PROGRAM
Rachel Lawton, violin; Thu Vo, cello
Kathryn Lang, flute; Charlotte MacDonald, clarinet
Ethan Stefanski and Drew Jungslager, percussion; Liliya Ugay, piano
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Paul Novak
private, stolen time (2024)
Ä°layda Ä°lbaĹź and Thomas Roggio, violin; Maya Johnson, viola; Param Mehta, cello
Nina C. Young
Claire “Parky” Park, flute; Sarah Ward, oboe; Jenna Eschner, clarinet; Hannah Farmer, bassoon; Eric On, horn
Thong Truong, piano; Isabelle Scott, harp; Tim Thomas and Nick Bahr, percussion
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Ebb and Flow (2025)
Emelia Ulrich, violin; Jacob Grice, viola
Sarah Ward, oboe; Jaxon Stewart, clarinet; Caleb Duden, contrabass
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Three Silent Things (2023)
1. November Night
2. Release
3. Triad
4. Snow
5. Trapped
6. Amaze
7. Shadow
Marcy Stonikas, soprano; Greg Sauer, cello
A Bell that Calls the Underground (2024)
Emily Palmer, violin; Jacob Grice, viola; Param Mehta, cello
Shelby Werneth, flute; Jaxon Stewart, clarinet; Elizabeth Grice, piano
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Chawin Temsittichok
Ingrid Stölzel
Wan Heo
Flujo Textural (2024)
Ben Dunham
Mitchell George, cello; Sam Malavé, flute
Daniel Farias, piano; JJ Baker, Travis Beeton and Sami Smith, percussion
Manuel Torralba, conductor
singing in the dead of night (2008) Julia Wolfe
Maya Johnson, violin; Turner Sperry, cello
Alex Nagy, piano; Jordan Brown, percussion
Claire “Parky” Park, flute; Charlotte MacDonald, clarinet
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Associate Professor of Voice Marcy Stonikas has performed with major opera houses and symphony orchestras across North America, Europe, and Australia. Notable operatic engagements include multiple appearances with Seattle Opera as the title roles in Turandot, Fidelio, and Ariadne auf Naxos, Miss Jessel in Turn of the Screw, Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel, Magda Sorel in The Consul, and the High Priestess in Aida; Chrysothemis in Elektra with Minnesota Opera; Senta in Der Fliegende Hölländer with Cincinnati Opera; further performances of Turandot with Atlanta Opera, Opera Naples, and Cincinnati Opera, with covers of the role at the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago; Leonore in Fidelio with Volksoper Vienna and Princeton Festival; Third Norn in Götterdämmerung and Gerhilde in Die Walküre for her debut with Washington National Opera; her role and house debut in the title role in Salome with Utah Opera; Ariadne with Berkshire Opera Festival; Tosca with Arizona Opera and Opera Santa Barbara; Gertrude with San Diego Opera; and multiple performances with Wolf Trap Opera as Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Rosaura in Wolf-Ferrari’s rarely staged Le donne curiose, and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, which she also performed with Opera Santa Barbara. Stonikas also had the unique opportunity to perform the roles of Irene and Mary in the American premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera with Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in Chicago. Orchestral highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with San Antonio Symphony and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the South Dakota Symphony; and she sang a Blumenmädchen in Parsifal with the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez.
Stonikas received the Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and the Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She was First Prize winner in the Wagner Division of the 2013 Gerda Lissner Foundational Vocal Competition, the Leonie Rysanek prize-winner of the 2013 George London Vocal Competition, and a finalist in Seattle Opera’s 2014 International Wagner Competition. She is also the recipient of a Shouse Career Grant and a Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation.
Professor of Cello Gregory Sauer joined the College of Music in 2006. A native of Davenport, Iowa, Gregory Sauer attended the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory. His principal teachers included Ada Marie Snyder, Charles Wendt, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Bonnie Hampton and Colin Carr. For eleven years prior to his arrival at FSU Sauer taught at the University of Oklahoma, where he was named Presidential Professor (2005). Praised for his versatility, Sauer performs in many different musical arenas. He has appeared in recital at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, at universities and schools of music such as the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt, the Shepherd School at Rice University, the University of Iowa and the University of Tennessee, among many others. Sauer was a prizewinner in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Ima Hogg National competitions and has performed concertos with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the New American Chamber Orchestra, the Quad City Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Columbus (GA) Symphony, the Tallahassee Symphony, and the Missoula Symphony, among others. Sauer joined the Carpe Diem String Quartet in 2019, playing concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Siena, Italy, and in the group’s first China tour.
Along with his brother, Thomas Sauer, he serves as co-Artistic Director of Chamber Music Quad Cities in their hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Other chamber music ventures have resulted in appearances at the Austin Chamber Music Center, the Snake River Music Festival, the Victoria Bach Festival, the Texas Music Festival, the Colorado Music Festival, and the Garth Newel Music Center. As a member of the Fidelio Quartet, a prizewinning group
in the London International String Quartet Competition, he performed concerts in the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. He attended the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory. His teachers included Ada Marie Snyder, Charles Wendt, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Bonnie Hampton, and Colin Carr.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Novak: prisms and mirrors
I’m fascinated by prismatic musical forms: structures that continuously refract and reflect, kaleidoscopically shifting and evolving but at the same time static and unchanging. I imagine a light shined through a series of crystals and mirrors, shimmering into colorful spectra and bouncing in unexpected directions. Similarly, prisms and mirrors maps a single idea through a series of musical refractions and reflections, a set of continuous variations which is by turns textural, rhythmic, and melodic. To me, this concept of musical form resonates with the beautifully collaborative nature of writing music, in which all ideas are continually refracted throughout the course of notation, interpretation, and performance. prisms and mirrors musically enacts this refraction, with all the fragility, intricacy, and color of a prism refracting light. prisms and mirrors was commissioned by the Boston New Music Initiative. It is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano.
The “spellbinding” (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. Novak has been commissioned by and collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world. He has received awards from the Barlow Foundation, ASCAP, BMI, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and more. He is the co-artistic director and flutist of Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. paulnovakmusic.com
Young: private, stolen time
Somewhere between the late night and the too-early morning, when most are asleep and even the birds are still, I lie beside my daughter, coaxing her back to deep slumber with whispered lullabies and gentle caresses. In these long, fragile moments when she drifts between worlds and the outside one is seemingly frozen perfectly still, I feel a deep and precious unity with my child while also sensing the quiet liberty to reclaim my mind and body as only my own - free from the sweet chaos of the full, beautiful life I am privileged to live. It is in these spaces that I learn to create my own private, stolen time - to carve out that place in the seconds burrowed between and around the rushing kaleidoscopic chaos that is parenthood, work, love, and survival. It is in these moments that I write, that I float, that I hope, that I reflect. Perhaps this is grace. private, stolen time was commissioned by and written for the Grossman Ensemble.
Composer and sonic artist Nina C. Young (b. 1984) creates works ranging from acoustic concert pieces to interactive installations that explore aural architectures, resonance, timbre, and the ephemeral. Her music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Aizuri Quartet, Sixtrum, and Matt Haimovitz. A winner of the 2015–16 Rome Prize and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Young has been recognized by the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Fromm Foundation, and BMI. Her recent and upcoming projects include works for Carnegie Hall, NY Phil, Philadelphia Orchestra, Decoda, and pianist Han Chen. A graduate of MIT, McGill, and Columbia, she joined the Juilliard School faculty in 2024 and is the Slee Visiting Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.
Temsittichok: Ebb and Flow
Ebb and Flow is written for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass. While composing this piece, I was interested in creating interlaced gestures that flow from one to another. The result is a melody that behaves like a stream of thoughts. Gestures are organized so that they bounce between multiple instruments, generating colorful blends of timbre and forming ebbs and flows of energy in the ensemble. Contrasting to the continuous fluid gestures is the syncopated rhythm that underscores it. This rhythmic idea initially emerges from the counterpoint between lines. It is an artifact from the conjunction of gestures. I found its character contradicts nicely with the flow. The syncopated rhythms unfold gradually throughout the piece, slowly transforming the sense of pulse and time until everything conjoins at the end.
Chawin Temsittichok is a Thai composer whose works explore the interconnectedness of musical phenomena, culture, and history. His works are distinguished by vibrant timbre and effervescent ambiance, emphasizing the connection between sounds and extramusical references. Chawin’s music often draws inspiration from personal impressions, natural phenomena, and technological innovation. Incorporating his foundation in Thai traditional music, Chawin navigates across different artistic domains, weaving together contemporary sonic landscapes and Thai traditional musical elements.
Stölzel: Three Silent Things
Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) was an American poet, born in Brooklyn and raised in Rochester, New York. She is the inventor of a unique cinquain poem, 28 of which were published posthumously, due to her death at age 36, in Verse (1915). Crapsey’s short, unrhymed, affecting cinquain poems are composed of twenty-two syllables. These are distributed in a syllabic pattern consisting of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 with an accentual stress pattern of 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 for each of the five lines. Especially powerful to me is the gradual intensification of energy through line four, which is followed by a sharp halt in the fifth line. This strict structure and short form, suggest an urgent meaning and compression of emotion that I was inspired to capture in imaginative ways with voice and cello. A review in the New Republic of Verse stated that Crapsey’s “emotion was true and poignant, her craft exacting, her spirit the artist’s. She should be reckoned and warmly cherished as a poet.”
Composer Ingrid Stölzel (b. 1971) has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and creating work that is “richly introspective” (BBC Music Magazine) and “downright beautiful” (American Record Guide). A melodist at heart, Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and soloists across the globe. She is the recipient of numerous international composition prizes and her works have been performed in some of the world’s most revered concert halls and festivals, including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center, Thailand International Composition Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, to name a few. Stölzel was born and raised in Germany and is currently Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Kansas School of Music. ingridstolzel.com
Heo: A Bell that Calls the Underground
A Bell that Calls the Underground is inspired by my sonic experience at Buddhist Mountain monasteries in South Korea. Before religious service that happens twice a day at temples (at 4AM and 6PM,) monks play four Buddhist instruments to prepare for the service: call all the creatures of the world. The sound of Beom-Jong is believed to call creatures of inferno, which is the main idea for the piece. Beom-Jong is played with a large wood stick, and when it’s hit, its sound is mostly an overwhelming metallic noise. A second later, the dense spectrum resonates from the bell for longer than a minute until it disappears. Pitch materials are derived from spectral analysis of recorded Bell sound, and rhythmic and textural materials depict the sonic complexity of the bell and the resonance with the unique soundscape of the temple.
Wan Heo is a Chicago-based composer whose works have been performed in South Korea, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United States. Her music was commissioned and performed by Darmstadt Summer Course, Yarn/Wire, line upon line percussion, Unheard//Of, New Music On the Point, and VIPA among others. Wan’s percussion solo piece, Unveiled Future, has been published by Alfonce Production in Paris. Since 2020, she has been making field recordings at Buddhist mountain monasteries in South Korea. Her works inspired by this project were presented at SEAMUS, NYCEMF, Composition In Asia conference, and North American Saxophone Alliance regional conference. Wan holds B.M. in Composition from Ewha Womans University in South Korea and M.M. in Composition from Florida State University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University under the guidance of Alex Mincek, Christopher Mercer, and Jay Alan Yim.
Dunham: Flujo Textural
Flujo Textural (translated Textural Flow in English) focuses on the movement of ideas, motifs, and gestures as they occur throughout the piece. Inspired by Latin American and French music, these gestures cross and meld between different genres and inspirations. Though the main melodic and rhythmic figure enters in the middle of the piece, the beginning section hints at the melody and develops accompaniment gestures to fit the main melody. The textures of these different ideas transition from instrument to instrument and from timbre to timbre. Starting with a slow and ambient introduction, the piece works to expand a sonic world and incorporate additional ideas that further the development of the piece. The middle section centers on the fast and energetic melody and interaction between accents and movement of conflicting and agreeing harmonies. The ending flows back into its more ambient soundscape discovered at the beginning of the work.
Composer, vibraphonist, and improviser Ben Dunham (b. 2002) strives to create music that reflects both his environment and personal experiences, spanning a wide range of genres and mediums. Recent works include The Sixth Stream, a cross-genre work commissioned by the University of Miami All-Stamps Ensemble, and Glass, for pianist Renato Diz. Other works have been performed by The Rhythm Method, The _____ Experiment, Peridot Duo, and the USF Percussion Ensemble. As a jazz vibraphonist, Ben has performed at prestigious venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Maurice Gusman Hall, Scope Art Gallery (Art Basel-Miami), and the Clearwater Jazz Festival. In September of 2023, he released his debut album Homesick and leads his own trio. Recognized by organizations like Tribeca New Music, DownBeat Student Awards, and YoungArts, Ben is currently pursuing an M.M. in Music Composition at the Peabody Conservatory, studying under Dr. Felipe Lara.
