Han-Wei Lu looks on intently while playing Julia Werntz’s Five Vignettes. This delicate piece required a great deal of concentration yet Han-Wei, and Janet Jacobson on violin, made the work appear effortless.
Our next few pictures will focus on the amazing performers who lend their time and talent to make each concert a tour de force. In addition to lending her time to the festival, Han-Wei performs with new music ensembles such as 016 and the Saraswati Quartet.
An annual tradition for the festival, the Local Composers Concert displays the wide variety of musical styles and ideas present in just the tri-state area (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York). The following picture features Janet Jacobson and Han-Wei Lu performing the intricately microtonal “Five Vignettes” by Julia Werntz. A process of dividing the traditional Western scale, Julia describes her use of microtonality:
My method was just to seize the “new” pitches from in-between the “old” pitches of 12-note equal-temperament—60 new pitches in total—and to sing the intervals again and again until I had internalized a new microtonal, equal-tempered chromatic scale consisting of 72 pitches. Then I began developing a melodic technique, relying on certain aspects of my traditional musical training, while at the same time looking out for the peculiar new demands of the new intervals themselves, such as rhythm.
More info on Julia Werntz and her music can be found here.
