Millennial Masters Vol.1
Stephen Yip | David Lipten | Michael Travlos | Igor Shcherbakov | Jeff Nichols
ABLAZE Records is pleased to announce the winners of its first Millennial Masters Mastertape prize. The winners are all included on ABLAZE Records Millennial Masters Vol. 1 CD, which is available worldwide through Amazon.com and iTunes.
What ABLAZE was looking for were simply two things as we approached this first Millennial Masters volume: great compositions and excellent performances that were well recorded. We were stunned at the level of the submissions and first disc features music of superb composers from the USA, Greece, Ukraine and China. Stephen Yip was awarded a place on the disc for his stunning, evocative In the Garden for a small mixed ensemble. David Lipten's muscular, yet elegant set of piano pieces Best Served Cold, Ever Since and Snap won not only because they are marvelous compositions, but because of the tremendously lucid and effortless performances by Mark Tollefsen. The solo oboe work Progressions by Greek composer Michael Travlos brought an exciting, virtuosic dimension to the competition and a compositional voice that we believe deserves to be heard more in the United States and world over. Leading Ukrainian composer Igor Shcherbakov won a place on the disc for his luminous, emotional and virtuosic Piano-Gesang. His authoritative approach to piano writing coupled with a musical language that is forward looking yet with deep roots in the strong traditions of his culture were very impressive to us. Finally, we were delighted and captivated by Jeff Nichols' le trombe d'oro della solarità. This work is so inventive and marked by a fluidity, grace and power from the small instrumental ensemble comprised of the very best performers New York City has to offer. All of this collection of great works, tremendous performers and wonderful recordings were mastered by the superb Grammy Award winning mastering engineer, Silas Brown.
When it comes to new music, quality audio, great performances and bold, dramatic, original conceptions, you don't have to look any further than ABLAZE Records.
Stephen Yip
Stephen Yip was born in Hong Kong and now lives in the U.S.A. He received his Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) from Rice University and Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. His mentors include Wing-fai Law, Clarence Mak, Arthur Gottschalk and Ellsworth Milburn. He has attended major music festivals including: Aspen Music Festival, Asian Composers’ League, ISCM World Music Days, Music X, June in Buffalo, IMPULS Ensemble Akademie, California E.A.R. Unit Composer Seminar, the 13th International Summer Program, Czech Republic, International Composers’ Workshop, Luxembourg, The 45th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt, Germany and residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Yaddo Colony, NY and MacDowell Colony, NH.
Yip’s works have been performed in the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Israel, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Germany, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines. He has received several composition prizes, including the “Haifa International Composition Prize”, First International EPICMUSIC Composition Prize, Italy, International Biennial composition competition, the Debussy Trio Music Foundation, Molinari Quartet’s Third International Composition Competition, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Emerging, the ALEA III composition Competition and the fourth NACUSA Texas Composition Competition.
Yip is a member of SCI, NACUSA, and CASH. Currently, he serves on the music faculty at Houston Community College and is a freelance composer.
“In the Garden is dedicated to the Ensemble TIMF and was composed for an octet, comprised of flute, bass clarinet, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass. This piece refers to a Japanese Zen Garden, called ‘Niwa’ which is a space, usually enclosed, where a specific scene is designed for viewing. Rocks, gravel, sand, trees, plants and water are used to create scenes patterned after nature, making it possible for viewers to enjoy the beauty of natural landscapes. I was inspired by this idea. In the composition I used different musical elements, to create different atmospheric scenes associated with different timings and space to let the listeners create their own imagined scene. Natural landscape is designed to calm the mind and soothe the spirit of viewers. In this piece, In the Garden, I tried to design some musical gestures, different tone colors, harmony, sensations and emotions and let the listener use their own imagination to listen to what they ‘see’ when walking into this designed garden (space).”
Musicians — In the Garden
Christopher Lee majored both in choral conducting and in orchestral conducting at the University Mozarteum Salzburg with Russell Davies and Walter Hagen-Groll. Now, a Principal conductor of Ensemble TIMF, as well as an artistic director and chief conductor of the TransArt Orchestra Salzburg, Christopher Lee regularly collaborates with leading orchestras of Korea, including those of KBS Symphony Orchestra, Korean Symphony Orchestra, Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra and Wonju Philharmonic Orchestra.
Ensemble TIMF was founded in 2001 as an ambassador of publicity for Tongyeong International Music Festival with a hope to establish a professional performing group that could represent contemporary music of Korea. Since its foundation, the Ensemble has shown performing skills of high quality and extended its stage abroad from the year 2003. Most recently, the ensemble has been invited to the prestigious contemporary music festival, the 48th Warsaw Autumn 2005 and The 25th ACL World New Music Conference and Festival held by Asian Composers League.
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David Lipten
David Lipten’s music has been described as possessing “a strength and integrity…along with a deep [and]…rigorous musical lyricism.” His compositions have been performed by some of the most accomplished chamber ensembles, including the New York New Music Ensemble, the Verdehr Trio and the Chester Quartet, among others. Other performances of his music have included a number of his piano works Best Served Cold, Snap and Ever Since, as well as one of Ictus for string quartet at the Portland Chamber Music Festival where it was awarded first prize in 3rd Annual Composers Competition.
David has received a number of commissions including those from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Verdehr Trio/Michigan State University and Duo46, among others, awards, fellowships and grants from the St. Paul’s Chamber Music Competition, ASCAP, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), the State of Florida and Duke University, among others. He has also been in residence at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies, as well as the Aspen Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the CSU Summer Arts Festival and the June in Buffalo Composers Conference.
David holds a B.A. in Piano Performance from Hampshire College, a M.A. in Music Composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music at the City University of New York/Queens College and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Duke University. He currently lives and works in Florida with his wife, Holly, and daughter, Olivia.
“I wrote Best Served Cold while in residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH in 2003. It was the dead of winter and magnificently serene for much of the time. Nothing about the character of this short, sometimes violent piece, then, can be attributed to my surroundings.
My time at the colony also happened to coincide with the build-up to the mess in Iraq. I spent some of my downtime listening to the fabrications presented to the United Nations by a certain former Secretary of State for what turned out to be some of the pretense for the situation. We all knew what was coming. I was outraged.
The title is borrowed from “Les Liasons Dangereuses” (1782) by Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos. However, my original acquaintance with it came from either a Klingon in Star Trek or Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson’s evil boss, I’m not sure which.
Ever Since is the second work in a series of short character pieces I began writing for piano in the winter of 2003. The first (Best Served Cold) is quite fiery, so I wanted to write something more introspective as a contrast. Its impromptu nature is attributable to improvising much of the initial ideas for it at the piano.
Snap refers to the rather break-neck pace at which the music is intended to proceed. The tempo marking calls for it to be played at a speed which is “as fast as humanly possible.” The piece primarily features quick, repeated single notes connected by short, jagged bursts or runs leading to passages of climactic chords.”
Musician—Mark Tollefsen, piano
Sought-after for his musical creativity and technical and rhythmic precision, Mark Tollefsen has been a strong advocate of new music. This advocacy has included performances of over fifty works by living composers and more than a dozen world or regional premieres. A native of St. Louis, Mark Tollefsen received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a Masters of Music from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music.
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Michael Travlos
Michael Travlos was born in 1950 in Piraeus, Greece. He started his musical studies at Athens National Conservatory in 1970 with Professor Michalis Vourtsis. In 1975, he was accepted to the Hochschule das Künste Berlin, where he studied composition with Professor Isang Yun until 1980, when he obtained his diploma in Music Composition. He lives in Athens as an independent composer and professor of theory and composition. He is artistic director of the Conservatory “Nikos Skalkotas”.
He has written music for large and small ensembles, for solo instruments, as well as a chamber opera and concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. His works have been performed in many countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Greece, England, Holland, etc. He has participated three times in the International Gaudeamus Music Week (Gaudeamus Foundation) in Holland as well as in the International Music Days (International Society of Contemporary Music, ISCM) in 1985.
“Progressions for solo Oboe is the first of two solo pieces under the same name (Progressions 2 for solo guitar was written a year after).Written in 1983, (world premier in Warsaw-Poland in 1984) it deals the manner of playing the Greek-Balkan instrument called Tsambouna (a folk instrument played by folk musicians in northern Greece and other Balkan countries).It is by no means a transcription of folk music. The overall mood created by this folk instrument is being expressed in a contemporary way using the oboe, whose sonority somehow tends to resemble ,in some regions of the instrument, the sound of the Tsambouna.”
Musician
Christopher Redgate (b 1956) specializes in the performance of contemporary oboe music. He has been described as having ‘extraordinary exploratory technical brilliance’ (Music Web) and of being a ‘tireless champion’ of extended techniques (Double Reed Magazine). His performing career has taken him to most European countries, Scandinavia, Australia, America, Canada, Mexico and China. He has worked with many ensembles including Exposé, Suoraan, Trio Krosta, Kreutzer Quartet, Firebird Ensemble, Music Projects/London, Lontano, Ensemble Modern, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ixion, Apartment House and Topologies.
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Igor Shcherbakov
Igor Shcherbakov was born in 1955 in Dnipropetrovsk and graduated from the former Kiev State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire where he studied composition with Vitaliy Kyreiko. From 1980–84, he served on the staff of the Culture Research Institute of Ministry of Culture and since 1985, he has been the chief editor of Muzychna Ukraina Music Publishing House and is currently a professor of composition at the Ukrainian National Music Academy in Kiev. Shcherbakov has been organizer and artistic director of the festivals “International Forum of Youth Music” and “Music Premieres of the Season”. Since 1999, he has been the Head of the Kiev Branch of the National Union of Ukrainian Composers.
Shcherbakov claims that the Soviet, modern Ukrainian, and Polish school of composers, in general, exerted a very strong influence upon his music. Specifically, the music of Dmitry Shostakovich, Valentin Silvestrov, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski is important. There are influences from minimalism as well: for instance, he will repeat a figure but for shorter periods of time than in the music of some minimalists. This technique is employed to ‘stretch’ the form. His music is a mix of neo-romanticism with some limited aleatorics. Foremost, he lists Beethoven as his greatest influence. His music is mostly intuitive but he is always cognizant of the structure of the work, particularly harmonically.
Piano-Gesang (2008), in English, means literally “piano-singing.” The piece was commissioned by the International music festival Menhir in Falera, Switzerland where it was performed in September 2008 by Jozsef Örmeny, and is dedicated to the well known Swiss musicians conductor Simon Camartin and his wife Oana Camartin-Zaharia. The work is written in a free atonal style. The basic idea—a quasi-Romantic melody that represents a yearning for an unattainable ideal beauty—appears out of a long prepared E-flat. Both E-flat and the melody that emerges out of it have a long range composing out over the course of the piece. The notion of an unattainable ideal beauty is also expressed in the impossible task of ‘singing on the piano’—a longstanding characteristic of the Russian piano school for the past two centuries, but which is now replaced by a rather more technical and academic pianism.
A haze of free atonal harmonic colorations constantly seems to obscure the two broad tonal axes between and through which the music of Piano-Gesang unfolds. These two axes are C sharp which takes on a character of objective energy and force while the other, E-flat, projects a character that is melancholic, inward and lyrical. The last section of the work combines these two harmonic axes into one large and composed out polychord that holds a special Eastern symbolism for the composer.
Musician
Honored Artist of Ukraine Jozsef Örmeny was born in Uzhhorod and studied piano at the Lviv Conservatory with Prof. Mary Krushelnytska and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Prof. Eugene Malinin. As a soloist, accompanist and chamber music specialist his repertoire includes music from the Baroque to the present. He has played in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, USA and Canada, and participated in numerous radio and TV recordings. Recently, his work is more focused on interpreting the music of the twentieth century. He is Professor of piano at M.Lysenko National Music Academy in Lviv where many of his students are laureates of international competitions.
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Jeff Nichols
Jeff Nichols (b.1957) grew up in Colorado, Texas and Indiana. He began composing at the age of nine and soon thereafter was writing music inspired by the postwar European and American avant-garde. His principal teachers were Milton Babbitt and Donald Martino and he holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard Universities. Nichols’ music has been performed by leading new-music ensembles and soloists in the United States and in South Korea, Italy, Belgium and Germany. His music is published by Theodore Presser and C.F. Peters. Awards have included a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fromm Music Foundation commission. Nichols is Associate Professor of Music at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.
About le trombe d’oro della solarità (2002-3), he writes: The title is taken from the final line of Eugenio Montale’s poem I Limoni. The relationship between piece and title is very casual; while writing the piece I came across Montale’s poem, which wonderfully captures a feeling I have when composing goes well—when I discover, accidently, while in pursuit of mundane ideas, a hidden source of beauty. Montale’s image is of boys wandering down abandoned paths, scooping eels “out of half-dry puddles” and coming by chance upon an orchard:
“…the hubbub of the birds
dies out, swallowed by the blue…
Here, by some miracle, the war
of troubled passions calls a truce;
here we poor, too, receive our share of riches,
which is the fragrance of the lemon-trees.”
The final lines of the poem were irresistible to a composer in the middle of writing a piece featuring brass:
“…il gelo del cuore si sfa,
e in petto si scrosciano
le loro canzoni
le trombe d’oro della solarità.”
“…the chill in the heart
melts, and deep in us
the golden horns of sunlight
pelt their songs.”
(I Limoni, from Ossi di Seppia, Eugenio Montale. Translation: Jonathan Galassi.)
The work is in a single movement, its form episodic and unpredictable but featuring the very gradual emergence of unpitched percussion and low brass after passages that focus on the more brilliant sonorities afforded by the ensemble. The listener will notice extended soloistic writing for trumpet, sometimes paired with vibraphone; these driving passages are counterbalanced by discursive writing for the contrabass near the beginning and a reflective marimba solo near the end.
Le trombe d’oro della solarità is dedicated to the superb musicians on this recording: David Wakefield, horn; Raymond Mase, trumpet, John Rojak, bass trombone; James Baker, percussion, Donald Palma, contrabass, and David Gilbert, conductor.
Musicians
James Baker is Principal Percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Music Director and Conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and Director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. He is also an active composer of electro-acoustic music with recent commissions from the Opera Ballet de Lyon and The Dublin Dance Festival.
Composer and flutist David Gilbert is a member of the faculty of Manhattan School of Music since 1983 and its resident conductor. Formerly principal conductor of American Ballet Theatre, he has also been guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic and is currently music director of the Greenwich Symphony in Connecticut and the Bergen Philharmonic in New Jersey.
Trumpeter Raymond Mase has distinguished himself as soloist, chamber artist, orchestral player, and teacher. He is a member of the American Brass Quintet, principal trumpeter of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Chairman of the Brass Department at The Juilliard School and an artist/faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival.
At twenty years of age, Donald Palma (contrabass) became a member of Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra, and joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of twenty-four. Mr. Palma is a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. With the contemporary music group, Speculum Musicae, he serves a double function as bassist and conductor.
John D. Rojak (bass trombone) has performed extensively with major classical ensembles as well as in commercial ventures (including the complete 16 year Broadway run of Les Misérables). He is a member of the American Brass Quintet, New York Pops, Orchestra of St. Luke’s among other ensembles. Rojak is on the faculties of Bard College Conservatory, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, and New York University.
David Wakefield (horn) is a member of the American Brass Quintet and principal horn of the Little Orchestra Society and has performed with the New York, Vienna, and Brooklyn Philharmonics, Houston Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the New York City Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He is on the faculties of the Aspen Music School and the Juilliard School.
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