CASA SPRING CONCERT
featuring the Chicago New Arts Trio
Misook Kim, piano; Jennie Brown, flute; Carolyn Hart, soprano
Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 3:00pm at
Trinity University's
Ruth Taylor Recital Hall, San Antonio, Texas.
$15 / $5 for students, seniors, military with ID
Also join us for a pre-concert discussion about the pieces with the composers (2pm).
And stay around to talk to the composers after the concert.
PROGRAM
David Heuser
Woman Ironing Premiere
Text by Olga Cabrel
Dimitar Ninov
All Lovely Things (2009) Premiere
Text by Conrad Aiken
Lily Barmor Rose
Shir Eres L'Yaacov (Lullaby for Jacob) (2008) Premiere
Text by Lily Barmor Rose
Ken Metz
Experiments for Flute and Piano (2006)
Balancing Act
Crash and Burn
No Return
If Only
Tone Holes
David Heuser
In Sad Hotels (2005) Premiere
Text by Olga Cabrel
Misook Kim
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1990, rev. 2008)
Text by Wallace Stevens
The Chicago New Arts Trio is also giving a free concert on Thursday, April 2, 2009, University of Texas at San Antonio Recital Hall (1604 Campus), 7:30pm. Music on this concert is by Nancy Telfer, Jennifer Higdon, Misook Kim, Thea Musgrave, and Jake Heggie
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Misook Kim, received her B.A. with the honor of Cum Laude from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. After finishing her “New Star Concert” sponsored by the Cho-Sun Newspaper, she entered the graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she completed her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in composition and the certificate of piano performance. Reviewer Mike Greenberg, writing in the San Antonio Express-News, called the composer ‘a bold and unrepentant modernist’. He also has mentioned ‘each of her works presented thus far has impressed with its fearless modernism, its concision and its strong individual profile’.
Kim has performed as a composer as well as a pianist in various concerts of her own works from solo to larger ensemble compositions throughout the States and Korea. Including commissions for the MUSICOPIA Concert, Olmos Ensemble, she has won International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) Judith Zaimont Award and the Long Island Arts Council International Composition Competition in 2007. She has also won 2008 International Sejong Music Composition Competition. She was a former faculty member at the University of the Incarnate Word and Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. She had also served as a music director at KUMC. In fall 2006, Kim joined the faculty at the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College, IL.
Jennie Brown is an active performer in the Chicago area and a faculty member at Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. As a chamber musician, Dr. Brown is a founding member of the Chicago New Arts Trio. Performances this year include the closing recital for the “Women in Music Festival” at the Eastman School of Music and as visiting artists at Indiana State University, University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, the University of Texas, San Antonio, and with the San Antonio Composers’ Alliance. Performing with the Lunaire Chamber Ensemble, Dr. Brown looks forward to recording the music of American composers Amy Beach and Martin Amlin as well as performances for the Du Page Choral Society and Concordia College. Dr. Brown also enjoys performing with The Timaeus Chamber Ensemble, a collaboration of university faculty and Eastman alumni dedicated to the music of contemporary composers.
Dr. Brown has performed for the recording “The Music of Gardner Read” distributed by Albany Records and “Ambrosia” distributed by the European Cultural Society. She was also a featured performer in the “Gen X Showcase” at the 2005 National Flute Association Convention in San Diego. Dr. Brown was a fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West.
Dr. Brown received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters Degrees, and the Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Bonita Boyd. She received her Bachelor of Music Degree from Northwestern University where she studied with Chicago Symphony members Walfrid Kujala and Richard Graef. She is also a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy.
Dr. Brown is a lifetime member, former chair, president, and vice president of the Chicago Flute Club, and a member of the National Flute Association, the Musicians’ Club of Women, and the American Federation of Musicians.
A frequent performer of recital, oratorio and orchestral repertoire, soprano Carolyn Hart appears frequently in the Chicago area and has toured extensively throughout Canada and Great Britain. Further concerts have taken her to Asia, New York and most recently to Paris. She performs with Music of the Baroque (Jane Glover) and has been heard live on WFMT (Chicago) and frequently on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She especially enjoys chamber music, and performs with a variety of instrumental ensembles.
Her CD Not Your Usual Lineup features newly commissioned works for soprano, clarinet and piano. She holds degrees from the University of Toronto, and earned her doctorate at the University of British Columbia. Further studies have taken her to the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Britten-Pears School in England, and the Academie de Musique in Lausanne, Switzerland for work with such artists as Boris Goldovsky, Peter Pears and Hugues Cuénod. She has adjudicated extensively throughout Canada, and has been a juror for the Canada Council and Eckhardt-Grammatté competitions. Dr. Hart has served on the Board of Directors for the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and currently serves at Wheaton College as Associate Professor of Voice and Chair of Voice Studies.
PROGRAM NOTES
Shir Eres L'Yaacov (Lullaby for Jacob), by Lily Barmor Rose, is a lullaby that was composed for Jacob, the composer’s son when he was just under two years old. The text is an original Hebrew text (the native tongue of the composer) about a mother singing a lullaby to her young child. She tells him that she will think about him night and day as she reflects about him growing up so fast: “another day has passed, and so have two.” The word “lila” (meaning night) is rhythmically emphasized and lyrically repeated, and while intended to provide comfort to the sleepy child, it also serves as the means to which the mother hangs on to the precious time that she has with her son in this moment in time.
Experiments for Flute and Piano is a series of (as you might imagine) musical experiments designed to test ideas occurring in life and music. Since this piece was completed it has become a metaphorical laboratory for further musical attempts to explore the unknown in the language of music.
Balancing Act: A metaphor for the way many of us live our lives
Crash and Burn: Well it happens a lot these days.
No Return: or ABA’ w/o A’
If Only: If only…lots of things….then….
Tone Holes: A pun intended for the flute tone wholes and the whole tone scale that is an important ingredient in this number.
All Lovely Things: This is Dimitar Ninov's first setting to a poem by an American (or English speaking) poet and the song will have its world premiere in San Antonio. The poem evokes a feeling of nostalgia about the "sweet youth" and the regret that, the lovely things and times, so naturally associated with young age, are fading away."
Both Woman Ironing and In Sad Hotels are by Olga Cabral (1909 – 1997), a New York poet of Portuguese descent. She was born ten degrees North of the equator, in the West Indies. When she was nine her parents moved to the Canadian prairie. From the age of ten she lived in New York, except for several periods on the West Coast. She began publishing poetry in the magazines in the 1930s, and her poems have since appeared in various literary journals, about twenty anthologies, and seven of her own books. Her occupations have included office worker, art gallery owner, and director of a children’s art workshop. She was the wife of American Yiddish poet, Aaron Kurtz, whose poems she also translated. For the full text of these two songs, see http://www.davidheuser.com/ironing2.htm and http://www.davidheuser.com/sadhotels.htm.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the following for their contributions and support:
Trinity University
Centro Properties
Musical Bridges
Charles Goodhue