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Shepherd School of Music: SYZYGY, New Music at Rice

Presented by Rice University - Shepherd School of Music at Rice University - Alice Pratt Brown Hall - Duncan Recital Hall

October 7, 2010

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Rice University Shepherd School of Music presents SYZYGY, New Music at Rice.   Thursday, October 7 at 8pm in Duncan Recital Hall - Alice Pratt Brown Hall.

Featuring:

Bernard Rands, (pictured, Photo © by Jack Mitchell) guest composer

Through more than a hundred published works and many recordings, Bernard Rands is established as a major figure in contemporary music. His work CANTI DEL SOLE, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, won the1984 Pulitzer Prize in Music. His suites for large orchestra, LE TAMBOURIN, won the 1986 Kennedy Center Freidheim Award.

Current projects include an opera entitled VINCENT, commissioned by Indiana University on an original libretto by J. D. McClatchy, which will premiere on 8, 9, 15 and 16 April, 2011 in Bloomington, Indiana; an orchestral work, DANZA PETRIFICADA, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony and Maestro Riccardo Muti, which will premiere on 14, 15, 16, 17 October, 2010; and THREE PIANO PIECES for American Pianist Jonathan Biss for his debut Carnegie Hall recital on 21 January, 2011, which was commissioned by Music Accord.

Recent projects include CHAINS LIKE THE SEA for large orchestra commissioned by the New York Philharmonic; a large-scale work for solo piano, PRELUDES (12 Preludes), co-commissioned, for pianist Robert Levin, by Maria and Robert A. Skirnick and the Ruhr International Piano Festival; and PRISM, commissioned by the New York State Arts Council for the Prism Saxophone Quartet.

Conductors including Barenboim, Boulez, Berio, Maderna, Marriner, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rilling, Salonen, Sawallisch, Schiff, Schuller, Schwarz, Silverstein, Sinopoli, Slatkin, von Dohnanyi, and Zinman, among others, have programmed his music.

Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra for seven years, from 1989 to 1996, as part of the Meet The Composer Residency Program, Rands made a dedicated contribution to the music of our time. Maestro Riccardo Muti hired Bernard Rands for this residency and they worked thoughtfully together and continue a close friendship to this day.

Rands' works are widely performed and frequently commercially recorded. His work CANTI D'AMOR, recorded by Chanticleer, won a Grammy Award in 2000. The recording of his CANTI TRILOGY for soprano, tenor, and bass with chamber orchestra was released in December 2004 to great critical acclaim, including TIME OUT NEW YORK's top-ten CDs of the year. His seventieth birthday, in 2004, was celebrated internationally by more than one hundred performances of his music.

Born in England in 1934, Rands emigrated to the United States in 1975 becoming an American Citizen in 1983. He has been honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; BMI.; the Guggenheim Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; Meet the Composer; the Barlow, Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, among many others. Several universities in the USA and in Europe have conferred honorary degrees.

Other commissions have come from the Suntory concert hall in Tokyo; the New York Philharmonic; Carnegie Hall; the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the Cincinnati Symphony; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Philadelphia Orchestra; the BBC Symphony; the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, DC; the Internationale Bach Akademie, Stuttgart; the Eastman Wind Ensemble; and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Many chamber works have resulted from commissions from major ensembles and festivals around the world.

His Chamber Opera BELLDONNA was commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Festival for its fiftieth anniversary in 1999. In 2003 the first act was performed as part of VOX 2003 of the New York City Opera.

A dedicated and passionate teacher, Rands has been guest composer at many international festivals and Composer in Residence at the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. Rands is the Walter Bigelow Rosen Research Professor of Music at Harvard University where he taught with distinction for twenty years.

The originality and distinctive character of his music have been variously described as "plangent lyricism" with a "dramatic intensity" and a "musicality and clarity of idea allied to a sophisticated and elegant technical mastery" — qualities developed from his studies with Dallapiccola and Berio.

In 2004 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives between Chicago, Illinois and Becket, Massachussets. Since 1993, he is married to American composer, Augusta Read Thomas. Rands contiues his long term project of composing a full scale opera, entitled Vincent, based on the life and work of Van Gogh.

A dedicated and passionate teacher, Rands has been guest composer at many international festivals and Composer in Residence at the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. Rands is the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard University where he teaches with distinction.

The originality and distinctive character of his music have been variously described as "plangent lyricism" with a "dramatic intensity" and a "musicality and clarity of idea allied to a sophisticated and elegant technical mastery" — qualities developed from his studies with Dallapiccola and Berio.

Rands was elected and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004.

Scheduled Program:

Bernard Rands - “Now Again” – Fragments of Sappho (2006)
Luciano Berio - Sequenza IV (1966)
Pierre Jalbert - Sonata for Cello and Piano (2008)
Richard Lavenda - Blast! (for double brass quintet and percussion; 1991)
Allen Molineux - Encounter for Brass Quintet (1972).

Performers include:

Susanne Mentzer, mezzo-soprano
Brian Connelly, piano
the Fischer Duo
and students of the Shepherd School.
8:00 p.m., Duncan Recital Hall