AT HOME • UNCOVERED Voices
Exceptional musical partnerships from critically acclaimed albums headline this program. Artistic Director Gloria Chien and heralded clarinetist Anthony McGill are longtime recital partners, and the exhilarating F Minor sonata was part of their recording of the Brahms clarinet sonatas. McGill joins the Catalyst Quartet in the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor quintet that is part of UNCOVERED—the Catalyst’s multi-volume spotlight on previously overlooked Black composers. Sensational pianist and composer Stewart Goodyear, and beloved Portland flutist Amelia Lukas also introduce us to spectacular music from Deena T. Grossman, Tania Léon, and one of Goodyear’s own solo piano works.
This concert is generously sponsored by Leslie Hsu & Rick Lennon.
ACCESS DATES FOR THIS CONCERT: This concert will be professionally recorded with access July 28 @ 7pm through August 31 @ 11:59pm
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Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- DEENA T. GROSSMAN “snowy egret, january messenger” (1993)
DEENA T. GROSSMAN
snowy egret, january messenger (1993) (5’)Written while the composer was living in Japan, snowy egret, january messenger was inspired by Honkyoku, classical Japanese music for shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute. This solo shakuhachi music was played by wandering samurai monks in Edo period Japan (1600-1868), and was originally passed on as an oral tradition. The free rhythm and extended flute techniques such as flutter-tongue, and bending pitches all reflect the sonic world of shakuhachi.
During the summer rainy season white egrets stand in the water among the brilliant green new shoots of rice plants. This image along with hearing her husband practicing shakuhachi in their home, forms the basis for snowy egret, january messenger.
—© Deena T. Grossman
- TANIA LEÓN “Alma” (2007)
TANIA LEÓN (b. 1943)
Alma (2007) (7’)“Una flauta toca un crescendo que se va convirtiendo en alegria.”
A flute plays a crescendo that starts transforming into joy.— From Bailando con mi angel by Carmen A. Vega Schimmenti, Puerto Rico.
This poem was the spark that ignited the creation of Alma. Ripples of pitches, a web of sonic impulses shimmering in the imagination. In Spanish, “alma” means soul or spirit; invisible forces, like the wind that caresses the chimes outside my window. The opening and closing of the piece evokes the sound of these chimes. The mood of the middle sections is propelled by the cascading of pitches that at times converge and diverge, a myriad of colors in playful conversation of bouncing gestures.
- Tania León
- BRAHMS Clarinet Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Clarinet Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 (24’)I. Allegro appassionato
II. Andante un poco adagio
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. VivaceIn the winter of 1891, Johannes Brahms was on the verge of retiring from composition. He was unwell, depressed, and suffering from writer’s block. A visit to the court of Meiningen a few months later changed everything; there Brahms met virtuoso clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, who played in the court orchestra. Mühlfeld’s artistry, and the rich expressive sound of the clarinet itself, reanimated Brahms, who went on to compose several significant chamber works, all featuring the clarinet.
In 1894, Brahms once again reached a low creative point, and once again Mühlfeld and his clarinet came to Brahms’ rescue. While vacationing in Bad Ischl that summer, Brahms composed the two clarinet sonatas of Op. 120. Biographer Karl Geiringer wrote of the “wonderful exploitation of the possibilities of the clarinet, especially in the effective change from the higher to the lower registers…a tender melancholy…and a splendid perfection of form in all the movements.”
The Clarinet Sonata in F minor’s four movements contrast the introspection and wistfulness of the first two movements with exuberance and lighthearted whimsy in the final two; by the closing Vivace the mood is so transformed as to end in a sunny F major rather than the brooding echoes of the original F minor tonality.
Brahms recognized Mühlfeld’s central role when he included the following dedication in the published score of Op. 120: “To Richard Mühlfeld, the master of his beautiful instrument, in sincerely grateful remembrance.”
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
- STEWART GOODYEAR “Panorama” (2019)
STEWART GOODYEAR (b. 1978)
Panorama (2019) (5’)One might say that Callaloo is my soul food…a dish from the Caribbean composed of spices from different cultures, deliciously blended together. I grew up in a city where the population was what one would call a “callaloo”, composed of people of various backgrounds and religions blending together to create an authentic urban flavour. The people of Trinidad, where half my family is from, call their community a “callaloo” nation, and they celebrate their history and present every February with Carnival, a festival of different sounds and traditions. Calypso, a blend of jazz, African and French influences, is the heart of Trinidad.
My Suite for piano and orchestra, aptly enough titled Callaloo, was originally composed for orchestra in 2016, two years after my first Carnival in Trinidad. At that festival, I was exposed to gorgeous Calypso music for two weeks straight, riveted every second. The full instrumentation of the suite is almost identical to the symphony orchestra version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with bongos taking the place of the banjo.
The first movement of Callaloo is Panorama, a high-spirited medley of three different melodic and rhythmic ideas. At Carnival, Panorama is a competition between different steel pan groups, each one giving their best arrangements and medleys of the top three Calypso songs of the year. The most successful medley wins the prize. For this movement, I wrote my own three themes, but bringing elements that would be familiar to Calypso lovers.
- Stewart Goodyear
- SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10
SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)
Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 (1895) (34’)I. Allegro energico
II. Larghetto affettuoso
III. Scherzo. Allegro leggiero
IV. Finale Allegro agitatoBritish composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, son of a medical student from Sierra Leone and a white English woman, revealed his prodigious musical talent early. He began playing violin at five and entered London’s Royal College of Music at 15; his classmates included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Coleridge-Taylor quickly attracted favorable attention from his teachers, including his composition teacher Sir Charles Stanford. When a racist fellow student insulted Coleridge-Taylor, Sanford retorted that Coleridge-Taylor had “more music in his little finger than [the abuser] did in the whole of his body.” Edward Elgar concurred, saying Coleridge-Taylor was “far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men.”
“What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk-music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies,” Samuel Coleridge-Taylor declared of his 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59, which he published in 1905. Coleridge-Taylor’s Pan-Africanism spurred his interest in music from all over the Black diaspora; the songs of Op. 59 come from East, West, and South Africa, the West Indies, and America.
The Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 emerged as the result of a challenge from Charles Stanford to his students in 1895. After attending a performance of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, Stanford reportedly claimed no subsequent clarinet quartets could be written without reflecting Brahms’ influence. Two months later, the 20-year-old Samuel Coleridge-Taylor presented Stanford with his own clarinet quintet, which not only fully refuted Sanford’s assertion, but stands as a monumental achievement on its own terms.
The Allegro energico opens with the clarinet singing in its chalumeau register, emphasizing the sunlight-and-shadow quality of the F-sharp Minor tonality. Howsoever Coleridge-Taylor presents his musical ideas, he never lets us lose track of the basic motifs that anchor this movement. The exquisite languor of the opening theme of the Larghetto affettuoso recalls momentarily the composer’s setting of “Deep River.” The strings assume the central thematic role, while the clarinet serves in a supportive capacity until more than halfway through the movement, when the instruments reverse their roles. In the sunny Scherzo, playful rhythmic ideas abound. Coleridge-Taylor’s love for Dvořák shows itself most clearly in this delightful mercurial music. The closing Allegro agitato features a bracing thematic idea, first sounded by the clarinet, then strings. The constant interplay between F-sharp Minor and A Major (the related major key) keeps both musicians and listeners alert to sudden changes of mood, key, and tempo.— © 2022 Elizabeth Schwartz
Artists
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Gloria Chien
Piano & Artistic Director
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Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.
In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic.
Most recently, Gloria was named Advisor of the newly launched Institute for Concert Artists at the New England Conservatory of Music. Gloria released two albums—her Gloria Chien LIVE from the Music@Menlo LIVE label and Here With You with acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill on Cedille Records.
Gloria received her bachelor, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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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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Anthony McGill
Clarinet
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Hailed for his “trademark brilliance, penetrating sound, and rich character” (The New York Times), clarinetist Anthony McGill enjoys a dynamic international solo and chamber music career and is principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic—the first African American principal player in the organization’s history. He is the recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize, one of classical music’s most significant awards.
McGill appears as a soloist with top orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. He performed alongside Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriela Montero at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, premiering a piece by John Williams. As a chamber musician, McGill is a collaborator of the Brentano, Daedalus, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, Shanghai, Takács, and Tokyo Quartets, and performs with leading artists including Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang.
He serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School and is the Artistic Director for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. He holds the William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2020, McGill’s #TakeTwoKnees campaign protesting the death of George Floyd and historic racial injustice went viral.
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Amelia Lukas
Flute
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“Known for her especially pure tone, flexible technique, and passionate performances,” (Artslandia) flutist Amelia Lukas performs with “a fine balance of virtuosity and poetry” (The New York Times). A Powell Flutes Artist and Portland resident, she “excels at bringing drama and fire to hyper-modernist works with challenging extended techniques” (Oregon ArtsWatch). In addition to her solo show “Natural Homeland” at the Alberta Rose Theatre and throughout Washington and Hawaii, her recent engagements include solo appearances for United for Ukraine, Siletz Bay Music Festival, Fear No Music, Makrokosmos Project, Kenny Endo, March Music Moderne, Portland Taiko, the Astoria Music Festival, and for All Classical Radio’s live radio broadcasts, with additional performances for the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Portland Piano International, TedX Portland, Friends of Chamber Music, 45th Parallel, and Oregon Music Festival. Lukas’ career includes founding and directing the “truly original… impeccably curated” (Time Out New York) multimedia chamber series, Ear Heart Music, membership in the American Modern Ensemble, and performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Stone, Bargemusic, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and New Music New York Festival. She holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music (London), where she received three prizes for musical excellence, and from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was an inaugural class member for the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Performance. Amelia is a Chamber Music Northwest Board Member and offers creative strategy and public relations services as the Principal and Founder of Aligned Artistry. Learn more at amelialukas.com.
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Catalyst Quartet
String Quartet
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Karla Donehew Perez, violin
Abi Fayette, violin
Paul Laraia, viola
Karlos Rodriguez, cello“Like all great chamber groups, the Catalyst Quartet is beautiful to watch, like a family in lively conversation at the dinner table: anticipating, interrupting, changing subjects.”
The New York Times, August 5, 2020Hailed by The New York Times at its Carnegie Hall debut as “invariably energetic and finely burnished…playing with earthy vigor,” the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet was founded by the Sphinx Organization in 2010. The ensemble (Karla Donehew Perez, violin; Abi Fayette, violin; Paul Laraia, viola; and Karlos Rodriguez, cello) believes in the unity that can be achieved through music and imagine their programs and projects with this in mind, redefining and reimagining the classical music experience.
Catalyst Quartet has toured widely throughout the United States and abroad, including sold-out performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Chicago’s Harris Theater, Miami’s New World Center, and Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The Quartet has been guest artists with the Cincinnati Symphony, New Haven Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, and served as principal players and featured ensemble with the Sphinx Virtuosi on six national tours. They have been invited to perform by prominent music festivals ranging from Mainly Mozart in San Diego, to the Sitka Music Festival and Juneau Jazz and Classics in Alaska, and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where they appear annually. Catalyst Quartet was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Vail Dance Festival in 2016. In 2014, they opened the Festival del Sole in Napa, California, performing with Joshua Bell, and as part of the Aldeburgh Music Foundation String Quartet Residency gave two performances in the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh, UK.
International engagements have brought them to Russia, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, along with regular concert tours throughout the United States and Canada. Residents of New York City, the ensemble has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they were named Quartet-in-Residence for the MetLiveArts 2022-23 Season, City Center, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, The New School (for Schneider Concerts), and Lincoln Center. They played six concerts with jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for Jazz at Lincoln Center. The subsequent recording won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. They are 2023 Artists-in-Residence with Chamber Music Northwest.
Recent programs and collaborations have included Encuentros with cellist Gabriel Cabezas; (im)igration, with the Imani Winds; and CQ Minute, 11 miniature string quartets commissioned for the quartet’s 10th anniversary, including works by Billy Childs, Paquito D’Rivera, Jessie Montgomery, Kevin Puts, Caroline Shaw, and Joan Tower. UNCOVERED, a multi-CD project for Azica Records celebrates important works by composers sidelined because of their race or gender. Volume 1 with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Stewart Goodyear includes music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Volume 2 with pianist Michelle Cann features music of Florence Price; it was nominated for “Recording of the Year 2022” by Limelight Magazine, Australia. Volume 3, released in February 2023 features music of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, and William Grant Still. Uncovered is also the focus of live concerts performed throughout the US including Uncovered series with San Francisco Performances in 2021-22 and their Pivot festival in 2023.
Catalyst Quartet’s other recordings span the ensemble’s scope of interests and artistry. The Bach/Gould Project pairs the Quartet’s arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations with Glenn Gould’s String Quartet Op. 1. Strum is the debut album of composer Jessie Montgomery, former Catalyst Quartet violinist. Bandaneon y cuerdas features tango-inspired music for string quartet and bandoneon by JP Jofre, and Dreams and Daggers is their Grammy-winning album with Cecile McLorin Salvant.
Catalyst Quartet combines a serious commitment to diversity and education with a passion for contemporary works. The ensemble serves as principal faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Curtis Institute of Music. Catalyst Quartet’s ongoing residencies include interactive performance presentations and workshops with Native American student composers at the Grand Canyon Music Festival and the Sphinx Organization’s Overture program, which delivers access to music education in Detroit and Flint, Michigan. Past residencies have included concerts and masterclasses at the University of Michigan, University of Washington, Rice University, Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, The Virginia Arts Festival, Pennsylvania State University, the In Harmony Project in England, University of South Africa, and The Teatro De Bellas Artes in Cali, Colombia. The ensemble’s residency in Havana, Cuba, for the Cuban American Youth Orchestra in January 2019, was the first by an American string quartet since the revolution.
Catalyst Quartet members hold degrees from The Cleveland Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, The Curtis Institute of Music, and New England Conservatory. Catalyst Quartet is a Sphinx ensemble and proudly endorses Pirastro strings.