Earth, Penka Kouneva
Penka Kouneva (Duke University, Ph.D. Composition, 1997) composed seven tracks on Women Warriors: The Voices of Change, which won a 2022 GRAMMY for Best Classical Compendium. In 2017, she was one of three inductees into the Duke Graduate School’s Few-Glasson Alumni Society. Kouneva composed music for NASA’s “Heroes and Legends” exhibit. The $30M multimedia exhibit focuses on American astronauts at the Kennedy Space Center.
Film & game composer of “exquisite talent” (Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands game co-composed with Steve Jablonsky), Penka Kouneva has worked for 15 years in Los Angeles on titles grossing $15 billion worldwide. Her own music is a blend of her Eastern-European upbringing, classical training, modern film & game music, and influences ranging from rock, electronica, Medieval chant to non-Western music. She has made Hollywood history (first woman Lead Orchestrator on films with budgets over $100M – Ender’s Game and Elysium).
Penka has been honored with the Aaron Copland Award, SUNDANCE Composer Fellowship; Hollywood Music In Media Awards, Square Enix Music Online nomination, Independent Music Award; two Ovation Awards, The Visionary Award from Women’s International Film & TV Showcase, GRAND PRIX at the Tokyo Young Composers Competition, Meet the Composer Award, and numerous Artist Fellowships.
City Trees, Michael Markowski
The orchestral version of City Trees was originally commissioned by the Durham Medical Orchestra in 2015.
About City Trees, Markowski writes:
“I had just moved from Arizona to New York City when I began sketching the first fragments of City Trees. After being born, growing up, and living in the desert for 25 years of my life, moving to New York so suddenly was and continues to be one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. I think it has also been one of the bravest. I left my friends, my family, and my ridiculously cheap rent all without much planning.
Every time I walk down a street in New York, I notice the trees shackled by the sidewalk. Some have little fences around them, many have trash nestled up next to their exposed roots, and others have grown so big and become so strong that they have broken right through the concrete pavement. As I pass beneath them, they all seem to wave their leafy pom-poms in the wind, a thousand leaves applauding, cheering me on as if I had just returned from the moon.
These trees have learned how to brave the concrete jungle, and it gave me solace knowing that they had flourished in such a challenging environment. Over time, the impossibilities of the city have become familiar, and although I continue to learn new lessons everyday, I’ve slowly begun to assimilate, finding my way around, discovering new places, and making friends while still keeping close with those who aren’t close by. The music in City Trees began to take on a growing sense of perseverance, embodied by the expansive melodies that sweep over the pensive, rhythmic undercurrent.
For me, City Trees is a reflection of the bravery that it often takes to venture into new worlds, embrace other cultures, and lovingly encourage new ideas. I am deeply honored to dedicate this piece to the Lesbian and Gay Band Association. Although I may never completely understand the unique challenges my friends have faced and had to overcome, I am inspired by the overwhelming courage that has been so firmly planted for 30 years and that continues to grow, perhaps slowly, but always stronger.”
About Michael Markowski
Michael Markowski is fully qualified to watch movies and cartoons. Although he graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in ‘Film Practices,’ his thirst for writing music has always been the more persistent itch. His concert music has been performed around the world, from the Musikverein in Vienna to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and has been recorded by vocalist Timothy Stoddard (“Tarot”) as well as the Brooklyn Wind Symphony. As a film composer, his music can be heard in Nathan Blackwell’s “The Last Movie Ever Made” (Amazon Prime, Apple TV). At Carnegie Hall, his orchestrations for the New York Pops have featured the vocal talents of Hailey Kilgore, Derek Klena, Javier Muñoz, Ali Stroker, and Valisia LeKae. Markowski is a member of ASCAP, the Recording Academy, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
(source: https://www.michaelmarkowski.com)
As Glaciers Thaw…, Peter Askim
As Glaciers Thaw… opens with the icy coldness of a glacier – majestic, pure, indifferent – holding within it eons of frozen time, eternity crystallized. As the first rays of the spring sun rise above the horizon, we sense a stirring within. Gradually the light, reflected through the ice as through a prism, brings with it heat – melting the surface of the glacier.
As the ice warms, tiny rivulets form, growing with the heat into streams, rivers, torrents. Mammoth chunks of ice break free, transported on the flowing currents, floating on cascades of newly freed rivers, millions of years old. The summer sunlight, in its reflected brilliance, sparkles and shimmers, burning our eyes with the intensity of a magnifying glass. Passing clouds bring only momentary relief, cooling briefly with their fleeting shadows.
The winter returns, night falls. The flowing water slows, freezes, stops. Darkness descends and iciness returns, trapping within it the brilliance of a season past, frozen – preserved for eternity in memory and ice.
Commissioned by the Iolani Concert Orchestra and premiered in Honolulu in December 1999.
About Peter Askim
Active as a composer, conductor and collaborative connector, Peter Askim is the Artistic Director of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists and the conductor of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, as well as Director of Orchestral Activities at North Carolina State University. He was previously Music Director and Composer-in-Residence of the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and served on the faculty of the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where he directed the Contemporary Music Ensemble and taught theory and composition.
As a conductor, he has led the American Composers Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony and Vermont Symphony, among others, and is known for innovative programming, championing the work of living composers and his advocacy of underrepresented voices in the concert hall. He has conducted premieres by composers such as Brett Dean, Aaron Jay Kernis, Allison Loggins-Hull, Jessica Meyer, Nico Muhly, Rufus Reid, Christopher Theofanidis, Jeff Scott and Aleksandra Vrebalov, and led the American premiere of Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America. His work was featured on HBO and National Public Radio conducting folk-rock legend Richard Thompson’s soundtrack for The Cold Blue. He has collaborated with such artists as Miranda Cuckson, Matt Haimovitz, Vijay Iyer, Jennifer Koh, Nadia Sirota, Sō Percussion and Jeffrey Zeigler, and the bluegrass band Balsam Range. As a composer, he has been called a “Modern Master” by The Strad and has had commissions and performances from such groups as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Cantus Ansambl Zagreb and the American Viola Society.
With the creation of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Askim founded a festival dedicated to the next generation of performers, composers and choreographers. Founded in 2013, the Festival encourages young artists, ages 20-30, to focus on artistic development, entrepreneurial career strategies and the music of living composers. The Next Festival Composer and Composer/Choreographer workshops connect early-career performers, composers and choreographers in an innovative and highly collaborative laboratory for the creation of new works. The Festival has been awarded grants by the Amphion, ASCAP and BMI foundations, and the Copland Fund for Music. Immediately recognizing the devastation of the COVID pandemic on young artists, he began providing free workshops, masterclasses and resources to support young artists through challenging times beginning in March of 2020. Through the Festival, he has presented over 50 Guest Artists, including Pulitzer, Grammy, and MacArthur award winners.
With the Raleigh Civic Orchestras, Askim has pioneered collaborative, multimedia concert events focused on social and environmental justice and has programmed a newly-commissioned world premiere on each concert for the last seven seasons. Themes have included Martin Luther King, Jr.’s North Carolina “I Have A Dream” speech and a work for Virtual Reality and orchestra highlighting the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Voting Rights Act. During the pandemic, Askim premiered nine new works by composers harnessing latency and technology in innovative approaches to distance collaboration. Under his direction, the orchestras have received multiple grants recognizing diversity in programming, including from New Music USA and the Women’s Philharmonic Association.
(source: peteraskim.com)
The Automatic Earth, Steven Bryant
- A Slow Fire
- Days of Miracle and Wonder
- Shining of Shadow
- The Automatic Earth
- The Language of Light
About The Automatic Earth, Steven Bryant writes:
Our way of life is unsustainable, therefore it will not continue. The Automatic Earth weaves together two threads: the climate crisis, and the technological transformation of what it is to be human. The tandem acceleration of technological wonder and ecological catastrophe means, at best, a strange, unrecognizable future, likely within our own lifetimes.
As the interlocking set of crises that we call climate change make life more and more difficult for everyone, I fear we will turn, in desperation, to geoengineering and human re-engineering. We will alter the earth and alter our bodies in radical, untested ways in order to survive. Surpassed only by an extraordinary change in our willingness to cooperate with each other.
In other words, it confronts our own hubris in thinking that technological progress will somehow magically solve the problems created by the last round of technological progress.
I wrote a piece in 2008 called Ecstatic Waters which addressed the merging of human and computer. In this work, I was ultimately optimistic that we would eventually find a successful way to become more than human, to transcend our organic limitations and become happier, fitter creatures. Now, however, I’m not so sure it will be a good thing, but if it’s possible, then it’s inevitable. Humanity will alter itself, or it will perish.
Special thanks to Dr. Katrina Clements for recording some of the Clarinet material used in the electronic sounds.
About Steven Bryant
Steven Bryant’s music is chiseled in its structure and intent, fusing lyricism, dissonance, silence, technology, and humor into lean, skillfully-crafted works that enthrall listeners and performers alike. His seminal work Ecstatic Waters, for wind ensemble and electronics, has become one of the most performed works of its kind in the world, receiving over 250 performances in its first five seasons. In 2015, the orchestral version was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra to unanimous, rapturous acclaim. The son of a professional trumpeter and music educator, he strongly values music education, and his creative output includes a number of works for young and developing musicians.
John Corigliano states Bryant’s “compositional virtuosity is evident in every bar” of his 34’ Concerto for Wind Ensemble. Bryant’s first orchestral work, Loose Id for Orchestra, hailed by composer Samuel Adler as “orchestrated like a virtuoso,” was premiered by The Juilliard Symphony and is featured on a CD release by the Bowling Green Philharmonia on Albany Records. Alchemy in Silent Spaces, commissioned by James DePreist and The Juilliard School, was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra in May 2006. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series featured his brass quintet, Loose Id, conducted by Cliff Colnot, on its 2012-13 concert series.
His evening-length work for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, The Treachery of Sounds, based on several images of René Magritte, uses a live application of binaural technology by placing every member of the audience in headphones to create an immersive experience that defies the listener’s sense of reality. Other recent commissions include Zeal for Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, a large-scale intermedia project for Arizona State University, the Concerto for Trombone for Joseph Alessi and the Dallas Winds, as well as works for the Gaudete Brass Quintet (Chicago), cellist Caroline Stinson (Lark Quartet), pianist Pamela Mia Paul, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet (funded by the American Composers Jerome Composers Commissioning Program), the University of Texas – Austin Wind Ensemble, the US Air Force Band of Mid-America, the Japanese Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference, and the Calgary Stampede Band, as well as many others.
Steven was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro for the 2014-2015 academic year. Steven studied composition with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School, Cindy McTee at the University of North Texas, and Francis McBeth at Ouachita University, trained for one summer in the mid-1980s as a break-dancer (i.e., was forced into lessons by his mother), was the 1987 radio-controlled car racing Arkansas state champion, has a Bacon Number of 1, and has played saxophone with Branford Marsalis on Sleigh Ride. He resides in Durham, NC with his wife, conductor Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant (Duke University).
(source: stevenbryant.com)
Symphony No. 6 in F Major “Pastoral”, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
- Erwachen heiterer Empfindungen bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande – Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside
- Szene am Bach – Scene by the brook
- Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute – Merry gathering of country folk
- Gewitter, Sturm – Thunder, Storm
- Hirtengesang. Frohe und dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm – Shepherd’s song. Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm
– movements 3, 4, and 5 connected without a break (attacca) –
Nature as Healer, Music as Experience
Date of Composition: Completed in the spring of 1808, immediately following his Symphony No. 5.
Premiere: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 premiered at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22, 1808.
Structure: 5 movements, with movements 3, 4, and 5 connected without a break (attacca)
- Allegro ma non troppo (F Major)
- Andante molto mosso (B-flat Major)
- Scherzo – Allegro – Finale (F Major – F Minor – F Major)
How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, over grass and rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do.
Ludwig van Beethoven, letter to Teresa Malfatti, 1810
Of Beethoven’s symphonies, the Symphony No. 6 in F Major, op. 68, is one of only two symphonies named by Beethoven himself: “Pastoral Symphony, or A Recollection of Country Life.” The original score includes a note from Beethoven that the symphony is to be “understood without a description, as it is more feeling than tone-painting,” and his annotations on sketches include, “One leaves it to the listener to discover the situation” and “Who treasures any idea of country life can discover for himself what the author intends.”
The subtitles of each movement underscore that this is a symphony of country vignettes. While there are occasional depictions of sounds of nature, such as birdcalls or the gentle, tireless flow of a babbling brook, the Pastoral is meant to be evocative of one’s emotional experience in nature, putting the listener as the central object. His intent for the music to have an “effect on the soul” (noted on one of his sketches) is created through peaceful, not-too-dramatic developments (movement 1), flowing rhythms (movement 2), a joyous dance (movement 3) that is interrupted by a storm (movement 4), and a shepherd’s song of relief and gratitude after the storm (movement 5).
Nature having a therapeutic, healing quality was perhaps rooted in Beethoven’s own longing for the comforts and healing power of nature to ease his suffering from loneliness, declining health, and the emerging deafness that plagued him. He openly expressed his love of nature in letters to friends and acquaintances and privately in his diary, and as he grew older, he yearned for what he hoped would bring him peace and respite. In one letter, Beethoven wrote that if his deafness could not be cured, his acquaintance should “rent a house for me in some beautiful part of the country and then for six months I will lead the life of a peasant – perhaps that will make a difference. Resignation – what a wretched refuge!” And in a diary entry, “My decree is to remain in the country … My unfortunate hearing does not plague me there. It is as if every tree spoke to me in the country, holy! holy! / Ecstasy in the woods! Who can describe it? If all comes to naught the country itself remains … Sweet stillness of the woods!”
See also:
Swafford, Jan. Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.