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99-cent Concert Series

99-cent concert, October 1996

New Trios & Quartets: Six World Premieres by Madison Chapter composers Royce Dembo, Kevin Ernste, Joseph Koykkar, Kirk Miller, Robin Park-Doob, and Tom Patterson.

8:00 p.m. October 10 & 11, 1996, Madison Civic Center Spotlight Room, 211 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin.

This project is funded in part by a grant from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, with additional support from the Madison Community Foundation. Further funding provided by the Madison Civic Center Foundation. Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission
Promotional assistance provided by WORT, 89.9 FM, listener-sponsored community radio. WORT's diverse programming includes over 40 hours of new music, jazz, and classical programming every week. WORT 89.9 FM, Madison, WI
Special thanks to the following for their help in presenting this concert: WYOU cable access television, Ward-Brodt Music Mall.
Support staff for this concert: Audio for the Arts, sound recording; Arthur Durkee/Black Dragon Productions, poster/publicity design; Mercedes Binder, program typesetting.

Program

Elemental Suite
     I Air
     II Fire
     III Water
     IV Earth
Robin Park-Doob
Christine Mata, clarinet
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Jeff Gibbens, piano
Night Song (Trio in Two Stanzas) Kevin Ernste
Wendy Rowe, soprano
Mary Leavell, flute
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Octane! Tom Patterson
Christine Mata, clarinet
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Jeff Gibbens, piano
Intermission
Tropical Imprints
     I Dawn
     II Serengeti Lullaby
     III Capuchin Caper
     IV Night Stalk
Royce Dembo
Mary Leavell, flute
Christine Mata, clarinet
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Songs of Transition
     I there is a name
     II from whence we come
Kirk Miller
Wendy Rowe, soprano
Christine Mata, clarinet
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Jeff Gibbens, piano
Dan Hosken, conductor
Double Dance Joseph Koykkar
Mary Leavell, flute
Christine Mata, clarinet
Maria Yuin, bassoon
Todd Welbourne, piano
Geoff Brady, vibraphone

Notes on the Music and Composers

Robin Park-Doob is a fourth-year undergraduate at UW-Madison, majoring in music composition. He has published a book of intermediate piano solos, and won third place in last spring's Ear & Now competition.

"The four parts of the Elemental Suite loosely follow the four elements, partially in an evocative manner, but more closely as a compositional tool. None of the elements are exactly alike, yet they share certain characteristics (i.e. the swirling eddies of air and water). This structure led my composing very easily, ensuring great contrast between the movements yet also lending to common ideas.

"Air is light and unpredictable, following a direction for only a short time before turning to another. Fire is quick and ongoing, growing and falling back, burning and crackling about, and generally continuing its growth steadily but juggernaut-like. Water is serene, with many currents acting upon each other to form an ever-changing whole. Earth is sedentary, but in its own way strong and majestic."

Kevin Ernste is a student of Composition at the UW-Madison under Stephen Dembski and Joel Naumann.

"Night Song (Trio in Two Stanzas) is an exploration, for me, of musical possibilities both in terms of the given instrumentation of this commission and the subject matter of Ebersold's poetry. This work follows few of the paradigms I have grown accustomed to composing within, and is, perhaps further, a step away from them. The stripped-down simplicity of the textures is an attempt at elegance which favors restraint over embellishment, contextual over thematic variation, and contemplation over directedness. It seeks, in its intent, to complement Ebersold's still scenery and voice."

Tom Patterson was born in Wausau, WI, in 1967 and moved to Madison in 1986 to attend the UW. He completed a B.A. in French in 1990 and returned to school in 1994 to pursue a second degree in Music Composition. He hopes in the future to work on music in collaboration with film.

"Octane! sounds like it does because I wanted to write something fun. Entertaining. Something I wouldn't mind listening to myself. I was thinking of some punk rock songs and cartoon soundtracks when I wrote it. It probably ended up sounding more like Bartok, but that's no reason to take it seriously.

"The piece is in five continuous sections, which are kind of like scenes in a narrative. In each section the instruments take on a particular persona and interact in different ways. It is left to the listener to provide a story line."

Royce Dembo is a free-lance composer who received her M.M. in Composition at the UW-Madison in 1970. She has taught piano, theory, and composition privately, and has done extensive composing for all musical forms and instrumentation. Several of her compositions have received commissions, grants, and awards. Her works have been performed in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Scotland, and her vocal works performed in New York, including her chamber opera The Audience.

"Tropical Imprints is a compressed representation of the awe and respect I have for Nature with its continuing struggle between life and death. The first movement is a rainforest awakening that gradually becomes vibrant with multi-level themes that represent birds, mammals, and insects. The torrid afternoon in the second movement is a quiet time where beasts intermingle in peace, but remain suspicious of each other. A brief interlude suggests play before dusk. The death struggle in the last movement begins with the emergence of nocturnal creatures lurking in the dark. In this section, I felt the need to use some extended instrumental techniques."

Kirk Miller recently received his bachelor's degree in composition at the UW-Madison under Steve Dembski and Joel Naumann. He has worked a great deal in extended-technique vocal forms and is currently submerging himself into the broad field of computer music production and recording. Kirk has been active as a concert organizer for MadWAC, and is currently producing a CD by the New York-based funk band, 1ADAM12.

"This is my second set of pieces entitled Songs of Transition. The first, scored for violin and piano, was written in 1994. The "transitional" aspect of these works has nothing really to do with musical transitions (of course only you would know this because you're reading these notes and not really listening to the the music), but deals with, or was somehow germinal in the inception of these works, life-transitions, or more specifically in this case, fundamental changes in perception, physical states, spiritual states, and other run-on sentences. I dedicate these works with a warm heart and lots of love to my mother, Sylvia, one of my greatest influences."

Joseph Koykkar is coordinator of the Interarts and Technology faculty and Music Director for the Dance Program at the UW-Madison. He holds degrees from UW-Milwaukee, Indiana University, and the University of Miami (DMA 1983). His principal composition teachers have been John Eaton, Dennis Kam, and John Downey. His compositions have been performed extensively throughout the United States and in Europe and South America by such ensembles as the New York New Music Ensemble, North/South Consonance (New York), California EAR Unit (Los Angeles), Synchronia (St. Louis), Relache (Philadelphia), Present Music (Milwaukee), Compagnia Brasileira De Music (Sao Paulo, Brazil), and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He has composed in a variety of media including chamber music, orchestral scores, music for dance, film/video scores, and electronic music. He was composer-in-residence for the NOW Festival '96 at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

His compositions are published by MMB Music, Inc., Belwin-Mills, and See Saw Music. In September 1992 Northeastern Records released a compact disc, Expressed In Units, featuring six of his chamber music compositions. In March 1994 MMC Recordings released a recording of his orchestral composition, Composite, performed by the Slovak Radio Symphony of Bratislava, Slovakia, under the direction of Robert Black. Triple Play for piano, computer, and MIDI Disklavier is recorded on the SEAMUS CD Volume 3. St. Louis's new music ensemble, Synchronia, has released his composition Double Take on their first CD in December 1995.

He has been the recipient of twelve consecutive annual awards from ASCAP, and has received an Individual Artists Award in Music Composition for the Wisconsin Arts Board. Among his other awards are grants from Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the NEA. He has been a fellow at the International Summer Workshop for New Music in Darmstadt, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Conductors Institute American Composer/Conductor Program and the Montanea Festival in Bern, Switzerland. He has been a past president of the Wisconsin Alliance of Composers.

Double Dance is a rhythmic work that features a through-composed structure and an economical handling of musical materials. Tonight's concert will feature the first movement only; a second movement of a contrasting nature is currently in progress.


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