Annie Booth gets Honorable Mention in 2011 ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Awards
Annie Booth
Jazz Piano Bachelor of Music student Annie Booth received an Honorable Mention as part of the 2011 ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Awards. This program, established in 2002, was created to encourage gifted jazz composers from throughout the United States. The recipients, who receive cash awards, range in age from 9 to 29, and are selected through a juried national competition.
Annie Booth is a young jazz pianist and composer who began playing music from an early age. Originally from Westminster, Colorado, she currently studies Jazz Piano and French at CU-Boulder. Annie has performed at a number of venues and festivals including Denver’s premiere jazz venue, Dazzle, The Mile High Jazz Festival, The UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival, where she was noted as an outstanding soloist, and the Telluride Jazz Celebration as part of the Telluride Student All-Star Band. Within the Denver and Boulder area, she performs regularly with The Annie Booth Trio and writes for a larger group called The Annie Booth Septet. She has been mentored in both jazz improvisation and composition from the likes of Art Lande, John Gunther, Brad Goode, Pat Bianchi, and Jeff Jenkins.
Congratulations Ekstrand Competition Winners!
2011 BRUCE EKSTRAND MEMORIAL GRADUATE STUDENT PERFORMANCE COMPETITION
Adjudicators
Charmaine Coppom
William Kearns
Anthony Pierce
Ekstrand Prize – $2,000
Owen Zhou, piano
Second Place Development Award – $1,000
Nicole Vogel, mezzo-soprano
Finalist Prizes – $500 to each
Shih-han Chiu, bassoon
Adam Jackson, piano
Kimberly Patterson, cello
Ross Snyder, violin
Dean’s Audience Favorite Prize – $500
Ross Snyder, violin
Special thanks to the collaborative pianists Allan Armstrong, Kwok Lui, Beth Nielsen and all others involved in the previous rounds.
Alumni News: Miroslava Mintcheva wins MTNA Fellowship
Miroslava Mintcheva
Dr. Miroslava Mintcheva (DMA 2010, piano performance) is the recipient of the 2011 MTNA StAR Studio Teacher Fellowship Award. This prestigious award is given to an individual who exhibits exceptional teaching and performance skills and is deeply committed to the teaching profession. She is very proud to have been selected as the winner out of a large national pool of applicants. The award is in the amount of $3,000. In addition, Dr. Mintcheva will be featured in the American Music Teacher magazine, which is read by music teachers around the nation.
So You Think You Can Collaborate?
"So You Think You Can Collaborate?" Rehearsal (Photo by Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado)
The College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder hosted its first competition dedicated specifically to collaborative music-making: So You Think You Can Collaborate? Saturday, January 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Grusin Music Hall. The winners of the competition were Forty Fingers of Fury (Allan Armstrong, Laura Brumbaugh, Doreen Lee and Sunyoung Lee, pianos with Owen Zhou, technical guru). Second prize was awarded to the Cold Quartet (Ryan Wurst, laptop, Hannah Darroch, flute, Jessica Lindsey, bass clarinet and Mollie Wolf, dancer).
The most significant and innovative feature of the competition is that participants must consider the audience to be part of the collaborative process. This means that their presentation must not only include a high-level collaborative performance, but must include some component that engages the audience – be it speaking, technology, dance, as a few examples – with the goal of enhancing the audience’s appreciation, enjoyment and understanding of the musical performance. Much time has been spent discussing the classical music industry’s need to revitalize its audiences, and this is a competition that will reward performers who do just that.
And perhaps most exciting of all: The winners are determined by an audience vote! After all, they’re the best judges of which performers were most engaging!
Special thanks to the College of Music’s performing departments, who are providing the funds for the award money for this inaugural competition.
Organized and directed by Alexandra Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano, the So You Think You Can Collaborate? competition is taking place as part of an international day celebrating collaboration, an effort spearheaded by the Music Teachers National Association as part of its Year of Collaborative Music 2010-2011.
Hsing-Ay Hsu’s Recording: Barber Centennial
Hsing-ay Hsu, director of Pendulum New Music, just released her new CD, Barber Centennial. This album features Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata and his Piano Concerto (which won him a Pultizer Prize), recorded in Moscow with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. Samuel Barber is one of the most lyrical and poetic 20th century composers, and helped to define the American style. CDs are available at www.hsingayhsu.com.
Study Abroad for Music Majors
25% of all CU-Boulder students study abroad during the course of their college career. However, only 5% of music majors choose to study abroad. The College of Music’s Undergraduate Office is hoping to change this. We examined the reasons so few music students study abroad, and determined that there were not many study abroad programs featuring music courses. Therefore, we have worked closely with the Study Abroad office to identify and highlight programs throughout the world that allow music students to study abroad and continue to make progress towards their degrees. We created a Study Abroad Guide for Music Majors (PDF). More specific information is also available on the Study Abroad Website.
Programs identified include both semester-long and summer options in locations such as Vienna, Milan, England, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. We have also worked to initiate our first faculty-led global seminar. In the June 2011, Professor Kwasi Ampene will travel to Ghana with students to study the music and culture of Ghana. We also recently approved an exchange agreement with the University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music in Sydney Australia.
We held a “Study Abroad 101” session for undergraduate students on October 26, and had about 35 students attend. We also held information sessions for the summer trip to Ghana, Sydney Exchange, and IES programs in Vienna, Milan, and Amsterdam. These sessions were all well-attended.
Hopefully, we’ll see an increase in the number of music students choosing to study abroad!
Amy Larsen
College of Music, Undergraduate Office
CU students win MTNA Competition
Congratulations to the following CU student performers and their teachers for winning the following awards at the MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) state competition. The competition is open to anyone in the State of Colorado and winners will advance to the Division Competition in January in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Senior Piano
Alternate: Ambrose Soehn (Doris Pridonoff Lehnert)
Young Artist Piano
Winner: Kevin Lufkin (David Korevaar)
Young Artist Strings
Winner: Andrew Briggs (Judith Glyde)
Alternate: Kimberly Patterson (Judith Glyde)
Chamber Music
Winner: Anasazi String Quartet (Erika Eckert)
Alternate: Zenobia Winds (Yoshiyuki Ishikawa)
Honorable mention: Altamira String Quartet (Erika Eckert)
Faculty CD Release: Geraldine Walther and David Korevaar
David Korevaar and Geraldine Walther have collaborated on this new CD release. Information from MSR Classics below:
NOE VALLEY CHAMBER MUSIC PRESENTS
TRUE DIVIDED LIGHT
CHAMBER MUSIC OF DAVID CARLSON
TRUE DIVIDED LIGHT for Viola and Piano
SONATA for Cello and Piano
GERALDINE WALTHER viola
EMIL MILAND cello
DAVID KOREVAAR piano
True Divided Light is an architectural term for a window constructed of multiple panes of glass, where each pane is individually set in its own mullions, or dividers. The earliest known true divided light windows were fitted with thin pieces of alabaster set between dividers of lead or stone. In the fifth century, rondels—discs of spun glass—were connected to form larger expanses of light. The concept continued to evolve into the huge multicolored rose windows of Notre Dame and, in our century, entire buildings constructed with glass exteriors.
True Divided Light is a work of absolute music. There is no specific program. But the term suggests a number of evocative metaphors: light versus darkness, a window into the soul, and, in the case of stained glass, refracted colors juxtaposed to convey meaning and emotion. In two contrasting movements of equal duration, True Divided Light is conceived as a succession of emotional states varying in mood and intensity. The first movement, Lento luminoso, presents three main ideas: a series of pensive chords followed by a broad, soulful melody for the viola, then a hymn-like arpeggiated section marked mistico, and a third idea in which figurations in the piano are mirrored by the viola at a much slower speed. The movement closes with the mistico music. The second movement also contains three main ideas. The first, Presto strepitoso, is characterized by exhuberant triplet figures and builds to a thundering climax before settling down. The character changes with the appearance of a folk-like tune (inspired by music heard from a street musician playing a Hardanger fiddle in St. Petersburg, Russia), and the mood transforms again with a radiant, lyrical melody. A variation of the triplet music returns, more insistent this time, and the piece hurtles energetically towards its conclusion, ending with a cascade of scales and a series of bright, triumphant chords.
True Divided Light is the first work commissioned by Noe Valley Chamber Music and was made possible by grants from the Carol Franc Buck Foundation and the American Composers Forum, SF Chapter. The work is dedicated to Carol Franc Buck, a longtime supporter of Mr. Carlson’s music.
The Cello Sonata was commissioned by Chamber Music America for cellist Emil Miland and pianist Robin Sutherland. It is the first of many significant collaborations between Carlson and Miland, which include Nocturno, a motet-concerto in Renaissance style for cello and eight-part male chorus, commissioned and first performed by Miland and the famed vocal ensemble Chanticleer; Cello Concerto No. 1, Cello Concerto No. 2, premiered by Miland and the Bay Area’s New Century Chamber Orchestra, and the brief elegiac work Vocalise. Fifteen years separate the Sonata for Cello and Piano from True Divided Light, and though obviously by the same composer, they differ greatly in their stylistic temperments: while the viola work is boisterous and outgoing, the Sonata is inward-looking and contemplative. Having been written during the height of the the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, the composer has suggested that perhaps its moods are reflective of those times. The piece is taxing in the extreme for both instruments, not only in technical difficulty but in the expressive nuances specified. The work is in a single movement subdivided into distinct sections. A dark opening motif is heard and slowly developed in back and forth utterances between the piano and cello in a “secco” style, reaching a great climax; true to sonata form this section is repeated. A new idea follows with the cello imitating a middle-Eastern stringed instrument (the first of America’s wars in Afganistan was then underway, hence the influence). This is followed by a broad and lyrical melody for the cello, opening in a plaintive octave-drop, which is then developed, ending in a series of low, ghostly chords, evocative of the tolling of distant church bells. This is followed by a will ‘o the wisp scherzo, with very rapid figurations barely ever rising above pianissimo. After a grand climax, the plaintive tune returns, with the sonata fading into a lyrical, calm, dolcissimo C major ending.
For more information and to order CDs click here.
Boston Musical Intelligencer Review of Andrew Cooperstock
A disappointingly small audience turned out for one of the most significant and worthwhile concerts of the 2010 Maverick Concerts season in Woodstock. Saturday evening. The duo Opus Two, violinist William Terwilliger and pianist Andrew Cooperstock, played a recital called “American Spirit,” and they justified their title with both repertoire and performance.
The program opened with Aaron Copland’s regrettably scarce Violin Sonata (written three years after his summer sojourn in Woodstock with Benjamin Britten). This plainspoken, unaffected music shares the aesthetic of the contemporaneous Appalachian Spring, and to this listener at least it seems equally expressive and effective. In fact, the way the music frequently changes tempo and mood even within its movements is similar to Copland’s ballet writing. The performance was lively and alert throughout, and, as with the entire recital, beautifully balanced.
Needing material to fill out an all-Bernstein chamber CD, Opus Two commissioned composer Eric Stern to create a suite of music from a Bernstein operetta, Four Movements from “Candide.” Stern did outstanding work, imaginatively rescoring Bernstein’s songs to make them sound like real chamber music. I thought that the third movement, the famous “Glitter and Be Gay,” would have been a better finale. Again the performance was outstanding, aiding in the transformation from vocal to instrumental idiom.
Robert Starer (1924-2001) was a personal friend, so I cannot pretend to be objective about his music. I can say, though, that Starer created an immediately recognizable, individual style, and that if I hear something of his on the radio I can always tell whose music it is before I hear the announcement. Starer’s Duo for Violin and Piano is a continuous meditation lasting about 15 minutes. Although it may seem like stream-of-thought, its opening material generates much of what follows and returns occasionally. It was fascinating to hear this music on the same program with the Copland Sonata. Copland was one of Starer’s teachers, and the Duo sounds as though it contains deliberate reflections of Copland’s work. These musicians recorded the Duo in 1995, and their long experience with it showed in a completely convincing performance.
The program concluded with the early Violin Sonata of John Corigliano. It was written for his father, John Corigliano Sr., and the father’s recording of the music for CRI was Corigliano’s first recorded work. This large neo-romantic work is not as substantial as the masterful work this composer has created since, but it’s still quite entertaining and easily holds a listener’s attention for nearly half an hour. Its finale has some apparent echoes of Bernstein’s work. Pleased with their enthusiastic reception from the audience, Opus Two gave us an American encore: Jascha Heifetz’s transcription of Foster’s “I Dream of Jeannie,” played with affecting lyricism.
Often when I hear performers who offer only specialized repertoire, I can understand why they specialize. Hearing the strengths of this duo, though, I’d love to hear them play Beethoven.
In its Maverick Concerts debut, the violin and piano duo Opus Two (William Terwilliger and Andrew Cooperstock) offered an all-American program, all performed with virtuosity, musicianship, and excellent balance. The rarely-heard Violin Sonata of Aaron Copland was revealed as a neglected masterpiece. Eric Stern’s arrangement of Leonard Bernstein music, Four Moments from “Candide,” actually sounded like chamber music. The ensemble recorded Robert Starer’s Duo for Violin and Piano 15 years ago and still plays it convincingly. John Corigliano’s Violin Sonata, an early, neo-romantic work, isn’t the composer’s most mature music but it was still lots of fun in a lively, virtuosic rendition.
Faculty CD Release: Dusinberre & Korevaar
Faculty members Edward Dusinberre, violin and David Korevaar, piano have just released a new recording of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas Nos. 9 “Kreutzer” & 10 on Decca. This recording was funded by grants from the Council on Research and Creative Work and from the Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado. The recording can be ordered from Presto Classical. Read two of the great reviews below.
CD of the Week review by Hugh Canning in the London Sunday Times 7/25/2010
The ways of the multinational classical labels become ever more mysterious. The British violinist Edward Dusinberre (right) may not be a household name, but he leads one of the world’s outstanding and best-known string quartets: the Takacs. They used to record for Decca, but defected to Hyperion after completing their acclaimed set of Beethoven quartets. Now here is Dusinberre, with the fine American pianist David Korevaar, in the same composer’s last two sonatas, the most famous of them all, the virtuosic, concerto-like “Kreutzer”, in A major, of 1803, and its successor, in G, of 1812. You have to read the small print to see that the recording has been made with grants from the University of Colorado, where the Takacs Quartet are “in residence” and Korevaar is professor of piano. Universities are perhaps the most important advocates of chamber music in America, so this is hardly the equivalent of “vanity publishing”, and the music-making is of exceptional quality. Neither player is a big soloist personality, but both appreciate the “competitive” aspect of the Kreutzer’s huge opening adagio-sostenuto, bringing an argumentative quality to their dramatic exchanges. The contrast with the G major’s allegro moderato could hardly be greater – Dusinberre calls it a “conversation between friends” – and both musicians capture the later sonata’s pastoral tone, especially in the beautiful adagio espressivo. The Dusinberre/Korevaar partnership is so rewarding, one hopes they will record Beethoven’s eight other sonatas for this combination of instruments.
And a 7/15/2010 review by Andrew Clements in The Guardian:
Edward Dusinberre brings the same wonderfully subtle and intensely musical qualities to these two violin sonatas as he does to Beethoven’s quartets in his day job as leader of the peerless Takács Quartet. There’s no suggestion here that Dusinberre is using the sonatas just as a showcase for his own violin playing; even in the more flamboyant passages of the Kreutzer Sonata Op 47 there is nothing flashy or self-regarding about his playing, and his partnership with pianist David Korevaar is very much one of equality. The emotional core of their performance of the Kreutzer is the set of variations that forms the central slow movement, and while other partnerships might bring more drama to the first movement, Dusinberre and Korevaar judge the contrast between that and the variations that follow perfectly. They are perfectly attuned to the rather conversational exchanges of Op 96, too; it’s an elusive work, on the brink of Beethoven’s late period, and these players judge its pastoral intimacies exactly.
