Composer Premiere

[Firman Lamarre]

Mr. Runestad is considered one of the most influential American composers of our time. To have such a highly respected musician at Clemson to learn from and bring new art into existence premiered first to the Clemson community is a life-changing experience. This musical journey has elevated the Clemson Choral Program, Department of Performing Arts and students from countless majors across the University. We were honored to make history with this world premiere and further the Clemson Elevate mission of student experience, research and transforming lives!

Last fall, the Choral Program commissioned a new work from Runestad for Cantorei and the piano. The department arranged for him to work with students through guest lectures, a masterclass and rehearsals ahead of the CU Singers and Cantorei concert on April 25.

Colorado Music Festival brings some of the best classical music to Boulder throughout the summer. The Festival has also become a place to debut new classical works. One premiere this summer brings together one of the most significant current composers with a world renown quartet based in Boulder.

"'Kachkaniraqmi' means 'I still exist' which is a celebratory way of saying that in spite of all the hardships the cultures of Peru have gone through, they still thrive. They still survive," Lena Frank explained.

The piece is four movements and features the Takcs String Quartet embedded within a larger string orchestra. The Takcs is a grammy award winning string quartet based in Boulder at the University of Colorado. This is the 50th anniversary for the quartet.

"I think it's particularly exciting that we're premiering a new work, and we're commissioning new composers, and embracing how a string quartet can be meaningful in our world," said Harumi Rhodes, Second Violinist with the Takcs.

Rhodes is long time friends with Lena Frank, so collaborating on a symphony seemed like a natural project. The Takcs world is usually limited to four musicians. They are very used to working together.

"So bringing our little village of four into a larger community, into the orchestral context is a very exciting opportunity and an opportunity for us to expand our voices and the range of colors and characters we can make," Rhodes explained.

It's also fairly rare. There aren't many concertos composed for this combination. One of the challenges that Lena Frank faced was not allowing the quartet to get lost in the bigger sound of the orchestra.

A job well done in music that shows deep emotion and celebrates each voice of the string quartet. While the piece is inspired by Peru, Lena Frank hopes that audiences will be transported to someplace meaningful to them.

Haunting tones -- During a demonstration at the Apple store in Syracuse, SUNY Oswego music faculty member Paul Leary uses a homegrown device to send data to a computer, modifying his flute music electronically to produce other-worldly effects. Leary's composition "Larger Than Us" will premiere in a Jan. 20 performance that the Society of New Music and the MOST in Syracuse are co-hosting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NASA's first manned mission to orbit the moon.

SUNY Oswego music faculty member Paul Leary has been working hard during winter "break" to finish a composition that meshes music and science, computer programming and artistic skills -- all set to visual and audio offerings from NASA's vast public archives.

Titled "Larger Than Us," the multimedia piece will premiere Sunday, Jan. 20, in a Society of New Music concert at the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse. The society and museum are dedicating the evening to a mission in outer space a half-century ago.

Thanks to sophisticated software and hundreds of NASA photos he's animated, Leary makes the galaxies spiral and the planets rotate and the stars sparkle -- all set to original music provided by electronic instruments that Leary has built and a seven-piece chamber ensemble that will perform live on stage.

The video of Leary's other-worldly electronic composition -- though not a full-dome presentation at this time -- will premiere at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 20, in the IMAX Theatre at the MOST, 500 S. Franklin St. His "Larger Than Us" will tandem with Charles Fussell's "The Astronaut's Tale," a staged chamber opera modeled after Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale."

"I've always been interested in science and space, in general," said Leary, who specializes in electronic music and has a doctorate in composition from Duke University. "One of the biggest reasons I agreed to do this is that everything NASA publishes is in the public domain."

Adobe's After Effects software enables Leary to animate sequential NASA photos -- taken during the Hubble space telescope mission, among others -- causing celestial objects to move in the video at a visible rate of rotation. A set of Puppet tools allows Leary to bend images according to the positions of pins that he places and moves, simulating motion for three-second intervals, after which the images would begin to deform.

A great deal of computer programming -- and some carpentry -- has gone into the production, Leary said. He is building a new musical instrument for the occasion, a nine-foot pendulum whose motion he initiates. The device uses an accelerometer and a magnetometer to send data back to a computer, electronically changing the pitches and tempos of traditionally produced music.

Another of Leary's homegrown musical instruments is a set of bicycle wheels with Hall effect sensors installed, which uses magnets and an accelerometer to produce haunting electronic effects from, for example, a flute that Leary plays.

The composer, who also has master's degrees from Duke and the Cleveland Institute of Music, teaches both introductory and advanced electronic music, as well as songwriting, a music theory course and a "Music and Business" course. He also is a coordinator of the audio design and production minor and of SUNY Oswego's MIDI Lab.

She is known for her many collaborations, including working with pop icon Nico, as well as multi-disciplinary projects. Along with Jess Gillam, she has collaborated with noted artists such as Jess Gillam, Jeremy Denk, Martin Frst, Pekka Kuusisto, and Yo-Yo Ma.

This past season (2023-2024), Clyne held the position of Composer-in-Residence with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their Artistic Team; as Composer-in-Residence at the BBC Philharmonic, and as Artist-in-Residence with Symphony Orchestra of Castilla y Len.

The 25-minute piece is written for orchestra and saxophone soloist, specifically Jess Gillam, who premiered the piece last year with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and conductor Han-Na Chang.

She used social media to recently announce Palette, a new project for augmented orchestra. The movements are titled Plum, Amber, Lava, Ebony, Teal, Tangerine, and Emerald, and she will be producing seven paintings, one to go along with each.

With a combination of virtuosity and upbeat charisma, British saxophonist and BBC radio broadcaster Jess Gillam has created a unique profile in the music world. She was the youngest soloist to perform at the prestigious Last Night at the Proms broadcast, and the first saxophonist to sign an exclusive contract with Decca Records.

A preconcert talk by Michael Cooper, professor of music at Southwestern University, will take place at 7:15 p.m. in the Iger Lecture Hall. Cooper is a leading researcher on the life and music of Florence Price.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, Price (1887-1953) was a classical composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher. She is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra when her Symphony No. 1 in E minor was performed in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.

Beecher grew up in a household where he spoke English around his father and Estonian around his mother and did not realize until later that his mother spoke English. He also had a secondhand understanding of Estonia as he was not able to visit the country until its Soviet rule ended when he was 10.

The concerto premiered at the Orlando Philharmonic in 2021, but the Cabrillo Festival concert will mark its first public performance on the West Coast. Beecher hopes the piece will inspire audiences to find something similar within their own lives.

Lynchburg residents can experience some of the most imaginative and edgy sounds ever written for orchestra when the Randolph College Chamber Orchestra performs the American premiere of a new composition by award-winning composer Maxwell Dulaney.

The Chamber Orchestra will present its fall concert on December 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Smith Hall Theatre. The group includes Randolph College students as well as Lynchburg-area high school students who play alongside professional musicians.

Dulaney is an internationally recognized composer whose works have been performed in Asia, Europe, and many cities around the USA. He will visit Randolph College for two days to work with the Chamber Orchestra as the group prepares to perform the American premiere of his composition The Old Harp.

The Old Harp was inspired by a Chinese poem that uses imagery of an old Chinese instrument, the Qin, collecting dust. The composition begins with sounds that are only the abstract representation of music: the violin plays almost imperceptible sounds of the bow and fingers gliding against the strings but with all of the pitch muted.

Besides The Old Harp, the Randolph College Chamber Orchestra will perform classics by Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, and a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach in collaboration with the Randolph College Chorale.

A powerful communicator renowned for her musical scope and versatility, Assad is a significant artistic voice in the classical, world music, pop and jazz genres. Assad is a prolific Grammy-nominated composer, with more than 70 works to her credit. Her work has been commissioned by internationally renowned organizations, festivals and artists, and published in France and the United States by Virtual Artists Collective Publishing. A sought-after performer, Assad is a celebrated pianist and inventive vocalist who has released seven solo albums and appeared on or had her works performed on another 30.

c80f0f1006