Musiqa to Perform PRETTY/DIRTY at the CAMH, 5/7

Musiqa, winner of the 2013 Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, presents a free loft concert, Pretty/Dirty, at the Contemporary Arts Museum on May 7 at 7:30 PM. The concert's program features three works: Sean Friar's Two Solitudes for flute, viola and harp; Philippe Hersant's Bamyan for solo harp; Three Shades Without Angles by Hannah Lash; Laura Schwendinger's Rumor for flute and cello; and Anna Weesner's Sudden, Unbidden for violin and cello.

The final program of the season of Musiqa's loft series of informal, intimate concerts, Pretty/Dirty is presented in collaboration with the current CAMH exhibition of the same name. The exhibition features works by renowned artist Marilyn Minter, whose at times-controversial art examines feminism, drug use, fashion, and celebrity. The exhibition is on view through August 2.

Sean Friar's Two Solitudes is a gentle, crystalline work exploring some of the delicate timbres created by the flute, viola, and harp. While many composers of the last century (notably Debussy and Takemitsu) have written for this combination of instruments, Friar takes a wholly unique approach, mixing the instrumental colors with the deftness of a painter.

Commissioned by the Lily Laskine International Harp Competition, Philippe Hersant's Bamyan is named for a city in Afghanistan famous for the statues of Buddha, which were carved into its cliffs centuries ago. The work is intended to maintain the memory of these statues, many of which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The city's name is Sanskrit and translates as, "The Place of Shining Light," a phrase which could readily describe this work's luminescent textures.

Hannah Lash's Three Shades Without Angles (also for the trio of flute, viola and harp) was premiered by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 2014. The shifting time signatures and angular instrumental lines evoke "the transformation of musical shapes" (Lash).

Laura Schwendinger's Rumor was written in 1992 and was a co-winner of the Score Search of the International Alliance of Women in Music. It has been performed by the New York Camerata, as well as by various duos in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. The Washington Post wrote that the work "revels in sinewy counterpoint as the instruments alternately vie and entwine in heated discourse."

Anna Weesner's Sudden, Unbidden was written in 1998, and juxtaposes two very different ideas: one is jagged, while the other is lyrical. The violin and cello seem to react to one another throughout the work; one will often interrupt the other mid-stream, rapidly shifting the musical dialogue to the alternate idea.

The performers for this program are:

Hope Cowan, harp

Leah Kovach, viola

Francesca McNeeley, cello

Ling Ling Huang, violin

Aaron Perdue, flute

Musiqa's Pretty/Dirty

Thursday, May 7

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

5216 Montrose Blvd.

Houston, TX 77006

7:30 PM - Performance

Admission is free

On the Program:

Sean Friar: Two Solitudes for flute, viola and harp

Philippe Hersant: Bamyan for solo harp Hannah Lash: Three Shades Without Angles

Laura Schwendinger: Rumor for flute and cello

Anna Weesner: Sudden, Unbidden for violin and cello

About the Composers:

Sean Friar grew up in Los Angeles, where his first musical experiences were in rock and blues piano improvisation. While his focus soon shifted toward classical music, his composition has always reflected the energy and directness of those musical roots. Friar blends these contemporary styles with an expansive classical sensibility that Slate magazine called "refreshingly new and solidly mature... and doesn't take on airs, but instead takes joy in the process of discovery-in the continual experience of suspense and surprise-that good classical music has always championed." Friar holds undergraduate degrees from UCLA and graduate degrees from Princeton. He studied composition with Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey and Dmitri Tymoczko.

In 2011, Friar became the youngest composer to win the Rome Prize in over 25 years. His other honors include the Aaron Copland Award, Charles Ives Scholarship, Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, four ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, Lee Ettelson Award, First Music Award, Renee B. Fisher Award, finalist for the International GAUDEAMUS Prize, 1st Place SCI/ASCAP (Region VIII); as well as awards from eighth blackbird, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and the Hawaii Institute of Contemporary Music. His music is recorded on New Amsterdam Records (NOW Ensemble, Awake) and Innova Recordings (Mariel Roberts, nonextraneous sounds), both of which were featured as New York's Classical Music Radio Station's WQXR's Q2 Album of the Week. He also has albums on Darling Records Cologne, Crescent Phase, and a self-released album by TRANSIT New Music. (from the composer's site)

French composer Philippe Hersant was born in Rome in 1948. His studies included literature as well as music, and he took harmony classes with Georges Hugon before entering André Jolivet's composition class at the Paris Conservatory in 1968, receiving his undergraduate degree in literature that same year.

From 1970 to 1972, Hersant went on to teach music and to become a producer at the radio station France Musiques. In 1978 he became a resident at the Villa Médicis thanks to the support of composers Henri Dutilleux and Gilbert Amy. It was during this period that he truly came into his own as a composer. Stances for orchestra, composed around this time, is considered by the composer to be the first work in his official catalogue. This piece was followed by several other, more melancholic works, such as Missa brevis, the chamber opera les Visites espacées (Avignon, 1983) and the opera le Château des Carpathes (1982), based on a work by Jules Verne. He composed a number of shorter and more dynamic works for small instrumental ensembles before returning to the orchestra with his Second Concerto for cello and the ballet Hurlevent (Palais-Garnier, 2002).

Hailed by the New York Times as "striking and resourceful...handsomely brooding," Hannah Lash's music has been performed at the Times Center in Manhattan, the Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard University, The Chelsea Art Museum, and on the American Opera Project's stage in New York City. Commissions include The Fromm Foundation, The Naumburg Foundation, The Orpheus Duo, The Howard Hanson Foundation's Commissioning Fund, Case Western Reserve's University Circle Wind Ensemble, MAYA, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.

Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Her orchestral work Furthermore was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. Her chamber opera, Blood Rose, was presented by New York City Opera's VOX in the spring of 2011. (from Schott Music)

The first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize, Laura Schwendinger, Professor of Composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Contemporary Ensemble there, was born in Mexico City. Her music has been performed by leading artists or our day, including Dawn Upshaw (Tour 1997-2013; Voices of Our Time, a TDK/Naxos DVD), the Arditti and JACK quartets, Janine Jansen, Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimovitz, Christina Jennings, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Collage New Music, the StonyBrook Premiere Series, Boston Musica Viva, the Aspen Ensemble, Voices of Change, Dinosaur Annex, the Trinity Choir and American Composers Orchestra and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Hungary.

Venues include the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Times Center New York, Symphony Space, BargeMusic, the National Arts Centre of Canada, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the Theatre du Chatalet in Paris, the Tanglewood, Aspen, Bennington and Ojai Music Festivals. Her honors include those from the Guggenheim, Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University, Copland House, Harvard Musical Association, Chamber Music America, the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies, and Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (a Leiberson Fellowship given to "mid-career composer of exceptional gifts" and Charles Ives Scholarship) and first-prize of the 1995 ALEA III Competition, the first American to win in over a decade. In addition to the American Academy in Berlin, her artistic residencies include those at the MacDowell (8), Yaddo (6) and VCCA, she also has held numerous residencies internationally, in Salzburg and Mittersill Austria and Schwandorf, Bavaria, and at the American Academy in Rome, Tyrone Guthrie Center Ireland, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria Italy. (from the composer's bio, courtesy of the University of Wisconsin - Madison)

Anna Weesner's music has received many notable performances, including those by the American Composers Orchestra, Counter)induction, Sequitur, Open End, Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001, the Cypress Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, Metamorphosen, Ensemble X, Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish, Richard Goode, Judith Kellock, Scott Kluksdahl, Caroline Stinson and Melia Watras. Weesner was awarded a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2008 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2003 Pew Fellowship. She has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Musiqa (www.musiqahouston.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. Founded in 2002 and led by four composers, Musiqa aims to enrich and inspire the community through programs that integrate contemporary music with other modern art forms. Musiqa celebrates modern creative arts through interdisciplinary concerts that highlight modern music and its connections to literature, film, dance, art, and more. With its innovative collaborations and educational programming, Musiqa strives to make modern repertoire accessible and vital to audiences of all ages and musical backgrounds.

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