music @ UCLA » Composers

PhD Candidate Kevork Andonian reports on two recent concerts

SRHickman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:45:10 +0000

On October 29, 2011 Kevork Andonian’s arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango” was performed by the Los Angeles Dream Orchestra at Zipper Hall as part of their debut concert. �The orchestra was founded by Daniel Suk who is also a Doctoral Candidate at HASOM. UCLA voice professor Vladimir Chernov and former UCLA vocal student Erin Wood were among the soloists at this concert.

A couple of weeks later Kevork performed some of his solo piano compositions in Ottawa, Canada at a concert organized by the Ottawa New Music Creators. �The concert held at Caf� Paradiso on November 14 was part the “Contemporary Revolution” series which the new music organization runs regularly.� Kevork received funding from the HASOM Student Opportunity Fund to help cover travel expenses for this performance.

The photo was taken after the Zipper Hall concert. �(From Right to Left: �Kevork Andonian, Erin Wood, Daniel Suk, and Mr. and Mrs. Don Neuen.)

Fishbein wins ACDA�s Brock Student Composition Contest

avbosen — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:14:50 +0000

Joshua Fishbein, a 2nd-year PhD student in music composition at UCLA, has recently won the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Contest of the American Choral Directors Association. This contest is an opportunity for young composers to showcase their talents and have their work presented at an ACDA conference. Selected nationally, Fishbein�s work will be premiered at the 2012 ACDA Western Division Conference, taking place from February 29 to March 3 in Reno, Nevada. Additionally, he will receive a $1,000 cash prize and conference registration.

This is the fourth composition contest won by Fishbein since enrolling at UCLA in the fall of 2010. The others include The Esoterics� POLYPHONOS Competition (2010 � 2011), the National Lutheran Choir�s 25th Anniversary Choral Composition Competition (2011), and the Guild of Temple Musicians� Young Composer�s Award (2011 � 2012). Recordings of Fishbein�s award-winning music by the Seattle-based Esoterics and the Minneapolis-based National Lutheran Choir can be heard at the following links:

The Esoterics Recording (10/9/2011): http://www.joshuafishbeinmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/14+With+a+greeting.mp3

The National Lutheran Choir Recording (5/16/2011): http://www.joshuafishbeinmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/01-May-the-Words-of-My-Mouth.mp3

For more information about Joshua Fishbein, visit his website at http://www.fishbeinmusic.com

Music Department’s Gloria Cheng Shines in opening of “Piano Spheres”

avbosen — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:40:32 +0000

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times

For those who missed the great article in the Los Angeles Times about Prof. Cheng’s recent concert:

The late composer Luciano Berio called his small but potent book of Harvard lectures �Remembering the Future.� And that seemingly paradoxical phrase informed Gloria Cheng�s nearly all-British Piano Spheres program Tuesday night at the Colburn School�s Zipper Hall.

In the first half, the pianist offered the United States premiere of Bernard Rands� 12 Preludes. An impressionistic, emotionally draining 40-minute work, it�s the first of 15 premieres planned this season by the venerable recital series, now in its 18th year.

Before the performance, the English-born Rands, based in the United States since 1975 (he became a citizen in 1983), touchingly told the audience that he owed �much of what I am as a musician� to Berio, his mentor and friend. And a Berio-like sense of music history and lyricism pervaded Rands� Preludes. Dedicated to the pianist Robert Levin, who performed the world premiere in 2007, the score conjured a sound world that Debussy would recognize. At the same time, the melancholy cast of many of the pieces was Rands� own.

Cheng�s precision, warm tone and sensitive, resonant pedaling conveyed enough variety to put the largely elegiac work across, whether in the fourth Prelude, Elegia (In memoriam Luciano Berio), the introspective eighth, Lamento, or the haunting concluding Notturno (In memoriam Don Martino).

After intermission, Cheng offered the U.S. premiere of Gavin Bryars� �Ramble on Cortona,� summoning waves of sound from the keyboard and lending coherence to the seemingly improvisatory 10-minute piece. Then Cheng announced a reordering of her program, wisely saving the shorter dance pieces for the end. She gave a playful rendition of George Benjamin�s darkly comic �Relativity Rag,� or as Cheng called it, �the little rag that couldn�t.� And in Oliver Knussen�s poignant �Ophelia�s Last Dance,� composed in memory of his wife Sue, who died in 2003, Cheng caught the intimate, hallucinatory quality of grief without sentimentality.
Delightful readings of Harrison Birtwistle�s �Betty Freeman: Her Tango,� and Samuel Barber�s �Hesitation Tango,� from his suite �Souvenirs,� followed. Her encore was Don Davis� tongue-in-cheek �Illicit Felicity.�

Review by Rick Schultz

Graduate composition student Joshua Fishbein’s composition performed at Chorus America National Conference

avbosen — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:48:37 +0000

Unseen Secrets, a choral work by composition PhD student Joshua Fishbein, was recently performed during the Awards Banquet at Chorus America�s National Conference in San Francisco. Performed and commissioned by the Oakland-based chorus WomenSing, Unseen Secrets was composed under the mentorship of acclaimed composer Libby Larsen as part of WomenSing�s Youth-Inspiring-Youth Composition Competition. WomenSing, winner of the 2010 ASCAP Alice Parker Award, received a standing ovation at the performance, which was attended by many of America�s choral music leaders.

For more information about WomenSing�s performance at the Chorus America National Conference and the Youth Inspiring Youth Program, visit the group�s website at http://womensing.org

(WomenSing, directed by Martin Benvenuto, perform at the Chorus America Awards Banquet, June 10, 2011 at the Whitcomb Ballroom, San Francisco, CA.)

Photo used by permission from Chorus America.

Interdisciplinary Composition Major student Pablo Hopenhayn creates Online String Production Company

avbosen — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:58:27 +0000

Pablo Hopenhayn, a graduate student pursuing an interdisciplinary in the School of the Arts and Architecture, has shared news of his required final project, which is the creation of a company which brings together all of the things he learned in my major: classical and jazz composition, violin performance, sound engineering and music industry. He will be enrolling as a student in the Anderson School of Business Fall quarter in this independent study.

This project consists of the creation of a new online string production company that offers recording, arranging and mixing of professional strings for albums, television and film. By managing a team of string players on call 24/7 who record remotely from their home studios, Pablo’s entrepreneurial project offers an alternative to bringing a full orchestra into the recording studio. Thanks to the support of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and its goals of working across disciplines, Pablo was able to pursue a major that integrated composition, performance and music production, which ultimately enabled him to create this company.

The process of establishing this company led him to record all of the violin tracks on Andres Calamaro’s album “Calamaro on the Rock” which was nominated for the Latin Grammy award in 2010 for best Vocal Rock Album. This last month Pablo’s website has recorded on more than ten sessions for albums, commercials, and films which will be released later this year.

To view the results of Pablo’s project, check out the website at:

http://www.esessionstrings.com/

From 2006 to present, Pablo has worked as a violinist and arranger with several Latin Grammy Award winning musicians including Diego Torres, Andres Calamaro, Rafa Arcaute, Marco Antonio Solis and Grammy Award winner Julieta Venegas. He performed in more than 300 shows on tours in Latin America, the U.S., Canada and Europe in diverse styles such as Latin Pop, Flamenco, and Tango.

Also, later this summer, Pablo will be working with Violin Professor Guillaume Sutre on an interactive violin jazz scale book which will be published next year. The book will be aimed at classical violinists who seek to have a comprehensive understanding of jazz harmony and scales. The book will also include recordings of all of the scales, which will complement the theoretical aspect of the book and to help those who learn faster by listening.

Music Grad student Kevork Andonian reports summer activities

avbosen — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:36:43 +0000

Kevork Andonian, Music graduate student in composition (whom we have blogged about several times) sent us the following email about his summer activities–glad you are keeping busy, Kevork!

“Kevork Andonian, UCLA PhD Candidate in Music Composition, had his composition for flute and marimba entitled A Longing For Joy performed at this year’s “Piccolo Spoleto Festival” in Charleston, South Carolina. The performers were flutist John Samuel Roper and percussionist Michael Haldeman and they are interested in commissioning a new work from Kevork in the near future.

On June 18th of this year the same piece was performed by flutist Marc Grauwels and percussionist Sarah Mouradoglou at the “Festival Evian” in France.

In August, 2011 Kevork will present a paper about composer Olivier Messiaen’s piece Quartet for the End of Time in Baden-Baden, Germany at the “Symposium on Art and Science” hosted by the “International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics”. At this conference Kevork will also give a lecture-recital related to his dissertation topic of music polystylism, eclecticism and transnationalism.”

Professor David Lefkowitz shares news of new CD

avbosen — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:20:14 +0000

Here’s some information from Music Department Composistion Chair David Lefkowitz on a recently-released CD:

David S. Lefkowitz: Music of Contradictions

For much of my career as a composer, I have enjoyed creating music with different-often contradictory-faces: atonal yet tonal, dissonant yet consonant, fast yet slow, granular and intricate yet long-lined and melodic, repeating basic patterns without ever repeating itself. These faces often exist in tension with one another, or, like an optical illusion, one face will seem all but invisible, until suddenly the image “flips” and our perception utterly changes. The old hag is suddenly seen as a young beauty, the vase is suddenly a pair of people kissing, and the Necker Cube, pointing down and to the left, suddenly points up and to the right.

The music of this CD, exploring inherent oppositions, covers nearly 25 years of compositions, and ranges from solo work through quartets and quintets.

http://www.albanyrecords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AR&Product_Code=TROY1247

Ethnomusicology Professor Tamir Hendelman recording new CD; other summer activities

avbosen — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:09:56 +0000

We have received an interesting update from Tamir Hendelman, who also appears to have an exciting summer planned. After another exciting year at UCLA, this June he will be recording his fourth CD with the Jeff Hamilton Trio, a follow-up to last fall�s Symbiosis, which topped the Jazzweek charts.

Also on the summer schedule:

A 4th of July concert with the Trio in Ancona, Italy kicks off a European tour with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra featuring vocalist/guitarist John Pizzarelli in tribute to Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. The tour will include stops in Villingen-Schwenningen (July 7), the North Sea Jazz Fest (July 8)- featuring Dutch vocal star Trijntje Oosterhuis, The Gran Canaries Jazz Festival (July 9-10), Cordoba Guitarra Festival (July 11) and the Festival Da Jazz in St. Moritz (July 13.)

On July 24-30 Tamir Hendelman will travel to Port Townsend, Washington�s CENTRUM JAZZ WORKSHOP for a week of workshops and concerts with the Jeff Hamilton Trio and fellow faculty such as Paquito D�Rivera, John Clayton and more.

Tamir returns to Southern California in August for concerts with a quartet led by brilliant guitarist Graham Dechter and the world-class rhythm section of John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton. They will then record Graham�s second CD, which will also feature a half dozen arrangements Tamir collaborated on with Graham.

Finally, Tamir is conducting a series of workshops on the Great American Songbook in Southern California- for musicians, students and music fans- centered around improvisation, accompaniment and arranging.

Musicology Ph.D. student Jeremy Mikush–summer activities a benefit of the HASOM Student Opportunity Fund

avbosen — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:29:37 +0000

We have heard from Musicologh Ph.D. Student Jeremy Mikush about his fun and wide-ranging summer activities. Here is a quick blog about what he is doing this summer:

Jeremy Mikush, a Ph.D. candidate in the Musicology Department, has been in France since early June practicing his French and doing research in Paris for an article and for his dissertation–thanks to two HASoM SOF grants!

Also, in August, he’ll be performing his own songs as well as those of other composers with biographic and artistic works that speak to queer experience at the second installation of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History in the SoHo district of NYC (http://www.queermuseum.com/home/), giving a lecture-recital on non-traditional sexuality in musical cultures of the not-so-recent history.

All of this will be happening while he is continuing to balance work on his dissertation and his increasing collaboration with theater and performance artists in SF. In October, he will very likely perform with Original SF Cockette member Rumi Missabu in NYC with a hand-picked ensemble, in connection with retrospectives at Lincoln Center as Cockettes material is archived at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. A very busy summer and early fall indeed!

Thanks, Jeremy–it looks like a fun summer!

New piano composition by UCLA PhD Candidate Kevork Andonian commissioned by “Young Music Project”

avbosen — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:02:26 +0000

In February, 2011 Kevork Andonian’s new piece for piano entitled “Echoes from a Distant Land” was performed in three European cities at concerts and masterclasses spearheaded by “Young Music Project”, a new music organization founded by composers Herv� Legrand and Thomas Malarbet. Kevork received funding from the Herb Alpert Student Opportunity Fund to attend the concerts and masterclasses.

“Echoes from a Distant Land” will be recorded in Paris by �Young Music Project� in the very near future for commercial release.

The mandate of the �Young Music Project� is to promote the creation of new music through concerts and the commercial distribution of scores and recordings. The organization is interested in commissioning new compositions from three North American as well as two European composers.

For more information please visit http://www.youngmusicproject.com