TransBAMAgiNations:  Duos for Violin and Piano

The idea for a duo collaboration with pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov was sparked after reading violin and piano sonatas at the Seattle home of Elena Dubinets, a Russian musicologist who had invited each of us to perform with the Seattle Chamber Players as guests in their 2004 Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices, an international conference of contemporary music from the countries of the Baltic Sea. We played through the Shostakovich Viola Sonata, which was inspired in mood and motif by Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and is permeated by autobiographical quotations from his own symphonies. Vanya then exclaimed that he would like to compose his own Solnechnaya (Sunlight) Sonata for violin and piano that we would premiere in a duo recital during the upcoming season at Birmingham-Southern College. We contacted Charles Mason and Dorothy Hindman to request a duo composed by each of them and were midstream in our planning when Dr. Mason was awarded the 2005 Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition. The triple duo project was then relocated to Seattle where the Washington Composers Forum presented the TransMagiNations program and then onto Rome where we performed at Villa Aurelia at the American Academy in May 2006 as the culmination of their year in Rome. The current program was augmented from a call for scores in October 2006 by BAMA (Birmingham Art Music Alliance) composers and we are at long last bringing the project back home to Alabama under the title TransBAMAgiNations.

–Karen Bentley Pollick

Michael Angell has written music in many genres and styles, from solo and chamber music through orchestral works, art songs, theatrical compositions, and multimedia works in collaborations with visual artists. His works have been presented in locations throughout the United States and Europe. His music has been heard regularly at concerts of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Society of Composers events, Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) and International Computer Music Festivals. His works have received awards from the International Trumpet Guild, the Hultgren Cello Biennial, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and he has received an Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Angell is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, serving as its initial president. He has also served on the boards of directors of the Artburst series (president, 2000) and SEAMUS. He has been on the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham since 1994, teaching courses in computer music, composition, theory, and as director of the Computer Music Ensemble. His music has been recorded on the Centaur, Marks Music, and Living Music labels.

Prig and the Pig was written in October 2006 for Karen Bentley Pollick and Ivan Sokolov. Formally, the work, which is in a single movement, is a simple alternation of two contrasting moods. A simple, elegant gesture gives way to more aggressive figures. The elegant, prim idea is subjected to numerous contrapuntal treatments, and wanders into a sea of trills, and even an ambient landscape, before giving way to its more aggressive counterpart.

—Michael Angell

Charles Norman Mason has received many awards for his compositions including the 2005 Rome Prize (Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship) and as a result lived and composed in Rome until August, 2006. Other awards he has received include: second prize in the International Society of Bassists 2004, 1998 Premi Internacional de Composició Musical Ciutat de Tarragona Orchestra Music prize, a 1994 National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Award, 2002 First Prize in the Atlanta Clarinet Association Composition Competition, a 1998 Plymouth Music Orchestra Reading fellow, a 1995 Delius Prize, a 1996 Dale Warland Singers Commission Prize, 1989 honorable mention in the International Bourges Electro-Acoustic Composition Competition, and commissions from the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (2003), Dale Warland Singers (1996) , the Corona Guitar Kvartet (Denmark) (2004) Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, (1996), the Lithium Quartet (2002), West Wind (France) (2002), ONIX (Mexico) (2004), Luna Nova (2004), cellist Craig Hultgren (1993), the Music Teachers National Association (2000), Steinway Artist William DeVan (2000), bassist Robert Black (2004), violinist Karen Bentley Pollick, and the New York Golliard Ensemble (2003).

His music has been performed throughout the world. Recent performances include the FORO INTERNACIONAL DE MUSICA NUEVA in Mexico City (2005), Aspen Summer Music Festival (2003), Nuova Musica Consonante in Romania (2004), Spoleto Festival (SC) (1995), the Florida State New Music Festival (2003), and Merkin Hall (Washington Square Contemporary Music Ensemble) (2004). He was composer-in-residence with the Golliard Ensemble for 2004-2005.

Mason was a composer in residence at the International Centre for Composers in Visby, Sweden in 2005, a resident composer at the Hambidge Center (1994), the University of Alaska in Fairbanks (1996), the pianissimo New Music Festival in Bulgaria (2001), and was sponsored by the Seaside Institute as an “Escape To Create” composer-in-residence at Seaside, Florida (1995).

His music is available on ten different compact disc recordings including a 2003 release of The Onix Ensemble from Mexico with flutist Alejandro Escuer on the Quindecim Recordings label. His music is published by Living Artist Publishing.

Dr. Mason is professor of composition at Birmingham-Southern College and director of the Birmingham-Southern College Electroacoustic Music Studios. Birmingham-Southern offers a Bachelor of Music in Composition and a Master’s of Music in Composition. His website ishttp://panther.bsc.edu/~cmason.

Incantesimi: Ommagio a Scelsi e Berio for Violin and Piano (2005)
I composed this piece while a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. I was extremely fortunate to be there in 2005 as there were two amazing events occurring simultaneously: a month-long Luciano Berio celebration and a four month Giacinto Scelsi festival. I literally attended three concerts a week and still was not able to attend everything. I felt a strong influence from those two giants of Italian music and noticed that influence sneaking into my composition. Rather than attempt to block it out, I decided to embrace it as an homage to Berio and Scelsi. The piece itself also continues my work in the style of Hyper-Connectivisim. The term refers to the idea of disparate parts working together towards a common goal at such a frenetic pace that they reach the border just before chaos, but also the point at which great things can happen. For those who like to know the inner workings of a piece, I offer this: The motives, chords, pitch centers, and form all result from the following pitches: A Bb B C Eb E F# which come from the following three names BErio (Bb E) SCElSi (Eb C E Eb) MASon (F# A Eb) CHArlES (C B A E Eb). This does not mean these are the only pitches used in the piece, just that each section focuses on one of those pitches, the dominant notes in the original harmonies come from those pitches, etc. The careful listener may notice that there was a bit of tongue in cheek used in determining the pitches for the Scelsi and Berio sections (the Scelsi section focuses on the Berio pitches and vice-versa).

–Charles Norman Mason

Dorothy Hindman’s (b. 1966) work is performed extensively in the U.S., and throughout Eastern and Western Europe. Critics have called her music ‘intense, gripping, and frenetic’, ‘sonorous and affirmative’ and ‘music of terrific romantic gesture.’ Awards and recognition include a 2005 Almquist Choral Composition Award, a 2004 Nancy Van de Vate International Composition Prize for Opera, a 2004 Winner of the International Society of Bassists Solo Composition Competition, a 2002 Alabama Music Teachers Association/MTNA Commission, the Atlanta Prize in the 2001 Hultgren Biennial Solo Cello Works Competition, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, the NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the Abraham Frost Composition Competition, the G. Schirmer Young Americans Choral Competition, and the Percussive Arts Society’s International Solo Marimba Composition Competition. Recent commissions include Tapping the Furnace for Evelyn Glennie, Lost in Translation for saxophonist Carey Valente, Drift for the Lithium Saxophone Quartet, Taut for the Corona Guitar Kvartet, Louise: The Story of a Magdalen, a full-length opera for Alabama Operaworks, and Time Management for bassist Robert Black. A native of Miami, Florida, Hindman has taught music theory and composition at Birmingham-Southern College since 1994. In 2005-06, she resided in Rome, Italy, and was a Visiting Artist in the Fall of 2005 at the American Academy in Rome.

centro for Violin and Piano (2005)
In Rome, history is present to a tangible degree; everywhere, one is bombarded by insistent whispers of past presences (or present pasts?), relentless reminders of one’s own mortality. Anyone who has stood at Piazza Barberini, or any of the numerous other piazzas in the Centro will understand. This is a multilayered temporal experience: ancient, medieval, renaissance, contemporary. The paradox of human time and life’s fleeting nature is juxtaposed against man’s monuments, built to exist forever. In this work, the avant-garde coexists with the post-modern; each is informed by the other, juxtaposed, treated to hyper-imitation and timbrally bent toward or away from the other until the influences overwhelm and subsume the individual identities within the work. With its abrupt shifts and constant recasting of the same material into different connotations, centro also might suggest the inner, continuous centering of the self in relation to one’s surroundings, physical and metaphysical.centro, the second piece in the Monumenti series, was written in December, 2005 at the American Academy in Rome for Karen Bentley Pollick and Ivan Sokolov. It exploits their prodigious talents.

—Dorothy Hindman

Ivan Sokolov graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory as pianist and composer and worked as assistant professor of composition there in 1984-94. Mr. Sokolov has appeared in recitals and as a soloist with different orchestras in many European countries and in the USA. Being an extraordinary and inspired performer of baroque, classical and romantic music, Mr. Sokolov is one of the major Russian artists committed to the contemporary music world. His extensive contemporary music repertoire includes music by Prokofiev, Schönberg, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Bartók, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Kagel, Crumb, Feldman, Cage, Boulez and other composers.

Mr. Sokolov is the most prominent and recognized performer of piano and chamber music by the Soviet and contemporary Russian composers. He premiered many works by S. Gubaidulina, V. Silvestrov, E. Denisov, N. Korndorf, A. Raskatov, V. Tarnopolski, F. Karayev, V. Ekimovsky, D. Smirnov, E. Firsova, A. Rabinovitch, and other composers. In 1995 he made a CD-recording of all Galina Ustvolskaya’s piano works. His other projects include the recordings of compositions by the Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf, a recording of the Russian-German Composers’ Quartet, of which he is a member, and many other recordings. He collaborated with such excellent musicians as the cellists Alexander Ivashkin and Natalia Gutman, pianists Marta Argerich and Alexei Lubimov, violinists Tatiana Grindenko and Kolya Blacher, conductors Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Andrey Boreiko as well as with many distinguished Russian and German orchestras.

Since 1979 Mr. Sokolov has performed as a soloist in all major cities of the former Soviet Union and Europe. Since 1986 he has regularly appeared in concerts and festivals for contemporary music, including the Alternativa Festival in Moscow (of which he is one of the founders), the Schleswig-Holstein festival, Almeida Festival London, the Luzerner Festwochen, the Copenhagen Culture festival, and others. Sokolov made his debut in Seattle with the Seattle Chamber Players at the Icebreaker: Contemporary Russian Music Festival in February 2002, performing ten compositions in three days, and was re-engaged by the ensemble for another appearance in Seattle at the Shostakovich Uncovered festival with chamber music of Shostakovich and his followers, to many of whom Sokolov is a close friend and first and frequent performer of their compositions.

Mr. Sokolov’s own works include pieces for piano, violin, piano trio, orchestra, as well as a miniopera. They have been performed in Moscow and in many other Russian and European cities. In his music, Sokolov experiments with different types of musical expression, including cryptophonic encodings, graphic notational experiments, happenings as well as truly romantic stylistics. Since 1995 Sokolov has divided his time between Cologne (Germany) and Moscow and has toured all over the world. www.obst-music.com/artists/sokolov.htm

Solnechnaya Sonata for Violin and Piano was written in August 2005. The first movement, a sonata form, Allegro moderato in E minor, is in a lyric-epic atmosphere and filled with impressions from the beauty of Russian nature. Working on it, I was listening to a lot of Russian music and Alexander Glazunov’s Karelian Legend in particular (op. 99, 1916), which might be a better piece than any of his symphonies. The second movement Andante is in a pastoral, contemplative mood close to that of the symphonic music by Vassily Kalinnikov. It brings reminiscences of a rest in the open air. In the middle section there appears an image of a certain wide river, smoothly bearing its waters. In the recapitulation you can hear bird singing. This bird singing is getting closer to us in the third movement, Scherzo, and we look at it as if through an ear microscope. The finale, Allegro vivace, is the dramaturgical center of the Sonata, in a rondo form. It has only one theme, but some images from the previous movements are reflected and reach their conclusions in this finale. After some quite lyrical development, the music gradually becomes brighter and ends with a coda which reminds of a burst of sunlight in E major. The entire piece is named by this coda — the Solnechnaya (Sunlight) Sonata.

I am really grateful to the wonderful violinist Karen Bentley Pollick for her request to write this music and for agreeing to perform it.

—Ivan Sokolov

Robert Boury has for the past twenty-five years served as Resident Composer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He has composed two operas, two symphonies, chamber music and hundreds of piano pieces and songs. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Michigan where his principle teachers were David Diamond, Mario Davidovsky, Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett. A dedicated teacher as well, Boury has taught at national Music Camp at Interlochen, in the public schools and currently at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. His song cycle, “To Dream Again” was recently published by C.F.Peters. He is married to a composer and artist, Angie Boury.

Two Blues for Violin and Piano
The first blues Mother of Pearl was written in 1988 in memory of my maternal grandmother, who so influenced my development as a creative person. My mother’s name was Pearl, so my grandmother was “Mother of Pearl”. Ivesian fragments of patriotic tunes are heard throughout, along with a touch of ragtime.

The second blues A Tristan Two-Step was my breaking free piece from academic music in 1970, right in the middle of doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. It, along with other voices of American music, formed the aesthetic I followed after graduation and until the early years of this new century.

—Robert Boury

From the Czech Republic, Jan Vičar (born on 5 May 1949 in Olomouc) is a prolific composer whose compositions have been performed and recorded by leading Czech soloists, orchestras and choirs in the Czech Republic, United States, Canada and Japan. He has served as Editor-in-chief of the leading Czech music journal Hudební rozhledy. As a Fulbright/CIES Scholar-in-residence, he lectured at eight United States universities in 1998 and 1999. He has published five books including Imprints: Essays on Czech Music and Aesthetics (2005, in English). He is a professor of music at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and head of the Musicology Department of Palacky University in Olomouc. As a visiting professor, he taught composition and music theory at Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama, in the fall of 2005. He has been a member of Birmingham Art Music Alliance since 2006.

Uspávanky/Lullabies for Violin and Piano (2006)
Lullabies (2006) were written for violinist Karen Bentley Pollick and pianist Ivan Sokolov to supplement the program of their March recital at Birmingham-Southern College where I spent fall semester 2005. It is a lyrical parallel to Homage to Fiddlers which was premiered at BSC a year ago. And it is similarly based on the folk music of my native country. The four and half-minutes-long piece is generated from Moravian lullabies I have chosen from the repertory of a folk singer, Zdena Hovorková. I have expanded the governing feature of Lydian mode, augmented fourth, into the bi-tonality: a mother sings and rocks her baby (simple tune in piano in Ab major), but the child’s dreaming comes from somewhere else (violin in D major).

—Jan Vicar