Oliver Herbert—renowned cellist and son of two former NWS Fellows—is hailed for his “wonderful youthful exuberance… coupled with a highly sophisticated musical expression and outstanding technique.” (Santa Cruz Sentinel) The recent Avery Fisher Career Grant winner will perform Robert Schumann’s lush Fantasiestücke and Jacques Ibert’s playful Concerto, before joining the NWS Cello Fellows for Julius Eastman’s The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, which comes to life with the help of dancers from Kyle Marshall Choreography. Hannah Kendall experiments with the 12-tone technique in her delightful Vera and Brass Fellows relish in Finland’s folklore for Jean Sibelius’s Prelude and Tiera. 

This concert is generously supported by the Estate of Douglas S. Cramer and by the NWS Collaborations Fund.

This concert is part of the Chamber Music Series. NWS Fellows and acclaimed guest artists collaborate at these intimate concerts, performing a wide range of repertoire for small ensembles. Subscriptions for this 6-concert series are $72. Click here to explore the full subscription! 

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Program

Robert Schumann

Fantasiestücke for Cello and Piano, Op. 73 (1849 )
Approximate duration: 12 minutes

“For some time now,” Robert Schumann wrote to a friend in 1849, “I’ve been very busy—it’s been my most fruitful year—it seemed as if the outer storms compelled people to turn inward.” The “outer storms” to which Schumann referred were the pockets of revolutionary unrest that spread through Europe, including flare-ups in his home city of Dresden. He still completed nearly 40 works that year, among them a set of “Fantasy Pieces,” or Fantasiestücke. He conceived the score as a duet for clarinet and piano, but he made sure to publish alternate parts that allowed the clarinet line to be played by violin or cello to make it accessible to as many customers as possible.

Schumann was the son of an author and bookseller, and literary influences figured prominently in his musical outlook. His first use of the title Fantasiestücke, applied to a set of 1837 piano miniatures, was a nod to the writer E. T. A. Hoffman and his short story collection, Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. Schumann had scribbled Soiréestücke (“Night Pieces”) on the manuscript of his clarinet and piano work, but he switched the title to Fantasiestücke when he published the duets in 1849.

The first selection, labeled “Tender and with expression,” has the feeling of a song without words. The middle movement, marked “Lively, light,” raises the piano accompaniment to the level of equal partnership in the melodic dialogue. The final section, “Quick and with fire,” has the type of quick mood changes and exploratory escapades that match the tradition of a freewheeling musical “Fantasy.”

Julius Eastman

The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc for 10 Cellos  (1981 )
Approximate duration: 20 minutes

Julius Eastman, a gay Black provocateur with exceptional gifts as a composer and singer, died in obscurity in 1990. With his radical perspective on identity politics and a sound-world that intensifies the cyclical processes of minimalism, Eastman is resonating with 21st-century listeners and filling concert halls that were never accessible to him while alive.

In the late 1970s, Eastman was living in the Bowery, a notoriously gritty neighborhood in lower Manhattan that was filled with clubs, including the iconic CBGB. He quoted a riff from a song he heard and apparently loved by Patti Smith—the queen of New York’s punk scene—in the hard-driving opening to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, as noted by Josh Langhoff in The Cresset. 

Its sanctified title notwithstanding, The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc used the medieval martyrdom of a gender-fluid warrior as an entry point to explore themes of resistance and freedom. He addressed the saint directly in his program note, writing, “Dear Joan, when meditating on your name I am given strength and dedication… I shall emancipate myself from the materialistic dreams of my parents; I shall emancipate myself from the bind of the past and the present; I shall emancipate myself from myself.”

After Eastman introduced The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc at The Kitchen in 1981, the score went missing. Fortunately a recording of that concert survived, and the composer and cellist Clarice Jensen undertook a meticulous reconstruction. The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (of which Jensen is artistic director) launched a new life for this rapturous score with a performance in 2016.

Joan by Kyle Marshall Choreography

Joan is a quartet celebrating power over tyranny, motivated by Julius Eastman’s score The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc. The story of Joan d’Arc, a female warrior who is called by God to lead her army to victory against an occupying oppressor, is central to this dance. The French origins of this legend are reinterpreted to remember the history of the Maroons, Seminoles and other communities of revolutionary people who fought for their freedom against slavery and colonial rule. Flanking “Joan” are three saints who symbolize the spirits of her ancestors who guide and fight by her side.

Originally choreographed as a duet for Oluwadamilare Ayorinde and Bria Bacon, the duet Joan premiered and was commissioned by the Elizabeth Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 2019.

Jean Sibelius

Petite Suite for Brass Septet  (1891 )
Approximate duration: 4 minutes

When Jean Sibelius was born in 1865, his homeland was controlled by the Russian Empire, but his family spoke Swedish, like many in that territory that had been ruled by Sweden since the Middle Ages. The Finland that now reveres Sibelius as a national hero did not exist as an independent nation yet, nor did it have a unified identity or language, until artists and intellectuals of Sibelius’ generation advanced the cause of political autonomy.

Sibelius’ music studies advanced as far as they could in Helsinki, but to reach his true potential he traveled abroad, spending 1889-90 in Berlin and then 1890-91 in Vienna. While he was there taking lessons and drafting effective student pieces like this Prelude for Brass Septet, he also dedicated himself to learning the Finnish language and studying its history and folklore. These ingredients would comingle in the coming years to form the Sibelius’ unmistakable sound world. 

Jean Sibelius

Tiera for Brass Septet and Percussion  (1898 )
Approximate duration: 5 minutes

To find the soul of Finnish music, Sibelius tapped a unique source by adapting the hypnotic modes and rhythms of the Kalevala, an ancient folk poem that preserved local mythology through oral tradition. He also took inspiration from the stories themselves, like when he wrote this miniature tone poem for brass and percussion named after Tiera, an eager warrior sidekick. Composed in the same year as Sibelius’ First Symphony and the original version of Finlandia, this brief episode of musical storytelling shows how far the developing composer had come in capturing his country’s essence.

Hannah Kendall

Vera for Clarinet and Strings  (2008)
Approximate duration: 9 minutes

Hannah Kendall began playing violin at the age of four with the encouragement of her grandfather, a jazz saxophonist from Guyana. She also trained as a singer, but it was only once she took a required composition course as an undergraduate that she found her calling to become a composer.

Learning to compose requires a reckoning with the past, and in this early work for clarinet and strings, Kendall applied some of the most imposing techniques from the 20th century in surprising and delightful new ways. Anyone who associates 12-tone composition with the arcane dissonances of Schoenberg and Webern will be surprised to learn that Vera is also based on the 12-tone principle that places notes into ordered rows. The opening section concentrates on the “white notes” of the keyboard that blend together with little friction, juxtaposed against a contrasting section that uses the remaining tones to create a “heavier and darker effect,” as Kendall wrote in a program note.

Jacques Ibert

Concerto for Cello and Wind Instruments  (1925 )
Approximate duration: 13 minutes

Jacques Ibert studied at the Paris Conservatory in the years before World War I, in a cohort that also included Honneger and Milhaud, two future members of the group of young French upstarts that a critic dubbed “les Six.” Ibert was away from Paris in 1920 when “les Six” were anointed, having won the prestigious Rome Prize on his first try in 1919, but his breezy style and willingness to buck conventions were well aligned with that trendsetting clique.

In the early 1920s, progressive French composers took their cues from Stravinsky, the Russian expatriate who had pivoted from bombastic ballets to sparkling neoclassicism. A year after Stravinsky premiered his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments at the Paris Opera, Ibert prepared his own concerto accompanied by winds in 1925, pairing a solo cello with a 10-piece ensemble. The opening Pastorale followed recent music under the same heading by Milhaud (another member of “les Six”) and Honneger, at a time when pastoral simplicity served as an inviting antidote to overwrought romanticism. The Romance title for the middle movement harks back to singing slow movements from the time of Mozart and Beethoven, and the Gigue finale reaches even further into the past, evoking the barreling dance style that was a staple of French culture in the time of Louis XIV and his Baroque court composers.

-- © 2021 Aaron Grad

Aaron Grad is a composer and writer based in Seattle. In addition to providing program notes for the New World Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and others, he is also the artistic director of Many Messiahs, a project that reframes George Frideric Handel's masterpiece as a collective call for justice.

Kyle Marshall Choreography

 

Artistic Director: Kyle Marshall
Company Manager: Madalyn Rupprecht
Performers: Bree Breeden, Taína Lyons,
David Lee Parker, Ariana Speight
MakeUp Artist, Visual Consultant: Edo Tastic
Costume Designer: Ikshit Pande

Kyle Marshall (Artistic Director, Choreographer and Performer) is a 2018 Bessie Award winner and a NJ State Council of the Arts Fellow. His dance company, Kyle Marshall Choreography (KMC), has performed at venues including Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Joe’s Pub at the Public, Actors Fund Arts Center, NJPAC, NYC Summerstage, Wassaic Arts Project, and Conduit Dance (PDX). Commissions have included "Dance on the Lawn" Montclair's Dance Festival, NJPAC, and Harlem Stage. Kyle has taught masterclass and creative workshops at the American Dance Festival, Montclair University, County Prep High School and Muhlenberg College. Currently, he dances with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He has also worked with doug elkins choreography etc., Tiffany Mills Company, and 10 Hairy Legs. Kyle graduated from Rutgers University with a BFA in Dance and is a resident of Jersey City.

Bree Breeden (Performer) is a freelance performing and media artist. Her choreography and performance work has been presented at Post/Future Performance Festival in 2020, Gibney Work Up program in 2019, Embodied Spaces Festival I and II in 2018, and at Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts dance talk series in 2016. She is a dancer and the Managing Director for Proteo Media + Performance, and performs with VON HOWARD PROJECT, MICHIYAYA Dance, Kyle Marshall Choreography along with other freelance projects. She is from Cheraw, S.C. and received a BFA in Dance from Montclair State University.

Taína Lyons (Performer) is a San Pedro, California native who began her dance training at the San Pedro Ballet School at the age of four. Her professional dance training started at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, eventually being mentored by Debbie Allen herself. She is a 2020 New York University Tisch School of the Arts graduate with a BFA in Dance and Minor in Spanish. There she performed in guest works by Ronald K. Brown, Wayne McGregor, and Lar Lubovitch. In the Spring of 2019 she also had the pleasure of studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic at the HAMU school. She is a multi-hyphenated artist who since graduating has had the pleasure of performing in a new work by Antonio Brown, as well as in the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors. She is currently an Apprentice with Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence as well as a Limón2 Company member. Taína is very grateful and humbled to be beginning this journey with Kyle Marshall.

David Lee Parker (Performer) is a native from Long Island, New York. He started his dance training at Long Island High school for the Arts and continued his studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts where he graduated class of 2018 with honors and received his B.F.A. in dance performance. David has trained at the Alvin Ailey Summer Intensive, American Ballet Theater Summer Collegiate Program, Gibney Summer Contemporary Dance Program, and has had the privilege to study abroad for a year in Israel at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He has performed works by Stefanie Batten Bland, Antonio Brown, Camille A. Brown, Netta Yerushalmy, Ohad Naharin, Noa Zuk, Reggie Wilson, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Noa Wertheim, and Maxine Doyle along with many others. He has also had the special opportunity to perform at the Suzanne Dellal Theatre in Tel Aviv, the Joyce Theatre, and NYU Skirball to name a few. David was an apprentice for Ronald K. Brown and has danced for Brian Brooks Moving Company, Visual Artist Carrie Mae Weems, QBC Company, and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More. David is currently working with Kyle Marshall and site-specific company Kinesis Project Dance Theater.

Ariana Speight (Performer), a graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Africana Studies, is a contemporary artist invested in researching the curiosities of life through various mediums. Originally from Los Angeles, she had the opportunity to dance abroad at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance where she studied Gaga technique and repertory from Batsheva company members and Vertigo Dance Company. In addition to working with artists like Kyle Abraham, David Dorfman, and Yin Yue during the course of her professional training, she has performed with a number of artists, most recently in a dance film by Jordan Lloyd that premiered through the platform Issue Project Room. She is also certified as a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) under Om Factory School of Yoga/Yoga Alliance where she continues to nurture her teaching practice.

Madalyn Rupprecht (Company Manager) is a dancer, choreographer, clothesmaker, and arts administrator born in Baltimore and now based in Brooklyn. As a dancer, she has worked with Jodi Melnick, Kathleen Kelley, HN.Trepid Dance, Fredrick Earl Mosley, and Abby Zbikowski, performing at venues such as the 92nd Street Y, Jacob’s Pillow, and The Joyce Theater. As a choreographer, she has presented her work at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, in the Post/Future Performance Festival, and was selected to present at Montclair State University’s Dance Makers 2020 concert, Bridge for Dance’s Uptown Rising Performance Series, and in Puerto Rico as part of Bailar al Sol International Dance Festival. Rupprecht was a 2019 Intern at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and has worked with Eryc Taylor Dance, Proteo Media + Performance, and Michelle Tabnick PR in various marketing and administrative positions. She is elated to be joining KMC as Company Manager. She is a 2020 magna cum laude graduate of Montclair State University with a BFA in Dance and a BA in Journalism.

Edo Tastic (Makeup Artist, Visual Consultant) is a makeup artist living in New York City. His work has been published in Solstice Magazine, Malvie, IMirage Magazine, McGlory Magazine and others. His film makeup work includes the upcoming series Lower East Side Asides produced by Steve Becker and Invasion directed and produced by Dennis Thomas. His makeup work includes numerous web series and assisted Ezel Mustafa in the Amazon series Big Dogs. Edo began his career in awe of makeup artists like David Frank Ray and Donyale McRae. As an assistant to stylist Andre Austin, he learned to have a vision that never clashes and dedication to his beloved craft which continues to inspire his work today.

Ikshit Pande (Costume Designer) QUOD is designed by Ikshit Pande, an erstwhile business graduate with about a decade in the fields of advertising and brand communication. Ikshit subsequently pursued fashion at Parsons School of Design and Central Saint Martins, interned at Vera Wang, and registered the label in the cities of New York and New Delhi. Short for Latin 'quod erat demonstrandum', QUOD fuses period femininity with classic tailoring and modern streetwear. With sharp yet unconfined silhouettes, the collections incorporate soft, flowy materials with a combination of high contrast monochromatic colors and minimal yet intricate detailing. Think Saville Row finesse and Victorian proportions for 21st century dressing. ESTD 2019 NEW YORK • NEW DELHI