Picture of the Day

Picture of the Day – July 18, 2012

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.

Picture of the Day – July 16, 2012

Though many of the pictures posted so far have shown the great music-making that takes place at the Festival each year, our events also serve as an important opportunity for composers to interact with each other and with audience members. Most of the living composers programmed on the Festival attend, and we always look forward to meeting the women featured each year.

In the photo above, composers Kate Swanson-Ellis (left) and Gale Gardiner (right) chat at the 2010 Local Composers Concert.

Picture of the Day – July 13, 2012

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.

Picture of the Day – July 10, 2012

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.”

Picture of the Day – July 8, 2012

Another singer from the 2011 festival! In addition to being our guest composer for the 2011 festival (our first featured composer to speak around the Greater Hartford area), Gilda Lyons performed her cycle A Small Handful (2002), an emotionally powerful setting of Anne Sexton’s poetry, on the Concert Pro Femina. Of the piece Gilda writes:

While Anne Sexton’s troubled existence was littered with depression and suicide attempts, she remained committed to turning the detritus of her life into poetry. Maxine Kumin, a close friend and trusted colleague of Sexton’s, wrote “I am convinced that poetry kept Anne alive for the eighteen years of her creative endeavors. When everything else soured… the making of poems remained her one constant.”

The three poems that I have chosen to set for unaccompanied voice span the length of these creative endeavors: from “Music Swims Back To Me” found in her first publication To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960); to Seven Times from the cycle “The Death Baby” found in her 1974 publication The Death Notebooks; and, finally, to “Where It Was At Back Then” from 45 Mercy Street (1976), Sexton’s first posthumous publication.