The innovative TIME:SPANS Festival 2023 presents the International Contemporary Ensemble in an evening that exemplifies its concept of Polyaspora, including two premieres: the US premiere of the large ensemble work Invisible Self by Andile Khumalo, named one of the top five South African composers by BBC Music Magazine and one of the top composers and performers to watch in 2023 by the Washington Post; and the New York premiere of Gondwana: Earth, a Blue Sanctuary, Oceans, Seas, Lakes, Rivers, Springs and Lagoons; Paradise Gardens and Skies, a large ensemble work by American composer Wadada Leo Smith, hailed as “an anchor of American experimental music” by the New York Times. Also on this exciting and diversely creative program are works by internationally renowned contemporary Korean-German composer Younghi Pagh-Paan and emerging Iranian composer Aida Shirazi, whose work has been described as “affecting” by the New Yorker.
PROGRAM
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Wundgeträumt, 2005
for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello
Andile Khumalo
Invisible Self, 2020*
for piano and large ensemble
* US premiere
Aida Shirazi
Crystalline Trees, 2020
for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello
Wadada Leo Smith
Gondwana, 2022*
for solo cello, three ensembles, conductor
* NY premiere
PERFORMERS
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Alice Teyssier, flute
Jillian Honn, oboe
Campbell MacDonald, clarinet
Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Priscilla Rinehart, horn
Clara Warnaar, percussion
Nathan Davis, percussion
Jacob Greenberg, piano (soloist on Invisible Self)
Cory Smythe, piano
Gabriela Díaz, violin
Josh Modney, violin
Yezu Woo, violin
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Pala Garcia, violin
Wendy Richman, viola
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Ashley Walters, cello (soloist on Gondwana)
Katinka Kleijn, cello
Lizzie Burns, double bass
About the Composers
Younghi Pagh-Paan (*1945 Cheongju, South Korea) is one of the most important female composers of her generation. She was the first woman to receive a commission for an orchestral work at the Donaueschinger Musiktage (1980) and the first woman to be appointed professor of composition at a German university (Bremen, 1994). As a composer and teacher, she has influenced several generations of composers.
Pagh-Paan studied from 1965 to 1971 at Seoul National University before a DAAD Scholarship took her to Germany in 1974. There she continued her studies at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik with Klaus Huber (composition), Brian Ferneyhough (analysis), Peter Förtig (music theory) and Edith Picht-Axenfeld (piano), graduating in 1979.
The conflict between Self and Other strongly influenced her artistic thinking; many of her works bear Korean titles and seek a balance between these two poles. Another important mainstay of her output is a preoccupation with political subjects such as flight, displacement, statelessness, violence and resistance.
In 1980/81 she had a fellowship from Southwest German Radio’s Heinrich Strobel Foundation and in 1985 from the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation. She has received numerous international prizes for her work: the Heidelberg Prize of Women Artists (1995), the Lifetime Achievement Award of Seoul National University (2006), the Republic of Korea’s Order of Civil Merit (2007), the 15th KBS Global Korean Award (2009), the Senate’s Medal for Art and Science from the city of Bremen (2011), the Paiknam Prize (Seoul, 2013), the European Church Music Prize and, in 2020, the Grand Art Prize from the Academy of Arts in Berlin, of which she has been a member since 2009.
Andile Khumalo, born in uMlazi in the environs of southwest Durban, is currently a music lecturer at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. His music studies in composition took him to the University of KwaZulu - Natal before he moved to Columbia University in New York, where he studied composition with Tristan Murail, Fabien Levy and George Lewis. As well as to Stuttgart where he studied composition with Marco Stroppa.
Stroppa introduced Khumalo to spectralism, a sensitive approach towards constructing sound as the foundation for composition. This was further developed during his studies with Tristan Murail. Sound as the foundation is one of the fundamental aspects of the amaXhosa people of South Africa, where bow instruments provide the fundamentals from which the overtone melodies are developed. This sensitivity to sound is found in the music and their language and is ultimately part of their daily living experiences. For example, a change in intonation could easily change the meaning of a word or sentence without changing how it is written.
The change experienced in sound deeply affects the listener's connection between the lived experiences and the spiritual world. My studies with George Lewis heightened the search for one's own identity. In deepening one's own understanding of oneself, as Ngunis and Africans, we believe in a deeper connection with the spiritual world of our ancestors. In my recent work, I have been deeply interested in our sense of existential spirituality through sound.
Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi (1987) is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. Shirazi’s music is described as ”unfolding with deliberation” by The New York Times, “well-made” and “affecting” by The New Yorker, and “unusually creative” by San Francisco Classical Voice. In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics, she mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by Persian and other languages and literature.
Shirazi’s music has been featured at festivals and concert series, including Manifeste, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Maison de la Radio France, Lincoln Center, and Kennedy Center. Her works are performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Miranda Cuckson, International Contemporary Ensemble, Oerknal, Quince Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, and Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Shirazi has earned her Ph.D. in composition and music theory from the University of California, Davis. She has studied with Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam. Shirazi has participated in workshops and masterclasses by Kaija Saariaho, Mark Andre, Riccardo Piacentini, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, and Füsun Köksal, among others. She holds her B.A. in classical piano from Tehran University of Art (Iran) and her B.M. in music composition and theory from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey). She has studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani. Shirazi is an alumna of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music.”
Wadada Leo Smith defines his music as “Creative Music,” and his diverse discography reveals a recorded history of music centered in the idea of spiritual harmony and the unification of social and cultural issues of his world. He has created Ankhrasmation, a symbolic image-based language for performers or musicians. He started his research and designs in search of Ankhrasmation in 1965, and his first realization of this language was in 1967, when it was illustrated in the recording of The Bell (Anthony Braxton: ‘Three Compositions of New Jazz’). Ankhrasmation has played a significant role in Wadada’s development as an artist, ensemble leader and educator. Since, he exhibited his Ankhrasmation language scores in major American museums including The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, the Hammer Museum, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Michigan, and the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco. Significantly, Smith was also a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Ten Freedom Summers, (Defining Moments in the History of the United States of America) and is a Doris Duke Artist.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble’s 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.
Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble’s composer-collaborators—many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration—have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble’s founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.
CREDITS
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2023-24 concert season are made possible by the generous support of many individuals as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Siemens Musikstiftung, New Music USA, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.