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PARTHENIA Beverly Au, treble and bass viols Lawrence Lipnik, tenor viol Rosamund Morley, bass viol Lisa Terry, bass viol with Barbara Feldon, actor Paul Hecht, actor Kristin Norderval, soprano Hot off the press! Poetry and new music Two Sonnets Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) On the Death of Two Most Notable Lovers On the Same Subject I die, alas! (Moro lasso) Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1560-1613) Night Voices No. 15 Max Lifchitz (2008) Quartet for four viols Let Evening Come Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) 2:4 David Thompson (2008) Fantasy for four viols Cicada Fantazy Anacreon (570-478 BC) David Glaser (2008) Duet for tenor and bass viols He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Like the Lily Frances White (1999, arr. for Parthenia 2008) Two bass viols and electronic sound Brief Pause The Loathly Lady (act 2, scene 2; Sheherezade) Wendy Steiner (2006) A Twelvemonth and a Day Paul Richards (2007) Quartet for four viols Nothing Proved Kristin Norderval (2008) Voice, viols and electronics Nothing Proved spoken: Quote by Elizabeth at the execution of Lord High Admiral Thomas Seymour, condemned as a traitor, and accused, among other things, of plotting to marry the princess Elizabeth "by secret and crafty means". The Doubt Spoken: Written in her French Psalter - Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Sung: The Doubt of Future Foes - Queen Elizabeth I Grieve and Dare Not Spoken: When I was fair and young – Queen Elizabeth I "Madam, ye need not tell me" - Sir James Melville (1535-1617) Sung: On Monsieur's Departure – Queen Elizabeth I Composers will introduce each work and the audience is invited to stay after the performance for a Q & A Picture Ray Studio 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, 2008 ABOUT THE PROGRAM The viol consort PARTHENIA, with actors BARBARA FELDON and PAUL HECHT, and soprano KRISTIN NORDERVAL, offer this unusual program of new musical selections “HOT OFF THE PRESS,” composed or arranged this year for Parthenia by Max Lufchitz, Kristin Norderval, Paul Richards, Frances White, David Glaser, and David Thompson. Written especially for this evening’s program, Night Voices No. 15 is built around the unusual harmonies found in the madrigal Moro lasso al mio duolo (I die, alas! From my pain) by Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 15601613). The Prince of Venosa, Gesualdo achieved notoriety for having murdered his wife Donna Maria de Avalos and her lover Fabrizio Carafa upon catching them in flagrante delicto. Exempt from prosecution given his high ranking social status, musicologists speculate that Gesualdo’s shocking and innovative harmonic language was a response to the guilt feelings that tormented him throughout his life as a result of his barbaric actions. The musical texture of Night Voices No. 15 juxtaposes post-modern techniques with harmonic gestures derived from Gesualdo’s madrigal. These diverse elements wander into the musical mist as if appearing through a dream-like mist. The two pieces I have written for Parthenia (actually all my work up to now) share two commonalities: A polyphonic musical texture and the use of ratios as a constructive device. Polyphonic musical texture is just a fancy way we musicians mean to say music that has two or more independent musical lines occurring at the same time in a piece. This style of composition focuses on the horizontal or liniar aspect of music and has a vast and rich history in Western art music, especially so, for the consort of viols. 2:4 is a Fantasia and is inspired by the 16th century Italian Fantasia, which unlike its later incarnations was quite formal and used mostly imitative counterpoint. In this work I have employed a canon by augmentation, in which the imitating voice has the melody in doubled note values (twice as long) thus the name 2:4. As the piece begins you will hear the canon theme played alone on the 2nd bass viol after which, the second voice is introduced (1 st bass viol) this time the canon is played in augmentation while the tenor viols plays the original canon theme. Other different voices are introduced but throughout the piece the two canon themes are always present. In the second piece titled 3:4 my inspiration has come from the Baroque da capo aria. Although the musical texture is choral the four voices are quite independent from one another. The treble and tenor lines move in sets of 3 measures while the two basses move in sets of 4 measures. Written for Rosamund Morley and Lawrence Lipnik, Fantazy is a duo for tenor and bass viols. It is based on the English viol fantasy and like its model, it too is organized in several contrasting sections. As with the earlier fantasy some of these sections are contrapuntal, but unlike its Elizabethan forerunners other sections are explorations of textural and timbral effects for the gamba. Frances White Like the lily, originally for viola, double bass, and electronic sound (1999). In a special arrangement for Parthenia. Like the lily was inspired by Alleluia: Justus germinabit, one of the chants from the Liber Usualis. According to the Catholic church, these chants were dictated by God to Pope Gregory the Great. The electronic part features quiet, indistinct, irregularly pulsing chords. Meanwhile, in the strings, the chant surfaces in bits and pieces but is mostly not recognizable. At the end it finally emerges from a fading sonic landscape made up of the sound of wind, tuned to form a harmonic background to the chant. A Twelvemonth and a Day was composed for Parthenia, both as a concert piece and as the prelude to the third act of my new opera, The Loathly Lady. Written to Wendy Steiner’s libretto, it is based on "The Wife of Bath's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer, in which a rakish knight has a year and a day to answer the question, "What do women want most?" Since on his quest, The Loathly Lady’s Knight encounters Titania, Freud, Sheherezade, Virginia Woolf, and other opinionated characters, John DeLucia’s musical concept calls for them to be mirrored in appropriate period idioms and instruments, including viols. In Picture Ray Studio 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, 2008 "A Twelvemonth and a Day," we hear the Knight leaving the frenetic dissonance of his travels for the suspended medieval court of Camelot. The Loathly Lady has provided him with the correct answer, but he is unaware of the elfin magic awaiting him and the final lesson he has in store. “The Loathly Lady” will have its première in April, 2009 in concert performances in Philadelphia and elsewhere, featuring Parthenia, Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner, Ruth Cunningham, Ed Brewer, the members of Piffaro, and many others, with Gary Wedow conducting. Kristin Norderval’s Nothing Proved is part of a song cycle (to be premiered next season) scored for the viols of Parthenia, soprano and interactive audio processing. Using traditional Elizabethan consort song instrumentation and sensibilities, the work combines a 21st century musical aesthetic and technology, giving the music simultaneously a Renaissance and contemporary sound. The composition presents the words of one of the most powerful and enigmatic women in history in an interpretation reflecting the intelligence and emotional edge of the poetry SUNG TEXTS NOTHING PROVED Sung Texts – adapted from the following poems: The Doubt of Future Foes The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy, And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy; For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith doth ebb, Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web. But clouds of joy untried do cloak aspiring minds, Which turn to rain of late repent by changed course of winds. The top of hope supposed the root upreared shall be, And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see. The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds, Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds. The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know. No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort. My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy. On Monsieur's Departure I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute, but inwardly to prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned. Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die and so forget what love ere meant. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Parthenia, hailed by the New Yorker as "one of the brightest lights in New York's early-music scene," is a dynamic ensemble exploring the extraordinary repertory for viols from Tudor England to the court of Versailles and beyond. Known for its remarkable sense of ensemble, Parthenia is presented in concerts across America, and produces its own lively and distinguished concert series at Corpus Christi Church in NYC, collaborating regularly with the world's foremost early music specialists and has been featured on radio and television and in prestigious festivals and series including Music Before 1800, Maverick Concerts and the Regensburg Tage Alter Musik. Noteworthy among Parthenia's inventive programs have been a presentation of the complete instrumental works of Robert Parsons at Columbia's Miller Theatre, and the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell at the Cathedral of St John the Divine. Parthenia performs often at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium and in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall, and appeared in conjunction with the exhibition, "Searching for Shakespeare," at the Yale Center for British Art. Parthenia’s popular touring program, “When Music and Sweet Poetry Agree,” is a unique collaboration with actor Paul Hecht and soprano Jacqueline Horner, a celebration of Shakespearean poetry and music. Parthenia has commissioned, premiered and recorded many new works by composers such as Phil Kline, Brian Fennelly, Will Ayton, Randy Sandke, John Stone, Nicholas Patterson, and others, in part through grants from the American Composers Forum, the Camargo Foundation, Roger Williams University, the Viola da Gamba Society of America, and private funds. An ASCAP/CMA Award honored Maverick Concerts' 2002 Season, which included two world premieres of works by Brian Fennelly, commissioned especially by Maverick for Parthenia. Through a 2006 grant from the Jerome Foundation, Parthenia is excited to be commissioning and premiering "Nothing Proved Can Be," a new song cycle for viol consort, voice and interactive audio processing, set by composer Kristin Norderval to the extraordinary poetry of Queen Elizabeth I. Parthenia recently recorded a new CD of the works of Will Ayton, "A Reliquary for William Blake," on the MSR Classics label. Parthenia is represented by GEMS Live! Artist Management: www.gemsny.org/gemslive For more information about Parthenia, please visit www.parthenia.org. Barbara Feldon is best known as “99” -- the secret Agent on the TV series, Get Smart. During her career she has performed in television films, variety shows, and motion pictures, (only one of which she wishes to recall: the Michael Richie film Smile). On stage Barbara performed in the Circle in the Square production of Past Tense, the off Broadway musical Cut the Ribbons, and her one woman show, Love for Better or Verse. Over the years she has developed a number of poetry and prose readings: Great Love Poetry, Pablo Neruda in His Own Words, Jane Austin, and Virginia Woolf. Because of Barbara’s interest in women’s issues, from 1982 to 1984 she hosted The 80’s Woman on Lifetime Network. She has served on the boards of Screen Actors Guild, The Orchestra of St. Lukes, and The Poetry Society of America. She lectures on women’s issues and is a passionate supporter of Girls Inc., an organization created to help underprivileged girls develop options. Her book of essays, Living alone -- and Loving it! was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster. Space’s “Selected Shorts” series, broadcast on National Public Radio. Acclaimed both as a singer, improviser and composer, Kristin Norderval has premiered numerous new works for voice and presented original compositions incorporating voice, electronics, and interactive technology at festivals and concert houses in Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. Many works including five chamber operas - have been written specifically for her. A number of these works have been recorded on Aurora, CRI, Deep Listening, Eurydice, Koch International, and New World Records. Her credits as a soloist include performances with the Philip Glass Ensemble, the San Francisco Symphony, Oslo Sinfonietta and the Netherlands Dance Theater. Paul Hecht made his Broadway début as The Player in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tony nomination, 1968). Other Broadway roles include John Dickinson in 1776 , Nathan in The Rothschilds, Rufio in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, Belcredi in Pirandello’s Henry IV (both with Rex Harrison), Stoppard’s Night and Day with Maggie Smith, the Director in Noises Off, and as John Ruskin and Jerome K. Jerome in The Invention of Love. His off-Broadway roles have included Ralph in the American premiere of Harold Pinter’s Moonlight, Charlotte Jones’s Humble Boy and the title role in Pirandello’s Henry IV, for which he received an Obie award. Around the country he has appeared as Cyrano in the world premiere of the Anthony Burgess translation at the Guthrie, and at the American Shakespeare Festival as Marc Antony in both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. He has also performed in plays by Shaw, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Turgenev, Handke,KaufmanFerber,and Ronald Harwood, at Canada’s Shaw Festival, the McCarter in Princeton, the Berkshire Theater Festival, the NY Shakespeare Festival, Lincoln Center, and the Bay Street in Sag Harbor. He has appeared in movies with Bette Davis, Jane Fonda, Jeremy Irons, Chris Rock and Howard Stern. He was in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Stoppard-Previn), and Facade (Walton-Sitwell) with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in the Soldiers Tale conducted by Robert Craft He performs regularly in literary events at the 92nd st Y where he recently directed Edna St Vincent Millays Conversation at Midnight, and is heard annually in Symphony In 2004 and 2005 she was awarded a Norwegian Artists Stipend for creation of new inter-disciplinary works for the stage, and in 2005 she received the Henry Cowell Award recognizing her innovative work as a composer. Among her compositions are works for concert, stage and film. Commissions include works for Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen, the Bucharest International Dance Festival in Romania, jill sigman/thinkdance in New York City, and the early music ensemble Parthenia, the latter as part of the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program. Norderval is the co-founder and vocalist/laptop performer of the electroacoustic duo ZANANA, and a member of Pauline Oliveros' improvising quintet the New Circle Five. Kristin Norderval received her Doctor of Musical Arts from Manhattan School of Music in New York City in 1993. Her undergraduate and Masters studies were completed at the University of Washington and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Østfold in Halden, Norway, investigating training and creation methods in the interdisciplinary performing arts. [ \ ABOUT THE COMPOSERS Max Lifchitz was born in México City in 1948, and has resided in New York since 1966. A graduate of The Juilliard School and Harvard University, his works have been performed throughout the US, Europe and Latin America. Lifchitz has taught at Columbia University, the Manhattan School of Music and The University at Albany, SUNY. His works have garnered fellowships and awards from, among others, the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim Foundations; the New York State Council for Arts Individual Artist Program; and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Also active as pianist and conductor, his compositions and performances may be heard on the Classic Masters, CRI, Finnadar, New World, North/South, Opus One, Phillips, RCA Victor and Vienna Modern Masters record labels. Born in Mexico City, David P. Thompson is a composer and classical guitarist who supports his composition habit by teaching throughout New York City. A commission from the New York Wind Symphony and the French-American School of Music in September of 2007 resulted in the composition, Collage: Triptych for Winds premiered at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church. Mr. Thompson holds degrees from USC and the Mannes College of Music where he studied with Christopher Berg and Michael Newman. David Glaser was born in Manhattan in 1952 and studied at Hunter College (BA), Queens College (MA) and Columbia University (DMA) where he worked with Mario Davidovsky, George Edwards, Martin Boykan and Jack Beeson. In 2007 he was awarded a Fromm Foundation commission to compose a piece for Parthenia. He has also received a Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a CAP Grant and a Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Grant from the American Music Center, the Dr. Boris and Eda Rapoport Prize in Composition at Columbia University and Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Wellesley Composer Conference. He has been composer-in-residence at the NewMusic@ECU festival at East Carolina University. He is a past President of the United States section of the League of Composers/ISCM. His music is published by APNM. The American Academy of Arts and Letters describes his work as “…subtly potent music of important potential.” His music has been commissioned by the New York New Music Ensemble, Judith Kellock, Susan Narucki, Linda Larson, Elizabeth Farnum, the Cygnus Ensemble, the Anderson-Fader Guitar Duo, the Peconic Chamber Orchestra, the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble and Glaux, the new music ensemble of Temple University. He is Assistant Professor at Stern College of Yeshiva University in New York. Frances White composes instrumental and electronic music. She studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. She has received awards, honors, grants, commissions, and fellowships from organizations such as Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France), the International Computer Music Association, Hungarian Radio, ASCAP, the Bang On A Can Festival, the Other Minds Festival, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Dale Warland Singers, the American Music Center, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. She recently completed The ocean inside, a work commissioned by the Third Practice Festival at the University of Richmond for the acclaimed ensemble eighth blackbird. Ms. White's music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, and Bridge Records labels. A CD devoted to her electroacoustic chamber works, Centre Bridge, was released in August of 2007 on the Mode Records label. Ms. White's music was featured as part of the soundtrack of two of Gus Van Sant's award-winning films: Elephant and Paranoid Park. Ms. White studies the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), and finds that the traditional music of this instrument informs and influences her work as a composer. Much of Ms. White's music is inspired by her love of nature, and her electronic works frequently include natural sound recorded near her home in central New Jersey. Born in New York City in 1969 to a musical family, composer Paul Richards has been engaged with music since childhood, including forays into various popular styles, the Western canon, and Jewish sacred and secular music through his father, a cantor. All of these experiences inform his creative activities, which have included numerous orchestral, vocal, chamber, and theatrical works. Hailed in the press as a composer with “a strong, pure melodic gift, an ear for color, and an appreciation for contrast and variety,” and praised for his “fresh approach to movement and beautiful orchestral coloration,” his works have been heard in performance throughout the country and internationally on six continents. He has been recognized in numerous competitions, including the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s Fresh Ink 2002 Florida Composers’ Competition, the International Section of the 2000 New Music for Sligo/IMRO Composition Award and the 2001 and 2004 Truman State University/M.A.C.R.O. Composition Competition. Other honors and awards include Special Distinction in the 2006 ASCAP Rudolph Nissim Prize, Finalist in the 2006 American Composers Orchestra Whitaker Reading Sessions, Second Prize in the International Horn Society Composition Competition in 2001, First Place in the 1999 Voices of Change Composers Competition, two First Place prizes in the Guild of Temple Musicians Young Composers Award (1994-95, 1995-96) and many others. Commissions have come from organizations including the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Florida State Music Teachers’ Association and Music Teacher’s National Association, Duo 46, Sonoran Consort, Meet the Composer-Arizona, Arizona Repertory Singers, Arizona Commission on the Arts and Catalina Chamber Orchestra. In addition, many university wind programs have commissioned Richards’ work, including those of Baylor, Florida, Illinois – Champaign/Urbana, Michigan, Nevada – Las Vegas, North Carolina – Greensboro, Northern Iowa, Syracuse and Truman State. “Fables, Forms, and Fears,” a CD of Richards’ chamber music, was released by Meyer Media in July of 2007. Music by Paul Richards is also recorded on the Capstone, Mark, Summit, and MMC labels, including a recent recording featuring famed clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and the Slovak Radio Orchestra. His works are published by Southern Music, TrevCo Music, the International Horn Society Press, and Margalit Music. Currently associate professor of composition at the University of Florida, he previously taught at Baylor University, and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition at the University of Texas at Austin, and Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in Theory and Composition at the University of Arizona UPCOMING NY PERFORMANCE (for more information and reservations, call Parthenia at 212-358-5942) Friday, Aril 25, 2008 at 8pm Corpus Christi Church, 529 West 121st Street, NYC PARTHENIA & EX UMBRIS with Paul Shipper, Tom Zajac, Grant Herreid, Nell Snaidas and Karen Hansen THE QUEEN’S COUTIERS Listen at the keyhole of the Queen’s Presence Chamber as Elizabeth’s courtiers vie for favor and power. Songs and ballads of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sydney, Dowland and Hume. Parthenia thanks the following individuals and organizations for their wonderful support: JoCarole Lauder, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Time Warner, Michael Sivy, Phong Bui, Gary Wedow, Janet and David Offensend, Virginia and Richard Storr, Johnson & Johnson, Elizabeth Guiher, Nancy Tooney, Louise Basbas, Sam Chell, Jane Furth and Augie Matzdorf, Michael Rigsby, Wendy Steiner, Brigitte Segmuller, Webster Williams, Naomi and Stephen Antonakos, Nancy Goldring, Samuel and Linda Kramer, Hans & Judy Lie, Jill Samant, Irving and Lucy Sandler, Michael & Nina Sundell, Regan Heiserman and Bob Karen, Amanda Pond, Margaret Brown, Norma Cote, Rackstraw Downes, Paula Gannon, Alain and Ariane Kirili, Patsy Rogers, Hugh Young , John Behan, Anna Burton, Suzanne Darrow, Gladys Foxe, Manfred Korman, Judith Murray, Joyce Richardson, Peter and Sally Saul, Tom Warren, Laura and Michael Goudket, William Atkinson, Joy Hudecz, Max Lifchitz, Lawrence Loewinger, Nona Mosiej, Arthur Williams, Evelyn Simon, Grace Feldman, Susan Hellauer, Cynthia Shaw and David Simonoff, Bonnie Lassen Parthenia acknowledges the following people and organizations for help in making this concert possible: William Wegman and Christine Burgin, Brian Kerrigan and Picture Ray Studios, GEMS, Gary Wedow, Michael Terry, Rober Storr; Dongsok Shin Recordings Parthenia is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts. Parthenia's concert season is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Leadership support for Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections Program is generously provided by MetLife Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Amphion Foundation, Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, BMI Foundation, Inc., Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Jerome Foundation, mediaThefoundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Virgil Thomson Foundation, Ltd Picture Ray Studio 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, 2008 Picture Ray Studio 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, 2008