Showing posts with label viola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label viola. Show all posts

Friday, July 3, 2015

September 13, 2015 @ 3 p.m.

Peter Dutilly, viola
Galen Dean Peiskee, piano

Edward Lein (b.1955)
Calendar Songs
-September
-In the Bleak Midwinter
-Summer Wind (World Premiere)

Peter Dutilly (b. 1988)
Three Character Pieces for Viola and Piano

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Selected Songs

Intermission

Peter Dutilly
Five Pieces for Unaccompanied Viola
1. Song
2. Angry Etude
3. Ardor and Celtic Pastorale
4. Rumination
5. Rhapsody

He Jianjun (b. 1958)
2 Pieces for Viola and Piano

Joshua Burel (b. 1985)
Sonata for Viola and Piano (World Premiere)
I. Flowing
II. Somber and Ominous
III. Bombastic and Lively


Peter Dutilly joined the nucleus viola section of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in May of 2014, less than a week after graduating with a Master of Music in Viola Performance from The Florida State University, where he studied viola with Dr. Pamela Ryan and orchestral excerpts with Professor Eliot Chapo. Previously, Peter earned two Bachelor of Music Degrees from Jacksonville (FL) University, where he studied viola with Dr. Marguerite Richardson and composition with Dr. Jianjun He.

At JU, Peter was awarded departmental honors for orchestral and solo performance, was a two-time recipient of the Delius Award for Composition, was principal viola of the University Orchestra, and was violist in the full-scholarship Honors String Quartet. At FSU, Peter was in the principal rotation of the University Symphony Orchestra, violist in the full-assistantship Eppes String Quartet, and a member of Pi Kappa Lambda, the national music honor society. Additionally, Peter has been asked back by both universities to perform with faculty ensembles and give guest master-classes.

Active primarily as an orchestral violist, Peter has recently performed with the Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Augusta, Ocala, Northwest Florida, and Pensacola symphony orchestras, as well as the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra, Coastal Symphony of Georgia, and Sinfonia Gulf Coast. As a composer, Peter’s works have been performed by the JU Orchestra and Chorus, JU faculty, FSU students and faculty, the clarinet duo Pitches in Stilettos, the Warwick (RI) Symphony Orchestra, Westwood High School orchestra, chorus, and theater department in Columbia, SC, and the Jacksonville Children’s Chorus.

Also active in music education, Peter has a small studio of private students, teaches at the summer camp and conducts the Symphonette of the Golden Isles Youth Orchestra, teaches at Prelude Chamber Music Camp, and coordinates the chamber music program for the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Galen Dean Peiskee, Jr. is currently a student at Florida State University, where he is in the process of acquiring a DMA in collaborative piano. Before moving to Florida he worked as a freelance pianist in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex accompanying numerous faculty, student, and guest artist recitals at Texas Christian University and Texas Wesleyan University, where he was a vocal coach for two years. Mr. Peiskee has a MM in Accompanying from Florida State University, and an Artist Diploma from Texas Christian University, where he earned his BM degree. His past teachers include Sandra Siler, John Owings, and Jose Feghali. He currently studies with Dr. Timothy Hoekman.

As a pianist he has performed in Poland, Italy, Austria, Greece, and he has toured various parts of the United States with the Singing Girls of Texas, a group that he accompanied for five years. He received the first ever Judith Solomon Award for Vocal Accompanying from Texas Christian University. He has performed as a soloist with the Brazos Chamber Orchestra multiple times, and is part of the Emerald Trio.

Florida native Edward Lein holds master's degrees in Music and Library Science from Florida State University. Early in his career he appeared throughout his home state as tenor soloist in recitals, oratorios and dramatic works, and drawing on this performance experience the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following performances of pieces by the Jacksonville Symphony, including Meditation for cello, oboe and orchestra (premiered June 2006) and In the Bleak Midwinter (premiered December 2007), his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players for new pieces. His translations of songs and song cycles are frequently published in music program guides in North America and Great Britain, ranging from student recitals to concerts by major orchestras, including Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Utah Symphony; he also contributes articles to the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Encore magazine. After 28 years as the Music Librarian for the City of Jacksonville, Ed retired from full-time employment in July 2014, but continued to produce Jacksonville Public Library's popular Music @ Main concert series through September 2015.


Samuel Barber is a two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer who ranks with Bernstein, Copland and Gershwin as the Americans whose concert music is most frequently performed. Barber's art songs are among the finest written by any American composer. These include Hermit Songs, a cycle on texts translated by W.H. Auden (1907-1973) from anonymous verses discovered in the margins of Medieval illuminated manuscripts, and the luminous Sure on this Shining Night on a poem from Permit Me Voyage by James Agee (1909-1955), which likely has had more performances than any other American art song.

Jianjun He, a native of China, received his B.A. in violin performance from Northwestern National University, M.A. in music theory from The Arts Academy of China, and D.M.A. in composition from West Virginia University where he studied composition with John Beall. His compositions, numbering over sixty for a wide variety of media, are enjoying growing success in Asia and the United States. They have been featured at numerous new music related festivals and conferences, including several performances at the SCI (Society of Composers, Inc.) and CMS (College Music Society) national conferences. Recent commissions include works for Wyoming Music Teachers Association, pianist Jeffrey Jacob, and Ningxia University Choir. CD recordings are available on ERM, VMM, Mark Masters, and Da Di (China) label. In addition to his musical creation, he has published books and research papers dealing with music theory, compositional techniques, ethnomusicology, and music education. Dr. He is currently on the faculty of Jacksonville University (FL) teaching Composition, Advanced Music Theory, Counterpoint, and Analysis. He was a former faculty member at Ningxia University (Yinchuan, China), Slippery Rock University (PA), Stephen F Austin State University (TX), and Casper College (WY). Since 2002 he has been an honorary professor at Hunan Normal University (Changsha, China) where he teaches composition to HNU graduate students in summer. Teaching related awards include “Young Teacher’s Award for Excellence at Ningxia University (1991),” “Excellent Teacher of Ningxia (1993),” and “Rosenthal Outstanding Educator Award (Casper College, 2008).”
Joshua Burel is the recipient of several awards including the Theodore Presser Music Award for his project Czech Composers and the Holocaust: Engaging History through Composition and Performance, a Downbeat Music Award for his orchestral performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 “Titan,” and a Goodwill Ambassador Award from the city of Holland, MI as a member of the International Holland String Quartet. An accomplished violinist, Joshua has performed in the United States, Europe, and Mexico. He recorded Ernst von Dohnanyi’s Symphony No. 2under the Naxos Music Label with the Florida State University Symphony Orchestra and has performed at Carnegie Hall as a member of the new music ensemble What Is Noise.

As a composer Joshua’s music has been performed throughout the United States having had his work Roanokeperformed at Carnegie Hall. His work Andooni was commissioned by Anastasia Christofakis for the Armenian Music Symposium to commemorate the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. He was also recently commissioned by violist Peter Dutilly to compose his Sonata for viola and piano. Joshua’s Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano “Subharmonics” was commissioned by violinist Naomi Droge to explore an extended violin technique allowing players to produce notes below the G-string and his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was written as part of a research grant through the Theodore Presser Foundation.

Joshua completed his Doctor of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition at Florida State University and graduated with honors from Western Michigan University where he received his Master of Music degree in Composition and his Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance and Music Education. Joshua has studied composition with Ladislav Kubik, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, C. Curtis-Smith, and Richard Adams and violin with Benjamin Sung, Renata Artman Knific, Amanda Walvoord Dykhouse, and Ellen Rizner. He currently serves on faculty at Webster University in St. Louis, MO.

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, February 9, 2014 @ 3 p.m.

Jorge A. Peña, viola
Maila Gutierrez Springfield, piano

Haydn/Piatigorsky : Divertimento in D Major
1. Adagio
2. Minuetto
3. Allegro molto

Manuel De Falla/Peña : Suite Populaire Espagnole
1. El Paño Moruno
2. Seguidilla
3. Nana
4. Jota
5. Asturiana
6. Canción
7. Polo

Henri Vieuxtemps : Sonata in B-flat Major
1. Maestoso
2. Barcarolla (Andante con moto)
3. Finale scherzando (Allegretto)

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Honduran-born violist Jorge Peña is a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and a former member of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. He has performed for Midwest Clinic, Grand Teton Music Festival, St. Augustine Music Festival and Island Concert Association, as well as at the National Gallery of Art, Tanglewood Music Center, University of North Florida and Jacksonville University. As a solo artist he has appeared throughout the Americas and Europe. With chamber music holding a special place in his career, Jorge and his wife, cellist Jin Kim-Peña, formed and perform with the Movado Quartet, and he often collaborates with a variety of ensembles, such as the Ritz Chamber Players, the Dover Quartet, the Diaz Trio, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta Virtuosi. Mr. Peña is Founder and Artistic Director of the annual St. Augustine Music Festival, the largest free music festival in the United States. Mr. Peña was graduated from Columbus State University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music with degrees in performance and chamber music. He studied with Curtis Institute President Roberto Diaz, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra principal viola Richard Field, and Julliard quartet member Earl Carlys.

Award-winning pianist Maila Gutierrez Springfield is an instructor at Valdosta State University and a member of the Maharlika Trio, a group dedicated to commissioning and performing new works for saxophone, trombone and piano. Twice-honored with the Excellence in Accompanying Award at Eastman School of Music, Maila has been staff accompanist for the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, Georgia Southern University, the Buffet Crampon Summer Clarinet Academy and the Interlochen Arts Camp, where she had the privilege of working with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. She has collaborated with members of major symphony orchestras, including those in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jacksonville. Maila can be heard on saxophonist Joren Cain’s CD, "Voices of Dissent," and on clarinetist Linda Cionitti's CD, "Jag & Jersey." Ms. Springfield was awarded a Bachelor of Music degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Haydn/Piatigorsky : Divertimento in D Major

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the “Classical” style that his two younger contemporaries Mozart (his friend) and Beethoven (his pupil) built upon.  By the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely celebrated composer in Europe.

When Haydn was 8 years old he was accepted as a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where in addition to vocal training he received instruction in violin and piano. But puberty spoiled all that, and by about 1749 Haydn found himself re-cast as a struggling free-lance musician. His choirboy years had not provided him with any substantial training in music composition, so he began to teach himself the essentials, pretty much on his own.  Through the next decade he began to make a name for himself as a composer, and in 1757 Haydn earned a full-time position as the chief musician for the aristocratic Morzin family. This success was short-lived: by 1761 Count Morzin's finances had tanked and Haydn found himself newly-married and unemployed.  But as a manor-door was slamming shut behind him,  Haydn climbed through a palace-window of opportunity and immediately entered into the employment of the fabulously wealthy Esterházy family, becoming their Kapellmeister in 1766. Both Prince Paul Anton (1711-62) and his successor, Prince Nikolaus (1714-90), were music connoisseurs, and Haydn thrived under their patronage.   In 1779, Nikolaus even agreed that Haydn could publish and sell works apart from those composed for (and belonging to) the family, and Haydn's reputation spread throughout Europe.  Unlike his grandfather and father, Nikolaus's son and heir, Prince Anton (1738-94), was no musician, so after Nikolaus died in 1790 the composer was free to travel, most notably to London, and his international reputation as the greatest living composer was sealed. When the financially-independent Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795, he was himself an important public figure.  He continued his association with the Esterházy family, but he was no longer their servant, and he neither needed nor wanted full-time employment. Instead, he could compose for himself and for posterity.

In addition to being Haydn's boss for nearly three decades, Prince Nikolaus played the baryton, an archaic bowed instrument with frets akin to the bass viol, that was pretty rare even back then. So one of Haydn's chief tasks was to write music for Nikolaus to play, which resulted in 123 trios for baryton, viola and cello. The music of the present Divertimento in D Major was adapted and arranged from the baryton trios by legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976).  Published in 1944, The majority of the music derives from Haydn's Baryton Trio in D Major, H. XI:113, but rather than providing a straight-forward arrangement, Piatigorsky used Haydn's music essentially to create a new work. As violist Myron Rosenblum observes, "What Piatigorsky seems to have done is to take the baryton and viola lines, merge them, with much recomposing to come up with his own work." Piatigorsky created the Divertimento to play himself, and in addition to the versions for either viola or cello and piano, there is also a version for cello and orchestra.

Manuel De Falla : Suite Populaire Espagnole

During the early decades of the 20th Century, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) gained an international reputation as the leading Spanish composer of his generation. Infused with the rhythms and harmonies of the folk songs and dances of his native Andalusia, Falla’s music has been described as representing “the spirit of Spain at its purest” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Among his best-known works are the ballets El amor brujo (Love, the Magician, 1915) and El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-cornered Hat, 1917), and the beautiful Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain, 1916), for piano and orchestra.

In 1907, Falla moved from Madrid to Paris where he met and shared ideas with many of the era’s leading composers, including Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky.  In 1914, shortly before he returned to Spain with the outbreak of World War I,  Falla wrote Siete canciones populares españolas (Seven Popular Spanish Songs).  Five of the songs are settings of existing folksongs, and two, Jota and Polo, are original tunes that mimic Spanish folk dances. In harmonizing the pieces, rather than providing accompaniments based simply on modal scales, Falla drew his harmonies from the natural overtone series. For an instrumental version, Falla collaborated with violinist  Paul Kochanski (1887-1934) to prepare the first edition of Suite Populaire Espagnole, which adapted six of the songs, omitting the Seguidilla.  Many subsequent arrangements have been made for a variety of different instruments, both with and without the Seguidilla movement. Jorge Peña has prepared his own edition for viola, and includes all seven canciones.


Henri Vieuxtemps : Sonata in B-flat Major

Belgian composer and violinist Henri Vieuxtemps (1820–1881) was a child prodigy who famously performed a concerto at age six, and who went on to gain an international reputation as both performer and teacher. Vieuxtemps was a student and eventually professor at the Brussels Conservatory, and he represented the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing. He lived in Russia for five years (1846-51), where he founded the violin school at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, while also serving as principal violinist in the court of Czar Nicholas I. In 1871, Vieuxtemps suffered a stroke that affected his bowing arm, effectively ending his concert career and interrupting his teaching. A second stroke in 1879 made even teaching impossible, and he retired to Algeria to be near his daughter and son-in-law, but he still continued to compose. Most of Vieuxtemps' compositions feature the solo violin, and he is most remembered for his seven violin concertos, with which he helped redefine Romantic concertos as works of symphonic scope rather than merely vehicles for virtuosic display. Other works of note include two cello concertos, three string quartets, and several works featuring the viola, another instrument of which Vieuxtemps had been a master. One of these, the Viola Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 36, was first published in 1863, and included an alternate part for the cello.



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