THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE

Wednesday, April 25, 7:30 PM

Bates Recital Hall

DIRECTOR

Dan Welcher

VISITING COMPOSER

David Gompper

CLARINET SOLOIST

Jonathan Gunn

This concert will last approximately two hours with one intermission

Keith Allegretti Elegy and Tarantella (2018)

(b. 1989)

Russell Pinkston Off Leash—A Celebration of Life with Dogs (2016)

(b. 1949) Little Dog

On the Trail

Home Alone

Eddie and Thelma

Sleeping Dogs

At the Beach

Old Friend

Letting Go

Remembering

Intermission

David Gompper Butterfly Dance (2001)

(b. 1954)

David Gompper Traceur II (2016)

Jonathan Gunn, clarinet

PROGRAM

PLEASE SILENCE YOUR ELECTRONIC DEVICES

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Elegy and TarantellaKeith Allegretti

Born: 1989, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Composed: 2018

Premiered: Tonight’s performance is the premiere

Duration: 9 minutes

Instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet,

trombone, percussion, piano, violins, viola, cello, bass

A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Keith Allegretti is a composer and pianist

who enjoys working comfortably in many genres, including chamber,

orchestral, vocal, and electronic music, and even musical theater. His music

has been performed in Santa Fe, Houston, Berlin, Ann Arbor, New York

and elsewhere by professional and amateur ensembles, including Santa Fe

New Music, Quartetto Indaco, the Rice University Chorale, the University of

Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Circuit Bridges, and the Santa Fe Community

Orchestra.

From the composer:

While composing Elegy and Tarantella, I began to conceive of an

extramusical connection between two seemingly unrelated genres.

Elegies, typically sung or played at funerals, have potentially grotesque

associations, simply through their reference to the dead. The Tarantella,

meanwhile, similarly confronts our morbid fascination with the macabre,

as this frenzied, ritualistic dance was traditionally associated tarantism in

15th to 17th century Italy, a psychological condition of “dancing mania”

believed to arise from the bites of spiders. Elegy and Tarantella juxtaposes

these two musical sections of wildly different moods: a slow, flowing,

dirge-like opening followed by an extended, energetic dance. The

transition between the two is gradual and seamless, so that the listener

cannot tell precisely when one ends and the other begins, effectively

creating a single accelerating trajectory from beginning to end.

Off LeashRussell Pinkston

Born: January 1, 1949, Brooklyn, New York

Composed: 2016—commissioned by Texas Performing Arts and The

University of Texas New Music Ensemble

Premiered: September 9, 2016 in McCullough Theatre at The University of

Texas at Austin by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble

Duration: 25 minutes

Instrumentation: flute, clarinet, vibraphone, percussion, piano, violins, viola,

cello, double bass

Russell Pinkston is a composer, teacher, and sound designer who currently

lives in Austin, Texas. He has composed music in a wide variety of styles and

genres, from choral, chamber, and symphonic works, to electronic music

for modern dance. In recent years, he has specialized in writing interactive

compositions for acoustic instruments and electronic sounds, and he has

developed a number of software tools for real-time audio processing and

score following. About Off Leash, the composer writes:

In her book Dog Songs, the poet Mary Oliver writes, “of all the sights I

love in this world—and there are plenty—very near the top of the list is

this one: dogs without leashes.” It is a sight that I love, as well. Dogs are

always in the moment, experiencing life in a way that most of us haven’t

been able to do since we were very young, if ever. And when they are

off leash, able to run and play and explore the world without the usual

restraints we impose on them, we get to see dogs as the free spirits they

truly are, and that we might like to be. They hurl themselves headlong

into life, completely comfortable in their own skin, unconcerned with

the past or the future, holding nothing back, running until they drop

with exhaustion, then getting up and running some more. When writing

these pieces, I wanted to capture a few classic dog behaviors, as well

as some memories I have of specific dogs I have known—their unique

personalities, the arcs of their lives from beginning to end, and some of

the feelings I have had while sharing all that with them. I hope this music

will evoke similar images and memories in the minds of other dog lovers,

and remind them of the many great joys of sharing life with dogs.

Butterfly DanceDavid Gompper

Composed: 2001

Premiere: Moscow on April, 24, 2001 in Rachmaninoff Hall at the

Moscow Conservatory of Music by the ensemble Studio New Music,

Vladimir Tarnopolski, director

Estimated duration: 9 minutes

Instrumentation: for clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano

From the composer:

This is work is based on an American Hopi Indian tune of the

same name (recorded in the 1950s on Canyon Records CR-7053),

and consists of two parts: the first as a preparation although

aesthetically removed but motivically based on the second part,

a more straightforward rendition of the tune itself. The idea was

to suggest an experience, as a non-native American, witnessing

an Indian dance, outside, in a semi-circle, at dusk. For only with

time and patience does one find they enter into the dynamic and

rhythmic pacing of the celebratory dance.

Traceur II David Gompper

Born: 1954, San Diego, California

Composed: August 31, 2016. Recorded January 17, 2017 with the Royal

Philharmonic Orchestra, Cadogan Hall, Emmanuel Siffert conductor,

Michael Norsworthy, soloist.

Premiere: The premiere of Traceur II (sinfonietta version) took place at

Boston Conservatory, Doug Perkins, conductor, on February 9, 2018, and

tonight’s concert

Duration: 22 minutes

Instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, French horn,

trumpet, trombone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, percussion, celesta, piano,

solo clarinet, violins, viola, cello, bass

From the composer:

This composition, an orchestrated expansion of Traceur for clarinet

and piano, is based on a series of sketches that were generated at the

MacDowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire in December and January

of 2013-2014, ideas generated from the descending order of fractions

(1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, etc.) that create interesting symmetrical properties

(the Farey series).

While this trench work served as a somewhat obtuse structural

foundation, the surface and expression of the music is very much

related to the experience—mostly imagined—of the art of Parkour,

and the person known as a traceur, who as a skilled runner and jumper

often performs acrobatic feats of flight (always choreographed). This

work is about the idea of tracing a path, a person trying to run as fast

as possible into (but not around) rails and obstacles with minimal

energy and without slowing down.

This work was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music

Foundation.

ABOUT JONATHAN GUNN

Jonathan Gunn is a versatile artist with a varied

career as an educator, soloist, chamber musician,

and orchestral performer. Currently, Mr. Gunn

serves as the assistant professor of clarinet at the

Butler School of Music at The University of Texas

at Austin. Appointed by Maestro Paavo Järvi

to the position of associate principal and E-flat

clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in

2004, Mr. Gunn served as principal clarinet from 2011 to 2016 before

joining the faculty at the Butler School of Music. Prior to joining the

Cincinnati Symphony, he was the principal clarinetist of the Fort Wayne

Philharmonic, and has performed as guest principal clarinet with the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra on multiple occasions and has performed

with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Colorado Symphony

Orchestras.

Committed to the education of the next generation of clarinetists, Mr.

Gunn gives master classes and recitals around the country, and has

served on the faculties of the Buffet-Crampon Summer Academy, the

Aria International Summer Academy and the National Youth Orchestra of

the USA. Prior to joining the faculty at The University of Texas, he served

on the faculties of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of

Music, Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Goshen College, Andrews

University and Seton Hill University.

Born in Sheffield, England, Mr. Gunn started his musical career playing

violin and piano and began studying the clarinet after moving to the

United States at age eleven. He received a bachelor of music from the

Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and a master of music from

the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University. Jonathan is

married to Jennifer Gunn, who plays piccolo and flute with the Chicago

Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Gunn is a D’Addario artist and musician advisor, a Buffet Group USA

Performing Artist and plays exclusively on Buffet-Crampon clarinets.

ABOUT DAVID GOMPPER

David Gompper has lived and worked professionally

as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New

York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas

and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music

in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts, Humphrey

Searle and pianist Phyllis Sellick. After teaching in

Nigeria, he received his doctorate at the University

of Michigan, taught at the University of Texas,

Arlington, and since 1991 has been Professor of Composition and

Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In

2002-2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching,

performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009 he

received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and

Letters in New York City.

Gompper’s compositions have been performed in such venues as

Carnegie, Lincoln Center and Merkin Halls (New York), Wigmore

Hall (London), Konzerthaus (Vienna) and the Bolshoi Hall (Moscow).

Wolfgang David and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded his

Violin Concerto for a Naxos CD, and his song cycle The Animals, based

on the poetry of Marvin Bell, was released on an Albany disc in June

2012. His Double Concerto, written for Wolfgang David, violin and

Timothy Gill, cello and Principal of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

(RPO), was premiered in March 2013. He received a 2013 Fromm

Commission to write a Clarinet Concerto for Michael Norsworthy and

BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), Gil Rose, director, which

will be premiered in the spring of 2016. During the fall of 2014, he

completed a work for clarinet and piano called Traceur, which was

recorded with Michael Norsworthy for a CD to be released fall of 2015.

Finally, he is working on a Cello Concerto to be premiered in the fall of

2016, and recorded by the RPO in January of 2017.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE

FLUTE

Zach Warren

OBOE

Madison Pregler

CLARINET

Nick Brown

BASS CLARINET

Josh Barker

BASSOON/CONTRABASSOON

Katia Osorio

FRENCH HORN

Ash Fulkerson

TRUMPET

Matthew Harper

TROMBONE

Eric Gomez

PERCUSSION

Kellen King

Jordan Walsh

Gilbert Garcia

PIANO

Timothy George

Andrew Q Langman

CELESTE

Andrew Q Langman

VIOLIN

Sara Sasaki

Sean Riley

VIOLA

Ruben Balboa

CELLO

Kelvin Lee

DOUBLE BASS

James Tabata

ASSIST. DIRECTOR

Alex Johnson

UPCOMING BUTLER OPERA CENTER PRODUCTION

Falstaffby Guiseppe Verdi

CONDUCTOR

Kelly Kuo

DIRECTOR

Robert DeSimone

Friday, April 27, 7:30 PM

Sunday, April 29, 4:00 PM

All performances in

McCullough Theatre

ABOUT THE OPERA

Falstaff revolves around the farcical (and generally thwarted)

efforts of the “fat knight,” Sir John Falstaff, to seduce two

married women to gain access to their husbands’ wealth. Shining

with originality and composed when Verdi was nearly 80, this

opera is proof that age took nothing from the master.

TICKETS

music.utexas.edu/concerts

QUESTIONS?

tickets@mail.music.utexas.edu

UPCOMING SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONCERT

The University of Texas Symphony OrchestraMonday, April 30, 7:30 PM

Bates Recital Hall

CONDUCTOR

Gerhardt Zimmermann

SAXOPHONE SOLOIST

Calvin Wong

W.A. MozartSymphony No. 40 in G minor

Henri TomasiConcerto for Alto Saxophone

Edward Elgar“Nimrod” from Enigma Variations

Hector BerliozRákóczi March

TICKETS

music.utexas.edu/concerts

QUESTIONS?

tickets@mail.music.utexas.edu

UPCOMING CONCERTS AND EVENTS

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN • COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS

Douglas Dempster, Dean

SARAH AND ERNEST BUTLER SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Mary Ellen Poole, Director

For more information about Butler School of Music concerts and events, visit our online

calendar at music.utexas.edu/calendar.

Become a member of The Butler Society and help us successfully launch tomorrow’s

brightest performers, teachers, composers and scholars. Make a gift today at

music.utexas.edu/giving

The University of Texas Butler Collage SeriesThursday, April 26, 7:30 PM

Recital Studio, MRH 2.608

The University of Texas Wind EnsembleSunday, April 29, 4:00 PM

Bates Recital Hall

The University of Texas Harp EnsembleSunday, April 29, 7:30 PM

Bates Recital Hall

The University of Texas Symphony OrchestraMonday, April 30, 7:30 PM

Bates Recital Hall

SPONSORED BY