A recital of music by the American composer Joan Tower.
Ms. Tower was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of sixty-five orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded Made in America in 2008. The album collected three Grammy awards: Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance. In 1990 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders, a piece she wrote for the St. Louis Symphony. Tower studied piano and composition at Bennington College and Columbia University. She co-founded the Da Capo Chamber Players in 1969 as pianist, but also wrote several well-received pieces for the ensemble. She is currently Asher Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.
In April, 2011, Ms. Tower spent several days at Curtis, working with the school's student composers, culminating in this concert:
Copperwave for Brass Ensemble
Composer note: Copperwave (2006) was commissioned for the American Brass Quintet by the Juilliard School for its centennial celebration. This commission was supported by the Trust of Francis Goelet. The work is dedicated with great admiration to the distinguished American Brass Quintet.
My father was a geologist and mining engineer and I grew up loving everything to do with minerals and rocks. Copper is a heavy but flexible mineral that is used for many different purposes and most brass instruments are made of copper. The ideas in this piece move in waves, sometimes heavy ones and at other times lighter — also in circles, turning around on the same notes. Occasionally, there is a latin type of rhythm that appears, which is a reminder of my years growing up in South America where my father was working as a mining engineer.
String Force
In String Force (2010), a solo violin work heard in a vigorous, colorful reading by Nikki Chooi, Ms. Tower explores fingerboard and bowing techniques, with sliding effects prominent among them.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times
Ivory and Ebony
Composer note: Ivory and Ebony is about the black and white notes of the piano which alternate "thematically" but occasionally mix together. Since I am also a pianist, this was a fun and challenging piece to write for the upcoming piano virtuosos coming to the San Antonio competition. I hope they enjoy working on it and I very much look forward to their different interpretations.
Angels (String Quartet No.4)
Composer Note: Angels is my fourth quartet — a medium I really love. In fact, when Ida Kavafian asked me what I wanted to write for the Festival, I immediately said string quartet. Having written three prior quartets and gotten to travel extensively around the world of quartets, I have come to love the way string quartets are so deeply creative and passionate about the music they play. They are really like four "composers" at work. Angels is about 18 minutes long in one movement and is dedicated to the people who helped my younger brother George survive a major stroke this year. They include my sister Ellen, a former student of mine (Erin), a doctor (Dr. Stenehjem), a nurse (Courtney) and two real estate agents (Ann and Dale). These are caring people whose generosity of spirit and love of humanity make them very special "angels."
DNA for Percussion Ensemble
This piece was written for and premiered by the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Frank Epstein, in April 2003.
DNA is written for percussion quintet as a way of capitalizing on the notion of DNA, and its role as the building block of all biological life. Deoxyribonucleic acid, as we know it chemically, is an elegant form, made up of double helixes and double strands in an endless spiraling ribbon. Using this feature as a starting point – the piece is built around pairs of instruments which are featured prominently throughout: high-hats, castanets, timbales, and snares appear in duos — and like the base pairs of DNA — conspire to make a whole work.
The fifth percussionist is primarily a soloist, an outsider to the pairs — playing on temple blocks, tambourine and congas — until he joins them in passages of trios, quartets and quintets.
Joan uses the basic concept of DNA in teaching all the time, when she is urging her students to find the "DNA," or building blocks of an idea for themselves.
(from G. Schirmer Inc.)
Musical Word(s) of the Week: White keys, black keys
The piano's white keys represent the tones of the musical alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
The black keys represent half-steps between various notes (sharps and flats).
Together, there are 7 white keys and 5 black keys per octave, which together represent the twelve equally spaced tones of Equal Temperament.
Originally, white keys were made of ivory (white), and black keys of ebony (black). But any two contrasting colors will work. Many old keyboards present the "naturals" (lower tier) as black, and the sharps/flats (upper tier) as white! (from wiki.answers.com)