wandering | reminiscence
Saturday October 5, 2024 - 7:30pm
St James Cathedral
65 E Huron St | Chicago
PROGRAM
The 2024-2025 season is sponsored by the Katherine L. Griem and Anthony G. Montag Charitable Fund in memory of Anthony Montag.
1.
My Idols Are Dead (2018)
My idols are dead.
My choices were blind.
I’ve never heard God.
The voices were Mine.
– Marcus Norris
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2.
Travelogue (2019)
Travelogue was written in celebration of the Great Learning Orchestra’s 20th anniversary. The creation of this piece was inspired by Cornelius Cardew’s monumental work, Treatise, and his accompanying research on graphic notation and improvisation. The title, Travelogue, is a reference from the Treatise Handbook, a collection of Cardew’s working notes and research, which has been a mainstay throughout my writing process. The ‘Working Notes’ section of the Handbook is a collection of diary-like entries in which Cardew processes his thoughts on Treatise: what it means, why he made it, how it could be interpreted. The question ‘what is Treatise?’ recurs throughout the text, seeming to torment Cardew - sometimes to the point of silliness “11th March 65 Treatise: What is it? Well, it’s a vertebrate...” and yet other times more sentimentally “a travelogue of the land of composition”. His struggle to understand his own creation results in notes that are conflicting, at times hypocritical. Through the thick of his stream-of-consciousness style of writing, my takeaway from his notes comes in the form of two main ideas:
- This is not free improvisation.
- If an interpretation is made in earnest, he cannot find fault in it.
These two points have been pillars in my own music and continue to inspire me to write in open notations that feel genuinely collaborative with performers.
There is another question from the Treatise Handbook that has driven my own explorations in graphic notation. He writes “Can I make empty symbols significant intuitively?” The magic and mystery of intuition is what keeps me returning to open scores and experiments in notation. With an understanding of intuition, a score that appears very indeterminate on the surface can in performance be quite determinate, consistent, and identifiable.
At the end of the second movement, I make a direct reference to the 44th page of Treatise. In an 193-page score of mainly rigid graphics, suddenly the lines on page 44 appear wavy, as if drawn by hand. As someone who creates all of my scores by hand, I have always found the sense of human touch on this page to be captivating and inspiring.
- Leah Asher
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Brief Pause
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3.
3 Pieces for Orchestra (2024 - World Premiere)
Three Pieces for Orchestra consist of arrangements of my original piano music. Each movement focuses on the beauty of the earth, experienced from the perspective of a lone traveler who is journeying in a world reclaimed by nature. It’s a call for caring for our planet and bringing awareness to the gross exploitation of and commodifying of our only livable habitat.
- Jonathan Hannau
4.
Beauty despite daylight (2022)
Like many people during the pandemic, I spent much of those years alone and isolated from my friends and family. Weekend outings with my family were replaced with online activities like playing Mario Kart with my sister and watching NBA games with my brother. Although these were things we had previously done together in person, there was a newfound significance that acted as a sort of therapy for me. In retrospect, these were the moments that prevented me from falling apart. Beauty despite daylight examines these themes of home and kinship, drawing from ru con—traditional Vietnamese lullabies—which acts as the foundation for this work. The untitled song I quote is interwoven throughout the entire piece, first fragmented into several motifs and then presented in its full form.
- Oswald Huynh
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The Chicago Composers Orchestra presents music by living composers, extending the orchestral tradition to be open and vibrant, to speak to contemporary life and bring diverse people together.
We envision the orchestra as a powerful vehicle for contemporary music, filled with energy and purpose for composers, performers, listeners, and their communities.
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CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
Conductor, Music Director
Allen Tinkham
Violin 1
Carmen Abelson* concertmaster
Laura Duggan
MK Guthrie
Izi Austin
Violin 2
Noah Jenkins*
Yulia Price
Raquel Gonzalez
Viola
Traci Huff*
Christina Karakos
Raven Huang
Cello
Meghan Lyda*
David Sands
Bass
Bradley Modjeski
Flute
Lesley Swanson (piccolo)
Oboe
Becca Dora
Clarinet
Shaun Flynn
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Randal Dennler
Horn
Mitchell Hansen
Trumpet
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Trombone
Colin Marusek
Tuba
Castin York
Percussion
Adriana Harrison*
Cameron Marquez
Timpani
Socrates Hwang
Harp
Lauren Hayes
*denotes principal
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Thanks to you, we are able to bring orchestral music by living composers to the Chicago community. The CCO is a non-profit 501(c)3 charitable organization. Support the CCO with a tax deductible on our website.
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Paul Johnson
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