NEW@NIGHT: Elemental Keyboards
Few realize that the piano is, technically, a percussion instrument. Tonight, we’ll explore percussive musical innovations inspired by Beethoven’s piano, including marimba, percussion, keyboard, piano, and even percussive cello. Experience these unique works by Keiko Abe, Clancy Newman, Juri Seo, and our CMNW Co-Commissioned World Premiere of Kyle Rivera’s new music for multiple keyboards and percussion—and meet the composer, as well!
6pm | Happy Hour & Conversation with Kyle Rivera
Post-concert Q&A with artists
CMNW Co-Commission • World Premiere
Kyle Rivera’s new work was commissioned by Emerging Voices—a groundbreaking collaboration by Chamber Music Northwest, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and Seattle Chamber Music Society—supporting young, emerging composers of color.
The Old Church
Wednesday, 7/17 • 7:00 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- CLANCY NEWMAN “Trance Music”
CLANCY NEWMAN (b. 1977)
Trance MusicIn life, there are births and there are deaths; there are successes and failures; great joys and great sorrows. There are famines, plagues, and times of abundance; there are trials, journeys, searches,
revelations; visions, hopes, inventions, and inspirations. There is creation. And there is destruction.And always there is the beat of the drum, steady, inevitable, immutable. It was there before us. And it will be there long after we are gone.
—© Clancy Newman
- KEIKO ABE Variations on Japanese Children’s Songs (1982)
KEIKO ABE (b.1937)
Variations on Japanese Children’s SongsVariations on Japanese Children’s Songs was the third piece composed by Keiko Abe and it is an example of one of her early improvisational works. The composition came to be when recording the album, Nostalgia, her first album that had no accompanying orchestra or chamber ensemble. She then improvised variations of many Japanese folk songs on marimba which would eventually become Variations on Japanese Children’s Songs.
—© Keiko Abe
- KYLE RIVERA “Grimoire I: Laplace’s Demon” (World Premiere)
KYLE RIVERA (b. 1996) Grimoire I: Laplace’s Demon (2024) • (30’)
I. Phase Space
II. Traveling an Infinite Curve in a Finite Space
III. Fractals, Free Will, and The Future
IV. The Demon Knows, The Butterfly Dreams
V. Weird Densities of Ancient OrbitsMythology about demons and malevolent spirits can shed light on our relationship to our human flaws and iniquities. Through the Grimoire series, I attempt to interrogate the fears of the unknown and our human inadequacy. Each Grimoire confronts a demonic figure from various cultures, traditions, and philosophies, and invokes the core nature of the demon according to its relevant mythology. My primary concern is to discover, through a musical ritual, a new side to the earnest vulnerability that fosters fear of the Other.
This first Grimoire looks to Laplace’s Demon as the central figure for the work’s lore. Laplace’s Demon is associated with supernatural knowledge of the physical world. While not a proper mythological demon, Laplace’s Demon is a philosophical avatar that confronts chaos theory, free will, and an understanding that exists infinitely beyond human capability. In the music, I translate the implications of Laplace’s Demon to construct a sonic environment that invokes the demon’s ramifications on human agency and the human mind.
—© Kyle Rivera
- JURI SEO Piano Sonata No. 1 (“La Hammerklavier”)
JURI SEO (b. 1981)
Piano Sonata No. 1 (“La Hammerklavier”) (2015–2016) (30’)I. La Hammerklavier
II. RicercareIn Beethoven’s Op. 106 “Hammerklavier” Sonata, rather than hearing the distant, god-given genius of musical legend, I hear an individual confronting the full extent of his limitations. The music toils at the edge of its creator’s potential. Beethoven’s self-imposed challenges of maintaining structural integrity—despite an ever-expanding form, complex tonal syntax, and painstaking counterpoint—fight with the mad force of his musical subconscious. The result is a remarkable heightening of expression: tempestuous, tender, and wickedly comic.
(Not surprisingly, Op. 106 is notoriously difficult to play; its wide leaps and dense material demand not only technical virtuosity, but the courage to face the possibility of a massive public failure).
Despite many overt references, my “La Hammerklavier” sonata is not “about” Op. 106. I wanted to write music that expressed more abstract ideas—struggle, optimism, and beauty—using Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” as a focusing lens.
My first movement is in sonata form. It distorts the famous opening leap of Beethoven’s sonata with a “wrong” chord that implies two different keys at once. The rhythms trip, as if mimicking a bad performance. Stylistically eclectic quotations—taken from all four of Beethoven’s movements—alter the affects of the original, often humorously. Following the example of the late sonatas, my sonata has a fugal development. A lighthearted coda follows the recapitulation.
The second movement, Ricercare, is mostly based on the Adagio third movement of Op. 106. The title “Ricercare” has both literal and historical meanings. My ricercare “searches” for the third movement (ricercare literally means “to search”), and it develops what it finds contrapuntally (ricercare movements traditionally unfold contrapuntally). I wanted the movement to capture the feeling of listening to Op. 106 in a dream, of not being able to remember it precisely. After much wandering, it eventually finds a theme by Beethoven—but it is a “wrong” one that combines two separate phrases from the original. Ten variations on this wrong theme follow. The seventh variation provides the only exact quotation in this movement—a slowly descending melody over Beethoven’s enchanted Neapolitan chord. The climactic final variation is a gigue (à la J. S. Bach) on top of the BECH (Bb-E-C-B) motive. It epitomizes the Bb-B struggle manifest in Op. 106, and throws a little nod to my friend Steve Beck, the wonderful pianist for whom this piece was written.
—© Juri Seo
Artists
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Steven Beck
Piano
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A New York concert by pianist Steven Beck was described as “exemplary” and “deeply satisfying” by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where his teachers were Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin, and Bruce Brubaker.
Mr. Beck made his concerto debut with the National Symphony Orchestra, and has toured Japan as soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. His annual Christmas Eve performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Bargemusic has become a New York institution. He has also performed as soloist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and Miller Theater, as well as on WNYC, and summer appearances have been at the Aspen Music Festival and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. He has performed as a musician with the New York City Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and as an orchestral musician he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Orpheus.
Mr. Beck is an experienced performer of new music, having worked with Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Wuorinen, George Crumb, George Perle, and Fred Lerdahl. He is a member of the Knights, the Talea Ensemble, Quattro Mani, and the Da Capo Chamber Players. His discography includes George Walker’s piano sonatas on Bridge Records, and Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto on Albany Records. He is a Steinway Artist, and is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as the Colorado College Summer Music Festival and the Sewanee Music Center.
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Edvard Erdal
Violin
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The Norwegian violinist Edvard Erdal (b. 1996) is a sought-after chamber musician and orchestra leader. He currently holds the position of First Concertmaster of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway. Edvard is a founding member of the string quartet Opus13, which was awarded 2nd prize in the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022. Edvard plays a Lorenzo Storioni violin dated 1780, generously on loan from Snefonn AS.
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Stewart Goodyear
Composer & Piano
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Proclaimed “a phenomenon” by the Los Angeles Times and “one of the best pianists of his generation” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished concert pianist, improviser, and composer. Mr. Goodyear has performed with, and has been commissioned by, many of the major orchestras and chamber music organizations around the world.
Last year, Orchid Classics released Mr. Goodyear’s recording of his suite for piano and orchestra, Callaloo, and his piano sonata. His recent commissions include works for violinist Miranda Cuckson, cellist Inbal Segev, the Penderecki String Quartet, the Horszowski Trio, the Honens Piano Competition, and the Chineke! Foundation.
Mr. Goodyear’s discography includes the complete sonatas and piano concertos of Beethoven, as well as concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Rachmaninov, an album of Ravel piano works, and an album entitled For Glenn Gould, which combines repertoire from Mr. Gould’s U.S. and Montreal debuts. His recordings have been released on the Marquis Classics, Orchid Classics, Bright Shiny Things, and Steinway and Sons labels. His newest recording, Adolphus Hailstork’s Piano Concerto with the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta, was released in March 2023 on the Naxos label.
Highlights for the 2024-25 season are his performances at the BBC Proms with the Chineke! Orchestra, performances at the Rheingau Musik Festival, and performances with the Vancouver and Toronto Symphonies, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, Frankfurt Museumgesellschaft, and A Far Cry in Boston.
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Ji Hye Jung
Marimba
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Percussionist Ji Hye Jung has been praised as “spectacular” by the Los Angeles Times and “extraordinary” by the Ventura County Star, with The Times further describing her as “a centered player who can give the impression of being very still yet at all places at once.”
Ms. Jung began concertizing in her native South Korea at the age of nine, going on to perform more than 100 concerts including solo appearances with every major orchestra in Korea. Soon after coming to the United States in 2004 she garnered first prizes at the 2006 Linz International Marimba Competition and the 2007 Yale Gordon Concerto Competition.
With percussion repertoire still in its formative stages, Ms. Jung feels strongly about collaborating with composers to further the creation of a new voice for the art form. To this end she has commissioned and premiered works by Kevin Puts, Emma O’Halloran, Annika Scolofsky, Bora Yoon, Molly Herron, Christopher Theofanidis, Alejandro Viñao, Lukas Ligeti, Paul Lansky, Jason Treuting, and John Serry.
For more than ten years Jung has served as Principal Percussionist for Camerata Pacifica, with whom she has debuted works by Bright Sheng, David Bruce, Lera Auerbach, and Huang Ruo. Recent solo engagements include appearances at the Westport Festival of Chamber Music in Ireland, Portugal’s Tomarimbando Festival, New Music Indaba in South Africa, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, the Grand Teton Music Festival, Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy, the Grachtenfestival in Holland, and the Ligeti Symposium in Helsinki, Finland.
Since 2015 Ms. Jung has served as Associate Professor of Percussion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee where she lives with her husband Lee and their daughter Eugenia. -
Clancy Newman
Composer & Cello
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Cellist Clancy Newman has enjoyed an extraordinarily wide-ranging career, not only as a cellist, but also as a composer, producer, writer, and educator.
He received his first significant public recognition at the age of twelve, when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against contestants twice his age. He went on to win first prize at the Naumburg International Competition, and he has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. A recipient of an Avery Fisher career grant, he can often be heard on NPR’s Performance Today and has been featured on A&E and PBS.
As a composer, he has expanded cello technique in ways heretofore thought unimaginable, particularly in his “Pop-Unpopped” project, and he has been featured on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. His piano quintet was premiered at the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC, and in 2021 he was commissioned by the Kingston Chamber Music Festival to produce four educational videos to assist school teachers as they navigated the Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently on the faculty of Princeton University, Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia.
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Kyle Rivera
Composer
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The ever-evolving artistic perspective of Kyle Rivera (b. 1996) makes his music a space for intrigue and exploration. Kyle is fascinated by visual imagery in sound and the way it can create windows into his mind. Sound and time are malleable objects with which he sculpts vivid sonic landscapes. He often draws upon the diverse sonic and cultural environments he grew up in to craft the soundscapes of his music. Interests in linguistics, spirituality, and media all influence the way he creates music. One of Kyle’s goals as an artist is to offer a perspective on the world through his personal experiences. Some of his music has focused on topics relating to social justice, equality, and racialized matters. Alongside that, his music explores the conceptual limits of psychology, spirituality, and consciousness in sound.
As a composer, his music has been performed across the United States and internationally in Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China. Past collaborations include the Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Yale Philharmonia, Albany Symphony, Musiqa Houston, EnSRQ, Tacet(i), KINETIC Ensemble, Houston Grand Opera, and the Chelsea Music Festival. Kyle was the 2023 Anne Spencer Fellow with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He received a 2024 MacDowell Fellowship and an Aaron Copland House Residency.
Kyle attended the University of Houston and Yale University where he earned the Woods Chandler Memorial Prize.
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Daniel Thorell
Cello
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Daniel Thorell is a cellist from Stockholm, Sweden. Though only 26-years-old, he has already had great success as a soloist and chamber musician, both nationally and internationally. Praised for his mature and expressive music making, he is currently regarded as one of Scandinavia’s most promising young cellists.
He is a first-prize winner in no less than nine international competitions, most notably Rovere D’oro (2017), where he was also awarded a gold medal. In May of 2019, he was a major prize winner in the 54th Markneukirchen International Cello Competition. He was also a laureate at the sixth season of La Classe d’Excellence de Violoncell with Professor Gautier Capucon.
Born into a family of musicians, Daniel began playing the cello at the age of five. He made his debut as a soloist at the age of eleven, performing Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto in A Minor with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has performed regularly as a soloist with orchestras around Sweden, including the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel is also an experienced chamber musician and since 2019 is a member of the Norwegian-based string quartet, Opus13. In 2022, they were awarded second prize in the Banff international string quartet competition and have performed at festivals such as Kamermuziek festival Utrecht, Risør kammermusikkfest, Valdres sommersymfoni, Midtåsen kulturfestival, and many more. In 2021, they made their debut at the Oslo Quartet Series.
Daniel recently finished his soloist diploma studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music with Professor Torleif Thedéen has studied with a number of renowned professors, including Jens-Peter Maintz, Danjulo Ishizaka, Maria Kliegel, Claudio Bohorquez, and Antonio Meneses. He is a recipient of numerous scholarships from foundations such as SWEA International Scholarship for the Arts and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
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Albin Uusijärvi
Viola
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Albin Uusijärvi, born in 1995 in Nyköping, Sweden, started his musical education in Stockholm and switched from violin to viola at the age of twelve. He studied under Göran Fröst at Lilla Akademien in Stockholm, with Walter Küssner and Tabea Zimmermann at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin, and later with Ulrich Knörzer at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic. Mentors such as Eberhard Feltz, Oliver Wille, and Mats Zetterqvist have also had a great influence on his passion for chamber music.
In 2014, he was awarded first prize in the Polstjärnepriset competition in Gothenburg, Sweden, which led to him representing Sweden at the Eurovision Young Musician Competition, performing live with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne.
After working as solo violist of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, he won the audition for principal violist of his hometown orchestra, the Swedish Radio Orchestra, where he currently collaborates under the leadership of chief conductor, Daniel Harding. He divides his time between his role in the orchestra and as violist of the string quartet, Opus13.