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Martin Herman: Arena
Arena, a trio of etudes written in 1990-91, begins with arena Brains, a combative, almost violent piece in which the right hand is pitted against the left. It takes its title and inspiration from a print by Robert Longo. The print suggested an approach to the material and the title provided an apt metaphor for the musical processes going on in the piece. The second piece, Sky, Blue Sky, opens in a mysterious, elegiac mood, and then moves into a restlessly swaying middle section before reaching a final eruptive climax. Strange Attractors, the concluding movement, explores states of stability and instability. The term “strange attractors” refers to mathematical feedback loops (so-called “chaos equations”) whose output can be fed back into them as new input. From these feedback loops, stable patterns can emerge that orbit around “attractor” points. Unstable patterns may also emerge that have no “attractor” points. In this piece, the composer's goal was to generate, in musical terms, a stable system which is challenged and destabilized at strategic moments in the piece, but which, overall, tends toward equilibrium. To this end, he designed a computer model of a non-linear, dynamic system to generate some of the musical material. The work thus makes a foray into the domain of computer-assisted, algorithmic composition, although the composer's intuition and technical judgment play the dominant role.
Martin Herman has worked at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Pierre Boulez, director, as an independent researcher in computer music and at CEMAMu (Centre d'Etudes Mathematiques et Automatiques Musicales), the studio of Iannis Xenakis. He is currently on the faculty of California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches music composition and theory and directs the computer and Electronic Music Studio. His opera, the Scarlet Letter, premiered in Los Angeles in 1994, He currently devotes himself to multi-media projects.
Augusta Read Thomas: Whites
Augusta Read Thomas' coolly austere Whites resulted from the composer's desire to make a sonic equivalent of a visual exploration of white.
Augusta Read Thomas has been composing since childhood, showing dedication and talent which brought her early recognition. Her works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and other major ensembles. She has written a violin concerto for Joel Smirnoff of the Juilliard Quartet and an extended orchestra work for Mstislav Rostropovich and the National Symphony Orchestra. She has also received commissions from Absolut Vodka and Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, France.
Stephen Jaffe: Impromptu
Stephen Jaffe's Impromptu (1987) is a short set of variations based on a bluesy pavane. The piece was written for a 70th birthday concert in honor of composer George Rochberg, and is based on a pair of gestures from the composer's Symphony No. 2.
Stephen Jaffe's music has been widely performed throughout the US and in Europe by ensembles such as R.A.I. of Rome, Spectrum concerts Berlin, the San Francisco and New Jersey Symphonies and the New York New Music Ensemble. His works have been recorded by the CRI and Albany labels, and are published by Theodore Presser. Stephen Jaffe is on the faculty of Duke University, where he directs the concert series “Encounters with the Music of Our Time”.
Randall Woolf: Nobody Move
According to it composer Randall Woolf, the hard-driving Nobody Move “tries to find the common ground between the menace of the hard-core Hollywood villain and the fearless bravado of the virtuoso pianist, with the audience as helpless victim, too frightened to bat an eye”.
Randall Woolf's works have been performed at the Tanglewood, June-in-Buffalo, Bang on a Can and Monadnock festivals. He has received awards from the National Institute/Academy of Arts and Letters, Harvard University, US West, and the National Orchestral Association. Recent Commissions include works for Boston Musica Viva, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. His Danceetudes have been recorded by Kathleen Supove on CRI's Emergency Music label. He currently lives in New York City,
John Harbison: Four Occasional Pieces
John Harbison's Four Occasional Pieces were written over a ten-year period between larger, more serious works. The first, Gospel Shout, is an affectionate, witty look at traditional Afro-American music. The brief and gentle Two-part Invention which follows was a birthday gift to conductor and composer Andre Previn, and the clever, quiet thank-you Notes was similarly a gift to friends. Standards pays wry tribute to bar-room and cocktail pianists the world over in its friendly parody of favorite popular tunes.
In 1981, Michael Walsh of Time magazine described John Harbison as “a leader in music's humanistic revival”. Harbison's work stands out for its unusual combination of inwardness and toughness. He grew up playing viola, tuba and jazz piano and went on to study at Harvard, Princeton and the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. At Andre Previn's request, he served as resident composer with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has also been resident composer at the Santa Fe Festival, the American Academy in Rome, and Tanglewood. In 1987, his cantata, The Flight into Egypt, won the Pulitzer prize for Music. He holds an endowed professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His works are published by G. Schirmer, New York.
Robert Kyr: White Tigers
Robert Kyr; White Tigers is based on a legend found in Maxine Hong Kingston's novel The Woman Warrior in which a young girl learns the ways of a woman warrior in part by emulating a white tiger - the wildest, most mysterious beast in the jungle - and goes on to liberate her people from oppressions. The piece, coloristic and dramatic, is constructed in two arches. During the first, the music gradually intensifies until it bursts into an explosion of cascading glissandi. A series of resounding climaxes, the music presses forward finally to unfold in a triumphant chorale.
Robert Kyr's wide-ranging interests have led him to explore and master diverse musical idioms and styles ranging form Javanese gamelan music to live performance with computers. He has received commissions from Ensemble Project Ars Nova (PAN), the Fires of London, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and others. As a pianist, he collaborates with computer artist Daniel Scheidt in works for Yamaha MIDI Grand, computer and Disklaviers. He was educated at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the Royal College of Music in London, and Harvard. He teaches at the University of Oregon School of Music, where he is director of the Music Today Festival, the Vanguard Concert Series and the Pacific Rim Gamelan. His catalogue of works is published by ECS (E.C. Schirmer, Boston). Several of his works are available on compact disk.
Patricia Goodson, pianist
American pianist Patricia Goodson maintains a busy schedule as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout Europe and North America. Her playing, described by critics as “powerful and seductive” has been featured on television and radio in Europe and the US.
A resident of Prague, Ms. Goodson has performed with leading Czech musicians, such as cellist Jirí Bárta and pianist Milan Langer. She also works actively with Czech ensembles. In 1993 she joined the Czech new music ensemble AGON, for their British debut at the south Bank Center. As leader of the Music Now ensemble, she has toured in Europe and on the west coast of America. She has served as pianist-in-residence at the annual percussion workshops in Bydgoszcz, Poland where she performed with noted Polish percussionist Stanislaw Skoczynski.
Ms. Goodson has worked closely with Czech composers, and premiered numerous of their works. In 1995, the eminent Czech composer Ivanan Loudová wrote for and dedicated to Ms. Goodson, Prague Imaginations, which Ms. Goodson premiered at the 1995 Music Now Prague festival. In addition, Miroslav Pudlák, Hanus Bartoñ, and Roman Novák - members of the younger generation of Czech composers - have written chamber works for her ensemble.
She has been equally active with American composers. She gave the first European performance of Robert Kyr's “White Tigers”, and, together with pianist Milan Langer, premiered Martin Herman's tour-de-force “Parallel City” for two pianos. Before coming to Prague, she was a regular performer with the Harvard Group for New Music, where she introduced works by Robert Kyr, Jeffrey Stadelmann and others.
In conjunction with her performing activities, Ms. Goodson is the founder and Artistic Director of the Music Now Prague Festival, which is devoted to discovering and promoting new works by Czech and American composers through performances and workshops in the US and Czech Republic.
Engineer: Tanislav Sykora
Producer: Jaroslav Rybár
Cover Art: Barbara Benish
Photograph: Adrian Paul
Special thanks to: Lyle Frink, Susan Hamilton, Robert Kyr, Nick Pappas, Javier Caba, Martin Herman, Jirí Stilec.
This recording was funded in part by a grant from California State University, Long Beach.
© 1997 Patricia Goodson
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