Here’s a photo from the 2010 Festival’s Local Composers Concert. Festival Director Daniel Morel introduces Carrie Koffman and Sheri Brown before they perform an arrangement of Tanya Anisimova‘s Caravan.
Originally composed for two cellos, Koffman and Brown performed a version for two alto saxophones. You can hear the composer and cellist Ole Akahoshi perform the original here.
The 2009 Festival featured a performance as part of The Hartt School Paranov Performance Hour. Our Picture of the Day show Hartt alum Mike Lunoe warming up before the show. Lunoe performed Jessica Rudman‘s Napoleon Complex for Solo Percussion, which he had commissioned from the composer.
When commissioning the work, Lunoe requested a piece whose set-up could fit in a duffel bag. Inspired by the idea of small instruments and also by her small dog, Rudman wrote Napoleon Complex in 2007 and incorporated theatrical elements, which can be seen in this Youtube video of the performance.
Looking back at the 2011 Festival for yesterday’s picture brought back so many memories that we’ve decided to focus on shots from past Festivals for the next few days, so get ready for a few more blasts from the past! To kick it off, here’s a photo from the 2008 Festival.
The Hartford Sound Alliance – members Katie Kennedy and Charles Huang shown in the picture above – was our featured ensemble in 2008. They performed a number of works by Twentieth Century composers on their concert, including Ruth Crawford Seeger‘s Diaphonic Suite No. 4 for Oboe and Cello.
Ruth Crawford began her composing career as a teenager and eventually became the first woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930, the year that saw the composition of her four Diaphonic Suites. Two years later, Crawford married her teacher Charles Seeger and took a twenty year hiatus from composing, choosing instead to focus on the study of American folk music. She returned to composing in 1952, but her career was cut short by cancer. Despite the brevity of her career, Crawford Seeger remains an important figure in American music known for her “ultra-modern” style.
For a detailed study of Crawford Seeger’s music, check out Joseph N. Straus’s The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger.
Here’s a peek at the 2011 Festival’s opening concert:
The Hartt Independent Chamber Orchestra led by Erberk Eryilmaz performed works by 2011 Composer-in-Residence Gilda Lyons, Eunsook Baek, Jessica Rudman, and the winner of our inaugural Composition Competition, Sang Mi Ahn.
The Composition Competition was a new addition to the Festival in 2011, and the high quality of the submissions received in both the first and second years encouraged us to continue offering this award annually. Each year, the prize involves the performance of a selected work by our featured ensemble – stay tuned to find out who it will be for 2013!
The Dahlia Flute Duo performs “Two Flutes and Tape” by Nomi Epstein at this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The composer provided the following notes about the piece: “Written for Australian flutist Janet McKay’s 2009 US Tour “Those Vanished Hands,” the work explores material as sonic block both as live player and prerecorded tape parts. Juxtaposition of blocks are presented through stratification and variation of durational properties.”
