September 18, 2006

2006-07 Season

Earplay:22 MusingMonday, September 18, 2006, 7:00 PM

Earplay 22: Exploring

Monday, March 12, 2007

James H. Carr

Christopher Wendell Jones

György Ligeti

Krzysztof Penderecki

Kurt Rohde

Earplay 22: Visioning

Monday, May 21, 2007

as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival

Tickets:Free (Donations appreciated)

SPECIAL PRODUCTION:

Libby Larsen, Every Man Jack (2006)World Premiere

Sonoma City OperaNovember 11, 12, 15, 18 & 19, 2006

www.sonomaopera.org

Welcome to an Earplay performance.elcome to an Earplay performance.elcome to an Earplay Our mission is to nuture new chamber music --composition, performance, and audience--all vital components. Each concert features the renowned members of the Earplay ensemble performing as soloists and ensemble artists, along with special guests. Over twenty-one years, Earplay has made an enormous contribution to the bay area music community. Th e Earplayensemble has performed hundreds of works by more than two hundred composers. Earplay has commissioned an average of two hundred composers. Earplay has commissioned an average of two hundred composers. Earplaynew works per season, and has presented more than one hundred world premieres.

Th is year the concerts are free to encourage more people to listen to new music. We appreciate your donations to make this possible. We look forward to meeting you and hearing your responses..

Richard AldagPresident, Board of Directors

Earplay Board of Directors

Richard Aldag, presidentStephen Ness, secretaryDan Scharlin, treasurer

Terrie Baune, musician representativeMary ChunChristopher Wendell JonesMay Luke

Earplay Staff

Aislinn Scofi eldexecutive directorScott Koué technical director/stage managerTerrie Baunescheduling coordinatorBill Beckerman

bookkeeping services

Special Thanks To:

Earplay Donald Aird Memorial Composers Competition

Downloadable application at:www.earplay.org/competitions

Dennis Wadlington, Sherman-ClaySan Francisco Girls ChorusJennifer Burke, Industry

Melissa ApuyaJeff ByersChris FrohScott Koué

Jensine MartinezSteve Ness

Kevin Neuhoff Nicole Rodriguez-

Karen RosenakRegina Sneed

Deadline: October 28, 2006

EARPLAY 22: Musing

Tod Brody, fl utes Terrie Baune, violinBrody, fl utes Terrie Baune, violinBrody Peter Josheff, clarinets Ellen Ruth Rose, viola Karen Rosenak, piano Thalia Moore, cello

Guest Artists

Jeremy Galyon, bass-baritone Chris Froh, percussionKevin Neuhoff, percussion

Featured SoloistTerrie Baune

Mary Chun, conductor

Monday Evening, September 18,, 2006, at 700 p.m.

The Herbst Theatre

Earplay is funded in part by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Amphion Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for New Music, the Bernard Osher Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Ross McKee Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the San Francisco Grants for the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Fund, and Generous Donors.

SAN FRANCISCO WAR MEMORIAL AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTERHERBST THEATRE

Owned and operated by the City and County of San Franciscothrough the Board of Trustees of the War Memorial of San Francisco

Th e Honorable Gavin Newsom, Mayor

TRUSTEES

Wilkes Bashford, President

Th omas E. Horn, Vice PresidentNancy H. Bechtle

Bella FarrowMrs. Walter A. Haas, Jr.

Claude M. Jarman, Jr.Chrysanthy Leones

Mrs. George R. MosconePaul F. Pelosi

Paul E. ReynoldsCharlotte Mailliard Shultz

Eleni Takopoulos-Kounalakis

Elizabeth Murray, Managing DirectorGregory P. Ridenour, Assistant Managing Director

Vincent Persichetti Infanta Marina (1960)Ellen Ruth Rose and Karen Rosenak

Ronald Caltabiano Lines from Poetry (1992) Terrie Baune

Peter Josheff House and Garden Tales (World Premiere, 2005, revised 2006)

Jeremy Galyon, Tod Brody, Ellen Ruth Rose, Thalia Moore, and Karen Rosenak

Intermission

Allen Shearer Bagatelles (2006) (World Premiere)

Tod Brody and Peter Josheff

Chen Yi YangKo West Coast Premiere (2000, arranged 2004)

Terrie Baune, Chris Froh, and

Kevin Neuhoff

Libby Larsen Slang (1994) West Coast Premiere

Peter Josheff, Terrie Baune, and

Karen Rosenak

Program

AnonymousJohn Adams & Deborah O’GradyCarol & Brooke AirdLinda AllenAllen AndersonCaroline ArmstrongAnn BasartRoss BauerWilliam Beck & Yu-Hui ChangWilliam BeckermanJohn BellDiane & Stephen BienemanFrances L. BennionHerb BielawaSeth Brenzel & Malcolm GainesKitty BrodyMrs. William H. V. BrookeElva BuckhalterAnn CallawayHenry CaltabianoJohn & Mary CarisWilliam B. CarlinJames & April CarlsonJames CarrChen Yi & Long ZhouJohn ChowningMary ChunRaymond & Mary ChunWayne ChunAlice Berg CroninLori DobbinsMargaret DorfmanBarbara & Sanford DornbuschRichard & Anna Carol DudleyPatti Noel DueterEdwin & Katherine DuggerJeff L. DunnGeorge EdwardsRichard Felciano

Richard FestingerStephanie & Donald FriedmanPablo FurmanJane GalanteGuillermo GalindoStacy GarropKonstantin Gavrilov and H. CrossDaniel GodfreyStuart GoldMargot GoldingViolet & Douglas GongElinor HagedornMark Haiman & Ellen Ruth RoseAlice HannahStephen J. HarrisonValerie & Richard HerrDavid HollanderMartha HorstAndrew W. ImbrieKenneth JohnsonChristopher Wendell JonesLeslie Ann JonesYoshi KakudoLouis KarchinRenu Karir & Ian AtlasHi Kyung Kim & John SackettRuth KnierWilliam KraftArthur KreigerAnn KroeberAntoinette Kuhry & Thomas A.

HaeuserJules LangertRichard & Patricia Taylor LeeAmy Miller LevineUrsula & Dwight MamlockDrs. Michael & Jane MarmorPaul & Ellen McKaskleNancy & Howard Mel

Amelie C. Mel De FontenayAmy & Jeff MillerMary MontellaJohn Mugge & Ronald CaltabianoBari & Stephen NessFlorence Neuhoff Professor Anthony NewcombSamuel Nichols & Laurie San MartinWendy NilesRoger NixonNora NordenLarry OchsPablo OrtizKurt PatznerDavid PereiraWayne PetersonAndrew Rindfl eischJody RockmakerKurt RohdeDavid RakowskiMartin RokeachJerome RosenKaren RosenakDan ScharlinJanice SchopferWilliam SchottstaedtAllen ShearerSteven D. SmithMegan SolomonJeff rey StadelmanKurt StallmannJohn SwackhamerDavid TanenbaumJohn ThowCarla WilsonJohn & Linda WilsonDaniel WeymouthMark WingesDan & Rachel Winheld

Donors

Eliane AberdamSarah AderholdtThomas AdèsDonald AirdRichard AldagAlexis AlrichAllen AndersonRobert BasartRoss BauerBruce Christian BennettArthur BergerJonathan BergerLuciano BerioChristophe BertrandHerb BielawaSusan BlausteinStephen BlumbergLinda BouchardPierre BoulezMartin BoykanCarolyn BremerBenjamin BrittenAnn CallawayRonald CaltabianoEdmund CampionJames CarrElliott CarterChris ChafeYu-Hui ChangEric ChasalowYi ChenMiguel ChuaguiTimothy Vincent ClarkSteven ClarkAaron CoplandEleanor CoryCindy CoxRuth Crawford SeegerGeorge CrumbBeth CusterMarc-Andre DalbavieGreg D’AlessioLuigi DallapiccolaJames DashowMario DavidovskyAdriana Verdié de Vas

RomeroTamar DiesendruckLori DobbinsFranco DonatoniKui DongJérome DorivalJacob DruckmanEdwin DuggerJoel DurandDavid DzubayJason EckardtGeorge EdwardsLeo Eylar

Fredrik FahlmanRichard FelcianoJohn FelderMorton FeldmanRichard FestingerIrving FineTom FlahertyAndrew FrankDavid FroomPablo FurmanGuillermo GalindoMichael GandolfiGuy GarnettStacy GarropJohn GibsonJames GiroudonvGlenn GlasowDaniel GodfreyAlexander GoehrPerry GoldsteinMichelle GreenMark GreyStephen Michael GrycSusan HardingLou HarrisonEllen Ruth HarrisonStephen HartkeHugh HartwellJonathan HarveyHans Werner HenzeMartin HermanJennifer HigdonVincent Chee-yung HoMartha Callison HorstJoan HuangLee HylaIgor IachimciucVictor IaleggioShintaro ImaiAndrew ImbrieCharles IvesEdward JacobsStephen JaffeDavid JaffePing JinBetsy JolasPeter JosheffLouis KarchinArthur KeigerHi-Kyung KimEarl KimJerome KitzkeBarbara KolbAnthony KorfPaul KozelWilliam KraftMeyer KupfermanGyorgy KurtagBun-ching Lam

David LangMassimo LauricellaRichard LavendaMario LavistaAnne LeBaronYinam LeefFred LerdahlPeter ScottLewisJorge LidermanPeter LiebersonGyörgy LigetiLiza LimScott LindrothDavid LiptakZhou LongJing Jing LuoWitold LutoslawskiDrake MabryJohn MacDonaldSteven MackeyKatherine MalyiUrsula MamlockDonald MartinoDavid MeckstrothMarjorie MerrymanOlivier MessiaenDonal MichalskyDarius MilhaudEric MoePaul MoravecGustavo MorettoTristan MurailThea MusgraveHyo-Shin NaWilliam NeilOlga NeuwirthRoger NixonJoao Pedro OliveiraHenry OnderdonkPablo OrtizGabriela OrtizJose Antonio OrtsDavid PereiraJeffrey PerryWayne PetersonAlexander PostLaurie RadfordDavid RakowskiShulamit RanBernard RandsMaurice RavelBelinda ReynoldsSteve RicksAndrew RindfleischJody RockmakerKurt RohdeMathew RosenblumMorris RosenzweigChris Roze

Virginia SamuelLaurie San MartinCarlos Sanchez-GutiérrezMarc SatterwhiteEric SawyerRalph ShapeyDavid SchiffDavid SchoberPhilippe SchoellerArnold SchoenbergRoger SessionsAllen ShearerSheila SilverReynold SimpsonPaul SiskindRonald Bruce SmithDavid SoleyHarvey SollbergerClaudio SpiesJeff StadelmanKurt StallmanDorrance StalveyEitan SteinbergFrank StemperMark StickmanIgor StravinskyKotoka SuzukiToru TakemitsuBruce TaubJohn ThowLeilei TianUshio TorikaiJoan TowerChristopher TrapaniBertram TuretzkyJason UechiDavid VayoCurt VeenemanCaspar Johannes WalterXi-Lin WangAnton von WebernDaniel WeymouthScott WheelerFrances WhiteBeth WiemannOlly WilsonMark WingesWalter WinslowStefan WolpeCharles WuorinenIannis XenakisPagh-Paan YounghiIsang YunEric ZivianRicardo Zohn-MuldoonEllen Taafe Zwilich

Earplay Composers: Twenty-Two Years Notes on the Program

Infanta MarinaThis piece by Persichetti, an American, is for viola and piano and is based on a literary source, a Wallace Stevens poem titled “Infanta Marina.” The dreamlike text depicts a young woman emerging from the sea into a world where “Her terrace was the sand / And the palms and the twilight.” In life, an infanta was the daughter of a Spanish or Portuguese monarch.

Infanta Marina by Wallace Stevens

Her terrace was the sand

And the palms and the twilight.

She made of the motions of her wrist

The grandiose gestures

Of her thought.

The rumpling of the plumes

Of this creature of the evening

Came to be sleights of sails

Over the sea.

And thus she roamed

In the roamings of her fan,

Partaking of the sea,

And of the evening,

As they fl owed around

And uttered their subsiding sound.

Online text © 1998-2006 Poetry X, All rights reserved. From Harmonium, 1923

American composer Vincent Persichetti (1915-87) was, along with William Schuman and Walter Piston, one of the foremost representatives of

what has become known, somewhat inappropriately, as the American academic school of composition. Born in Philadelphia during the First World War, Persichetti began studying music at the age of five, taking lessons in piano, organ, and, later, theory and composition. Persichetti entered Combs College of Music, studying with composer Russel King Miller while still attending public school, and in 1935 he took a BM in composition from Combs and was appointed Head of Music Theory at Combs immediately after graduating.

Persichetti accepted an invitation to take over as head of theory and composition at the Philadelphia Conservatory in 1941, and in 1947 he joined the composition faculty of the Juilliard School. Three Guggenheim Fellowships, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Brandeis University Creative Award, the first ever Kennedy Center Friedham Award, and the Juilliard Publication award are just some of his more noteworthy honors.

Persichetti’s compositional language is a panorama of twentieth century techniques; he moves between tonality, atonality, polytonality and modality with fluency. In addition to his ceaseless activities as a composer and educator, Persichetti found the time to write an important textbook on modern compositional practice, Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice, and a 1954 biography of composer William Schuman.

RONALD CALTABIANO, Lines from Poetry (1992) violin solo

Lines from Poetry was written in 1992 for my good friend, Mitchell Stern. Each of the nine movements is based on personal impressions of one or two brief poetic statements, which are shown below. The relationship of the music to the poetry is more impressionistic than programmatic.

It was my desire to compose a work that would highlight both the virtuosic and lyrical aspects of the violin. These elements are often juxtaposed between movements (as between the first and second), and sometimes within one movement (as in the third). To provide unity, all the movements share an ever-varying cantus firmus, as well as motivic elements. Moreover, movements are attacca except for two short pauses.

--- R.C.

I. Moderato

“The air broke into a mist with bells”

(Robert Browning: The Patriot)

II.Allegro fl essibile

“An avalanche of stars, last night the Leonids

fi red every farm with ancient light”

(Jim Barnes: Last Night in La Plata)

III. Andante

C.P. Cavafy: Walls

[Copyright restrictions]

IV. Andante moderato

“The sobbing of the bells”

(Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass)

-pause-

V.Adagio molto

(Sandro Penna: La veneta piazzetta)

[Copyright restrictions]

VI.Andante moderato

(E. E. Cummings: the fi rst of all my dreams was of)

[Copyright restrictions]

-pause-

VII.Adagio molto: Andante

(W. H. Auden: Aubade)

[Copyright restrictions]

VIII.Presto

(John Ashbery: Heibun 4)

[Copyright restrictions]

Prestissimo

(Margaret Atwood: The Red Shirt)

[Copyright restrictions]

IX.Andante

“The breezy call of incense breathing Morn”

(Thomas Gray: Elegy in a Country Churchyard)

Adagio

“Now fades the glimmering landscape on the night”

(Thomas Gray: Elegy in a Country Churchyard)

Mission:

earplay nurtures new chamber music. EARPLAY links audiences, performers, and composers through concerts, commissions, and recordings of the fi nest music of our time.

Founded in 1985 by a consortium of composers and musicians, EARPLAY is dedicated to the performance of new chamber music offering audiences a unique opportunity to hear eloquent, vivid performances of some of today’s fi nest chamber music. Earplay concerts feature the Earplayers, a group of seven artists who, as a group, have developed a lyrical and ferocious style. EARPLAY has performed over 400 works in its 22-year history including 107 world premieres and 47 new works commissioned by the ensemble. The 2006-07 season reinforces EARPLAY’s unwavering track record of presenting exceptional music in the 21st century.

Ronald Caltabiano’s(b.1959) music has been hailed as having achieved “a remarkable synthesis of modernism and

romanticism, of violence and lyricism, of integrity and accessibility.”

He first came to international attentionin the early 1980s with his String Quartet No. 1, premiered in Great Britain by the Arditti Quartet and in the United States by the Juilliard Quartet, and a series of prominent orchestral commissions soon followed. Works written for the San Francisco Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony exhibit kaleidoscopic colors and provocative designs. Performances by international orchestras include those of the BBC Symphony, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Major awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation were anticipated by a number of awards from BMI and ASCAP as well as two Bearns Prizes. Since working as assistant to Aaron Copland during the last five years of that composer’s life, Caltabiano has served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and the Peabody Conservatory. He currently lives in San Francisco.

Caltabiano is a BM/MM/DMA graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Elliott Carter and Vincent Persichetti. In addition, he has studied composition with Peter Maxwell Davies and conducting with Harold Farberman and GennadiRozdesvensky.

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PETER JOSHEFF , House and Garden Tales(2005) revised 2006, for voice, fl ute, viola, cello, and piano

House and Garden Tales, Six Poems by Jaime Robles (2005, 2006)was premiered by Allen Shearer at last year’s Harvest of Song. It is a nine-minute set of miniatures exploring the comings and goings of the animals in the Robles household. The poems are domestic portraits of her chickens, birds and cats, the territory in which they roam and the sounds they make as they go about their daily business. It was originally written for baritone, flute (piccolo), harp, viola and double bass. The in-a-nutshell qualities of House and Garden Tales make it a kind of preamble, a final fling at concision before plunging into the wild passions of the Inferno.

The composer would like to thank Mary Chun and Ellen Ruth Rose for initiating the process that has made this performance possible, and to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Jaime, Allen and Eliza O’Malley to all of whom this work is dedicated. --P.J.dedicated. --P.J.dedicated. --

HOUSE AND GARDEN TALES, SIX POEMS BY JAIME ROBLESI. Haiku

Flapping up down fl utter, cornered in the eye—a small brown bird

II. Aversion

Yow! grinned cat.

That’s the biggest wingy thing I’ve ever seen.

Chicken raises an open beak from the gritty dirt,

turns her feathery gaze toward cat, and cat,

seeing big-toothed dinosaurs in the history

Scott Koué (technical director/stage manager) is a sound recordist, editor and designer with thirty years of experience in film, advertising and the theater. His work can be heard in over thirty films including The Legend of Drunken Master (starring Jackie Chan) and the award-winning Titanic. His credits on these and other projects include sound supervisor, sound editor, creator of specialized sound effects and Foley recordist. Industry awards include the SILVER HUGO, New York Festival, the London International Advertising Award and Golden Reel (Titanic, Best Sound). He also collaborated with photographer David Waldorf in Experience & Exchange: Documentary as the Art of Collaboration, Kent State University. Scott’s formal training includes Theatrical Design at U.C. Davis.

Aislinn Scofield (executive director) has extensive experience with a wide range of Asian performing arts from her sixteen years at the Asian Art Museum (final position was Manager of Cultural Programs). She has received awards for her work including The Bernard Osher Cultural Award, a special Izzy Award (Isadora Duncan), travel awards from the Korea Foundation, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Formal studies include a B.A. in Theater, Washington State University, a B.A. in Studio Art (Photography and Textiles), and an MA. Interdisciplinary Art, San Francisco State University.

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Sonoma City Opera presents a wonderfully theatrical exploration of Sonoma’s most famous historical figure and literary icon, Jack London, in a provocative, newly commissioned opera, Every Man Jack. Inspired by London’s groundbreaking biographical work, John Barleycorn, the opera tells the compelling story, through a Vaudeville-like format, of this adventurer, writer, and charismatic genius’s lifelong struggle with alcohol.

Every Man JackA Jack London Opera

by composer Libby Larsen

and librettist Philip Littell

Mary Chun, Music Director

Joseph Graves, Stage Director

Earplay, Orchestra

&

Rod Gilfry, as Jack London

Jennifer Lane, as Charmian London

John Duykers, as Older Man

Susan Narucki, as Older Woman

Ilana Davidson, as Young Girl

Brad Bradshaw, as Young Boy

Performances:

November 11, 12, 15, 18 , 19, 2006

Person Theatre, Sonoma State University

Presented in association with the

Green Music Festival

www.sonomacityopera.org

of her

slanted

yellow eye,

fl ees.

III. Desire

Curved in the window of emerging day,

cat attends

to the conversation of birds.

Kekk ka ka kkkkek, whispers cat,

dreaming of soaring

into the pinioned sky

IV. Flourish

4 a.m. Cat enters,

promenades the bedroom

—puhrrrrrruh puhrrrrruh puhrrrrrruh—

and waves his hindquarters out the sliding glass door

V. Fervor

Chicken runs as fast as she can:

wing tips tucked, feathered trousers, lacy fringed,

bobbling. Did she hear the back door open?

Is the cat food out? Cat on the kitchen counter complains, “Mine,

that food is mine.” Chicken—ping, ping—keeps—ping, ping—eating—ping, ping—

till—ping, ping—she’s—ping, ping—thrown out. Whoosh.

Flap fl ap.

VI. Absence

Under the juniper bushes

gnarled wood

Under the junipers

between ancient branches and feathery foliage—

junipers dark, pungent, nested warp of branch, weft of scaly leaves—

Under feathery dark junipers,

a clutch of green eggs, one broken,

nestled sticky in a mulch of matted leaves, woody sediment

Poems Copyright © 2004 by Jaime Robles. Used with permissionPoems Copyright © 2004 by Jaime Robles. Used with permissionPoems Copyright © 2004 by Jaime Robles.

PETER JOSHEFF [b. 1954] is a founding member of Earplay. Over the past twenty years he has established himself as a leading performer and advocate of contemporary music.

His most recent compositions grow out of a decade of collaboration with Bay Area poet and book artist Jaime Robles. What started as bass clarinet improvisations in response to her readings has expanded to song-cycle and chamber opera. The larger scope of their recent work was inspired by Harvest of Song, an annual autumn concert at the Berkeley Art Center, organized by Josheff, Robles and composer/baritone Allen Shearer. A previous work, Diary (2002), seven songs for soprano, baritone, alto flute, bass clarinet, guitar and double bass, premiered at Harvest of Song. It received a second performance at an American Composers Forum Salon and was later staged by Goat Hall Productions

Guest Artists

Jeremy Galyon, (bass-baritone), a 2006 SF Opera Adler Fellow, was seen this past summer as Nick Shadow in the Merola Opera Program production of The Rake’s Progress. After spending four years as a Resident Artist with Binghamton’s Tri-Cities Opera he recently returned there to perform the role of Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. Other roles with Tri-Cities Opera include Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro, Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Colline in La Bohème and Dulcamara in The Elixir of Love. He has been a Young Artist with the Glimmerglass Opera where he performed the roles of Larkens in The Girl of the Golden West and Masetto in Don Giovanni. Other engagements include Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Chicago Opera Theatre and 2nd Armored Man in The Magic Flute with Florida Grand Opera. His awards include Regional Finalist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and an Opera Index Encouragement Award.

Chris Froh (per-cussion) is a San Francisco freelance p e r c u s s i o n i s t specializing in new music written for solo and chamber

settings. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and has also studied at the Eastman School of Music and the Toho Gakuen Conservatory of Music,

where he was a special audit student of marimbist Keiko Abe. He is a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble, the new-music improvisation group sfSound, and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. He has also performed with Earplay, Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, Santa Cruz New Music Works, and at the Other Minds, Berkeley EdgeFest, Festival Nuovi Spazi Musicali, and Pacific Rim Music Festivals.

Kevin Neuhoff (per-cussion) is a soloist and new-music chamber mu-sician who has performed with the Cabrillo Festival, the Oakland Ballet, Left

Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Other Minds Festival, New Century Chamber Orchestra, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. He holds the post of principal timpanist with the International Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra, the Western Opera Orchestra, the Berkeley Symphony, and the Fremont Symphony, and is principal percussionist with the Marin Symphony. Neuhoff is frequently invited to play with the San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa, and Sacramento Symphonies and can be heard on recordings made on the Harmonia Mundi, Triloka, New Albion, Wide Hive, and Nonesuch labels.

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in San Francisco. Memento (2001), Diary and 3 Hands (2003) are all attempts, in part, to think about the issues of writing for the stage, and have led to Josheff and Robles’ current chamber opera project, Inferno. The first completed music from that work, Francesca’s Complaint (2006), will premiere at the sixth annual Harvest of Song, October 28 and 29 at the Berkeley Art Center. He is also working on a commission from the Empyrean Ensemble to be premiered in April 2007. Josheff has received grants from the American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer, and has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony. He did graduate work in composition at the University of California, Berkeley, studying with Olly Wilson, Andrew Imbrie and Edwin Dugger.

ALLEN SHEARER, Bagatelles (2006) for flute and clarinet, World Premiere

These seven duos for flute and clarinet are quite brief. They range from a minute to a minute and a half each. I began them as compositional studies in order to take stock of my own musical language, and also to practice some basic techniques such as inversion without having to struggle with a large form. Though there is no real thematic link between the movements, some prominent element of each connects with the beginning of the next. My instrumental music tends to be descriptive, but the Bagatelles are an exception. Some of them do chirp, but that seems to be my way with these instruments. I did not intend to evoke any pastoral associations.

My thanks to Tod Brody and Peter Josheff, for whom the piece was written. --A.S.

Allen Shearer has received many awards in music, including the Aaron Copland Award, the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship, an Alfred Hertz Fellowship,

residencies at the MacDowell Colony, several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, including one for the creation of his opera The Goddess, and grants from Meet The Composer. His choral works have been performed in nearly every state of the U.S. as well as in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and South Africa. Recent premieres include Memory Beams for violin and guitar, Outbound Passenger for mixed chamber group, Hymn to Gaia for men’s voices and instruments, and Secrets for mezzo soprano, flute, cello and piano. Also a baritone, he frequently performs vocal music old and new, including his own. He is artistic codirector of the San Francisco new music presenter Composers, Inc. He holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg, and teaches at California State University, East Bay and at the University of California at Berkeley.

CHEN YI , YangKo (2000), arranged 2004 for violin and two percussion

YangKo, originating in northern China, is a major folk dance form in mass performance popularized in the country. In a YangKo performance, people always play rhythmic patterns on the drums hung around their waists while singing and dancing. In my piece YangKo, I have imagined a warm scene of YangKo dancing in the distance. The solo violin plays a sweet and gracious melody line imitating

Theater of Saint Louis, Opera Idaho, the Texas Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Lyric Opera, Pacifi c Repertory Opera, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera and San Francisco Opera. In Fall 2006 she premieres Every Man Jack, a new chamber opera based on the life of writer Jack London, written by composer Libby Larsen and librettist Philip Littell, and commissioned by the Sonoma City Opera.

Thalia Moore (cello), attended the Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her bachelor’s and mas-

ter’s degrees in 1979 and 1980. Since 1982, Ms. Moore has been Associate Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and in 1989 joined the cello section of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.

Peter Josheff (clar-net) is active both as a composer and a performer. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is a founding member of Earplay, a member of

the Paul Dresher Ensemble,the Empyrean Ensemble, and the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players. He has performed with most of the new-music ensembles in the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Composers Inc.

Ellen Ruth Rose (viola) relocated to the Bay Area in 1998 after having spent several years in Cologne, Germany, where she first became immersed in contemporary music.

As a member of the experimental ensembles Musik Fabrik and Thürmchen Ensemble, and as a frequent guest with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, she toured throughout Europe, premiering and recording countless works. She has performed as soloist with the West German Radio Chorus and appeared at the Cologne Triennial, Berlin Biennial, Salzburg Zeitfluss, Brussels Ars Nova, Venice Biennial, and Budapest Autumn festivals. Ms. Rose holds degrees in viola performance from The Juilliard School and the Northwest German Music Academy; and a degree in English and American history and literature from Harvard University.

Karen Rosenak (piano) is an “almost native” of the Bay Area. She was founding member/pianist of Bay Area new-music groups Earplay and the Empyrean Ensemble,

and she currently performs with those groups. She studied modern piano withCarlo Bussotti and Nathan Schwartz, and credits Margaret Fabrizio with introducing her to the fortepiano during her graduate work in early music at Stanford University. She has found the balance between old and new music, and between old and new pianos, to be an ongoing, most satisfying pursuit. Since 1990, she has been on the faculty at UC Berkeley, where she teaches musicianship and contemporary chamber music.

a beautiful girl’s singing. Supported by the sound produced two percussionists, who play instruments and recite percussive sounds, with the evergoing pulse, the music recalls a warm scene of the dance parade in the background. Under request of Network for New Music ensemble, the piece is adapted from the second movement of my Chinese Folk Dance Suite for violin and orchestra, and premiered by NNM in Philadelphia on March 8 and 9, 2005. – C.Y.

CHEN YI (b.1953) is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-

Kansas City, and the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award (01-04) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dr. Chen Yi has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. Chen Yi has received bachelor and master degrees in music composition from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers have included Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and Alexander Goehr. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer, & Aptos Creative Arts Center supported by Meet The Composer, and as a member of the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Fellowships have been received from Guggenheim Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and National Endowment for the Arts in the United States. Honors include a first prize from the Chinese National Composition Competition, the Lili Boulanger Award, the Elise Stoeger Award from Chamber

Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund, an Honorary Doctorate from Lawrence University. Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded on various labels.

LIBBY LARSEN, Slang (1990), for violin, clarinet, and piano, West Coast Premiere

Slang (1990) is a one-movement work in three sections. Its title references a culture’s evolution of its own lexicon of sound-bytes to express itself to itself in short hand. I’m fascinated by this idea. Considering the vast array of musical languages which are available to us on a daily basis, I set about to compose SLANG. An abstracted country fiddle gesture provides a structure in which jazz and boogie slang combine twentieth century ‘new music’ slang, rounded off by a coda cadenza build on a rock and roll strumming pattern. SLANG asks the performers to freely change performance styles as the musical language dictates. This piece was commissioned by the Verdehr Trio, 1990. --- L.L.

LIBBY LARSEN (b. 1950) has created a catalogue of over 200 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music

to massive orchestral and choral scores. Libby Larsen has received numerous awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy as producer of the CD: The Art of Arlene Augér, an acclaimed recording that features Larsen’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her opera Frankenstein, The

Modern Prometheus was selected as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990 by USA Today. The first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, she has held residencies with the California Institute of the Arts, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, the Philadelphia School of the Arts, the Cincinnati Conservatory, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and the Colorado Symphony.

Holder of the 2003-2004 Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education at the Library of Congress and recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Libby Larsen is a vigorous, articulate champion of the music and musicians of our time. In 1973, she co-founded (with Stephen Paulus) the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, which has been an invaluable advocate for composers in a difficult, transitional time for American arts.

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Performers

Terrie Baune(violin), in addition to being a member of Earplay, is associate concertmaster of the Oakland-East Bay Symphony and a member of the -

Empyrean Ensemble. Her professional

credits include concertmaster positionswith the Women’s Philharmonic, Fresno Philharmonic, Santa Cruz County Symphony, and Rohnert Park Symphony. A member of the National Symphony Orchestra for four years, she also spent two years as a member of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra of New Zealand, where she toured and recorded for Radio New Zealand with the Gabrielli Trio and performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Tod Brody (flute) has been in the forefront of contemporary music activity in northern California through his performances and recordings with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Earplay,

and the Empyrean Ensemble. He maintains an active freelance career, teaches at the University of California, Davis, and directs the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Composers Forum.

Mary Chun (conduc-tor) has premiered the works of many composers, including John Adams’ earth-quake romance I Was Looking at the Ceilingand Then I Saw the Sky, and Then I Saw the Sky, and Then I

which she conducted in Paris, Hamburg, and Montreal. In demand as a collaborator for new lyric work and traditional operatic repertoire, she has worked with opera companies in Europe and the U.S. such as Opera de Lyon, La Monnaie, Kosice State Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Opera