Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival 2024
Program Notes
Taylor Brook Vocalise (2009)
Vocalise is dedicated to the violinist Mira Benjamin.
This composition is largely influenced by my exposure to Hindustani (Classical North India) music. The title, Vocalise, refers both to the long lyrical sections performed on a single violin string, as in the famous Vocalise of Rachmoninov, as well as the singing style of Hindustani music with its long sweeping lines and heavy use of glissandi.
In the Hindustani tradition all instruments aspire to the qualities of the voice, relating the playing techniques on the instrument to vocal production. For example, the act of plucking a string may correspond to the act of the tongue enunciating a consonant; minor variations of the angle and speed of the pluck slightly alter the timbre in a way similar to the timbral variations elicited by slight changes in the movement of the tongue. In this composition, I approach the violin in this spirit, calling for a variety of playing techniques in order to achieve a richness and variety of timbre rather than taking the unified "classical" timbre associated with standard orchestral violin technique for granted.
Formally, Vocalise consists of a single movement with several internal sections, each focusing on different strings of the violin. Furthermore, each section has a faster pulse than the previous one, giving the work a sense of large scale acceleration. The entire work is accompanied by a slightly flat F# drone, to which the fourth string of the violin is also tuned. This drone functions as the tonal centre throughout the composition as the solo violin plays in a just intonation mode in relation to it.
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Taylor Brook writes music for the concert stage, electronic music, music for robotic instruments, generative music software, and music for video, theatre, and dance. His music is often concerned with finely tuned microtonal sonorities as well as unique approaches to the integration of electronic sound and digital media. Brook enjoys collaborating with performers and ensembles on the development of new works, including Mira Benjamin, Jeffrey Gavett, Corey Hamm, Dana Jessen, Andy Kozar, Vicki Ray, Quatuor Bozzini, Del Sol Quartet, JACK quartet, PARTCH ensemble, and many others.
In 2018 Brook completed a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in music composition at Columbia University with Fred Lerdahl and was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in music composition. Currently Brook is the technical director of TAK ensemble.
Sam Weiser, currently the first violinist of the Carpe Diem String Quartet, is a lifelong chamber musician and advocate of contemporary music. He holds a number of positions around the Bay Area, including assistant concertmaster of the California Symphony, member of One Found Sound, and violinist in sfSound. Formerly, he was a member of the award-winning Del Sol Quartet. Sam has performed all over the country, from the Herbst Theater and the Kennedy Center to a raft floating along the Yampa River. He has premiered over 150 new works by composers such as Vijay Iyer, Huang Ruo, and Chen Yi. He studied with Ian Swensen, Lucy Chapman, James Buswell, and Patinka Kopec. He holds bachelors’ degrees from Tufts University in computer science and the New England Conservatory in violin, as well as a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in chamber music. Outside of the violin, Sam loves cooking, a long bike ride, or a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
Matt Ingalls 49 Rays (2023)
49 Rays was written for sfSound in 2023 and revised for tonight's performance in the Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival. All the pitches in the piece are harmonics of the lowest F on the 92-key Bösendorfer piano. Starting on the 49th partial, the ensemble gradually smears down through the piano harmonics in a kind of “acoustic band-pass filter sweep." The piece is dedicated to the composer James Tenney, a composer-performer involved in acoustic and computer music that I’ve always felt a kinship with. Born in Silver City, NM, Tenney grew up in the Southwest, and I have to think that being born and raised in New Mexico myself has something to do with my “enchantment.”
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Reviled for his "shapeless sonic tinkering" by the Los Angeles Times, Oakland-based Matt Ingalls is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the director of sfSound and the WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES.
Hwayoung Shon May You Find Rebirth in Paradise (극락왕생하소서) (2024)
“May You Find Rebirth in Paradise (극락왕생하소서)” offers a captivating blend of traditional Korean music and contemporary elements. Featuring the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument, the piece incorporates elements of shamanistic rituals and Korean folk music. It captures the essence of these ancient rituals, where shamans guide and appease spirits, ultimately leading them to peaceful paradise. The composition draws inspiration from the melodies of Neok-puri(넋풀이, meaning “to appease the soul”), a shamanic chant, and reinterprets melodies from Sanjo, a 19th-century Korean folk music genre. Ultimately, the piece embodies a heartfelt wish for peace and transcendence for the souls of the departed.
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Hwayoung Shon (b.1975), a native of South Korea now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a gayageum master and composer who dedicates herself to exploring Korea’s rich cultural heritage and introducing it to audiences worldwide. From winning Korea’s national gugak competitions leading to her public debut on Korea Broadcasting System in 1986, Shon has dedicated herself to mastering the intricacies of the gayageum. Over the years, she has won in numerous renowned competitions and received accolades in performance from Seoul National University. She has since collaborated extensively with K-pop stars, jazz musicians, world musicians, classical ensembles, and orchestras. Shon’s mesmerizing renditions have captivated audiences in prestigious concert halls worldwide, including the Herbst Theatre, Seoul Arts Center, and KBS Hall as well as collaborations with esteemed Korea’s classical symphonies, gugak symphonies, Santa Cruz Symphony and more. Her performances have been broadcasted on KBS, MBC, EBS, BBC, WGVU-FM, KAZU-FM and more. Her recent albums are inspired by Korea’s cultural heritage. Through her music, Shon aims to spread beauty of gayageum sound worldwide by sharing diverse perspectives and fostering cultural connections.
Juri Seo Just Intonation Etudes (2023)
Just Intonation Etudes is my first attempt at merging extended just intonation with old-school harmony and counterpoint. The new intervals subtly redefine the harmonic syntax by altering our perception of consonances and dissonances. My goal was to ensure my love for humor and speed survives the difficulty (of composing, of performing) as well as the seduction of justly tuned sonorities.
I. Pythagoras' Lament Twelve perfect fifths, when purely tuned, do not neatly add up to an octave. The gap between B# and C, about 1/4 of a semitone, is known as the Pythagorean comma. In this overture-like movement, I offer a musical explanation. A series of fifths land on the comma, a cosmic dilemma.
II. Sarabande in Giant Tiny Steps The legendary tune Giant Steps by John Coltrane is renowned for its distinctive root motions. When you stack three major thirds like that in 5-limit just intonation, instead of reaching a full octave, you fall short by a not-so-tiny interval known as the Lesser Diesis, about 5/8 of a semitone (as a result of the compounding errors of the syntonic comma.) It had been my dream to modulate to the lesser diesis ever since I first encountered it some dozen years ago, and I've finally done it here. Giant Steps serves as an introduction. What follows is a sarabande built upon the Giant Steps progression, tuned justly.
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Juri Seo is a Korean-American composer and pianist. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen. Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress. She has received commissions from Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, the Goethe Institut, and Tanglewood. She holds a doctorate in music from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University. For more information, visit www.juriseomusic.com
Mat Muntz 31. (endless and unreal) (2024)
An episodic study on various approaches to just intonation whose structure is inspired by a chapter from Ivo Andrić’s celebrated novel Bridge on The Drina (na Drini ćuprija) involving a supernatural, possibly demonic card game on the novel’s titular bridge in the Bosnian town of Višegrad. This bridge is used throughout the novel as a stage for the unfolding of over 300 years of history on the frontiers of empire - as manifested in the daily interactions and encapsulated dramas of Višegrad’s multi-ethnic, interconfessional community. In this strange chapter at the book’s midpoint, the bridge itself is pulled out of space and time, setting the stage for an altogether different kind of struggle. Written especially for Del Sol, 31. (endless and unreal) aims to integrate a detailed approach to tuning with stylistic diversity, rhythmic intensity, and narrative flow.
“...the bridge appeared endless and unreal, for its ends were lost in the milky fog and the pillars below sank into darkness; on one side each pillar and arch was brightly lit by the moon, while the other was completely in shadow; these illuminated and darkened surfaces broke and cut in sharp lines so that the entire bridge looked like some strange arabesque created by the momentary play of light and darkness…
…It never even crossed his mind that the sofa with its white stone seats and carefree crowd could have any connection with that terrible place, somewhere at the ends of the earth, where he had one night played his last game, staking on a deceiving card all that he possessed, even his own life in this world and the next…”
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Mat Muntz is a composer, bassist, and bagpiper. Rooted in jazz improvisation and extending through microtonality, non-Western instrumentation, and experimental performance practice, Mat's work seeks to imbue the volatile and bizarre with an expressive, human immediacy. His music has been described by The Wire as “rare and rewarding” and possessing “a strangeness which is positively thrilling,” and by The Guardian as “filled with a wild, distorted energy.”
Since completing a BM in Jazz Bass at Manhattan School of Music in 2016, Mat's focus has shifted to composition. He has written for ensembles including Yarn/Wire, Del Sol Quartet, and Wet Ink, and is a co-leader of the cross-cultural experimental ensemble The Vex Collection with Vicente Atria. His debut album as a leader, Phantom Islands, was nominated for a 2024 German Jazz Prize for International Debut Album. Mat's projects have been awarded by The Shed, Brooklyn Arts Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, and in 2022 he was invited to attend the International Gugak Workshop in Seoul. His compositions have been performed at Moers Festival (Germany), Skanu Mezs (Latvia), and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival (NYC).
San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet believes that music can, and should, happen anywhere - screaming out Aeryn Santillan’s Makeshift Memorials from a Mission District sidewalk or a rural high school, bouncing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana off the canyon walls of the Yampa River or the hallowed walls of Library of Congress, bringing Huang Ruo’s Angel Island Oratorio home to the island detention barracks or across the Pacific to the Singapore International Arts Festival. Del Sol’s performances provide the possibility for unexpected discovery, sparking dialogue and bringing people together.
Since 1992, Del Sol has commissioned or premiered hundreds of works by composers including Terry Riley, Tania León, Frederic Rzewski, Vijay Iyer, Mason Bates, Pamela Z, Chinary Ung, Chen Yi, Andy Akiho, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, and Reza Vali. They especially value their ongoing relationship with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, California.
Huang Ruo - A Dust in Time, Del Sol’s eleventh album, was described in the New York Times as “excavations of beauty from the elemental.” New Del Sol recordings in 2023 include The Resonance Between, a collaboration with North Indian musicians Alam Khan & Arjun Verma, and SPELLLING and The Mystery School with Oakland magical-futurist pop phenomenon SPELLLING. Releasing in June 2024, their new podcast "Sounds Current: Angel Island" is an official selection of the 2024 Tribeca Festival.
delsolquartet.com @delsolquartet
Benjamin Kreith & Hyeyung Sol Yoon, violins Charlton Lee, viola Kathryn Bates, cello
Andrew McIntosh Symmetry Etudes (2009-2012)
IV. for Jim Sullivan and Brian Walsh VII. for Alice Lille Walsh VIII. “hidden symmetry"
Jim Sullivan and Brian Walsh are two very good friends of mine and we have been playing music together for 5 or 6 years in various contexts. They are both phenomenal musicians and are the reason that these crazy pieces exist. They often meet with each other once a week or so to practice tuning and other kinds of technical clarinet things and about four years ago I had the good fortune to be invited to a number of these meetings, at which we started to explore microtonal tunings. They suggested I write some kind of study or technical exercise to help with understanding just intonation, which instead turned into a set of 8 complete pieces of music that took me 3 years to write. It is not a single piece with movements, but rather a kind of book of self-contained individual pieces – although there is a definite development throughout the book. The forms and harmonic constructs of the pieces are often very geometric or symmetrical in some way. For instance, in Etude IV (my personal favorite) the symmetry is reflected in time as each phrase goes out of phase with itself. In Etude VIII, I wrote the piece up to the middle point relatively intuitively and then attempted to write it from that point on in reverse from memory without referencing my original work (allowing some artistic liberty, of course). All of these forms and constructs, however, are merely a means to an end. Mostly I was inspired by how beautifully Jim and Brian play and I felt that my job as a composer was simply to create little sound-worlds that frame their wonderful playing in different ways.
Andrew McIntosh is a Grammy-nominated violinist, violist, composer, and baroque violinist who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts, with a wide swath of musical interests ranging from historical performance practice of the Baroque era to improvisation, microtonal tuning systems, and the 20th-century avant-garde. He holds degrees in violin performance, composition, and early music performance from the University of Nevada, Reno, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Southern California. McIntosh often works with forms and ideas found in nature or in other artistic disciplines, working in instrumental, vocal, and fixed media forms, and was described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as “a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West". Recent commissions include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry opera company, Yarn/Wire, the Calder Quartet, and violinists Ilya Gringolts, Movses Pogossian, Lorenz Gamma, and Marco Fusi.
Caleb Rose is a clarinetist and educator based in San Francisco, California who has a wide range of musical interests from orchestral performance to new music and improvisation. He has performed as principal clarinetist with the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra and has had the opportunity to play at SFJAZZ, accompanying Ambrose Akinmusire and Terri Lyne Carrington in ensembles. He is also co-founder of the SF-based chamber collective, The Bridge Music Collective.
Larry Polansky ii - v- i (1997)
Dedicated to Carter Scholz and Brian McLaren, ii-v-i is one of my works which explores real-time tuning, this time in the simplest possible fashion. The guitars are retuned three to three different harmonic series during the course of the piece. ii-v-i was premiered by the composer and Nick Didkovsky, guitars, in 1997, the solo version by Claudio Calmens, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1998. The score is published by Frog Peak Music and also in the journal 1/1.
Larry Polansky (1954–2024) was a composer, theorist, teacher, writer, performer, programmer, editor and publisher. He was the Emeritus Strauss Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-director and co-founder of Frog Peak Music.
Italian-born guitarist and musicologist Giacomo Fiore has premiered more than two dozen new works for justly-tuned, electric, and classical guitars, and released several recordings for Other Minds, Populist, Cold Blue, Pinna, Spectropol, Paper Garden Records, and his own impressum. He teaches a wide range of historical and practical music courses at the University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz. Giacomo is a member of Ninth Planet New Music (the chamber group formerly known as Wild Rumpus), and an occasional performer for New Music Works, sfSound, and other Bay Area organizations.
The Dresher/Davel Invented Instrument Duo - cancelled due to illness
Performing live on a pair of huge invented musical instruments, the Duo of acclaimed composer, performer & instrument inventor Paul Dresher and percussionist-extraordinaire Joel Davel consistently generates excitement and wonder!
Playing the 15-foot Quadrachord or the 10-foot Hurdy Grande, both controlled by Don Buchla’s magical Marimba Lumina, Dresher and Davel create lush textures and rhythmically propulsive grooves that fascinate the ear and the eye. Exploring unique sound-colors amplified by live digital looping, this electro-acoustic duo creates complex sonic layers as rich as a full orchestra.
Audiences are sonically immersed and visually overwhelmed both by the sight and sound of these sculptural inventions as by the energetic and imaginative ways Dresher and Dave interact with them physically. With 14-foot steel strings, the Quadrachord resembles an over-sized guitar lying reclining. Not to be underestimated, although it can be plucked like a guitar, it can also be bowed like a cello, played like a slide guitar, or banged like a drum. Hurdy Grande, in contrast, which has seven 10-foot strings that are mechanically bowed by a motorized wheel, can also make a vast array of different sound, sounding alternately like a bowed violin or cello, a harp, or even a percussion instrument. In the hands of just a single player, the Hurdy Grande can generate more layers of contrasting sounds than any other acoustic instrument yet created.
The Dresher/Davel duo has performed to enthusiastic audiences across the US and in Australia. Concerts have been performed at Disney Hall (opening for the LA Philharmonic), Carnegie/Zankel Hall, Bard College, Detroit Institute of Art, Symphony Space, UT Austin, the Bowling Green Festival of New American Music, the Sydney Conservatorium and the Canberra International Music Festival in Australia.
A bonus to all the Dresher/Davel’s concert is that after each performance, the audience is invited up on stage to explore the instruments and to talk with the two artists.
Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and unique personal style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film.
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006/07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Walker Arts Center, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, National Flute Association, and the American Music Theater Festival. He has performed or had his works performed throughout the world at venues including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and the Minnesota Opera.
In March 2009 at Stanford University, Dresher premiered Schick Machine, a music theater work performed on a set comprised entirely of invented musical instruments/sound sculptures and created in collaboration with writer/director Rinde Eckert, percussionist/performer Steven Schick, and mechanical sound artist Matt Heckert. In April 2008, the San Francisco Ballet premiered Dresher’s orchestral score for Thread, his collaboration with choreographer Margaret Jenkins, commissioned for the Ballet’s 75th anniversary. In May 2006, Dresher’s chamber solo chamber opera The Tyrant, for tenor John Duykers, premiered in five performances at Opera Cleveland and has now been produced in nine cities.
Other recently completed projects include the acclaimed score for the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s premiere production of To the Lighthouse, an adaption of Virginia Woolf’s novel by playwright Adele Shank and directed by Les Waters, and Snow in June, a collaboration with playwright Charles Mee and director Chen Shi-Zheng. In November 2004, his contemporary chamber group, the six-member Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band, made its Carnegie Hall debut, performing a concert of Dresher’s chamber works as part of the “In Your Ear Festival” curated by John Adams.
Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego, where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee, as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music and Arts, 0.0. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels.
Joel Davel’s diverse career ranges from traditional folk and classical to highly experimental and electronic. He is best known for his collaborative efforts with composer Paul Dresher, performing in duos and with the ElectroAcoustic Band. Often working in the worlds of dance, opera, and theater, Davel is music director for dNaga Dance Company. He collaborated with electronic music pioneer Don Buchla for 20 years, and the resultant marimba lumina has become Davel’s signature instrument. Davel holds a bachelor’s degree in music from Northern Illinois University and a master’s from Mills College.
sfSoundOrchestra
PIANO: Hadley McCarroll
FLUTE: Diane Grubbe, Michelle Lee, Kevin Lo
OBOE: Kyle Bruckmann, Amber Lamprecht
CLARINET: Matt Ingalls, Caleb Rose
SAXOPHONE: John Ingle, Elizabeth Schenck
TRUMPET: Tom Dill
TUBA: Ron Heglin
ELECTRIC GUITAR: Giacomo Fiore
QUADRACHORD: Paul Dresher
VIOLIN: Benjamin Kreith, Wendy Reid, Sam Weiser, Hyeyung Sol Yoon
VIOLA: Charlton Lee
CELLO: Kathryn Bates, Ben Davis, Monica Scott, Scott Thompson