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The St. Lukeís Chamber Ensembleís eleventh season of Second Helpings new music concerts comes to a rousing finish with a tribute to Composer-in-Residence Joan Tower. ìTower Power,î on Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 2:00 p.m. at the Chelsea Art Museum, features three recent works by Tower herself ñ Rainwaves for clarinet, violin, and piano (1997); Big Sky for violin, cello, and piano, with the composer as pianist (1998); and In Memory for string quartet (1998) ñ as well as works commissioned by St. Lukeís of Joan Panetti and George Tsontakis and two of Towerís Bard College students, Casey Hale and Daniel Wohl: Panettiís ìThe instant gathersî from Homage to J.T. for piano trio, with the composer as pianist (2004); Tsontakisís microcosmos II (for Joan) for violin, cello, and piano (2004); Haleís Silly Devil for violin and cello (2004); and a work for solo cello by Wohl (2004).
The St. Lukeís musicians performing on the program are clarinetist Marina Sturm, pianist Melvin Chen (in addition to Tower and Panetti), violinists Naoko Tanaka and Katharina Grossman, violist Louise Schulman, and cellists Myron Lutzke and Daire FitzGerald.
This is the eleventh season of the Second Helpings series, which showcases the work of todayís composers with repeat performances and premieres of contemporary repertoire in an intimate and informal setting. The Chelsea Art Museum is this seasonís home for the series, which had previously taken place at Dia: Chelsea, and the concerts take place within exhibition spaces, which provides a striking visual stage for the performance. There is no intermission; Joan Tower introduces the composers, who talk briefly about their works, and a reception for the artists and audience follows the concert. Daniel Bernard Roumain is St. Lukeís Assistant Composer-in-Residence.
The concert takes place in the Chelsea Art Museumís third floor gallery space, which is currently showing an exhibition titled Flock & Fable: Animals and Identity in Contemporary Art, which presents the works of eleven artists, including Helen Altman, Cornelia Hesse-Honneger, Andrew Johnson, and Rosemary Laing, who use animal imagery to investigate forms of identity. The reception will take place in a permanent installation of works by Jean Miotte (b. Paris, 1926), co-founder of the Museum and one of the founders of the movement LíArt Informel (ìwithout formî). The Chelsea Art Museum serves as home to the Miotte Foundation, dedicated to conserving the work of Miotte and Informel.
Second Helpings is made possible with generous support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, BMI, the Gladys K. Delmas Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, and generous individuals.
Joan Panetti's "The instant gathers" is the first movement of a work for piano, violin, and cello written in homage to Joan Tower, with whom Panetti has been friends for years. The title is taken from a poem by Theodore Roethke, and reflects the composers' relationship. Panetti says that when she first met Tower, her immediate impression was of tremendous strength, and that as the years have passed, that impression has deepened and gathered more resonance -- "this first movement is in the spirit of that gathering."
George Tsontakis says, "Joan's music is filled with such vitality and color, and her unique profile comes through in each and every work. She just loves to be around great performing musicians, and so I would imagine that her years with St. Lukeís must have been a time of true reciprocal sharing; music, philosophy, and as always with Joan, lots of laughs. It was a pleasure creating a wee bit of something for her and the occasion ñ she's a great composer, colleague and friend."
In the words of a biographical note by Sandra Hyslop, ìThe works on this concert derive from the passions that have driven composer Joan Tower for as long as she has been making music. Her profound connections to nature, to language, and to people (especially performers) have shaped her music, as well as her life in music.
ìWhoís to say how Towerís early life in South America as a daughter of a mining engineer shaped her attraction to nature? Was it the paternal genes? Or was it the exposure to a geology and a culture that nurtured her young curiosity about the natural world? From her earliest compositions ñ Black Topaz, Amazon, and Platinum Spirals, for example, all composed in the 1970s ñ to such recent works as Big Sky (2000) and DNA (2003), Tower has returned repeatedly to the observable world and its forms. Even her admiration for Beethovenís music, with its transformation of small seeds into organic structural elements, is tethered to her respect for the natural world ñ how it grows, and how it thrives. Rapids, Sequoia, Night Fields, Rain Waves, Wings, and Snow Dreams ñ again and again, Towerís titles reveal her preoccupation with nature.
ìThis composer creates her music not from abstract theories and solitary intellectualizing, but rather from her continuing experiences as a performing musician. Academically trained as a pianist and a composer (Bennington under-graduate, and a doctorate at Columbia), Tower gained her first professional experiences as a founding member of the Da Capo Chamber Players, for whom she composed many works.î
Joan Tower is one of this generation's most dynamic and colorful composers. Her bold and energetic music, with its striking imagery and novel structural forms, has won large, enthusiastic audiences. Recent works include: In Memory for the Tokyo String Quartet (2002); Strike Zones for percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony (2001); Fascinating Ribbons for wind ensemble (premiered at the 2001 College Band Directors National Association conference); Vast Antique Cubes/Throbbing Still premiered by pianist John Browning in 2000; and the 2000 world premiere of The Last Dance by the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Tower was born on September 6, 1938, in New Rochelle, New York.
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