SAX IN THE CITY
International Tour and Festival

During the last week of February and the first week of March 2007, the French chamber ensemble, Trio Saxiana will tour in the United States presenting a concert featuring five newly commissioned pieces by an international roster of composers – the Americans Neely Bruce, Mark Phillips and Gerald Shapiro, the French composer Thierry Pécou, and from Germany, Martin Münch.

The centerpiece of the tour is the festival and residency at Brown jointly sponsored by the Department of Music and Brown New Music. In addition to the trio, four of the five composers will be in attendance at the festival, which will showcase their work on two concerts. The first, on Friday March 2nd, presents the Trio Saxiana in a full evening of premieres. The following night, a concert using a mixed ensemble of student and professional players will present a second set of pieces by the visiting composers. The visitors will help prepare the students in their pieces and participate in the performance. In addition, they will meet with classes and individual composition students in the Department, and jointly present a departmental colloquium. Trio Saxiana will spend Saturday afternoon working with Brown student composers rehearsing and recording their compositions.

In addition to their performance at Brown, the trio will present concerts at Wesleyan University, Ohio University, and Indiana University in this country and later, back in France, at the Salle Cortot in Paris.


PARTICIPANTS

Trio Saxiana
In the few short years since its founding, the Trio Saxiana has taken a place among the most prestigious French chamber ensembles featuring the saxophone. Winners of no less than three first prizes at the Conservatoire National, the trio is invited regularly to festivals and concert series and has performed over 600 concerts spanning the globe from France to Korea. They have made a habit of introducing the work of living composers and have added many commissioned works to the repertoire. Since 2002, in addition the works to be presented on the tour, they have commissioned and premiered works by Jorge Calleja, Jean-Pierre Raillat, Henri-Jean Schubnel, Bernard Van Beurden, Matthieu Alvado, Kristina Megyeri, Christophe Frionnet, and Gilles Cagnard.


Olivier Besson, Saxophone
After early musical studies in Limoges, Oliver Besson enrolled in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and, on graduating in 2001, received first prizes in performance and chamber music. Since that time, he has played with numerous ensembles, including the Orchestre Lamoureux, L’orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, L’orchestre régional du Limousin, Quintette Saxiana, and L’ensemble de sax de la Région Nord.  He is a founding member of the prize-winning saxophone quartet Carré Mêlé whose presentation, "saxophares et sémaphones", inspired by traditional celtic music, has been presented throughout Europe in live performances and on radio and television.

Besson is a professor of saxophone at the Ecole Nationale de Cambrai .

Nicolas Prost, Saxophone
Born in 1971, Nicolas Prost won first prizes in 1994 in performance and chamber music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. He was named Lauréate of the Yahama Foundation in the same year and began his solo career with the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux under the direction of Yutaka Sado. He continued that career, playing concertos with orchestras in Europe and North America including l'Orchestre Philarmonique de Mexico, the European Camerata of London , L’orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, the Ausburg Camerata, Les Musiciens de la Pree, Tempo Primo, Concerts Lamoureux, and the L’orchestre régional du Limousin.

Well known as a champion of new music, Prost has had more than forty pieces dedicated to him and performed them in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and the Far East. He is Professor of Saxophone at the Conservatoire National de Saint-Maur and active in presenting national and international festivals and contests. Prost is also the composer of numerous pieces for saxophone instruction published by editions Billaudot, Lemoine, Fuzeau etc.


Laurent Wagschal, piano
Like the two saxophonists of the Trio Saxiana,  Laurent Wagschal attended the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris where he also achieved first prizes in performance and chamber music. Lauréate of the  Fondation Natexis, he has won numerous international prizes and has performed as soloist with the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the Orchestre d'Auvergne, the Solistes de Paris, the Philharmonie de Poznan, the Orchestre Classica of Moscow and the Kaliningrad Orchestra.

Wagschal is heard regularly in the most prestigious concert halls around the world including the Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Théâtre Mogador, Musée d'Orsay, Radio France, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Auditorium National de Musique de Madrid, Carnegie Hall in New York, Dongsoong Hall in Seoul, Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall, Osaka Phoenix Hall.

He is particularly interested in uncovering the music of lesser-known composers and in French music. His recordings include CDs devoted to the solo piano music of F. Schmitt, works for violin and piano by Szymanowski, Concertos by Chausson and Mendelssohn with the Orchestre d'Auvergne , sonatas for cello and piano by Fauré, Magnard and Poulenc, and a CD of music by French composers with flutist Kazunori Seo.

Thierry Pécou, composer
Born in 1965 in Paris, Thierry Pécou began studying piano at the age of 9.and continued his studies at the Conservatoire where he won First Prizes in Orchestration and Composition in 1987 and 1988.  Regularly chosen for residencies around the world, Pecou has had a long-standing relationship with the Banff Center in Canada. He was also a member of the Casa de Velazquez in Madrid from 1997 to 1999 and has made his extensive travel a source of inspiration for his music.

His composition awards have included the UNESCO prize in 1990 and two early awards from SACEM. He has also received the Pierre Cardin Prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the  Nouveau Talent prize from SACD.  In 2004 he again received prizes from SACHEM and UNESCO as well as from the Foundation Groups Popular Bank.

His work has been played at festivals including Gaudeamus Music Week in Amsterdam, Automne in Moscow, New Music Concerts Toronto, Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva of Mexico City, Festival of Ambronay, Tampere Choir Festival (Finland), Organ Stops in Yvelines, October in Normandy. Starting around 1996, Pecou developed an interest in the music of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africa and his own compositions since then, such as L’Homme Arme, Les filles du Feu, and La ville des Cesars, have often shown this influence. Other recent works of note include, La Symphonie du Jaguar, Cosmos et Desastre-Siqueros, and Une rose, a circle of kisses.

Neely Bruce, composer
Neely Bruce, Professor of Music and American Studies at Wesleyan University, is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music. He has been visiting professor and artist-in-residence at Middlebury College, Bucknell University, the University of Michigan, and at Brooklyn College. He is the chorus director for Connecticut Opera, and, with his wife Phyllis, co-director of music at South Congregational Church in Middletown, Connecticut.
           
Bruce has composed the full length Opera, Hansel and Gretel, two one-act operas, five concerti, numerous orchestral compositions, keyboard works, over 250 solo songs, a series of Grand Duos for various solo instruments and piano, pieces for tape with and without live performance, and large-scale chamber works. Commissions received include works for Donald Nally and the Bridge Ensemble, the Claude Kipnis Mime Troupe, Stuart Dempster, Richard Biles, James Fulkerson, Larry Palmer, and Sandra Kopell. Two of Bruce’s major works, the oratorio Hugomotion and the Second Violin Concerto, were commissioned by the late Ruth Steinkraus Cohen. His Perfumes and Meanings for sixteen solo voices was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and premiered at Queen Elizabeth Hall by London Voices, conducted by William Brooks.

His largest work is entitled CONVERGENCE. Commissioned by the American Composers Forum, and premiered on June 18, 2000 as part of the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas, CONVERGENCE, is scored for multiple marching bands, multiple choruses, three or more organs, fife and drum corps, bagpipes, two orchestras, jazz band, West African drumming ensemble, Native American ensemble, Javanese gamelan, West Indian steel drums, and two solo trumpets. On August 18, 2002 Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors presented a performance of this piece, enthusiastically received by an audience of 10,000.
           
His “rock phantasmagoria” for four voices and tape, The Plague: A Commentary on the Work of the Fourth Horseman, was commissioned by Electric Phoenix and performed many times in the United States, Europe, and at festivals in Huddersfield and Newcastle (UK). The Plague, and Bruce’s other works for this virtuoso ensemble—Eight Ghosts (Michael McClure) and The Dream of the Other Dreamers (Walt Whitman)—have been released on CD by Mode. Five of the Eight Ghosts were performed by Electric Phoenix at IRCAM in Paris.           


Mark Phillips, composer
Mark Phillips won the 1988 Barlow International Competition with his orchestral composition Turning, which has been performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Japan, with Leonard Slatkin conducting, as well as by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, with Uriel Segal conducting.  His String Quartet N° 2 was commissioned, premiered, and recorded by the Lark Quartet. Other significant performances of his music have taken place at Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall in NYC, Wigmore Hall in London, Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Stockholm, Krakow, Warsaw, Graz, Greece, and the Netherlands. His works have been performed by the Kansas City Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Huntington Symphony Orchestra, the Baltic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, the Bahia Blanca Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Ensemble Eclipse (Beijing), and the Icelandic Symphony. 

Rain Dance for flute and electro-acoustic music, winner of the 1994 Newly Published Flute Music Competition, has been recorded by flutist Jill Felber on the Neuma label.  T. Rex for trombone and electro-acoustic music has been recorded by both John Marcellus and Andrew Glendening. Richard Stoltzman recorded Three of a Kind with the Warsaw Philharmonic conducted by George Manahan for the MMC label.  Sonic Landscapes has been recorded by oboist Stephen Caplan for Musician’s Showcase. 

His awards and distinctions include the 1990 Delius Chamber Music Award, ASCAP Standard Awards, an ASCAP Raymond Hubbell Award, grants from Meet the Composer, and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Commission, Ohio University, and Indiana University.  His music has been featured at the Blossom Festival, Chautauqua Summer Music Festival, Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival, Memphis State New Music Festival, Florida State University Festival of New Music, National Flute Association Conference, International Double Reed Society Conference, International Trombone Association Conference, World Saxophone Congress, and the national conferences of both the Society of Composers, Inc. and the Society of Electro-Acoustic Musicians in the United States.


Gerald Shapiro, composer
Gerald Shapiro is a composer and Professor of Music at Brown University. He was born in Philadelphia in 1942 and attended public schools there.  He received the Bachelor of Music degree with distinction from the Eastman School of Music in 1964 and continued with graduate work at Mills College, where he received an M.A. in 1967, the University of California at Davis, and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, studying under a Fulbright grant.  His principal teachers of composition during this period were Darius Milhaud, Mort Subotnick, Karlheinze Stockhausen, and Nadia Boulanger.
His work includes Phoenix and Prayer for the Great Family for the British vocal ensemble, Electric Phoenix, Mount Hope in Autumn and From the Log of the Alice for the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, the Piano Trio #1 for the Yuval Trio, In Time’s Shadow for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, String Quartet #2 for the Mondriaan Quartet, Mouvements Perpetuels for the Dutch Percussion Group, The Vineland Sagas and Intrigue for the Baltic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, Piano Trio #2 for the Rekjavik Trio and the Trio for Saxophones and Piano for the Trio Saxiana.

Performances of these and other compositions have been included on programs in the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the New York Summer Festival at Lincoln Center, the Grand Teton Festival in Wyoming, the Montanea Festival in Switzerland, the Blue Lagoon Festival in Iceland, the De Stem Festival in Holland, and the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. Shapiro has provided guest lectures or residencies at, among many others, Wesleyan University, Rice University, Princeton University, the Eastman School of Music, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Illinois, Kings College in London, The Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Bayreuth Festival in Germany, and the Brabants Conservatory in the Netherlands.

Shapiro’s music is published by Editions Billaudot, and available on the Naxos and Neuma record labels.


Martin Münch, composer
Martin Münch was born in Frankfurt, Germany.He received his diploma at the University of Mainz where he majored in music pedagogy with outstanding grades in piano performance under the guidance of Monica von Saalfeld. He continued his studies at the Ferienkurse di Weikersheim and the Contemporary Music Festival of Darmstadt. He has performed in 26 countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Japan, and the United States.

Münch studied composition in Frankfurt with Professor Hans-Ulrich Engelmann, and in 1992 he completed a degree in composition with Professor Wolfgang Rihm at the College of Music in Karlsruhe.  Performances of his work include the Rhapsody for Clarinet and Piano at the Theater Colon in Buenos Aires and the Theater of Sao Paolo and his Second Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in Rumania. Several of his compositions have been broadcast by the radio stations  Suedwestfunk Mainz and Sueddeutscher Rundfunk as well as on Suedwestfunk television and national TV Bulgaria.

Martin Münch is the founder of the Turn of the Century Society, a major cultural organization in Germany.  Since 1994, he has worked on music therapy projects and research in Weinsberg (Heilbronn). He teaches piano at the University of Bamberg in Bavaria and is the artistic director of several piano festivals including yearly events in Heidelberg and Florence.




TRIO SAXIANA
CONCERT PROGRAM

Olivier Besson, soprano and alto saxophones
Nicolas Prost, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones
Laurent Wagschal, piano



NEELY BRUCE  /  Private conversations

world premiere for 2 saxophones alto and piano

THIERRY PÉCOU /  Nanook Trio

world premiere for 2 saxophones and piano

MARTIN MÜNCH / Trio op.42

world premiere for saxophone alto, saxophone baryton and piano


... pause


GERALD SHAPIRO / Trio for two saxophones and piano

American premiere for saxophone soprano, saxophone tenor and piano

MARK PHILLIPS / Ménage à trois

world premiere for saxophone alto, saxophone tenor and piano






PROGRAM NOTES

Neely Bruce: Private Conversations
In the last ten or fifteen years I have taken to improvising in public, most often as "preluding" to introduce various piano pieces by myself and others.  Sometimes these improvisations would be in the style of a particular composer (Beethoven, Chopin, etc.), or a particular period ("an improvisation in late eighteenth century style").  But most often I improvise in a free chromatic style which is more or less my own.  I observed that my "original" improvisations tended to take me in musical directions which were not typical of most of my composed (written-down) music of recent years.  So, to take advantage of some of these new directions, since 2000 or so I have deliberately begun to incorporate improvisational material into more structured work.  The basic move is to improvise on paper and then use the resulting melodic and rhythmic ideas to make larger, more organized pieces.  This method seems to work especially well when composing chamber music -- my first venture of this type was a trio for violin, cello and piano simply entitled "Fantasy."  "Private Conversations" is the second trio composed in this manner, and there is a third one in the works for violin, flute and piano.  I plan to write a series of "Improvisations for Orchestra" as well.

Since these compositions originate in the subconscious, they can become a forum for ideas from the past, not utilized in decades, or even consciously rejected.  But they spontaneously arise, unbidden, like bubbles on the surface of a lily pond or the La Brea tar pits.  Much to my surprise I found myself asking the two saxophonists to play into the lid of the piano and to rotate while sustaining long tones -- overtly theatrical gestures which disappeared from my music about 1974 but which were alive and well in the late 1960s.  I last incorporated multiphonics for saxophone in one of my pieces in 1972 -- the Grand Duo for Soprano Sax and Piano.  The conversational part of "Private Conversations" is pretty clear -- the instruments take up various topics, develop them, toss them back and forth, etc.  They even go off on tangents from time to time.  But what these conversations add up to, or mean, is not so apparent.  That's the "private" part of it.


Thierry Pécou: Nanook Trio
When Trio Saxiana asked me to compose a piece for the rather unusual combination of two saxophones and piano, I was about to begin a lengthy score to accompany the  silent film, "Nanook of the North", produced in 1921 in the Canadian arctic by Robert Flaherty.  The film music was to be scored for a much different group consisting of flute, clarinet, trombone, cello and live electronics. I proceeded to write the same music for these two radically different sets of instruments, always keeping the images of the film in mind, but switching constantly between the two ensembles.

The trio is in three movements, each corresponding to a scene in the film showing some aspect of the hard everyday life of an Inuit family, often with humor and tenderness. The central movement is based an Inuit song, performed in the original with a drum accompaniment. In general, however, the rhythmic and melodic materials of the trio are inspired by the images of the film rather than by any ethnographic materials.

Martin Münch:
The compositions of Martin Münch are situated in the fascinating musical realm of a demanding esthetic addressed to mankind and to the spirit of the humanist tradition whose development continues to this day.  They aspire to build a bridge from the high culture - works created in the spirit of an evolving tradition - to a culture that embraces the needs and assumptions of contemporary audiences.

Münch's current works often require political conditions that guarantee the indispensable freedom of art such as those found in the constitutions of secular states and in reciprocal calls for universal tolerance.  His funeral march opus 37/4, "Sorrow Over the Unending Crimes of Religions Against Humanity," for instance, has been denied performance five times so far in the so-called Free World - including the USA and Germany.
The Saxophone Trio is not political music.  Rather, it is a personal artistic confession and an open demonstration of a broad range of spiritual energies and states of mind.  It follows the stylistic directions of Münch's earlier sonatas, for example, the Sonata for cello and piano opus 31, and the Sonata for violin and piano opus 33.  

The press has written aptly of his music: "With joy he seeks sweeping tonal adventure, narrating but not letting it get out of hand, ecstatic but never without control." 



Gerald Shapiro: Trio for two saxophones and piano
Like Thierry Pécou’s Nanook Trio, my Trio has a twin. When I accepted Nicolas Prost’s invitation to write a piece for Saxiana, I was just starting a trio with the more usual combination of violin, cello and piano – a pretty close match to Saxiana. I finished it up, but kept the idea of the saxophones pretty much always in mind as I wrote for the strings. In truth, I couldn’t get them out of my mind. In the end, I had to drop one movement in the string version that made extensive use of pizzicato when I came to make the saxophone version. On the other hand, the solo tune at the beginning of the last movement was definitely written with the tenor sax in mind, not the cello, and works a lot better that way. On the whole, I tried to write music that would work equally well with either instrumentation. In the few places where I couldn’t do that, I wrote two versions. The trio has been performed both ways now and I can’t say I prefer one over the other.

There was neither program nor image in my mind as I wrote the Trio. It’s what the musicologists used to call “absolute” music (if such a thing can exist) - music for the sensual pleasure of the ear and the mind, unencumbered by any extra-musical baggage. The first movement plays a bit with time, stretching the sense of tempo in particular so that we can hear two pulses at the same time, one slowing and one staying constant. It happens most perceptibly just after the opening section, in the two sax solos. The second movement is just a sweet and tender song. I like the canon in the middle with the two saxophones at the unison tonally, and just off rhythmically – and how the soprano sax sounds at the end, way up at the top of its range. The third movement has the tenor solo mentioned above, and in general is most influenced by the sax sound – and the sax mystique - of smoky jazz clubs and driving music. I hope you enjoy it.



Mark Phillips: Ménage à trois
I find it interesting that the French, who gave us the phrase ménage à trois, also virtually invented the profession and vocabulary of diplomacy — and for centuries, theirs was the primary language of its practice.  In the opening section of my composition, the musicians must negotiate a series of unusual and tricky passages without the benefit of a conductor, of meter signatures, or even (in some cases) of fixed endings.  Performers are called upon to negotiate on the fly such details as when a phrase will end, who will have its “last word,” and when the next phrase will begin.  As in any negotiation, one should expect disagreements as well as interesting (and potentially humorous) “debates” before all is settled.  Though much of this work (like most of my music) sounds decidedly American, perceptive listeners may notice the inclusion of French musical influences, as well.

This composition is a one-movement affair in three sections, with a long transition between first and second that strongly anticipates the second, but can’t seem to let go of the first.  There is no debating when we get to the fast final section, however — and the ending couldn’t be more conclusive.