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The Latin Legacy: Continuum

Continuum Ensemble. Joel Sachs, Cheryl Seltzer, Ann Miller, Christina Reiko Cooper, Jared Soldiviero, Moran Katz, Ulla Suokko

Our country has been vastly enriched by waves of immigration throughout its history. Newcomers have contributed to all areas of society, and, not the least, to our culture. One of the most stimulating forces in American music for nearly three generations has been the influx of composers from Latin America. Among the senior figures are the Argentinean-born Mario Davidovsky, a composer of the highest imagination and quality and one of the pioneers in electronic music; among his contemporaries are the Panamanian Roque Cordero, the Argentinean Alcides Lanza, who was active in New York before moving to Montreal; the late Eduardo Mata, Mexican-born composer, pianist, and conductor of the Dallas Symphony; the Chilean pianist-composer Alfonso Montecino; and the Uruguayan conductor-composer José Serebrier. Composers of the middle generation include Osvaldo Golijov, Roberto Sierra, Pablo Ortiz, Ricardo Lorenz, Tania León, Miguel del Aguila, Orlando Jacinto García, Samuel Zyman, and numerous others. Continuum's long relationship with most of these composers is well known to our audiences.

Each generation of Latin American composers who have settled here gets larger. Tonight's concert celebrates a few of the many young men and women who are now beginning to make their mark on an international scale. Like any large group of composers, they employ a broad range of techniques and styles: sometimes a single composition can embrace both folkloric materials and an international modernist language. Continuum hopes that this concert will show not only the striking level of talent but also the difficulty of generalizing about young composers from Latin America.

Marcelo Toledo: Aliento/Arrugas (1998)

At an early age, Marcelo Toledo (b. Posadas, Misiones, Argentina, 1964) became co-founder of the experimental multi-media group "Indiklextomink", which was devoted to research into different "artistic codes". In Santa Fé, Argentina he worked as a guitarist and composer interested in the crossing of the languages of popular and experimental music. Subsequently he studied at the National University of Litoral, where he engaged in a research project entitled "Stravinsky or the sculpture of time" and had composition lessons with composer Dante Grela. After coming to the United States in 1992, Toledo earned a master's degree in composition at Syracuse University and the DMA at Columbia University as a student of Tristan Murail, Fred Lerdahl, and Jonathan Kramer. His compositions include the Ensemble Intercontemporain 2002 Commission, Para el encuentro en los abismos, for 24 musicians; the radio opera De qué modo en lo anónimo, written for Radio Clásica, Spain on a CDMC 2002 Commission; the opera La selva interior (The Jungle Within), commissioned in 2006 by the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón; and a Südwestrundfunk Commission (2007). He also has an unpublished book of poetry. In 2005-2006 he was the New York mentor for the intercultural project Global Interplay organized by "Musik der Jahrhunderte" for the ISCM World Music Days. He also was organizer of the New York Global Interplay Conference and Concerts at the Goethe Institute in New York, whose participants included young composers from Europe, Africa, Asia and America. Toledo has given lectures, courses on 20th-century music, seminars, and composition workshops at universities including Stanford, Columbia, and UNAM (Mexico City). He is the 2008 Recipient of the DAAD Artist in Residence fellowship in Berlin. His music has been performed in international contemporary music festivals and concerts in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, by prestigious new music ensembles among others, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ergo Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, Continuum, Columbia Sinfonietta, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Marcelo Toledo writes, "Aliento/Arrugas (Breath/Furrows) is a sonic exploration of the instrument using the breathing of the performer as an element of organic expression. Inhaling and exhaling generate a continuum made out of sound gamut from colored noise to complex granular sounds obtained by the dense combination of several sound productions. Flutter tongue, tongue noise, percussive sounds, singing and playing simultaneously, create a textural/timbrical sonic world where the flute functions as a filter, a masking device, and a resonance body." The work was premiered by Ulla Suokko in New York in 1998.

Manuel Sosa: Melodia I (2003)

Manuel Sosa (b. Venezuela, 1967) writes: "Caracas-Venezuela: wood, violin, bright natural light, cement, theory of music, legos, soccer, solfège, salsa, drawing, my siblings, baseball, gardening, Beethoven, vibrancy of nature, the cuatro: then, US-New York: a different dynamism within the same immense piece of land, four seasons, and music composition: The Juilliard School: bm, mm, dma; incisive teachers: Albert, Castaldo, Diamond; inspiring teachers: Beaser, Cox, Druckman, González, Kim, Saylor; a caring mentor: Jacques-Louis Monod; music written for and performed by extraordinary ensembles, in this and other lands; several prizes and awards; blessed by the opportunity of collaborating with embracing and talented artists: poets, painters, dancers, musicians, actors; and, as always: working on music, day by day, and teaching: pre-college division at my alma mater.

"Melodia I is the second piece in a series of works for violin and piano that pay personal homage to the great European musical tradition that I was exposed to growing up. As a child, in my native Venezuela, I rarely encountered Latin American art music of any kind. European art music was at the center of all my early musical experiences.

"Soon after my arrival in the U.S., I felt the need to somehow come to terms with the palpable and ever-present conflict between the autochthonous features and ramifications of my native culture, and those derived from the inevitably powerful influence of the mother continent. My Melodiæ embrace the space where I have attempted to balance, if so ever possibly, these opposite and yet complementary, and in my own particular case, necessary forces. In the early 1980s, as I bowed my way through violin studies, I composed, or so I thought at the time, several short pieces for violin and piano, in which I experimented by fusing the sounds and rhythms I heard in the streets of Caracas, with those I found in my father's record collection -mainly European 'classical' music. My Melodiæ, I feel, are a continuation of these early pieces, as the notion of combination is at their core. But as in any homage, the Melodiæ also embrace a great sense of respect. This carries with it a sense of rupture and a melancholy that, perhaps, can only emerge as one caringly tries to deceptively recombine those very elements that make up one's cultural heritage."

Melodia I was commissioned by Dr. and Mrs. Abdurrahman Unal, and receives its world premiere tonight.

Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez: ...and of course Henry the Horse... (2006)

Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez (b. Mexico City, 1964) spent his early years in Guadalajara, and studied piano there. He subsequently received Master's degrees in composition from the Peabody Conservatory and Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton; his teachers included Henri Dutilleux, Jacob Druckman, and Martin Bresnick. He has taught composition at San Francisco State University, Yale School of Music, and is now Associate Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He has received many prizes and grants including Guggenheim, Fromm, Rockefeller, Camargo, and Charles Ives fellowships. Sánchez-Gutiérrez is a member of Mexico's prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and was named Person of the Year 2000 by the Mexican daily Público. His work is performed and recorded frequently in the U.S, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, appearing on the Capstone, Pueblo, Teldec International, Alebrije, Equis, Princeton and UMMUS labels. It is published by Ediciones Mexicanas de Música and by the composer himself. Among his many commissioned works are orchestral and chamber compositions; a chamber opera Just Look was commissioned by Munich's A/Devantgarde Festival; El Mozote is an evening-long collaborative work with French choreographer Pascal Rioult, Argentinean director Susana Tubert and the U.S.-based Core Ensemble (a Barlow Endowment/Cary Trust commission).

 ... and of course Henry the horse... was commissioned by Continuum with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. The composer writes:

“The source of the title for this collection of short pieces should be obvious to any Beatles fan. 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite'—a hallucinatory electronic waltz with colorful characters and an aura of decadence, nostalgia and futurism—intrigued and amazed me long before I could understand what the lyrics said.

“I'd like to think of the four little pieces that make up this collection of music for four-hand piano, clarinet and violin as proponents of some of the same qualities I like about 'Mr. Kite'. My pieces, like most circus acts, employ a menagerie of 'technological' devices (in the case of my music, these are rhythmic and structurally 'imperfect' mechanisms) that are precisely engineered; yet precariously realized. The pieces are simple and complex, as well as a bit funny and very dangerous. Each piece pays homage to, and is a commentary on a work of contemporary art.

“Genghis is a wobbly, six-legged robot built in 1989 by Rodney Brooks (Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab), which, upon being switched on, doesn't vacuum one's floors or build the newest Chevrolet. Instead, it simply 'does what is in its nature.'

“Mandala Tequila was inspired by the installation piece Mandalas para la vida moderna (Mandalas for Modern Life) by Mexican artist Iván Puig, where an endless mechanical mallet weaves a mantric melody when hitting a collection of tequila bottles arranged in a circle. Thanks to a small light bulb installed on the mallet, a series of cogwheel-like shadows are projected onto the walls, creating a perpetual counterpoint of light, sound and movement.

“Machine with Artichoke takes its title from one of the awesome machines built by the American artist Arthur Ganson—a self-described cross between a mechanical engineer and a choreographer. Ganson's machines are simple and profound, quiet and eloquent, high-tech and low-tech, finite and eternal.

“Things that Go dreams about the world of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, specifically their masterful film The Way Things Go, a sort of perpetual cycle where fire, air, gravity and corrosive liquids make it possible for mops, buckets, wood planks and old bottles to stage a carefully choreographed dance that is part chain-reaction, part circus-act – Being for the Benefit of Ms. Seltzer and Mr. Sachs!

Program note ©2006, Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez

Jorge Martín: Conjuration (2003)

Jorge Martín (b. Santiago de Cuba, 1959) came to the United States in 1965, and now lives in Vermont and New York City. He graduated from Yale in 1981, summa cum laude, with distinction in music, and earned Master’s and Doctoral degrees in composition at Columbia University. Mr. Martín won the Academy Award in Music of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a Cintas Foundation Fellowship for artists of Cuban origin; two residencies at Yaddo; and a month’s fellowship in Bogliasco, Italy, awarded by the Bogliasco Foundation. In 2005 he completed his opera Before Night Falls, based on the memoir by Cuban dissident writer Reinaldo Arenas, with a libretto by Arenas’s translator, Dolores Koch. The piece is currently in the development phase. His one-act opera Tobermory won the National Opera Association's Chamber Opera Competition in 1993, and was performed across the United States. Beast and Superbeast, a set of four one-act operas (one of which is Tobermory, based on Saki's short stories with libretti by Andrew Joffe), was presented in 1996 in Washington D.C. and New York to critical acclaim. The Vienna Saxophone Quartet performed Martín’s Saxophone Quartet in Vienna and New York; his Four Dances for bassoon and string quartet was first presented at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland in 1997 and subsequently in New York at the American Composers Orchestra "Sonidos de las Americas: Cuba" festival. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra commissioned Romance for its autumn tour in 1999, and will feature it again in 2009. In 2000, baritone Sanford Sylvan (with pianist David Breitman) premiered Martín’s The Glass Hammer, an hour-long song cycle on poems by Andrew Hudgins; Carnegie Hall subsequently presented it at Weill Recital Hall. The duo recorded the cycle on the Koch International Classics label.

Conjuration was commissioned by the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble in 2003 and featured in their 2004 and 2005 seasons. It is “one in a series of compositions in which I was trying out different ways of incorporating Cuban musical styles into my own musical language in preparation for composing the opera Before Night Falls, which is based on a Cuban historical theme.”

Arthur Kampela: Exoskeleton (2003)

Continuum is delighted to have as a guest performer tonight the renowned composer and guitar virtuoso Arthur Kampela (b. Rio de Janeiro, 1960), winner of the 1995 International Guitar Composition Competition (Caracas, Venezuela) and the 1998 Lamarque-Pons Guitar Composition Competition (Montevideo, Uruguay). He has received commissions and awards from the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Rio Arte Foundation, and fellowships from the Brazilian Government and Columbia University, among others. In 1998 he received a doctorate in composition from Columbia University, where he studied with Mario Davidovsky and Fred Lerdahl. He also had private lessons with British composer Brian Ferneyhough in 1993. Kampela's works have been performed in leading forums for contemporary music in South America, Europe, Asia, and the US. Recent achievements include the premiere (in June 2007) of Elastics II for flutes, guitar and electro-acoustic sounds and Percussion Study V for “viola alla chitarra” and electroacoustic sounds at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain in Strasbourg, France. His Antropofagia for electric guitar and large chamber ensemble was premiered at the ISCM 2006 World Music Days by the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin. Kampela describes himself as having broken new ground in two ways. In his native country, as a sort of "Brazilian Frank Zappa", he has fused popular and vernacular styles with contemporary textural techniques; his 1988 CD "Epic..." uses new-music resources together with popular music forms deconstructing samba, jazz, musical theater, creating a true hybrid genre. He also has worked with new extended techniques for acoustic instruments. He writes that his ’Tapping Technique’ exploits timbre, pitch, texture, and complex rhythmic designs where ergonomic/motoric considerations take a prominent thematic role.”

Regarding Exoskeleton, for viola ‘alla chitarra’, (Percussion Study IV), he writes, “My series of Percussion Studies attempts to create a set of pieces for the acoustic guitar that have in common an unusual playing technique called the ‘Tapping Technique.’ This technique enables me to intersperse a set of unique percussive sounds and noises performed over the guitar's body and executed mostly with bare hands. For this purpose, it is necessary to ensure that percussive sounds and noises could be performed with the same flexibility as ordinary notes. In Exoskeleton (which means the outer shell of insects) my idea was to ‘export’ the Tapping Technique to the viola’s morphological context. The idea behind such exchange is to provoke a motoric break with the expected technique of the instrument, allowing for a new way to play and hear the instrument’s sounds. It is not a substitution that weakens the technical potential of the instrument but a way to infuse new potency into its acoustic possibilities. You can hear pizzicato sounds played at speeds never heard before in traditional viola music. My intention when creating this piece was to deal with the mobility of musicianship, more than with the pre-determined, assigned role of the musician. Thus, this piece can only be played by a guitarist. The 'Percussion Studies Project' is something larger, in my view, than a series of studies. It is a complete insight into compositional procedures that uses the guitar (and the guitarist) as its starting point. The intention here is to incorporate the very musician as a ‘compositional material.’ The pieces have been literally evolving to envelop the voice, the gestures, the body of the player, and other instruments (i.e. viola, cello, violin etc.), but avoiding, as much as possible, all gimmicks, or what is not relevant to the compositional discourse. It is a true platform of compositional thinking, a ‘twisted diary,’ a place of ‘privileged exposure,’ where I attempt to extend and amplify the idea of ‘study,’ being, and performance.”

Sebastián Zubieta: CCXCIV (2002)

Sebastián Zubieta (b. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1967) currently lives in New York, where he is Music Director at Americas Society. His music has been performed in concerts and festivals in Argentina, Europe, and the U.S., including Latein Amerika-Ruhrgebiet 1993 in Essen and the 1997 World Music Days in Seoul (where his Elliot Ness was played by Continuum). In 2007, he was one of five composers commissioned to write a piece premiered in Buenos Aires during the new music series organized by the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires. As a choral and vocal ensemble conductor for twenty years, Zubieta has presented a variety of music from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. He was the conductor of the Yale International Singers from 1999 to 2005 and premiered a number of new works for chamber ensembles and orchestra with Yale Philharmonia, New Music New Haven, and NeitherMusic. His teaching experience includes positions as a teaching fellow for music appreciation and American popular music at Yale Department of Music and for hearing and analysis at Yale School of Music. He also taught music history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, composition at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and music appreciation at the Centro de Arte y Tecnología in Buenos Aires. He has presented papers on baroque music in the United States, Belgium (at the 17th Congress of the International Musicological Society), and Argentina. Sebastian holds an MMA degree in composition from Yale School of Music and a degree in musicology from the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires. CCXIV, for the unusual combination of voice and double bass, was written for NeitherMusic and it was premiered in 2002 by Szilvia Schranz and Kevin Mayner at the Staller Center for the Arts in Stony Brook, New York. The text is drawn from Francesco Petrarca’s Canzoniere; the title indicates the number of the poem in the collection. This setting pays close attention to the sound of the poem, with the two musical lines moving in intricate homophonic rhythms and microtonal melodic gestures.

Ileana Pérez Velázquez: Duendes alados (2001)

Ileana Pérez Velázquez (b. Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1964) received her B.A. in piano and composition from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1987. When she moved to the United States in 1993, she was already recognized as one of the up-and-coming talents in Cuban composition, having won several national composition competitions. After obtaining her Master’s degree in 1995 in electroacoustic music from Dartmouth College, she began her doctoral studies at Indiana University. Pérez Velázquez received a 1999 Cintas Fellowship in Composition, served on the faculty of Portland State University (Oregon) for two years (1998-2000), and completed her doctorate in 2000. She then joined the faculty of Williams College, where she is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Electronic Music. Her music has been featured in numerous festivals, such as the Festival Sonidos de las Americas Cuba at Weill Recital Hall, by the American Composers Orchestra; the American Composers Forum’s Sonic Circuits XII International Electronic Music Festival at Berklee College; the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival; New Music Miami Festival; the Festival of Women Composers International, Pittsburgh; and other festivals in Wisconsin, Virginia, Indiana, and New Hampshire. Her compositions have also been heard at international festivals in Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Chile, Lebanon, and France, and in national conferences of the Society of Composers Inc., the College Music Society, and at the International Association of Women in Music Congress. Albany Records released a CD of her music in January.

She says of Duendes alados (winged goblins): “Duende in Spanish has several meanings, one of them being a spirit who has a certain magical quality. This work relates to an imaginary and unreal world of fantasy. It does not reflect any particular story, but a world created in the imagination of the composer.” Duendes alados was commissioned by the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College for the FLUX quartet, which premiered it in 2002.

 Fernando Benadón: Meet Café (1999)

Fernando Benadón (b. 1972 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) came to Boston at the age of 18 to study arranging at the Berklee School. Then began what he calls a series of “migrating studies” – to Los Angeles for a year, continuing studies of arranging, then back to New York for three years, during which he attended the Manhattan School of Music and worked in the education department of the New York City Opera. Benadón then returned to California for a doctorate in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. Next came a year teaching at a Western-style conservatory in Istanbul; two years in Paris as a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Ladd prize. He is currently on the faculty of the American University in Washington, DC. He has received Tanglewood’s Fromm Commission, Copland House’s Aaron Copland Award, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Advanced Master Class, Fondation Royaumont, and the Wellesley Composers Conference. His film scores have been featured at the Cannes Film Festival and at many other festivals worldwide. As a scholar, he has written articles on John Lee Hooker's boogie, rhythmic elasticity in 1920s jazz, the visualization of rhythm, and the properties of 'swing' eighth-notes.

Meet Café was composed in 1999 and premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Mr. Benadón says, “The title and inspiration ... come from a passage in Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. More or less instinctively, I attempted to portray the novel’s recklessness, intensity, nonlinearity, and humor – but Meet Café is playfully lighthearted so there the comparison ends.”

Ricardo Romaneiro: Partita (Remixed) (2007)

Ricardo Romaneiro (b. Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1979) lives in New York City. He earned his undergraduate degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music under the tutelage of Richard Danielpour. Following private studies with Mexican-American composer Samuel Zyman, he completed the master of music degree in 2006 at the Juilliard School, where his teacher was Christopher Rouse. Romaneiro won the Claremont Prize for his chamber orchestra piece Alma Brasileira, a work inspired by his native country, which was premiered by Roger Nierenberg in 2002. His first work for dance, Scry for percussion trio, was premiered in Alice Tully Hall, choreographed by Bobbi Smith. It went on to be performed by the Sacramento Ballet in its Modern Masters' Series in 2004. Broken Rituals: Confessions from a Bound Spirit, choreographed by Shamel Pitts, was created and premiered in 2005, as part of Juilliard’s Composers and Choreographers program. This driving, percussive work featuring all male dancers was also presented in a gala for the Queen of Uganda's Buganda Kingdom, which helps raise awareness of Uganda's Arts. In 2006, Romaneiro again collaborated with Pitts to create Captured Archetypes. Premiered in Montreal's Place Des Arts’ Project Professionnel, this work, with an all-female cast, counterbalances Broken Rituals. In 2006 he won the Arthur Friedman Prize in Composition for his orchestral song Hard Garden. He has also written works for the Alvin Ailey School, Colorado Ballet, Ebony String Quartet, New Miniaturist Ensemble, and the New Juilliard Ensemble. His composition process and music was featured in Esquire Magazine's annual issue of "America's Best & Brightest 2007." Storm King, his newest piece, will be premiered this summer at MoMA’s Summergarden festival, with members of the New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs.

Romaneiro enjoys fusing his strong background in classical music, elements of his native rhythmic language, and passion for electronic music, to create a unique sound blurring individual music styles. “Partita (Remixed) was composed in 2007 for a program of works inspired by Bach's Partita in B minor for solo violin. I composed this work by taking fragments of the Bourrée and Double sections, analyzing it, and recomposed/rearranged it, making it my own. While still keeping the heart and form of the work intact, articulations and dynamics were left open to the ensemble, therefore combining the old with the new and the new with the old.”

Continuum’s programs are researched and directed by Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs. The biographies and descriptions of the works on tonight’s program are from materials provided by the composers.