Dec 11, 2017 - 1962, a Master of Music with Distinction from Indiana University in 1963, and was the first percussionist
PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE Monday, December 11, 2017 8pm | Kulas Hall
Richard Weiner, director Richard Weiner (b. 1940)
Perpetual Motion for Four Diverse Snare Drums Angelo Antinori Samuel Conner James Leonard Albert Mackey
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
Rain Tree
William Albright (1944-1998)
Take That
Allan Blank (1925-2013)
Michael Hopkins Taylor Newman Daniel Raney
Kengo Ito Tyler Niemeyer Kevin Ritenauer Alex Skov Knock-On-Wood Angelo Antinori Samuel Conner James Leonard Albert Mackey (continued)
John Cage (1912-1992)
Third Construction Peter Nichols Charles Renneker Jeremy Sreejayan Linda Wallenthin Intermission
Donald Erb (1927-2008)
4 for Percussion Michael Hopkins, percussion Kengo Ito, percussion Taylor Newman, percussion Kevin Ritenauer, percussion Alex Skov, timpani Melivia Raharjo, piano Juanito Riveros, harp Sichen Ma, celeste Commemorating the 90th Birthday of Donald Erb
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS ANGELO ANTINORI, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Glen Head, New York, and studies with Paul Yancich. SAMUEL CONNER, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Burke, Virginia, and studies with Marc Damoulakis.
MICHAEL HOPKINS, percussion, is a master’s student from Raleigh, North Carolina, and studies with Marc Damoulakis. KENGO ITO, percussion, is a master’s student from Nagoya, Japan, and studies with Paul Yancich. JAMES LEONARD, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Cincinnati, Ohio, and studies with Marc Damoulakis.
SICHEN MA, celeste, is a master’s student from Berlin, Germany, and studies with Anita Pontremoli. ALBERT MACKEY, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Honolulu, Hawaii, and studies with Richard Weiner. TAYLOR NEWMAN, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Glen Gardner, New Jersey, and studies with Marc Damoulakis.
PETER NICHOLS, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Nitro, West Virginia, and studies with Marc Damoulakis. TYLER NIEMEYER, percussion, is a master’s student from Cincinnati, Ohio, and studies with Paul Yancich. MELIVIA RAHARJO, piano, is a master’s student from Surabaya, Indonesia, and studies with Anita Pontremoli.
DANIEL RANEY, percussion, is a master’s student from Austin, Texas, and studies with Paul Yancich. CHARLES RENNEKER, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Birmingham, Alabama, and studies with Paul Yancich. KEVIN RITENAUER, percussion, is a master’s student from Macedonia, Ohio, and studies with Marc Damoulakis.
JUANITO RIVEROS, harp, is an undergraduate student from Rowlett, Texas, and studies with Yolanda Kondonassis. ALEX SKOV, percussion, is a master’s student from Cary, North Carolina, and studies with Marc Damoulakis. JEREMY SREEJAYAN, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Sydney, Australia, and studies with Marc Damoulakis.
LINDA WALLENTHIN, percussion, is an undergraduate student from Balsta, Sweden, and studies with Richard Weiner.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR RICHARD WEINER is the former principal percussionist of The Cleveland Orchestra. Hired by George Szell in 1963, he was appointed principal in 1968 where he led the section for 43 years of his total 48 years as a member of the orchestra. In 2011 he received The Cleveland Orchestra Distinguished Service Award presented yearly to a person or persons to recognize extraordinary service to The Cleveland Orchestra and is Principal Percussion Emeritus of The Cleveland Orchestra. Since his retirement in 2011, Weiner continues to occasionally perform with the orchestra and remains an active faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music — a position he has held since 1963. Since his retirement he has performed with the National Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony and Nashville Symphony Orchestras. He has performed several times at the Grand Teton Music Festival. Weiner received a B.S. in Education degree from Temple University in 1962, a Master of Music with Distinction from Indiana University in 1963, and was the first percussionist to be honored with the Performer's Certificate Award. He also holds a Juris Doctor in Law magna cum laude from Cleveland State University. Former teachers include Charles Owen (Temple University), Philadelphia Orchestra principal percussionist and George Gaber (Indiana University), renowned New York timpanist/ percussionist. In 1962, Weiner was a scholarship student at the Aspen Festival School and a member of the Aspen Festival Orchestra where he performed the solo xylophone in the American premieres of Olivier Messiaen's Oixeaux Exotiques, and Reveil des Oiseaux with Messiaen in attendance for a Conference on Contemporary Music. He has performed Donald Erb’s
Percussion Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra as well as many other of Erb’s pieces with The Cleveland Orchestra, with chamber groups and at CIM. He was a member of the Chautauqua Summer Symphony in 1964 and has been on faculty at Oberlin College. As a percussion clinician, Weiner has presented symphonic percussion clinics and labs at the Percussion Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) and is a faculty artist in residence at the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland. Additionally, he has been a seminar participant and coach at the New World Symphony, and editor and contributing editor of the PAS Symphonic Percussion column in Percussive Notes. He is the Co-Chairman of the Percussion Arts Society’s Symphonic Committee and the Coordinator of the PAS Emeritus Section presenting a concert at PASIC 2017. Additionally, he performed with that group at PASIC 2011 and 2015. Weiner can be heard on many acclaimed recordings with Maestros George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Robert Shaw, Christoph von Dohnányi, Franz Welser-Möst, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Riccardo Chailly, as well serving as principal percussionist on three heralded Telarc recordings of the Cleveland Symphonic Winds conducted by Frederick Fennell. He has recorded most of Olivier Messiaen’s orchestral works, Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and L’Histoire du Soldat with Pierre Boulez, as well as performing on over 175 recordings. Weiner has also participated in over 100 world and U.S. premieres and has performed in concert with George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, Franz Welser-Möst, Robert Shaw, James Levine, Jahja Ling, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, Riccardo Chailly, Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, Antal Dorati, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Bernard Haitink, Herbert von Karajan, Erich Leinsdorf, Yoel Levi, Kurt Masur, Eugene Ormandy, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Simon Rattle, Leonard Slatkin, Georg Solti, Michael TilsonThomas, John Adams, Arthur Fiedler, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Henry Mancini and John Williams among many others. Concert tours with The Cleveland Orchestra have taken him to the Soviet Union, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea, Scandinavia, as well as South and Central America. Weiner’s former students play or have played in symphony orchestras such as Cleveland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, National, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Santa Fe Opera, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Zealand, Europe, Navy Band (D.C.) as well as the Hollywood studios, Broadway and contemporary percussion ensembles such as The Percussion Group, Nexus and the Steve Reich Ensemble.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM Perpetual Motion for Four Diverse Snare Drums
Richard Weiner
Perpetual Motion is a short (about 2 minutes in length), fast, exhilarating and challenging piece originally written for four diverse snare drums. The drums are different sizes and different pitches so that each player’s contribution can be readily heard. Premiered at a special concert of The Cleveland Orchestra in 2009, Perpetual Motion has been performed several times at other Cleveland Orchestra performances. It has been performed by several colleges and universities since it was published. Expanded in 2011, Perpetual Motion now includes optional timpani and bass drum/cymbal parts to allow additional players to participate, if desired. Tonight, Perpetual Motion is being performed in the original format of four snare drum players.
Rain Tree
Toru Takemitsu
Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own, and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation. He composed several hundred independent works of music, scored more than ninety films and published twenty books. He was also a founding member of the Jikken Kobo (experimental workshop) in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century. (Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.) Rain Tree for three percussionists forms one part of Takemitsu's Waterscape series. These pieces were written for a variety of ensembles. The piece, dedicated to the author Kenzabuto Oé, takes its title from a passage in the novel Atama no ii, Ame no Ki: “It has been named the rain tree; for its abundant foliage continues to let fall rain drops collected from last night's shower until well after the following midday. Its hundreds of thousands of tiny leaves — finger-like — store up moisture, while other trees dry up at once. What an ingenious tree, isn’t it?” (Notes taken from the score.)
Take That
William Albright
Written in 1972 for the Blackearth Percussion Group, Take That is scored for “four drummers with sixteen drums.” The drums are arranged in an antiphonal set-up to surround the audience in a full stereo sound. Sections of intense unison figures compliment sections of passionate solos that will require high communication skills from the performers. American composer, organist and pianist of great repute, William Albright began learning the piano at an early age of five. He progressed quickly in his studies showing immense talent as a performer and composer. He attended the Juilliard Preparatory Department (1959-62), Eastman School of Music (1962-63) and University of Michigan (1963-70) where his principal teacher was former department chair Ross Lee Finney. Though his works are crafted concisely, he stressed the value of music as a form of communication and the supremacy of music of intuition, imagination and beauty of sound. (Steve Weiss Music Description.) Knock-On-Wood
Allan Blank
According to the composer: “Written for four performers playing 12 wooden instruments, Knock-On-Wood is a sound and rhythm study. Each performer plays three instruments. The instruments are arranged in a semi-circle. Specific wooden instruments are not designated since several are possible.” Allan Blank was an American composer who has more than 60 published works. He attended the Juilliard School of Music (1945-47) and obtained a bachelor’s degree from Washington Square College (1948). He received a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota (1970) and also studied at the University of Iowa. He was a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1950-52). He taught composition at Western Illinois University (1966–68), Paterson State Teachers College (1968-70), Lehman College (1970-77) and Virginia Commonwealth University (1978-96). He became a Professor Emeritus at VCU and was listed in the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Some of his awards include First Prize in the George Eastman Competition (1985) sponsored by the Eastman School of Music for his Duo for Bassoon & Piano, and a grant (1985) from the National Endowment for the Arts to support his one-act opera, The Magic Bonbons. The Virginia Shakespeare Festival at Williamsburg commissioned Blank to write music for their production of Measure For Measure. Blank died at the age of 87 on November 12, 2013. The composition notebooks of Allan Blank are archived at Old Dominion University. (Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
Third Construction
John Cage
Born in 1912, Cage studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, among others. Varèse was a major influence, especially in the field of percussion music. The Third Construction, one of three constructions for percussion which he composed, is for four percussionists. The instrumentation of the Third Construction includes wooden rattles from India, tin cans of various sizes, tom-toms, claves, suspended Chinese cymbal, maracas, teponaxtle (a log or split drum), cowbells, lion’s roar and bass drum roar (instruments in which a cord or string attached to a drum head is pulled making the sound of a roar), tambourine, the jawbone of an ass (now played on an instrument known as the vibraslap), cricket callers (sections of bamboo with grooves cut in them), conch shell, tacks in a tin can and a wooden ratchet. Organized in 24 sections, each 24 bars long and structured by rhythmic cadences, Cage has created an incisively articulated work of high rhythmic energy with fascinating coloristic and dramatic components. 4 for Percussion
Donald Erb
4 for Percussion for celeste, harp, piano, four timpani and four percussion was composed in 1961 while Erb was at Indiana University and had its first performance on his doctoral recital in May 1962. Although an early work, 4 for Percussion already exhibits many of the traits characteristic of his later works such as the use of what Erb calls “basic sounds” (for example glissandi, tremolos, trilling sonorities and percussive clicks) which are subjected to the techniques of thematic development. (Lucille Erb from Don Erb’s file.) The Cleveland Institute of Music is celebrating the life of Donald Erb this year. This semester the CIM Orchestra performed Evensong and the CIM New Music Ensemble performed Erb’s Drawing Down the Moon and The Devil’s Quickstep. Erb received major commissions from the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Dallas Symphony and Houston Symphony, among many others. Donald Erb held the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music where, in 2000, his lasting contributions to the conservatory were celebrated with a concert in his honor and the creation of a scholarship in his name. Donald Erb said this about his music: “A craftsman can create entertainment, but you need more than that to create art. You need an emotional, inspirational quality, because in and of itself craft means nothing. There has to be something inside you pushing out or all a person will ever write is a craftsman-like piece. And that’s not quite good enough.” (Excerpted from Theodore Presser.)
