Program News 2018

The Cornell Choral program had another successful academic year. The Cornell Chorus took a multi-week tour of the Gulf Coast over winter break, offering concerts and school workshops in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. Shortly thereafter, the Chorus was honored to perform two concerts that received standing ovations at the American Choral Director’s Association (ACDA) Regional Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The Glee Club had a successful spring break tour to the Midwest, offering concerts and school workshops in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois. The Glee Club and Chorus combined for an historic and highly successful performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, collaborating with professional soloists and period instrumentalists fielded by New York State Baroque. This was the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion at Cornell in over sixty years. The Cornell Chorale reached new enrollment records. The choral program is limited by the capacity of our rehearsal spaces, but we look forward to finding new ways to accommodate the growing interest in singing at Cornell. The Chorale offered two collaborative performances to packed Sage Chapel audiences. The winter performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria was supported by the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, and the spring performance of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms featured the Cornell Percussion Ensemble and DMA candidate Anna Steppler on the Sage Chapel organ. The Cornell Chamber Singers offered four performances this season. Highlights included a collaborative performance with the Philadelphia-based ensemble Variant 6, featuring the music of Dieterich Buxtehude and Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw, and a spring performance of Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G, which was paired the American premiere of Roman Palester’s Vistula in a new edition prepared by Ph.D musicology candidate Mackenzie Pierce. The Chamber Singers look forward to their first tour, which will bring them to Maui this August for a collaborative performance with the Maui Chamber Orchestra.

The Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players, led by the Cornell DMA composers, organized three events during the year. A collaboration with the Ithaca College Graduate Percussion Trio that resulted in premiered of pieces by Barry Sharp, Piyawat Louilarpprasert, and Sergio Cote. A five-day residency with The [Switch~Ensemble] led to three concerts featuring the music of composition faculty together with pieces by the Cornell DMA composers: Jihyun Kim, Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei, Piyawat Louilarpprasert, and Barry Sharp. A final residency with Silvia Lucas, visiting from the Royal Northern College of Music, premiered pieces for piano and electronics by Piyawat Louilarpprasert and Sergio Cote.

Cornell’s Brazilian ensemble Deixa Sambar explores samba in many of its robust (and loud) permutations – batucada street samba as well as mid-century samba and musica popular brasileira songs. Our two favorite performances this year: a carnival-themed fundraiser for the Johnson School that put the 300 attendees into a dancing frenzy, and our shared concert with other Cornell percussion ensembles in which we contrasted exuberant batucada with quietly contemplative bossa nova, our first foray into this gorgeous music. 

Ensemble X celebrated its 20th anniversary in style this year with five concerts on Cornell's campus and at Swarthmore College, and co-commissioned a politically-charged work by GRAMMY Award-winner Stephen Hartke, entitled Ship of State. Visiting composers who worked with the ensemble included Hartke, Elizabeth Ogonek (Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), and alumnus Christopher Stark (Washington University). Guest conductor Timothy Weiss, director of Oberlin's Contemporary Music Ensemble, led a rare performance of Jonathan Harvey's Bird Concerto with Pianosong, featuring DMA candidate Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, and the ensemble also performed US premieres by Polish composer Roman Palester, as part of a festival called “Forbidden Songs: Lost Music of Midcentury Poland,” organized by PhD candidate (musicology) Mackenzie Pierce. Ensemble X, which supports works with broad aesthetic values, featured works by  Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Luciano Berio, and David Lang this year, continuing Steven Stucky's mission: "To bridge gaps between composer and performer, between composer and audience, between past and present." Director Xak Bjerken compiled a list of over 250 works the ensemble has performed in the last twenty years, from Abrahamsen to Zimmermann.

The Cornell Gamelan Ensemble participated in a klenengan featuring Ngudi Raras, a touring group of some of the leading gamelan musicians from Surakarta, Central Java. Joining the six members of the group (Wakidi Dwidjomartono, Mulyani Soepono, Darsono Hadiraharjo, Paimin, Sularno Martowiyono, Sri Mulyana) were three other Javanese musicians resident in the US (I.M. Harjito, Sumarsam, Danis Sugiyanto). The ensemble and gamelan-playing participants in the conference “Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music” played two welcoming pieces, and joined Ngudi Raras for two of their five pieces. Produced in partnership with the Cornell Indonesian Association as their annual Indo Night celebration, the event drew a large crowd of students and community members to Willard Straight Hall for food and music, in an approximation of the more relaxed atmosphere in which gamelan music is typically encountered in Java, which gives the temporally expansive repertoire room to breathe. The event was funded in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts, with additional support from the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia in New York.

The Cornell University Jazz Ensemble program, under the direction of Senior Lecturer Paul Merrill, had an exceptionally robust and active academic year. The program consists of over seventy undergraduate and graduate students who perform in seven accredited ensembles, plus a student club of 200. The highlight of the 2017-18 season was the Jazz Band’s performance at a gala concert with the Wind Symphony (James Spinazzola, conductor) and Symphony Orchestra (Chris Kim, conductor) and guest trumpet soloist and A. D. White Professor-at-Large, Wynton Marsalis, at Bailey Hall. Marsalis worked with students from four ensembles during a residency that lasted just over seven days.  Junior tenor saxophonist, Tom Nyul, junior music major and bassist Christopher Worden, senior pianist Marco Sanchez-Ayala, and first-year drummer Brian Caine all gave standout performances with the Jazz Band and Wind Ensemble. The Jazz Band trumpet section joined the famed trumpeter for a personalized version of Ellington’s Concerto for Cootie with the Wind Symphony. Fresh off their performance at the San Diego Jazz Festival in the fall, the Original Cornell Syncopators worked with and performed for Marsalis in another public concert at Barnes Hall. The rest of the season was just as noteworthy with guests such as the Matt Garrity Actual Trio and Nate Smith Trio from the east coast, and the Adam Benjamin Trio from the west coast. All ensembles gave free concerts to the Ithaca community and master classes and workshops to Cornell students. Tenor saxophonist Chad Leftkowitz-Brown joined the Jazz Band in concert at Barnes Hall in the Fall, and the Jazz Ensemble and Combo showcase concerts continued to impress. Members of the ensembles also joined the Wind Symphony for a performance at Woolsey Hall at Yale University.

The Music Improvisation Ensemble enjoyed another year of rich collaboration with dance and lighting design students from Performance and Media Arts, culminating in performances at Locally Grown Dance at the Kiplinger Theater in March, and on the newly renovated Schwartz Center courtyard in May. Building on the stunning success of their spring 2017 collaboration, students from E. D. Intemann's “Automated Lighting and Control” and Jumay Chu’s “Mapping the Moving Body” joined members of the Music Improvisation Ensemble in pieces designed for both indoor and outdoor spaces exploring structured improvisation across disciplines with light, movement, and sound.

This article appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of Whole Note, the Cornell University Orchestra Newsletter. 

Life and the Blues: An Interview with Wynton Marsalis 

Tharun Sankar 

“It’s fundamental, comprehensive, and endless,” Wynton Marsalis said about the importance of the blues, the tradition around which his Blues Symphony is based. Mr. Marsalis has been a prominent force in the music world for many decades and is an avid ambassador of jazz and the blues. His trumpet skills are unmatched, and his strong musicianship shines through his performance.  

Wynton Marsalis’s recording of the middle school audition classic, “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby,” was the first trumpet recording I had ever listened to. Finding this recording was a defining moment for me as a trumpet player because I explored his work after I realized just how versatile of a musician he is. Marsalis is widely known for his career spanning both classical music and jazz, particularly the blues. We spoke at length about his Blues Symphony, which the Cornell Symphony Orchestra performed on March 28. He described how the symphony follows the traditional I-IV-V-I blues chord progression and how each part of the symphony explores a different aspect of the blues, including its roots in ragtime. Since jazz is not often written for an orchestra, Mr. Marsalis was very particular in the ways he orchestrated the symphony. He notated the music specifically in order to teach classically-trained musicians how to play jazz. He also chose various methods to distribute the traditional jazz rhythm section throughout the orchestra. Rather than requiring the bass players to play a traditional walking bassline with a swung triplet feel, he “put the bottom in two, and the top rhythm part in three” to create the shuffle feel which is characterized by a 2-against-3 triplet-based rhythm.  

I was extremely nervous to speak with one of my long-time idols and even more nervous to play with him later that week. During our conversation, I mentioned my nerves and asked him if he had ever found himself in a similar situation. He recounted a story of playing with Herbie Hancock at the age of 19 with only one rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl. 

“I had no idea what they were playing. The first song we played on that set was called ‘The Sorcerer.’ I had never played on that type of material—I didn’t know the chord structure, the harmony, nothing they were playing.” 

Marsalis also discussed the importance of his musical mentors; he described them as having “keys to doors that you need to open,” people who can “show you where you’re going.” Therefore, I loved seeing the keys Mr. Marsalis offered us during his time in Ithaca.  

Throughout his life, Mr. Marsalis has approached jazz with an understanding of the cultural significance of the music he plays. Near the end of our conversation, I told Mr. Marsalis how my parents are from India and how much I have interacted with Indian music throughout my life. He told me “this music, [the blues], is a way for you to embrace your American-ness without having to have friction with your Indian-ness.”

Organs and organ music continue to flourish, with numerous concerts, demonstrations, and classes across the year given by Cornell faculty and students, as well as distinguished visitors. On the Wednesday lunchtime series Midday Music for Organ, and in full-length afternoon and evening concerts, we heard all four Cornell organs in music ranging across six centuries, from the Elizabethan keyboardists of the late 16th century, to Dutch organists of the 21st. The Aeolian-Skinner organ in Sage Chapel was the star of a duo-performance by theater organist Dennis James, with fortepianist Michael Tsalka, in a live accompaniment to Asta Nielsen’s incredible silent film Hamlet (1921), and the organ was put through its paces again by DMA student Michael Plagerman in a performance of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 6 in April. DMA student Anna Steppler created a musical biography of the Anabel Taylor organ, performing music from the 17th to the 20th centuries in a highly imaginative reflection on the history and construction of the instrument. Special guests included the young Canadian-born organist Michael Unger, and one of Europe’s leading recitalists and teachers, the Danish organist Bine Bryndorf. 

University organists David Yearsley and Annette Richards worked across the year with the curators of the Cornell organs, Parsons Pipe Organ Builders of Bristol, NY, to keep the instruments well maintained. Work on climate conditions in Anabel Taylor is still high on our list of priorities, but restoration of the Aeolian-Skinner is becoming increasingly urgent. We welcome your interest and support for this important project.

This year the former World Music and Dance Ensemble was revived as the Pan-African Drum and Dance ensemble under the direction of Isaac Kwesi Anim. Students from across the university learned concert drum and dance traditions from a number of Sub-Saharan African countries. The year culminated in a standing-room-only joint performance with Deixa Sambar, the Cornell University Steel Band, and Cornell Gamelan Ensemble. 

The Cornell  Percussion Ensemble, directed by Michael Sparhuber,  performed in five concerts in the 2017–18 academic year, including collaborations with Ensemble X and the Cornell University Chorale and Chamber Singers, in various configurations. With the participation of 14 auditioned students, the ensemble regularly rehearsed and performed in chamber groups of trios, quartets, and quintets. Concert repertoire from this year included Mallet Quartet (Steve Reich), Taxidermy  (Caroline Shaw), Mudra  (Bob Becker), Omphalo Centric Lecture  (Nigel Westlake), and Aura  (Anna Thorvaldsdottir), among others. 

This spring, the ensemble accompanied the Cornell Chorale in their performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, providing the full orchestral percussion supplement. This was followed the next day with a performance with the Cornell Chamber Singers, in the American premiere of Roman Palester’s The Vistula.

The Westfield Center began the year with a blockbuster conference and concert festival at the University of Notre Dame, “Reformations and the Organ 1517-2017.” The festival, in early September, took the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation to reflect in diverse ways on the idea of “reformation” in organ history. Stretching the theme a bit, Cornell University Organists Annette Richards and David Yearsley presented a program of music for four hands (mostly at two keyboards, but sometimes, cozily, on one), on chamber organ, harpsichord, and fortepiano, from late 18th-century Europe, tracing the travels of the famous English music historian Dr. Charles Burney, and interweaving the music with readings from Burney’s diaries. One of the star performers from that event, French organist Christophe Mantoux, followed his Notre Dame appearance with a recital later that month sponsored by the Westfield Center and the Cornell Music Department on Ithaca’s superb French-romantic style instrument at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Collegetown. The recital was part of a one-day symposium on French 19th- and early 20th-century organ culture that brought visitors from across the region; a large contingent of organ students from Eastman participated, alongside Cornell students, in masterclasses with Mr. Mantoux, and, on the art of improvisation, with American organist Jeffrey Brillhart. Experimentation and imagination were in full flight again in November when the Westfield Center co-sponsored Spanish early-keyboardist extraordinaire David Catalunya's visit to upstate New York. Mr. Catalunya gave a seminar and a ravishing concert of some of the earliest music in the keyboard repertoire, taken from the early 15th-century Faenza Codex and played on Mr. Catalunya’s reconstruction of a Clavicimbalum. Westfield was then able to sponsor Mr. Catalunya’s participation as a keynote speaker/performer at the inspiring “Instruments of Theory” conference in Rochester, NY, co-designed by Associate Professor Andrew Hicks, that formed a prelude to the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. 

The landmark yearbook of the Westfield Center, Keyboard Perspectives, published its tenth volume this year, co-edited by Professor Annette Richards and Associate Professor Roger Moseley. Conceived as a celebratory bumper volume, the book’s contents range from the 18th-century French harpsichord and the “Bach” organs of Thuringia and Saxony to the latest Yamaha keyboard instrument, reflecting the tremendous richness of historical keyboard studies in 2017. They also represent the very high quality of the work of some of our current Cornell graduate students, with essays on the philosophical underpinnings of Couperin’s L’art de toucher le clavecin by Matthew Hall, and a media-archaeological account of vocal synthesis, which has often been programmed and performed by way of a keyboard interface, by Aya Saiki. The volume also includes Roger Moseley’s review of Cornell alum Tom Beghin’s groundbreaking recording of Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas, performed on a piano fitted with a reconstruction of Beethoven’s “hearing machine.”

The Westfield Center’s programs have been supported for the past six years by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. That grant comes to an end in October, and we’re thrilled that Cornell has committed to supporting Westfield’s administrative office for the next three years. In addition, the music department has received a generous gift that will allow us to secure historical keyboard studies at Cornell for the future, giving a physical home to the Malcolm Bilson Collection of historical pianos, and supporting concerts, conferences, visiting artists, and, especially, students of keyboard culture from the clavichord and organ, through harpsichord and fortepiano, to the modern piano in all its guises. We are looking forward to announcing our first set of programs in the fall.

The year was full of musical adventures for the Cornell Wind Symphony (CU Winds), beginning with a performance on the second day of classes for the inauguration of President Martha E. Pollack. The fall semester included three world premieres: Mark Winges’ Breath and Hammers Piano Concerto with Blaise Bryski, A Solemn Fanfare by Byron Adams (DMA ’84), and Kaleidoscope by Janice Macaulay (Ph.D. ’86). The latter two works are part of an ongoing commisioning project in honor and memory of Professor Emeritus Karel Husa. Additional collaborations included those with the Cornell Klezmer Ensemble (November), and faculty percussionist Michael Sparhuber for Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto (May). The Wind Symphony was chosen to perform at the 2018 Eastern Division conference of the College Band Directors National Association at Yale, and two weeks later accompanied A. D. White Professor-at-Large Wynton Marsalis in Bailey Hall. The latter performance featured three new arrangements by conductor James Spinazzola.