Orchestra member wins Marshall Prize

Our own Michael Barany who plays french horn in the CSO wins the Marshall prize. Full article in the Chronicle after the jump.

updates since the last post

The orchestra activity has been at such an intensity that it has been hard to keep updates on this blog. I will post a series of updates of what the orchestra has been up to in brief. Since the September 30, joint concert by the CCO and CSO here are the high lights.

October 31 Joint Halloween concert between CSO and Ithaca college Symphony Orchestra
Program included Music by Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, Saint-Saens, Adam Glaser and John Williams

November 9, 10, 11 A collaborative production of Carlisle Floyd's one act opera Slow Dusk

November 11 Chamber Orchestra fall concert featuring music by J.S. Bach, Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra with soloists Anna Herforth (oboe), Daniel Kim (violin) and Wendy Richman (viola)

Mid November Orchestra member Alex Chao redesigns CSO website

I will put detailed posts regarding these entries

download the orchestra newsletter as a pdf file

Here is a link to the pdf file of the Orchestra newsletter. It is about 13 mb.
If you would like to receive a copy in the mail, please send your mailing address to cyk8(at)cornell.

Orchestra Newsletter article part 5 - Orchestra Board efforts

It’s a new year. This means new repertoire, new members of the orchestra, a fresh start. It also means that we have a new executive board, an excited and motivated group of individuals with big dreams for the orchestra. We have revamped the structure of the board this year and are excited about the new opportunities that this year provides.

We have kept a few standard positions: co-presidents, treasurer, and secretary. However, beyond this – with a few exceptions of positions that had already been in place – we have expanded the board by creating several new positions. Our hope is that by delegating smaller tasks to a greater number of people, we will be better equipped to achieve the large goals that have set for ourselves. In addition to the aforementioned four officers, the board consists of four committee chairs: social chair, fundraising chair, outreach chair, and publicity chair. These individuals will oversee and delegate in their respective efforts. Furthermore, we have added a number of other positions with specific goals in mind.

CCO representative – This year, we are trying to bridge the gap between CSO and CCO. The CCO representative will represent the ideas and interests of the CCO in orchestra board meetings and will report back to the CCO.

Webmaster – Our website is our primary method of contact with prospective students, alumni, and the rest of the world. We are working on a new design and a more user friendly interface.

Alumni Liaison – We are aware that many alumni cherish the experience they had in the Cornell orchestra and would like to stay in touch with us. Thus, this liaison will work to establish a current database of orchestra alumni and communicate with directly.

Orchestra Historian – This individual will be maintaining the orchestra’s records. We would like to focus these efforts on both the present (documenting our activities, taking pictures, etc) and the past (researching and digitizing information about the orchestra’s history).

Newsletter Editor – The editor will assign and manage revision of articles, as well as working on the layout of the newsletter and maintaining the mailing list.

The orchestra board is now meeting independently each week. After each week’s meeting, the minutes from the meeting are sent out via email to the orchestra members and posted on the website. In addition, important matters are discussed with Chris Kim. So far, through these weekly meetings, we have planned social events (including orchestra ice skating and an upcoming board game night), brainstormed publicity ideas and website plans, worked out ideas for our Halloween concert, and – most exciting of all – begun planning for our tour to Spain in January of 2009.

I could not be more excited about the dynamic group of people on the board this year. Despite the fact that every board position has yet to be filled, each current board member is happy to temporarily fill in for missing positions. As we work throughout the year to write bylaws for this governing body of the orchestra, we hope to set a precedent of efficiency and innovative ideas that will serve as a strong foundation for years to come.

We always welcome new members of the board and would love for as many members of both CCO and CSO to join us at our weekly meetings. We also would love to hear suggestions that can make this board even better! (Send ideas to co-presidents Melanie Adamsky [maa67@cornell.edu] or Sam Birmaher [sb397@cornell.edu].)

-Melanie Adamsky, Biological Sciences ’09

Orchestra Newsletter article part 4 - Old and New

This semester the Cornell music department welcomes to its family two new ensembles that take the stage in early November. Interestingly, each of these groups stretches the department’s horizons in a different direction. First, a small chamber opera orchestra assembled for the endeavor will perform Carlisle Floyd’s one-act music-drama Slow Dusk in the Schwartz Center’s Black Box Theatre. Conductors Chris Kim, John Rowehl and Dorian Bandy will lead the ensemble, with a stage cast drawn from members of Judith Kellock’s voice studio. Although various attempts have been made over the years to stage operas at Cornell, several practical problems have persisted, one of which is finding performance space that accommodates an orchestra while still leaving room for the actors. The production staff of Slow Dusk have avoided this logistical problem by reducing the opera’s score from a full orchestra to an 8 piece chamber ensemble consisting of Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, 2 Violins, 2 Violas, Cello and Piano, all of which will remain on stage for the duration of the performance. Because instrumental rehearsals for Slow Dusk don’t begin until 15 October, my own involvement in the project has been limited to orchestration, but with the caliber ensemble that we’ve drawn from the Cornell Orchestras, and the level of singers that are participating, I have no doubt that this production will be an excellent step in terms of collaborations between the Music and Theater Departments.
Les Petits Violons de Cornell, on the other hand (unlike the Slow Dusk project) has had multiple incarnations over the last decade. The student baroque orchestra, consisting of 3 or 4 violins (and in search of more), 2 violas, 2 cellos, a violone and a harpsichord, and playing on baroque and classical instruments, is named with a playful nod to Louis XIV’s own orchestra, plain old Les Petits Violons. Convened and coached by Neal Zaslaw, the group consists of a mix of faculty, grad students and undergrads, each with varying levels of exposure to baroque repertoire and period instruments. Les Violons are currently preparing Händel’s excellent D major concerto grosso, op. 6 no. 5 and a Telemann Burlesque Dance Suite, ultimately intended for performance on November 18th in Bailey, as part of a collaboration with the NYS Baroque Orchestra and the NY Baroque Dance Troupe. The event—entitled “Harlequin’s Capers”—will feature dance and music from the 18th century comic theater, including a staged version of Mouret’s Pygmalion. With improvised commedia dell’ arte scenes, plenty of buffoonery, and great music, this concert is not one to be missed! Stay tuned…
- Dorian Bandy, Music,’10

Orchestra Newsletter article part 3 - Freshmen Perspective

Starting a new life in a new place can be nerve-wrecking for many 17 and 18-year-olds. College freshmen often have their hands completely full just dealing with the various changes in their lives associated with beginning college life. Imagine then being a freshman standing in the back of the symphony orchestra in Bailey Hall, playing the first notes in a piece all alone: the fourth beat of every measure on the bass drum in Christopher Rouse’s “Bump.”

I entered the music world as a violinist 13 years ago, playing in orchestras since 5th grade. However, after also playing percussion in the high school marching band for 4 years, I decided to become a concert percussionist in the Cornell Symphony Orchestra.

Playing in the orchestra as a percussionist has been a whole new experience, and I love it. The director, the TA, and fellow members are – for a lack of better word – amazing. Whether it is the picnic at Stewart Park or the rehearsals in Lincoln Hall, orchestra director Chris Kim always gives his all, driving the orchestra to its fullest potential. Orchestra TA Spencer Topel is always there to assist both the director and the ensemble. Every member of the orchestra is unique, possessing various backgrounds, interests, majors, and life goals. Despite such differences, however, we all share the love of music which brings us together every Monday and Wednesday nights to the basement of Lincoln Hall, where we strive to play our very best.

While there have been big changes in life – high school to college, California to New York, and violin to percussion – I am glad and honored to be a member of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra. Thank you to Chris Kim and fellow members for an amazing start to my new life here at Cornell University!
- Risa Naka, Animal Science ’11

Orchestra Newsletter article part 2 - Senior Perspective

Late Night Reminiscences on Playing in the Cornell Symphony Orchestra

Sometimes, it feels as if we had just finished rehearsing Beethoven's Coriolan Overture. The c minor chord that opens the piece and represents our tragic hero's resolve still plays itself in my memory. I arrived at Cornell the same year Chris began his tenure as conductor of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra. Bailey Hall was still in renovation at the time, and so I played my first concerts with the orchestra in Ford Hall at Ithaca College. I remember the other concerts we performed too: one in the stifling heat of Helen Newman Hall for the First Year Family Weekend concert, a stint at the Johnson Museum, where a group of us played Riley's In C (my first experience with aleatoric music), and Sierra's Concerto for Saxophones at Ithaca High School.

I was then sorely disappointed during spring pre-enrollment when I realized that there was no way I could play in orchestra during the coming year because of scheduling conflicts. It was a difficult year. Without the motivation of orchestra, I found it increasingly difficult to find time to practice the violin. But the year ended, and I spent the summer bringing my violin playing back up to par in anticipation of the next orchestra season. My second season with the orchestra coincided with my third year at Cornell, and, writing now as a senior, I can say it was my best year at Cornell ever.

Besides another year of great repertoire, the orchestra had the chance to go on tour to perform in Berlin. More important than the allure of traveling to Europe, the tour was a great bonding opportunity for the orchestra. I'll never forget waking up at 8 AM to explore the city until night, staying up obscenely late to play card games with friends until sheer exhaustion set in, then repeating the cycle again the next day. Berlin remains one of my fondest memories of orchestra, and it was the place where many of my lasting orchestra friendships were made.

Although it has been an extremely busy semester for me so far (then again, does the opposite even exist here at Cornell?), I am always uplifted by the fact that every Monday and Wednesday night, I have a chance to forget my work, take out my violin, and sit down and simply play music for two hours. It has always been an oasis in my day-to-day work schedule. But with one great regret do I graduate from Cornell and depart from orchestra: I will not be staying for one more year, so that I can end my Cornell Symphony Orchestra career playing under Chris's baton and tour Spain with my friends in orchestra.
-Adrian So '08

Orchestra Newsletter article part 1 - Horn Call

Although I am a first-year graduate student, this is my fifth year as a student at Cornell University. I have endured four Ithaca winters, witnessed four Slope Days, and taken more prelims than I care to remember. I am, however, only in my first year as member of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra. There is no record of my affiliation with the ensemble for any of the past four years, and likewise, there shouldn’t be: in August of 2003, I left home for my first year of college, and my horn didn’t follow. It would remain untouched in the corner of my bedroom, collecting dust as I pursued a life of supposedly more important things. Nearly four years later, in early June of this year, I opened the case for the first time since that day.

The sudden desire to play my horn again was motivated by several reasons. The first is simply that it is a shame when there is something you once did relatively well but no longer do because you essentially quit without good reason. In this sense, I was motivated by guilt.

Perhaps more importantly, though, my last two years as an undergraduate coincided with a revival of classical music in my life, which began naively during my junior year when, in hopes of balancing my mostly technical curriculum with something from the liberal arts, I enrolled in a music history class. I rediscovered pieces I performed years ago in my youth orchestra, and after further exploration into the greater landscape of classical music, I learned that the works that appealed to me most were of a late Romantic and Russian origin.

By the middle of my senior year, my renewed appreciation for the classical tradition made my return to the horn seem like a likely undertaking. However, I was not convinced that I would be able to make time for another extracurricular activity. I equivocated on the matter as one would expect from someone sporting genuine ambition but lacking self-confidence, until this past June. My curiosity led me to the orchestra’s blog, where Chris Kim posted a tentative concert program for the 2007-2008 season. There, listed for the December 2nd concert, was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Although a lesser known work in the orchestral repertoire, it holds – for me at least – a certain programmatic significance. It is Rachmaninoff’s last opus, and although conceived in an era of rampant serialism and deviation from tonality, the first movement features an unexpected and brief yet distinctly Romantic interlude that betrays even the composer’s late style—a befitting anachronism for one of the last Romantics.

Having this opportunity waved in front of my face was exactly the enticement I needed; I could not miss this chance. So, I practiced. A lot. I logged more hours on my horn this summer than my former, teenage self would have ever considered (though I admit that does not speak for much). I found a private teacher in Boston where I spent the summer to help me regain my playing ability, for I had to be audition-ready in two months.

It has been four months since I made that resolution, and I can’t help but acknowledge the effectiveness of a little, honest-to-goodness dedication and hard work. It’s a maxim that is so often proclaimed in the form of nice-sounding, rhetorical proverbs and parables, but its underlying truth is so frequently obscured by cliché. And yet here I am. I made it. I found myself a seat in a row of brass, with percussion behind me, woodwinds before me, and strings beyond them. There is a localization of sound specific to my very spot in the orchestra, and it is a sensory experience I have been too long without. Truth be told, the Symphonic Dances has been replaced on the concert program by Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, but this modification, in the end, is not in the least disappointing.

If I seem at all boastful in describing what I have accomplished, let that simply be on account of the small, personal triumph I have earned for myself. Ultimately, my experience can be seen, I hope, as just one instance of a more general phenomenon in which we as humans arrive at some of our greatest achievements in life through our own, deeply personal incentives. In these cases, we are driven not by the wishes of our peers or the prospects of tangible reward, but rather by privately held notions of duty, ambition, and passion.

My horn was a part of my life I never should have abandoned in the first place, and though I may never make a living out of making music, I will always turn to music as a source of inspiration and emotional consolation. And even as making up for four years of lost playing proves to be a daunting task, I wouldn’t want to be using my time in any other way. This is what I set out to do, and I managed to pull it off in a quirky, spontaneous kind of way. It’s nice to be back. -Alex Chao, Horn

Masterclass with Francois Rabbath

The french double bassist and composer Francois Rabbath was in residence at Ithaca College and gave a masterclass on September 20th. Thirteen bassists from Ithaca College and Eastman's School of Music performed a solo work or etude written by Mr. Rabbath. This provided a rare opportunity to gain insights not only from a superb musician but also from the composer.

Mr. Rabbath was born and Syria and taught himself to play the double bass using a book written by the French bassist Edouard Nanny. He moved to Paris in hopes of meeting Edouard Nanny, but the Parisian teacher had already died. He ended up staying in Paris to study music and became one of the most influential bassists of our time. In particular he formulated a whole new method of playing the double bass based on extension fingerings rather than the traditional method of smaller, more rigid fingering positions.

Most impressive to me was his intuitive understanding of all aspects of creating music. Composition, musicianship, technique, performance. As a both composer and player he puts a strong emphasis on visualizing the music. Each of his own pieces were written with a specific mental image in mind. "Iberique Peninsulaire" was inspired while he was walking through the desert and came upon a rose-colored lake. Another piece he wrote around the birth of his first son. He and his second son performed a piece at the masterclass which depicts a huge whale being hunted.

What sets Mr. Rabbath apart is his physical awareness of playing. His bass is truly an extension of himself. Nicholas Walker, professor of double bass at Ithaca College, told an anecdote about the dress rehearsal before Mr. Rabbath's recital the previous evening. He described how Mr. Rabbath complained that the floor of the stage sloped down toward the audience. They first attempted to test this by rolling a quarter down the stage with no success. Finally they found a level, and sure enough, the stage floor sloped down a millimeter over half a meter. Mr. Rabbath could tell because the instrument didn't quite feel right.

Finally the insight which blew me away the most was his belief that wood has memory. A bow keeps its curve because the wood has memory. He told us that as string players we teach the wood of our instruments to vibrate, and it remembers the vibrations. We can either teach it well so that its sound improves with time, or we can kill it. Mr. Rabbath's genius is understanding how to show a bass how to best to vibrate.

For two and a half hours on a Thursday evening, about forty people saw a musical genius at work. His love for playing, teaching and composing was contagious. He was an inspiration, and many years from now I will still remember that wood has memory.

0708 brochure revised v.3

The 2007-2008 season brochure for the Cornell Orchestra has been revised. Some program changes were made and also the spring season is set for both CCO and CSO.

If you would like to receive a copy in the mail, please send us a message.

Brave New Works Summer newsletter

To download the Brave New Works Summer '07 Newsletter follow the Link.

Composer Forum schedule

Here is the Composer Forum schedule for the fall semester.
More updated info after the jump.

SEPTEMBER

Sept 7: Master class with Steven Stucky (music of Chris Gendall and David Weaver)
Sept 14: Guest composer: Professor Emeritus Karel Husa
Sept 21: Master class with Kevin Ernste
Sept 28: Seminars on Modern Opera and Music Theater: Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortleges (seminar leaders Ryan Gallagher and Zachary Wadsworth)

OCTOBER

Oct 5: No meeting

Oct 12: Master class with Roberto Sierra
Oct 19: Seminars on Modern Opera and Music Theater: Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King (seminar leaders Chris Gendall and David Weaver)
Oct 26: Guest composer: Zygmunt Krauze
Oct 27: Guest composer: Luca Antignani [N.B.: Saturday, 2:00 PM]

NOVEMBER

Nov 2: Seminars on Modern Opera and Music Theater: topic and leaders TBA
Nov 9: Guest violinist: Peter Shepherd Skaerved
Nov 10: Readings of student work by soprano Marnie Breckenridge and pianist Blaise Bryski [N.B.: Saturday, 1:00 PM, Barnes Hall]
Nov 16: Seminars on Modern Opera and Music Theater: Beat Furrer's Begehren (seminar leaders Chris Stark and TBA)
Nov 23: No meeting due to Thanksgiving break
Nov 30: Composing for the Harp, a workshop by guest harpist Bridget Kibbey, using as examples music by Cornell composers

Colloquium Schedule

Thanks to David Yearsley, here is the Colloquium schedule for the fall semester.
Some very interesting speakers. You can also check the latest update on the link.(currently it still has the Spring 07 schedule, but it will be updated shortly)

Musicology Colloquium, Fall 2007
Mondays beginning at 4:15pm in 124 Lincoln Hall

September 10: Alexander Rehding, Harvard University: "Screeching Dissonances, Inaudible Quartertones and Enharmonic Furies in the French Enlightenment"

September 17: Malcolm Bilson, Cornell University: "Knowing the Score Redux or
Some Old Recordings and (Possibly) Some New Insights"

September 24: William Rothstein, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY: "La via italiana: The Italian Approach to Nineteenth-century Tonality"

THURSDAY, September 26: Jerrold Levinson, University of Maryland: "Philosophical Reflections on Jazz Vocal Improvisation" LECTURE IN A. D. WHITE HOUSE AND BEGINS AT 4:30

October 1: Charles Kronengold, Wayne State University/Cornell Society for the Humanities: "Presence, Presences and the Present Tense in Modern Gospel"

October 22: Neal Zaslaw, Cornell University: "Mozart the Borrower"

October 29: Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Cornell University: "Reading Roland"

November 5: Rafaëlle Legrand, University of Paris, Sorbonne: "French Vaudeville
Theater of the Eighteenth Century"

November 12: Lenore Coral Memorial Lecture: Richard Will, University of Virginia: "Mozart's Topoi in Performance"

November 26: David Yearsley, Cornell University; "Princes of War and Peace and their Most Humble Court Composer"

The other CCO

The other CCO (Cayuga Chamber Orchestra) is in the midst of a music director search. It is a good chance to see four conductors this season. The first concert is is this Saturday at our old venue over at the other hill. Here is the program.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8th, 2007
8:00 PM
Ford Hall, Ithaca College
WITH CCO MUSIC DIRECTOR CANDIDATE,
TOMASZ GOLKA
ROSSINI: La Scala di Seta
MCLEAN: Elements for Violin and String Orchestra
Brian Lewis, Violin
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4, Op.90 in A Major (Italian)

Bailey Plaza construction update on Chronicle

Here is a link to the Chronicle article on the Bailey Plaza construction. According to the article the plaza will be finished on October 19. A full 3 weeks after the first concert by the Cornell Orchestras on September 30.

Here is a picture. There are grumbles about the faux waterfall in the middle of the plaza. Who thought it was a good idea to have a fake water fall in Ithaca, the land of real waterfalls.

Perhaps final evaluation of the plaza should be weighed in once the plaza is open.

Dudamel and orchestra at the BBC proms

What fun it must be to play with this orchestra!

List of Early music concerts in the Ithaca area

Here is a list of early music concerts coming up, thanks to Neal Zaslaw for this post.

Many of them are free or heavily discounted for orchestra members.

Upcoming Early-Music Concerts in Ithaca


Sunday, Sept 9: Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano: Haydn, Beethoven, Dussek (Barnes, 8 p.m.)

Wednesday, Sept 26: Annette Richards: Frescobaldi on the 1740 Vicedomini organ (Sage Chapel 12:30 p.m.)

Wednesday, Oct 10: Mark Ferraguto, organ: Mendelssohn, Bach (Anabel Taylor Chapel, 12:30 p.m.)

Thurs, Oct 11: Stefania Neonato, fortepiano, winner 2007 Bruges Fortepiano Competition (Barnes 8 p.m.)
Friday, Oct 12: Blaise Bryski, fortepiano: Clementi (Barnes, 8 p.m.)

Saturday, Oct 27: NYS Baroque: The Trout Quintet and other Schubert chamber music with Malcolm Bilson (First Unitarian Society, 8 p.m.)

Monday, Oct 29, Sezi Seskir, fortepiano (Barnes, 8 p.m.)
*Friday, Nov 2: Andrew Manze, violin, Richard Egarr, piano: Mozart & Schubert (Bailey, 8 p.m.)

Sunday, Nov 4: Frédérique Lacroix, fortepiano: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert (Barnes, 3 p.m.)

*Wednesday, Nov 14: Apollo's Fire (Sage Chapel, 8 p.m.)

Sunday, Nov 18: "Harlequin's Capers" with New York Baroque Dance (Bailey, 3 p.m.)
Monday, Nov 19: Cornell Chamber Singers, Holland Jancaitis cond., Lassus, Schütz, Schein (Barnes, 8 p.m.)

Saturday, Dec 8: NYS Baroque, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and other Venetian delights (First Unitarian Society, 8 p.m.)

orchestra picnic

Orchestra picnic is today.
We will leave from the parking lot behind Lincoln Hall at 145 pm.
Bring food to share. There will be about 5 cars driving, so if you need a ride please arrive early. The picnic will be in Stewart Park from 2-6 pm. We will be in the main pavilion. Special gift for all who come.

Orchestra audition results

Here are the audition results of the Fall 2007 Orchestra auditions.
First the Chamber Orchestra roster;

Fall 2007 Cornell Chamber Orchestra
Violins
Charlene Kluegel, Biology/Music, '10
Auriel Washburn, Undecided, '11
Haran Tae, Government/Psychology, '10
Aaron Wexler, Biology and Society, '10
Kasia Hozer, Biology, '11
Alex Fe, Biological Engineering, '08
Adam Sidor, Mechanical Engineering, '08
Alex Ma, Biology, '08
Sumona Bhattacharya, Undecided, '11
Tim Vo, Biology and Society, '10
Angela Chiang, Math, '11
Andrea Matho, English/Biology, '08
Brian Vaccaro, Biology/Chemistry, '08

Viola
Christina Butler, Animal Science, '09
Elbert Chang, Chemical Engineering, '11
Philip Chuang, Materials Science Engineering, '08
Jennifer Lee, Biology/Economics, '08
Claire Barbasch, Math/Music, '07
Michael Lee, Physics, '11

Cello
Abe Katzen, Biology, '08
Ellen Haynes, Animal Science, '09
Theresa Tan, Psychology, '09
Ricardo Villarreal, Biology, '11

Bass
Trevor Yeats, Grad

Keyboard
Dorian Bandy, Music, '10

The Symphony Orchestra

Cornell Symphony Orchestra Membership for Fall 2007

Violin I
Julian Kang, Chemistry/Biochemistry, '10
Alisa Timashpolsky, Biology, '11
Jian Liu, CS/Economics. '09
Marcus Cerroni, PAM '11
Sejin Bai, ILR, '11
Minerva Ho, China/Asia Pacific Studies, '10
Kevin Lin, Biology, '09
Chanha Carol Ohh, Operations Research, '10
Yvonne Chang, Architecture, '11
Sinsub Jeong, Engineering, '11
Christina Fiorenza, Human Biology/Health and Society, '09
Joanne Yuan Chua, Asian Studies, '11
Benjamin Ou-Yang, Astronomy, '10
Adrienne Carey, French Lit/Comparative Lit, '09
Erin Chu, Biological Sciences, '10

Violin II
Adrian So, Chemistry/Math, '08
Andrew Chen, Biological Engineering, '11
Kathryn Barger, Statistics, Grad
Eugena Fung, Economics, '09
Anna Nickless, Undecided, '11
Wallace Hui, AEP, '08
Jeremy Greiner, Chemistry, '11
Yubo Lu, Law, JD
Michael Chen, Computer Science, '10
Tina Hang, Economics, '09
Elizabeth Baker, ILR, '11
Yvette Wong, Math/Biology, '10
Collin Chan, Operations Research, Phd
Kirby Black, Biological Sciences, '10
Emerson Fang, Biology, '10

Viola
Joel Ong, Computer Science, '09
Mickey McDonald, Physics, '10
David Chang, Undecided, '10
Yoriko Nakamura, Biological Sciences, '11
Andrew Shook, Atmospheric Science, '09
Eric Auerbach, ILR, '10
Andrea Bowring, Engineering, '11
Joseph Hamilton, Comparative Lit, '10
Nick McAfee, Music
Kim Mezger, Mechanical Engineering, '09

Cello
Brian Lee, Chemical Engineering, '10
Alexandra Pavel, Government, '09
Isabelle Posey Cutting, Government, '10
Hilary Wattenberger, Hotel, '09
Jin Sung Kim, Engineering, '11
Alissa Sexton, Psychology, '10
Adrian Radocea, Engineering/Material Science, '11
Alexander Mora, Engineering, '10
Liz Hartman, Public Affairs, Grad
Alexander Sahn, Music, IHS
Sarah Smith, Physics/Music, '10
Stephen Moseson, Mechanical Engineering, '10
Jason Lee, Biology/Material Engineering, '11
Gretchen Craig, Environmental, '10

Bass
Laura Spitler, Astronomy, Grad - principal
Mike DeFlorio, Atmospheric Science, '09
Chris Gerig, '11
Kris Kooi, Music, '11

Harp
Janet Vertesi
Stephanie Beth Liff, '11
Sarah Blau, '10

Flute
Miriam Nussbaum, Linguistics, '11
Rebecca Morrow, Communication, '09
Alexander Tsiatas, Computer Science, '08
Annie Mulcahy,Hotel Management, '11

Piccolo
Christine Marschilok, Biology, '08

Oboe
Kit Stone, Science of Natural and Environmental Systems '11
Greg Weisbrod, '10
Shanon Sim, Chemical Engineering, '08

Clarinet
Jonathan Felbinger, Electrical Engineering, Grad
Vance Gao, Biology, '10

Bassoon
Melanie Adamsky, Biological Sciences, '09
Sarah Furnish, '10

Horn
Alexander Hong Chao, Computer Science, Grad
Kira Gridley, Biology, '11
Sallie Dietrich, French/Sociology, '10
Sarah Edythe Dimiduk, Biological Engineering, '11
Michael Barany, Math/College Scholar, '08

Trumpet
Anthony Clark, Music, '09

Trombone
Christopher Mayes, Physics, Ph.D
Christopher Stark, Composition, DMA
Sam Birmaher, Music, '10
Carl Seiber, Chemical Engineering, '11

Tuba

Percussion
Ian Chu Chen
Risa Naka
Brian Gainor
Jonathan Rothschild

Piano
Jake Jungbin Lee

Congratulations to those who have made it into orchestra.
Rehearsal starts on Monday, August 27 for Symphony and August 28 for Chamber Orchestra.

Audition statistics for 2007 so far

Here are the numbers for the fall 2007 orchestra auditions.
As of Tuesday August 21 at 1008 am;

String players auditioning
violin 61
viola 17
cello 21
bass 4

Wind players
flute 12
oboe 5
clarinet 5
bassoon 1

horn 7
trumpet 4
trombone 6
tuba 1

percussion 5

If you would like an audition time please email Chris at cyk8.
Audition results will be posted Sunday, August 26.
Rehearsals will begin in the week of Monday, August, 27.

Hottest Ivy school

Cornell was named the hottest Ivy by Newsweek.
Here is the link to the article.

Excerpt from the article:
"Hottest Ivy Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

Unlike the other Ivies, Cornell is a land-grant college emphasizing problem solving as well as scholarly debate. The university boasts a world-class engineering college and top-flight liberal arts, science and fine arts. The hotel school is considered the world's best. Cornellians, proud of the variety on campus, point to the president, David Skorton, a cardiologist, jazz musician and computer scientist who is the first in his family to have a college education."

concert in Ithaca

Orchestra auditions are two weeks away. I have just returned from Tanglewood where I attended the Contemporary music festival. I will link to some articles later. In Ithaca there is a concert by Malcolm Bilson. If you are in town you should try to make it. Here is the release from Loralyn Light, our concert manager.

Here's a reminder of a free concert in the Schwartz Center this Tuesday evening (tonight), involving Malcolm Bilson and two of his former students (both D.M.A. performance practice) who were part of the concertizing and recording of all of the Beethoven piano sonatas--and were both here for Malcolm's 70th birthday celebration/festival.

Malcolm Bilson, David Breitman, and Andrew Willis
Fortepiano

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: Kiplinger Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Web site: Malcolm Bilson, David Breitman, and Andrew Willis

Malcolm Bilson, the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music at Cornell, and two of his former students - David Breitman, associate professor of music at Oberlin, and Andrew Willis, associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro - perform works of of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and others.

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street (1973)

I came across this post of Stevie Wonder's band on Sesame Street in 1973 on youtube. WOW! What is your favorite music? Check out Stevie's expression as the clip gets to about a minute from the end. Pure joy in his music making.

Audition time sign up

Sign up for audition times by following the link. Please fill out the audition form and bring it to the audition. There are specific instrument audition time slots. Please email me and request a time slot in those times.

I would prefer to hear all like instruments together.

Audition dates are from August 20-25. Results will be posted on Sunday August 26. First rehearsals will start on August 27 and August 28 respectively for each orchestra.

Looking forward to seeing you in August.
If you can not be in orchestra do let me know about that too.

Updated 0708 season brochure

Here are the updated season brochure for 2007-2008.
It has a cleaner layout of concert dates on some minor changes in repertoire.

Alan Gilbert named music director of NY Philharmonic

First it was LA Phil's announcement of Gustavo Dudamel to succeed Salonen, now it is Alan Gilbert who will be the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. I love the fact that his favorite composers are Anders Hillborg and Magnus Lindberg. Perhaps we will see more exciting and innovating programs.

Here are articles;

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/arts/music/19reac.html?ref=music
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/arts/music/18phil.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/arts/music/19tomm.html?ref=arts

and some pictures

Havard Summer school orchestra

For those of you who may be in Cambridge, MA for the summer, here is a notice for auditions with the Harvard summer session orchestra.

Notice of Open Orchestra Auditions

The Harvard Summer School Orchestra is pleased to announce
its 22nd season under music director, Judith Zuckerman.
Orchestral musicians of all ages are invited to audition.
(A Harvard affiliation is NOT required.)

Auditions for the Harvard Summer School Orchestra will be
held on a first-come, first-served, walk-in basis (no
appointments) Tuesday through Thursday, June 26 to 28,
5 to 9 pm in Harvard University's Memorial Hall room 038
(in the basement of Sanders Theater).

For directions to the auditions/rehearsals/concert, please
see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ememhall/directions.html

To audition, you will need to do a little sight-reading and
play one prepared piece (this can be anything you love to
play and feel you play very well without accompaniment).

The whole audition will last no more than eight minutes.
If your chosen prepared piece is long, please select a short
section or sections that you feel best display your
musicianship. It is not necessary to memorize your audition
piece.

Openings are available for all orchestral strings, piano,
harp, flute/piccolo, oboe/English horn, clarinet, bassoon,
French horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, and percussion.
(Returning players must reaudition.)

This season's program includes American music by Copland,
Still, Cowell,and Ives and will feature the wonderful
baritone, Robert Honeysucker singing Copland's "Old American
Songs".

Regular rehearsals are Mondays, 6:30-9 pm, July 2-August 6,
Dress rehearsal on Wednesday, August 8.
The performance will take place on Saturday, August 11.
The call rehearsal will begin at 6:30 PM.

All rehearsals and the performance will be held in Harvard's
famed Sanders Theater.

The performance will begin at 8 PM and is free and open to
the public.

Concert dress for the orchestra will be as follows:
WOMEN--Black skirt or slacks, black shoes, white blouse.
MEN--Black suit, black shoes, white shirt, tie.

For more information, please contact
Judy Zuckerman at [send email to judyzuckerman(at)yahoo.com

New type of music making interface

Check out this video of of this input device. It would be interesting to figure out a way to perform with analog instruments using this device.

0708 brochure revised

Revised brochures.

Possible fund raiser item

Here is a link to a possible fund raiser item for the orchestra. You can get a name plate or a key chain for free.
desk nameplates

Alumni week concert

In case you are around for the summer and are looking for a way to celebrate Karel Husa's 80th birthday year, come to the concert in Barnes this Saturday. Program is on the poster to the left.

07-08 season brochure

Here are screen shots of the 07-08 season brochure for the Cornell Orchestras. Board members please proof the brochure for any spelling mistakes.

Ed Murray conducts Rake's Progress

Here is a link to the Cornell Chronicle article about Ed Murray's operatic work at Cornell in 1997. Murray, who succeeded Karel Husa in 1975 as conductor and director of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, was musical director for the Ithaca Opera Association's productions of Candide, Cosi Fan Tutte, Marriage of Figaro, Fairy Queen and Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing. Widely known as a performer with the Society of New Music, Murray has performed in concert several times with David Borden, director of Cornell's digital music program, at Barnes Hall in two-piano programs of popular and jazz standards. Murray and Borden have released a CD of popular and jazz standards, "Night and Day," on the Lameduck label. (The performance dates for this production was March 27 and 28, 1997)

Husa conducting Music for Prague 1968

Karel Husa conducts his "Music for Prague 1968" in Prague in 1990 following the Velvet Revolution. The concert was noted as a landmark in Czech musical history.

Also, the Karel Husa Archive and Gallery at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York may be contacted at (001) 607-274-1367 (Fax: (001) 274-1727) or via email at mradice(at)ithaca.edu.

Karel Husa with Solti and Herseth

Sir Georg Solti, Karel Husa, Adolph Herseth and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a performance of the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. Photo courtesy Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

CCO history : conductors

Here is a list of conductors who have conducted the CCO in the past.
Xak Bjerken
Mark Scatterday
Karel Husa
John Hsu
Edward Murray

I will try to find past photos and articles and make a link.
If you have any info regarding past conductors of the Cornell Orchestras please forward to them to this Blog.

First one is Cornell Professor Emeritus Karel Husa conducting the Cornell Chamber Orchestra in a performance of his Pastoral for String Orchestra, during a music department concert in honor of his 80th birthday in Barnes Hall Sept. 28, 2001.
(Charles Harrington/University Photography)

Cornell Chamber Orchestra has a newly designed website

The Chamber Orchestra website has been completely redesigned. There are few links that needs to be fixed. But please visit and give us your comments.

Notes on conducting the CCO

NOTES ON MY EXPERIENCE CONDUCTING
THE CORNELL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
by John Rowehl

1. Choosing the piece

It was quite helpful to be given a few pieces from which to choose (two C. P. E. Bach sinfonias, the Dvorak “Nocturne,” and a Mozart divertissement), given that I know so little of the orchestral repertoire, and know even less about what would be appropriate for an ensemble of the CCO’s ability. The C. P. E. Bach Sinfonia in D (W 183/1) appealed to me for various reasons – length, degree of complexity, musical material – but as it turns out, it also made for a nice complement to the rest of the program (the Mozart concerto for violin and viola, and the Bartok “Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta”).

2. Learning the piece

Though it’s full of little surprises and twists, the Sinfonia in D is not a terribly complicated or difficult piece; indeed, it is largely sight-readable for the conductor. Even so, at Chris’s suggestion, I aimed to memorize it. My initial attempts proved to be not very successful, and with hindsight I think that may have been because I was trying to memorize too much at once. I think I might have been more successful if I’d started with basic elements – e.g., phrase structure – and then gradually layered on other details (harmonic structure, individual parts). Even so, I did eventually commit most of the work to memory, though not to the level of knowing every note in every part.

3. Rehearsing the piece

When I began rehearsing the piece, I acknowledged to the players that this was my first experience conducting an orchestra and that I hoped to learn a lot from them. I shared with them that because I’ve performed a lot of Baroque and early Classical music as a singer (with professional period-instrument orchestras) and have also played several C. P. E. Bach flute and keyboard works, I was quite comfortable with the style of the music, but might need their help in translating my musical suggestions into their language as string players.

At the first couple of rehearsals, we worked primarily on articulation and phrasing. In their initial readings, the players tended to employ a fat, romantic sound, they had difficulty backing off unaccented notes, and they resisted the extremes in Bach’s dynamic markings. To address the last of these problems, I consulted with Annette Richards about the reliability of the dynamic and phrase markings in the Durand score. (I was already suspicious of the phrase markings, because all four of the recordings of the piece I’d heard departed from them considerably, generally in the direction of less phrased, more detached playing.) Annette confirmed my suspicions about the phrase markings and advised me to use the recordings as a guide and alter the markings in the score. But she thought that the dynamic markings were likely to be Bach’s, because he is known to have been very precise about the dynamic markings in his works for keyboard. Annette also felt that the “wildness” of the markings in this piece (e.g., sudden dynamic changes, liberal use of sforzandi, particularly in the 1st and 3rd movements) was entirely compatible with Bach’s style. Armed with this musicological support, I returned to rehearsal with the aim of eliciting a wider range of dynamics from the players. We largely succeeded in this, though not without a considerable amount of prodding and positive feedback from me.

I also found the players to be somewhat stiff physically, in a way that I think impaired their ability to capture the right affect for the music. For example, in the second movement, a slow minuet, it was not at all possible to read the desired strong-weak-weak articulation from the way the players moved (or rather, didn’t move) when they played, and I believe it was no coincidence that the ensemble was ragged. When I asked them all actually to move into the first beat as if they were about to take a step in a dance, the articulation and ensemble both improved dramatically. I continued to emphasize physical expressiveness in subsequent rehearsals, but it never felt as if this became natural for the players.

Once we were playing in a manner that seemed to me more stylistically appropriate, we began to play through larger sections of the piece, whole movements. The virtuosity of the violin parts forced us to remain under tempo in the first movement for a while. And I found that retention of the stylistic suggestions was not terrific from rehearsal to rehearsal. Every week, I needed to remind them anew about strong-weak articulation and ask that they go for more extremes in dynamics. Nonetheless, we began to make some progress.

At the beginning of one rehearsal (about halfway through the rehearsal cycle), Aara Edwards gave a demonstration of baroque playing style, using period instruments. Aara prepared well, and created an interesting exercise using a passage from the first movement to illustrate the quasi-melodic role the bass line can play in creating forward motion. She had them all play the bass line on their own instruments, as if it were a melody. And then she had them return to their own part but listen for its relation to the bass line. The timing of the demonstration was useful, as it occurred on a day when I was delayed in getting from my seminar to rehearsal, but – to be frank – I’m not sure it was of much use or interest to the students. They listened politely, but I couldn’t see evidence that the demonstration greatly affected their playing.

There were a few impediments to rehearsing that are perhaps worth mentioning. (1) We lost ground over Spring Break, since people pretty clearly didn’t even look at their parts for two weeks, which negligence was readily apparent at the first post-break rehearsal. (2) We lost small, but not insignificant, chunks of rehearsal time to the Bartók on several occasions, because the Bartók routinely needed 5 or 10 more minutes than it had been allotted. (3) Finally, we never had the full complement of players (strings, winds, horns) until the actual performance

4. Performing the piece

The dress rehearsal for the Bach was 1:00-2:30 pm the day of the concert, ending just half an hour before the concert’s start. Given that we’d had adequate rehearsal time over the previous weeks, it should have been unproblematic to run the dress rehearsal just before the concert. But the rehearsal was surprisingly ragged. In particular, the violins had trouble holding back tempo in the first movement. My guess was that this was due primarily to the players’ being anxious about the Bartók, a piece that had them justifiably terrified, and I did not want to increase their anxiety by making too big a deal out of the rushing. Neither, though, did I want the performance to be ragged. I chose to take a slightly slower tempo for the first movement – and I showed more beats, especially with the left hand, than I would have liked to.

From my perspective – hardly an objective one, to be sure – the performance came off reasonably well. There were the splats one typically gets from amateur horn players, and there was still some rushing in the violins (especially the 2nds), but the energy of the piece felt good. As is typical of amateur ensembles, they were not quite as daring with expressive gestures in performance as they’d been in rehearsal, but I think they were expressive enough to make the gestures read.


5. Developing my conducting skills

My chief objectives for this independent study were:

(1) to gain some experience working with an orchestra.
This objective was achieved, not only through my own conducting of the C. P. E. Bach group, but also in closely observing Chris’s work on the Bartók (and on the Bach, Elgar, and Vaughan Williams in the first concert of the semester). Given that I’ve spent so little time with orchestras, it was quite helpful for me just to sit in the orchestra and hear its sounds from the inside, so that I could get a better sense of how things would sound from the podium.

(2) to learn conducting technique from Chris.
This objective, too, was achieved – largely through direct coaching, but also through observation. If I had the semester to do over again, I would start taping my rehearsals earlier in the process and analyzing them with Chris. That I didn’t was due partly to logistics and partly to my own emotional ambivalence at having to watch myself on tape. Watching myself turned out to be both much less painful and much more helpful than I’d expected (as helpful as conducting for Chris in his office); in particular, it showed me how much as I was doing (especially with my left hand) that I wasn’t even aware of..
I think that in my effort to make my gestures more efficient, and to convey as much as possible with the baton, I’ve put myself in a transitional stage that feels a little awkward. I’m censoring modes of expressivity that previously felt natural without yet having completely transferred what I wish to express to the baton. But I can tell already that the effort will pay dividends, because it’s forcing me to make more conscious choices about my conducting gestures.

(3) to learn score preparation and the reading/ear-training skills that support it.
I made pretty good progress at learning new clefs (the tenor, alto, and soprano C clefs), which was useful for reading the viola and horn parts in the Bach. I made some – albeit less – progress in identifying heard intervals quickly. I expect to make more progress on this skill in the summer, when I’ve arranged for a partner to play material for me. And, in any case, because the Bach was completely tonal and quite straightforward harmonically, I was not especially disadvantaged by the current state of my aural skills; they were sufficient for the purpose at hand.
As I mentioned in section 2, above, my method for learning and memorizing the score was probably not as efficient or productive as it could have been, at first. It might have been useful if Chris had had me do with the Bach some of the basic steps he showed me with the Brahms Requiem at the end of the semester (e.g., number all measures, identify repetitions and near-repetitions, create a phrase map, create a harmonic map). Understanding the phrase and harmonic structure is something I tend to do intuitively, but being forced to be explicit (and thorough and detailed) about it would make for good training and discipline.

Former conductor of CSO featured

John Hsu, conducting the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra in rehearsal recently, has proven himself a leading early-music maestro in America. His ABO debut was a knockout; the musicians believe they've never sounded better.

Read about former CSO conductor John Hsu's activities in Atlanta.

2007 fall dates for CCO and CSO

Hi everyone,
Here is the schedule for the Fall 2007 season. Repertoire will be posted in about a week.

Auditions
August 20-25, (More specifics will be posted by June 1)

August 26, Sunday Audition results posted

August 27 Monday First rehearsal for CSO (630-815 pm in B20 of Lincoln Hall)

August 28 Tuesday First rehearsal for CCO (445-615 pm in Barnes Hall)

September 30 Sunday First Combines concert for CSO and CCO in Bailey Hall 8 pm

October 31 Wednesday Halloween concert combined with Ithaca College Orchestra
(Two performances; one at 8 pm in Bailey Hall, one at Midnight in Ithaca College's Ford Hall)

November 11 Sunday CCO concert in Barnes Hall 3 pm

December 2 Sunday combined CSO and CCO concert in Bailey Hall 8 pm

December 8 Saturday Fourth Annual Concerto competition Finals concert in Barnes Hall 7 pm

New Director of Percussion

Here is an announcement from Steven Pond who chaired the Percussion search.
I have also linked to Tim Feeney's website.

Dear Colleagues and Members of the Cornell Community,

It's my pleasure to announce the hiring of Tim Feeney as the new Director of Percussion at Cornell. Tim, who was chosen from a field of over 30 candidates, is completing his DMA in percussion at Yale this month. He will direct the CU percussion program, including the Percussion Ensemble, the Steel Band, and the World Drumming and Dance Ensemble, and will work closely with Cornell's other performing ensembles that feature percussion and with composers. Tim will begin his duties as of July 1.

Please join me in welcoming him.

Sincerely,
Steve Pond
Chair, Percussion Search Committee
Associate Professor, Music
120 Lincoln Hall
Cornell University

Final concert of the 2006-2007 season

The Performance will be this Sunday (April 29, 2007) at 3 pm in Bailey Hall. This will be the final program of the 2006-2007 season.

The program will be as follows;

Rossini Overture to La Gazza Ladra (Thieving Magpie)
Maurice Ravel Piano concerto in G major with Xak Bjerken
intermission
L.V. Beethoven Symphony No.6 in F Major

Concert is free and open to the public.

I look forward to seeing you at the concert.

Chamber orchestra schedule

Here is the poster for the April 22 concert by the Cornell Chamber Orchestra.
Roberto and Gabriela Diaz will be arriving on Friday.
Here is the schedule of events for this Weekend;

Thursday
Last Regular rehearsal in Barnes Hall
445-6 pm Bartok with everyone
6-645 pm CPE BACH on stage in Barnes, Mozart strings in Green room

Friday
4-6 pm viola masterclass by Roberto Diaz at Ithaca College
8-10 pm Mozart rehearsal in B20 of Lincoln Hall with soloists

Saturday
1030-1130 am dress rehearsal for Mozart with soloists in Barnes Hall
1130-1145 am setup for Bartok
1145-1 pm dress rehearsal for Bartok

Sunday
130-230 pm Dress rehearsal for CPE Bach in Barnes
3 pm Concert in Barnes Hall
Program order
CPE BACH Sinfonia in D major
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante
intermission
Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

New conductor in LA

Shocking news from LA. Salonen will step down to hand the post of MD of La Phil to 26 year old Gustavo Dudamel! He is has been a sensation around the world.
Bold move by LA phil. More orchestras should make brave choices like this.

Bailey Hall plaza update

On March 19, construction will begin for the plaza in front of Bailey Hall. According to the Chronicle article the plaza is due to be complete in Mid August.

CSO's collaboration with CUMEP

CUMEP

This year, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra has begun an outreach program to give back to the greater Ithaca community. We are most excited about a new collaborative venture with the Community Unity Music Education Program (CUMEP), which provides low cost instruction to youth of limited financial resources. Members of the CSO have volunteered to serve as mentors in this program. Through weekly visits to Beverly J. Martin Elementary School, these volunteers teach students basic skills in individual musicianship and what it means to have music in their everyday lives. We hope to share our passion for music with the youth in this program and inspire them to achieve great things, musical and otherwise. -Melanie Adamsky, Outreach coordinator

Here is the schedule of events;

4/29 Sun 3 pm in Bailey hall
CUMEP will perform a piece on the CSO concert at the beginning of the
CSO concert.

4/28 Sat in B20
30 minutes rehearsal at the beginning of the rehearsal with CUMEP
students.
4/26 Thurs in Statler Auditorium
345-430 pm short performance for President Skorton with the CUMEP students
4/21 Sat 2 pm in Barnes Hall
afternoon rehearsal with CUMEP students
4/17 Tues
regular CUMEP visit
4/9-13 (Ithaca area spring break, no CUMEP visit)
4/7 Sat 2 pm in Barnes Hall
afternoon rehearsal with CUMEP students
4/3 Tue
regular CUMEP visit
3/27 Tue
regular CUMEP visit
3/13 Tues
regular CUMEP visit

Photos to be added shotrly.

Elgar is now on google video

The performance is on Google Video.


Chamber Orchestra's performance on February 25, 2007, of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro is now on youtube and google video. The performance featured CCO collaborating with Bryant Park Quartet. Enjoy.

Bernstein plays Ravel

Check out this video of Bernstein playing Ravel's piano concerto in G(3rd mvt).
Blazing fast and very exciting.

Beethoven 6th rehearsals

As the Symphony begins rehearsal on Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony I will collect program notes and webclips for CSO members.
If you have a link you would like to post, please forward them to one of our bloggers.
The first one is a program note by Phillip Huscher from the Chicago Symphony website.

Cornell Symphony Orchestra concert

Here is the poster for the upcoming Symphony Orchestra concert.
Program will feature two works by Jean Sibelius. The first movement of his violin concerto with the winner of the Third Annual Cornell Concerto Competition, Charlene Kluegel and Symphony No. 2.
Concert is free and open to the public.

Weekend of new music

Here is an invitation from Steven Stucky about this weekend's three new music concerts in Barnes Hall.

Barnes Hall will be the scene of a rich offering of contemporary music this weekend. Please mark your calendars now for all three concerts:

IMAGES, ETUDES, AND FANTASY
February 24, 8 p.m.

An "Ensemble-X-style" concert with guest composer Fred Lerdahl and many of our favorite Cornell and IC performers. In addition to Lerdahl's classic sextet from 1985, Fantasy Etudes, the program includes Stephen Hartke's violin-duo showpiece Oh Them Rats Is Mean in My Kitchen delivered with panache by Steven Miahky and Rebecca Ansel, and the world premiere of Xi Wang's Three Images (winner of last year's Ensemble X Competition). Rounding out the concert are two folk-influenced works by Lutoslawski from the 1950s: Dance Preludes in the nonet version, and the piano suite Bucolics in the world premiere of a new arrangement for the same nonet complement.

CORNELL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Chris Younghoon Kim, conductor
February 25, 3 p.m.

Chris Kim will have reminded most of you of this concert already; let me just stress that the program includes Berio's rarely heard Concertino (1949) with soloists Rick Faria and Steven Miahky.

LANDSCAPE WITH BUTTERFLIES AND CRANES
February 25, 8 p.m.
guest artists:
Daria Binkowski, flute
Elinor Frey, cello

This beautiful program of (mostly) recent music for flute and cello, singly and together, will include the chance to hear a complete performance of Kaija Saariaho's stunning Sept Papillons for solo cello, and of Shirish Korde's celebrated solo flute piece Tenderness of Cranes. Works by Cornell composers Stephen Gorbos and Xi Wang will also be featured, as will Cornell's own Emily Green as pianist. These young musicians are rising stars, and their recital is sure to be a memorable occasion. (I have appended the guest artists' biographies below.)

Hope to see you there,
Steven Stucky

Daria Binkowski, flute, is currently pursuing her master's degree at McGill University in Montreal, where she studies with Timothy Hutchins and performs with the Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Denys Bouliane. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2005 at the Eastman School of Music with Bonita Boyd and also had post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Daria was a member of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 2004 to 2006, working with Sydney Hodkinson, Steven Stucky, Marc-André Dalbavie, and Robert Spano. She is currently performing with the East Coast Composers' Ensemble (ECCE), a new ensemble based in New York. Daria has performed at the Heidelberg College New Music Festival (Tiffin, OH), the Women in New Music Festival (Rochester, NY), and the Music of Japan Today Festival (College Park, MD). In March 2006, she performed with members of the St. Louis Symphony in their Pulitzer Foundation contemporary music series. She has also appeared with members of the St. Louis Symphony at the Pulitzer Foundation for Contemporary Art with conductor Pascal Rophe. An avid devotee of contemporary music, Daria performed extensively with Eastman's new-music ensembles and has premiered works of faculty and students in Rochester, New York, and Aspen. In addition to her contemporary music activities, Daria was a member of the 2006 Spoleto Festival Orchestra and has soloed with the New Jersey Symphony, the Brockport Symphony, and the New Amsterdam Symphony. She was also on the administrative board of Eastman's student-run new-music ensemble, OSSIA, and was recently an intern with National Public Radio's Performance Today in Washington, DC.

Cellist Elinor Frey joined the eclectic virtuoso ensemble Quartetto Gelato in December 2005 after receiving a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School the previous May. A native of Seattle, she has studied in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago with renowned teachers including Bonnie Hampton, Hans Jensen, Orlando Cole, and Barbara Mallow. An active recitalist, chamber musician, and teacher, and an advocate of new music, she served as cellist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2004 and 2005. With the New Juilliard Ensemble, she gave the New York premiere of Betsy Jolas' cello concerto Wanderlied in April 2005, and she recorded a CD in London of new chamber works. As winner of the 2006 Contemporary Record Society Competition, she will record Lutoslawski's Sacher-Variation, a work she also played at the Cornell University Lutoslawski conference. in November 2005.
Elinor has attended the Kneisel Hall Music Festival, Yale University's Norfolk Contemporary Session, and the Fontainebleau Music Festival in France, and she was a participant in the July 2006 London master classes of Ralph Kirshbaum. Elinor performs on 115-year-old French cello on loan to her as the winner of the Virtu Foundation competition. After winning the prestigious 2004 Ladies Musical Club of Seattle competition, she gave a concert tour of western Washington State in September 2004. As a fully accredited Suzuki cello teacher, Elinor has been on faculty at the Music Institute of Long Island and the Hudson River School of Music and guest faculty at the Suzuki String School of Guelph. She now lives in Toronto.

Bryant Park String Quartet

Bryant Park String Quartet will be joining the Chamber Orchestra performance this Sunday by playing the solo parts of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro. They will also be teaching lessons on Saturday to Chamber Orchestra members. Here is their bio.

Based in New York City, the Bryant Park Quartet (Stephen Miahky and Benjamin Russell, violins, Adam Meyer, viola, Tomoko Fujita) is dedicated to performing in concert halls and bringing chamber music into the community. The BPQ recently completed a weeklong outreach tour of eastern, rural Appalachian Kentucky, performing for more than 3,300 school children. Other highlights from the BPQ's current season include recitals throughout New York City, Massachusetts, Des Moines, a solo performance with the Cornell Chamber Orchestra, a recital under the auspices of the Perlman Music Program, and other outreach projects on Long Island. Its members have attended the Amsterdam Conservatory, the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, the Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Michigan, and Stony Brook University. In recent summers they have participated in the Aspen Music Festival and School, Kneisel Hall, the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Perlman Music Program, and the Tanglewood Music Center. The Bryant Park Quartet has been coached by Colin Carr, and Kathy Murdock and members of the Brentano, Borromeo, and Emerson String Quartets.

Summer internship

Here is an internship for this coming summer. Sent to us by former CSO member Erica Knight.


Woodwind and String musicians:

UVMC is looking for college and university students in woodwind quintets and string quartets who also enjoy working with young musicians.

University music students as interns, an integral part of our summer music camp, assist in teaching choral and instrumental music at camp. They also perform a concert series in the Upper Valley area. We would ideally like to hire ensembles that are already formed to perform its repertoire and presents children’s concerts.

The Upper Valley Music Center (UVMC), based in Lebanon, NH, operates programs throughout the Upper Connecticut River Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont: children’s and youth choruses; three levels of string orchestras; a variety of chamber music ensembles for youth and adults; Suzuki violin and cello lessons and group lessons for string, wind, brass and percussion instruments in elementary schools; and a summer music camp for all ages.

Interns will be paid $2500 for the period June 20 through July 20 for teaching and performing, with an option for a few to continue through August 3 @ Kimball Union


The summer schedule is as follows:

June 21-24 Rehearsals
June 25-29 UVMC Summer Music Camp, Woodstock, VT
July 1-7 * Performances
July 9-13 UVMC Summer Music Camp, Hanover, NH
July 16-20 UVMC Summer Music Camp Hanover, NH
* Concerts will be scheduled throughout the month, primarily the week of July 1-7.


July 22-26 Kimball Union Academy Arts and Technology Camp,
Meriden, NH
July 29-Aug. 3 Kimball Union Academy Arts and Technology Camp,
Meriden, NH


Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, just south of Hanover, will provide housing and kitchen facilities for UVMC performers/interns from June 20 through August 3. Transportation is the responsibility of performers/interns.



Page 2

UVMC’s summer day camp operates Monday through Friday, for one week in Woodstock, VT and for two weeks in Hanover, NH, the home of Dartmouth College. Kimball Union Academy, a nearby boarding school, also offers a two-week music, arts and technology camp. UVMC sponsors summer ensembles that perform a concert series in the Upper Valley. These concerts consist of childrens’ programs and performances for recreation departments, libraries, house concerts, cruises as well as concerts on the Dartmouth and Medical Center campuses.

UVMC’s camp serves children from grades one through twelve, divided into three age groups. Children in grades 1-3 learn about music through movement, listening, singing and playing Orff instruments. Campers in grades 4-6 participate in chorus, musical theater, chamber ensembles, orchestra, gamelan, theory and composition class. Additionally these campers select a new instrument to explore. Chamber music ensembles are the focus of campers in grades 7-12. At the end of the week all campers perform in an informal concert for parents.

Kimball Union Academy’s Arts and Technology camp, held on the KUA campus offers campers, ages 8-15, the opportunity to explore fine and performing arts, and technology. Courses such as drawing, painting, choreography, computer programming, gaming, animation, instrumental and vocal classes will be offered.

Please send a CD or DVD of a current performance with a repertoire list to UVMC’s artistic director, Robert Mark, by March 10, 2007.

Sincerely,

Susan K. Kinne
Program Coordinator
Upper Valley Music Center
P.O. Box 826
Lebanon, NH 03766

Cornell University closed due to weather

Cornell University is closed until 5 am Thursday morning due to the 30 inches of expected snow which is falling at a rate of 2-4 inches per hour. Tonight the snow will be accompanied by 30 miles per hour wind with wind chill factor around zero. Symphony rehearsal scheduled for 7-9 pm is canceled.

poster for Chamber orchestra concert

The poster for the Chamber Orchestra's upcoming February 25th concert is ready.
The program for this concert will be;

Luciano Berio Concertino
CPE Bach Double concerto in Eb major Wq.47
intermission
Edward Elgar Introduction and Allegro
R.V. Williams Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Brave New Works concert in Williams College

I have been in Williams College for the past two days rehearsing with Brave New works for a concert tonight. Yesterday we had a recording session for two of the composers from Williams College. We have been welcomed by Williams College and have been treated very well. Everyone is looking forward to our concert tonight. The program will include two pieces by guest composer in residence with us Marilyn Shrude. We will perform her Piano trio and her new violin sonata. The program will also feature an East coast premiere of Andrew Mead's Far Cry and a performance of 2006 call for score winner Peal by Phillippe Bodin. The concert will finish up with 2005 call for score winner Black Bend by Dan Visconti.

And here is the video of the performance of Black Bend by Dan Visconti on Google video.

Brave New Works at University of Puget Sound

BNW- Northwest tour

Immediately after the Berlin tour, Chris and Steve went on to Tacoma, WA, for a residency at University of Puget Sound. The same trip also included a residency at Western University at Bellingham, WA. In both Universities Brave New Works gave a full length program plus gave masterclasses and composer reading sessions.

Brave New Works at Williams College

Chris will be in Williams College this week from Wednesday to Saturday for a performance and residency with Brave New Works. The program info is included in the link.

Berlin tour photo slide show

Berlin tour slide show

Here is a collection of photos taken by CSO members on our recent tour to Berlin, Germany. After the Monday night rehearsal we presented the premiere of the Slide show in B20. Now the same slide show can be enjoyed online.

pictures from the competition

Cornell Concerto Competition

Here are photos from the third annual Cornell Concerto Competition.
The winner was Charlene Kluegel who will play the Sibelius violin concerto with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra on March 4, 2007 in Bailey Hall.

Concerto winner announced

I am pleased to announce the result of the third annual Cornell Concerto Competition.
It was an event in which an enormous amount of talent, dedication, and communal support brought much inspiration to all that participated and sat in the audience.

After a full day of preliminary rounds with sixteen participants, the final round of five students were chosen as the following;

Emily Looney (Saxophone) Glaznunov Concerto in Eb
Jung Bin Lee (piano) Liszt Totentantz
Andrew Yeo (violin) Lalo Symphonie Espagnol
Jian Liu (violin) Chuasson Poème
Charlene Kluegel (violin) Sibelius Concerto

At the 7 pm final round in Barnes Hall, all five finalists performed. A winner was chosen by the panel of judges. The 2007 Cornell Concerto Competition winner is Charlene Kluegel. She will perform Jean Sibelius' violin concerto on the March 4th concert by the Cornell Symphony Orchestra.

I would like to thank the five judges for their hard work this past Saturday.

Chris Kim
director of orchestras


Bios of the judges follow;

*Kristin Taavola *is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Cornell University. Her research combines music-theoretic and ethnomusicological perspectives in studying twentieth- and twenty-first century art music, as well as musics from Asia and Indonesia.. She has published on Zen and contemporary Japanese art music, as well as musical processes in the music of Bali and the compositions of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Currently, her interest in harmony and mode has turned to France, specifically fin-de-siécle Paris and the music of Satie. She also plays the flute, and has performed in various Balinese angklung gamelan, or percussion orchestra. She has previously taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Eastman School of Music.

A native of Canada, *Dr. Mayron Tsong* was one of the youngest musicians to complete a Performer's Diploma in Piano from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto at age 16. Since that time, she has performed extensively across the United States, including New York, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, Indiana, California, Oregon, Michigan, Louisiana, Arizona, Texas, across Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, China, Taiwan and Russia as a soloist and chamber musician. She has been featured as a soloist with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic (Russia), Symphony North (Houston), the University of North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Longview Symphony Orchestra (Texas), the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra (Canada), the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra (Canada), and the University of Calgary Orchestra (Canada). She has collaborated with renowned artists such as James Campbell, Antonio Lysy, George Taylor, Jeffrey Zeigler (of the Kronos Quartet), the Brentano String Quartet and the Miró String Quartet. Ms. Tsong's solo and collaborative performances have been broadcast by CBC Radio Two - Calgary, Radio Canada - Montreal, WDAV ­ North Carolina, WFMT Radio - Chicago and Radio 4 - Hong Kong. Numerous prizes have included First Prize in the Canadian Music Competitions, the Millenium Prize for Russian Performing Arts, and the prestigious Arts B Grant, awarded by the Canada Council. From 1994-1998, Ms. Tsong was a three-time recipient of The Female Doctoral Students Grant, a competition that encompasses all disciplines nationwide, awarded by the Government of Canada.

Ms. Tsong holds graduate degrees in both Piano Performance and Music Theory, and she obtained her Doctor of Musical Arts under the tutelage of John Perry at Rice University. Her dissertations discuss the piano etudes of György Ligeti. She has also studied with such renowned musicians as György Sebök, Robert Levin, Marek Jablonski, Anton Kuerti, Marilyn Engle, Dr. Robin Wood, and Charles Foreman.

Having served on faculty at California State University in Humboldt and as Chair of the Piano Area at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, Ms. Tsong is currently Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Active as a teacher, clinician, adjudicator and judge in the United States, Canada, China and Hong Kong, Ms. Tsong was Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre, where she was invited to give masterclasses in 2001. In the summers, she has taught and performed at the Sequoia Chamber Music Festival in Northern California, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan, Lutheran Summer Music in Minnesota and the Young Musicians
and Artists Camp in Oregon.

A Steinway Artist, Ms. Tsong is a member of the performer¹s roster of the College Music Society, the Scriabin Society, the Canadian Universities Music Society, Minorities and Women Doctoral Directory, the Canadian Music Centre, and she is an Honorary Member of the Tingshuset Music Society in Sweden. She is currently recording her first album for Centaur Records.

Born in Chicago, *Jeffery Meyer *began his musical studies as a pianist, and shortly thereafter continued on to study composition and conducting. He is presently the Director of Orchestras at the Ithaca College School of Music, as well as the founder and Artistic Director of the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, Russia. Jeff has worked with orchestras in the United States and abroad, including ensembles such as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In recent concert seasons, he has been seen conducting, performing as piano soloist and chamber musician, as well as conducting from the keyboard in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Germany.

An active participant in the music of our time, he has collaborated with many composers, and commissioned and premiered many new works. He has been featured numerous times as both a conductor and pianist as part of the “Sound Ways” International New Music Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. As a pianist, Jeff has been in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and in residence at the Aspen Festival as part of the Furious Band, a New York-based group dedicated to contemporary music. He performs frequently with percussionist Paul Vaillancourt as part of the piano and percussion duo Strike. He has been broadcast on CBC Newfoundland, has recorded and performed with the Philadelphia Virtuosi (Naxos), and has been heard as a soloist at the Aspen Festival. During the 2001-2002 academic year he lived and studied in Berlin and Leipzig as the recipient of a DAAD grant in music. He was selected as a semi-finalist in the 2004 Pedrotti International Competition for Conductors, a finalist in the 2003 Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition, and a semi-finalist in the 2003 Beethoven Sonata International Piano Competition, Memphis, Tennessee.

Jeff is an active adjudicator, guest clinician, and masterclass teacher and has served on the faculties of the Dorian Keyboard Festival, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, Marrowstone Music Festival, and the Lutheran Summer Music Academy and Festival. He holds degrees in piano as well as composition and completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he studied with Gilbert Kalish.

When the Worshipful Company of Musicians awarded the prestigious Constant & Kit Lambert Fellowship to *Karl Lutchmayer*, the only time in its history that it has been awarded to an instrumentalist, the accolade recognised an artist who in addition to a busy international concert career is also a high profile lecturer, and has even successfully combined the two disciplines to create the 'Conversational Concert' format of public lecture-recitals, which is regularly featured in the national press.

Born in London, he studied with Peter Wallfisch and John Barstow at the Royal College of Music, where he was a major prize winner, and his studies included extensive research into the music of Ferruccio Busoni for his Masters' degree. He subsequently undertook periods of study with Lev Naumov at the Moscow Conservatoire, Gyorgy Sandor, and Martino Tirimo.

His wide-ranging repertoire, extending from the Renaissance to the present day, allows him to create exciting and innovative programmes; and his recitals and concerto appearances in Russia, Greece, Malta, India, Germany, the USA, and at venues and festivals throughout the United Kingdom have received wide acclaim. He has performed for Radio 3, All India Radio, and Classic FM, worked with international conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis and Lorin Maazel, and been a soloist with numerous orchestras including the Philharmonia, The Erneast Read Symphony Orchestra, The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, the Bombay Symphony orchestra, as well as numerous provincial orcjestras.

As the Constant & Kit Lambert Fellow he returned to the Royal College of Music, where he created a piano repertoire course, gave lectures on the Masters Degree programme, coached contemporary piano music and designed, established and delivered the pioneering Performance in Perspective series of lecture-recitals. It was through this work that he was first invited to guest-lecture at the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools in New York, and appointed Professor of Performing Practice at Trinity College of Music, London. He has also been a key-note speaker at the Incorporated Society of Musicians' Annual Conference, and is reguarly invited to give pre-concert talks at the Wigmore Hall. He has more recently, been in demand as a professor of piano, and as a coach for artists in their early careers, and as well giving frequent masterclasses, he has now been invited to join the keyboard faculty at Ithaca University, New York, for a semester in 2007.

A passionate advocate of contemporary music, he has given numerous premières, and had works written for him by Julian Anderson, Richard Causton, and Kenneth Hesketh. He regularly performs with his own chamber collective, Dialogos, as well as the Continuum Ensemble, with whom he has appeared as chamber musician and soloist He has also been the soloist in several performances of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony, and took part in the Stockhausen festival at the Barbican Centre.

He made his New York debut in the 'Interpretations' contemporary music series, and recently gave a recital devoted to premières of works by British composers in Montreal where he also performed and lectured at McGill university. He is also much in demand as a chamber musician in which capacity he has performed at the Cheltenham, Spitalfields, Brighton and Huddersfield festivals and worked with the Duke, and Belcea Quartets.

*David Weaver* began studies in composition in 2000 while a sophomore at Swarthmore College. While completing a B.A. in physics he took extensive courses in music including composition with Gerald Levinson. From 2002 to 2005 he worked as a laboratory researcher in cell biology at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. His scientific discoveries have appeared in The Journal of Cell Biology. In 2005 he began pursuing music full-time as a D.M.A student in composition at Cornell University where he studies with composers Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, and Kevin Ernste. Recent works have included an interactive electroacoustic gallery installation at Cornell University. His instrumental works have been performed at Cornell, Swarthmore College, and in New York City.