We are thrilled to welcome long-time collaborators The Hausmann Quartet back to San Francisco, where over the next two weeks they will grace their adoring bay area fan-base with two public performances and a chamber music masterclass.

Praised for its “passion and commitment” (San Francisco Classical Voice), and a sound “packed with biting and lyrical substance” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), The Hausmann Quartet was formed in the summer of 2004 at Lyricafest in New Jersey, and has since become known for powerful and dynamic performances. Now into its eighth season, the Quartet has established itself in San Diego California, joining the faculty at San Diego State University as Artists in Residence, as well as founding the Hausmann Chamber Music Program. Recent winners of the Beverly Hills Auditions and recipient of a Chamber Music America Residency Grant, the Hausmann Quartet has enjoyed a busy and varied performance schedule with concerts throughout North America and China.

Later this spring The Hausmann Quartet joins CMASH Artistic Director and soprano Ann Moss at Skywalker Sound to collaborate on her debut album CURRENTS. They will be recording Seven Songs (2003) by Vartan Aghababian, as well as their own arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s Cactus Tree, part of a suite of Mitchell songs created especially for this project.

The Hausmann Quartet is (l-r) Eric Chin, Jeremiah Shaw, Isaac Allen, Angela Choong

SFSU Recital Hour Series

Friday, April 19, 1pm FREE
Creative Arts Building, Knuth Hall
SFSU School of Music and Dance
Anton Webern - Langsamer Satz in E Flat Major for String Quartet
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 14 in G major, K.387 “Spring”
Arthur Piazzolla - Four For Tango

La Belle Vie at the Legion Chamber Music Series
Presented by San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music

Sunday, April 21, 12pm FREE
Rodin Gallery, Legion of Honor
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 14 in G major, K.387 “Spring”
Henri Dutilleaux - Ainsi La Nuit
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K546
Claude Debussy - String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10

Chamber Forum Masterclass

Friday, April 26, 2:30-4pm FREE
Creative Arts Building, Knuth Hall
SFSU School of Music and Dance

CMASH is proud to welcome the return of One Art Ensemble to the Bay Area this week, where they will present a remarkable program of art song and chamber music at venues in Berkeley and San Francisco. Their program, entitled ‘I Shall Possess the Field’ features works from the classical repertoire as well as new works commissioned by and for the trio. One Art Ensemble has been thrilling audiences for years with their exciting and adventuresome programs. They have also been enthusiastic core members of CMASH since 2009. We are proud to support their continued engagement with contemporary vocal chamber music and living composers. Don’t miss the chance to hear these talented artists, performing in historic venues on both sides of the Bay.

One Art Ensemble is (l-r) Alexa Beattie, viola; Hillary Nordwell, piano, Ann Moss, soprano

I Shall Possess The Field

Vartan Aghababian – Two Songs for Soprano, Viola and Piano (2010)
Jake Heggie - At The Statue of Venus (scene for soprano and piano, 2005)
Robert Schumann – Adagio and Allegro Op. 70 (1849)
Benjamin Britten – Lachrymae Op. 48a (1948)
John Woods Duke – Three Sonnets for Voice, Viola and Piano (1959)

SUNDAY, APRIL 14 7pm, BERKELEY
The Hillside Club

TUESDAY, APRIL 16 12:30pm, SAN FRANCISCO
Selected works from Sunday’s full program
Noontime Concerts

Experience what the SF Examiner declares “the best thing that can happen to unfamiliar new works of music.” With ‘I Shall Possess The Field,’ One Art Ensemble blends the new and unusual with classic favorites from the chamber music literature. Repertoire for trio displays a merging of art song and chamber music genres. In settings of poetry by Elizabeth Bishop and Edna St. Vincent Millay, Massachusetts composers Vartan Aghababian and John Woods Duke employ soprano, viola, and piano as equal partners to fuse text, melody, and emotion. Aghababian’s songs were commissioned by One Art in 2009, while Duke’s Millay settings were discovered posthumously and have enjoyed only one performance since their 1959 premiere. The Ensemble offsets trio repertoire with daring and delightful works for duo instrumentation. In Jake Heggie’s dramatic 2005 scene for soprano and piano, with libretto by Terrence McNally, we take a whirlwind ride through the frantic, comical, and ultimately self-accepting inner monologue of a woman on a blind date. Benjamin Britten’s 1948 Lachrymae for viola and piano explores a different sort of inner turmoil, drawing on the courtly lamentations of Renaissance lutenist John Dowland. And Robert Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro, composed a full century earlier, uplifts and inspires with childlike wonder and joyfulness. Come allow the “captivating sound” (SF Classical Voice) of One Art Ensemble to draw you into this rich and multi-dimensional concert program.

Hailed as “beautiful feminine giants of chamber music,” One Art Ensemble has quickly gained recognition for its inspiring juxtaposition of historic chamber music and art song with new works by living composers. OAE has created innovative concert sets for Noe Valley Chamber Music, Old First Concerts, CMASH New American Chamber Music Series, the Bing Concert Series at Stanford University Hospital, and San Francisco’s Noontime Concerts. OAE has made two concert tours to northern Washington state, appearing on the KONP Radio show Artbeat, and a concert tour to Boston. In 2009, OAE commissioned Boston area composer Vartan Aghababian to set two poems by Elizabeth Bishop, which received their premiere on April 11, 2010 at Noe Valley Chamber Music. Their second commission was for Bay Area composer Liam Wade to set a collection of fantastical poems by Boston area poet Lisa DeSiro, which were premiered in February, 2010. In April, 2010, OAE premiered Candlelight Cafe, a work by LA based composer Weslie Brown arranged specifically for the trio by Liam Wade.  Mame Loshn, a cycle of 5 songs in Yiddish composed for OAE by Miriam Miller with poetry by Sarah Traister Moskovitz, received its premiere performance in Fall of 2010 in Port Townsend, WA. OAE is part of the core membership of CMASH, a new music repertory group committed to establishing and nurturing long-term collaborative relationships between composers and performers. OAE served as the 2010 Ensemble in Residence for the PhD candidates in Composition at UC Davis, a residency which culminated in two public performances of six new chamber works composed for the Ensemble. Through ongoing collaborations with living composers, One Art Ensemble contributes to an expanding repertoire that is carefully crafted to highlight the full range and expressive power of this unique chamber ensemble.

www.oneartensemble.org

We are pleased to announce our Inaugural San Antonio Concert taking place this Sunday, April 7 at 4:00PM on the campus of Our Lady of the Lake University. Entitled “A New Beginning” this concert features soprano Jennifer Piazza-Pick and pianist Dr. Cheryl Cellon Lindquist, and includes the world-premiere of HIGH AND LOW, a song cycle composed for the occasion by Liam Wade with texts by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, and John Grimmett. Liam Wade will be in attendance.

Pennsylvania native Jennifer Piazza-Pick has recently moved to San Antonio after living in Germany.  She was a member of the House Chorus at the Nationaltheater Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany for 5 years, where she performed in over 50 different productions.  She sang several small roles with the theater as well, including Turandot’s handmaiden in Turandot, first Mädchen in Le Nozze di Figaro, and the first soprano solos in Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon.   Active also as a concert singer, she has performed in several concert series’ as a soloist and ensemble singer, including a concert tour of Poland, Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania with the U.S. Army Europe Band and an annual quartet recital as part of the Hab 8 series at the Nationaltheater. She has been a soloist in such works as Handel’s Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Magnificat, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, Bach’s St. John’s Passion, Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, and performances of Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen. Her operatic roles include Nannetta in Falstaff, the First Lady in The Magic Flute, Miss Wordsworth in Albert Herring, and Belinda in Dido and Aeneas.  Ms. Piazza-Pick holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Voice Performance and Music Education from Ithaca College and a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In San Antonio, she is the soprano section leader at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, adjunct faculty at Our Lady of the Lake and Wayland Baptist Universities, and she maintains a private studio.  She has performed with the San Antonio Choral Society, Opera Piccola of San Antonio, and the Composer’s Alliance of San Antonio, as well as on the First Friday Concert series at St. John’s Lutheran Church.  Last fall, she gave a series of Lieder recitals at various local universities. She is also the recipient of the 2012 George Cortes Award for Classical Singing by the Artist Foundation of San Antonio.

Cheryl Cellon Lindquist collaborates with an array of singers, instrumentalists, choirs and chamber ensembles.  With appearances throughout the U. S. and Europe, she has been a featured soloist with several symphony orchestras. She has studied with distinguished artists and professors such as Douglas Fisher, Carolyn Bridger, Timothy Hoekman, Valerie M. Trujillo, Lita Guerra, Jerry Alan Bush and Paul Nitsch, and has worked with notable composers John Harbison, Jake Heggie and Krzysztof Penderecki. Through master classes and festivals, she has enjoyed performance opportunities with Martin Katz, John Wustman and Dalton Baldwin. Dr. Lindquist was invited to serve on the faculty at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria as repetiteur and recital pianist and participated in the Songfest Music Festival at Pepperdine University and at the Acadèmie Internationale d’Été de Nice in Nice, France. Dr. Lindquist earned her DMA in piano performance from Florida State University with an emphasis in chamber music and accompanying. She has served on the faculty at University of Texas-Pan American, University of North Carolina-Pembroke and Northwest Vista College. Dr. Lindquist is currently an adjunct professor of music at Our Lady of the Lake University and organist at Trinity Baptist Church. During her brief time in San Antonio, she has enjoyed performances with the San Antonio Symphony, Opera Piccola and the San Antonio Children’s Chorus. Dr. Lindquist also maintains a private coaching studio and is thrilled to be part of the expansion of CMASH from California to Texas.

EVENT DETAILS:
Sunday April 7, 2013, 4PM
Our Lady of the Lake University, Fine Arts Room 200 
Admission $10, free for students

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? To mark the occasion this year, CMASH artist Lisa DeSiro has volunteered to participate in something special. Every day during the  month of April, she will be sharing an original poem on the internet, along with 11 other poets, as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.

Tupelo Press is a small non-profit literary publisher in Massachusetts which produces beautifully-made books. The 30/30 Project is a fundraiser “marathon” during which poets write 30 poems in 30 days, while asking for sponsorship and encouragement. The funds raised go to support the work of Tupelo Press and their on-going publication of new writers.

You can follow Lisa’s daily poem-posts here:
http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/

Poet Lisa DeSiro

If you feel compelled to contribute on Lisa’s behalf, click on the “donate” button, then type her name where it says “in honor of” at the bottom of the page. As an extra incentive Lisa is making a special offer: her sponsors may choose to suggest either a title or a topic for a poem! But even if you’re not able to make a donation, we hope you’ll check out the site and read some of the poetry generated by this incredible project. And feel free to send Lisa comments to cheer her on.  

The mission of Tupelo Press is to foster and shepherd great new literature. For more than a decade — twelve years and 100 books — they’ve remained committed to writers who give great gifts to the world. During the past year the Press has added some terrific prose to their growing poetry list (indelible novels, short story collections, and creative nonfiction).

Tupelo Press initiated the 30/30 Project in December 2012, and plans to continue the Project through the year. If you’d like to volunteer for the month of May 2013, please contact kmiles@tupelopress.org with your offer, a brief bio, and three sample poems … and warm up your pen!

We are pleased to announce that CMASH will present our Inaugural San Antonio Concert on Sunday, April 7 at 4:00PM on the campus of Our Lady of the Lake University. The concert will feature soprano Jennifer Piazza-Pick and pianist Dr. Cheryl Cellon Lindquist and composer Liam Wade will be in attendance.

Entitled “A New Beginning” this concert features the music of Aaron Copland, Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Vartan Aghababian, and the world-premiere of a new song cycle composed for the occasion by Liam Wade.

Composer and Director of Collaborative Programming Liam Wade reflects on this exciting expansion —

“When Ann Moss and I started CMASH six years ago, we sought to find an alternative to the traditional model of composition - the composer working in isolation to perfect every detail before handing a “locked” score to the performer for a dictated, precise execution. I felt that the role of the performer had become less that of a creative collaborator and more of a mercenary. I saw that in other genres, such as Musical Theater, Jazz and Rock and Roll, the talents and ideas of the performer were embraced by the composer and integrated into the music, resulting in new music that comes from a musical experience that is shared by composer and performer. A blending of their role for the greater good of the music.

Composer and Director of Collaborative Programming Liam Wade

My new song cycle, entitled High and Low, is specifically written to pair up on concerts with Jake Heggie’s cycles Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia and Rise and Fall. The cornerstone of this song cycle is the song “distance is crueler than the coldest february”, a setting of a poem by librettist/playwright/composer John Grimmett. Jake Heggie is a mutual friend of John and mine and when I was commissioned to write an opera for the Washington National Opera last year, Jake introduced me to John as a potential librettist. John and I hit it off right away and jumped into what turned out to be one of the most rewarding collaborations and intense writing experiences of my life: composing an opera in just a few months to be premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. In organizing this Inaugural CMASH San Antonio Concert, I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to continue working with John Grimmett, and that it was very befitting that John is a Texas native who hails from Houston.


High and Low owes very much to the open, tailor-made compositional process that has evolved through years of CMASH collaboration. Cheryl and Jennifer have been very much a part of the creative process already, and are continuing to help shape these pieces by contributing their own interpretive and compositional ideas throughout the rehearsal process.


I am so excited to be having this creative exchange with Jennifer and Cheryl who share with me a desire to bring new opera and art song to the San Antonio community. Over the last 30 years, we have seen opera boom across the state of Texas. Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth have blossomed into some of the finest and supportive opera communities in the world, and have shown profound interest and dedication to commissioning New American Opera. I see the vibrant, soulful city of San Antonio as a fertile environment for artistic collaboration and the creation of new opera and art song. San Antonio holds for me the  thrilling promise of a collaboration dedicated to expanding audiences for contemporary American opera in a city that is ready to sing.”

~ Liam Wade

John Grimmett and Liam Wade in Washington DC for the November 2012 premiere of their co-commissioned opera “Part of the Act”

EVENT DETAILS:
April 7, 2013, 4PM
Our Lady of the Lake University, Fine Arts Room 200 
Admission $10, free for students

CMASH Composer and Director of Collaborative Programming Liam Wade created the enchanting song cycle SILVER APPLES in 2008 for CMASH Artistic Director Ann Moss (soprano) and CMASH co-founder Steve Bailey (piano) for premiere on our second annual New American Chamber Music program. Described as “extremely engaging and humorous” in San Francisco Classical Voice, SILVER APPLES traces the energetic journey of one full cycle of the moon, from the innocence of a new moon through the lunacy and gravity of the waxing and full moon, returning again to the clarity of the new moon. Wade’s eclectic settings incorporate elements of blues, rag-time, Boulanger piano exercises, and even the sound of a cat walking on the keyboard, while his writing for Moss allows her to explore every corner and color of her varied vocal palette, from high-flying coloratura fireworks to Swedish-Chef inspired scat singing to a dog’s mournful howl, and even a hint of Vincent Price style narration.

Photo: Wade and Moss at the premiere of SILVER APPLES at CMASH New American Chamber Music II, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Recital Hall, January 2009

At the outset of their collaboration, Wade and Moss selected the moon-themed poems together, deciding on four texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Butler Yeats, and CMASH poet-in-residence Lisa DeSiro. Bailey and Moss worked closely alongside Wade throughout the compositional process, both performers contributing musical ideas which were incorporated into the score. Wade allowed for a great deal of improvisation as well, and to that end the duo have never performed these magical, whimsical songs the same way twice in concert.

Now Moss and Bailey are making ready to record the cycle as part of Moss’s debut CD CURRENTS, which will be recorded with producer and engineer Leslie Ann Jones at Skywalker Sound for release later this fall. All four collaborators have come together in rehearsals to explore new musical possibilities offered by the studio setting. Moss has composed an extended cadenza for the second movement, Eldorado (Poe), for which Bailey makes his way inside the piano to create a lengthy sound collage of extended techniques to accompany her vocal foray. In other movements Jones and Wade are discussing the incorporation of dialogue, found and incidental sounds, as well as the manipulation of wall panels and mic placement in the recording studio to create an undulating sound environment.

Photo: Moss and Bailey at the 2009 premiere of SILVER APPLES

“I am thrilled to be able to share Liam’s inventive story-telling and natural affinity for the lyric coloratura instrument with a broader audience,” says Moss of her choice to include Wade’s work on her upcoming release. “Especially as his budding operatic career is propelled by a recent commission from Washington National Opera. SILVER APPLES has enabled so many new listeners to connect with and find joy in the genre of Art Song in concert; this recording will surely serve to further that good work and hopefully bridge some gaps between the new music and the vocal music communities.”

Moss is actively raising funds in order to complete CURRENTS, which also includes compositions by CMASH members Weslie Brown and Vartan Aghababian, and is a sponsored project of non-profit arts service organization Fractured Atlas. She welcomes contributions at her Fractured Atlas Project Profile as well as through her Indiegogo Campaign, where supporters can receive rewards such as a signed CD or digital download of the album as soon as it becomes available.

LISTEN: Two movements from SILVER APPLES recorded live in performance at San Francisco’s Old First Church, January 2011

*CURRENTS: A Collaborative Recording Project is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of CURRENTS: A Collaborative Recording Project must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

CURRENTS is a dynamic new recording project that will feature acclaimed soprano and CMASH Artistic Director Ann Moss, performing some of the extraordinary new and recent American vocal/chamber music she has championed over the past decade. She will be recording with a dream team of collaborators from the chamber music, new music, and jazz communities. Repertoire includes two works composed especially for her by CMASH composers Liam Wade and Vartan Aghababian; a haunting, lyric ballad for soprano and Flamenco guitar by CMASH Composer Weslie Brown; an unpublished song cycle by the late John Thow; and five new arrangements created especially for this recording of songs by one of the most beloved songwriters of all time, Joni Mitchell.

CURRENTS will be recorded in 2013 at Skywalker Sound, produced by Grammy® Award winner Leslie Ann Jones, and features CMASH performers the Hausmann Quartet, pianist Steve Bailey, and bassist Liam Wade.

Other performers on CURRENTS include pianist Karen Rosenak, flamenco guitarist and founder of Solero Flamenco Jeremy Garcia, Grammy® nominated guitarist Richard Savino, jazz pianist Matt Berkeley, and drummer Joe Bagale

In parts one and two of this thread, I reflected on the initial stages of my rehearsal process with the Hausmann String Quartet as we prepare Seven Songs for recording in 2013. I want to take some time now and share the story behind this work’s composition and the heartrending poetry that inspired it.

Vartan Aghababian (b. 1964) and I conceived of Seven Songs in the early winter of 2002, while we were students in the Master of Music program at Longy School of Music. 2013 marks the ten-year anniversary of this powerful work for soprano and string quartet on poems by British WWI poet Wilfrid Gibson. In his large-scale song cycle, Aghababian layers sumptuous vocal lines over rich harmonic textures to illustrate Gibson’s profound poetic messages about wartime. Since the premiere in 2003, the work has moved audiences to tears with its lyric expressiveness, as well as its poignant relevance to our country’s involvement in multiple conflicts abroad. With imagery ranging from soldiers in the trenches, to wives and mothers on the home front, to the plight of veterans returning to broken lives, Seven Songs evokes compassion for those who have given their lives or lost loved ones in the past, and challenges us to question our modern military actions and motivations.

Poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878 – 1962) was born in Northumberland, England, to a middle-class family. He began his career writing Tennysonian verse, but gave it up in the early 1900s to join other young writers such as Wilfrid Owen, Rupert Brooke, and John Mansfield, writing in the Georgian style. The Georgians wrote lyric poems which celebrated a timeless English countryside, and which managed to capture the fragile image of Europe on the brink of war. Their idyllic world was soon to be shattered by the invasion of Belgium and the subsequent Great War.

In 1913, Gibson founded a community in north Gloucestershire with Lascelles Abercrombie, Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater, and Eddie Marsh. Together this group published a literary journal called New Numbers, which, along with individual volumes of poetry, was widely circulated throughout Britain and the U.S. The Dymark Poets, named for the village they settled in, gained their popularity with works that reflected everyday life. Gibson was known as “the People’s Poet” for his use of language that reflected the speech of ordinary, country folk. He concerned himself with the themes of common humanity - married life, friends, his cottage, and the farms, fields and forests of the Dymark countryside.

American poet Robert Frost joined the Dymark poets in 1914. He admired Gibson, who was one of the first Englishmen to review Frost’s A Boy’s Will. Gibson’s 1927 poem The Golden Room describes, with nostalgia, an evening which brought all of the poets to his cottage. The poem captures Frost’s intellect and expansiveness, Thomas’s shyness, Brooke’s merriment. The poem also captures the pain that Gibson still felt – more than a decade later – at how the war had ended it all. Just one year after that evening in Gibson’s cottage, Rupert Brooke, sent to Dardanelles as part of the fateful Gallipoli expedition, died of blood poisoning in a field in France. Of Britain’s 16 best-known poets of the day, only ten survived the conflict. Gibson, due to poor eyesight, remained at home. He did not experience the war first-hand until 1918, when he served as a clerk on the Western Front. Still, his poems of this period are primarily concerned with the suffering of those who fought and died, and the sorrow and loss experienced by those who were left behind. He penned The Going to commemorate Brooke’s passing, including it in a small volume entitled Friends, which he also dedicated to Brooke’s memory.

Wilfrid Gibson lived to the age of 84, publishing seven volumes of poetry and several plays. Though he was one of the most famous poets of his day, his popularity waned with the advent of Modernism, and he is barely remembered today.


The Return

He went, and he was gay to go;
And I smiled on him as he went.
My son, ‘twas well he couldn’t know
My darkest dread, nor what it meant —
Just what it meant to smile and smile
And let my son go cheerily —
My son … . and wondering all the while
What stranger would come back to me.


The Going
R.B.

He’s gone.
I do not understand.
I only know
That as he turned to go
And waved his hand,
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone,
And I was dazzled with a sunset glow,
And he was gone.

23rd April 1915


Breakfast

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.
I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread
That Hull United would beat Halifax
When Jimmy Strainthorpe played full-back instead
Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head
And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead.
We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.


All Being Well                                             

All being well, I’ll come to you,                     
Sweetheart, before the year is through;                    
And we shall find so much to do,                  
So much to tell.                                              

I read your letter through and through,                     
And dreamt of all we’d say and do,              
Till in my heart the thought of you              
Rang like a bell.                                                                                                        

Now the bell tolls, my love, for you;
For long before the year is through
You’ve gone where there is naught to do
And naught to tell.

Yet mayn’t I find when life is through
The best is still to say and do,
When I at last may come to you,
All being well?


Long Tom

He talked of Delhi brothels half the night,
Quaking with fever; And then, dragging tight
The frowsy blankets to his chattering chin,
Cursed for an hour because they were so thin

And nothing would keep out the gnawing cold –
Scarce forty years of age, and yet so old,
Haggard and worn with burning eyes set deep –
Until at last he cursed himself asleep.

Before I’d shut my eyes reveille came;
And as I dressed by the one candle-flame
The mellow golden light fell on his face
Still sleeping, touching it to tender grace,

Rounding the features life had scarred so deep,
Till youth came back to him in quiet sleep:
And then what women saw in him I knew
And why they’d loved him all his brief life through.


Back

They asked me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen,
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands…
Though I must bear the blame
Because he bore my name.


Lament

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily upon the sun or feel the rain,
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly, and spent
Their all for us, loved too the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –
But we, how shall we turn to little things,
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break at the heart of things?

“Seven Songs” Part One - Diving In

“Seven Songs” Part Two - Deep Waters

~ Ann Moss

CMASH composer Kurt Erickson has an exciting new commission from Festival Opera as part of their production “About Face - An Opera Experience” featuring CMASH collaborator Heidi Moss (soprano) with Jorge Garza (tenor) and Eugene Brancoveanu (baritone). Here the composer muses about his lengthy relationship with the works of Giuseppe Verdi.

“Is Giuseppe Verdi my artistic good luck charm? Why is it that his music keeps showing up at important junctures in my life? As a young pianist Liszt’s Concert Paraphrase on Verdi’s Rigoletto was my go to ‘I’m-going-to-impress-you’ piece. About a decade later, Verdi’s music played a key role in my first ballet commission (an arrangement from Othello) included in piece for SF Opera Ballet Master Lawrence Pech and his plucky San Francisco company. Fast forward another ten years to now and here’s Verdi again, making an appearance in my new opera commission with Festival Opera via re-contextualized pieces from La Traviata and Rigoletto.

Gorgeous works, both. I take the material and I run with it. Verdi seen through a self-indulgent, post-modern lens. Verdi playing in a trio with Chet Baker and Claude Debussy on a booze-filled Friday night. Verdi listening closely to the newest Miles Davis album, picking up tricks and turns of phrase.

While Verdi’s music is beautiful and powerful, this wasn’t what I spent long nights studying and pining over. For some reason or other, I clearly connect with his music. It provides inspiration and has become intertwined with some of my most powerful musical memories. It’s a connection that works, but I have no idea why. Why fight it? Better to just go with it.”

~ Kurt Erickson

As it turns out, “diving in” with the Hausmann Quartet means plunging head-first into the deep end.

I had anticipated a “bash-through” (a term musicians humorously use to refer to the first reading of a new piece), followed by a bit of awkwardness while we got to know each other’s musical languages. Maybe by the second or third meeting we’d be making music. And with four days of rehearsal planned that seemed like enough time to find our way into the details, perhaps start to discover some subtleties in this piece.

Boy was I wrong!

In our very first session on Friday evening I was delighted to find that the quartet had already spent extensive time getting to know Vartan’s piece. And they had so many wonderful ideas! We talked about phrasing, colors, sound worlds, character, story-telling, subtext - all the good stuff you usually have to wait for if you ever even get there.

To begin Isaac, Eric, Angela, Jeremiah and I sat in a ring while I talked through the score movement by movement. I shared my connection with the texts and confessed how they sometimes have the power to undo me emotionally. I warned the quartet that I might come apart at moments during our rehearsal. As I opened up to them, I felt a warm wave of support flowing between us that remained constant through our subsequent meetings. It seemed they were totally on board, not a bit bothered by my apparent vulnerability.

Then the music-making commenced. From the intensity of the first few chords I knew I was in the company of profoundly respectful colleagues. Here they were, playing the music of a composer some of them had never heard of, with a singer two of them had only just met. Yet I witnessed complete musical and personal investment from each player. They chose to rehearse from full scores, despite cumbersome page turns, so as to be more connected to my vocal line and the poetry. (I learned that, in their first rehearsals, violinist Eric had actually sung my part as he played his own. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that!)

Watching the four members of HQ work together to solve problems is truly inspiring. They are respectful of one another - gentle in their language and tone as they suggest ways to achieve a particular group sound at a particular moment - but without any trace of tiptoeing or apology. This is one of my favorite aspects of working with string players when they really get along. They can reach right into each other’s playing technique, tweak and offer new approaches, and nobody seems to feel intruded upon. We singers have much to learn from this dynamic.

After two blissful days exploring the depths of Seven Songs together, we were joined on Sunday afternoon by our producer Leslie Ann Jones. We met in the SDSU recital hall, opening our inward-facing ring of music stands into a wide arc. Leslie Ann pulled out her score, turned on her recorder, and suddenly it felt like a performance. I noticed our group mode shift from process to presentation, with a wave of jittery energy that, over the years, I have come to associate with the excitement of sharing music with an audience. The first movement surged with a new intensity; everybody seemed to be proving themselves. As I sang my opening lines—

“He went, and he was gay to go;
And I smiled on him as he went,
My son, ‘twas well he couldn’t know
My darkest dread, nor what it meant”

—I felt myself pushing a bit, forcing it just a little. “Relax Ann,” I thought to myself, “we’re all partners in this effort. No judging here.” But I also knew I wasn’t the only one who had moved into this head space. All five of us seemed to be leaning into the music more earnestly than we had in rehearsal, and it created a weight that was almost too much to sustain.

Luckily we are working with one of the best set of ears in the business. Leslie Ann Jones immediately picked up on our over-eager energy, and her response was gracefully stated and immensely helpful. She explained that, as an outside listener hearing this text for the first time, she wouldn’t necessarily know that the woman’s son was going off to war. “He could be leaving for college - that might be the way some listeners initially connect to this story.” She urged us to let the truth of the scenario, and the musical weight that accompanies that truth, emerge as the poet reveals it. There was no reason for us to start at the emotional finish line. We played through again and the movement had a new sense of elegance, lightness, and much greater contrast. And I felt myself relaxing into a calmer energy, letting go of the jitters that had made me push. Phew!

We continued through the piece, taking it movement by movement, receiving Leslie’s reactions and impressions for each. Sometimes we worked transitions in a very detailed way, focusing on metronome markings and articulations, and sometimes we delved into broader interpretations of story and character. Our performance-style arc once again felt like an inward-facing ring, now with six members instead of five. Within the brief two hours of working together, Leslie Ann had shifted in our perception from audience to collaborator.

~ Ann Moss

“Seven Songs” Part One - Diving In

“Seven Songs” Part Three - Wartime Lyricism
 

Hausmann Quartet and producer Leslie Ann Jones feeling the post-rehearsal glow

It begins.

I’m here in San Diego for four days, to recommence work on a song cycle that has been near and dear to my heart for over a decade. This is a piece I helped create, and have lived inside of and shared with others many times over the years. And yet it feels today like something new and unknown is about to begin.

Every time I return to this cycle, with its devastating poetry by Wilfrid Gibson and haunting, lyrical music by Vartan Aghababian, I find myself delving deeper into the tragic themes of World War 1. As I revisit the brutal imagery and heart-wrenching personal stories Gibson explores in his poetry, I am challenged in new ways, both vocally and emotionally. As I age, these songs and texts age with me, drawing up new inspiration from deeper wells of feeling than I knew were within me.

The last time I performed this cycle for an audience, in June 2011, I experienced a complete emotional collapse on stage as the final chord sounded and the applause began. It felt like a wave I had been holding back for the whole performance overtook me; a combination of relief - to be through the difficult journey - and vulnerability - to have shared that journey with a room full of loved ones and strangers.

I am learning how to sing inside this emotion. How to breathe through it.

This fall I rejoin the Hausmann Quartet to prepare “Seven Songs” for recording on my upcoming album CURRENTS. The string quartet is composed of old friends and new friends-to-be. I eagerly anticipate the process of finding our way together in this piece, and being nourished by their profound artistry and spirited energy. I know this brief period of intensive work will be a journey in itself. I await the depths of feeling that are sure to reveal themselves.

~ Ann Moss

“Seven Songs” Part 2 - Deep Waters

“Seven Songs” Part 3 - Wartime Lyricism

We’re thrilled to introduce the artists on our New American Chamber Music 5 program at Old First Concerts on August 26 at 4pm. Each year we bring together five to six composers and a featured ensemble to present a program of new and recently written chamber music, enabling performers and composers to work in close collaboration to create each new piece.

FEATURED ENSEMBLE - M2B
A Three-Way Musical Love Story (or The Ménage 2 Beat)

CMASH co-founders Ann Moss and Steven Bailey have dazzled audiences with their unique brand of entertaining and thought-provoking recital programs since 2004, with performances at Sacramento Festival of New American Music, Fresno New Music Festival, Noe Valley Chamber Music, San Francisco Song Festival, Florence Crittendon Services and SF Conservatory to name a few. The 2010-11 season started with a bang thanks to the auspicious addition of soprano Heidi Moss. Bringing a third diva into their already potent ensemble would allow them to blur the boundaries between concert and theater repertoire, while inspiring living composers to create brilliant new works for an unlikely trio of exceptional individuals. Their musical chemistry experiment (who ever heard of two sopranos singing chamber music together?) proved not only a success but a sensation! Now, with a west coast premiere and two world premieres under their collective belt, this trynamic trio anticipates a rich future of collaboration with living composers while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of the traditional song recital.

Special Guest - Alexis Lane Jensen

Bay Area native Alexis Lane Jensen is a multi-genre performer who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the California Institute of the Arts. A champion of new and contemporary work, she has sung in many West Coast and World Premiere concerts with groups such as the Berkeley Symphony, Redwood Symphony and the Mirabai Ensemble, and, as a member of the Grammy Nominated Pacific Mozart Ensemble, has had the privilege of sharing the stage with artists as diverse as Sufjan Stevens, Meredith Monk and Sweet Honey in the Rock. She also enjoys an active career in Opera and Musical Theater, having most recently sung the role of Margaret in Machine: A Fire Opera at The Crucible, about which the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joshua Kosman wrote she “…sang beautifully”. Other engagements have included Bat out of Hell, Chrysalis, L’enfant et les sortileges, The Tenderland and Caliban Dreams (West Edge Opera), Beardo (Shotgun Players), The Medium (Cinnabar), Jerry Springer the Opera (Ray of Light), As It Is In Heaven (Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley), Bat Boy, The Musical (Altarena Playhouse), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Berkeley Playhouse), Pirates of Penzance (Lamplighters),The Rake’s Progress, Akhnaten and White Darkness (Oakland Opera Theater), Three Sisters Who Were Not Sisters (Exit Theatre), Dionysis/Playboy of the Western World and Happy End (Goat Hall Productions) and Abigail, The Rock Opera (Buzz/Skycastle Productions). Ms. Jensen is an avid fan of cabaret, jazz and beyond and has produced and performed her own cabaret concerts featuring the music of Weill, Eisler, Bolcom, et.al. She also performs regularly with the Kurt Weill Project, and was named this year’s Best Female Crooner in the SF Cabaret Showcase competition.

Special Guest - Paul Murray

Paul Murray, bass-baritone, has established himself as a respected opera and oratorio singer in the Bay Area, lauded for his rich timbre and dramatic acumen. He received his Master’s degree in 2005 from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and was awarded a Post-Graduate Fellowship in 2006. Since completion of his degrees, Mr. Murray has performed many main stage roles with companies such as Opera San Jose, West Edge Opera (Berkeley Opera), Livermore Valley Opera, and Opera Bangkok. Equally comfortable on the concert stage, Mr. Murray has appeared with the Silicon Valley Symphony, the San Francisco Bach Choir, the San Jose Symphonic Choir, Chora Nova, and will debut with the Santa Rosa Symphony in December 2012. A true believer in the power of singing to heal and balance a life, Mr. Murray has devoted much time to teaching. He served on the faculty of CSU Fresno for two years, and has been adjunct faculty at Santa Clara University for the past four years, teaching private lessons, singing for beginners, opera workshops, and lyric diction. He also teaches at the Reeder Music Academy in Danville, CA, and from his home in Berkeley. Since 2010, Mr. Murray has been the artistic director/conductor of Jubilate Deo, a children’s choir based in Hayward. At home, Mr. Murray enjoys chi kung practice, mountain bike riding, cooking, and spending time with his new son.

Artist Biography - Steven Bailey

Steven Bailey is a pianist of wide versatility, performing in and outside the San Francisco Bay Area as soloist, chamber and collaborative keyboardist. Steven has performed as concerto soloist with Symphony Parnassus, Diablo Symphony, UC-Davis Symphony, San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, and Magnificat Baroque Orchestra. He has performed with American Bach Soloists as guest soloist and continuo organist. He has collaborated with members of the Alexander, Arlekin and Sausalito quartets. He provided live musical accompaniment for SMUIN Ballet’s production of Stravinsky Piano Pieces and was featured on the San Francisco variety program Mornings on Two on FOX Network. He is the regular continuo player for the San Francisco Bach Choir. Steven Bailey’s first solo CD recording, The Art of the Opera Transcription, features seven virtuoso operatic fantasies and paraphrases composed by the master Franz Liszt. Steven often ventures into the arena of impersonation as Blind Boy Grunt. Mr. Bailey holds a Master of Music degree in Piano performance from Boston University. He teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Funny Napkins premiered at Noe Valley Chamber Music in the spring of 2011, and enjoyed a repeat performance at CSU Summer Arts’ Composer/Performer Collaboration Workshop later that summer. We can’t wait to share it with our audience at New American Chamber Music 5 at Old First Concerts on August 26!

Program Note - Funny Napkins (2011)

“Funny Napkins was musically inspired by Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock. It is the prototype for a children’s interactive outreach idea called Project Libretto, wherein school kids would come up with a fantastical story and then I would demonstrate how to write an improvised musical theatre piece out of it. In Funny Napkins, the two main characters are loosely based on the librettists, Heidi Moss’s daughters Ava and Hana (4 and 6 at the time), who also conceived of the title. There is improvised staging and costuming throughout, as the singers play dress up and put on a play. Scene One deals with random subjects one might discuss at bedtime: dinosaurs, marshmallows, counting sheep, etc. In Scene Two the girls, now overtired and increasingly free-associative, dress up as Queen Ava and Princess Flower, list things they’ve learned in school, and engage in a tickle fight. The end of Funny Napkins finds the girls curled up on the floor for story time. They pull out a book of Mozart’s “Sull’ aria” and, unable to resist the onset of nap-time, read/sing each other to sleep.” ~ Liam Wade

Premiere Performance, Noe Valley Chamber Music Finale Gala
front row: Librettists Hana and Ava
back row: M2B - Heidi Moss, Ann Moss & Steven Bailey, with composer Weslie Brown

Composer Biography

Liam Wade’s music has been presented by La Jolla Music Society, ProQuartet, Toronto Music Garden, Noe Valley Chamber Music, Old First Concerts, and the Empyrean Ensemble at the Mondavi Center. His music been featured on tour with CMASH and by the Boston based Firebird Ensemble on their Meat the Composer series. Wade’s opera, Part of the Act, with libretto by John Grimmett was recently commissioned by Washington National Opera as part of the American Opera Initiative and will premiere at the Kennedy Center on November 19, 2012.

As co-founder and Director of Collaborative Programing for the San Francisco based new music repertory group CMASH, he has composed numerous song cycles and individual songs for co-founder Ann Moss, as well chamber works for One Art Ensemble and M2B, and four string quartets for the Cecilia String Quartet and the Hausmann Quartet. In 2010-11, the Empyrean Ensemble premiered two large scale chamber music works at the Mondavi Center. Liam is currently collaborating with composer Weslie Brown on her Opera, Chivalry; writer Doug Rice on a performance version of his book, Dream Memoirs of a Fabulist; and with Ann Moss and producer Leslie Ann Jones on Moss’s debut album for 2013, CURRENTS.

Wade studied composition at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, France; Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA; and University of California, Davis. His composition mentors have been Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, Howard Frazin, Kurt Rohde and Ross Bauer. For the last two years he has participated at Dweezilla and Three of a Perfect Pair Camp, intense summer workshops held near Woodstock, NY. There, he studied improvisation and musicianship with Zappa Plays Zappa, Flo and Eddie, and King Crimson. He currently studies bass and guitar with Zappa Plays Zappa alumni Pete Griffin and Jamie Kime.

It gives us immense pleasure to present the premiere of Song of Solace / Song of Regret (2012) by Kurt Erickson on our New American Chamber Music 5 program at Old First Concerts, August 26, 2012.

Program Note - Song of Solace / Song of Regret (2012)

“I have a confession to make; my pieces come from a very personal, very private place. I know and admire many fellow composers who take a cooler, analytical stance towards their art and aesthetic, and I admire their craftsmanship and outward reserve. But that just doesn’t work for me (no judgement).

From a technical standpoint, my aim in writing these two little pieces was to see if I could set a short text in two similar but completely different ways. I did this in an earlier piece of mine (the outer movements of my song set Chicago Songs) and I felt this technique would be the right approach for this poem as well.

Besides their expectant, quietly intense natures/moods, what these two settings share in common is an interest in exploring the outer extremities of the piano for expressive purposes. In Song of Solace, the vocal line seeks clarity and comfort in the middle registers, while the piano acts as a kind of buttressing force that often lashes out in a spirit of hostility and chaos. In Song of Regret, the vocal line moves in a smoother, more step-wise fashion, while the piano explores the upper ranges of the piano with ringing bell-like chimes that act as a constant reminder but to what we can only guess.

The vocal lines in both pieces come across as direct and heartfelt responses to an impending sense of conflict, and one’s natural tendency to go to a calm and serene place when confronted with inner turmoil.”

Composer Biography

Kurt Erickson’s music has been commissioned and performed by a wide range of ensembles - notable compositional highlights include a premiere and Guest Composer residency at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, a San Francisco Girls Chorus premiere performance at Davies Symphony Hall, and a performance and residency with the Minnesota Orchestra. As a young composer in his twenties, Erickson began his composing career serving composer residencies at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, St. Mary the Virgin, Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi. More recently, performances of his song set Chicago Songs during the 2010-11 season took place in New York, San Francisco, Cal State Sacramento’s Festival of New American Music, Cal State Fresno’s New Music Festival, University of South Dakota, San Diego, and Modesto. He has worked extensively with San Francisco Opera Ballet Master Lawrence Pech on a number of ballet and summer festival projects. Erickson frequently serves as a guest judge at colleges and universities, including a Guest Composer residency at the June 2011 Cal State University Summer Arts Program. His new one-act opera What Your Parents Don’t Want You To Know … (about fairy tales) received performances during the 2011-12 season at Houston’s Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival (June 2011), Sacramento’s Next Stage Theater (spring 2012), and at Fresno Community College (fall 2011).

We are delighted to welcome Season Contributors Sanford Dole and Brad Erickson to the CMASH community and to premiere excerpts from their Gertrude And Alice: Scenes From A Shared Life on our New American Chamber Music 5 program at Old First Concerts, August 26, 2012.

Program Note - Gertrude And Alice: Scenes From A Shared Life (2012)

“In the Spring of 2011 Ann Moss asked me if I would like to write a piece for CMASH. But the catch was that she wanted a piece for two sopranos as Heidi Moss would be part of the show this year. Of course I said yes! But having no idea what the subject would be I approached my friend Brad Erickson, an accomplished playwright, to see if he would like to collaborate on the project. Brad and I have worked together in the past on an opera about the Cisco Kid.

The four of us met over a spirited dinner so Brad could get a sense of the personalities of the two sopranos. We tossed around various subjects before Brad came up with the idea of mining the story Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, two fascinating characters in the history of the arts. (This was at the time when local museums were featuring the art from their home in Paris.)

I told him that I wanted to create a set of five songs, thinking that a series of three-minute songs based on 1- or 2-stanza poems would make a nice 15-minute cycle. But since Brad writes plays, not poetry, the work is becoming more of an opera than a simple song cycle. Well, it has aspects of both. The libretto is a script running several pages for each song. It has become some kind of hybrid thanks to the brilliant portrayal of the characters that Ann and Heidi being to the performance. I know this because the first two songs were presented earlier this year at a Sanford Dole Ensemble concert. It was a revelation to see/hear this music acted as well as sung!

And now, we’ve added a third song to the set. It seems that I work slowly and so it is still a work-in-progress, with two more “movements” yet to appear. After a lot of research into the lives of these amazing women, Brad has isolated various aspects of their lives as a couple. He has dramatized these moments and created a series of snapshots which I have set to music. After a description of the famous soirees that they hosted every week at their home, we next hear about how they met. The third song describes the first time Gertrude was asked to lecture on her writing. Eventually the cycle will include a song about Alice’s cooking and finally a nostalgic look back at their lives and what it means to be an artist.”

Composer Biography

Sanford Dole is Music Director of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco and Artistic Director of Bay Choral Guild, a 40-voice community choir based in Palo Alto. For the past several years he has produced concerts of the Sanford Dole Ensemble, an all-pro group dedicated to presenting concerts of contemporary music scored or voices and instruments. A native of Berkeley, he has been active in the Bay Area as a conductor, singer and composer for his entire adult life. He received his Bachelor and Master’s degrees, in composition and conducting respectively, from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Mr. Dole was a founding member of the male vocal ensemble, Chanticleer. He was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus from 1974-1998 and served as Assistant Director of SFSC from 1987-97. From 1999-2009 he sang with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s Chorale. As a composer, Sanford has been commissioned by Chanticleer, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Mt. Holyoak College, Silicon Valley Men’s Chorus and others. His 35-minute cantata The Fabric of Peace  was commissioned in 2008 by the Oakland Symphony Chorus in celebration of their 50th anniversary. Water: Making Everything New was created for the Pacific Mozart Ensemble in 2010.  His works are published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Church Publishing.  

Librettist Biography

Brad is a playwright, actor and arts administrator who serves as executive director of Theatre Bay Area, one of the nation’s largest regional performing arts service organizations.

His play, The War at Home, premiered at San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) in 2006 and won “Best New Script” from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.  His play Woody & Me was named best new play in the 2000 Festival of Emerging American Theatre and premiered at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis.   His play American Dream, el sueno del otro lado, was developed by several groups and will premiere at NCTC in August of 2013.  His most recent play, Milagro, was supported by a residency at The Studios of Key West and developmental readings by The Playwrights Lab at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley and at NCTC.  In August 2012 Brad returns to The Studios of Key West where he is developing a new play, Jesus in Carmel, and completing the libretto for Cisco, a new opera with composer Sanford Dole.

Brad is also an actor and has appeared in numerous productions, most recently in Octopus at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.  Brad holds a BFA in Acting from the Goodman School of Drama, now the Theatre School of DePaul University.