Tuesday Night New Music: Lanning, Jia, Hertzman-Miller, Stephenson, Wiese, & Josifoski

Mathew Lanning | Sonatina (2021)

Prélude
Menuet
Toccata

Program note

Sonatina arose as the next and latest player in my collection of virtuosic piano suites. After thoroughly exploring the genre of piano preludes for several years, my attention turned to writing concert piano repertoire. Following big, virtuosic projects such as my Reveries and Three Barges suites, the Sonatina takes on a more delicate role, bringing back some forms and styles of old and revitalizing and infusing them with my own ideas of harmony and texture. “Prélude” offers a simple, plaintive melody interspersed with flourishes of sound, while the “Menuet” brings forward a soft, calm lullaby of a dance that is reminiscent of a somber yet positively sweet voice singing others gently to sleep. Finally, the “Toccata”, based on the French style of keyboard toccatas incorporating many repeated notes and interplay between the hands, wakes the listener back to life and from start to finish delivers a flashy, invigorating experience, interlaced with the occasional lyrical line, with a brilliant, explosive ending                                                                                               
– Mathew Lanning

Tianfang Jia | Rotating Time (2020)

Program note

What if time is not linear but cyclical?
What if time is not quantitative under chronometric measurements?
What if time is elastic, can be stretched to macro-, or contracted to micro-?
What if time is an eternity that is present in every moment?
What if time is corresponding to space, direction and distance?
What if time is multilayered and superimposed?
What if time is rotating and fluctuating under gravitational pull?
What if time is annihilated, at the same time reincarnated?
What if time is in the void, setting all the efforts in vain?                            
– Tianfang Jia

Ruth Hertzman-Miller | Shifting Moods (2021)

Program note

This piece was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21. The music moves through various emotional trajectories, including calm, lyrical, meditative, and mysterious, as well as frantic, insistent, fragmented, and jumpy.                                                                                                              
– Ruth Hertzman-Miller

Claire Stephenson | String Quartet No. 1 (2021)

I.
II.
III.
IV.
 

Program note

This string quartet is meant to come close to the classical style without being identical to it, with one thing "wrong" in each movement. In the first movement the recapitulation is in the wrong key; in the second is not in the traditional major/minor; in the third although it is a dance movement it is the wrong type of dance; and in the fourth there are tempo changes.                                                                    – Claire Stephenson

Ian Wiese | Divergent Points (2021)

Program note

Divergent Points is the second of two pieces written for the Polyphony Artist Management and Composer Jenni Brandon summer workshop "Writing for the Solo Instrument" 2021 series. The workshop encompassed one session of writing for flute (with performer Nicaulis Ailley) and one session for harp (with performer/composer Joseph Rebman). When writing the piece, in a lesson with Brandon, I had inadvertently spoken the phrase "...all the different, divergent points in this piece." This chance statement got me thinking about Stravinsky's famous sketch of his music, a single line with large bullet points, right angles, double-backs, and branch lines. This description of his music showed its different divergences, a unique and broad palette of ideas all generating linearly. Coupled with a series of quickly changing extended techniques on the harp (thunder, xylophone, gong, etc.), one idea diverges into new lines, both fractal and linear.                                                           
– Ian Wiese

Kristian Josifoski | Metaphysical Mutations (2021)

Cosmic Elf Destruction Crusher
Primordial Transience
CHUGADJENTCHUG