CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
American Composers Orchestra

Zankel Hall
Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

American Composers Orchestra
Stefan Lano, Conductor
Curt Cacioppo, Voice and Percussion
Donal Fox, Piano
Colin Gee, Writer, Director, and Actor
Erin Gee, Vocalist
Huang Ruo, Vocalist

IVES Tone Roads No. 1
CURT CACIOPPO When the Orchard Dances Ceased (World Premiere)
HUANG RUO Leaving Sao (NY Premiere)
IVES Tone Roads No. 3
ERIN GEE Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1 (World Premiere)
DONAL FOX Peace Out for Improvised Piano and Orchestra (World Premiere)

Program is approximately 1 hour, 10 minutes, including one intermission

Program Notes:

THE PROGRAM


CHARLES IVES (1874–1954)
Tone Roads No. 1, Tone Roads No. 3

Ives’s Tone Roads are thought to be a kind of musical depiction of the various journeys humans take through life. Our individual differences converge to create the fabric of a larger community. He wrote the following in his Memos:

The Tone Roads are roads leading right and left—"F. E. Hartwell & Co., Gents Furnishings"—just starting an afternoon’s sport. If horses and wagons can go sometimes on different roads (hill road, muddy road, rocky, straight, crooked, hilly hard road) at the same time and get to Main Street eventually, why can’t different instruments on different staffs? The wagons and people and roads are all in the same township, same mud, breathing the same air, same temperature, going to the same place, speaking the same language (sometimes)—but not all going on the same road, all going their own way, each trip different to each driver, different people, different cuds, not all chewing in the key of C—that is not all in the same key—or the same number of steps per mile."

The composer included the following inscription on the original manuscript of Tone Roads No. 1:

Over the rough and rocky roads our old forefathers strode on their way to the steepled village church or to the farmers’ harvest fair, or to the town meetings where they got up and said what they thought regardless of consequences.

Performance Time: approximately 6 minutes



CURT CACIOPPO (b. 1951)
When the Orchard Dances Ceased (2009, World Premiere)

By 1863, waging a ruthless scorched-earth campaign, the US Army had driven the Navajo people from their ancestral lands. The tribe was force-marched to destitute regions hundreds of miles away, where internment areas—models for Nazi concentration camps 70 years later—had been constructed for them. We’ll first chastise, then civilize bold Johnny Navajo were the words grafted to an otherwise harmless Irish tune, now a propaganda song to justify military imperative. Many Navajo died on The Long Walk. Those who survived sang a bitter "Song of Happiness," recollecting conditions of home. They cherished the memory of their splendid peach orchards, planted in earlier times in Canyon de Chelly—thousands of trees, amid which dancing and ceremony took place. In January 1864, the US Army obliterated the orchards completely.

Bracketed by remorse, my piece first imagines Navajo life, dancing and ritual in the orchards, then documents the annihilation. The beginning and ending statements express woe at the human and ecological harm done, and bewail the abuse of music that turned a lovely folk song into a demonizing mantra of conquest. In the dance section, each of four episodes is announced by a vocal call generic to Athapaskan or Pueblo singing. The sound of Native American instruments—water drum, corn husk rattles, etc.—also lend character to the scene, which builds to frenzied incantation. The festive atmosphere is abruptly halted by the start of the next section, which describes the military campaign. Amidst strains of "Hail, Columbia!" and "The Star-Spangled Banner"; a shrill, ecclesiastical chorale phrase and echoes of Amen cheer on the destruction and dispossession. Sounds of sawing, chopping, and uprooting, of spurs, marching, and bugle call culminate in violent tone clusters. In the aftermath, the Native American flute is evoked, as a final vocal entry intones the first syllables of the Navajo "Song of Happiness."

—Curt Cacioppo

Performance Time: approximately 13 minutes


HUANG RUO (b. 1976)
Leaving Sao (2004, New York Premiere)

Leaving Sao is written for soprano or high male voice in folk style and chamber orchestra. It is in memory of my grandmother, who passed away in 2004. Sao means "sorrowful predicament" in Chinese. This title was taken from a poem written by poet Qu Yuan (fourth century BCE) from the ancient kingdom of Chu. Instead of setting Qu Yuan’s poem, I wrote an original new poem with the same title in a modern form and literal use of words.

This piece has three sections meant to be played in succession. The middle section is an elegy played by strings only. The first and last sections, written for the entire orchestra, frame the middle section to create a seamless united whole.

—Huang Ruo


Performance Time: approximately 8 minutes


ERIN GEE (b. 1974)
Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1 (2009, World Premiere)

The Mouthpiece series comprises 21 works and engages with the physiology rather than the psychology of music: Linguistic meaning is not the voice's goal. The Mouthpieces use non-semantic vocal sounds to avoid elements of the voice that heighten the identity of the performer and link it to the act of performing. This non-semantic use of the voice removes a stratum of individuation from the vocal performance, which is often strongly identity- or character-based. In earlier Mouthpieces, the performer’s vocalization becomes predominantly instrumental and the vocalist often dissolves into the ensemble or orchestra. When used in a narrative setting, the voice articulates an experience that, rather than pre-existing thoughts or speech, is simultaneous and subconscious to them. The vocal work gives an inner voice to language. This transformation matches the dissolution of Self that the protagonist experiences at the end of Mouthpiece XIII narrative.

For Mouthpiece XIII, a narrative text was written for the characters and then adapted for the creation of the vocal line, creating a movement between character and "characterless-ness", a solidified individual and an abstract "instrumental" entity. In the libretto, the vocal sounds prefigure the words of the text and the experiences that the text expresses.

Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci is a three-part concert opera narrating the mysterious final moments of a fictional scholar of memory. It takes inspiration from the life of Matteo Ricci, who, as a scholar and Jesuit missionary to China in the late 16th century, taught the Method of Loci, or "Memory Palace," a mnemonic technique of associatively linking items to be remembered, to places within an architectural location.

The opera fictionalizes the historical figure Ricci and divides him into two separate characters: Mathilde (based on Ricci) and her servant Matteo. The opera also transforms the "Memory Palace" technique of linking remembered items to architectural locations, to a method that links personal memories to physical locations within one’s body. By subsequent mental navigation of these locations, and through physical behaviors, speech, and thought, they are remembered and a sense of identity achieved.

The opera’s narrative tells of Mathilde’s final moments prior to a mystical vanishing that follows a summons to the "Great Hall." Upon arriving at the hall, a location she had previously used as her own "Memory Palace," she and Matteo find it unattended and strangely unrecognizable. Turning to leave, the door has shifted places, the building transformed, and they are unable to exit as they entered. A journey through a series of shifting rooms and spaces begins.

A legend constructed around the character of Mathilde states that in the months preceding her disappearance, she had developed a sense of herself as two people: one, whose voice described places and memories with sounds unlike their descriptive words, and another, whose body remembered things and recorded its sense of self in movements. She addressed this second person as Matteo.

The two faces of the protagonist (Mathilde and Matteo) articulate the duality of cognitive-verses-corporeal memory: Mathilde uses her voice to describe places and memories with non-semantic sounds; and her servant, Matteo, silently represents the corporeal memory of her identity through his physical performance.

Special thanks to The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City for its cooperation on this project.

—Erin Gee


Performance Time: approximately 8 minutes


DONAL FOX (b. 1952)
Peace Out for Improvised Piano and Orchestra (2009, World Premiere)

Peace Out is third in a trilogy of sorts, a series of works that started with a song I wrote for soprano Louise Toppin, titled Peace Out My Brother. This third version of Peace Out is substantially different and is a new work, with an extended dramatic introduction, an expanded and reworked first and second section, and an extended epilogue and coda, with entirely new material presented by the piano soloist.

The concerto is in three continuous movements or sections. The first is a dramatic opening of angst, turbulence, and ongoing struggle between the piano and orchestra, with loud high-C trumpet screams, culminating in dark forbidding chords by the orchestra. The second movement is based on fragments taken from a famous Charlie Parker blues composition, Now’s the Time.

There are many playful permutations with the Now’s the Time motive, from the bass to the melodic lines in the woodwinds and strings. The fragment I use from Parker’s tune generates the underpinning of most of the middle section of the piece. In a jazzier section of the second movement, the woodwinds spit out sped-up, reconstructed versions of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps in counterpoint to the Now’s the Time motive in the bass lines. The second movement is the hope and promise that it is indeed now our time, and it is time to take giant steps forward with world peace and our environment.

—Donal Fox


Performance Time: approximately 10 minutes

More Information:

American Composers Orchestra always pushes the envelope, and here they’re working with composers who transform folk traditions into something new. The transformations use electronic sounds, Chinese folk singing, and piano improvisations that blend classical music and jazz, drawing both on ancient cultures and on our own postmodern world.

American Composers Orchestra
Stefan Lano, Conductor
AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA

Now entering its 33rd year, American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. ACO has extended its mission, making the creation of new opportunities for American composers and new American orchestral music its central purpose. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research, and talent, as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and as an advocate for American composers and their music.

To date, ACO has performed music by 600 American composers, including 200 world premieres and newly commissioned works. Among the orchestra’s innovative programs have been Sonidos de las Américas, six annual festivals devoted to Latin American composers and their music; Coming to America, a program immersing audiences in the ongoing evolution of American music through the work of immigrant composers; Orchestra Tech, a festival and long-term initiative to integrate new digital technologies in the symphony orchestra; Improvise!, a festival devoted to the exploration of improvisation and the orchestra; Playing it UNsafe, a new laboratory for the research and development of experimental new works for orchestra; and, of course, Orchestra Underground, ACO’s entrepreneurial cutting-edge orchestral ensemble that embraces new technology, eclectic instruments, influences, and spatial orientation of the orchestra, new experiments in the concert format, and multimedia and multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Among the honors ACO has received are special awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from BMI recognizing the orchestra’s outstanding contribution to American music. ASCAP has awarded its annual prize for adventurous programming to ACO 32 times, singling out ACO as “the orchestra that has done the most for new American music in the United States,” and most recently awarding ACO the 2008 ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming. ACO received the inaugural METLife Award for Excellence in Audience Engagement, and a proclamation from the New York City Council. ACO recordings are available on ARGO, CRI, ECM, Point, Phoenix USA, MusicMasters, Nonesuch, Tzadik, New World Records, and online at InstantEncore.com. More information about American Composers Orchestra is available online at americancomposers.org.

STEFAN LANO

This evening marks Stefan Lano’s first appearance with American Composers Orchestra and his Carnegie Hall debut. After completing degrees in composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he was awarded a full scholarship for study at Harvard University, from which he holds a PhD in composition.

Music director of the Teatro Colón from 2005 to 2008, Mr. Lano began conducting through his work as a composer and after an extensive tenure on the music staff of the Wiener Staatsoper.
He was invited to inaugurate the 1993 season of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires for the first South American performances of the complete version of Berg’s Lulu. The press praised this production as one of the most important and significant in the history of the Teatro Colón.

Mr. Lano made his debut at The Metropolitan Opera, conducting The Rake’s Progress in 1997, where he also prepared the MET production of Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. This led to engagements with the San Francisco Opera for Berg’s Lulu, Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for Le nozze di Figaro, and Strauss’s Salome at the Cincinnati Opera.

During the 2005 season, Mr. Lano premiered two new operas in the US: Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata at the Houston Grand Opera and Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner in co-productions with the Michigan Opera Theater, Cincinnati Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. In November and December of 2005, he conducted productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Atlanta Opera and Strauss’s Capriccio at the Teatro Colón.

During the 2007 season, Mr. Lano conducted the first international tour of Teatro Colón, presenting Puccini’s Turandot in Mexico City, where he also conducted Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. In addition to further appearances with the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and return appearances in Cincinnati, Madrid, and Philadelphia, he conducted a highly successful debut at the Semperoper Dresden, where he returns for two productions in 2009: a reprise of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and a new production of Hans Werner Henze’s L’Upupa.

Curt Cacioppo, Voice and Percussion
CURT CACIOPPO

Although much of Curt Cacioppo’s music stems from his connection with Italy, an even greater portion of his output reflects his nearly four-decade involvement with Native American studies. He has produced works in this vein for the Emerson, American, and Moscow quartets; the Chicago, Milwaukee, Pacific, and Philadelphia Classical symphonies; Chamber Orchestra of Bryn Mawr; and the Ex Novo Ensemble, among others. He is currently writing new works for the Borromeo Quartet and pianist Emanuele Arciuli.

Mr. Cacioppo studied with Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, and Ivan Tcherepnin at Harvard University, and was closely associated with George Rochberg. David McAllester became his mentor in Native American musical research, and Navajo elder John Co’ií Cook has guided him in a number of projects over the years. Mr. Cook and Mr. Cacioppo completed a significant collaboration in 2007, digitally preserving on 10 CDs the music of the Navajo Coyoteway healing ceremony.

In 1997, Mr. Cacioppo received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who wrote: “Curt Cacioppo has fashioned a rich language which gives him the flexibility and range with which to say what he believes in musically, emotionally, spiritually …” In addition to Western musical topics, he teaches a course titled Native American Music and Belief at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he is Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music.

Donal Fox, Piano
DONAL FOX

Internationally acclaimed as a composer, pianist, and improviser in both the jazz and classical fields, Donal Fox makes his second appearance in an American Composers Orchestra event tonight. In 2004, he was a featured performer in ACO’s Improvise! Festival, where he gave the New York premiere of T. J. Anderson’s piano concerto, Boogie Woogie Concertante, with the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Philharmonic. Tonight he appears not only as soloist, but also for the first time with ACO as composer.

From 1991 to 1993, Mr. Fox was the first African American composer-in-residence with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. In the l993–1994 season, he was a special guest artist at the Library of Congress in a program that was recorded by National Public Radio, and was a visiting artist at Harvard University, where he received a Certificate of Recognition from the president of Harvard College for his contribution to the arts.

Mr. Fox’s numerous awards include a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition and a 1998 Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy). His innovative Jazz Duet Series has included concerts, recordings, and collaborations with Oliver Lake, David Murray, Elliott Sharp, Regina Carter, Andrew Cyrille, Stefon Harris, and Gary Burton, to name a few.

In the 2005–2006 season, Mr. Fox gave the world premiere of his composition Peace Out, My Brother in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. The following season, he gave the world premiere of T. J. Anderson’s second piano concerto Fragments (a Bach and Monk fantasy for improvised piano and orchestra), written expressly for Mr. Fox and the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, also featured him in his Blues on Bach Project to celebrate its 100th anniversary during the 2006–2007 season.

In 2008, Mr. Fox received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award in Music. He is the Martin Luther King Visiting Artist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the 2009–2010 academic year.

Colin Gee, Writer, Director, and Actor
COLIN GEE

Born in California and trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre, Colin Gee is currently the founding Artist-in-Residence at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and a Visiting Artist-in-Residence at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. He was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 in the touring production Dralion, and appeared in the Cirque du Soleil television program Solstrom (2003).

Recent works include the libretto for a short opera by Erin Gee, SLEEP (2009), premiered at the Opernhaus Zürich; Portrait and Landscape (2002–present), an ongoing series of video portraits first shown at Dance Theater Workshop; Cathedral Project (2009), a series of 12 short films; and The Chestnut (2009), with Limerick Youth Theatre in Limerick, Ireland. Also in 2009, his essay Firespots was published in the Austrian art journal kursiv.

Film-performance works include Dakota (2006), presented at PS 122, Diskurs’04 Giesen, Wexford Arts Center, 4020 Festival, and the Dublin Fringe Festival, where it received the Best Male Performer award. A second film-performance project, Across the Road (2009), received a NYSCA commissioning grant and was premiered at The Chocolate Factory. His screenplays for Lady Heard Voices (2007) and Across the Road (2007) were selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition; other film projects include the shorts Lady Heard Voices (2004) and Stardust (2007), premiered at the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Mr. Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company in 2000–2001 and was co-artistic director of The Flying Machine Theater Company from 1998 to 2001, in works including Petrushka (2000) at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, Utopians (1998), The Escapist (1999), and Archipelago (2000).

Erin Gee, Vocalist
ERIN GEE

Erin Gee received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano and composition, respectively, from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. In Austria and Germany, she studied composition with Beat Furrer, Mathias Spahlinger, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett, and Steve Takasugi. She completed her PhD in music theory from the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz in 2007.

Ms. Gee’s awards for composition include the International Rostrum of Composers Award, Samuel Barber Rome Prize, Teatro Minimo first-round prize from the Opernhaus Zürich, Impuls Award, Gianni Bergamo Prize, SKE Prize, an Austrian government grant for composition, Pelzer Award, Publicity Prize 2005, a CAP award from the American Music Center, Look & Listen Festival Prize, Judith Lang Zaimont Prize, and the Composition Prize for the city of Graz in 2008.

She has worked with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Vokalensemble Zürich, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Latvian Radio Chamber Choir, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Alter Ego, Ensemble Surplus, Metropolis Ensemble, Repertorio Zero, and Duo Contour, among others.

In 2005, Ms. Gee was a guest artist at the Akiyoshidai International Art Village (Japan) where she returned to teach and perform in 2006. Additionally, her works have been featured at the Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, Klangspuren, Musikprotokoll, Steirischer Herbst, Klangriffe, Zürich Tage für Neue Musik, the Look and Listen Festival, Vienna Mozartjahr 2006, Diskurs Festival, MATA Festival, Nuovo Consonanza, Shut up and Listen! Festival, and the 4020 Festival.

Ms. Gee’s opera SLEEP was premiered in January 2009 by the Oper Zürich, which also commissioned a 45-minute orchestral work for 2011. For 2009–2010, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2010–2011, she will have residencies at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.

Huang Ruo, Vocalist
HUANG RUO

Originally from Hainan Island, China, Huang Ro first came to American Composers Orchestra’s attention at the 2002 New Music Readings, where his City of Solace was performed. In 2003, Miller Theatre at Columbia University featured him on its Composer Portraits series, where his four chamber concertos were premiered by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). He was awarded both the Luxembourg International Composition Prize (First Prize) and Audience Award from the Luxembourg Society for Contemporary Music in 2008.

As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Huang’s education expanded from composers such as Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutosławski to include the Beatles, rock ‘n’ roll, heavy metal, and jazz. As a member of the new generation of Chinese composers, his goal and task is not just to simply mix both Western and Eastern elements, but to also create a seamless synthesis and a convincing organic unity.

After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, he moved to the US to further his education. Since then, he has earned a bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and master’s and doctor of musical arts degrees from The Juilliard School. His composition teachers have included Randolph Coleman and Samuel Adler. Mr. Huang is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

Mr. Huang has collaborated with New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon in a setting of his Concerto No.3, Divergence. His recent commissions include People Mountain People Sea, a cello concerto for Jian Wang, co-commissioned by the ASCAP Foundation as part of Miller Theatre’s Pocket Concerto series; Real Loud, a chamber work co-commissioned by the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and The Color Yellow, a concerto for sheng, written for Wu Wei and the Albany Symphony under David Alan Miller.