Tuesday Night New Music

PART ONE: 8:00 PM

Alex Matheson | An apparent dichotomy (for piano)

joyful, yet multivalent
slow, deliberate

Two pieces — one brand new, one a few years old — perhaps missing a third piece that might ordinarily synthesize and clarify the meaning of their union. One, a "contemplation of nothing serious" (C.E. Ives); the other a 'serious contemplation of nothing' — but which is which?                                                              

- Alex Matheson

Mason Ishida | String Quartet No. 2

Like a Motet Without Words
Aggressive, Dance-like
Reminiscence
Coda

After New England Conservatory sent all students home due to COVID-19, I began work on this string quartet immediately after returning home. I finished it in five days - the fastest I hever finished a multi movement work (though it is only five-and-a-half minutes). I worked under a six minute time limit because I planned to submit it for a reading session which didn't allow for pieces longer than six minutes. This reading session was cancelled due to COVID. I structured the piece: A-B-A'-CODA (B') similar to the structure of Bartók's Third Quartet (my favorite of his quartets). The harmony also is quite inspired by Bartók, though I aimed to add a lot of my own flavors to it. All movements keep the same underlying pulse, the second movement just counts the quarter instead of the half. This makes the attaccas between each movement much more fluid.          

- Mason Ishida                                                            

Da-Yu Liu | Into the Deep

A short piece expressing the suffering and suffocation during these turbulent times.

– Da-Yu Liu

Kristian Josifoski | prayers from a broken body

for the heroes of kosovo

on the field of kosovo, year 1389, a broken body lies with broken bodies, whispering broken bodies, but this one prays, slow, natural, free, his cry of faith, the song of the eternally mournful, on a field eternally restless.                                     

– Kristian Josifoski

Lila Wildy Quillin | 書法: Calligraphy

毛筆Brush
硯Inkstone

書法Calligraphy explores how elements of traditional Chinese calligraphy could be expressed through music. I was initially drawn to attempting a musical interpretation of calligraphy because I thought I had a lot to learn from the incredible elegance, nuance, and power of a beautifully drawn character; it’s enticing to try and represent elements like negative space, line quality, momentum and fluidity through music. While I had that in mind as I wrote, I eventually found there was a strong connection between the calligraphic process itself and the unfolding of musical material, and it became my goal to express that process in a convincing musical way. (In the end I also found that a careful observation of what’s involved in the process of creating a structurally sound, beautiful character changed my approach to composition as well.)

The first movement establishes two realms distinguished by register (the low world and the high world) that are based on the relationship between fundamental and partial; in the opening of the piece, the high material is composed only of harmonics and is completely dependent on the fundamental, but as the piece progresses, the material of both realms begin undergoing their own transformations; after a crucial point in the piece where both finally unfold in sync at the same pace, the music becomes focused on the accelerating movement and counterpoint between both worlds. This plot, and especially the use of fundamental and partial, was inspired by the brush (a concrete element and symbol of the manifestation of material) and its relationship to the calligrapher’s vision of a character at the moment the brush is about to touch the paper (an abstract and idyllic world of possibilities). The second movement is inspired by inkstones, mortars in which inksticks are ground and mixed with water to create calligraphy ink. Thus, the form of this movement is driven by temporal change for the purpose of “grinding” or working out the material.

– Lila Wildy Quillin

Tamir Shimshoni | I Wish I Could Stop Being Angry

The title tells you everything you need to know about the piece. Explaining further would do it a disservice.                                                                        

– Tamir Shimshoni

PART TWO: 9:30 PM

Jiaqi Wang | The Disjointed Fantasyland

The Disjointed Fantasyland is a single movement for solo E flat alto saxophone that is improvisatory in character. My inspiration came from my choppy dream at midnight this summer, and I used various sections and musical ideas to depict my dreamlands separately with different textures, rhythms, and use of saxophone techniques. The fantasyland starts with mysterious images accompanied by a beam of light, and then the use of the multiphonics, slap tongue, and zigzagged melodic contour represent the moods of intensity, harshness, and grief. The dream of fantasyland finally concludes with sweet memories. However, when the end of the music comes, it tells the story of returning to the real world and the dream suddenly ends with bizarre tremolo gestures.                                                                                                     

– Jiaqi Wang

Ian Wiese | For Dan

For Dan was commissioned by trumpet player Daniel Venglar during the summer of 2020 and the COVID-19 epidemic for an online recital of new music with Orchestre de francophonie in Quebec, Canada. Venglar would normally play with the summer festival orchestra in person, but due to the COVID-19 shutdown of the world, the orchestra instead opted to perform solo music on an online solo recital format. Taking cues from Luciano Berio's Sequenza X for solo trumpet (also performed on this recital), For Dan explores a vast palette of extended techniques and rich colors that are inherent to the trumpet, including but not limited to multiphonics, doodle tonguing (borrowed from Berio), and air sounds preceded by normal articulations.

– Ian Wiese

Yunqi Li | The Loyalty of a Danish Prince

For Hamlet

You are a noble Prince,

You are supposed to be happy if that thing didn’t happen,

You are supposed to stay with your lover if that thing didn’t happen,
You are supposed to have a better life if that thing didn’t happen.
But you have no choice, the fate chooses you.
You have to revenge,

You must revenge for your father!

My dear, you are too young to seek that revenge,

My dear, you have paid too much to seek that revenge,
My dear, you have lost everything to seek thatrevenge.
But you have no choice, The fate chooses you.
You always insist on your decision,
Perhaps you have hesitated before,
But it is normal,
You are human.
You have a pure heart and an elegant spirit,
You are always my hero, Prince Hamlet.

- Yunqi Li