Program Note

Hammers, Sticks, Wind & Stones

PROGRAM NOTE

Hammers (2012) | Allison Loggins-Hull

Sonata (2022) | Juri Seo
Fire

The Stone Tapestry (2014) | Jeff Herriott
Clouds of Stone
Between the Sun and the Shade
Luminous Stones
Beneath a Granite Sky
Consciousness Floats into the Wind
Wanderer Hymn
Purification of the Stone
Lament of the Stone
Draping the Walls with Ice

Performers:

Videographer:

Anna Weisling

Concert audio and visual tech:

Ken Shirk

Special thanks to:

George Fox University Department of Music
Dwayne Corbin

*special guests

About the Performers:

Southern Oregon-based duo Caballito Negro is known for its creative and compelling performances, generating a fearless, ecstatic blend of modern and traditional aesthetics. Multi-flutist Tessa Brinckman and multi-percussionist Terry Longshore draw their name (“dark little horse”) from Federico García Lorca’s poem, Canción de Jinete (1860). They collaborate with visionary artists, using an arsenal of instruments to push the artistic experience to new heights, and always in the spirit of duende.

Heralded for their “wildly personal, intercultural, modern music…vivid, expressive music that could be performed anywhere” (Oregon Arts Watch), the duo melds narratives, images, and themes in imaginative curations, ranging from Timbuktu libraries, Turkmen jazz, and speculative-science fictions, to visions of resistance and dissent. Caballito Negro envisions true cultural exchange through inclusive and innovative projects with local, regional, and international artists.

Numerous music collaborations, commissions and arrangements include the work of artists such as the “mad-scientist-of-music” Mark Applebaum, Palestinian-American oud-master Ronnie Malley, Mexican-American percussionist Ivan Trevino, Xhosa composer Bongani Ndodana Breen, and former LA Philharmonic composer-in-residence William Kraft.

Caballito Negro also composes as a duo, synthesizing their eclectic musical dialects. Their work as resident artists has been featured at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Festival of New American Music, Britt Music & Arts Festival, as well as in many university, theater, and house concerts in the U.S. They share years of musical and life experience, in giving joint masterclasses to explore questions of intercultural exchange and hybrid forms.

Their first recording, the EP Songlines (2016), was praised for its “absolutely gorgeous tone”, “understated virtuosity” (Joshua Cheek) and being “expertly produced and played” (NFA Quarterly), featuring the music of William Kraft, David P. Jones and Ivan Trevino. Caballito Negro has ongoing recording projects for CD and video release in the near future.

The Portland Percussion Group is Portland’s own percussion chamber ensemble. The group formed in 2011 to invigorate new music in the city and the greater Northwest, and since then has become a mainstay in the contemporary music space in Portland. After ten years as a quartet, in 2021 the group expanded to a collective of eight members, incorporating a wider range of performers and backgrounds. In this production of “Hammers, Sticks, Wind & Stones”, founding members Chris Whyte and Paul Owen perform with special guests, Wanyue Ye and Delaney Jai.

To date, the PPG has worked with composers to create over 60 new works for percussion quartet and continues to look for ways to develop new sounds, explore new spaces, and engage new audiences. Recent engagements include appearances at the GAIDA Festival (Lithuania), nienteForte Contemporary Music Festival, the Northwest Percussion Festival, Makrokosmos Project, the National Association of Composers National Conference, New Music Gathering, and collaborations with Resonance Ensemble and pianists DUO Stephanie and Saar. The ensemble maintains an ongoing relationship with Tapspace Publications, resulting in a number of new published works by emerging composers.

The Portland Percussion Group also extends into educational outreach through involvement with young percussionists in our region and the creation of new educational opportunities for developing percussionists. The PPG frequently presents clinics and workshops at universities throughout the Northwest and United States on the topic of chamber percussion repertoire and performance as well as maintaining an ongoing involvement with the Portland Summer Percussion Academy.

Award-winning percussionist Wanyue Ye has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra player.

Ms. Ye is currently serving as the Principal Percussionist at The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in Washington State, US. She has made appearances with The Orchestra Now, Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra, South Florida Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Occasional Symphony, Baltimore Philharmonia Orchestra, Janiec Opera Company, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Yakima Symphony Orchestra and Bozeman Symphony at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Symphony Space in New York City, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Fisher Center for the Performing Art in Annandale, NY, The Hudson Hall in Hudson, NY, Wold Performing Arts Center in Boca Raton, FL, Bing Concert Hall in Stanford, California, Modell Lyric Performing Arts Center, Friedberg Concert Hall and Leith Symington Griswold Hall in Baltimore, MD, Porter Center for Performing Art in Brevard, NC, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

Ms. Ye earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Percussion Performance from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where she was the recipient of the Brookby Scholarship. Ms. Ye has studied with marimba virtuoso Robert van Sice, Tom Freer the Assistant Principal Timpanist and Percussionist of Cleveland Orchestra, David Skidmore from the Grammy-awarded percussion quartet “Third Coast Percussion Group”, and Ted Atkatz the former Principal Percussionist of Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She was also selected by Tuck Business School of Dartmouth College as a scholarship recipient to attend the competitive Tuck Business Bridge Program in recognition of her achievements and understanding of business strategy and market development as they relate to the performing arts industry.

Ms. Ye teaches and performs in the Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA area. Her notable projects include commissioning percussion chamber works Disbelief in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Ballet Company, video recording of Etude from Santa Clause on the Vic Firth YouTube Channel, and appears on Bridge Records CD recordings of Michael Nagy’s Buried Alive and Orion Weiss’ Piano Protagonists.

Delaney Armstrong, born in Spokane, Washington, is a Percussion Performance Graduate Student at Southern Oregon University after receiving a Music Business degree and Percussion Performance degree at Adams State University. As an aspiring percussionist and singer/songwriter, they have performed with many ensembles including percussion ensemble, jazz ensembles, concert choirs, wind ensembles, ‘7543 Panhandlers Steel Band, Marival Road Steel Pan Ensemble, Central American Marimba Band, The Alpine Backbeats Drumline and Samba Band, and Left Edge Percussion. They were featured as a percussion and vocal soloist on an Adams State University Percussion Concert titled Composition XX. Delaney has a passion for equity in music, and in the summer of 2018 was a guest speaker on the podcast, Tacet Thoughts in regards to their on-campus presentation entitled “The Stage Gap: Perceptions of the Female Percussionist in a Male Dominated Industry.”

In addition to promoting overall equity in music, they are an advocate for the LGBTQ+ and Women’s Rights movement. From the fall of 2018 to now, they are working on the Composer Diversity Project, a project created to help bring awareness to underrepresented composers in the music industry. Currently, Delaney can be found under the percussive instruction of Dr. Terry Longshore. When they are not in percussion rehearsal or a practice room, they can be found painting, working on their animation skills, or recording in the recording studio.

About the Composers:

Allison Loggins-Hull is a flutist, composer and producer with an active career performing and creating music of multiple genres. In 2009 she and Nathalie Joachim co-founded the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix, which was praised by The Wall Street Journal for being able “to redefine the instrument.” Similarly, MTV Iggy recognized Flutronix for “redefining the flute and modernizing its sound by hauling it squarely into the world of popular music.”

Allison has performed at The Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Orchestra Hall (Chicago), World Cafe Live, and several other major venues and festivals around the world. She has performed or recorded with a wide-range of artists including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, Lizzo, The National Sawdust Ensemble and others. With Flutronix, she has released two full studio albums (Flutronix and 2.0), a live album (Live From the Attucks Theatre), an EP (City of Breath) and is signed to Village Again Records in Japan. As a member of The Re-Collective Orchestra, Allison was co-principal flutist on the soundtrack to Disney’s 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” working closely with Hans Zimmer. On the small screen, she has been featured in an internationally broadcast ESPN Super Bowl commercial, the 62nd annual GRAMMYs Award Show and the Black Girls Rock! Awards Show.

Allison has composed for Flutronix, Julia Bullock and others and has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts, Alarm Will Sound and The Library of Congress. She was a co-producer of Nathalie Joachim’s celebrated album “Fanm d’Ayiti,” which was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY for Best World Music Album. In support of her work, Allison has been awarded grants from New Music USA and a fellowship at The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida.

Allison is on the flute faculty of The John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. She’s a teaching artist at The Juilliard School’s Global Ventures and is a former faculty member of The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. She lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.

Jeff Herriott is a composer whose music focuses on sounds that gently shift and bend at the edges of perception. He creates unhurried music, using slow-moving shapes with a free sense of time. His works often explore repetition with subtle variations in gestural pace, instrumental character, and tuning. Jeff employs electronics to alter instrumental timbres and shift tunings by tiny amounts – changes that listeners may not actively perceive, but which can foster a sense of uncertainty and wonderment.

Jeff’s music has been supported by a MATA Festival Commission for bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern; an American Composers Forum commission through the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program for the Ancia Saxophone Quartet; a McKnight Foundation Visiting Composer Residency for which Jeff spent 2 months recording sounds in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and working with local students at the Ely Public Library; and a commission by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for the ensemble Due East (Erin Lesser and Greg Beyer). Jeff studied composition and computer music with Cort Lippe, David Felder, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Fredrick Kaufman, and Kristine H. Burns and received degrees from the University at Buffalo (PhD), Florida International University (MM), and Middlebury College (BA). Jeff is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

Juri Seo* (b. 1981) is a Korean-American composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen.

Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Copland House Residency Award, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Goethe Institut, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Her portrait albums “Mostly Piano” and “Respiri” were released by Innova Recordings. She holds a D.M.A. (Dissertation: Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartets, 2013) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She has also attended the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome, corsi di perfezionamento with Ivan Fedele) and Yonsei University (Seoul, B.M.). She has been a composition fellow at the Tanglewood, Bang on a Can, and SoundSCAPE festivals, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.

*Note on pronunciation: In North America, my name is pronounced [Jew-ri Suh].

Notes about the pieces by the composers:

Hammers was inspired by construction noise and other industrial type sounds one can hear when living and walking around the busy streets of New York City. While the sounds created are often cacophonous and erratic, there is still a sense of order and focus to get the job done. If you listen closely, you can sometimes hear ostinato rhythms and accented patterns. Hammers borrows these ideas, using the percussion instruments to represent massive tools at work. The flute is busy working through the noise, but is often interrupted and has to frequently stop, start and repeat itself, similar to when one is trying to communicate or complete a task while there’s disruptive noise. There is a moment when it feels like the work is quieting down and one can finally concentrate, but it doesn’t last long and sure enough, the noisy work picks right back up.

The three-movement shape of Sonata came together gradually. Before the summer of 2021, I had written parts of the second movement made of Intricate workings of birdsong-like melodies. During my visit to Del Mar, California that summer, I chatted with my friend Joseph Sowa about the piece amid a writer’s block. Joseph gave me images that colored many technical ideas I had in mind; among them were visualizing resonances as lights that depict the twinkles of fireflies and flickering candles, and thinking of the duet—made of wood and metal—as two forces that symbolize nature and technology (“… could be a gentle dialogue, rather than a violent one…”). These ideas merged and became the first movement, “fire,” in which I tried to represent both the calming and destructive natures of fire. The birdsongs then became a symbol of the resilience of life in the second movement, “life.” I couldn’t help imbuing them with a sense of longing and grief as I pondered our tainted relationship with nature. The finale, “water,” is a gestural depiction of water and includes quotations from Ravel’s Jeux d’eau. All themes dissolve in the end, leaving only the ripples.

Sonata alludes to many harmonic and formal aspects of the nineteenth-century sonata. It was my response to some of the initial conversations with the arx duo, who longed for large-scale harmony-driven music for mallet percussion (“…music that happens to befor percussion…”). Sonata became an opportunity to address the relative scarcity of percussion repertory that emerged from the Western tonal tradition and its narrative strategies based on harmonic tension and resolution. The “fire” movement is in sonata form—with modulations and retransitions and all. The “life” movement is formally free, developing in sections that become gradually more expansive. The “water” movement is a rondo. I found rondo the hardest to work with because the well-demarcated themes, characteristic of rondo, seemed antithetical to the fluidity I sought. I decided to transition smoothly between all sections jettisoning the usual playful contrasts. Despite making use of an old formal mold, I wanted to include many fascinating materials from recent music. The expanded harmonic language, the rhythmic intricacy available for percussion, and the unique timbres of mallet instruments were among them. The challenge was to minimize the dissonance between material and form. I had to consider the ramifications of these added resources and carefully modify the structure. In retrospect, I believe it was my way of finding a reflection of nature within music’s infinite capacity for transformation. Sonata was written between July 2021 and February 2022 for arx duo and a consortium of percussionists. (J.S.)

The Stone Tapestry is a collection of interwoven myths, about origins, lifecycles, and the pace and significance of change. As a whole, the piece divides into two segments that together trace the path of just a few stones, from discovery to disappearance. Musically, several different ideas appear and recur in different forms, modeling change across large time spans. The ritualistic approach to the performance of many segments of the piece is intended to impart a distance to the act of music-making, placing focus on the repetitive nature of the physical acts themselves. The Stone Tapestry was commissioned for Due East by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.