DESCRIPTION:
Conductors: James Baker, Louis Karchin
Soloists: Liang Wang, oboe and Sharon Harms, soprano
Host: John Schaefer, WNYC
Bruce Adolphe Crossing Broadway (2007)
Eve Beglarian Waiting for Billy Floyd (2010)
Wang Jie ** Oboe Concerto for the Genuine Hearts of Sadness (2013)
Elliott Carter Call (2003)
Keith Fitch* In Memory (2013)
Leon Kirchner Lily, version for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1978) -- reconstructed and edited by David Fetherolf
* World premiere, League-ISCM commission
** World premiere, League-ISCM commission, supported by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The concert opened with Bruce Adolphe's Crossing Broadway, taking the audience through the musical experience of New York, with its "distinctive energy and conflicting rhythmic patterns." From there, with fixed images and tape, Waiting for Billy Floyd was Eve Beglarian's response to a ghost town she found on a trip down the Mississippi River and the short story, At the Landing, by Eudora Welty. Wang Jie's Oboe Concerto for the Genuine Hearts of Sadness was inspired by the reading of Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa's interpretation of sadness: "...if you put your hand through your rib cage...there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness...your experience is raw and tender and so personal."
In honor of the many years of Elliott Carter's support and dedication to the League of Composers/ISCM, the second half of the program began with Call, a three-minute fanfare originally written in 2003 as an introduction to the film Elliott Carter -- A Labyrinth of Time. Written for the League/ISCM and in remembrance of his teacher, Fredrick Fox, Keith Fitch's new work In Memory "is essentially about memory -- musical and personal. Memory reflected through a multicolored, multifaceted sonic landscape. Memory of people -- and relationships -- lost." The program concluded with Leon Kirchner's Lily, version for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble, based on Saul Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King, and which contained Kirchner's own voice on an accompanying electroacoustic tape part.

Video production by SeeSeeMedia 2013