Singing the Sun (2001) David Dzubay (b. 1964)
Dallas Premiere
1. The Ecchoing Green (William Blake)
2. I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson)
3. The Cricket (Sappho)
4. Song (William Blake)
5. The Eagle (Alfred Tennyson)
6. Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling (Walt Whitman)
7. Night (William Blake)
Heidi Dietrich Klein, mezzo soprano
Jac Alder, narrator
Harvey Boatright, flute/piccolo Ross Powell, clarinet
Maria Schleuning, violin Peter Steffens, cello
Deborah Mashburn, percussion Jo Boatright, piano
Capriccio (1998) David Dzubay (b. 1964)
Dallas Premiere
Maria Schleuning, violin Jo Boatright, piano
Threnody (1987/1993) David Dzubay (b. 1964)
Maria Schleuning, violin Bing Wang, violin
Thomas Demer, viola Peter Steffens, cello
dancesing in a green bay (1999) David Dzubay (b. 1964)
Text by e.e. cummings
1. between green/ mountains
2. the/ sky/ was
3. grEEn’s d
4. All in green went my love riding
5. six
6. (sitting in a tree-)
7. in the rain-
Christine Schadeberg, soprano
Harvey Boatright, flute/piccolo Ross Powell, clarinet
Maria Schleuning, violin Peter Steffens, cello
Deborah Mashburn, percussion Jo Boatright, piano
Conducted by the composer
David Dzubay may be based in Bloomington, Indiana, where he has served on the faculty of Indiana University since 1992, but he has a long association both with North Texas and with the Southwest’s premiere new music ensemble, Voices of Change. VOC Artistic Director Jo Boatright first programmed Dzubay’s music in 1992, and has been a tireless advocate for his music since then, programming his works regularly. “On first hearing David’s orchestral piece, Snake Alley, I was immediately fascinated with the brilliant timbre of his orchestration and the mesmerizing melodic/rhythmic conception,” she says. “What he hears and transforms into notes is a challenge for musicians, but every hour of practice yields great satisfaction to us. You feel that the music is here to stay. As with all great composers, there are no wasted notes. I expect Dzubay’s music to be around a long time, especially since there are many talented, well-trained, eager musicians emerging to play this music.” The present recording reflects Dzubay’s keen interest in chamber music. The works that Voices of Change has recorded range from a violin/piano duo to two song cycles for soprano and mixed sextet (an instrumental complement of flute/piccolo, clarinet, violin, cello and piano as in Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, plus percussion). They show Dzubay to be a thoughtful text-setter with a subtle sense of color shared in his instrumental and vocal settings.
* * *
In our culture, a parody is something that makes fun of another entity, usually through theatrical, artistic, or musical mockery. During the Renaissance, the term ‘parody’ meant something entirely different in music from its modern connotation. It was a form of homage, a serious reworking of an existing composition, adding to or modifying the model work to enhance it and honor its inherent artistic value. The most common use of parody was the adaptation of a multiple-voice popular song or instrumental composition into a sacred mass. The technique represented a structural variation, and to some extent an advance, on the concept of a cantus firmus mass, which used a single melody (such as a Gregorian chant) as the basis for its musical material.
Dzubay’s Threnody for String Quartet is a parody (in the Renaissance sense) of a chanson by Josquin des Prez (c. 1440-1541), whom musicologists consider to have been the greatest composer working in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was admired by Martin Luther, who wrote that ‘Josquin alone was master of the notes.’ Across the Alps in Italy, the Florentine writer Cosimo Bartoli likened Josquin to Michelangelo two decades after Josquin’s death. In an era when travel was difficult, these geographically far-flung endorsements are testament to his prominence. Josquin was a native of Picardy in Flanders, and worked in courts throughout Europe, notably in Milan, Rome, and Ferrara. He wrote masses, motets, and secular music. Most of the latter consists of chansons setting French lyrical poetry. Josquin was an innovator, breaking from the fixed forms of the day and even setting some songs through-composed, allowing for more intimate and sensitive reflection of the text through the music. Mille regretz, one of his last chansons, is a superb example. The song was widely known and admired in its day. In fact, the Spanish Renaissance master Cristóbal de Morales (b. circa 1500, d. 1553) wrote a six-part parody mass based on Josquin’s song in 1544. Dzubay’s note in the score adds:
Threnody is a parody of ‘Mille regretz’, a hauntingly beautiful chanson by Josquin des Prez. Josquin’s chanson provides the framework for this short lament. Around this frame, I have created my own musical statement using interruption, layering, contrast, repetition and variation. Though I composed Threnody in the summer of 1987, I made a few slight revisions to the work in May 1993 and also wrote a version for string orchestra.
Text and translation of the chanson follow.
Et d’eslonger vostre fache amoureuse and leaving behind your loving face,
painful distress
Quon me verra brief mes jours definer. that it seems to me my days will
soon dwindle away.
Voices of Change commissioned Dzubay’s Life Songs, Book I: dancesing in a green bay in honor of the ensemble’s Silver Anniversary season in 1999-2000, with assistance from Chamber Music America’s A Musical Celebration of the Millenium. Dzubay fulfilled the commission with seven songs for soprano and chamber ensemble on texts of E.E. Cummings (1894-1962). Dancesing is the first of a series of song cycles. All of them are related in part to Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ The other books in the collection are (II) Singing the Sun; (III) Blazing Eyes/Blinding Sight; and (IV) Fierce Tears, which will set the Thomas poem in its entirety. For dancesing in a green bay, the source is Thomas’s third stanza:
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dzubay paraphrased the second line for his title. His approach to text has been similarly flexible and unorthodox, not least in his inspiration from two poets’ verse. For these songs, Dzubay turned to the verse of the American poet E.E. Cummings, best known for his experimental typography. Cummings was also a respected craftsman whose depth and simplicity exerted a powerful influence on a generation of American and British poets. Dzubay explains his choice thus:
The Cummings poems in the present set are, perhaps loosely, tied together by use of words from the title, particularly ‘dance,’ ‘sing,’ and ‘green.’ All of the poems except ‘six’ have outside, natural (green) settings. While the songs were composed as individual entities, they are arranged in a symmetrical order, balancing on the most substantial fourth song [‘All in green went my love riding’]. They are also meant to complement and contrast each other, as shown by suggestions to the performers for each movement’s character: orgiastic, pastoral, hiccupy, brave, playful, twitterjoy, and tenderly.
Soloist Christine Schadeberg remains delighted with the work. “This was one of those rare occasions when I received a new score, read through the vocal line, and found it exactly right,” she recalls. “The rhythm feels right with the text; the words flow freely, and the melodic line fits not only with the sense of the text but also with its underlying meaning.” Dzubay demonstrates considerable skill from a practical as well as aesthetic standpoint. He has provided spaces in the vocal line to permit the singer to breathe and pace herself. Schadeberg adds, “That pacing allows the instrumental ensemble to ‘reflect’ on the nuances implied between the lines of the text.”
* * *
Dzubay composed Capriccio in 1998 for violinist Corey Cerovsek, a college friend whose playing he admires. Like Dzubay, Cerovsek lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana, although he has an active career as a touring concert soloist. Their paths first crossed during their undergraduate years. Dzubay has written:
I have known and admired Corey since our first meeting in a music history class in 1986. My Capriccio has many of the standard attributes of other capriccios: contrasting textures and moods, unexpected chromatic twists, repeated sections, and just a certain capricious flow. Alternating between three cadenzas and three allegros, Capriccio is built out of a rather simple theme, which is based on the pitches derived from the letters in Corey Cerovsek’s name. Initially presented in the first cadenza (with some elaboration), the theme permeates all the other sections, thus the work is a loose set of variations. Despite all the chromatic twists and turns, I am still going to claim that Capriccio is in A minor.
The orthography of Cerovsek’s name translated to music requires a bit of elaboration. Instead of the German spellings for musical notes, Dzubay adapted the French solfège pitches best known to the general public through ‘Do-re-mi’ from The Sound of Music. Thus, the R’s in CoRey and CeRovsek become the musical pitch D (Re ‘translates’ to the pitch D). Similarly, the S in CerovSek is the solfège pitch si, or B-natural. The thematic material of the work derives from the pitch sequence: C-D-E-C-E-D-B-E. Does the listener hear this? Not likely; however, composers have played spelling games for centuries (Bach, for example, was a frequent practitioner of such motives embedded in his music), Dzubay joins a long list of composers who have chosen to pay tribute to someone through this technique.
Another element of homage is the extraordinary difficulty of Capriccio, “It is very hard,” acknowledges Ms. Schleuning, “but it’s also a fantastic piece: really well thought out, accurate, balanced and precise as to how it fits together between violin and piano. The difficult part is ensemble, just putting it together. But a lot of that difficulty derives from the musical excitement, because what David has written is so dynamic rhythmically.”
Dzubay’s Life Songs, Book II: Singing the Sun derives its title from a line opening the fourth stanza of Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” (1951).
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
The composer offers the following explanation of this cycle’s structure:
While dancesing in a green bay uses poetry of E.E. Cummings exclusively, Singing the Sun uses texts by five different poets. The poems in the present set are tied together by their relationship to the themes of sun, song, and flight. The singer and narrator alternately sing and speak the texts. The sung poems (1, 3, 5, and 7) are observations of nature, describing sun and spring (1), sun and cricket (3), sun and eagle (5), and sun and moon (7). Spoken poems (2, 4, and 6) are first person, intimate declarations, presenting short narratives, with the passionate Whitman poem providing the dramatic anchor of the entire work, and leading without break into the concluding return to night.
Singing the Sun was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation.
Notes by Laurie Shulman © 2003
Singing the Sun
1. from The Ecchoing Green (William Blake)
The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bells’ chearful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
2. I taste a liquor never brewed (Emily Dickinson)
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
3. The Cricket (Sappho)
When the sun dazzles the earth
with straight-falling flames,
a cricket rubs its wings
scraping up a shrill song.
4. Song (William Blake)
How sweet I roam’d from field to field,
And tasted all the summer’s pride,
‘Till I the prince of love beheld,
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He shew’d me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fir’d my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
5. The Eagle (Alfred Tennyson)
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
6. Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling (Walt Whitman)
Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.
Hear me illustrious!
Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge,
thy touching-distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my
invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his
voice – and thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and
shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations
well.)
Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O’er myriad farms, o’er lands and waters North and South,
O’er Mississippi’s endless course, o’er Texas’ grassy plains,
Kanada’s woods,
O’er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest
so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray
out of thy million millions,
Stride through these chants.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself – prepare my
lengthening shadows,
Prepare my starry nights.
7. from Night (William Blake)
The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon like a flower,
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
* * * * *
David Dzubay was born in 1964 in Minneapolis and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Attending Indiana University, he earned a B.S. (1986), an M.M. in Composition and Trumpet (1988), and a D.M. in Composition (1991). His principal teachers have been Donald Erb, Frederick Fox, Eugene O’Brien, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Allan Dean and Bernard Adelstein.
Dzubay’s music has been performed in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia by more than thirty orchestras. His music is published by Pro Nova Music, Dorn, and Thompson Edition and is recorded on the Centaur, Innova, First Edition and Indiana University labels.
Formerly on the faculty of the University of North Texas, Dzubay is currently Associate Professor of Music at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, where he teaches composition, directs the New Music Ensemble, and occasionally conducts an orchestra. Dzubay has conducted at the Tanglewood, Aspen, and June in Buffalo festivals, and at Disney World. He has also conducted the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Voices of Change, an ensemble from the Minnesota Orchestra and strings from the Louisville Orchestra. From 1995-98 he served as Composer-Consultant to the Minnesota Orchestra, helping run the American Composers Forum’s “Perfect-Pitch” reading sessions for works by Minnesota composers.
Recent honors for Dzubay include the American Composer’s Forum ‘Continental Harmony’ commission for Portland-based fEARnoMUSIC (2003); a Meet the Composer commission for the Manhattan Brass Quintet (2002); the 2001 Walter Beeler Prize from Ithaca College; a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard (2000); and the 2000 Wayne Peterson Prize for Music.
Along with his wife, clarinetist Tasha Dzubay, and children, Laura and Paul, David Dzubay makes his home in Bloomington, Indiana, where in addition to composing and teaching, he enjoys tennis, (endless) home improvement, and welding.
Voices of Change is the Southwest's only professional chamber music ensemble dedicated to the performance of music of our time. Now in its 28th year, Voices of Change has performed for enthusiastic audiences of all ages ranging from Dallas area schools to the greatest international halls.
Voices of Change's repertoire reflects the diverse styles of the music of the 20th and 21st-centuries. Voices' programming also includes multi-media works that employ visual components, such as slides of paintings with electronic sound accompaniment.
Change, evolution, originality -- all are hallmarks of a world that continues to develop and grow. In music, exploration and experimentation are as important as anywhere else. Composers of our time help us to hear the classics in new ways. Newly-composed music induces imagination, stimulating our thoughts and ideas afresh.
Throughout its history, Voices of Change has consistently earned national and international recognition and awards both for the high calibre of its performances and for its adventuresome programming. The ensemble has five times been presented with the ASCAP award for Creative Programming. The 1998 recording, Voces Americanas, was nominated for the prestigious Grammy Award.
Voices of Change has a proud history of welcoming living composers to work with its musicians and interact with its audiences toward making new music accessible, understandable, and fun. Personal collaboration among composer, performers, and listeners makes for better performances. It gives audiences the unique opportunity to learn more, first hand, about the process of composing.
Jo Boatright, Piano, is the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Voices of Change. She has received accolades worldwide for her collaborative performances as a chamber musician. Her work with Voices of Change has earned her the ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming on five occasions. In 1999 the CD Voces Americanas on CRI by Voices of Change was nominated for the prestigious Grammy award. Ms. Boatright is a founding member and pianist of the Walden Chamber Music Series that presents the Walden Piano Quartet featuring the foremost members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She has been a soloist with symphony orchestras since the age of twelve, including an appearance with the Boston Pops Orchestra. Ms. Boatright holds degrees from Colorado College and the New England Conservatory of Music and received the prestigious “Lanvan Award” at Boston’s Tanglewood Festival. Her teachers have included Max Lanner, Miklos Schwalb and the great Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus.
With Voices of Change, she has toured the European capitals of London, Berlin, Paris, The Hague, Edinburgh, and Riga, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. She has also performed with the ensemble in Venezuela, Mexico and the Sixth International Festival of Music in Costa Rica. Her many United States appearances have included Washington D.C’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Merkin Hall, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Music in the Mountains at Purgatory and concerts in cities around the U.S. and Texas. Ms. Boatright is a former Associate Professor of Music at Texas Christian University and University of Texas at Dallas. She is also Music Director for the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. In addition she has appeared as keyboardist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, including several recordings. Ms. Boatright has recorded with Voices of Change for CRI, Crystal, Redwood, Odyssey, Albany, and Centaur. She is heard as a soloist on the Music & Arts label.
Christine Schadeberg, soprano, is recognized as one of America’s outstanding singers specializing in 20th and 21st - century music. She has performed over 120 works, many written especially for her unique vocal and dramatic talents. After making her Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center debuts, she has continued her guest appearances with such groups as Speculum Musicae, the New York New Music Ensemble, Musicians’ Accord, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Voices of Change, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, the Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, Currents, the Little Orchestra Society of New York and the Dallas and Memphis Symphonies. Also in demand as a recitalist, she is noted for her interpretation of American song; she regularly conducts master classes and composers’ seminars and was Artist-in-Residence for three semesters at the Baylor University School of Music. Ms. Schadeberg has recorded a disc for commissioned works for the Jubal Trio released on CRI in the autumn of 1996. She has a solo CD (an all-Berio disc of vocal chamber music on the Mode label), and can also be heard on the Opus One, Bridge, Centaur and New World labels. She has been a member of Voices of Change since its inception in 1974
Heidi Dietrich Klein, mezzo-soprano, native of Los Angeles, received a Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Indiana University. Though her repertoire is varied, Ms. Klein is particularly dedicated to the interpretation of early and contemporary music. She has premiered numerous compositions, many of which have been written expressly for her. In addition to her work as a soloist in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, Ms. Klein performs frequently at new music festivals throughout the United States. She is currently a member of the Helios Ensemble of Dallas, The Orchestra of New Spain and the Denton Bach Society. She is featured on two compact disc recordings: CEMEsonics: The Threshold of Sound, and Music from SEAMUS, Volume 7.
Maria Schleuning, Violin, is in her seventh season with Voices of Change. She moved to Dallas in 1994 to join the DSO. Prior to that time, she served as the concertmistress of several orchestras including the Banff Festival Orchestra in Canada. Ms. Schleuning holds degrees from Indiana University and The Julliard School. Her teachers include Joel Smirnoff, Josef Gingold and Yfrah Neaman. As soloist she has performed with the Oregon, Seattle and Columbia Symphonies, and served as a faculty member and performer at the Bowdin Summer Music Festival in Maine. Her other chamber music appearances include performances at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Jac Alder, narrator, has appeared in scores of shows since 1961 when, with his late wife Norma Young, he co-founded Theatre Three in Dallas. A musician and singer (of sorts) he has appeared in many musicals (including some he devised) including Rise and Shine, Clap Yo’ Hands, Jeepers Creepers Here’s Harry, Porter Please, The Fantasticks, and Candide. Classical roles include assignments in Shaw, Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goldoni. He has also performed in the works of modern masters including Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams as well as in many of the contemporary American and European works premiered in Dallas by Theatre Three. He has taught acting on many campuses as a guest teacher and for six years was Director of Drama at the University of Texas at Arlington. He currently serves as Theatre Three’s Executive Producer-Director.
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Harvey Boatright, Flute, was a member of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from 1960 until his retirement in 2000. Mr. Boatright holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and has played in the Colorado Springs Symphony, the Denver Symphony and the Seventh Army Orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany. He toured Germany, France, Luxembourg, Holland and Greece as flutist in a chamber ensemble. Mr. Boatright has been an active chamber musician in the Dallas / Ft. Worth Metroplex performing with the Dallas Bach Society, Walden Chamber Music Society and the Fort Worth Chamber Music Society. He has been a member of Voices of Change since its inception in 1974. Mr. Boatright is an active private teacher of flute and the Alexander Technique.
Thomas Demer, Viola performed as Principal Violist with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra while earning a degree from the University of Arizona. Subsequently he was a member of the Omaha Symphony and the Fort Worth Symphony. For the last sixteen years he has been a violist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and in the harp trio Tryptych.
Deborah Mashburn, Percussion, is Assistant Timpanist/Percussionist of the Fort Worth Symphony and Principal Timpanist of the Dallas Opera. She studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria on a Rotary International Undergraduate Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and two Austrian Government Grants. She is a graduate of the University of North Texas School of Music with a Masters in Percussion Performance. Ms. Mashburn has toured throughout Europe as a member of the Glorieux Ensemble and performed frequently with the Mozarteum Orchestra, the Salzburg Academia Camerata Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Nuremberg Opera and the Munich State Opera. Having toured Europe and the United States with the Dallas Symphony, she has also been a soloist on the Cliburn Concerts, the National AGO convention and on many recording of Voices of Change, the Fort Worth Symphony and the Turtle Creek Chorale.
Ross Powell, Clarinet, is Co-Founder of Voices of Change and served as its President and Director from 1975 to 1983. He was a member of the first New Music Panel at the NEA and has been a panelist and evaluator for the Texas Commission on the Arts as well as for the Office of Cultural Affairs, City of Dallas. Mr. Powell studied with Alberto Luconi while earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Woodwind Instruments at the University of Michigan, and at the Eastman School of Music, studied with D. Stanley Hasty while earning a Performer Certificate, Masters of Performance and Music Literature and completing course work for the Doctor of Music Degree.
As an orchestral performer he has served with the Toledo Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Opera Orchestra. He served as Director of Educational Services with the Dallas Symphony developing and administering grants providing performances for youth involving the symphony, opera, ballet and theater in Dallas. Joining the music faculty of SMU in 1966, he is now Associate Professor of Clarinet and served as Head of the Orchestral Instruments Department from 1979 to 1995. As a recording artist with Voices of Change he may be heard on CDs distributed by CRI, Crystal, Redwood, Odyssey and New World labels. The 1999 Grammy nominated recording Voces Americanas features Mr. Powell in Madrigal for Solo Clarinet by Mario LaVista.
Peter Steffens, Cello, is in his sixth season with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He has held the position of Principal Cello at both the New World (Miami) and Charleston, South Carolina Symphonies, and was a frequent soloist and chamber music performer at both locations. Mr. Steffens graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he studied with Gabor Rejto, Lowell Creitz and Parry Karp. Along with his DSO season schedule, Mr. Steffens is also a resident chamber musician at the Garth Newel Summer Music Festival in Virginia. This is his fifth season with Voices of Change
Bing Wang, violin, was born in China and started lessons with his father, Professor De-Wen Wang, at the age of four. In 1993 he came to the United States to attend Indiana University, earned his Bachelors degree in Music at Cincinnati University where he studied with Dorothy Delay, received his Masters of Music at the University of Southern California and pursued the Doctorate of Musical Arts there under the guidance of Professor Alice Schoenfeld. Mr. Wang has performed in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Honors include winning the Los Angeles Arts Council’s Violin Competition, the Agnes Fowler Strings Competition, the Paganini Caprices Competition at IU, being named the 1991 Davidoff “Young Musician of the Year”, and serving as concert master of the American Youth Symphony from 1989-1995. Mr. Wang was concertmaster of the Schleswig-Holstein Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra from 1990-1992. He is currently a member of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and is on the faculty of University of Texas at Arlington.
* * * * *
Credits
Voices of Change was a 1999-2000 participant in Chamber Music America’s A Musical Celebration of the Millenium, which commissioned dancesing in a green bay. Support for this program came from:
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation
Susan W. Rose Fund for Music
The Helen F. Whitaker Fund
and the CMA Endowment Fund.
This recording was made possible through a recording grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, American Music Center.
Some other items for inclusion in booklet text (typically on the inside of the back page in the booklet):
Produced by David Dzubay and Konrad Strauss
Recorded and Edited by Konrad Strauss
Assistant Engineer: Jason Biggs
All compositions are published by Pro Nova Music (BMI)
http://php.indiana.edu/~ddzubay/pronovamusic/
innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Director/layout: Philip Blackburn
Artists and Product: Chris Strouth
Assistant: Chris Campbell
www.innova.mu