Fabian Lopez, percussion - with Amanda Lynn Leonhardt, percussion Jesse Milhoan, percussion Richard Issac Rios, percussion - Northern Arizona ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
proudly presents the
2020-2021 Student Artist Series
Fabian Lopez, percussion
with
Amanda Lynn Leonhardt, percussion
Jesse Milhoan, percussion
Richard Issac Rios, percussion
This Junior Recital is given
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Bachelor of Music in Perofrmance.
Sunday, March 21, 2021
1:30 p.m., Livestreamed from Kitt Recital HallProgram
Variations on Lost Love (1997) David Maslanka
Theme (1943-2017)
Variation I
Fabian Lopez, marimba
Prelude no. 1 (1984) Christopher Deane
(b. 1957)
Fabian Lopez, timpani
October Night (1986) Michael Burritt
I. Largo (b. 1962)
II. Mysteriously
Fabian Lopez, marimba
~ Intermission ~Over the Rainbow (2015) Harold Arlen
(1905-1986)
arr. Robert Oetomo
(b. 1988)
Fabian Lopez, marimba
Amanda Lynn Leonhardt, vibraphone
Jesse Milhoan, vibraphone
Richard Issac Rios, marimba
Links (1975) Stuart Saunders Smith
(b. 1948)
Fabian Lopez, vibraphone
Suite no. 5 in C Minor, BWV 1011 (1722) Johann Sebastion Bach
I. Prelude (1685-1750)
Fabian Lopez, marimba
Please turn off or silence all electronic devices.
Unauthorized audio and video recordings are prohibited.Program Notes
by Fabian Lopez (2021)
DAVID MASLANKA (1943-2017)
Variations on Lost Love
“Lost Love” refers to the poem of the same name by the English poet Robert Graves.
The poem describes a person so distraught by lost love that he enters a state of
hyperawareness. “His eyes are quickened so by grief, he can watch a grass or leaf every
instant grow.” He can hear “A noise so slight it would surpass credence—drinking
sound of grass . . . the whir of spiders when they spin.” And, finally, “This man is
quickened so with grief, he wanders god-like or like a thief, inside and out, below,
above, without relief seeking lost love.”
Maslanka notes that his variations are not formal variations on a theme. They
are, rather, emotional pictures—a variety of moods, attitudes and feelings that arose
from contemplating the poem. They range from mournful and tragic to light-hearted
and whimsical. Maslanka chose the marimba because, “the marimba is a wonderful
instrument for capturing these qualities of feeling, particularly in its ability to produce
small and beautifully sustained sounds.”
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1943. David Maslanka attended the
Oberlin College Conservatory where he studied composition with Joseph Wood. He
spent a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and pursued master’s and doctoral
study in composition at Michigan State University where his principal teacher was H.
Owen Reed.
Maslanka’s music for winds has become especially well known. Among his more
than 150 works are over fifty pieces for wind ensemble, including eight symphonies,
seventeen concertos, a Mass, and many concert pieces. His chamber music includes
four wind quintets, five saxophone quartets, and many works for solo instrument and
piano. In addition, he has written a variety of orchestral and choral pieces. He served on
the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College,
New York University, and Kingsborough Community College of the City University
of New York, finally settling into a career as a freelance composer in Missoula, MT,
from 1990 until his death in 2017.
CHRISTOPHER DEANE (b. 1957)
Prelude no. 1
Prelude no. 1 for Solo Timpani by Christopher Deane was composed in January
of 1984 as a musical gift for Carol L Stumpf, principal timpanist of the Charlotte
Symphony Orchestra. This work can be considered as a “companion” piece to Deane’s
Etude for a Quiet Hall for solo marimba.A number of extended techniques are used on the timpani throughout the piece.
Most notably, the performer is required to flip the timpani mallets and play with the
wood ends of the mallet. Later in the composition, the performer is asked to play a
glissando on the largest drum.
Christopher Deane is an Associate Professor of Percussion at the University of
North Texas College of Music, teaching orchestral timpani, mallets, and directing the
UNT Percussion Players percussion ensemble. He holds performance degrees from
the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music. Deane studied timpani with James Massie Johnson,
former principal timpanist of the St. Louis Symphony, and percussion with Allen
Otte. He also has studied independently with Roland Kohloff of the New York
Philharmonic, Eugene Espino of the Cincinnati Symphony, and Leonard Schulman
of New York City Opera.
MICHAEL BURRITT (b. 1962)
October Night
This two-movement piece is dedicated to Gordon Stout and is based on the Dylan
Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” The first movement is a
chorale that features harmonic shifts between B-flat and C major. With every note
rolled, and specific phrase markings and dynamics, help establish the character of the
first movement. The second movement is much more lively, utilizing techniques such
as arpeggiations up and down the marimba using all four mallets; these arpeggiations
are heard a few times and act as an overarching theme throughout the movement.
Along with the tenseness of the arpeggiations, the syncopated double-stop chords help
to add harmonic density to the composition. Although the second piece depicts anger
and aggression, echoes of the first movement’s remorsefulness can be heard toward the
end of the second movement.
Michael Burritt is Professor of Percussion and chair of the Winds, Brass, and
Percussion department at the Eastman School of Music. He is only the third person
in the history of the school to hold the position of Professor of Percussion. Prior to
his appointment at Eastman, Burritt was Professor of Percussion at Northwestern
University from 1995 to 2008, where he developed a program of international
distinction. Burritt received his Bachelor of Music (1984) and Master of Music (1986)
degrees, as well as the prestigious Performers Certificate, from the Eastman School of
Music.
HAROLD ARLEN (1905-1986)
Over the Rainbow
This percussion ensemble arrangement of Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow” from
The Wizard of Oz is based on Robert Oetomo’s solo marimba arrangement. The threeaccompaniment parts support the soloist as if within a Classical concerto setting. A trio
of mallet players accompany the solo marimba with two vibraphones, glockenspiel, and
a second marimba, diversifying the texture possibilities and color spectrum. Oetomo
notes that he was heavily influenced by jazz in its harmonies and quasi-improvisation,
as well as Romantic elements of runs, ornaments, and flourishes. The instrumentation
highlights these influences while maintaining the simplicity of the melody and
harmony of the original song. The original song was first recorded in 1938 by Judy
Garland. It was then made famous through the acclaimed film, The Wizard of Oz, in
1939. This arrangement was commissioned by Louis Boldrighini and the Manvel High
School Percussion Ensemble, and premiered at the 2015 Midwest Clinic in Chicago,
IL.
Indonesian-born Australian percussionist and composer Robert Oetomo is an
active freelancer as a soloist, chamber musician, composer, and an educator. He has
been invited as special guest artist to perform and present masterclasses in numerous
festivals and universities around the world including the Hochschule für Musik
Würzburg in Germany, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia, the 1st
Qingdao International Percussion Festival 2014 in China, and the 9th Tabasco
International Marimba Festival 2015 in Mexico.
STUART SAUNDERS SMITH (b. 1948)
Links
The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays is scored for vibraphone in various settings, from
unaccompanied solos to duos with flute, piano, and off-stage orchestra bells. There are
eleven individual Links pieces; this series was composed between 1975 and 1995. Smith
has noted that the title refers to the entire structure of the work, in that the end of one
composition elides to the beginning of the next—a link in a delicate necklace. Also,
“links” in German means “left” in English. The Links Series remains left of the center
of the past and current musical languages in which composers have composed and
are composing. The Links are performed all over the world and are part of important
percussion curricula from Yale University to the University of California San Diego,
to mention a few.
Stuart Saunders Smith has created a diverse and unusual body of musical and
literary compositions. His music is usually chromatic, atonal, and rhythmically
complex, with his pitch material selected in an intuitive manner rather than via the
twelve-tone technique. Many of his works are theatrical, asking the performers to
speak, sing, act, and perform pantomime in addition to playing their instruments. His
works often feature improvisation. Approximately half of his more than 130 works
involve percussion, and his works are particularly popular among percussionists. Stuart
Saunders Smith currently resides in Vermont, where he composes fulltime.JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
“Prelude” from Suite no. 5 in C Minor, BWV 1011
This “Prelude” is actually a prelude and fugue; the opening prelude is grand and slow,
beginning with a deep and rich octave C, then navigates through a plethora of closely
related key signatures. Written in a French overture style (prolific use of dotted-eighth
and sixteenth rhythms), the opening prelude evolves into a half cadence, leading directly
into the fugue. We experience a strong sense of improvisatory writing here—sweeping
scale figures lead to rich chords and dotted rhythms taking the listener through an
unorthodox array of harmonies for sixteenth-century music.
The fugue—the only one in the cello suites (as opposed to three fugues in Bach’s
unaccompanied works for violin, one in each sonata)—is remarkable in that, even
though it’s written in multiple voices, it contains very few chords. Harmony and
multiple voicing is, for the most part, implied, but noticeable just the same due to
Bach’s remarkable gift for creating expectation and a certain sense of inevitability in
voicing. In other words, he sets up the progression of the music so that our brains
capture the sense of the harmony and multiple voicing, even though throughout most
of this fugue Bach has written only one musical line at any given time.
In December 1717, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen hired Johann Sebastian
Bach, then organist and Kapellmeister at Weimar, as his director of music. According
to Richard E. Rodda, Bach was inspired by the high quality of the musicians in his
charge and by the Prince’s praise of his creative work. Bach produced much of his
greatest instrumental music during the six years of his tenure at Cöthen. The Six Suites
for Unaccompanied Cello were apparently written for either Christian Ferdinand Abel
(whose son Carl Friedrich became the partner of Bach’s son Johann Christian in an
important London concert venture in the 1760s) or Christian Bernhard Linigke, both
master cellists in the Cöthen court orchestra.Artist Profiles
FABIAN LOPEZ (percussion) is a gifted percussionist, musician, and aspiring music
director, from Nogales, AZ. Upon graduating from Nogales High School in May of
2018, he accepted a tuition scholarship from the Northern Arizona University School
of Music, where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Performance degree with an
emphasis on percussion. Lopez began studying music in 2014 while attending Nogales
High School. Since that time, he has been a guest conductor with several music groups
of varying skill levels. Recently, he has served as guest director with the Tucson Concert
Band for the world premiere of League of Titans by local composer Ethan Anderson.
Lopez has had the privilege to study with renowned composers Frank Ticheli and
David Maslanka, but credits his most influential teacher as Lisa Sargent-Myers, his
high school band director.
At Nogales, Lopez served as section leader of the marching band drumline and
performed in the wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, and mariachi for multiple years. In
2016, 2017, and 2018, he was selected to perform with the North Central Arizona All-
Regional Music Festival Band. At NAU, Lopez is or has earned a principal position
in the NAU Wind Symphony, NAU Symphony Orchestra, and NAU Symphonic
Band. In addition, he performs with the NAU Percussion Ensemble and the Panorama
Steel Band (playing lead pan). While at NAU, Lopez has been a member of the NAU
Percussion Society and has committed to serving as Vice-President for that collegiate
organization in the 2020-2021 school year.
AMANDA LYNN LEONHARDT (percussion) is a senior at Northern Arizona
University pursuing a Bachelor of Music Education degree.
JESSE MILHOAN (percussion) is a senior at Northern Arizona University pursuing a
Bachelor of Music Education degree.
RICHARD ISSAC RIOS (percussion) s a second-year graduate student at Northern
Arizona University pursuing a Master of Music degree in percussion performance.Acknowledgements I would like to thank: My mom, dad, siblings, and grandparents for always supporting my love for music and encouraging me since I was little. Dr. Steven Hemphill for being a wonderful mentor and inspiring me as an educator. Dr. Michelle Wachter for her outstanding musical guidance. The Kitt Recital Hall staff for making this recital possible. All of my friends and colleagues at Northern Arizona University for their friendship and support.
You can also read
