Composer/clarinetist Karl Henning makes his Atlanta debut tonight
November 17th, 2009 by Mark Gresham in Music news
Boston-based composer/clarinetist Karl Henning will make his Atlanta debut tonight (Tues., Nov. 17) at 8 p.m. at Emory Presbyterian Church. Admission is $10/$5 students.
Henning is in Atlanta to perform much of his music for unaccompanied clarinet, and Nicole Randall-Chamberlain will perform his music for unaccompanied flute (and a new work of her own). Together they will play some of Karl’s music for flute and clarinet duo.
You may recall that Karl’s percussion sextet “Journey to the Dayspring” as one of the works on the inaugural concert of the Schwartz Center.
Complete program for this evening performance below …
ABOUT THE COMPOSER-PERFORMERS
Karl Henning holds a B.Mus. with double major in composition and clarinet performance from the College of Wooster (Ohio); a M.A. in composition from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville); and a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Buffalo, where he studied with Charles Wuorinen and Louis Andriessen. His music has been played and sung on three continents (North America, Europe and Australia). Karl has served at different times as Interim Choir Director and Composer-in-Residence at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston, where he composed a 40-minute unaccompanied choral setting of the St John Passion, fresh performances of which are slated for March of 2010 by the Sine Nomine choir (Dr Paul Cienniwa—Music Director). Karl has recently completed a suite for cello ensemble, and a five-part unaccompanied anthem for the choir of First Church in Boston. Current projects include a full evening’s ballet based on Dostoyevsky’s novella White Nights; and Discreet Erasures for orchestra.
Nicole Randall-Chamberlain is a composer and flautist living in Atlanta, GA. Her works have been performed from Alias Chamber Ensemble in Nashville, TN to flautist James Strauss in Recife, Brazil. The bulk of Nicole’s work is for the concert setting, but she has also set some films to music, winning “Best Original Score” for the 2003 Atlanta 48 Hour Film Project for the musical “Storyboard in A Major.” Nicole’s works have been featured on “Live in Studio C”, bowed.org, and Dartmouth College’s Electronic music festival. Recently, Nicole was awarded Atlanta Pen Women’s Composer of the Year 2008. Nicole received her Bachelor’s in Music Composition from the University of Georgia where she studied with Dr. William Davis, Dr. Leonard Ball, and Dr. Lewis Nielson and was selected for masterclasses with Charles Wuorinen and Joan Tower.
As a flutist, Nicole currently performs with the Mercury Season, New Atlanta Philharmonic, and various jazz situations throughout Atlanta. Nicole teaches at New Atlanta Conservatory, Carere Music and is an active student of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist, Christina Smith. She lives with her husband, composer and guitarist Brian Chamberlain in Doraville, GA. You can find out more and listen to Nicole’s music at www.nikkinotes.com
Irreplaceable Doodles
and other flights of musical fancy
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:00 p.m.
Emory Presbyterian Church
1886 North Decatur Rd. NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307 USA
PROGRAM
- performed without intermission -
estimated total duration: 75 minutes
Blue Shamrock Karl Henning
Mr. Henning, clarinet
The Angel Who Bears a Flaming Sword Henning
Ms. Randall-Chamberlain, flute
Irreplaceable Doodles Henning
Mr. Henning, clarinet
Smorgasbord Nicole Randall-Chamberlain
I. Crunchy world premiere
II. Gelatinous
III. Carbonated
IV. Fluffy
Ms. Randall-Chamberlain, flute
Studies in Impermanence Henning
Mr. Henning, clarinet
All the Birds in Mondrian’s Cage Henning
Ms. Randall-Chamberlain, flute – Mr. Henning, clarinet
Heedless Watermelon Henning
Ms. Randall-Chamberlain, flute – Mr. Henning, clarinet
* * *
Concert producer: Mark Gresham
Audio recording engineer: John Noel Wheeler
There are some generous people we wish to thank.
The list appears on the back of the program.
(Do please have a look.)
Program Notes
BLUE SHAMROCK
Although the occasion for ‘finalizing’ this gnarly little number was a call from a European clarinetist for unaccompanied pieces, I had done most of the composing while in St Petersburg, in the mid-’90s. At that time, I was supposed to be finishing composition of my doctoral dissertation; but the comparative ‘formality’ of completing that dissertation aside, on a practical, experiential level, I felt a great freedom in having at last emerged from academia, and this sense of freedom frequently expressed itself in the writing of some small-scale piece which served no practical purpose for the dissertation. In this case, a jeu d’esprit for clarinet solo, three variations ‘in search of a theme’; which I had not quite finished, at a point when conscience regained the upper hand, and I went back to work on the dissertation. The call for scores prompted me to dust off these sketches; and the result is a piece sufficiently demanding, that I doubt whether the European clarinetist ever did essay it. Every now and again, I get Blue Shamrock back into playing condition, because I can, and because I seem not to lack nerve.
—Karl Henning
THE ANGEL WHO BEARS A FLAMING SWORD
This piece I originally composed for trumpet solo, for Chris O’Hara. I knew it would be a demanding trumpet piece (a schoolmate in high school, Steve Falker, was a trumpet virtuoso, and his playing has been a persistent benchmark for me—to the despair of many another trumpeter). When I had finished composing the piece, and was fine-tuning the graphic layout, I realized that (with judicious transposition) it would work effectively for flute solo. The piece has some elements of Ego vox clamantis in deserto (“I am a voice crying out in the desert,” as John the Baptist ‘explained’ himself in the Gospel). The sword of flame is in the hands of an Angel posted by the Most High to bar the return of errant man to Paradise; the Angel obediently performs a stern office, yet he may feel pity for errant Man, whose return to Paradise he must bar. In part, then, this piece meditates on the Angel’s sorrow.
—Karl Henning
IRREPLACEABLE DOODLES
Earlier I had composed a brief-but-demanding piece for unaccompanied clarinet (Blue Shamrock); and while the composer did not at all repent of the technical demands he made in Shamrock, it seemed to him something of a pity, that a clarinetist put forth all that preparatory effort for so brief a musical space. Thus, I launched upon a course of composing more expansive works for solo wind instrument. One of my customary activities is, to compose while being conveyed hither or yon by the MBTA (public transportation in Boston); and far the greater part of Doodles was written on a bus traveling down I-93. Loosely, the piece hangs upon the Classical model of the sonata-rondo. The opening (‘A’) material makes frequent returns, sometimes with modifications (and for those who like to keep track of such things, the initial measure is 11/8). The architecture of the piece is perhaps too discursive to map neatly onto any template, but there is also a ‘B’ section which returns at the transposition of a fifth (something, again, rather sonata-rondo-ish). Irreplaceable Doodles is by turns fancifully dance-like, and lyrical.
—Karl Henning
SMORGASBORD
Smorgasbord explores the different styles and textures a flutist can convey through the manipulation of the air stream. Through punching, clicks, bending, popping, fluttering, and even singing while playing, the flute can take on a metamorphosis of sound. The titles of the movements are analogous to a variety of textures found in food as well as the sounds of the flute. Through punches and aggressive attacks, the sound can be crunchy; though bending, it can be gelatinous; through pops, clicks and different embouchure shapes, it can be carbonated; with our friend the piccolo, singing while playing, and fluttering, it can sound fluffy. Certainly the flute has a “smorgasbord” of ingredients in the pantry that can be whipped up a delicious audio-culinary work.
—Nicole Randall-Chamberlain
STUDIES IN IMPERMANENCE
This is one of a number of compositions which I have written, essentially because I wondered if I could. Wondered if I could, and if I dared. There are not many single-movement, 20-minute compositions for unaccompanied wind instrument out there in the repertory; and it was a challenge which I enjoyed tackling, as both composer and performer. An additional challenge in writing the piece turns on the question of repetition in music: on one hand, repetition assists the listener in perceiving both the content and the musical shape (form) of a piece (and this seems especially desirable in a new composition); on the other, there are few things as trivial and inartistic as over-repetition. The question is like a mobile, with moving parts which can balance in different ways, and whose particulars are bound up with the weight and volume of materials — I don’t imagine that there is only one right answer (and indeed I approach the question in different ways in different pieces). In the case of these Studies, I set out with the exploratory intention of writing a piece in which there was no literal repetition; none of the music would repeat later note-for-note, but nonetheless, I wanted to try to make every ‘event’ flow out of the preceding music. Now the fact is, I knew when I started writing the piece, that I wanted it to last about 20 minutes; and here I have set out on the musical journey, with a sort of ‘constitutional principle’ of non-repetition. And the process of writing the piece flowed very satisfactorily. I reached a point in the writing, when the larger part of the music had taken shape, had assumed a definite character (or, we might say, a definite series of related character), when I decided musically that I could cast aside the ‘guiding principle’ of non-repetition. In truth, I was playing with the idea of bringing back material from earlier in the piece, but in such a way (because of its unfolding, ‘repetition-resistant’ fabric) that the repetition would not be apparent; an effect, if you like, of bringing back material which the listener has heard before, but because of the linear flow of the piece, even this ‘old’ material will appear new. Goethe made a famous remark about music being “frozen architecture,” which is a beautiful image, and certainly apt for certain musical styles and genres; but the fact is, that music is much freer than architecture, and the ‘gravitational forces’ which music must take into account are very different. At any rate, casting aside the ‘mold’ of non-repetition which had formed the majority of the piece was a compositional act which did not cause the overall piece to dissolve into chaos, and in fact it gave an appropriate direction to the end of the piece, whose signature is the repeated interval of a tritone. And if the piece begins with the idea of ‘non-repetition’, only to change ideas somewhere in the middle, perhaps this is one instance of impermanence which the music studies.
—Karl Henning
ALL THE BIRDS IN MONDRIAN’S CAGE
I wrote this as a companion-piece to Heedless Watermelon (below); although we perform them tonight in ‘reverse order’, Birds is designed for a slow middle movement (and at some point I shall write the raucous finale, Swivels & Bops). One evening, my glance chanced to fall upon the cover of the slim Taschen volume on Mondrian; and the sudden reminder of open, geometrical canvases whose space is defined by a spare grid of lines at right angles, served as musical inspiration. The birds, of course, come from the flute and clarinet playing together. Their lines would (in a manner visually suggested by a Mondrian canvas) be strictly governed (‘caged’), particularly with regard to intervals. One idea which struck me as a novel departure – but then, so many people have done so many ‘new musical things’ that I neither flatter myself by imagining that it is any absolutely ‘new discovery’, nor really care – was this: The series of pitches in a twelve-tone row serves a principle of non-repetition of pitch; but functionally, it is the series of intervals between the pitches of the source-set which is the governing force. I wanted to borrow the idea of a series of ‘governing intervals’, but I wanted to restrict their powers slightly. In a twelve-tone series, the intervals determine sequences of pitch (and can be used, for instance, harmonically as well as ‘melodically’). In All the Birds in Mondrian’s Cage, there is a series of intervals which governs the harmonic relation between flute and clarinet, but I elected not to use it as a pitch-driver. So far as I can tell, for the where to go? pitch-wise, I went ahead and used my ear.
—Karl Henning
HEEDLESS WATERMELON
This is one of a small number of pieces which I have written as a musical thank-you. Mary Jane Rupert, Paul Cienniwa, Peter Bloom & I played a recital on 24 June; and in the elated aftermath, I started composing, for my Muse bade me draw up a diverting duet for flute and clarinet. My method of composition can be quickly summarized: There is no method. No, that is not (cannot be) quite true; but doing something different I frequently find a reliable tack. After the extended musical canvases of my opp. 92-95 (about an hour and three-quarters of music total), I have lately trended to brevity. (I composed Marginalia for cello ensemble in the space of two days, while ‘powering down’ in Bethesda, Maryland.) Musically, this piece is an intuitive blend of fructose, sunshine, sanssouci and electricity. There’s even a canon on a modified Frank Zappa melody thrown in. Toujours de l’audace. Optional entertainment, forsooth.
—Karl Henning
(Photo courtesy Luxnova)
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