Anna ClyneFits + Starts (2012)1

for tape and amplified cello

Brant Taylor Cello

“Fits + Starts was commissioned by the Los Angeles–based Hysterica Dance Company. The original tape version was premiered with Hysterica at the DUMBO Dance Festival, New York, in 2003, and the live version was premiered by cellist Benjamin Elton Capps at Greenfield Hall, New York, in 2004. Fits + Starts has been widely performed at a range of venues including Housing Works in SoHo, New York, where Capps performed the work at an afternoon musical salon curated by Björk.

The tape part for Fits + Starts comprises acoustic recordings of harp-sichord, cello, and viola, which have been layered, manipulated, and transformed to create a backdrop for the solo cellist.

In 2012, Tzadik Records released a full album of my music, entitled Blue Moth, that showcases a diverse range of electroacoustic chamber music, including Fits + Starts.”

Shulamit RanBirkat Haderekh—— Blessing for the Road (2015)2

for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

“Birkat Haderekh—— Blessing for the Road begins its journey as a spacious, gently inflected melody, an instrumental ‘song without words’ that per-meates this entire eight-minute single-movement composition as it grad-ually evolves. At around mid-point of the piece, with just a small melodic twist, the music takes on an imploring quality, almost in the spirit of an invocation, increasing in urgency. In my own mind while composing the piece—— and no longer just thinking in the strictly musical terms of the formation and development of sound shaped in time—— became, for all of its modest proportions, a parable of one of life’s journeys. I found myself thinking of the array of conflicting emotions associated with preparing for a voyage, destination uncertain, of someone precious. Anticipation, anxiousness, longing, hope—— all mingled together. Perhaps it is a mother praying for her child’s well-being; a small, private ritual that cuts across time and place, speaking to our common humanity.

Birkat Haderekh—— Blessing for the Road was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Festival in celebration of its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2015.”

Monday, October 2, 2017, at 7:00Harris Theater for Music and Dance

Cliff Colnot Principal ConductorBaird Dodge ViolinStephanie Jeong ViolinBrant Taylor Cello

Samuel Adams and Elizabeth OgonekMead Composers-in-Residence

ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra

MusicNOW@

Osvaldo GolijovMariel (1999)3

for cello and marimba

“I wrote this piece in memory of my friend Mariel Stubrin. I attempted to capture that short instant before grief, in which one learns of the sudden death of a friend who was full of life: a single moment frozen forever in one’s memory, and which reverberates through the piece, among the waves and echoes of the Brazilian music that Mariel loved. The work was written for and premiered by Maya Beiser and Steve Schick.”

John CoriglianoA Black November Turkey (1972)4

for string quartet

“Composed as companion piece to L’invitation au voyage in 1972, A Black November Turkey gets its strange title from a Richard Wilbur poem. This savage barnyard allegory is set against an inane patter of clucking chickens (marked ‘with bitter sarcasm’ in the score), and por-trays a sad and endless futility, a celebrated and unnoticed death.

I made this arrangement, originally scored for chorus and piano, for the Corigliano Quartet in 2003.”

John CoriglianoRed Violin Caprices (2003)5

for solo violin

Stephanie Jeong Violin

“These caprices, composed in conjunction with the score for François Girard’s film The Red Violin, take a spacious, troubadour-inspired theme and vary it both linearly and stylistically. These variations intentionally evoke baroque, gypsy, and arch-romantic idioms as they examine the same materials (a dark, seven-chord chaconne as well as that princi-pal theme) from differing aural viewpoints. The caprices were created and ordered to reflect the structure of the film, in which Bussotti, a fictional eighteenth-century violin maker, crafts his greatest violin for his soon-to-be-born son. When tragedy claims wife and child, the grief- stricken Bussotti, in a gesture both ardent and macabre, infuses the blood of his beloved into the varnish of the instrument. Their fates thus joined, the violin travels across three centuries—— through Vienna, London, Shanghai, and Montreal—— passing through the hands of a doomed child prodigy; a flamboyant virtuoso; a haunted Maoist commissar; and at last a willful Canadian expert, whose own plans for the violin finally complete the circle of parent and child united in art.”

—— INTERMISSION——

Mason BatesThe Life of Birds (2008)6

Moving PartsParakeet DaydreamThe Caged Bird SingsOn a WireOld World Flycatcher

for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello

“The ambitious nature of the title, and its many movements, belie the study of miniatures that is The Life of Birds. For this unusual ensemble, comprised of two winds and two strings, I created a web of short but dense moments evoking the aviary.

After Moving Parts, which opens the work with a flurry of activity, Parakeet Daydream evokes a lazy dream state that receives unwelcome awak-enings at key moments. The Caged Bird Sings, the heart of the piece, encapsulates a long-lined melody in a cage of minimalist figuration. The melody seems to escape from its confines in the central section, but it is only a fleeting illusion. A mating dance on tiptoes unfolds in On a Wire, where the two winds persist in singing their love song despite the lopsided accompaniment. Finally, a very unfair fight emerges in Old World Flycatcher, which is defined as ‘a small and agile bird that takes its insect prey on the wing.’ The skittish, insectoid motives in the flute and violin are no match for the clarinet, which enters low in its register but ultimately moves higher to devour its prey—— which, like the piece as a whole, is quite small.”

Augusta Read ThomasCarillon Sky (2005)7

Premiered by the MusicNOW Ensemble, April 3, 2006, Oliver Knussen conducting, Baird Dodge solo violin

for flute (doubling on piccolo), oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, two violas, two cellos, harp, piano, percussion, and solo violin

Baird Dodge Violin

“The title Carillon Sky refers to a fantasized image that stimulated me to compose this music—— that of a sky full of very soft tinkling and flickering bells, as well as very clamorous pealing, ringing, resonant bells, through which one floats. It is as if a cathedral’s bell tower becomes a metaphor for nature’s ever changing landscape and the violin soloist is a distinctive bird soaring, interacting, circling, and swirling in the resonance. The orig-inal working title for this composition was Birds and Bells, since there are many bird-like and bell sounds; but Carillon Sky seemed a more abstract and poetic title upon reflection. The idea was to try to compose a mini violin concerto, but one that is in fact a ‘whole piece’—— all packed into less than seven minutes, like a miniature etching.

The solo violin part is marked with this performance indication: Passionate and rubato; like a jazz improvisation. Accentuate the variety of char-acters. Nine bars before the end of the work, there is an option for the soloist to compose and play a short cadenza in the style and language of the composition. Trust in the skills and taste of the original soloist, Baird Dodge, inspired me to allow this option.”

Mark-Anthony TurnageNo Let Up (2002–03)8

Premiered by the MusicNOW Ensemble, February 2, 2004, Cliff Colnot conducting

for flute, two bass clarinets, two soprano saxophones, brass trio, drum kit, piano, and bass guitar

Turnage’s No Let Up, for eleven players, composed in 2002–03 on a commission from MusicNOW, is a kind of companion piece to Release, written years earlier as a concert version of the score he wrote for an autobiographical documentary made as part of BBC2’s Sound of Film series. No Let Up calls for a slightly expanded version of the Release ensemble—— the additions are flute, horn, and bass guitar—— and still features soprano saxophone and bass clarinet, instruments for which Turnage writes with particular flair. But, as Turange points out, No Let Up is a more “single minded” work—— nonstop, without response or lyrical contrast—— thus the title. (Some of Turnage’s pieces, unlike his earlier works, take their titles from the nature of the music itself.) “Relentless” and “fast and very manic” are two of the markings in the score. Turnage calls it “extroverted and quite jazzy.”

—— Phillip Huscher, program annotator of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

composer profiles

London-born Anna Clyne is a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music that often includes collabora-tions with cutting-edge cho-reographers, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians worldwide. Clyne served as a Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony

Orchestra from 2010 to 2015. She also recently served as composer-in-residence for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra during the 2015–16 season and for l’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France from 2014 to 2016. This season, Clyne was selected by the League of American Orchestras

and New Music USA to serve as the Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with the Berkeley Symphony through the 2018–19 season. She has been commissioned by such renowned organizations as the American Composers Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, BBC Scottish Symphony, Carnegie Hall, Houston Ballet, London Sinfonietta, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and the Southbank Centre. In addition to being the recipient of several prestigious awards, Clyne was nom-inated for the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her double violin concerto, Prince of Clouds. She was nominated for the 2014 Times Breakthrough Award (UK) and is the recipient of a grant from Opera America to develop a new opera, Eva, which will be workshopped in spring 2018 at National Sawdust, where Clyne in a composer-in-residence for the 2017–18 season.

Shulamit Ran has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the United States, including the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for her sym-phony. Her music has been performed worldwide by lead-ing ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the Philadelphia Orchestra;

the Cleveland Orchestra; the Israel Philharmonic; the New York Philharmonic; the American Composers Orchestra; the Mendelssohn, Brentano, Pacifica and Juilliard quartets; Chanticleer; and many others. She served as composer- in-residence with the CSO between 1990 and 1997

and with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1994–97 where her residency culminated in the much-acclaimed per-formance of her first opera Between Two Worlds (the Dybbuk). Ran, who is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago, where she had taught since 1973, is currently compos-ing Anne Frank, a full-scale opera to a libretto by Charles Kondek, to be premiered by the Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater at the Jacob School of Music in 2020. The recipient of five honorary degrees, she is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company and the Israeli Music Institute, and recorded on more than a dozen labels.

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. Born to a piano teacher mother and physician father, Golijov was raised sur-rounded by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. His

blending of genres and seamless integration of voices speak volumes about his approach and style, a musical language that can only be termed “Golijovian.” Since the early 1990s, Golijov has enjoyed collaborations with some of the world’s

leading chamber music ensembles, the Kronos Quartet and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, in addition to relationships with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, and Robert Spano. In 2000, the premiere of Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (Saint Mark passion) took the music world by storm. Golijov has also received acclaim for other ground-breaking works such as his opera Ainadamar and the clarinet quintet The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, as well as music he has written for the films of Francis Ford Coppola. Golijov served as the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall during the 2012–13 season and composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2010. He is Loyola Professor of Music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1991.

The American John Corigliano continues to add to one of the richest, most unusual, and most widely celebrated bod-ies of work any composer has created over the last forty years. Corigliano’s numerous scores have been performed and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras,

soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. He was composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 1987 and 1990. Recent scores include Conjurer (2008), for percussion and string orchestra, commissioned for and introduced by Dame Evelyn Glennie; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra: The Red Violin (2005), developed from the themes of the score to François Girard’s film of

the same name, which won Corigliano the Oscar in 1999; Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000) for orchestra and amplified soprano, the recording won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition in 2008; Symphony no. 3: Circus Maximus (2004), scored simultane-ously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles; and Symphony no. 2 (2001: Pulitzer Prize in Music.) Other important scores include String Quartet (1995: Grammy Award, Best Contemporary Composition); Symphony no. 1 (1991: Grawemeyer and Grammy Awards); and the opera The Ghosts of Versailles (Metropolitan Opera commission, 1991, International Classical Music Award 1992). One of the few living composers to have a string quartet named for him, Corigliano serves on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which has established a scholarship in his name.

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Recently named the most- performed composer of his generation, Mason Bates serves as the first composer- in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His music enlivens imaginative narrative forms with novel orchestral writing, the harmonies of jazz, and

the rhythms of techno, and it has been the first symphonic music to receive widespread acceptance for its unique inte-gration of electronic sounds. Leading conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Leonard Slatkin

have championed his diverse catalog. He has become a visible advocate for bringing new music to new spaces, whether through institutional partnerships such as his res-idency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2010–15), or through his club/classical project Mercury Soul, which transforms spaces ranging from commercial clubs to Frank Gehry–designed concert halls into exciting, hybrid musical events drawing over a thousand people. In awarding Bates the Heinz Medal, Teresa Heinz remarked that “his music has moved the orchestra into the digital age and dissolved the boundaries of classical music.” In July 2017, Santa Fe Opera premiered The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a kinetic and emotional exploration of one of the most compelling figures of our time.

The impressive body of work by Grammy–winning com-poser Augusta Read Thomas embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry. Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, Eschenbach, Salonen, Maazel, Ozawa, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her

profession. An influential teacher at Eastman, Northwestern, and Tanglewood, she is also the sixteenth person to be des-ignated University Professor at the University of Chicago. Former chairperson of the American Music Center, she has become one of the most recognizable and widely loved

figures in American music. Thomas was the longest-serv-ing Mead Composer-in-Residence for Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1997 through 2006, a residency that culminated in the premiere of Astral Canticle—— one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. During her residency, Thomas not only premiered nine commissioned works but was also central to the establishment of the MusicNOW series. She won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, among many other coveted awards, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Thomas envisioned, spearheaded, and led the successful EAR TAXI FESTIVAL, a new six-day music festi-val in October 2016 celebrating the vital new-music scene in Chicago.

Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the most admired and widely performed composers of his generation. Turnage is a former student of Oliver Knussen and John Lambert in London and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. His works skill-fully blend classical and jazz idioms, modernism, and tradi-

tion. He has had residencies and associations with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English National Opera, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2006–10), and his

works have been conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis, Vladimir Jurowski, Daniel Harding, Antonio Pappano, Andris Nelsons, Vassily Petrenko, Oliver Knussen, and Leonard Slatkin. He has also collaborated with jazz musi-cians John Scofield, Peter Erskine, and Joe Lovano; soloists Håkan Hardenberger, Christian Lindberg, Christian Tetzlaff, and Marc-André Hamelin; and Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, and the Nash Ensemble. His stage works include the opera Anna Nicole for the Royal Opera and dance collaborations Trespass with Christopher Wheeldon and UNDANCE with Wayne McGregor. His music is recorded on the Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics, Chandos, LPO, Black Box, and Onyx labels. He was awarded a CBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honors.

conductor profile

Cliff Colnot has been princi-pal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s con- temporary MusicNOW ensem- ble since its inception. He was principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for twenty-two years and principal conductor of the University of Chicago’s Contempo

Ensemble for fifteen years. Colnot conducts the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble.

A master arranger, Colnot orchestrated Shulamit Ran’s Three Fantasy Pieces for Cello and Piano, Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival’s Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony no. 10, Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande,

Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat, and Ran’s Soliloquy for Violin, Cello, and Piano for Yellow Barn Music Festival. He arranged Messiaen’s Chants de terre et de ciel for ICE. Colnot reorchestrated Bottesini’s Concerto no. 2 in B minor for Double Bass. He is regularly commissioned to write works for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Percussion Scholarship Group and for many artists, including Richard Marx and Brian Culbertson.

Colnot graduated with honors from Florida State University and received the Ernst von Dohnányi Certificate of Excellence. He received the Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University, where he earned a doctorate. Chicago Tribune named Cliff Colnot a 2001 Chicagoan of the Year in music, he received the 2005 William Hall Sherwood Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts, and he was awarded the 2016 Alice M. Ditson Conductor’s Award.

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special guest profiles

New York City–native Baird Dodge joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a vio-list in 1996. He moved to the second violin section later that same year. In 2002, he was appointed principal second violin by Daniel Barenboim. After studying violin and viola from an early age, Dodge

attended the precollege division of the Juilliard School. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree in music from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His teachers have

included Helen Kwalwasser, Gregory Fulkerson, and Joyce Robbins. An avid chamber musician, Dodge has collabo-rated with artists such as Daniel Barenboim, Isadore Cohen, Ida Kavafian, Samuel Rhodes, David Sawyer, and Pinchas Zukerman. Dodge has a special interest in contemporary music, and often has performed works by his father Charles Dodge, including the premiere of his Violin Etudes at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre in 1994. He recorded his father’s Viola Elegy for New Albion Records in 1992. He premiered Carillon Sky, a chamber concerto written for him by Augusta Read Thomas, in 2006. Dodge also has cham-pioned the works of composer James Matheson, performing the premieres of several pieces including the Violin Concerto with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the CSO in 2011.

Stephanie Jeong, who holds the Cathy and Bill Osborn Chair, was appointed associate concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2011 by music director Riccardo Muti. Prior to joining the CSO, she was a member of the New York Philharmonic from 2010 to 2011. Jeong made her solo

debut at the age of twelve with the CSO as winner of its Feinburg Competition and with the Philadelphia Orchestra as winner of its Albert M. Greenfield Competition. She won

the Greenfield Prize again in 2002 and 2006, and performed as featured soloist on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Best of Tchaikovsky series conducted by Rossen Milanov. She has also appeared as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Kansas City Symphony orches-tras, among others. Jeong has collaborated in chamber music performances with such artists as violinists Cho-Liang Lin and David Kim, pianist Wu Han, and cellist Peter Wiley. She has appeared in recital at the Raymond F. Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Florida; the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City; and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Brant Taylor was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Daniel Barenboim. He was previously cellist of the Everest Quartet, prizewinners at the Banff and Fischoff chamber music com-petitions, as well as a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. His varied career

includes solo appearances and collaborations with leading musicians throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. A dedicated teacher of both cello and chamber music, Taylor has combined performance and pedagogy

throughout his career, conducting master classes and writing articles on a wide variety of musical topics. He is a member of the faculty of DePaul University School of Music. A fan of many styles of music, Mr. Taylor had a seven-year asso-ciation with the band Pink Martini, appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and in nightclubs and theaters across North America. He can be heard on Pink Martini’s studio release, “Hey Eugene.” Taylor holds a bachelor of music degree and a performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music and a master of music degree from Indiana University. His primary teachers include János Starker and Paul Katz.

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MusicNOW EnsembleMusicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guests

Cliff Colnot Conductor

Yuan-Qing Yu Violin 2, 4, 7

Hermine Gagné Violin 4, 7

Stephanie Jeong Violin 5

Baird Dodge Violin 6, 7

Danny Lai Viola 4, 7

Brant Taylor Cello 1, 3

Kenneth Olsen Cello 2, 4, 6

Katinka Kleijn Cello 7

Jennifer Gunn Flute 6, 8 and Piccolo 7

Andrew Nogal Oboe 7

J. Lawrie Bloom Clarinet 2, Bass Clarinet 8

John Bruce Yeh Clarinet 6, 7, Bass Clarinet 8

Jeremy Ruthrauff Soprano Saxophone 8

Taimur Sullivan Soprano Saxophone 8

David Griffin Horn 8

Christian Anderson Trumpet 7, 8

Charles Vernon Trombone 7, 8

Cynthia Yeh Marimba 3 Percussion 7, 8

Ian Ding Percussion 7

Julia Coronelli Harp 7

Winston Choi Piano 2, 7, 8

Lawrence Kohut Bass Guitar 8

“Two bold Xs come together to honor twenty great years, each containing the names of former CSO composers-in-residence who have contributed to the lexicon of modern art music. It is a celebration, commemorating the incredible achievement of two decades of MusicNOW.”

—— John Pobojewski of Thirst Communication Design Practice

Major support for MusicNOW is generously provided by the Irving Harris Foundation, the Sally Mead Hands 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 MusicNOW performance.

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