Modern Music Ensemble: "Winter Music"

The Modern Music Ensemble (Cristina Valdés, director), in collaboration with actors from the  School of Drama, presents a unique performance of four seminal works of John Cage, all performed simultaneously. The concert opens with works by Hilda Paredes and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Program

Modern Music Ensemble
Cristina Valdés, director

"Winter Music"
A collaboration with UW Drama
Actors: Jeffrey Fracé (director), Zo Eisenbrey, Taylor McWilliams-Woods, Sebastián Bravo Montenegro, Natalia Poliakova, Sebastian Wang, Yeonshin Kim

Sofia Gubaidulina - Dots, Lines, and Zigzag for bass clarinet and piano
Cameron DeLuca, bass clarinet; Jiaxuan Wu, piano

Hilda Paredes - Canciones sobre poemas de Eduardo Hurtado
Claire Wei, flute/piccolo; Cameron DeLuca, clarinet/bass clarinet; Soledad Mayorga Maldonado, soprano; Jiaxuan Wu, piano

- Intermission -

John Cage:
Winter Music
Zixi Fu, piano; Boheng Wang, piano; Jiaxuan Wu, piano

Four6
Minh-Thi Butler, oboe; Kyle Grant, alto saxophone; Soledad Mayorga Maldonado, soprano, Brayson Young, drums

Atlas Eclipticalis
Grace Playstead, flute; Cameron DeLuca, clarinet; Taylor DeCastro, violin

Variations III
 Zo Eisenbrey, Jeffrey Fracé, Taylor McWilliams-Woods, Sebastián Bravo Montenegro, Natalia Poliakova, Sebastian Wang, actors (Jeffrey Fracé, director). 

Program Notes

Dots, Lines, and Zigzag for bass clarinet and piano
One consistent feature of [Sofia] Gubaidulina’s output has been a reluctance to write absolute music. As often as not there exists some extra-musical stimulus, even if not stated openly, or a ritualistic or theatrical element. The latter plays a major role in the [Dots, Lines, and Zigzag], which moreover displays a typical fondness for using conventional instruments - in this case bass clarinet and piano - in less than conventional ways. The title alludes to the visual appearance of the score, in which traditional notation exists side by side with a freer indication of effects which need not be notated precisely. The “zig-zag,” for example, refers to the instructions to the pianists to produce sulla corda glissandi within a given pitch range. The great variety of pitches, rhythmic patterns, textures and articulation interlock to create a multi- layered counterpoint of ideas. As the piece starts, it is the bass clarinettist rather than the pianist who occupies the piano stool, depressing the instrument’s
sustaining pedal. This not only turns the piano into a large resonating chamber but has the effect of enhancing certain harmonics present in the chords which the bass clarinettist is instructed to produce through applying certain fingerings. On entering, the pianist plays a series of glissando figures directly on the lower strings of the piano, first with fingers alone and then with a variety of objects including a pair of coins. The bass clarinettist is meanwhile asked to improvise upon given material within a fixed set of pitches. Finally, the latter, still playing, leaves the piano, which is occupied by the pianist. Thus is symbolised through physical gesture the process of interchange and final coming together embodied in the music.
Geoffrey Thomason, 1993

Canciones sobre poemas de Eduardo Hurtado (1992/2012)
I have found setting poetry to music a very enriching and enlighten [sic] experience, which always sparks off my imagination into directions I don’t necessarily go towards when I write instrumental music. From the very first time I heard Eduardo Hurtado reading his poems in Mexico city in the early 90’s, I realised that in his poetry there was an invitation to create a world of sound. So I wrote this song cycle in 92, at a time when I was living in Mexico. The songs were originally written for the Mexican mezzo Adriana Díaz de León and the pianist Oscar Tarragó, but have since been revised. The instrumental version for soprano, flute, clarinete [sic] and piano, was written in 2012 for Lourdes Ambriz and Ensamble 3.
Hilda Paredes

Atlas Eclipticalis
Atlas Eclipticalis, commissioned by the Montreal Festivals Society, was composed over a period of nine months in 1961. It has 86 parts total, each one for a specific instrument. However, any number of these parts can be used for a performance of the work. In a letter dated December 1, 1963, Cage writes:
“In 1954 while in Europe I met the Japanese musicologist, Hidekazu Yoshida who gave me his notion of the three lines of Haiku poetry, the first line referring, he said, to nirvana, the second to samsara, and the third to specific happening. I thought in writing Atlas Eclipticalis of the first line and the stars as nirvana. And I had the intention of writing two other works which would complete this trilogy. I did this in 1963 with Variations IV and 0'0".”
“The title, Atlas Eclipticalis, is that of the book of astronomical maps I used in the composition.”

Winter Music
Winter Music was composed in the winter of 1956-57. It is scored for any number of pianos between one and twenty. The work is in twenty pages, with each page containing different chords, interpretation of which is largely left up to the performer; in some places, notation of clefs is left intentionally ambiguous. Chords are played as singular events; notes that the pianist cannot produce are prepared ahead of time as sympathetic vibrations. Time is also largely left up to interpretation, and performances of Winter Music vary greatly in duration.

Variations III
Variations III is the third piece in Cage’s Variations series, which is made up of eight total pieces composed between 1958-1967. Rather than making any reference to music or musicians, Variations III is built around various visual and audio events - in other words, it can be performed by people who are not singers or instrumentalists. The “score” consists of 42 circles, each marked with a specific event. The circles are then dumped on the ground or otherwise laid out randomly. The outcome of this randomization determines which events will occur and how they will unfold during performance. Other aspects of the events, such as sounds and actions, are determined by the performers ahead of time.

Four6
Four6 is part of John Cage’s Number Pieces, a series of works he wrote towards the end of his life. Each Number Piece’s title indicates the number of performers for each work and the iteration of that particular piece - in this case, Four6 is for four players and is the sixth such work he wrote. All four players devise twelve different sounds - on or off their instruments - and produce these sounds at designated intervals.

Biographies

Jeffrey Fracé is a veteran theater artist with more than 100 professional credits as an actor, director, writer, or producer. Best known as an actor, he is a former Associate Artist of Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, performing, touring, and teaching with the company for over 10 years. Recent performance credits include The War of the Worlds Radio Play with SITI Company, Father Comes Home From the Wars with UW Drama, Home with Doug Varone and 11 Comets with Rachael Lincoln at Meany Theatre, The Life Model at On the Boards, Betrayal at North Coast Rep in California, and Rapture, Blister, Burn; Celebration and Old Times (Pinter Festival); and Lieutenant of Inishmore, all at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Other credits include the Kennedy Center, New York Shakespeare Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Stonington Opera House, Cleveland Public Theatre, Chopin Theatre Chicago, La MaMa ETC and the Iberoamericano Festival of Bogota. His directing credits include Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet for Stonington Opera House; Mother Courage and Her Children and 1984 for People's Branch Theatre; Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream for Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre; Don Giovanni for New York Repertory Ensemble. His original work/devised performance credits include 11 Comets at Meany Theater; The Life Model at On the Boards; 10 Real Star Acts at Stonington Opera House; and Once Upon a Time 6x in the West, Harp Song for a Radical, Barbarians and Untying My Cement Shoes for UW Drama; plus, independently produced adaptations of King Lear, and Camus’ The Stranger. He is a founding member of the award-winning ensemble Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, writing for and performing in their original shows in New York and nationally. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, he worked in Chicago for four years before relocating to New York City, where he received his MFA from Columbia University. He is now based in Seattle, where he teaches acting, directing, movement, and devising theater at University of Washington.