CHAYA CZERNOWIN
“POETICA”
STEVEN SCHICK, PERCUSSION SOLOIST
Saturday, January 18, 2025 | 8 PM
Zipper Hall at the Colburn School
200 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Zipper Hall at the Colburn School
200 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
|
“INCONTESTABLY ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT COMPOSERS ACTIVE TODAY”
– Alex Ross on Chaya Czernowin (The Rest is Noise) |
“ONE OF OUR SUPREME LIVING VIRTUOSOS, NOT JUST OF PERCUSSION BUT OF ANY INSTRUMENT.”
– Alex Ross on Steven Schick (The New Yorker) |
Chaya Czernowin and Carlo Laurenzi at IRCAM in Paris. Photo by Jonathan Hepfer.
TICKETS:
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PROGRAM:
Edgard VARÈSE - POÈME ÉLECTRONIQUE (1958) [8']
Kaija SAARIAHO - SIX JAPANESE GARDENS (1994) [16']
--
Chaya CZERNOWIN - POETICA * (2024) [58']
for solo percussionist, percussion quartet, voice, prerecorded strings and electronics
* United States Premiere
Written for Steven Schick
Co-commissioned by Hellerau Dresden, IRCAM, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Steven Schick and Monday Evening Concerts
PERFORMERS:
Steven SCHICK, solo percussion
CATINBLACK, prerecorded strings
Carlo LAURENZI (IRCAM), electronics
Clément CERLES (IRCAM), electronics
RED FISH BLUE FISH, percussion ensemble
Mitchell CARLSTROM
Wesley FOWLER
Kosuke MATSUDA
Camilo ZAMUDIO
Edgard VARÈSE - POÈME ÉLECTRONIQUE (1958) [8']
Kaija SAARIAHO - SIX JAPANESE GARDENS (1994) [16']
--
Chaya CZERNOWIN - POETICA * (2024) [58']
for solo percussionist, percussion quartet, voice, prerecorded strings and electronics
* United States Premiere
Written for Steven Schick
Co-commissioned by Hellerau Dresden, IRCAM, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Steven Schick and Monday Evening Concerts
PERFORMERS:
Steven SCHICK, solo percussion
CATINBLACK, prerecorded strings
Carlo LAURENZI (IRCAM), electronics
Clément CERLES (IRCAM), electronics
RED FISH BLUE FISH, percussion ensemble
Mitchell CARLSTROM
Wesley FOWLER
Kosuke MATSUDA
Camilo ZAMUDIO
DESCRIPTION:
The piece POETICA is a journey of one into themselves. It is brought to life through breathing. Inhaling and exhaling serve to activate different parts of the sonic psyche, they create the micro and macro structures and they make events emerge and disappear.
This journey goes out from places where the external is present: I recorded countless demonstration sounds in Tel Aviv, in the US and in Paris, during 2023. We all live in a complex reality which nowadays seems inescapable. However, the sonic journey gradually comes to a focus with the emergence of the breathing, and with it, a discovery of what the percussion are hiding in the midst of their sound. The string tremolo emerges as a shadow to the percussion tremolo. These two types of tremolos push and pull inside their combined identity, and allow us to experience the percussion tremolo and the strings tremolo as a unified imagined field. In spite of the difficult and intrusive reality, one can still turn into their inside and find clarity and hope. Our internality is a kind of nature with its own vitality.
POETICA is the first part of the Triptych VENA, with the pieces UNHISTORIC ACTS (for choir and string quartet) and IMMATERIAL for 6 singers. (Chaya Czernowin)
This journey goes out from places where the external is present: I recorded countless demonstration sounds in Tel Aviv, in the US and in Paris, during 2023. We all live in a complex reality which nowadays seems inescapable. However, the sonic journey gradually comes to a focus with the emergence of the breathing, and with it, a discovery of what the percussion are hiding in the midst of their sound. The string tremolo emerges as a shadow to the percussion tremolo. These two types of tremolos push and pull inside their combined identity, and allow us to experience the percussion tremolo and the strings tremolo as a unified imagined field. In spite of the difficult and intrusive reality, one can still turn into their inside and find clarity and hope. Our internality is a kind of nature with its own vitality.
POETICA is the first part of the Triptych VENA, with the pieces UNHISTORIC ACTS (for choir and string quartet) and IMMATERIAL for 6 singers. (Chaya Czernowin)
ARTIST BIOS:
Composer Chaya Czernowin. Photo by Irina Rozovsky.
CHAYA CZERNOWIN:
Chaya Czernowin was born and brought up in Israel. After her studies in Israel, at the age of 25, she continued studying in Germany (DAAD grant), the US, and then lived in Tokyo, Japan (Asahi Shimbun Fellowship and American NEA grant), and in Germany (a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude). Her music has been performed throughout the world, by the best orchestras and performers of new music, and she has held a professorship at UCSD and was the first woman to be appointed as a composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria (2006–2009), and at Harvard University, USA (2009 -to the present) where she has been the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music. Together with Steven Kazuo Takasugi and Jean-Baptiste Jolly, the director of Akademie Schloss Solitude near Stuttgart, she has founded the summer Academy at Schloss Solitude, a biannual course for composers, 2003- 2019. Takasugi and Czernowin also taught at Tzlil Meudcan, an international course based in Israel founded by Yaron Deutsch of Ensemble Nikel.
Czernowin’s output includes chamber and orchestral music, with and without electronics. Her works were played in most of the significant new music festivals. She composed 4 large scale works for the stage: Pnima...ins Innere (2000, Munich Biennale) chosen to be the best premiere of the year by Opernwelt yearly critic survey, and received the prestigious Bayerischer Theaterpreis; Adama (2004/5) with Mozart's Zaide (Salzburg Festival 2006) Adama has a second version written with Ludger Engles, with an added choir which was presented in Freiburg Stadttheater (2017). The opera Infinite Now was written in 2017, a commission of Vlaamse Opera Belgium, IRCAM Paris, and Mannheim Stadtheater. The piece combines/ superimposes materials of the first world war (Luk Perceval's theater piece "FRONT") with the short story Homecoming by Can Xue. This opera was chosen as the premier of the year in the international critics’ survey of Opernwelt. In 2018/2019 Czernowin Wrote the text and music to Heart Chamber which was premiered and commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in the direction of Claus Guth to a strong critical and public acclaim. Czernowin was appointed Artist in residence at the Salzburg Festival in 2005/6 and at the Lucern Festival, Switzerland in 2013, and at Huddersfield Festival 2021.
Characteristic of her work are working with metaphor as a means of reaching and analyzing a sound world that is unfamiliar; the use of noise and physical parameters as weight, textural surface (as in smoothness or roughness, brightness or darkness); an inquiry of the handling of time; and shifting of scale. and perspective. These ways of working/thinking fuse her work with multi-sensory content and work to reach a sonic expression which includes the subconscious and goes beyond style, conventions, or rationality.
In addition to numerous other prizes, Czernowin represented Israel at Uncesco composer's Rostrum 1980; was awarded the DAAD scholarship ('83–85); Stipendiumpreis ('88) and Kranichsteiner Musikpreis ('92), at Darmstadt Fereinkurse; IRCAM (Paris) reading panel commission ('98); scholarships of SWR experimental Studio Freiburg ('98, '00, '01 and more); The composer’s prize of Siemens Foundation ('03); the Rockefeller Foundation, ('04); a nomination as a fellow to the Wissenschaftkolleg Berlin ('08); Fromm Foundation Award ('09); and Guggenheim Foundation fellowship ('11); Heidelberger Kunstlerinen Preis ('16); The WERGO portrait CD The Quiet (5 orchestral pieces) has been awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics’ Award ('16 ). She was chosen as a member of the Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin in 2017, and as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich in 2021. In 2022 She was awarded the Gema Authors prize in the Musiktheater (new opera) category.
Czernowin's work is published by Schott. Her music is recorded on Mode records NY, Wergo, Col Legno, Deutsche Gramophone, Kairos, Neos, Ethos, Telos Naxos, and Einstein Records. She lives near Boston with composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Czernowin is an Israeli/ American Citizen.
Czernowin’s output includes chamber and orchestral music, with and without electronics. Her works were played in most of the significant new music festivals. She composed 4 large scale works for the stage: Pnima...ins Innere (2000, Munich Biennale) chosen to be the best premiere of the year by Opernwelt yearly critic survey, and received the prestigious Bayerischer Theaterpreis; Adama (2004/5) with Mozart's Zaide (Salzburg Festival 2006) Adama has a second version written with Ludger Engles, with an added choir which was presented in Freiburg Stadttheater (2017). The opera Infinite Now was written in 2017, a commission of Vlaamse Opera Belgium, IRCAM Paris, and Mannheim Stadtheater. The piece combines/ superimposes materials of the first world war (Luk Perceval's theater piece "FRONT") with the short story Homecoming by Can Xue. This opera was chosen as the premier of the year in the international critics’ survey of Opernwelt. In 2018/2019 Czernowin Wrote the text and music to Heart Chamber which was premiered and commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in the direction of Claus Guth to a strong critical and public acclaim. Czernowin was appointed Artist in residence at the Salzburg Festival in 2005/6 and at the Lucern Festival, Switzerland in 2013, and at Huddersfield Festival 2021.
Characteristic of her work are working with metaphor as a means of reaching and analyzing a sound world that is unfamiliar; the use of noise and physical parameters as weight, textural surface (as in smoothness or roughness, brightness or darkness); an inquiry of the handling of time; and shifting of scale. and perspective. These ways of working/thinking fuse her work with multi-sensory content and work to reach a sonic expression which includes the subconscious and goes beyond style, conventions, or rationality.
In addition to numerous other prizes, Czernowin represented Israel at Uncesco composer's Rostrum 1980; was awarded the DAAD scholarship ('83–85); Stipendiumpreis ('88) and Kranichsteiner Musikpreis ('92), at Darmstadt Fereinkurse; IRCAM (Paris) reading panel commission ('98); scholarships of SWR experimental Studio Freiburg ('98, '00, '01 and more); The composer’s prize of Siemens Foundation ('03); the Rockefeller Foundation, ('04); a nomination as a fellow to the Wissenschaftkolleg Berlin ('08); Fromm Foundation Award ('09); and Guggenheim Foundation fellowship ('11); Heidelberger Kunstlerinen Preis ('16); The WERGO portrait CD The Quiet (5 orchestral pieces) has been awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics’ Award ('16 ). She was chosen as a member of the Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin in 2017, and as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich in 2021. In 2022 She was awarded the Gema Authors prize in the Musiktheater (new opera) category.
Czernowin's work is published by Schott. Her music is recorded on Mode records NY, Wergo, Col Legno, Deutsche Gramophone, Kairos, Neos, Ethos, Telos Naxos, and Einstein Records. She lives near Boston with composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Czernowin is an Israeli/ American Citizen.
STEVEN SCHICK:
Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,” he has championed contemporary percussion music for more than fifty years. In 2014 Schick was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.
As conductor, Schick was Music Director of the La Jolla Symphony and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the Breckenridge Music Festival, and Co-Artistic Director with Claire Chase of the Banff Centre’s Summer Classical Music program. In 2020, he was awarded the Ditson Conductor’s Award, given by Columbia University, for his commitment to the performance of American music.
Schick’s publications include a book, “The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams,” and numerous recordings including complete collections of the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis and the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. His most recent project, “Weather Systems,” a multi-part retrospective of solo percussion music released on Islandia Music Records, was listed among the best recordings of 2023 by both The New York Times and The New Yorker.
In 2019, he and his wife Brenda began The Brenda and Steven Schick Commissions to foster new creative work that embraces qualities of optimism in themes dealing with community or the environment.
Steven Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music and the inaugural holder of the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego.
As conductor, Schick was Music Director of the La Jolla Symphony and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the Breckenridge Music Festival, and Co-Artistic Director with Claire Chase of the Banff Centre’s Summer Classical Music program. In 2020, he was awarded the Ditson Conductor’s Award, given by Columbia University, for his commitment to the performance of American music.
Schick’s publications include a book, “The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams,” and numerous recordings including complete collections of the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis and the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. His most recent project, “Weather Systems,” a multi-part retrospective of solo percussion music released on Islandia Music Records, was listed among the best recordings of 2023 by both The New York Times and The New Yorker.
In 2019, he and his wife Brenda began The Brenda and Steven Schick Commissions to foster new creative work that embraces qualities of optimism in themes dealing with community or the environment.
Steven Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music and the inaugural holder of the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego.
RED FISH BLUE FISH:
The New York Times calls red fish blue fish a “dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California.” Founded more than 25 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego-based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion’s rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent. Recent projects include the world premiere of Roger Reynolds’ Sanctuary and the American premiere of James Dillon’s epic Nine Rivers cycle with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In the Summer of 2011, red fish blue fish collaborated with George Crumb, Dawn Upshaw and Peter Sellars to premiere the staged version of The Winds of Destiny. Eighth Blackbird invited red fish blue fish to join them in performances of works by American icons John Cage and Steve Reich at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The New York Times called their “riveting” John Cage performance the “highlight” of the program. In 2012 red fish blue fish presented four concerts of percussion music alongside Percussion Group Cincinnati at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, D.C., where they performed highlights from Cage’s collection of percussion works.
Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Their recording of the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen received Deutscheschallplattenkritikpreis for the best recording of contemporary music in 2015.
red fish blue fish has had impact on new music percussion both by virtue of their many performances and acclaimed recordings, but also through their commitment to research and pedagogy as a resident ensemble at the University of California, San Diego. The numerous alumni of red fish blue fish now hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.
Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Their recording of the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen received Deutscheschallplattenkritikpreis for the best recording of contemporary music in 2015.
red fish blue fish has had impact on new music percussion both by virtue of their many performances and acclaimed recordings, but also through their commitment to research and pedagogy as a resident ensemble at the University of California, San Diego. The numerous alumni of red fish blue fish now hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.