"DA CAPO CELEBRATES BARD" ON APRIL 11, WITH PERFORMANCES OF WORKS BY JOAN TOWER, BARD ALUMNI AND STUDENTS, AS WELL AS GEORGE CRUMB

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY—The Da Capo Chamber Players will perform a special concert on Friday, April 11, at 8:00 p.m. in Olin Hall at Bard College. The performance, "Da Capo Celebrates Bard," features works by Bard professor Joan Tower, two Bard alumni, three Bard students, and George Crumb. Presented by The Bard Center, the program is free and open to the public.

"Music at Bard is intensely creative," says Patricia Spencer, visiting associate professor of music at the College and flutist with Da Capo. "It evokes a spirit of much earlier times, when all performers were composers and vice versa."

Da Capo will perform Joan Tower's Turning Points for clarinet and strings; two works by Bard alumni, At the Edge by David Homan '01, and Six Small Pieces for Clarinet and Piano by Daniel Sonenberg '92; and three works by Bard students, Gloria by Tucker Fuller '03, Beachcomber by Andrew Schulze '03, and Liminality and Communitas by Sergei Tcherepnin '04. Also on the program will be Eleven Echoes of Autumn (1965), composed by George Crumb.

Guest artists include soprano Kimberly Kahan, violinists David Bowlin and Jane Chung, violist Lois Martin, and pianist Blair McMillen.

Da Capo is widely acclaimed for its virtuosity, stimulating programs, and openness to a wide spectrum of styles in new music. Its dedication to working with composers is matched by a commitment to rehearsing each piece as a living, moving, breathing entity, rather than as a fixed blueprint. Winners of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1973, Da Capo has become a leader in building a strong heritage of present-day American chamber music and can point with pride to more than 90 chamber music works written especially for the ensemble by Joan Tower, Philip Glass, Harvey Sollberger, and Philippe Bodin, among many others. The Da Capo Chamber Players are flutist Spencer, clarinetist Meighan Stoops, cellist André Emelianoff, and pianist Lisa Moore (currently on leave).

Funding for the concert is provided through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation at Bard College. For further information, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425.

André Emelianoff has toured throughout North America, Japan, Russia, Austria, and England, and given recitals throughout central Asia and the Mediterranean as an American Ambassador for the Arts, sponsored by the USIA. A cellist with Da Capo Chamber Players since 1976, he is also a member of the Aeolian Chamber Players and has been involved with the Music Today Ensemble. Winner of a 1985 NEA Solo Recitalist Award, he has commissioned works by Aaron Kernis, Joan Tower, George Perle, Richard Wernick, Shulamit Ran, Stephen Jaffe, and Gerald Levinson. He appeared as a guest artist with the Houston Da Camera, New Jersey Chamber Society, and Lincoln Center Chamber Society, among others; as a participant in the Marlboro, Chamber Music West, and Piccolo Spoleto festivals; and as a soloist with Albany Symphony. He is on the faculty at The Juilliard School, as well as the Round Top (Texas) Festival and the Perlman Program. Emeilianoff has recorded for CRI, Opus One, New World Records, Nonesuch, GM Recordings, RCA, Bridge Records, and Pro Arte.

Patricia Spencer has been praised by the American Record Guide for her "astounding ability to play late 20th-century music, with all its technical and musical demands, beautifully and intelligently." She received acclaim for her premieres of solo flute works by Louis Karchin and Eugene Lee at the 2001 Sonic Boom Festival and for the premiere of Shulamit Ran's flute concerto, Voices, at the 2000 National Flute Association Convention. As a soloist and flutist with the Da Capo Chamber Players, she has toured throughout the United States and abroad, including a solo performance at the 1999 International Computer Music Conference in Beijing. Spencer’s solo recitals draw from the growing repertoire of pieces written for her by such composers as Ge Gan-ru, Miriam Gideon, Peter Golub, Stephen Jaffe, Arthur Kreiger, Salvatore Martirano, Thea Musgrave, Judith Shatin, Harvey Sollberger, Louise Talma, Joan Tower, and Yehudi Wyner. Spencer's solo recordings include Joan Tower's Hexachords, Harvey Sollberger's Riding the Wind, Eleanor Cory's Epithalamium, Miriam Gideon's Eclogue, and Eric Chasalow's Over the Edge for flute and electronic sounds. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts recording program, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and the Copland Fund for her two solo recordings on Neuma Records. The first recording includes works by Boulez, Carter, Talma, Martirano, Jaffe, Kreiger, Korde, and Perle. The second recording, Narcissus and Kairos, was called "rapturous" by Fanfare magazine and includes works by Judith Shatin and Thea Musgrave. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she was a student of Robert Willoughby, Spencer continued her studies with Marcel Moyse, John Wummer, and Josef Marx. She is a faculty member in the Music Program at Bard College and also teaches flute and chamber music at Hofstra University.

Clarinetist Meighan Stoops is the newest member of the Da Capo Chamber Players, as well as an active chamber musician, recitalist, and teacher. She has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Key West Symphony Orchestra, Barge Music, the Con Brio Ensemble, and with the Da Capo Chamber Players on John Schaefer’s New Sounds on WNYC and at MATA (Music at the Anthology). Stoops holds degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, where she received the Lucy G. Moses Fellowship and the Dean’s Award. Past teachers include Russell Dagon, David Shifrin, and Kalmen Opperman.

George Crumb, Annenberg Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, was awarded a Grammy for best classical contemporary composition in 2001 for his work Star-Child from the recording 70th Birthday Album. In 1968, Crumb was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his composition Echoes of Time and the River. Other honors include International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO) Award 1971, and grants and commissions from the Fromm, Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, and Rockefeller Foundations. Crumb is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and received a D.M.A. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied composition with Ross Lee Finney. Audience enthusiasm, critical acclaim, and colleagues' praise have been extensive for Crumb's mature works (dating from approximately 1962). Among his most frequently cited qualities are an extraordinarily sensitive ear resulting in highly refined timbral nuances; a powerful evocative sense; and a sureness and concision in realizing his musical intentions. All of these attributes interact structurally to form a body of music that is moving and convincing.

Joan Tower, according to the New Yorker "one of the most successful woman composers of all time," is Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music and director of the Music Program at Bard College. She was inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998, and received the 1990 Grawemeyer Award in Composition, the 1998 Delaware Symphony’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composer, and the 2002 Annual Composer's Award from the Lancaster Symphony. Tower's recent commission by the Tokyo String Quartet, her second string quartet In Memory, received its premiere last year. This season the Boston Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory commissioned a percussion quintet to receive its premiere this spring; the Emerson String Quartet will premiere her third string quartet during the concert "Contemporary Music at Bard," one of the opening events of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, designed by Frank Gehry. Last year her percussion concerto Strike Zones, performed by Evelyn Glennie with the National Symphony Orchestra, received its debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In February 2002, she returned to the Kennedy Center to share half of a composer/performer chamber music program with Ned Rorem. In addition, Tower has been featured as composer in residence at numerous universities, and her music performed by orchestras and chamber music ensembles throughout the country, including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City, where she continues her role as composer in residence. She also is composer in residence at the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and has been the subject of television documentaries on WGBH (Boston), CBS Sunday Morning, and MJW Productions (England). Recently adding "conductor" to her list of accomplishments, Tower has conducted her works with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Scotia Festival Orchestra, and the Anchorage Symphony. From 1969–84, Tower was pianist and founding member of the Da Capo Chamber Players.

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(3.19.03)

This event was last updated on 03-25-2003

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