The Ph.D./D.M.A. Programs in Music December 9, 2008, 7:30 p.m. Bais l ey Powel l Elebash Rec i tal Hal l

Please switch off your cell phones and refrain from taking flash pictures.

The CUNY Graduate Center Composers’ Alliance

Three Pieces Cynthia Lee Wong, piano

Cynthia Lee Wong

Cubicle Revisited Paul Riker, Audio Anthony Angelicola, Video

Paul Riker

Piano Concerto no. 2 (from a collection of childhood works)

Cynthia Lee Wong, piano Karina Glasinovic, piano

Cynthia Lee Wong

— INTERMISSION —

putrefaction (2005), for four violins and four violas

Megan Atchley, Jeffrey Young, Chern Hwei Fung, Hubert Chen, violins Joshua Feldman, Robyn Siwula, Brian Thompson, Pinky Weitzman, violas

Andrea La Rose

Program Notes The Three Pieces are compositional studies of slow music and act as "warm-ups" for more substantial works. — Cynthia Lee Wong Cubicle Revisited. "Cubicle," in its original audio version, is the second in a series of pieces that deals with the transformation of realworld soundscapes into abstract musical environments. In this work, the listener is inserted into a vividly portrayed Office environment. Certain sounds begin to take on unrealistic characteristics before the entire scene is transformed into a more abstract musical place. All sounds are derived from office sounds or playground sounds. In "Cubicle Revisited," video artist Anthony Angelicola offers his own visual realization of the sonic landscape. In 2008, "Cubicle" was featured at the SEAMUS National Conference in Salt Lake City, at the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival in Gainesville, at the SCI Regional Conference in NYC, and has been implemented in the classroom by instructors of electronic music including Micheal Pounds and Miller Puckette. — Paul Riker Piano Concerto no. 2 was premiered with the New England Conservatory Preparatory School Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Benjamin Zander during my senior year of high school. The Concerto consists of three movements in typical fast-slow-fast form. — Cynthia Lee Wong putrefaction (2005), for four violins and four violas. I know what you’re thinking: “Why did you choose such a disgusting title?” I have a firm belief in the serendipity that the thing I need will find me at the right moment, especially when it comes to titles. When this piece was an embryo, I was reading a book called, “Wild Fermentation,” by Sandor Katz. It’s a cookbook, but also a manifesto of sorts. The author has AIDS, and devotes several pages to ruminating about various implications of life and death, something that he has been forced to think about due to his circumstance, but also something in which the processes of fermentation are directly involved. I found the word “putrefaction” in this book, presented with a lack of disgust usually associated with the term. The idea of decay as a positive and necessary part of a process resonated with my ideas of consonance and dissonance as part of the necessities of this octet, and so “putrefaction” became the title. During the process of finishing and rehearsing this piece, I was reading a book on modernism called, “All That Is Solid Melts into Air,” by Marshall Berman. One of the central conflicts of modern life, Berman suggests, is the modernist need for progress; the conflict being that in order to progress, in order to be able to constantly remake ourselves both physically and spiritually, we must destroy. This necessary part of the process is both tragic and heroic. These ideas have played themselves out, over and over in the past 150 years or so in music as well as other arts. I suspect musicians and music-lovers have even

ended friendships over the use of consonance and dissonance and which better represents the tragicomedy of modern life. I haven’t decided for myself which parts of my piece constitute the goodness of rotting (beer and cheese) or the horrors of rebuilding (eminent domain, gentrification). You may decide that for yourself.

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Looking back on this three years later, I see what other things were at play here that have developed into more ‘mature’ obsessions and concerns for me. I’ve become very interested in the perception of beat, meter, melody, and harmony, both by the performers and the audience. How do we decide who is presenting the main ideas and who is working for and against that? For me, the composer is not someone who creates a world and controls everything that goes on in it; composing music is not about my will or even my vision being realized to perfection. Instead, I see my job as someone who provides a situation for people to realize their own power and work out their relationships to the other musicians, to the audience, and to themselves. The situation is this: a song sandwiched between two slices of mayhem. I’ve taken away much of what performers tend to rely on in deciding their function in the music, so the performers have to each decide for themselves how to define their role in relation to what else is going on. The listeners are also making the same decisions, whether consciously or not, with effort or not. — Andrea La Rose

Composer Bios Commissioned twice by musica viva and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Cynthia Lee Wong has received praise for her "shamelessly beautiful" music as well as her devotion toward "not only the avant-garde audience, but all classical enthusiasts or indeed all music lovers" (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Her music has been performed in Spain, France, Canada, Russia, Bulgaria, Germany, and the United States, receiving broadcasts from the St. Petersburg State Radio in Russia, the Bavarian Radio in Germany, and the Bulgarian Radio. Her Fugato has been recorded by pianist Lilia Boyadjieva on the "Autour de la fugue" CD, available on Naxos. Wong's future commissions include a string quartet for the Tanglewood, to be premiered in August 2009, a piano concerto for 2009, and a piano quartet for 2010. Past commissions include works for the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Orchestra, New Juilliard Ensemble, and the Juilliard Orchestra at venues, such as Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard Theater, and Alice Tully Hall.

Wong is a graduate of the accelerated Bachelor-Master program at the Juilliard School. She studied composition with Milton Babbitt, Samuel Adler, David Del Tredici, and Larry Bell as well as piano with Tatyana Dudochkin and Martin Canin. From 2006-2008, she was a faculty member at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Currently, Wong is a Chancellor's Fellow at the Graduate Center and teaches at Baruch College, CUNY. She studies piano with Frank Levy and composition with David Olan.

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Paul Riker was born in Las Vegas and raised in upstate New York. His early musical experiences were through the world of rock, heavy metal, and jazz. He earned a B.M. from the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, where he studied electronic music with Paul Steinberg and composition with Paul Siskind. Paul earned his M.A. in composition from Queens College, CUNY, where he studied with Jeff Nichols, Bruce Saylor, and Hubert Howe. While enrolled at ACSM, Paul earned the Herbert Sukoff award in composition and the George Perle award in composition. He also enjoyed a number of performances, including the New York premiere of his song cycle “Prophecies” at the Flea Theatre in Manhattan.

Currently, Paul is pursuing a PhD in composition from the CUNY Graduate Center, where he has been awarded a Chancellor’s Fellowship. Paul has also received funding from the Graduate Center’s New Media Lab, where he works primarily with Max/MSP/Jitter. Most recently, Paul has studied with David Olan, David Del Tredici, and Hubert Howe. Paul’s compositional interests include computer-aided studies in timbre, overtones, and sounds of the real world; finding ways of incorporating additional media and interactivity into music; and developing new approaches to the composition of tonal music.

Recently, Paul’s works have been featured at SEAMUS, Lincoln Center (NYC), the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival (Gainesville, FL), The SCI Region II conferences (Queens, NY and Hamilton, NY), the Syracuse Society for New Music (Syracuse, NY),

Uncle Ming’s (NYC), Coney Island, Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival, FOLDOVER (WOBC 91.5FM - Oberlin, OH), todayscomposers.com, Coney Island, The New York City Downtown Film Festival, and at the American Composer’s Alliance Festival (Flea Theatre, NYC), with performances by a variety of performing ensembles including Cygnus and ICE. Paul has received support from CUNY’s New Media Lab and from ASCAP.

Paul is the co-founder of the InterMedia Arts Group (IMAG) in New York City. Their events feature new works involving interactive multimedia, and have involved artists such as This Spartan Life, David Grubs, Amnon Wolman, and Morton Subotnick. Paul is co-founder and co-director of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF). More information is available at nycemf.org.

For more information, please visit www.paulriker.com

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Andrea La Rose plays flute, writes music, likes to cook, and enjoys making weird noises. Her pride and joy since 2002 has been her work as a flutist/composer/board member with the punk-classical antagonists known as Anti-Social Music. Most recently, she’s been heard on cd with World/Inferno Friendship Society and His Name Is Alive, and live with Mohair Timewarp, thingNY, and her own improv trio with Bernadette Speach and Jeffrey Schanzer.

“Prolific and an expert performer, she's bouncing among a dozen good ideas, and wherever she lands will doubtless cause merriment, consternation, insight, and possibly the End of Civilization As We Know It.”

— Kyle Gann, artsjournal.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS Fall 2008

December 15 Xheni Rroji, piano 17 Contemporary Music Ensemble