ReTurn

Monday, October 25, 2021 at The Old Church Concert Hall

The season begins with a 30-year retrospective that highlights some of the most memorable music Fear No Music has brought into the world. This concert pays tribute to founders Jeff Payne, who curated this program, and Joel Bluestone.

PROGRAM

Cynthia Gerdes - Idaho Toccata

Keiko Araki, violin;  Nancy Ives, cello;  Jeff Payne, piano

Greg Youtz - A Far Tower

Amelia Lukas, flute; Kirt Peterson,  clarinet; Keiko Araki, violin;  Nancy Ives, cello; Michael Roberts, percussion

—Intermission—

Shaun Naidoo - Electric Fences

Inés Voglar Belgique, violin;  Nancy Ives, cello; with electronics

Bonnie Miksch - Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled

Paloma Griffin Hébert & Inés Voglar Belgique, violins;  Kenji Bunch, viola; Nancy Ives, cello; Monica Ohuchi, piano; Michael Roberts, percussion

Cynthia Gerdes

Cynthia Stillman Gerdes writes chamber music while pondering the imponderables on the side, and tries not to stray too far from humor. She has taught piano privately and at several Oregon colleges, including a twenty year stint at Portland State University. Her compositions have been performed in Oregon by FearNoMusic, at the Performers’ Choice Concert at the Ernest Bloch Festival Composer Symposium, at Portland State University, at the University of Portland and at a number of Cascadia Composers concerts. Cynthia is a past vice president of Cascadia Composers and is a founding member of Crazy Jane Composers. A CD of her “Solo and Chamber Music” performed by some of her favorite Portland musicians can be found online.

Idaho Toccata Trio

Commissioned by Fear No Music and premiered in 1998

The “Idaho Toccata Trio,” for violin, cello and piano, bursts out of the gate like a bucking bronco at a rodeo, then calms down with Dad’s song, “I Had Me A Rooster…I Love My Old Rooster, I Do.” Programmatic music may be out of style, but that’s what this piece is — the musical life of a girl about age ten in Boise, Idaho. Barber shoppers practice in their living room. Her grandparents’ chickens peck around in the piece because of Mussorgsky’s inspiration. Fiddle tunes haunt her from required grade school square dance classes. Their Westinghouse dryer chimes the old drinking song,“How Dry I Am”as it completes a load. Tension creating riffs rise up to announce rodeo and circus performers ready to defy death in the ring. The summer carnival evolves into scary visions of being grown-up. Seductive Spanish dancers are ogled by a few inebriated cowboys who act as dizzy as us kids when getting off whirling rides. Admiration of George Gershwin’s compositions motivates a caricature of a musical climax right before this girl skips off into the future. In the late 1990’s, due to the encouragement of FearNoMusic’s Jeff Payne, what was a piano piece became this trio.

Gregory Youtz

Gregory Youtz has served as Professor of Music at PLU since 1984. He is a regular pre-concert lecturer for Symphony Tacoma and a frequent public speaker and MC, presenting on topics ranging from classical and world music to Chinese culture and the study of creativity. His compositions include works for orchestra, band, choir, voice and chamber ensembles, and four operas including the 1991 Songs from the Cedar House about Native American-White interaction in the Puget Sound region, 2016’s Fiery Jade-Cai Yan, (libretto by Zhang Er) based upon the life of a historical Han Dynasty Chinese woman and 2021’s Tacoma Method (libretto by Zhang Er) about the expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma in 1885. His 60 minute oratorio Drum Taps: Nine Poems on Themes of War for orchestra, choir and SATB soloists, was nominated for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in music. Yout'z music for wind ensemble has won the NBA and Ostwald awards and his 2015 piece For Those Who Wait, addressing the anxiety of military families waiting for the return of their loved ones, was commissioned by a national consortium of 62 schools and universities.

A member of the Pacific Lutheran University music faculty for many years, Youtz has done research on Chinese music, instruments, and the use of Chinese musical techniques applied to western instruments, and has a list of compositions based upon Chinese ideas, from poetry and painting to history and philosophy. He was Chair of Chinese Studies at PLU for five years and directed the study abroad program in Chengdu for 15 years. He currently directs the university’s study abroad program in Trinidad and Tobago. Youtz is on the Board of the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation, served for 10 years as Chair of the Tacoma-Fuzhou Sister City Committee and directed a grant from the Freeman Foundation for 8 years to build partnerships between Pierce County schools and schools in China. He is a Senior Fellow with the Tacoma Pierce County Chapter of the American Leadership Forum (ALF). When not teaching or composing, Youtz can be found gardening, hiking or traveling.

A Far Tower

Commissioned by Fear No Music and premiered in 1996

Cycle I

Lute I/Cycle II

River

Zither/Temple Bells

Cycle III/Cycle IV

Fragments from the Life of Yu Hsuan-chi

Kingfisher blue along a tangled bank.

Mist drifts in a far tower.

Shadows creep across autumn water.

Flowers fall around fishermen’s heads.

Fish hide in old roots.

Twigs catch on pleasure boats.

Then: the wind’s whistle on a rainy night

Invades my dream.  I awake to grief.

- Yu Hsuan-Chi  (translated by Geoffrey Waters)

Yu Hsuan-Chi was a ninth century courtesan in Tang Dynasty China who was also one of the leading poets of her day.  Her poems speak from the position of a woman utterly dependent upon men in a man’s world, yet conscious of her own talents and worth.  During her short life, she was equally drawn to the pleasure of the sensual body, the art of words and the contemplation of the eternal cycle of the Tao.  She was executed on a questionable charge of murder at the age of 25. 

A Far Tower was commissioned by the members of Fear No Music.  It is warmly dedicated to them for their artistry and devotion to the cause of new music.

Shaun Naidoo

(1962-2012)

In his native South Africa, Shaun Naidoo (1962-2012) composed extensively for cabaret, musical theater, and modern dance in the late 1980s. During that period a series of collaborations with Warrick Sony and the Kalahari Surfers culminated in the Found Opera Season of Violence, which received an Honorable Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria in 1990. His cabaret troupe, “Shaun Naidoo and the Panic Attacks” received the Fringe Award at the South African National Festival of the Arts in 1988 for the revue Everything but the Shower Scene. Collaborations with the City Theater and Dance group as composer and musical director resulted in the acclaimed musicals Hotel Polana (1989) and Sunrise City (1988). The latter work incidentally became the last work to be banned by the apartheid regime in South Africa. 

In 1990 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and settled in Los Angeles, where he received Masters and Doctoral degrees in composition at USC. His output during the 1990s include numerous electro-acoustic works, which can be heard on C.R.I., New World Records, Evander Music, and Capstone Records.  Over the past twenty years or so he has written for ensembles and artists around the world. His music has been heard most recently at Carnegie Hall, Dartington Castle (England), Walt Disney Concert Hall, REDCAT Theater, the Lincoln Theater in Miami Beach, the Bang on a Can Festival at MassMoca in Massachussetts, and in Brisbane, Australia. 

Naidoo was an Associate Professor of Composition at Chapman University, where among other things, he was instrumental in redesigning the Conservatory’s music theory and aural skills curriculum.  As a leader and close friend to his colleagues, his impact within Chapman’s music program was profound, and his memory remains very much alive with us today.

Electric Fences

Premiered by Fear No Music in 1999

This version of Electric Fences is preceded by a version without electronics which was composed in 1997 and premiered by Robin Lorentz and Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Ensemble-in-Residence Series on October 13, 1999.  The title is derived for the poem “Electric Fences” by Philip Larkin.  The first and last lines of the poem read:

“The widest prairies have electric fences . . . 

. . . Electric limits to their widest senses.”

Bonnie Miksch

Bonnie Miksch is a composer who writes both acoustic and electroacoustic works. Her music explores the distinctly human realms of emotions, dreams, and states of consciousness, and combines diverse elements with an ear for coherence. Her music has been performed in Asia, Europe, Canada, and throughout the U.S. She has received commissions from the Meet the Composer, The Fireworks Ensemble, Beta Collide, and The Oregon Music Teacher’s Association who awarded her “Oregon’s Composer of the Year” in 2011. Her works have also been performed by FearNoMusic, Third Angle Ensemble, newEar, and the Portland Vocal Consort, and presented at international, national, and regional venues including ICMC (China, Greece, Singapore, Denmark), The International Contemporary Music Festival (Korea), SEAMUS, the Third Practice Electroacoustic Festival, the Society for New Music, the New World Arts Electrocoustic Festival, Electrogals, and Cascadia Composers. Her music is available on the North Pacific Music and Aca Digital labels. With degrees from CCM at the University of Cincinnati and Syracuse University, she serves as the Coordinator of Composition Studies at Portland State University, where she has taught music theory, composition,and computer music since 2004.

Somewhere I have never traveled

Commissioned by Fear No Music and premiered in 2016

1. In a state of vibration

2. Dweller on the threshold

3. In a body of blue stars

4. Sexploration

V. In a field of golden light

Somewhere I have never traveled was commissioned by Fear No Music and features the core members of the ensemble. This piece unraveled in five movements, each of which represents aspects of my personal experiences navigating the non-physical realm. Finding myself “in a state of vibration” preceding any conscious exit, these waves propel my mind into a heightened state of anticipation. The first barrier is fear and its manifestation as a loathsome “Dweller on the threshold.” Once fear has been overcome, there is seemingly no limit to what we can experience in the great beyond. The final three movements illustrate this. I have had experiences as a diaphanous being “in a body of blues stars,” as a sexually depraved creature without ethical limits, and as a witness to the golden light of pure love.