NEC Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Winds, & Symphonic Choir: Bernstein, Mancini, Gulda, Stravinsky & Brubeck

Leonard Bernstein (arr. Dave Rivello) | Some Other Time, from On the Town

Henry Mancini (arr. Dave Rivello) | Dreamsville

Friedrich Gulda | from Konzert für Violoncello und Blasorchester (1980)

I. Ouverture
II. Idylle
IV. Menuetto
V. Finale: Alla Marcia

Kenny Lee

Cellist and conductor Kenny Lee has been praised for his “lyricism, drive, tenderness, and passion” (The Times Argus). He has concertized throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist and a chamber musician. He has won top prizes at the New York International Artists Competition, Hudson Valley String Competition, Borromeo Guest Artist Competition, Eastman Concerto Competition, and New England Conservatory Honors Chamber Music Competition as the founding member of the Gioviale Quartet. He has given solo and chamber recitals in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and Eastman Kodak Hall. Mr. Lee has appeared as a concerto soloist with several conductors, including with Giancarlo Guerrero, Neil Varon, and William Drury. 
        As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with the members of the Juilliard, Cleveland, Borromeo, and Ying Quartets, and principal players of the Berlin Philharmonic. Festival appearances have included Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Thy Chamber Music Festival in Denmark, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, Taos Chamber Music Festival, and Piatigorsky International Cello Festival. He is also the co-founder and artistic director of the Flatirons Chamber Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado.
        As a conductor, he has won first prize at the seventeenth International Conductors Workshop and Competition. He has recently worked with Western Illinois University Symphony Orchestra, Lviv Philharmonic, Midcoast Symphony Orchestra, Exeter Symphonia, Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra, and Orlando Philharmonic. 
        Mr. Lee’s mentors have included Laurence Lesser, Paul Katz, Steven Doane, Steven Pologe, Hans Jørgen Jensen, Charles Peltz, and William Drury. He has also worked privately with Pieter Wispelwey, Lluis Claret, Ralph Kirshbaum, Frans Helmerson, and Gary Hoffman. He holds a bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music with the prestigious Celentano Award in Excellence in Chamber Music and master’s and Doctoral degrees, with honors, from New England Conservatory.
        Mr. Lee is a dedicated educator and currently serves as the cello professor and director of orchestral activities at Western Illinois University. He has held teaching positions at Stetson University, Phillips Exeter Academy, and has given masterclasses at Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Keene State College. His former students have been accepted to the Manhattan School of Music, Harvard University, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute, and Peabody Conservatory.

NEC Symphonic Winds

Flute
Isabel Evernham
Honor Hickman
Yechan Min

Oboe
Yuhsi Chang
Corinne Foley
Coleton Morgan

Clarinet
Tristan Broadfoot
Sarah Cho
Xianyi Ji
Tao Ke

Bass Clarinet
Nikita Manin

Bassoon
Evan Judson

French horn
Mattias Bengtsson
Huimin Mandy Liu
Tess Reagan
Jenna Stokes
Xiaoran Xu

Trumpet
Michael Harms
Sarah Heimberg
Matthew Mihalko
Justin Park
Cody York

Trombone
Elias Canales
Lukas Helsel
Noah Korenfeld
Noah Nichilo

Tuba
James Curto
Hayden Silvester

Percussion
Mark Larrivee
Parker Olson
Rohan Zakharia

Harp
Shaylen Joos

Guitar
Thatcher Harrison

Double Bass
Benjamin Friedland

Igor Stravinsky | Symphony of Psalms (1930)

I. Psalm 38: 13-14
II. Psalm 39: 2-4
III. Psalm 150

Program note

John Heiss is NEC’s Stravinsky, Ives and Schoenberg expert.  He has a musicologist’s sense of context and history, a composer’s sense of craft and a performer’s sense of what makes the piece “tick”.  We have called on him these past few weeks—as NEC always does—to contribute invaluably to the rehearsal process.  We thank him so very much. 

These are notes he provides for this program:

In a long career of notable surprises and successes, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930) stands out as both unexpected and uniquely eloquent.  Commissioned by the Boston Symphony to recognize the 50th year of its existence, the request encouraged Stravinsky to try to write “something popular.”  The composer responded by writing (as he said) something capable of broad human understanding!
        He set excerpts from a trio of exquisite psalms (Nos. 38, 39, 150) for his three interconnected movements, using Latin for its ancient tone-of-voice, as outlined here.
            “Hear my prayer” / Exaudi orationem meam — anguished
            “Hopeful, I waited for the Lord” / Expectans expectavi Dominum — waiting
            “Alleluia. Laudate Dominum.” / Hallelujah. Praise God — hushed joy

        When his musical aide, Robert Craft, later asked Stravinsky how was it that the music of the three movements held together so well, Stravinsky provided this extraordinary sketch of the key relationships.
                                                     (I. E to G     II. C to E-flat   III. C/E natural)
        Stravinsky wanted the chorus and orchestra to be equal partners.  The marvelous “sound” of the overall ensemble arises from a unique orchestration of multiple winds, normal brass, cellos, basses, two pianos, harp, and percussion – whereas there are no violins, violas or clarinets whatever, clearing the air for the chorus to prevail.
        The first movement, introductory and rather brief, begins in E minor only to shift quickly to G major as a dominant preparation for movement II, which begins in C minor as a formal fugue (flutes and oboes patiently waiting).  This leads to a haunting modulation by flutes alone into E-flat minor, the key of the surprising choral entry using its own fugal subject, producing a double fugue!  The contrasting instrumental and vocal subjects, different as they are, mesh perfectly like gloves on a hand.  This movement ends ambiguously, in dual tonalities of F minor and E-flat major.  The third movement, by far the broadest, cross-cuts between several contrasting tempos and tonalities over a much wider stretch of time, so as to culminate with a pianissimo “Alleluia” and “Laudate Dominum.”
        The work enjoyed a fine premiere and has been a continuing presence in our lives.  I played it in the BSO flute section several times and had the great joy of hearing Stravinsky conduct it in New York (summer, 1966), in his final public appearance as a conductor.  It is wondrously lyric, spiritually true, energetic and, at the end, transcendentally serene in a long coda.
        Stravinsky has ended many pieces this way—he characterizes such conclusions as apotheoses (being at one with God).  The concluding chord is often C major.  Here, in the Symphony of Psalms, it is voiced with six octaves of C and a single high E on the final word:  DO – MI – NUM
                                 (C)    (E)    (mmm)

Truly a heavenly ending!                                                                                     
– John Heiss
 

Text

NEC Symphonic Choir

Oluwanimofe Akinyanmi
Aislin Alancheril
Isaac Berglind
Brittany Bryant
Hongbo Cai
Chen Chen
Jing Chen
Garrett Comrie
Su Cong
Despina Dassouras
Andrew Minoo Dixon
Sophia Grace Donelan
Yuxin Duan
Yan Fang
Runyu Feng
Edward Ferran
Jaden Fogel
Rachel Fredette
Abisal Gergiev
Dermot Gleeson
Jiawei Gong
Killian Grider
Rachel Gu
Siyuan Amelia Guan
Changjin Ha
Yujin Han
Cameron Hayden
Jinyu He
Blake Hetherington
Weza Jamison-Neto
Owen Johnson
Jonah Kernis
Dohyun Kim
Loren Kim
Jordan Chun Kwan Lau
Che Li
Mengyuan Li
Pengyi Li
Qianqian Li
Ssu-Hsuan Sandy Li
Yuhang Li
Yunqi Li
Shawn Xiangyun Lian
Yen Yu Tiffany Lin
Jonas Shaocheng Man
Sally Millar
Colin Miller
Hannah Miller
Yechan Min
Sianna Monti
Tristan Murphy
Qiu Qiu
Xiaoyu Frank Sang
Emma Schoetz
Jonathan Senik
Xingrong Shao
Hanwen Shi
Jiaruo Aria Shi
Yide Shi
Tamir Shimshoni
Anisha Srinivasan
Claire Stephenson
Wanrou Tang
Ke Xin Tian
Sophia Tseng
Alexander Tsereteli
Joseph Vasconi
Qizhen Steven Wang
Ranfei Wang
Tianyou Wang
Yinuo Wang
Xiaoye Wei
Shan Shan Xie
Yuki Yoshimi
Grace Yu
Sean Yu
Jessica Yuma
Yukun Zhang
Zhaoqian Ellie Zhong
Ling Zhou
ZhuoYa Zhu
 

NEC Wind Ensemble

Flute
Erika Rohrberg
Javier Castro
Clara Lee
Nnamdi Odita-Honnah
Dianna Seo

Oboe
Kip Zimmerman
So Jeong Kim
Nathalie Vela
Izumi Amemiya
Samuel Rockwood

Bassoon
Miranda Macias
Delano Bell
Daniel McCarty
Andrew Flurer

French horn
Helen Wargelin
Karlee Kamminga
Paolo Rosselli
Xiang Li

Trumpet
Charlie Jones
Wentao Xiao
Kimberly Sabio
Alexander Prokop
Dimitri Raimonde

Trombone
Jianlin Sha
Puyuan Chen

Bass Trombone
Roger Dahlin

Tuba
David Stein

Percussion
David Uhlmann
Yiming Yao

Harp
Hannah Cope Johnson

Cello
Aixin Vicky Cheng
Trés Foster
Uijin Gwak
Jeffrey Ho
Eugene Kim
Youjin Ko
Cheyoon Lee
Eva Ropero

Double Bass
Christopher Laven
Diego Martinez
Minyi Wang
Yihan Wu

Piano
Sunmin Kim
Tracy Tang
 

Chris Brubeck | Fifty (2020)

World premiere

Commissioned by New England Conservatory in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Wind Ensemble and dedicated to its conductor Charles Peltz
 

Program note

When I was planning the anniversary year—2019–20—with Bill Drury and then acting President Tom Novak, we knew that the cornerstone of that celebration would be a premiere of an important new work.  Commissioning and premiering new music have been foundational to the NEC Wind Ensemble, and composers from Colgrass to Rands, Schuller to Tippet, had their voices heard through the NECWE commissioning legacy. 

Who to commission for this milestone?  Should it be someone from the classical world as had been done before? 

Or should we look at this as a chance to celebrate the wind ensemble, one of the premier ensembles of its kind, as part of the NEC vision of a wide musical world? That seemed the right thing. How exactly does one celebrate NEC? Maybe through the something created here – the idea of “third stream” music.  Schuller coined the phrase as the confluence of classical and jazz composition, but he later disowned the term as having been used to describe works with facile layering - ‘jazz works with strings” or classical works with raucous saxophones and “swinging” syncopations.  

To create a truly third-stream work required someone with a mind and proven pen for classical devices but with a genuine heart and ear for jazz.  That cuts the list down considerably.  One name rises up—Christopher Brubeck—a composer who has established himself as someone with a sophisticated style, a sure hand at orchestration and the ability to write, to explore, with confidence.   Chris has threaded the third-stream needle so finely.  The fugue, the ubiquitous other counterpoint, the sense of architecture all bows to the classical tradition, while the extended harmonies, the jazz gestures and the improvisatory middle are children of jazz parents.  

We could not have chosen a more fitting person to create a celebration of the NECWE 50th.                                             
– Charles Peltz

From its incisive opening thunder, Fifty establishes its self-assurance.  Over its seventeen minutes, it dances along the musical highway with feet on either side of the center line. Scored for the orchestral wind section in threes, but including rhythm section and jazz improvisers, it synthesizes the best of the classical and jazz traditions.  Fifty is set in ten sections organically connected either by the smoothest transitions or powerful gear shifting. If not truly a palindrome, it unfolds in an architecture of ABCDBA. A’s and B’s return show their organic growth: mature simplicity in the case of B and increased fire in the case of A.   Its overriding organic device is its use of meters “in 5” found in sections from the coolest to the hottest.  Coming from a Brubeck, that five-ness is in the DNA, but its adroit employment here is no familial cliché, it is fresh and innovative.
        In the first section we are introduced to the interval set of a fourth and third and a second. This set begets the rest of the pitches, as if a set of variations on the interval “theme”.  Each section has its own personality: from the fire of the opening to the “west coast cool” of the main theme, to that extended fugue (!) complete with 16-foot cantus firmus at its close, to the improvised choruses, to the carousel waltzes, to the return of a more contemplative west coast, and fiery finale.  
        What makes Fifty so remarkable is the harmonic language—it is the language of jazz, flavored with 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, flatted this and sharp that.  It is a rainbow of harmony, shifting from floating gentleness to spicily bold.
        NEC patron saint Gunther Schuller admitted that discovering a true third stream required a diviner’s fork of inspiration. How appropriate Chris Brubeck discovered it at NEC in his Fifty.

From the composer:

“I was honored to have been asked by Charles Peltz to compose this piece for the formidable New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble. The title, “Fifty,” is in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the NECWE.  The number “5” saturated my brain as I contemplated how to approach composing this work. The “fiveness” of things led me to writing something in the time signature of 5/8. The meters, 5/8 and 5/4 are deep in my musical blood after having spent decades performing as bass player and trombonist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. For my personal tastes, 5/8 possesses some built in “action” and moves forward with its own swagger and swing, which is also the kind of thing that the New England Conservatory has been doing for decades going back to its Gunther Schuller roots. He envisioned a place where jazz and classical influences could swim in the third stream together.  To further tie the magic number 5 together, imagine my surprise when a couple years after my father, Dave Brubeck, passed on, I got a call from the legendary Gunther Schuller. He remembered a Sanders Theater concert with my father improvising over his signature tune, Take Five, and Schuller was so taken by it that he wanted to track down this performance, study it, and use it as the basis for a new piece he intended to write inspired by my father’s improvisation. Gunther Schuller called it From Here to There, and Charles Peltz conducted the premiere. I have the same good fortune, as Maestro Peltz will be leading the forces when my piece makes its debut. 

“The timpani kicks off the proceedings, and you can hear the brass play the figure that sounds like the rhythm of the words “Fif-ty” “Fif-ty,” “Fif-ty!” This little rhythmic cell keeps popping up in the piece. After the intro the ensemble eventually gets into a lilting 5/8 samba-like groove with layers of counterpoint weaving through the texture. Eventually this music dissolves into a floating chorale with jazzy voicings played by the woodwinds. A new 8 bar theme is established in 4/4, and a fugato section unfolds. The brass rips off the straight-jacket after 56 bars and gets playful with quick little dance-like moves in 3/8 and 7/8.  There is a section that sounds like a real funky calliope, syncopated and kicking off of a basic 3/4-time signature. Eventually, everything falls into a 4/4 groove with a Latin feel. This becomes the bed for soloists with improvisational skills to play over with spontaneity and freedom. The jazz solos bring things to boil and then the brass explodes, flies over the landscape, and lands on a merry-go-round for a short ride. A bass clarinet solo signals that the fantasy ride is winding down to an end. 

To wrap up the work there is some compressed recapitulations of the opening themes which are presented in half time and reharmonized, reappearing in towering, stacked monolithic chords.  For symmetry the opening timpani lick, in 5/8, kicks the ensemble into the end zone. I know this music will be challenging for these young musicians, but I have every confidence that these exceptional players have the skills and leadership to play an exciting performance.”

NEC Wind Ensemble

Flute
Hui Lam Mak
Zoe Cagan
Anna Kevelson

Oboe
Ryoei Leo Kawai
Nathalie Vela
Samuel Rockwood

Clarinet
Tyler J. Bourque
Ching-Wen Chen
Soyeon Park
Erica Smith
Benjamin Cruz

Bassoon
Andrew Brooks
Richard Vculek
Andrew Flurer

Saxophone
Rayna DeYoung
Alexis Aguilar
*Samuel Childs
*Nicholas Biagini

French horn
Andrew Hayes
Tasha Schapiro
Hannah Messenger
Sophie Steger

Trumpet
Charlie Jones
Jake Baldwin
David O’Neill
*Daniel Hirsch

Trombone
Zach Johnson
*Michael Gerace

Bass Trombone
Changwon Park

Euphonium
Jack Earnhart

Tuba
David Stein

Percussion
Stephanie Nozomi Krichena
Ross Hussong
Taylor Lents
Tennison Watts

Double Bass
Leo WeisskofF

Piano
*Keegan Marshall-House


* student, NEC Jazz Department