To All My Friends Presents “To All My Friends, “Star V,” and “Factor Fiction”—Original Compositions by Professor Beth Denisch

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Monday / March 11, 2024 / 7:30 p.m.

David Friend Recital Hall (DFRH)

921 Boylston Street

Boston

02115

United States

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Beth Denisch

Image courtesy of the artist

Concert Description

Primary Duo: Sarah Bob, piano, and Aaron Trant, percussion perform Star V, an exploration of varying levels of indeterminacy for piano and percussion in three movements: 1. They Stir Waters, 2. Gold Radiation and 3. Star Blink. This composition is about doing and not doing, choosing one and not the other, and not choosing. Bob, founding artistic director of the New Gallery Concert Series, and Trant, composer in his own right, have been bringing their eclectic combination of rhythmic lyricism as Primary Duo to concert halls across North America since 2000. With a repertoire that ranges from masterworks of the contemporary genre to self-commissioned world premieres (including Star V), Trant and Bob’s individual strengths together create an ensemble rich with improvisation, jazz, classical, avant garde, and pop.

Professors Kathryn Wright, vocals, Wendy Rolfe, flutes, Margaret Phillips, bassoon, Rhonda Rider, cello, Jhon Alvarado, guitar, and Geneviève Leclair, conductor, perform To All My Friends. Beyond their impressive international acclaim, Rolfe stands out as a prominent performer in the U.S. and at international festivals, showcasing her mastery on historic and modern flutes. Wright boasts an extensive résumé, having graced the stages of over 65 orchestras in North America, including a notable performance with the prestigious San Francisco Symphony. Phillips, a key player with the Boston Symphony and Pops (also contrabassoon), contributes her exceptional talent, while Rider, artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon National Park and recipient of the Artist of the Year award from the Boston Globe, has left an indelible mark with her performances in the Lydian Quartet and Triple Helix Piano Trio. Adding to this distinguished lineup is Alvarado who serves as a voice for contemporary classical guitar music with award-winning performances focused on bringing the classical guitar into the 21st century. Amidst their collective artistry, Leclair, an active guest conductor across Canada, the United States, and the U.K., stands poised to debut with the Calgary Philharmonic and make outstanding return performances with The National Ballet of Canada in the 2023-24 season. Together, they will play the world premiere ofTo All My Friends, a composition that reflects themes of loss, awakening, and connection.

The internationally accomplished musicians of The Calyx Piano Trio are Catherine French, violin, Boston Symphony Orchestra and at Tanglewood and the Curtisville Consortium; Jennifer Lucht, cello, concert soloist with many orchestras and founder of the Carolina New Music Festival, and Nina Ferrigno, piano, soloist and also primary keyboardist with multiple orchestras, and cofounder and director the Missouri Chamber MusicFestival. The Calyx Trio performs with brilliant virtuosity and exquisite musicality that never fails to delight audiences. Factor Fiction (commissioned by the Trio) was inspired by a dream and flashes of clarity amidst climates of relativity, politically and socially, but with an ongoing persistence to connect and joyously celebrate life together.

Concert Program

To All My Friends | 2024

1. "Yin Yang Clouds," Melani Udaeta, poet
2. "(Lost in My) Cinnamon Dreams," Susan Ashley, poet
3. "Middle Woman," Sharon Lopez Mooney, poet
4. "To All My Friends," Hauntie (May Yang), poet

Kathryn Wright, vocalist
Wendy Rolfe, flutes
Jhon Alvarado, guitar
Margaret Phillips, bassoon
Rhonda Ryder, cello
Genevieve Leclair, conductor

Star V | 2022

1. They Stir Waters
2. Gold Radiation
3. Star Blink

Primary Duo
Sarah Bob, piano
Aaron Trant, percussion

Factor Fiction | 2018

1. Friend or Foe
2. Sing Dance Sing
3. Forlana

Calyx Trio
Catherine French, violin
Jennifer Lucht, cello
Nina Ferrigno, piano

To All My Friends—The Poems

"Yin Yang Clouds"

By Melani Udaeta

Beneath Yin yang clouds
it’s all in how you see it,
what’s Sun or the rain.

"Lost In My Cinnamon Dreams"
By Susan Ashley

Cinnamon memories catch my soul in snares
as I trace in anguish the curve of your lips
in a photo stained sepia with my tears –
a thousand words spoken through my fingertips;

wishing you to be the breeze teasing my hair
or the sun on my skin after its eclipse,
let mare’s tails twine us in a heavenly kiss –
cinnamon stirs my bittersweet reminisce.

"Middle Woman"

By Sharon Lopez Mooney

i am a middle womon
life parades past me hoping
but i do not choose
my eyes are sharp
never tire of looking
the world is waiting
to hear me declare my name
there have been sounds
but they take no shape
make no music
so I wear ties and shirts
and sit with my legs spread
my mouth is slightly open
i am ready

i am a middle womon
the chords of my voice have stretched dissonant and sweet
will no longer be quieted
i have been practicing these years
can throw my voice across treetops
it can go farther than i ever imagined
i have been built with those hard woods the weight of my living
bears down against the grain
resting on knots that cause weakness but add color and beauty
fierce winds bend and move me
flexing
i am ready

i am a middle womon
half of me has been in the making
the next half lies in the morning just before dawn
i will enjoy this new sculpting
i have more tools for the cutting now
a more steady hand
my stomach has the strength
when i swallow evil i can call it back up
there is nothing i have to keep down
i will taste everything
my belly will bear the load
these muscles are hard
i am ready

"To All My Friends"

By Hauntie (May Yang)

That I could be this human at this time
breathing, looking, seeing, smelling

That I could be this moment at this time
resting, calmly moving, feeling

That I could be this excellence at this time
sudden, changed, peaceful, & woke

To all my friends who have been with me in weakness when water falls rush down my two sides

To all my friends who have felt me in anguish when this earthen back breaks between the crack of two blades

To all my friends who have held me in rage when fire tears through swallows behind tight grins

I know you
I see you
I hear you

Although the world is silent around you

I know you
I see you
I hear you

About the Music

To All My Friends was written while reflecting on friendship, loss, growing up, and making new connections. The spoken words are rhythmically notated and this unusual instrumental combination, selected for musical reasons, also reflects the many different types of friends and associations we develop along our life paths. I searched through many anthologies of poetry and numerous poetry collectives online collecting a group of poems and then selecting, from that group, these four poems.

Star V, commissioned by the New Gallery Concert Series and Primary Duo, explores varying levels of indeterminacy. In the first movement, 1. They Stir Waters, with traditional notation for the pianist, Sarah Bob, the percussionist, Aaron Trant, selects multiple instruments of his own choosing while realizing graphic notation from a score that assigns those shapes to specific places in relation to the pianist’s music.

2. Gold Radiation represents the galactic highway of sound travel with a graphic score-map where the performers follow a curving line from the upper left to the lower right corner of the page with occasional groupings of multi-colored stars interrupting the line. The curvy line byways are moderate to fast moving melodies with some improvisation. The multi-colored stars are the starphonic sections with performer selected sustained sounds incorporating timbral variations.

3. Star Blink was inspired by the ancient seven-year agricultural cycle of letting the fields lie fallow in the seventh year to replenish, and to allow fruitfulness in the other years. While working on how the “doing” and “not doing” would happen musically, I read about a red giant star thousands of light-years away that “blinked,” dimming significantly for seven years before returning to normal. In relation to Star V, this star, Gaia17bpp, when blinking, corresponded, in my imagination, to the concept of this movement and all of Star V: doing and not doing, choosing, and not choosing. That in “not doing” one can return to “doing” with a fresh perspective.

Factor Fiction began in the middle of a night when the moonlight illuminated everything; and so much so that each object’s shadow—leaf, fence, house, grass, stone—popped with precision. Colors appeared wax-coated, and shadows were exact in their blackness, as if drawn with the blackest ink. Ensuing thoughts obsessed on this surreal moment of clarity and that led to wonderings about its antipodal lunar associations with obfuscation and deception.

Creative ideas about musical representation of simultaneous similar and contradictory elements merged with reflections on a polarized political climate of alternative facts, false truths, and their consistent assertions. The first half of "Friend and Foe" alternates contrasting passages that find reconciliation in the second half with the slow-moving melody, now continuous, in retrograde.

"Dream Sing Dream" is in the compound ternary form of the Minuet and Trio movement. 'Dream,' written before any of the other sections, was inspired by the moon scene described above. Clusters spread out to chords and then back again; pointillistic textures speed up and slow down while gradually transforming into something else, and the evocative melody is not answered. "Sing" came later during a singular happy moment when one becomes unconcerned about anything other than the expression of love through a lushly harmonized melody. "Forlana" was inspired by a traditional Italian folk dance of the same name and surrenders to the joy of creative expression through melody and dance.

About the Performers

Jhon Alvarado

Jhon Alvarado re-energizes the classical guitar repertoire with captivating contemporary performances of world-renowned 20th and 21st century composers. Alvarado's award-winning performances are always unique and exciting with the inclusion of music from today’s composers and the goal of bringing the classical guitar into the 21st century. His eclectic concert programs continually take his audience members on trips around the world discovering music from different corners of the globe, often beginning in Latin America and ending as far as Japan and the Middle East.

Calyx Piano Trio

“Dynamic…virtuosic…refined…delightful…a composer’s dream come true…” Through concerts and recordings, the Calyx Piano Trio has been exciting listeners with expressive, detailed ensemble playing and brilliant virtuosity since 2001. Each member of the trio—violinist Catherine French (Boston Symphony Orchestra), cellist Jennifer Lucht (Director, Carolina Chamber Music Festival) and pianist Nina Ferrigno (Director, Missouri Chamber Music Festival)—has been described as “a shining star in her own right.” With a repertoire combining classical masterworks with original pieces by living composers, the group’s commitment to expanding the trio repertoire includes commission funding by the Barlow Foundation and Chamber Music America and new piano trios by Derek Bermel, Beth Denisch, Amy Beth Kirsten, James Lee III, and Lansing McLoskey.

Geneviève Leclair is an active guest conductor across Canada, the United States, and the U.K. Highlights of the 2023-24 season include her debut with Calgary Philharmonic and return performances with the National Ballet of Canada. She has worked with orchestras including Orchestre Métropolitain, Spartanburg Philharmonic, Northern Ballet, Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke, Winnipeg Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Symphony New Hampshire, and Symphony New Brunswick. Her performances have been hailed as “impeccable” (Boston Phoenix), “ravishing,” and of “exemplary pacing and reading” (Hugh Fraser), while her conducting style is praised for its “verve and precision”, “confident dynamics and tempos, crisp rhythms, and crystalline phrasing creat[ing] powerful forward momentum” (Carla DeFord).

Primary Duo

Primary Duo is Sarah Bob, founding artistic director of the New Gallery Concert Series, and Aaron Trant, composer in his own right. They have been bringing their eclectic combination of rhythmic lyricism as Primary Duo to concert halls across North America since 2000. With a repertoire that ranges from masterworks of the contemporary genre to self-commissioned world premieres including Star V, Trant and Bob’s individual strengths together create an ensemble rich with improvisation, jazz, classical, avant garde, and pop.

Margaret Phillips

Margaret Phillips is an active bassoonist and contrabassoonist in the Boston and New England area. She has been an extra with the Boston Symphony since 1993 and has toured internationally with the Boston Pops. In addition, Phillips has recorded with diverse groups, including Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Danilo Pérez, and Phish. She is on the faculties of Berklee, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Boston University. She considers herself very fortunate to have a rich musical life and is thrilled to be performing the music of her friend and colleague for many decades tonight.

Rhonda Rider

For over two decades, cellist Rhonda Rider was a member of the Naumburg Award-winning Lydian Quartet and Triple Helix Piano Trio. Always interested in bringing classical music to unusual places, she has been an artist-in-residence at Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest National Parks. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and adjudicated at the Fischoff, Stulberg and Concert Artists Guild Competitions. In the summer, she performs and teaches at festivals including Green Mountain, Music from Salem, Tanglewood, and the Asian Youth Orchestra (Hong Kong). Rider teaches at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Wendy Rolfe

Wendy Rolfe performs on historical flutes with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, The American Classical Orchestra, Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and is piccoloist and flutist with the Cape Symphony. She has been guest artist at festivals in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, Finland, China, and the Caribbean.. Her recording "Images of Eve" features "Three Women" by Beth Denisch. She has recorded for Disney, and for Ken Burns's documentaries. Rolfe was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Ecuador and Kenya and toured the USA with a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant. She is professor of flute at Berklee.

Kathryn Wright

Kathryn Wright, soprano, has performed numerous new works, collaborating with many American composers. She sang the title role in Henry Mollicone’s Starbird (Kennedy Center), performed entirely improvised music theater works with the New Music Theater Ensemble (Minneapolis), and has sung premieres in England, Scotland, the Czech Republic, and the United States, including at the avant-garde music theater venue La MaMa (New York City), to New York Times critical acclaim. She has performed leading roles with regional opera companies and has appeared as guest soloist with 65 orchestras in the United States and Canada. With San Francisco Symphony, she performed Berg’s Lulu Suite, with Edo de Waart conducting.

About the Poets

Susan Ashley is a wife, mother, and an award-winning poet. She has been writing poetry for nearly a decade and creates poems in both lyric poetry forms and free verse. Ashley strives to express herself in a unique voice using dynamic and dramatic imagery. Her poetry is published on poetrysoup.com and her works have been included in several anthologies. Poetic expression allows Ashley's imagination to fly impassioned skies in all its shades of fiery emotion and fantasy; to travel above the rays and beyond the blaze of sunrise and sunset to explore enchanting galaxies of pulsing perception and invited introspection.

Sharon Lopez Mooney has been a writer and poet for over 40 years in different genres and different jobs—clear person-to-person communication has always been her practice ground. Now retired, she sits at the foot of the sacred Mt. Tetakawi, happily living in Sonora Mexico, on the shore of the bahia/bay to the great Sea of Cortez. Poetry is her primary interface into the world.

Melani Udaeta is a writer of various different forms of poetry currently residing in the Florida panhandle. Her poetry can be found on Facebook at Melrose Poetry, on Instagram at melrose_poetry18, and under Melani Udaeta on poetrysoup.com. She is a featured poet in their anthologies P.S. It’s Poetry and P.S It’s Still Poetry. Her work is also included in the following Open Skies poetry collections: The Sacred Feminine Vol II and III, ‘Dark Reflections, Myth, Legends, and Lore, and Open Skies Poetry, Vol 1. all available on Amazon. Her debut book—Of Love And Music—is also available now on Amazon.

Hauntie is the nom de plume and enigmatic figure performed by May Yang, a Hmong American artist and writer from California’s Central Valley. Their debut collection, To Whitey and the Cracker Jack (Anhinga Press, 2017), received the 2016 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Hauntie surfaces the intimacy of secrecy between Hmong ancestral knowledge and liberal empire. She reckons with the violence of missing history and tests our capacity to imagine how refugee lifeworlds sustain love, compassion, and our collective humanity. Yang is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Merced, in the Interdisciplinary Humanities.

About the Composer

Beth Denisch’s music has been performed at Moscow’s Concert Studio of Radio Kultura, in Russia, at Jordan Hall in Boston, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, across the U.S., and in Canada, China, Ecuador, Finland, Greece, Japan, and Scotland. Radio play and tracks are available online; CDs from Albany, Juxtab, Odyssey, and Interval record labels. Scores are published/distributed by Juxtab Music, ClearNote Publications, and TrevCo Music. Denisch frequently draws inspiration from artists as well as authors such as Henry James in Sorrow and Tenderness, commissioned by the Handel and Haydn Society; Jeanette Winterson, for Jordan and the Dog Woman, commissioned by the Equinox Chamber Players; and Kathleen Jamie’s The Tree House, commissioned by the Concord Women’s Chorus. The Calyx Trio commissioned Factor Fiction and Radius Ensemble commissioned Star IV. Many ensembles and organizations have awarded Denisch including the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin in Moscow for Fire Mountain Intermezzo; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with the Philadelphia Classical Symphony for The Singing Tree, inspired by the Maxfield Parrish painting; and the Composers Guild for Motherwell Lorca’s Bagpipe Lament (piano solo version). Others who have supported Denisch’s music include The PatsyLu Fund of Open Meadows Foundation, American Music Center, Our Bodies Ourselves, and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Denisch (D.M.A., Boston University) is professor of composition at Berklee College of Music where she teaches music composition and theory at the Boston campus and with Berkee Online and is the author of Contemporary Counterpoint (Hal Leonard/Berklee Press).

About her music:
• “…fierce rhythmic patterns,” Bernard Holland, New York Times
• “... brimmed with personality and drive ...” Anthony Tommasini, Boston Globe
• “... wonderfully evocative ... simply splendid,” David Cleary, New Music Connoisseur