New Music Ensemble

About the Program

program notes by Mark Bilyeu

Donald Grantham
Love Songs Sweet and Sour
BORN November 9, 1947, Duncan, OK
COMPOSED 2022
PREMIERED April 23, 2022, Liz Cass, mezzo-soprano, Carla McElhaney, pianist, Austin, TX
DURATION 18 minutes

Donald Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony’s Awards to American Composers, alongside a Guggenheim Fellowship, and three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Grantham, serves as the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor of Music at The University of Texas at Austin, Love Songs Sweet and Sour A set of five songs addressing various aspects of love through the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, E.E. Cummings, Dorothy Parker and others, Love Songs Sweet and Sour ranges in order, from enigmatic to regretful to sardonic to tender to inscrutable, offering a variety of perspectives on loving and being loved—or not.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Aequilibria
BORN 1977, Iceland
COMPOSED 2014
PREMIERED September 14, 2014, Bergen Norway, Baldur Brönnimann, conductor
DURATION 14 minutes

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir speaks frequently about how her homeland’s natural beauty has shaped her music, and impacted her perceptions of the world: its quiet drama and its subtle changes. Often writing works that interact with, uplift, or simply depict the ever-changing, slowly unfolding details of a landscape, her “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (NY Times) and “striking” (Guardian) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions — most notably, the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, the New York Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer Award, and Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award and Martin E. Segal Award. According to the composer, Aequilibria is “inspired by various states of balancing forces - by looking at the sky - the natural breath between expansion and contraction, and the perspectives of translucence and opacity.”

Donald Grantham
Music for the Blanton
COMPOSED 2006
DURATION 26 minutes
 

From the Composer: 

 Music for the Blanton was commissioned to celebrate the opening of the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. It is a work in 18 short movements for ten instruments, and is constructed similarly to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Eight of the movements are intended to musically depict specific works of art in the Museum’s collection. These eight movements are connected by very brief solos and duos intended to summon the audience from the location of one art work to the next within the Museum, and the entire work is framed by a Prelude and a Postlude.

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About the Artists

Marc Sosnowchik

Dr. Marc Sosnowchik is a conductor, educator, arranger, and clinician based in Austin, Texas. His current duties as Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Texas include conducting the New Music Ensemble and Concert Bands, instructing courses in conducting and wind literature, and teaching the Longhorn Bands. Before his appointment at UT, Dr. Sosnowchik served as Associate Director of Bands at the University of South Florida, Assistant Director of Bands at Oklahoma State University, and Associate Conductor of the Florida Wind Band.  Dr. Sosnowchik maintains an active schedule as a clinician, conductor, and arranger. He conducts ensembles throughout the U.S., and in the summer teaches at the World Youth and Adult Wind Orchestra Projects as part of the Mid-Europe Festival in Schladming, Austria.  Dr. Sosnowchik earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Alabama, and both his master’s and doctoral degrees in conducting from The University of Texas at Austin.

Drew Eary

Drew Eary is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Wind Band Conducting at The University of Texas at Austin studying under Professor Jerry Junkin. Eary holds a Master of Music in Wind Band Conducting from the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University where he studied with Dr. Jamie L. Nix and assisted the annual CSU Conductors’ Workshop. He also received a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and Clarinet Performance from The University of Arizona. Prior to beginning his MM, Eary was the Director of Bands at Casteel High School (Arizona). Eary has appeared as a guest conductor with the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” and was a Conducting Fellow for the H. Robert Reynolds Conducting Institute at the 75th Annual Midwest Clinic in Chicago, Illinois. Eary was also named a finalist for the 2021 American Prize in Conducting. He has presented at the annual Arizona Music Educators’ Association In-Service Conference and was named an ‘Educator to Watch’ by the Arizona Republic newspaper. 

Page Stephens

Stephens is a mezzo soprano, voice teacher and arts administrator based in Austin, TX with a soft spot for new music. Stephens has performed operas, chamber music, and art song written for her by composers like Matthew Lyons, Thomas B. Yee, Dana Lyn, Adrienne Inglis, Russell Podgorsek, Alex Heppelmann, Keenan Boswell, Steven Serpa, Franklin Piland, Akshaya Avril Tucker, Robbie LaBanca and Adeliia Faizullina. Page recently recorded Mark Kilstofte’s The White Album with pianist Chuck Dillard, after giving the New York premiere of the song cycle with Copland House, the Austin premiere with the UT New Music Ensemble, and the Pacific Northwest premiere with Dillard. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when live performances were still few and far between, she became a founding member of the new music collective Less Than <10, which streamed concerts of new and reimagined canonic works regularly. Additionally, she helped found a new all-female vocal quintet called VAMP; the quintet gave its premiere performance in Fast Forward Austin’s streamed performance in December, 2020.

Donald Grantham

Donald Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony’s Awards to American Composers, two first prizes in the William D. Revelli Competition, first prize in the Ostwald Competition, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and First Prize in the National Opera Association’s Biennial Composition Competition. Dr. Grantham’s music has been praised for its “elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism” in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and by wind ensembles all over the world.   He has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera. Dr. Grantham’s music is published by Piquant Press, Peer-Southern, E. C. Schirmer and G. Schirmer, and many of his works have been commercially recorded. With Kent Kennan, Professor Grantham is coauthor of The Technique of Orchestration (Routledge).

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New Music Ensemble

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