Escape Wisconsin

A concert by Alarm Will Sound

At 16:00 on May 26, 2018/ Saturday

CCOM Prince Mansion Concert Hall

1、CHEN Yi (U.S.A.)

Sparkle 

2、Stephen Yip (China Hong Kong)

Realm of the Immortals for 15 players (2012) 

3、ZHONG Juncheng (China）

Blast for mini symphony orchestra

4、ZHOU Long (U.S.A.)

Bell Drum Towers for Twelve Players 

5、Charles Peck (U.S.A.)

Vinyl for chamber orchestra (16 instruments) 

6、Andrew Norman (U.S.A.)

Try 

7、Caleb Burhans(U.S.A.)

Escape Wisconsin (Alarm Remix)

Alarm Will Sound

Alarm Will Sound is “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” ( The New York Times ). A 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music, they have established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic virtuosity. With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. Their repertoire comes from around the world, and ranges from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music. The group itself includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work.

Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, held each July at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Since 2010, over a thousand composers from nearly 40 countries have applied for the unrivaled opportunity to have their work premiered and recorded by Alarm Will Sound and to study with established composers. The festival is part of Dr. Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield’s vision to create an incubator for the composition and performance of new music at the University, and to position Missouri as a major center for the music of tomorrow. For more information about the festival, visit composersfestival.missouri.edu .

Alarm Will Sound may be heard on nine recordings, including their most recent, Splitting Adams , as well as the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite . Our genre-bending, critically acclaimed Acoustica features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin.

CHEN YI

As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is a recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005.

Born in China, Ms. Chen has received bachelor and master degrees from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers included Prof. Wu Zu-qiang, Prof. Chou Wen-chung, and Prof. Mario Davidovsky. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (93-96) supported by Meet The Composer, and on the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (96-98).

Fellowships and commissioning awards were received from Guggenheim Foundation (96), American Academy of Arts and Letters (96), Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (94), Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress (97), and National Endowment for the Arts (94). Honors include the first prizes from the Chinese National Composition Competition (85, 12), the Lili Boulanger Award (93), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (96), the CalArts/Alpert Award (97), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (99), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (01), the Elise Stoeger Award (02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (02), the UMKC Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship and Faculty Service (06, 12). Honorary Doctorates are from Lawrence University (02), Baldwin-Wallace College (08), University of Portland (09), The New School University (10), and the University of Hartford (16). She was appointed by the China Ministry of Education to the prestigious Cheungkong Scholar Visiting Professor at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2006, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Tianjin Conservatory in 2012.

Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded on over 100 CDs, on Bis (02, 03, 04, 11), New Albion (97), CRI (99), Teldec (97, 99 w/ Grammy Award for Colors of Love, 03, 08), New World (08, 09 w/ NPR Top 10 Classical Music Album Award for Sound of the Five), Albany (04, 05, 06, 09, 11, 12, 14), Naxos (07, 08, 09,12,15), Bridge (09,14, 18), and others on Delos, Angel, Nimbus, Cala, Avant, Atma, Hugo, Koch International Classics, Centaur, Eroica, Capstone, Quartz, Innova, and China Record Co. (from 1986 to 2016).

ZHOU Long

Zhou Long is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for his first opera, Madame White Snake, Dr. Zhou also received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the 2012-2013 Elise Stoeger Prize from Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. He has been two-time recipient of commissions from the Koussevitzky, Fromm Music Foundations, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2015, Zhou Long and Chen Yi both were nominated the 58th Grammy Award.

Born on July 8, 1953 in Beijing. Zhou Long enrolled in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977. Following graduation in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the China Broadcasting Symphony. He travelled to the United States in 1985 under a fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Davidovsky and Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. Dr. Zhou is currently Bonfils Distinguished Research Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. In 2018, Zhou Long has selected to the China National “Thousand Talents Program”, became Distinguished Visiting Professor of Southern University of Science and Technology.

ZhongJuncheng

ZhongJuncheng, professor of Guangxi Arts University, China, Artistic director of China-ASEAN Music Festival. He has completed more than 80 pieces of symphony and chamber music, including opera ‘Lingqu Canal of the Qin Dynasty’,‘ Great Han Dynasty Sea road’，the first symphony ‘The Land of of the Zhuang nationality ’, ‘The Second Symphony’, ‘The Third Symphony’, the fourth symphony ‘New Life’,the fifth symphony ‘China’s destiny’,the sixth symphony ‘Ai Ge Ai Wa’,the seventh symphony “Chen I”, the eighth symphony “Chen Ⅲ”etc. Many of his works have gain the national level and provincial level reward ,and performed all over the world by symphony orchestras and chamber music orchestras from France, Austria, Israel, America, Poland and ASEAN. As the founder and artistic director ,he has held successfully seven session China-ASEAN Music Festival.

Charles Peck

Charles Peck (b.1988) is an American composer whose work has been called “daring” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “vivid” (UArts Edge magazine), and “spell-binding” (Rappahannock News). His music has recently been selected for the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute and the Albany Symphony’s Composer to Center Stage program and has been performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Symphony in C, the New York Youth Symphony, the JACK Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, ensemble mise-en, and the Locrian Chamber Players. He has also been named the winner of the Lake George Music Festival’s Composition Competition, the NC New Music Initiative’s Orchestral Composition Competition, the Frame Dance Music Composition Competition, the Symphony in C’s Young Composers’ Competition, and the Castleton Festival’s Young Composer’s Forum.

Stephen Yip

Yip was born in Hong Kong and now living in U.S.A. He received his doctor of musical arts (D.M.A.) at Rice University and bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.) at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, studied with Law Wing--‐fai, Clarence Mak, and Arthur Gottschalk. He has attended major music festivals including: Wellesley Composers Conference, Aspen Music Festival, Asian Composers’ League, ISCM World Music Days, Chinese Composers’ Festival, IMPULS Ensemble Akademie, Luxembourg, the International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt, Germany, Wellesley Composers’ Conference. Residencies include: the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Yaddo Colony and MacDowell Colony. Yip’s works have been performed in the Asia, Europe and America. He has received several composition prizes, included “Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award”, “Taiwan Music Center International Composition Prize”, “Robert Avalon International Prize”, “Singapore International Composition Competition for Chinese Orchestra”, the ALEA III composition Competition, and the 2010 Alvarez Chamber Orchestra Freestyle Composition Competition, London, England. His works are recorded in the ERM--‐Media, PARMA, Capstone, North South recording, Ablaze records, ATMA Classique, and Beauport Classical labels. Yip is a member of the SCI, NACUSA, and ASCAP. Currently, he is on the music faculty at Houston Community College and works as a freelance composer. 

Andrew Norman

Andrew Norman (b. 1979) is a Los Angeles-based composer. Andrew’s work draws on an eclectic mix of sounds and notational practices from both the avant-garde and classical traditions. He is increasingly interested in story-telling in music, and specifically in non-linear, narrative-scrambling techniques from movies and video games. Andrew’s symphonic works have been performed by leading ensembles worldwide, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, the BBC, Saint Louis, Seattle, and Melbourne Symphonies, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, and many others. Andrew was recently named Musical America’s 2017 Composer of the Year. 

Caleb Burhans

Caleb Burhans (b. 1980) is an established, multifaceted presence in the New York contemporary music scene who is active as both a performer (strings, voice) and composer. Hailed by the New York Times as, “animated and versatile,” Mr. Burhans specializes in baroque performance practice, contemporary music, rock/pop music, electronica and free improv. He has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress and the Kronos Quartet, to name a few. In 2009 Caleb was awarded the prestigious Annenberg Fellowship. You can hear Caleb’s music around the world at events like the Bang on a Can Marathon, Look and Listen Festival, Tribeca New Music Festival, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Open Days Festival (Denmark) and the Aspen Music Festival.

Burhans is a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, itsnotyouitsme, Signal and the Wordless Music Orchestra and he is also a member of ACME, Newspeak and the disco band Escort. Caleb has also worked with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Roomful of Teeth, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Jonsi (Sigur Ros), Paul McCartney, fun., The National, Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) and Björk.

Caleb has worked with and premiered numerous works by such composers as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, La Monte Young, Lou Harrison, Meredith Monk, David Lang, John Zorn, George Crumb and Brian Ferneyhough. 

Program Notes

CHEN Yi (arranged by Stefan Freund)         Sparkle 

Sparkle was commissioned by The New Music Consort with funds provided by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Claire Heldrich conducted the premiere on October 21, 1992, at the Borden Auditorium, Manhattan School of Music in New York City. The piece is an octet written for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (in E flat), 2 percussionists, piano, violin, cello and double bass, recorded on CRi [CD 804] in 1999, and dedicated to Prof. Mario Davidovsky, who enthusiastically encouraged me to share my experience with audiences in America and abroad.

In Sparkle, I want to express my impressions of sparks---—everlasting flashes of wit, so bright, nimble and with passion. The material of pitch, rhythm and form are drawn from the tune and the structural method of traditional Chinese baban (Eight Beats) rules of the grouping of notes. The new version is adapted by Stefan Freund for the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound in 2018.

Stephen Yip (U.S.A.)      Realm of the Immortals for 15 players (2012) 

It was scored for chamber ensemble of fifteen players. “Realm of the Immortals” was inspired by Chinese painter, Li Kung-lin (1040 - 1106), in a period of Northern Sung dynasty’s landscape work. The subject of this painting illustrates the assimilation one of the Tao concepts, “Yin-Yang” which energies from the natural world. The detail from the work depicts yin spirits carrying ceremonial lanterns, brooms and parasols descending on clouds from a misty valley to reach the domain of yang, symbolized by the phallicshaped formation in the foreground. The other detail from the work portrays yang spirits as a group of scholars in a open pavilion with a rock formation in the foreground. They are meeting the world of yin, symbolized by the solitary Immortal outside the pavilion and the deep misty valley beyond the edge of the precipice.

Composer tried to create small fragments of motif and series of tone-color pattern to construct a large picture. The gradation of the dim and bright tone intensity is on of the major components in this piece. And the combination of motivic fragments is based on similar gestures such as ascending and descending lines. Some series of tone-color patterns are consists of pitch tone and non-pitch tone (like sound effect). Repetitions and imitations of the sound are employed. There are different combinations of ensemble sound

are designed to provide different atmospheres.

ZHOU Long (U.S.A.)                  Bell Drum Towers for Twelve Players

Commission of the House of World Cultures for Ensemble Modern

First performed by the Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu, March 30, April  1 & 3, 2006, at Philharmonie in Essen, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and House of World Cultures in Berlin, Germany

In the Bell Drum Towers, I am exploring my fantasy of their sound in the wind, the pulse of drum beating.

Gradually, new patterns develop, each time in a faster tempo, building to a climax that brings the music to a presto-wind-like section. Finally, the hazy wind rang the lingering bells.

ZHONG Juncheng            Blast for mini symphony orchestra

《The History of Dong-Han——Wang Ba’s story》 had wrote that “GuangWu king have a tolke with Wang Ba.He said they all dead who come from Yinchuan to follow me, except you.In the strong wind, only the tough grass won't be blown down.It means that only through a severe test that we know who is truly strong.

In this piece, the perfect fifth and diminished fifth interlace, the speed of the fast and the changing rhythm, the complex twelve-tone harmony and the pentatonic longitudinal chord structure.It is as if you can make you feel and understand the inner nature of people, people and nature, and the "vigorous grass".

Charles Peck             Vinyl for chamber orchestra

All recorded music is altered by the medium of its delivery. Most cassette tapes restrict high frequencies and digital mp3 files compress the original audio to its bare essentials. This piece is built around the peculiar alterations associated with vinyl records. The opening music jumps quickly between a variety of sounds, imitating the skipping that occurs when a needle is knocked out of a groove. Much of this material also includes small pitch fluctuations that imitate the sound of a warped vinyl. Later in the piece, the tempo and pitch both steadily increase during a long build as if the speed dial were being slowly changed from the setting for a 33 RPM vinyl to a 45 RPM. And finally, at the climax of the piece, the strings and woodwinds resonate strongly with a few fluctuations in energy, while the brass play at extreme volumes to represent the artifacts and distortion associated with a worn record or dull stylus.

Andrew Norman                 Try

I am a trial-and-error composer, an incurable reviser. Disney Hall and the LA Philharmonic have meant so much to me over the years that the overwhelming desire to write for them the perfect piece was enough to stop me dead in my creative tracks. It took me many months to realize the obvious: my piece was never going to be perfect no matter how hard I tried, and perfection was not even the right target on which to set my sights. The best thing I could do to honor the adventurous spirit of the Philharmonic and Disney Hall was to try as many new things as I could, to embrace the risk and failure and serendipitous discovery implicit in the word “try.” The piece I ended up writing is a lot like me. It’s messy, and fragmented, and it certainly doesn’t get things right on the first try. It does things over and over, trying them out in as many different ways as it can. It circles back on itself again and again in search of any idea that will stick, that will lead it forward to something new. And, at long last, after ten minutes of increasingly frantic trying, it finds one small, unlikely bit of musical material it likes enough to repeat and polish and hone until it finally (fingers crossed) gets it right.

Caleb Burhans: Escape Wisconsin (Alarm Remix)

Escape Wisconsin is a solo saxophone work which was commissioned by the Albany Symphony in 2006. A play on Wisconsin’s tourism slogan, “Escape to Wisconsin,” my saxophone piece began its life in 2001 as a vibraphone duo for two percussionists who went on to form a group called So Percussion. That version sat on the shelf until it was reduced into a work for solo performer. Escape Wisconsin (Alarm Remix) is a return to my original vision of the piece with some hefty augmentation from my Alarm Will Sound family.

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