NEC New Music Ensemble: Turnage
Inaugurated in Fall 2022, NEC's New Music Ensemble performs a program of diverse works. Stefan Asbury conducts tonight's performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage's suite Blood on the Floor.
About Stefan Asbury
A regular guest with leading orchestras worldwide, Stefan Asbury has appeared with prominent North American oestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, most recently featured in their BSO NOW series which was streamed in January 2021; the LA Philharmonic and LA Chamber Orchestra. The orchestras of Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Fort Worth, St Paul, Montreal and Vancouver Symphony.
He has conducted opera and ballet with Theatre de La Monnaie, Brussels, Lyons Opera, the Wien Modern festival, Perth Festival and Venice and Munich Biennales. A regular collaborator with Mark Morris, he conducted for the Mark Morris Dance Group’s touring production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet culminating with performances at Lincoln Center, New York with Orchestra of St Lukes, and in London at the Barbican Centre Theatre with the London Symphony Orchestra. In the 2016 Spoleto Festival, Charleston, he conducted the Galliard Theatre opening production of Porgy and Bess
With a worldwide presence, he was Chief Conductor and Conductor Emeritus of the North Netherlands Orchestra 2011-2018, Musician-in-Residence of the Tapiola Sinfonietta 2006-2012. He also has long-standing relationships with major orchestras in Europe and Asia including the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Hessicher Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt, ORF Orchestra Vienna, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, and West Australian Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig as part of Beethovenfest Bonn 2018 and Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao during Bilbao’s Musika-Musica 2019 festival, and has appeared with the China National Symphony Orchestra, Beijing and NHK Symphony, Tokyo.
Stefan has particularly strong relationships with many living composers including Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Unsuk Chin and Mark-Anthony Turnage. As a recording artist, Stefan’s CD of music by Jonathan Harvey was awarded a Monde de la Musique CHOC award, and his complete cycle of Gerard Grisey’s Les Espaces Accoustiques with WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln won a Deutschen Schallplattenkritik award.
Educated at Oxford University and the Royal College of Music London, Stefan was a student conducting fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1990 under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Since 1995 Stefan Asbury has served on the faculty and has been the Head of Conducting since 2005 and currently is the Perles Family Foundation Artist in Residence.
This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live
Mark-Anthony Turnage | Blood on the Floor
Prologue: Blood on the Floor (Biting)
Junior Addict (Slow and sensuous)
Shout (Harsh and hammered)
Sweet and Decay (Dark and muddy, sweet and tender)
Needles
Elegy for Andy (Tender)
Cut Up (Clear cut and decisive)
Crackdown (Solo freely)
Dispelling the Fears (Bleak and obsessive, always intense)Program note
Blood on the Floor is a suite in nine movements composed for orchestra and jazz trio by Mark-Anthony Turnage. It was composed over a span of three years (1993–1996) after a commission from the Ensemble Modern—a German music group—to produce a piece for an evening jazz event in 1994. After the performance, Turnage expanded the piece into a larger nine-movement suite. During this period of composition, Turnage's brother Andrew died of a drug overdose, shaping the music greatly. As a result, drug culture is one of the main themes in the suite. Blood on the Floor also draws influences from the paintings of Francis Bacon and Heather Betts; the suite's title is an adaptation of Bacon's painting Blood on Pavement.
Like other compositions by Turnage, Blood on the Floor incorporates elements of both classical and jazz music. Due to this, it has been described as being part of the "third stream" genre, a term coined by Turnage's former teacher Gunther Schuller. The suite is written as a concerto grosso and features a blend of classical, jazz, non-western and electronic instruments. As part of this fusion, the suite contains space for soloists to improvise in four of its movements. Blood on the Floor shows elements of non-functional harmony and has complex rhythmic changes, often changing metre every bar. Motifs are found recurring throughout the suite.
The premiere performance of Blood on the Floor was by the Ensemble Modern at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in May 1996. The suite received a mixed reception from music critics. Some enjoyed the suite's fusion of classical and jazz music, while others found it to be an unfulfilling combination. Outside of the Ensemble Modern, Blood on the Floor has been performed by various ensembles, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
– WikipediaEnsemble
First Violin
Harin Kang
Anatol Toth
Hyun Ji Lee
Sarah Campbell
Second Violin
K. J. McDonald
Olga Kaminsky
Ioan-Octavian Pirlea
Emily Lin
Arun Asthagiri
Viola
Nicolette Sullivan-Cozza
Philip Rawlinson
Aidan Garrison
Inácia Afonso
Cello
Shijie Ma
Xinyue Zhu
Asher Kalfus
Hechen Sun
Bass
Beth Ann Jones
Flute/Alto Flute
Jungyoon Kim
Anne Chao
Oboe/English horn
Robert Diaz
Alexander Lenser
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Phoebe Kuan
Dillon Acey
Bassoon/Contrabassoon
Matthew Heldt
Garret Comrie
Soprano/Alto Saxophone
Zhikang Chen
Xinyi Liao
French horn
Grace Clarke
Graham Lovely
Trumpet
Reynolds Martin
Nelson Martinez
Matthew Dao, assistant
Trombone
Jaehan Kim
Noah Nichilo
Bass trombone/Euphonium
David Paligora
Tuba
Masaru Lin
Percussion
Connor Willits
Felix Ko
Lucas Vogelman
Harp
Shaylen Joos
Keyboard
Yujin Han
Jazz Ensemble
Lenka Molcanyiova, saxophones
Peikun Liu, guitar
Misha Bjerken, bass guitar
Jeff Sagurton, drums