Friday, February 22, 8pm
Ciompi Quartet and artists from Kyo-Shin-An Arts in “Kammerraku” – a program of music for string quartet and Japanese instruments.
Yoko Reikan Kimura, koto; and James Nyoraku Schlefer, shakuhachi
Works include Daron Hagen's Concerto for Koto and String Quartet (2011), Paul Moravec's Shakuhachi Quintet, Toro Takemitsu's A Way a Lone, and two pieces by James Nyoraku Schlefer. Kyo-Shin-An Arts is dedicated to the integration of Japanese classical instruments (specifically shakuhachi, koto and shamisen) in Western classical music. They facilitate, commission and produce new works and concerts that bring forth the outstanding virtuosity of the Japanese tradition within the context of chamber ensembles and orchestras.
Sunday, March 3, 8pm Sheafer Lab Theater
Wet Ink Ensemble, Jacqueline Horner Kwiatek (Anonymous 4), and guests perform three Duke Ph.D. Dissertations
This concert, the second of the Wet Ink Ensemble's 2012-13 Duke residency, features the world premieres of three dissertations by Duke Ph.D. candidates. Wet Ink will be joined by mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek from the renowned early music group Anonymous 4, members of the North Carolina Symphony, and other local musicians, conducted by Duke Wind Symphony director Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant.
Tim Hambourger's Last Wave Reached, for three female singers and large chamber ensemble, sets texts by poet Kay Ryan, U.S. poet laureate from 2008-10 and a MacArthur Fellow from 2011. In the spirit of Ryan’s intricate vignettes, Last Wave Reached unfolds as a series of miniatures, evoking themes of repetition and return, finality and (im)permanence. Hambourger received his bachelor's in music from Princeton University in 2007. He has written acoustic and electro-acoustic works for chamber ensemble, for orchestra, for solo piano (his primary instrument), and for solo voice and choir. In summer 2011 he attended Yale’s Norfolk New Music Festival, for which he composed Maples by the West Street Cemetery based on a compilation of Sacred Harp tunes. Maples also continued Tim’s work with real-world environmental sound, something that inspired his Crossing a Bridge Slowly, which was premiered by So Percussion in 2010. Tim’s 2009 I am Untranslatable, a setting of fragments from Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself,’ received Duke’s William Klenz Prize for Composition.
Dan Ruccia’s Hallmarks, Sigils, and Colophons, for three singers and chamber orchestra, excerpts Christian Bök’s Griffin Prize winning poetry collection Eunoia. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as bossa nova, drone metal, free jazz, rock, and minimalism, this song cycle revels in each individual vowel’s unique sounds on a grand scale. Dan Ruccia (b. 1982) is a Durham, NC, based composer. He writes music that exists at the intersection of different styles, forms, and genres, built on the ideals of freeform radio. His music has been performed across the United States and Europe by Eighth Blackbird, The Bad Plus, Wet Ink, the Juventas New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Soli Fan Tutti, and [dnme]. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University where he has studied with Stephen Jaffe, Scott Lindroth, and Allen Anderson (University of North Carolina). Dan also has a B.A. in music from Princeton University, having worked with Dan Trueman, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Steven Mackey.
And Paul Swartzel’s Barbeque Man, Unleashed: The Greatest Professional Wrestling Work of All Time is a multimedia piano concerto/musical drama featuring action figure photography by Gray Swartzel. Swartzel’s tale depicts the storyline between professional wrestlers Barbeque Man, Jr., and Baron Banks Gentry, with electrifying entrances, devastating body slams, and contemporary classical music.
"The works by Ruccia, Hambourger, and Swartzel represent three different new musical worlds, representative of the individual agency of the composers, and Music's unique contribution within university life,” says Stephen Jaffe, Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition at Duke. “These imaginative pursuits to the fabric of the university are worthy of the attention of anyone curious to know what composing is all about in 2013."
This concert will also be livestreamed here.
Wet Ink's 2011-13 residency is sponsored by the Department of Music and a Visiting Artists grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts. This performance is also cosponsored by the Program in Literature and the Duke New Music Ensemble.
Tuesday, April 30, 8pm, Sheafer Lab Theater
Wet Ink Ensemble & guests play multimedia collaborations
The Wet Ink Ensemble concludes its residency at Duke with a concert of collaborations between Duke graduate student composers D. Edward Davis, David Kirkland Garner, Jamie Keesecker, Vladimir Smirnoff and Kenneth David Stewart; and film makers/media artists Marika Borgeson, Peter Lisignoli, LIsa McCarty from Duke's Program in Experimental and Documentary Arts. The concert will also include new works from Bryan Christian and Vladimir Smirnoff.
Department of Music