New Music Polymorphia Concert (III) Liliya Ugay, Director with
Sahoko Sato Timpone, Soprano Haiqiong Deng, Zheng featuring works by
Dan Trueman • Moritz Laßmann Ingrid Stölzel • Liliya Ugay • Du Yun
Friday, February 2, 2024 2:00 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
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PROGRAM Trio (2019) I. Tallboy (after Gabriel Kahane’s “Baltimore”) II. Slågedalen (after Salve Håkedal’s home) III. Bariolage (after Bach’s E-Major Prelude) IV. Keening Machine (after a mourning machine)
Dan Trueman
Maya Johnson, violin; Thu Vo, cello Liliya Ugay, bitKlavier Pareidolie (2021)
Fountain Five Wind Quintet Brenna Wiinanen, flute; Nic Kanipe, oboe Connor Croasmun, clarinet; Tarre Nelson, horn; Josie Whiteis, bassoon
Moritz Laßmann
Livid Loneliness of Fear (2019)
Ingrid Stölzel
Island of Enchantment (2021) I. to the port II. to the quietude III. to the sun
Liliya Ugay
Sahoko Timpone, mezzo-soprano Steven Fireman, flute; Andrew Prawat, clarinet Maya Johnsont, violin; Param Mehta, cello; Nick Montoya, percussion Artur Akshelyan, conductor
Lindsey Kovach, flute; Andrew Prawat, clarinet MaryKatherine Whiteley, violin; Evan A. Jones, cello Jackie Kai Zhi Yong, piano; Clinton Washington, percussion Liliya Ugay, conductor
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All… Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers. Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance. Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
by … of, Lethean (2007)
Haiqiong Deng, zheng Pamela Bereuter, flute; Brad Pilcher, clarinet Darrian Lee, violin; Miriam Tellechea, viola; Angelese Pepper, cello; Max Levesque, bass Ian Guarraia and Mackenzie Selimi, percussion Artur Akshelyan, conductor
Du Yun
ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS Haiqiong Deng is a master player of the 21-string Chinese zheng and a veteran practitioner of the 7-string qin. She has given numerous performances and lectures at concert halls, universities, museums, and festivals throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, China, Japan, and Singapore. Her discography ranged from solo, ensemble, concerto, and cross-cultural works. Her new album, Zheng Tu, a collection of contemporary zheng music composed by Dr. Chihchun Chi-sun Lee, will be released internationally by Innova Record and Apple Music in early 2024. Her many awards include the 2021-22 Florida Specific Cultural Project grant, the prestigious 2017 Florida Cultural Heritage Award, the 2013 Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, the 2012 Master Artist of the Florida Folklife Apprenticeship Award, and the winner of the Outstanding Performance Prize at the 1995 Chinese National Zheng Competition in Shanghai. Haiqiong has expanded musical expressions by exploring diverse world music traditions. She has learned classical Indian music with sitarist Nalini Vinayak since 2003. They released an album, Stringing Echoes, featuring the Chinese zheng, Indian sitar, and tabla in classical Indian music for the first time in history in 2014. Haiqiong has instilled world music elements into her compositions. Both Fa Xi (2022) and Guru (2020) are deeply influenced by Indian classical music and Layered Fantasy (2014) was inspired by Indonesian Balinese gamelan music. Haiqiong is the featured artist in the chapter on Chinese music in the widely used university textbook World Music: Traditions and Transformations (McGraw-Hill) by Michael B. Bakan. She directed the FSU Chinese Music Ensemble for 17 years and is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Modern Linguistics and Languages, teaching a special topic class, The Art of the Qin. Haiqiong also serves on the Executive Board of Directors of the Council on Culture & Arts (COCA) in Tallahassee, Florida, to advocate diversity, equity, and inclusivity of art in local communities. Haiqiong received the Bachelor of Music in Zheng Performance from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (1997), Master of Arts in Arts Administration (2004) and Ethnomusicology (2006), and Ph.D. in Musicology (2020) from the Florida State University.
Sahoko Sato Timpone, mezzo-soprano, is a native of Tokyo who grew up in Japan, Germany, and the U.S. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and has since performed in many operas and concerts throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, including the Baltimore, Syracuse, Berkshire, St Petersburg and Chautauqua Operas, Opera Maine, the Saito Kinen Festival, the Seiji Ozawa Ongakujuku, the Tokyo Opera Nomori and the Seattle, Oregon, West Virginia, Chautauqua, Singapore, and Sapporo Symphonies. She also made her Off-
Broadway debut as Sun Yi Nam in Figaro 90210 to critical acclaim (Marcellina in the updated version of Le nozze di Figaro). She has performed solo recitals nationally and internationally including Bangkok, Thailand, sponsored by the Nomura Cultural Foundation, as well as in Granada, Spain, where she won the First Miguel Zanetti International Spanish Song Competition in 2008. Her recent and future performances include the Verdi Requiem with the Battenkill Chorale, Music Worcester, and Masterwork Chorus at Carnegie Hall. In 2021, she released her solo CD, Songs of Japonisme, from Sheva Collection and is the author of the textbook for the online singing course by Phonim Music in Japan. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music and received the DMA from Rutgers University where she was the recipient of the Irene Alm Memorial Award for excellence in performance and scholarly research. She been on the faculty of the Florida State University College of Music since 2017 and has also been invited as guest artist and faculty member at the Alion Baltic International Music Festival in Estonia and at the Lunigiana International Music Festival in Italy.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Dan Trueman: Trio Tallboy takes a beautiful song called Baltimore, by Gabriel Kahane, as its starting point. A tallboy can be a number of things, including a piece of furniture, a bomb, a very tall glass of beer, a bicycle, or one of those giant wind socks that car dealers use. It’s also referenced in Baltimore. Take your pick. Slågedalen is where Salve Håkedal lives; Salve made the Hardanger d’Amore, a new kind of fiddle that I play. It’s a beautiful place, in a remote part of southern Norway, and Salve’s family has lived there for generations. A tall rock face towers over the door to his workshop (which his grandfather built), and in winter it is covered in ice, which slowly melts in the spring. I made this tune, originally on the d’Amore, after returning from a visit to Salve and his wife Inger. We think of J.S. Bach as an efficient composer—every note is essential, carefully placed as part of a deep architectural plan. And yet… over and over in his music we encounter these self indulgent, repetitive passages of bariolage, where the fiddler (or cellist) wanks away with impressive flying string crossings (think of the E-major Partita for solo violin, or the G-major Prelude for solo cello), or even in his keyboard music we find these extended sequential passages where the pianist just spins out a pattern over and over again for no apparent reason (think of the Presto in the C-minor Prelude of Book I of the Well Tempered Klavier). What’s the point? Of course there are lots of answers, though most usually depend on some circular notion that Bach is, well, great, so, well, naturally these passages are part of some grand plan. For me, however, the point is pretty simple: these passages are just so damn fun to play! After all the hardearned intricate passage-work that precedes them, it’s just so pleasurable to let the arm do its thing—you get in a kind of zone, as you might with minimalist music. And it’s really quite depressing to imagine Bach’s music without these passages. All that said, Bariolage is a similarly self-indulgent homage to Bach and the bariolage, and I hope it is fun. I’m imagining a machine that is sad, in mourning after the loss of… something, or someone. It keens, or tries to, in spite of its inner mechanisms which just want to keep doing what they were designed to do. Or perhaps it is a machine whose purpose it is to keen, another in the line of robots that we make to replace us and our jobs—there are
professional keeners, after all, so why not? Dan Trueman is a musician: a fiddler, a collaborator, a teacher, a developer of new instruments, a composer of music for ensembles of all shapes and sizes. He has worked with ensembles such as So Percussion, the PRISM Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Gallicantus, the JACK Quartet, as well as individuals like scientist Naomi Leonard, choreographer Rebecca Lazier, poet Paul Muldoon, director Mark DeChiazza, fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, guitarist/songwriter Monica Mugan, and many others. Dan’s work has been recognized by fellowships, grants, commissions, and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Bessies, the Fulbright Commission, the American Composers Forum, the American Council of Learned Societies, Meet the Composer, among others. Current and recent projects include bitKlavier (the prepared digital piano); The Fate of Bones, a new record with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (to be released in April ’20); The Cross Quartets, a set of string quartets in scordatura, for Brooklyn Rider and the Bergamot Quartet;12 Preludes for bitKlavier (recording in progress with Cristina Altamura and Adam Sliwinski); Songs That Are Hard To Sing, for So Percussion and the JACK Quartet (released by New Amsterdam Records in 2019); Midden Find, for fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Contemporaneous (in progress); Olagón, an opera featuring Iarla Ó Lionáird, with text by Paul Muldoon, and directed by Mark DeChiazza (premiering at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, May ’21, with the Crash Ensemble); There Might Be Others, with choreographer Rebecca Lazier and scientist Naomi Leonard (winner of a Bessie Award, Outstanding Music Composition).
Moritz Laßmann: Pareidolie Pareidolie for wind quintet was commissioned by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. (Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of German Industries e. V.) and premiered by the Pacific Quintet in Berlin in October 2021. Moritz Laßmann first studied composition with Claus Kühnl at the Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main (GERMANY) and then continued his studies in the composition class of Professor Markus Hechtle and Professor Wolfgang Rihm at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe (GERMANY), which he successfully completed with the soloist exam in 2021. He has won prizes at national and international composition competitions. Furthermore, some of his compositions have been selected for US, Russian, Serbian and most recently Australian concert series. Since October 2021 he is a lecturer for instrumentation and notation techniques at the University of Music in Karlsruhe. He attended master classes with Dieter Ammann, Nikolaus Brass, Chaya Czernowin, Dietrich Eichmann, Arnulf Herrmann, Jochen Kuhn, Rebecca Saunders, Johannes Schöllhorn and Manos Tsangaris, among others.
Ingrid Stölzel: Livid Loneliness of Fear Livid Loneliness of Fear was commissioned by the Music in the American Wild Ensemble as part of their series entitled “The American Aviatrix.” Being a long-time resident of Kansas, I chose to celebrate the famous American aviation pioneer and Kansas native, Amelia Earhart. When I first learned that in addition to being a record-breaking aviator and outspoken advocate for women’s rights, she was also an avid lover and writer of poetry, it was clear that my composition celebrating her pioneering legacy would have to include her words. Her poem “Courage,” which was published the year of her first transatlantic flight in 1928, is extraordinary and I was immediately drawn to her vivid imagery and powerful poetic voice. My setting is guided by this imagery as well as the strong formal aspects of the poem.
Composer Ingrid Stölzel has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and creating work that is “downright beautiful” (American Record Guide). Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned by leading soloists and ensembles and have been performed in concert halls and festivals worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center, Thailand International Composition Festival, Festival Osmose (Belgium), Vox Feminae Festival (Israel), Dot the Line Festival (South Korea), Ritornello Chamber Music Festival (Canada), and Beijing Modern Music Festival (China). Her music has been recognized in numerous international competitions, among them recently the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award, Red Note Composition Competition, and the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers. Stölzel is Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Kansas School of Music.
Liliya Ugay: Island of Enchantment Island of Enchantment was commissioned by ensemble Victory Players for their El Puerto Rico project in 2019. At that time, I only read about Puerto Rico and dreamed of visiting it; however, my plans were ruined with the pandemic. So instead of writing the piece directly inspired by Puerto Rico, I composed a piece about a dream place realizing the sounds of an imaginative island, paired with the “desire to reach the unreachable” feeling. I come from Uzbekistan, which is double-landlocked country in the middle of Central Asian steppes and deserts, where the idea of the island surrounded by the ocean is commonly viewed as a paradise. The first movement resembles various sounds of the port and feeling of anticipated departure - departure towards the dream of the unknown and undiscovered. The second movement resembles the fragile stillness of the night, stillness of the water - stillness of the nature that is as a beast, can wake up at any moment with its huge energy. There is a tune that sounds from afar. That tune develops in a somewhat traditional manner throughout the dance-like third movement, layered on two Puerto-Rican rhythms. It finally reaches the port, collapsing into a series of waves on the sharp edges of the shore. Island of Enchantment was premiered last year in Pablo Casals Symphonic Hall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which I was delighted to visit. Liliya Ugay serves as Assistant Professor of Composition and director of Polymorphia, Florida State University’s new music ensemble. Described as “vivid, yet ultimately enigmatic” (South Florida Classical Review), “evocative,” “fluid and theatrical…music [that] makes its case with immediacy” (Washington Post and The Arts Fuse) as well as both “assertive and steely,” and “lovely, supple writing” (Wall Street Journal) that “tugs at our heart strings” (OperaGene), her music has been performed in many countries around the globe. Ugay has collaborated with the Nashville Symphony, Albany Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, New England Philharmonic, Yale Philharmonia, Raleigh Civic Symphony, Norfolk Festival Choir, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Unheard-Of//Ensemble, Molinari Quartet, icarus Quartet, Antico Moderno, Omnibus ensemble, Andrea Lam, and Paul Neubauer among others. Her compositions have been featured at Aspen, Norfolk, CULTIVATE, MIFA, American Composers, Chelsea, New York Electroacoustic Music, June in Buffalo, and Darmstadt New Music festivals, as well as the 52nd Venice Biennale. She completed residencies with Washington National Opera and American Lyric Theater, which presented her operatic works on the stages of John Kennedy Center Terrace Theater and Merkin Concert Hall, respectively. Ugay has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, Yale University, and the Woodruff Foundation; she was also a finalist for the 2019 Rome Prize. In addition, she was a prizewinner of many international composition and piano competitions in the USA, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, and Russia. Her passion as a pianist is to promote the music of repressed Soviet composers: at Yale she led the concert series Silenced Voices, for which she received guidance from Boris Berman. Originally from Uzbekistan (a former part of the USSR) and raised in a multicultural Tatar/Korean music family, Ugay is particularly inspired by the subjects of immigration, motherhood, diversity, and geographic inequality. She is currently working on a monodrama commissioned by Opera America IDEA grant, as well as a large choral-orchestral work commissioned by the Redlands Symphony and the National Endowment of the Arts. She holds composition degrees from the Yale School of Music studying with Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Hannah Lash, Christopher Theofanidis, and David Lang, and a piano performance degree from Columbus State University studying piano with Alexander Kobrin and composition with Fred Cohen.
Du Yun: by … of, Lethean
a moment || our reminiscences, lopsided || our oblivions || for those who, unwillingly, died in a fatuous moment because of our living ones’ obtuseness. my weep. -=I see you have arrived there. You smiled lacking of, without pain. You left me on this side. My boat has yet not come. The hair brews a smell of harvest. I dressed you for this trip. Setting off. My boat has yet not come. My eyes blinded by the memory. Time leaks. I cannot count the solitude. You are not here, and I will never recognize you. The river ebbs. Vanished us. Will we remember. Swallow.
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