Monday, April 3, at 7:00Harris Theater for Music and Dance

Pierre BoulezDérive I (1984)1

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano

Boulez’s output, which spanned more than half a century, is character-ized by cross-references of the most subtle, complex, far-reaching, and elusive kind. Some of his smallest compositions, like Notations for piano, have grown beyond recognition into large orchestral works. Several of his major works have generated smaller satellites—— offshoots that shed their own brilliant light.

Dérive I is a luminous, beautifully detailed short piece related to and based on the same material as Répons, a large-scale work for soloists, ensemble, and computer-transformation. It’s neither a sketch nor an outtake, but a significant, though brief, score in its own right. The word dériver itself has several implications, including that of straightforward derivation as well as a sense of drifting from the shore.

—— Phillip Huscher

Marcos Baltershadows of listening (2017)2

for cello and electronics

World Premiere (MusicNOW Commission)

My initial sketch was titled shadows of memory, a homage to Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, and it revisited and reimagined some of his recurring music materials through my own compositional lense, as if establishing a dialogue with him. On learning of the sudden passing of Pauline Oliveros, another master who had significantly shaped my artistic sensibilities, I immediately threw away my previous sketch and

decided to pay equal homage to both of these music giants. I picked three poems by René Char that Boulez used in his Le marteau sans maître, fragmented them word by word, and built a new poem that attempted to evoke the psychology behind many of Oliveros’s instruc-tions in her text-based pieces. Shadows of listening is based on music making as a ritual (pivotal to both Boulez and Oliveros), on listening as an active element of performance, and on the tenuous line between control and freedom.

—— Marcos Balter

ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra

Samuel Adams and Elizabeth OgonekMead Composers-in-Residence

Cliff Colnot ConductorKatinka Kleijn CelloConor Hanick PianoStefán Ragnar Höskuldsson Flute

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Illuminating Boulez

la têtes’est tue

le ferdans mes jambesmon couteau qui cherche

le pas sauvageéloignédessus la pointe du clouau bord du bois

je rêve la solitudel’imitation habitableles boisles vagues mortesla promenadeles pressentiments

j’écoute

the headfalls silent

the ironin my legsmy searching knife

the wild stepdistantabove the tip of the nailat the edge of the wood

I dream the solitudethe hospitable imitationthe woodsthe dead wavesthe walkthe premonitions

I listen

Pierre Boulez12 Notations for Piano (1945)3

Fantasque—ModéréTrès vifAssez lentRythmiqueDoux et improviséRapideHiératiqueModéré jusqu’à très vifLointain—CalmeMécanique et très secScintillantLent—Puissant et âpre

In the mid-1940s, Boulez’s own transformation from unknown student to international pacesetter was sudden and decisive. These Notations are Boulez’s fi rst important works, written when he was a twenty-year-old student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. He composed twelve pieces, each twelve measures long (the number was central to the manifesto of the time, after all). They are concise, highly polished studies, each a precise and taut exploration of one musical idea—— “the character of each piece is defi ned, isolated, fi xed in a single expressive mode,” as Boulez himself later said. The relationship between the pieces is “essentially one of contrast.” Although Boulez quickly put them aside and moved on to greater challenges, they are among the pivotal works with which he began a new chapter in the history of music.

Boulez later reimagined these small piano pieces as full-blown orchestral works. He fi nished the fi rst four Notations for orchestra in 1978. He continued the series for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, completing the Notations VII for Orchestra in 1997. It was premiered by the CSO on January 14, 1999, with Daniel Barenboim conducting.

—— Phillip Huscher

Pauline OliverosFor Two or Three Instruments (2016)4

World Premiere (MusicNOW Commission)

For Two or Three Instruments is a piece that combines improvisation with meditation in a technique developed by the composer called Deep Listening. The method explores the difference between the involun-tary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening. The practice includes bodywork; sonic meditations; interactive perfor-mance; listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams; and listening to listening itself. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment—— both external and internal—— and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth. Oliveros described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible. The inspiration came from her child-hood fascination with sounds and from her work in composition, impro-visation, and electroacoustics.

In For Two or Three Instruments, musicians of unspecifi ed instruments are provided with a series of options. The duration, dynamics, articula-tion, and structure of the performance are all free, and the sound created by the musicians can be any pitch, tone, or noise that does not does not identify as a pitch.

—— Frances Atkins

Pierre BoulezMémoriale (1985)5

for solo fl ute, two horns, three violins, two violas, and cello

Mémoriale was written to honor the memory of Lawrence Beauregard, the highly gifted young fl utist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, who died of a brain tumor in 1985. This score is itself related to another memorial tribute, . . . explosante-fi xe . . . , Boulez’s farewell to Igor Stravinsky. That work was composed in response to a request from the British contemporary music journal Tempo, which commissioned sev-eral composers to create a series of “Canons & Epitaphs” in homage to Stravinsky shortly after his death in 1971. Mémoriale, which draws on material in . . . explosante-fi xe . . . , similarly alternates between rapid, “exploding” sections and slower passages of repose, character-ized by soft fl ute trills.

—— Phillip Huscher

MusicNOW EnsembleMusicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guests

Jennifer Gunn Flute 1

John Bruce Yeh Clarinet 1

Baird Dodge Violin 1, 5

Joshua Zajac Cello 1, 5

Vadim Karpinos Vibraphone 1

Daniel Schlosberg Piano 1

Katinka Kleijn Cello 2, 4

Samuel Adams Electronics 2

Conor Hanick Piano 3

Mars Williams Saxophone 4

Robert Kassinger Bass 4

Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson Flute 5

Greg Flint Horn 5

Parker Nelson Horn 5

Hermine Gagné Violin 5

Minghaun Xu Violin 5

Weijing Wang Viola 5

Danny Lai Viola 5

composer profiles

With the death of Pierre Boulez last year, one of the boldest chap-ters in the life of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra came to a close. Boulez played a unique and unusually powerful role in Chicago. He first appeared with the CSO in February 1969, conducting music by Debussy, Bartók, Webern, and his teacher

Olivier Messiaen. “Boulez firmly believes in the classics of our century,” the Chicago Tribune critic wrote of the con-cert. “He is also immensely qualified to spread the word, possessing a composer’s mind, a conductor’s savvy, and a poet’s soul.” At the time, Boulez was famous as a revolution-ary composer, and by the time he began his annual residen-cies with the Orchestra in 1991, he was also recognized as one of the most revelatory conductors of our age.

In Chicago, Boulez soon became our guide to the modern classics, a restorer of repertory staples, and our prophet of the new. Over the years, Boulez toured internationally with the CSO, worked with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, gave a series of lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago, appeared on the Orchestra’s new MusicNOW series, and brought the Ensemble Intercontemporain he founded to town—— all in addition to his regular appearances with the CSO. He also was the Orchestra’s first conductor emeritus, and eight of his twenty-six Grammy awards are for discs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

In the adventuresome music we choose to play and the unconventional programs we plan, and in the lessons he taught us—— to believe in the music of our own time, to embrace what lies just over the horizon—— Boulez’s spirit will long live on in Chicago.

Pauline Oliveros’s career spanned fifty years of boundary- dissolving music making. In the 1950s, she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, art-ists, and poets who gathered in San Francisco. A recipient of the John Cage Award in 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros

was a distinguished research professor of music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and the Darius Milhaud composer-in-residence at Mills College. She was interested in finding new sounds and new uses

for old ones. Her primary instrument was the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approached in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Since the 1960s, she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth, and ritual. Oliveros was the founder of Deep Listening and founded the Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, and now the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer.

Pauline Oliveros submitted her MusicNOW commission, For Two of Three Instruments, shortly before her passing on November 24, 2016.

Marcos Balter is a Brazilian-born composer whose music invites listeners to reimagine what instruments can do as well as the physical relationship between instruments and per-formers. True to his own diverse background, his music is inten-tionally chameleonic, embrac-ing eclecticism as a deflector

of sociocultural homogeneities and change as a positive force; any notion of style, therefore, is a consequence rather than a cause. Collaborations with artists from diverse prac-tices such as choreographer Bill T. Jones, indie-rock band

Deerhoof, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and singer/songwriter José González, have proven crucial to his artistic trajectory. Upcoming engagements in 2017–18 include a project with singer/songwriter Paul Simon and the group yMusic, a new evening-length work for flutist Claire Chase and community participation titled Pan, and a new orchestral work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Susanna Mälkki. He has been awarded fellow-ships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, as well as commissions from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard and Chamber Music America. He currently lives in New York City, and he is an associate professor of music composition at Montclair State University. www.marcosbalter.com

conductor profile

Cliff Colnot has served as assistant conductor for Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan workshops for musicians from Middle Eastern countries and as assistant conductor to Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He has conducted the International Contemporary Ensemble

(ICE), with which he recorded Richard Wernick’s The

Name of the Game for Bridge Records. Colnot also has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW ensemble since its inception and was principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for twenty-two years. He leads Contempo at the University of Chicago and the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. He has appeared as guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony.

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special guest profiles

Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn enjoys a career performing in solo, chamber music, improvisation, and orchestral performance. She has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Hague Philharmonic, and Chicago Sinfonietta and in recital at the Library of Congress and the Marlboro Music Festival. A

collaboration with the performance art duo Industry of the

Ordinary resulted in Intelligence in the Human-Machine by Daniel Dehaan, a duo for cellist and brainwaves. Most recently, Kleijn premiered Dai Fujikura’s Cello Concerto at Lincoln Center, with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). As a member of ICE, she gave numerous premieres, including the American premiere of Zona by Magnus Lindberg at Lincoln Center and Eternal Escape by Dai Fujikura. Kleijn recorded David Baker’s Cello Concerto with the Chicago Sinfonietta on Cedille, and has recorded for Naxos, Boston Records, with the progressive rock band District 97, the duo Relax Your Ears, and has a working duo with guitarist Bill MacKay.

Conor Hanick has collaborated with some of the world’s lead-ing ensembles and conductors, including Pierre Boulez, David Robertson, and James Levine. His season is highlighted by concerto appearances with Carlos Izcaray and the Alabama Symphony in the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Piano Concerto; col-

laboration with Alan Gilbert for the NYPhil Biennial in György Ligeti’s Piano Concerto; and performances with the Talea

Ensemble, ICE, the Knights, and Chatter. In addition, Hanick continues his partnership with cellist Jay Campbell with recit-als in Seattle, San Francisco, Indianapolis, and New York, including premiere performances of works written for them by Eric Wubbels, David Hertzberg, and David Fulmer. A recent finalist for the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, Hanick is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Juilliard School, where he received his master’s and doctoral degrees studying with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Matti Raekallio. He is a faculty artist at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and produces radio shows for New York Public Radio’s Q2 Music. Conor Hanick is a Yamaha Artist.

A native of Iceland, Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson holds the Erika and Dietrich M. Gross Principal Flute Chair of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and is a distinguished inter-national soloist and chamber musician. Prior to joining the CSO, he served as principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera

Orchestra from 2008 to 2016. His extensive solo perfor-mances include engagements with the Pacific Music Festival

in Sapporo, Japan; concertos with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra; recitals at the Sir James Galway International Flute Festival in Lucerne; and a live radio broadcast with BBC Radio 3 In Tune in London. Höskuldsson has been a faculty member with the Pacific Music Festival since 2010. He attended the Reykjavik School of Music in Iceland where he studied with Bernhard Wilkinson. Following his gradua-tion, Höskuldsson attended the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, where he studied with Peter Lloyd and Wissam Boustany. In 2015 he released his debut solo album, Solitude, on the Delos label.

This composition was created algorithmically, following a strict numerical “set” derived from Boulez’s famous quote, which refers to music as “a labyrinth, with no fixed route.” Each layer in the visual composition—— a 3D landscape, an abstracted portrait of Boulez, a “route” of pathways rendered in red, and a series of color squares—— is created directly using soft-ware based on the strict numerical set.

—— John Pobojewski of Thirst Communication Design Practice

Special thanks to Artistry Engraving, Graphic Arts Studio, and Mohawk Paper for their contributions to the limited-edition MusicNOW posters.

Major support for MusicNOW is generously provided by the Sally Mead Hands Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation, the Julian Family Foundation, Cindy Sargent, and the Zell Family Foundation.

Theater rental and services have been graciously underwritten through the support of the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

Special thanks to Helen Meyer and Meyer Sound for graciously donating sound equipment for this MuiscNOW performance.

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about the MusicNOW artwork

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