47th Annual New Music Festival

East Broadway, Julia Wolfe

Kai Frueh, toy piano

Sonnets, Robert Honstein

i. Love, though for this you riddle me with darts

ii. I think I should have loved you presently

vi. Only until this cigarette is ended

iv. Oh, my beloved, have you thought this

Sarah Luebke, soprano

Yevgeny Yontov, piano

Jonathan Ovalle, percussion

Fear of Flying, Gemma Peacocke

Gloria Pan, flute

Let me Come in, David Lang

Jenna Diem, soprano

Francisca de Castanheiro de Freitas, piano

The Blue Studio, Stephen Hartke

Caroline Chin, violin

Brian Snow, cello

Solungga Liu, piano

East Broadway is a work for toy piano with boombox in one movement. The toy piano is juxtaposed with a tape reminiscent of a malfunctioning 1980s ‘boombox’ conjuring both nostalgia and humor. The composer uses the toy piano as a loud percussion instrument with the boombox bringing the energy of rock.

Ever since a quixotic beauty caught the eye of an itinerant, 14th century ex-priest, the sonnet has been to poetic expressions of love as bread is to butter. It is an almost protean form, something so innate that whether or not Petrarch fell for his Laura a similar structure would surely have emerged in some other guise at nearly the same time. While the language and style of sonneteers continuously evolves, this timeless form has retained its grip on poetic minds for centuries. From Shakespeare and Donne to Rilke and Neruda, the sonnet persists as a deft expression of human experience in all its vicissitudes. Into the pressure cooker of its compact formal apparatus, the complexity, ambiguity and chaos of humanity emerges reshaped and reborn into powerfully concise, crystalline poetic expression.

Writing in the first half of the 20th century, Edna St. Vincent Millay vigorously takes up this tradition. At a time of high poetic modernism, Millay injects the ancient form with vitality and stylistic ingenuity. In her hands the sonnet feels fresh and urgent. The words are organic and vital, yet also surgically precise in their layered meaning, wit and sheer beauty. Millay’s sonnets are shifting and bold, fearlessly expressing a radically feminine perspective, while at the same time gesturing towards universal themes of love and desire. In writing my piece, Sonnets, I primarily wanted to foreground Millay’s brilliant words. The poetry is so good, so captivating, direct and powerful that it seemed my job, as composer, was simply to provide a musical scaffolding for Millay’s candescent verse. To that end I’ve put together five songs that hopefully allow you to appreciate and be moved by these beautiful words.

Fear of Flying (in broken Gilbertese), by Teresia Teaiwa
I maaku
You told me ba ko tangirai
I maaku

I maaku
My arms were awkward so ko taua baiu
I maaku

I maaku
The dancer trembles because te ruoia is a kind of sorcery
I maaku

I maaku
The frigate birds fly high above us and I’m afraid of falling
I maaku

Gilbertese is an Oceanic language spoken in the islands of Kiribati in the South Pacific. The word Kiribati is a transliteration of the country's former European name, "Gilberts." Gilbertese is also spoken by most inhabitants of Nui (an island of Tuvalu), Rabi Island (part of Fiji), and in places to which I-Kiribati emigrated or were relocated because of British phosphate mining.

Dr Teresia Teaiwa (1968-2017) was a Pacific Studies scholar and poet. Born in Hawai’i to I-Kiribati and African-American parents, Teaiwa was raised in Fiji, studied in the United States, and in 2000 emigrated to New Zealand where she became the director of Va’aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University of Wellington. A feminist activist and pacifist, Teaiwa was an acclaimed teacher and part of the Niu Waves Writers’ Collective, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement and the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum. Dr Teaiwa died of cancer in 2017 at the age of 48.

let me come in was written for the soprano Angel Blue, co-commissioned by LA Opera and the Fisher Center at Bard College. let me come inis part of a series of pieces I have been writing over the past several years, in which I have applied different literary filters to the text of the biblical ‘Song of Songs.’  The idea behind this series is that if we look at the text from many different angles it may eventually begin to reveal more of its emotional and spiritual powers.  Or at least that is the hope. For this song, I started with one verse in the King James version of the text, where the woman is awaiting the knock of her lover on her door. 5:2  I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. I love the sense of waiting for something beautiful to happen, the anticipation of the moment, and also I love that the narrator hasn’t moved to open the door yet – the sensuousness of the waiting is more powerful for her, and for us, than the actual physicality of meeting. Of course, these texts were originally in Hebrew, then translated and mistranslated into Greek and Latin and eventually English, and their various translations have changed the details of their various meanings.  Many of these are intentional mistranslations; different Christian denominations, for example, have their own shaded versions of the text, in an attempt to lower the temperature of the original, to tone down its sensuality, or to make it seem more like a metaphor, or like a dream.  I took 17 different versions of this verse, each slightly different, and then I alphabetized their phrases and got rid of all the duplicated lines, in order to make one single text, with all its interpretive angles shown. let me come inis dedicated to Sophie Claudel, in memory of Frédéric Bonnemaison.

Among the many treasures in the collection of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia are a number of paintings of artists' studios, one of the most remarkable being Matisse's Studio with goldfish. As it happens, the blue shade of the walls in his picture is very much like that of my workroom at home, and so the title, The Blue Studio, refers to both.  As a genre, these scenes of an artist's workplace are especially fascinating for their incorporating paintings of paintings and other artworks.  I thus came to conceive of this piece as a sort of studio visit.  The listener becomes a visitor leafing through the movements as if a portfolio of drawings, the little interludes separating them representing the brief, quiet transition from image to image.  I went back to my own sketchbooks for earlier pieces and appropriated unused material from them for parts of this work, so certain family resemblances to this or that piece of mine are intentional

Slow Burn, Mike Laurello

~world premiere~

BGSU Percussion Ensemble

Dan Piccolo, director

Jacob Koch; Chris Harris; Cahaya Drucilla; Brooke Guyton, percussion

Jacob Kendall; Nathaniel Brown; Shawn Muench, keyboards

All Vows, Michael Gordon

Brian Snow, cello

Quietly Revealed, Marilyn Shrude

John Sampen; Garrett Evans, soprano saxophone

Darek Samol; Sam Valancy; Jake Loitz, alto saxophone

Piano Quintet, Zygmunt Krauze

Big Reeling, Julia Wolfe

Les Moutons de Panurge, Frederic Rzewski

BGSU New Music Ensemble

Benjamin Hoffman, conductor

Slow Burn (2026) receives its world premiere on tonight's program.

All Vows was commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation and premiered by Maya Beiser in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2006.

Quietly Revealed was written in memory of my teacher Alan Stout who died in February 2018. Stout was an unassuming individual, whose vast knowledge of music served to inspire a generation of composers who worked under his guidance at Northwestern University. Deeply embedded in the harmonic fabric of the piece is a chord progression from his Suite for Saxophone and Organ (1973) written for the wedding of John Sampen and Marilyn Shrude. Quietly Revealed was premiered in July 2018 at the World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb, Croatia by John Sampen, Brianna Buck, Claire Salli, Drew Hosler and Jonathan Kierspe.

Krauze’s work is greatly influenced by the Constructivist art movement and in particular the work of painter Władysław Strzemiński. Written on the 100th anniversary of the painter’s birth, the Piano Quintet (1993) is an extraordinarily expressive and personal work exploring a wide range of emotional states. The composer writes: “. . . All the most important musical inspirations–I am talking here about early 1960s and even the end of the 1950s–were connected with the fine arts, and in particular with constructivism, especially as represented by Strzemiński . . . I realized that both his art and what I read is the source from which I might draw. Strzemiński used such notions as form, color, movement, texture, which are also characteristic for music. My goal was to translate his theory into sound, to translate into my music what he had created and invented. This is mostly connected to the theory of “unism,” i.e. a theory completely opposed to Baroque art, a theory which required a unity of elements, the elimination of contrasts, the concern for the form which was homogeneous, seemingly created from a single unit.”

Big Reeling is an expansion of a previous work, Reeling, a field recording project. For my field recording I’ve used a fantastic clip of a French Canadian singer. He’s an older man and he sings a very beautiful kind of music that’s basically the music that you make when you don’t have a fiddler and you don’t have a banjo. You just use your voice. You sing syllables in a sing-song twirly way. I started this project from a very pure place, just using his voice. And little by little I go from his world to my world, which is much more cacophonous and has a more urban sensibility. There is a very personal connection for me. I love folk music and I’ve played a lot of folk music. So in a way I’m connecting my own history by going to his singing and revving it up.

Les mouton des Panurge ("The sheep of Panurge") is based on the fourth book of Gargantua and Partagruel series by the French Renaissance author Francois Rabelais. In the eighth chapter, Panurge is traveling by ship with Pantagruel when their boat meets with a merchant ship carrying sheep. When the merchants make fun of Panurge, he buys one of their sheep and then proceeds to throw it into the ocean - and all of the other sheep follow it. To this day, the phrase "sheep of Panurge" implies a person who blindly follows the lead of another. Written "for any number of musicians playing melody instruments, plus any number of nonmusicians playing anything," the piece contains a 65-note melody played in a cumulative sequence by the entire ensemble in unison; then the melody is played in reverse at the conclusion of which all begin improvising. Rzewski instructs: "Always play loud, never stop or falter, stay together as long as you can, but if you get lost, stay lost. Do not try to find your way back into the fold. Continue to follow the rules strictly."

Primal Suite, Erik Santos

Francisca de Castanheiro de Freitas, piano

Revenant, Anthony Marasco

Roberta Michel, flute

John Eagle, horn & electronics

where my power is, Cahaya Drucilla*

i. rich feet

Cahaya Drucilla, performer

*Uses visual elements

Maybe I’ve run out of thoughts and my teeth fill the silence, Tanawat Naruepai

Liam Battle, eight-string modified cello

reservoirs, John Eagle

Justin Johnston; John Eagle, performers

Primal Suite for piano was originally written in 1988, while studying composition at Indiana University of Pennsylvania with Daniel Perlongo, and piano with Niccolo Sartori. It was the first concert piece of mine ever performed. Originally a five-movement work, it was also my first composition to win a prize (BMI), and it encouraged my decision to focus my energies on music composition. Like many dance suites, they are not necessarily meant to be danced to, but to evoke dance through music. And, instead of referring to particular styles of dance (i.e., corrente, sarabande, gigue, etc.), I was more interested to embody general patterns of movement which occur naturally in the world (i.e., running, floating, swirling, etc.). Nouns and verbs are one, and none.

Revenant is an exercise in conjuring ghosts and reliving the past. Members of the ensemble are divided into one of two roles: Storytellers and a single Conjuror, with the Conjuror summoning sonic remnants from the ensemble's past gestures throughout the performance. The Storytellers treat each performance like an evening spent sharing tales around a campfire. As a team, they are tasked with creating sonic representations of ghosts based on different text prompts, using their own individual interpretations of the prompts to create sonic events and musical statements that represent ghosts in their many, varied forms. 

where my power is, i. rich feet is a mixed media theatrical percussion piece that highlights the intersectinal irony of sensationalism in Western media's portrayal of current events. Simultaneously, we witness Western leadership negatively and disproportionately affect livelihoods in the Global South through policies that inflame climate catastrophes, neocolonialism, and capitalisitc imperialism. rich feet is inspired by Cahaya's own personal experiences, her family, community, and loved ones across the world. The performance expresses the hopelessness that comes from witnessing suffering from afar while yearning to name the feelings and turn them into action for a better world. This work is the first movement of a multiple percussion and voice solo titled where my power is, premiered at Bowling Green State University in March 2026.

reservoirs (2022, for two performers) belongs to a series of pieces which explore our ability to listen and respond to our environment in performance situations which translate environmental sound into electronically synthesized pitches. Here, the environment is a closed water system in a performance space as heard through two hydrophones (microphones made for water) placed inside glass jars connected to each other with a siphon. The hydrophones monitor the changing water levels by making periodic recordings which are analyzed in near-real time and the most prominent frequencies are played back through speakers. The short delays in the electronic system and the physical delays in the water movement (determined by the capacity of the tube) require the performers to balance the sound dimensions of the piece with those of the physical system. The performers’ actions cause the system to be in a constant stage of change while they must react to each other to maintain balance in the system (no spilling—keep the water in the jars).

Retrieve, Julia Wolfe

Brian Snow, cello

Jacob Warren, bass

Early That Summer, Julia Wolfe

Graduate String Quartet

Brayan Cabeza, violin

Eric Funk, violin

Natalia Velasquez, viola

Che Dixon, cello

Cha, Julia Wolfe

BiG SU

Garrett Evans, soprano saxophone

Jake Loitz, alto saxophone

Chandler Creedon, tenor saxophone

Sam Valancy, baritone saxophone

Cloth, Julia Wolfe

Hannah Levinson; Natalie Holstine; Natalia Velsquez; Jake Weil;

Cruz Pena; Melissa Peraza; Zihua Ma; Cole Habekost; Eric Funk, viola

Emily Cromwell, conductor

Retrieve was premiered at Sage Chapel at Cornell University on Thursday September 15, 2016 as a part of the Technologies of Memory series created by Cornell University Jewish Studies Director/Professor Jonathan Boyarin. The piece was commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) and Alexei Lubimov through BAC's John Cage and Merce Cunningham Fellowship. The fellowship was established to further the legacies of John Cage and Merce Cunningham through annual awards to artists embodying Cage and Cunningham's dedication to innovation and collaboration across disciplines.

While living in Amsterdam for the year [in 1992] I began Early That Summer. At the time I was reading a book about US political history. The author would introduce small incidents with phrases like “Early that summer …” Incidents would snowball into major political events or crises. I realized that the music I was writing was exactly like this—that I was creating a state of anticipation and forward build.

Cha is part of Breath Beneath, a pilot project in which the PRISM Saxophone Quartet explores the intersection of music, interactive technology, and durational visual art. Cha is dedicated to the memory of the composer’s father. Julia Wolfe writes: “My favorite memory is dancing the cha-cha-cha with my father. He would hit the dance floor and take me along with him. We danced together from when I was 10 until sometime into my early teens. It was great fun. As I thought about this way of remembering my dad I began to research the cha-cha-cha, and very quickly realized that our suburban version was hardly like the various Cuban versions with their wild sensuality, polyrhythms, and highly stylized movement. The cha-cha-cha takes its name from the shuffling sound of the feet against the dance floor and first emerged just a few years before I was born. The piece takes the cha cha as a starting point and create a joyful deconstruction/exaggeration of the style for the sax quartet.”

The viola is the unsung hero – the middle voice – sturdy, strong, and steady. In Cloth the viola wildly weaves a warf of arpeggios – like the over-and-under threads of a loom. Fragments of material fill in, increase the density, and illuminate threads of color within the fabric. Cloth is both practical and personal, intimate and grand, economical and extravagant, as the nine violas become one large instrument.
Cloth was written for violist Sào Soulez Larivière, with whom I workshopped the piece through its various stages of creation.

Julia Wolfe Composer Talk: "Telling History through Music"

Guard My Tongue, Julia Wolfe

Turn Ya Head, Shara Nova

All Seems Beautiful to Me, Eric Whitacre

Tuttarana, Reena Esmail

Collegiate Chorale

Dr. Richard Schnipke, conductor

Heather Goldman, pianist

Grayson Abend, graduate assistant

Vincent’s Sky, Jake Runestad

Collegiate Chorale, A Cappella Choir, & BGSU Wind Symphony

Dr. Richard Schnipke, Collegiate Chorale conductor

Prof. Todd Schreiber, A Cappella Choir conductor

Dr. Matthew Dockendorf, Wind Symphony conductor

Zig Zag, Julia Wolfe

BGSU Wind Symphony

Dr. Matthew Dockendorf, conductor

Guard my Tongue was composed for the 2009 Commissioned Composer Project of the University of Wisconsin River Falls.

Guard my tongue from speaking evil,
and my lips from speaking deceit.
– after Psalm 34

Commissioned by The Crossing and Conspirare, Turn Ya Head, from the "Titration" choral song cycle, was inspired by the Uvalde school shooting. Using sonic effects such as breathing, sirens, and heartbeats as well as performance cues, this movement speaks powerfully. This is a challenging work for experienced ensembles.

Look Look around
Turn ya head around
Notice the exits
Notice the window
Notice the entrances
Notice the path leading away
Notice the body
Notice the change
Notice sensation
Tingling
Numbness
Pressure
– Shara Nova

All Seems Beautiful to Me was commissioned by The United States Air Force Band, Colonel Don Schofield, Commander and Conductor. It is a tribute to the poet Walt Whitman, and its lyrics are taken from his poem “Song of the Open Road." It explores the cycle of life and death, and the idea that even in death, beauty and growth can be found. 

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of imaginary lines
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute.
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself from the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space.
The East and the West are mine, and the North and the South are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over and over to men and women
You have done such good to me, I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
– Walt Whitman, 1819–1892

The title of this Tuttarana is a conglomeration of two words: the Italian word ‘tutti’, means ‘all’ or ‘everyone’, and the term ‘tarana’ designates a specific Hindustani (North Indian) musical form, whose closest Western counterpart is the ‘scat’ in jazz. Made up of rhythmic syllables, a tarana is the singer’s chance to display agility and dexterity. While a Hindustani tarana is a solo form, I wanted to bring the tarana into an ensemble setting. Tuttarana was commissioned by the Mount Holyoke College Glee Club for their 2014-15 season, and has since been performed across the US, also in arrangements for SATB and brass quintet. 

Vincent van Gogh’s story is often framed by struggle—his lack of recognition, his illness, and the myths that surround his life. Yet, beyond the shadows, Vincent lived with a luminous heart: he gave generously to those in need, loved with intensity, and uncovered beauty in the ordinary. Though he endured what many now believe was temporal lobe epilepsy, his greatest gift was his vision—teaching us to see the world with fresh eyes, alive with light and wonder. Across the ocean, Walt Whitman sang with a similar spirit. Vincent read him with admiration, and one senses in his letters and paintings a kinship with Whitman’s voice. Both were largely self-taught, both were seekers of truth and beauty, both revealed through their art a profound tenderness for people and the natural world. In Whitman’s words, Vincent may have found a companion; in Vincent’s colors, we may glimpse Whitman’s song. In Vincent’s Sky, I explore van Gogh’s emotional world through the lens of three of his paintings, guided by Whitman’s words. I used a musical cryptogram, assigning pitches to letters, to spell words that would inform the musical content. For example, “VINCENT” is spelled with the notes A, B, G, C, E, G, F. This performance is presented as part of a commission corsortium which Bowling Green State University supported.

I. Olive Trees

Shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun!

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,
the earth’s whole amplitude consigned to colors;
pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

Prepare my lengthening shadows,
prepare my starry nights.

II. Wheatfield with Crows

The whole of nature is so indescribably beautiful.
I never tire of the blue sky. Pure luminous color.
This infinite earth, that infinite sky.

My life is under attack at the very root.
I have set to work again, although the brush is nearly falling from my hands.
I have painted three more large canvases — they are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies — and I didn’t have to try very hard in order to express sadness and extreme loneliness.

Il me semble absurde que les hommes veuillent paraitre autre chose que ce qu’ils sont.
(It seems absurd to me that men want to appear something other than what they are.)

Un soleil dans la tete et un orage dans le coeur.
(A sun in the head and a storm in the heart.)

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demonic laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing.

III. The Starry Night

I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven.

Up through the darkness, the ravening clouds shall not long be victorious.

The stars are immortal, they shall shine out again. They will endure.
The vast immortal suns, and long-enduring moons, shall shine again.

And over all, the sky—the sky! far out of reach, breaking out, the eternal stars.

My lengthening shadows…my starry nights. 

Zigzag is a high-energy, rhythmically charged work pulsing with drive and daring. It was commissioned by a consortium of universities led by Michael Butler, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the Big Ten Band Directors Association and The President’s Own Marine Band. The piece was premiered in 2021 by the Ohio State University Band as conducted by Russel C. Mikkelson in the Mershon Auditorium at Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio.

Bolero, Matthew Saunders

Nick Callcut; Che Dixon, cello

Little Risks, Margi Griebling-Haigh

Brian Snow; Calem Nagy, cello

Prayer Mosaic, Adam Roberts

Brian Snow; Calem Nagy; Che Dixon; Nick Callcut, cello

Early That Summer, Julia Wolfe

Graduate String Quartet

Brayan Cabeza, violin

Eric Funk, violin

Natalia Velasquez, viola

Che Dixon, cello

Maso, Cole Reyes

Cole Habekost; Zihua Ma, violin

Thistledown, George Lewis

Zihua Ma, violin

Liam Battle, cello

Francisca de Castanheiro de Freitas, piano

Jacob Koch, percussion

Aus Tiefer Not, Thomas Wells

Justin Johnston, clarinet

Bolero is a short duet for two cellos taking its structure from the Prelude of J.S. Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for solo violoncello and its inspiration from the Bachiannas Brasilieras of Heitor Villa-Lobos. Bach's prelude is, of course, one of the best-known works for cello, and Villa-Lobos' reimaginings of Bach in his personal idiom, often featuring the cello, led me to create this duet. My work bears little intentional resemblance beyond meter and tempo to the most famous piece of the same title, but as a trombonist, Ravel's Bolero is a benchmark work that I use as a mnemonic for setting an andante tempo without recourse to a metronome. Where I have added a bar or two to Bach's structure, I hope that I haven't diminished the architecture of the master.

Little Risks (2015) is a compact adventure for two cellists. The players dart in and out of each other’s musical territory, trading fragments, accompanying and interrupting one another, and moving freely between arco and pizzicato. An energetic opening gives way to more mysterious and deliberately “sneaky” episodes before earlier ideas return in altered form. Shifting meters, sudden dynamic contrasts, harmonics, and changes of register keep both players alert, while the two equal voices alternate between cooperation and friendly competition. The piece gradually retreats, finally ending with a very quiet gesture.

Prayer Mosaic was written as a memorial piece for friend and composer Alastair Putt, who tragically committed suicide on August 12, 2022. Alastair was kind, witty, and wrote colorful and highly crafted music. It was through Alastair that I explored London, as he graciously allowed me to stay at the “Putt Cottage,” his home just outside of London. I had not been in recent touch with Alastair, and was unaware of his struggle with mental illness. I was shocked by this sudden loss. An opportunity to compose for the cello quartet UCelli through Zoe and Jack Johnstone’s Ten Score project provided an avenue to give voice to this shock. Prayer Mosaic is at turns singing, longing, and becomes increasingly agitated through the use of microtonal harmony; it cries out, and finally resigns, saying goodbye, and drifts off into the ether.

While living in Amsterdam for the year [in 1992] I began Early that summer. At the time I was reading a book about US political history. The author would introduce small incidents with phrases like “Early that summer …” Incidents would snowball into major political events or crises. I realized that the music I was writing was exactly like this—that I was creating a state of anticipation and forward build.

Maso takes its title from a diminutive nickname for Tomaso, the Italian form of the name Thomas, which derives from the Aramaic word for “twin.” The duo is conceived as a pair of “twin” violins whose musical interaction is characterized by a sense of playful exchange. Throughout the work, the two parts engage in imitative gestures, echoing and mirroring one another before periodically reuniting in shared material. In this way, Maso explores the spirit of camaraderie and the particular joy that arises from making music collaboratively with close friends.

Written for and premiered by Ensemble Either/Or in 2012, the title of the work is drawn from Greg Bear's novel Eon (1985), in which a team sent to investigate the sudden appearance of an enormous asteroid in Earth’s skies discovers that the asteroid is in fact a human-built starship from their own future, which has now overlapped with their present. Named “Thistledown” by its builders, the asteroid contains various chambers, including a highly evolved city, but the seventh chamber, a human technological construct called “The Way,” appears to stretch beyond the dimensions of the asteroid, leading to parallel universes that render irrelevant the notion of a single, final destination for the starship’s journey. Analogously, my piece could be said to present a number of chambers that listeners may visit and inhabit. Each chamber possesses its own character, while overlapping temporally with others to present a rough and smearing future at ironic odds with the fragility implied by the work’s title, and continually deferring all teleological reckoning.

Aus Tiefer Not is based on a chorale tune of the same name by Martin Luther, set famously by Johann Sebastian Bach, that paraphrases Psalm 130, "Out of the depths, I cry to you, Lord."

Raindrop Army, Gulli Björnsson

Gulli Björnsson, guitar

Lucid Dreaming, Liza Lim

Roberta Michel, flute

BIG Talk, Shelley Washington

Garrett Evans; Jake Loitz, baritone saxophone

Sky Event, Hao Zhen

Liam Battle, cello

Shadowgraph 5, George Lewis

Cole Habekost, violin

Gloria Pan, flute

Martha Hudson, oboe

Sam Valancy, soprano saxophone

Jake Loitz, alto saxophone

Jared Beu, piano

Chris Harris, percussion

Will Hermanowski, electronics

Raindrop Army was originally composed for guitar orchestra and electronics. The piece is rooted in an experience I had during a recording session in Iceland. I was working in a cabin when it began to rain, so I took a break, lay down, and watched the weather shifting outside. I saw the clouds move in over the lake and valley; the rain began softly, the cloud cover thickened, and the rainfall gradually built into a heavy downpour before slowly dissipating. Musically, the piece unfolds through repeated arpeggiated patterns governed by a counter that cues when each part should move to the next idea, attempting to mirror the before mentioned journey. I focused a lot on harmonic ranges and the density of the composite texture, and while each individual part moves at its own natural pace, almost oblivious to the others, the counter functions as a precise conductor, guiding everyone to shift patterns at the specific moments, creating an underlying order within the chaos. There was something in the sound of many classical guitars together, layers of plucked attacks and overlapping resonances, that felt like an army of raindrops crashing towards earth.

Liza Lim’s work lucid dreaming is a companion piece to her bioluminescence and uses Salvatore Sciarrino’s trill techniques to create a flickering, shimmering line, almost a feeling of the instrument playing the performer. Lim’s employs both nested repeats and pockets, or adding musical material “pockets” ad lib. into the through line of the piece. In integrating these types of notation, "the musician may experience a kind of dissociation from a unitary flow of time/reality." dream state; recursive structures; dissociation from a unitary flow of time/reality.

BIG Talk was written for two baritone saxophones as a personal response to the repulsive prevalence of rape culture that can be observed in catcalling and sexual harassment that female-identifying persons experience and endure on a daily basis. Many women experience these situations enough to psychologically alter their self-perception and their perception of others in a long-lasting negative way: fear, anger, depression- emotions that seep deeper into the self and permeate deeper into society. This unrelenting, churning duo is written to be somewhat of an endurance piece that incorporates all aspects of the body- the muscular ability to play the piece, the wind to power the horn, the focus to see it through... I carefully considered the everyday endurance of a constant barrage of physical and verbal abuse, how we as women bear the brunt of the cultural burden, how we are expected to silently maintain physical and emotional poise to align with many "social graces" and how sick of it I am. How sick of it we are. The piece, the poetry, and the visual components are all linked to send a very clear and targeted message: stop perpetuating rape culture by any and every means necessary.

Shadowgraph, 5 is the last in a series of works for "creative orchestra" that I made between 1975 and 1977. There is no centralized score or conductor, and instrumentation is relatively open. Any number or combination of performers, from solo to full orchestra, can realize the piece's task instructions, choosing them as needed. The work is open to performers from any musical tradition, including those that do not regularly include improvisative modes of performance. Extensive prior experience with improvisation, while welcome, does not necessarily confer an advantage. The duration of the piece is determined by real-time negotiation and consensus. The success of a given performance of this work will be less a question of individual freedom than of the assumption of personal responsibility for the sonic environment. When performed well,Shadowgraph, 5 becomes a meditative evocation of weather. The work was composed for the AACM Big Band.

Musical Installation with the BGSU Contemporary Improvisation Ensemble

Aidan Plank, Director

Kobacker Lobby, 7 PM

Resilience, Szu-An Chen

Jared Beu, conductor

Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, Samuel Adler

i. Slowly and Declamatory

ii. Slowly

iii. Fast and very rhythmic

Andrew Pelletier, french horn

Pretty, Julia Wolfe

Bowling Green Philharmonia

Emily Freeman-Brown, conductor

The Contemporary Improvisation Ensemble, under the direction of Aidan Plank, will perform free improvisations exploring  sound and space, interaction, extended techniques, storytelling, and humor. Students in the ensemble span multiple areas of the BGSU College of Musical Arts, notably composition, music performance, and jazz. 

Resilience is the central concept of this piece— the spirit of always rising again and continuing to strive, no matter what challenges we may encounter. The inspiration came from two documentaries I watched this summer about my home country, Taiwan. The first one, A Chip Odyssey, describes the challenging path taken by Taiwan's semiconductor industry from beginnings to its current standing as an important player in the world of technology; and the second, Invisible Nation depicts Taiwan's history and geopolitical difficulties while also portraying Taiwan's struggle for international recognition and democratic defense against China's threats. Building an industry or achieving international recognition is never easy. These two documentaries showed me how incredibly resilient previous generations were. Even when faced with obstacles, doubt, uncertainty, or even external impediments, they persisted, overcame adversity, and continued to move forward—efforts that continue to this day. Their spirit greatly touched and inspired me, and this piece is both a tribute to them and a reminder to keep striving for what I believe. To convey the idea of resilience, I mainly use dense clusters, exaggerated continuous crescendos and diminuendos, and rhythmic pulses that create an unending momentum. At times, this flow is interrupted, but the original material soon returns, symbolizing recovery and reconstruction after disruption. I dedicate it to my dearest home, Taiwan, with pride and gratitude.

The Concerto for Horn and Orchestra was written in 1994-1995 commissioned by the Houston TX Symphony Orchestra for their principal horn William VerMeulen. It is in three movements. The first begins with a short slow introduction and is followed by a vigorous fast movement exploring the full range of possibilities of the horn and its artist There is a constant interplay between the soloist and the orchestra the two playing off one another. The second movement features the 'Shofar Calls' heard on the High Holidays in the Synagogue which is one of the most ancient musical examples we have. This is also performed against a duet between the Piccolo and the English horn from opposite sides of the stage.. I have always loved the four Horn Concerti by Mozart'. The last movement of each of them is quite similar one to the other., The themes are not quite the same but they introduce a movement of joy and brightness . I have tried to catch that spirit in my final movement. Mozart's last movements are all in 6/8 time while mine alternates between 6/8 and 5/8 and begins with the timpani paving the way and setting the joyous mood for the entire movement, The whole piece is about 25 minutes in length.

The word “pretty” has had a complicated relationship to women. It implies an attractiveness without any rough edges, without strength or power. And it has served as a measure of worth in strange, limited, and destructive ways. It has a less sweet origin from the old English – “cunning, crafty, clever.” As words evolve, it morphed to a much softer sentiment. My Pretty is a raucous celebration – embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll.