Faculty Composers
Concert
Music by Mark Engebretson, Alejandro Rutty
Greg Carroll, George Kiorpes, Anthony Taylor and Neeraj Mehta
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
7:30 pm
Recital Hall Music Building
Program
Super Glue (2013) Mark Engebretson
15 min
Red Clay Saxophone Quartet
Susan Fancher – soprano saxophone, Robert Faub – alto saxophone;
Steve Stusek – tenor saxophone, Mark Engebretson – baritone saxophone
Nicholas Rich – electric guitar, Alejandro Rutty – electric bass
Neeraj Mehta – drums
Music For Examining and Buying Merchandise (2011) Alejandro Rutty
8 min
Steve Stusek – soprano saxophone
Corey Denham – vibraphone
Nicholas Rich – electric guitar
Berceuse and Scherzo (2014) Greg Carroll
7 min
Music By Two
Nancy Davis, piano
Sharon Johnson, piano
Four Variations on a Popular Song For two pianos four hands George Kiorpes
6 min
Var I. Andante espressivo
Var II. Andante quasi Allegretto
Var III. Andantino, poco rubato
Var IV. Allegro
Music By Two
Nancy Davis, piano
Sharon Johnson, piano
Tears on a Superhydrophobic Pillow (2014) Anthony Taylor-Neeraj Mehta
8 min
Anthony Taylor – clarinet
Neeraj Mehta – percussion
More Music For Examining and Buying Merchandise (2012) Alejandro Rutty
7 min
Steve Stusek – alto saxophone
Alejandro Rutty – electronics
d-forme (2013) Mark Engebretson
6 min
Mark Engebretson – saxophone, electronics
Program Notes
Mark Engebretson
Super Glue
One of the things I wanted to do with this piece was create a lot of different formats in
which it could be performed: saxophone quartet alone, quartet with playback tracks,
quartet with a mix and match of live rhythm section and so on. Tonight is the first
stab doing the piece with rhythm section. Coming up: a version with piano to be
performed soon by the dedicatee ensemble, Oasis.
OK, so they are just songs, tunes. Really. That may well stick, ferociously, in your ear.
A little bubble-gum electronic dance music, a soulful ballad and an edgy prog rock
piece. The saxophone, instrument par excellence of so many popular styles, finds its
"serious" chamber music world invaded by the entertaining side of things. What I
wanted to do was to create a piece that would be fun for the players to play, fun for
people to hear. The titles are in league with the collection of pieces I've written that
are inspired by the amazing things we find around ourselves (such as the Energy
Drink series, Sharpie, Power Bar and so forth). I guess this relates to the music, since
what we hear around us all day, every day, is a myriad of popular styles, old and
new, playing things that tend to stick in your ear.
I considered adding parenthetical subtitles for the movements (Krazy Glue: hard to
beat; Glue Gun: every step; Liquid Nails: driving thru), but my friend Brian talked me
out of it. These subtitles would have been clues for those who have nothing better to
do than to chase down obscure references and influences. And they relate to the
music, of course, as well.
Super Glue was written for the Oasis Saxophone Quartet, who will present the
premiere performance this evening. The piece takes the form of a three-movement
suite, which may be played as a saxophone quartet with playback tracks, rhythm
section, or combination of the two. It may also be performed simply as a saxophone
quartet without accompaniment.
Alejandro Rutty
Music For Examining and Buying Merchandise
We usually encounter music for examining and buying merchandise (shopping)
played in the background in environments encouraging spending.
As such, the function of the music is mood regulation and behavior control.
Tonight's piece, which has as its only purpose to be listened to as part of an aesthetic
experience, paraphrases -from a certain distance- some of the features of music
designed for mood-control.
Greg Carroll
Berceuse and Scherzo
Nancy Davis and Sharon Johnson, gifted pianists who graduated from UNCG and
who have made a name for themselves in the music world as duo pianists, asked me
to write a piece for the two of them. This evening’s work was written for and
dedicated to them.
This composition juxtaposes contrasting movements. The first movement, Berceuse,
is a “rocking lullaby” relying freely upon a hexatonic (six-note) scale of alternating
minor 3rds and semitones (F, Ab, A, C, Db, E), giving the music an ambiguous major-minor
tonality.
This movement moves without pause into the Scherzo—a frenetic perpetual-motion
movement that employs irregular 14/16 and 10/16 meters and a contrasting
(octatonic) scale. Repeated fixed-pitch patterns (exchanged between the pianos)
suggest a bit of techno-pop, and the chordal-melodic materials offer a jazzy flavor.
Anthony Taylor and Neeraj Mehta
Tears on a Superhydrophobic Pillow
Inspired by the text fragment to a lost untitled 80s power ballad, "Your words are like
daggers, your silence like knives. Tears on my superhydrophobic pillow." Composed
by the legendary band Spinal Tap, the rest of the music was lost when the group's
third drummer spontaneously combusted on stage in 1981. The score, written on
three napkins, burned, except for this fragment of text. It chronicles the growing
conflict between the group's lead singer David St. Hubbins and guitarist Nigel Tufnel.
In the piece, occasionally the players listen to each other, more often don't listen to
each other, and debate about which, C minor or C-sharp minor, is the saddest of all
keys.
Alejandro Rutty
More Music for Examining and Buying Merchandise, for solo instruments and
electronics is a continuation of Music for Examining and Buying Merchandise, for alto
saxophone, piano and vibraphone, and includes samples from a live recording as
performed by Steve Stusek, Kristopher Keeton and Inara Zandmane).
The sampled voice is by Fabián López.
Mark Engebretson
d_forme
D is the note I’m playing. On the piano, it would be an f, but f may be another story
altogether. Form is the shape of a thing. What is the (musical) shape of d? To deform
something is to twist, bend, crush, mangle or otherwise re-shape it. That sounds kind
of violent, but perhaps this could be done in a gentle, loving kind of way. D is for
dimensionality. It is also my favorite note on the baritone saxophone. Dee was the
name of my nephew’s security blanket. If we’re going to think about dimensionality,
we might think about space: pitch space, vertical space, personal space, space in a
room, space the final frontier. Or rotating objects, viewed from every possible
direction. Forme is written here in french, possibly because of the f connection,
possibly because the french (in my experience) have a particular interest in form
(forme), possibly because I lived in france, speak french, and this language resonates
with me. For what it’s worth, the resonance is one of the things I love most about d
on my instrument. I’ve tried my best to deform my d, perhaps to extend it upward in
pitch space (there’s the shape of d again) and outward in physical space (you may
have to set it on its side for this one). Mostly, I want to listen to it, to discover what
hidden dimensions exist inside and around it, expand it, resonate with it, love it.
