The UNCG School of Music has been recognized for years as one of the elite
music institutions in the United States. Fully accredited by the National
Association of Schools of Music since 1938, the School offers the only
comprehensive music program from undergraduate through doctoral study in
both performance and music education in North Carolina. From a total
population of approximately 12,700 university students, the UNCG School of
Music serves over 575 music majors with a full-time faculty and staff of sixty.
As such, the UNCG School of Music ranks among the largest Schools of Music
in the South.
The UNCG School of Music now occupies a new 26 million dollar music
building which is among the finest music facilities in the nation. In fact, the
new music building is the largest academic building on the UNCG Campus.
A large music library with state-of-the-art playback, study and research facilities
houses all music reference materials. Greatly expanded classroom, studio,
practice room, and rehearsal hall spaces are key components of the new
structure. Two new recital halls, a large computer lab, a psychoacoustics lab,
electronic music labs, and recording studio space are additional features of the
new facility. In addition, an enclosed multi-level parking deck adjoins the new
music building to serve students, faculty and concert patrons.
Living in the artistically thriving Greensboro—Winston-Salem—High Point
“Triad” area, students enjoy regular opportunities to attend and perform in
concerts sponsored by such organizations as the Greensboro Symphony
Orchestra, the Greensboro Opera Company, and the Eastern Music Festival.
In addition, UNCG students interact first-hand with some of the world’s major
artists who frequently schedule informal discussions, open rehearsals, and
master classes at UNCG.
Costs of attending public universities in North Carolina, both for in-state and
out-of-state students, represent a truly exceptional value in higher education.
For further information regarding music as a major or minor field of study,
please write:
Dr. John J. Deal, Dean
UNCG School of Music
P.O. Box 26167
Greensboro, North Carolina 27402-6167
(336) 334-5789
On the Web: www.uncg.edu/mus/
Guest Artist Series
presents
Calefax Reed Quintet
Wednesday, November 7, 2001
5:30 pm
Organ Recital Hall, School of Music
Coming Wind Events
*Artist/Faculty Chamber Series:
“APPALACHIA!”
Thursday, November 8
7:30 pm · Recital Hall
Elaine Peterson, bassoon
Friday, November 16
5:30 pm · Organ Recital Hall
*Jazz Ensemble with Dick Oatts
Sunday, November 18
1:30 pm · Recital Hall
*Eastwind Trio
Monday, November 19
7:30 pm · Organ Recital Hall
*Fee charged. Please contact the University Box Office at
(336) 334-4849 or visit our campus locations at either Aycock Auditorium or the
School of Music. The box office will be open one hour before each event.
Ticket prices are $8 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $3 for students.
Program
Children’s Corner Claude Debussy
Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (1862-1918)
Jimbo’s lullaby arr. Raaf Hekkema
Serenade of the doll
The snow is dancing
The little shepherd
Golliwogg’s Cakewalk
Le rappel des oiseaux Jean-Philippe Rameau
from Pièces de clavecin (1724) (1683-1764)
Allemande arr. Raaf Hekkema
Courante
Gigue en Rondeau I & II
Le rappel des oiseaux
La villageoise
Rigaudon I & II
Musette en rondeau
Tambourin
intermission
Se Galaas Johannes Cuvelier
(fl. 1372-1387)
Can vei la lauzeta mover (1998) Ron Ford
(b. 1951)
Le tombeau de Couperin Maurice Ravel
Prélude (1875 - 1937)
Fugue arr. Raaf Hekkema
Forlane
Rigaudon
Minuet
Toccata
* * * * * * * * * *
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should please see one of the ushers in the lobby.
Jelte Althuis (b. 1967) studied the clarinet with Herman Braune and
George Pieterson at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, where
he graduated as a Performing Artist in 1993. In the meantime he studied
bass clarinet with Harry Sparnaay and graduated with honours as a
Performing Artist. He joined Calefax in 1994. He also works as a
freelance musician in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Radio
Chamber Orchestra. He mainly plays bass clarinet and Basset horn in
Calefax. Jelte drives a 1969 Volvo Amazon.
Oliver Boekhoorn, born in 1970, is the oboist and youngest member of
Calefax. His musical training was at the conservatories of Amsterdam
and The Hague. He is furthermore a member of the Danish group Mad
Cows Sing and the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam and is regularly
employed in the principal ensembles and orchestras of the Netherlands.
Oliver plays a Marigaux oboe but prefers Lorée for oboe d'amore and cor
anglais. In his spare time Oliver paraglides over the Dutch coastal dunes.
Raaf Hekkema (b. 1968) studied the saxophone with Ed Bogaard and
Arno Bornkamp and composition with Tristan Keuris and Ton Lambij.
He has arranged about half the Calefax repertoire. After his graduation
with honours, he received the second prize at the Tromp Competition
1994 and was laureat at the Gaudeamus competition 1996. As a soloist,
he recorded Jeff Hamburg’s Concertino with the Noordhollands
Philharmonisch Orkest for the label Composers Voice and played with
Het Brabants Orkest, ‘Combustion Chamber,’ De Beethoven Academie
(Antwerp) and Orchestre de Chambre de la Gironde (France). His
instrumentary is a hodge-podge.
The Calefax Reed Quintet celebrates its fifteenth anniversary in the
2000/2001 season. Thanks to its unique sound, the ensemble has won a
secure and special place in the music world. Calefax's repertoire spans
more than six centuries of Western music and is comprised of some
twenty compositions especially composed for the ensemble, as well as
more than 100 arrangements made by the players themselves. Calefax is
recognized internationally for the quality of its ensemble playing, and
has appeared widely throughout Europe, both in new music forums and
in renowned early music festivals (Utrecht, Saintes, Regensburg). In
1997 Calefax was awarded one of the most prestigious cultural
distinctions in the Netherlands, the Philip Morris Finest Selection Award.
The German label MDG issues compact discs of Calefax's ever-growing
discography, with consistently enthusiastic reactions from the
international music press. The most recent CD – the fifth in this
collection – entitled 600 Years Calefax appeared in November 2000 to
commemorate Calefax's fifteenth anniversary.
Calefax consists of: Oliver Boekhoorn, oboe; Ivar Berix, clarinet; Raaf
Hekkema, saxophone; Jelte Althuis, bass clarinet; Alban Wesly, bassoon.
Alban Wesly (b. 1967) is the bassoonist, co-founder and one of the
arrangers of Calefax. He is also member of the German ensemble
“MusikFabrik NRW,” and freelances in the principal Dutch ensembles
and orchestras. His musical training was at the conservatories of
Amsterdam and The Hague, where his final exam was honoured with the
Kolfschoten-prize in 1996. Recently, he has been working with
composers such as Gijsbrecht Roy, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio
Kagel, Heinz Holliger and Peter Eötvös. He plays a Heckel bassoon built
in 1996. Alban claims to be the best football player of the ensemble.
Clarinetist Ivar Berix (b. 1967) studied with Bas de Jong and George
Pieterson and graduated as a Performing Artist with honours. Besides
Calefax, he is mainly playing chamber music in various combinations.
Recently he participated in CD recordings of the complete chamber
music of the Dutch composer Leo Smit. He is also freelancing in the
major orchestras of the Netherlands. He plays Herbert Wurlitzer clarinets
built in 1986, but only with a Heinz Viotto N1 mouthpiece, with
Vandoren No. 3 reeds.
In their 15 year experience of arranging and re-composing, the members
of the Calefax reed quintet have found out that (french) keyboard music
is extremely suitable for the ensemble’s colour palette. With the all-reed
instrumentation of oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet and bassoon, a
homogenous sound is guaranteed, where on the other hand the different
voices in polyphonic music can be easily heard and followed.
Claude Debussy
Children’s Corner
(arr. Raaf Hekkema)
Claude Debussy, a composer and lover of walking sticks of natural
wood, rose smelling chocolates and seafood delicacies, “at the age of
fifty took more delight in toys than did his little daughter Chouchou,”
thus the astonished observation of the Italian composer and pianist
Alfredo Casella: when he was with Chouchou, Debussy came out from
behind his “threefold barbed wire fence of rebuffing paradoxes, biting
sarcasm and razor-sharp scorn” and became the happy
“Lepapadechouchou” as he lovingly signed a letter.
Claude-Emma “Chouchou” Debussy was born on 30 October 1905, two
weeks after the premiere of La mer, and named after her father Claude
and her mother Emma Bardac. The poet Gabriele d’Annunzio wrote,
“Her eyes are like those of Pan,” and Igor Stravinsky added dryly, “She
has the same teeth as her father, namely tusks.”
Debussy composed relatively little music during 1906 and 1907. He was
too occupied with his depressions (as he wrote to Durand, his good
friend and publisher: “If I didn’t have Chouchou, I’d shoot my brains
out”) and with his daughter and wife. He resumed his compositional
work in 1908 and wrote a few short piano pieces premièred under the
English title Children’s Corner on 18 December 1908. Debussy, to his
own regret, did not speak a word of English, but even so he was unable
to escape the Anglomania in vogue at the time.
After Debussy has inscribed the title page with the dedication “For my
dear little Chouchou, her father’s apologies, for what follows,” he
assumes an ironic smile and starts to write the extremely stylized set with
Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum: a child, practicing the piano, faces the
terror of Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum. In the second piece, Jimbo’s
lullaby, Chouchou sings a lullaby to Jimbo, her felt elephant. It is
followed by Serenade for the doll. According to Debussy, “The soul of a
doll is more mysterious than even Maeterlinck thinks it is.” The notes
fall “doux et triste” in the snow-white The snow is dancing. Here
Debussy anticipates the Des pas sur la neige (also in D minor) from the
second book of his Douze préludes. After the idyllic flute music of The
little shepherd sitting in Arcadia, a Golliwogg comes strutting into this
musical picture book. The composer’s ironic smile by now has become a
broad grin, and it is with malicious delight that Debussy combines a
citation from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with a jazz dance, the
Cakewalk.
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Le rappel des oiseaux
(arr. Raaf Hekkema)
Rameau composed five series of compositions for the cembalo, of which
Le rappel des oiseaux (1724) is the most brilliant. The composer himself
used several parts of this piece as material for larger orchestral and even
opera works, thus giving Raaf Hekkema excellent examples of possible
adaptions.
Johannes Cuvelier
Se Galaas
Ron Ford
Can vei la lauzeta mover
The American-Dutch composer Ron Ford (b. 1951) has shown his
fascination for medieval music in many of his works. The composition
Can vei la lauzeta mover (When I saw the lark move), written for
Calefax in 1998, was inspired by the eponymous song of Bernart de
Ventador.
In Can vei la lauzeta mover, the clarinet performs the leading role.
Initially, the clarinet is taken by surprise and subdued by the rhythmic,
almost violent pattern played by the other wind instruments, reminding
us of the inimitable rhythms of the Ars Subtilior. As we go along, the
clarinet finds its own ground and seems to calm down the other
instruments. In the second, lyrical part they take a more subservient
attitude and form a transparent harmony as the background for the light-hearted
clarinet solos.
To illustrate Ron Ford’s interest for the rhythmics of the Ars Subtilior,
his work is preceded by Se Galaas of Johannes Cuvelier. Cuvelier was a
poet and composer who lived in Tournai (northern France) at the end of
the 14th century. His music is a prime example of the so-called Ars
Subtilior, one of the most extraordinary periods in the history of
European music. Shortly before the onset of the Renaissance, composers
working at royal and ducal courts in France freely experimented with an
almost apocalyptic rhythmic complexity, which would not be surpassed
until the 20th century.
Maurice Ravel
Le tombeau de Couperin
(arr. Raaf Hekkema)
Maurice Ravel weighed exactly two kilograms too little to serve in the
military. But his sense of duty to his country meant that he could not rest
content with this decision. After much pleading and urging, he finally
became an ambulance driver. The composer who, in Debussy’s words,
had “the best and the finest ears of the century,” was attracted to the
hellish noise and shouts of World War I.
Ravel began Le tombeau de Couperin at the end of 1914, but did not
finish it until 1917, after he had been released from duty as an ambulance
driver (his toes were frozen off). In many of his works Ravel looked back
to the musical past with much fondness and nostalgia. His La valse of
1920, for example, brings back to life the Viennese waltz galas of the
nineteenth century. He also looks back in Le tombeau de Couperin, this
time to the epoch of the French composer François Couperin, and the
eighteenth century. The elegant court music from the era of powdered
wigs, golden buckles, and intimately whispered conversations exerted a
magical attraction on the aesthete Ravel.
The suite form Ravel chose for Le tombeau was that of a collection of
stylized dances, frequent in the eighteenth century. The frolicsome
Prélude and the introvert Fugue (the only fugue in Ravel’s oeuvre) are
followed by an Italian dance, the Forlane, and an old French dance, the
Rigaudon, among other movements. It appears that Ravel intended this
extremely fine and bright music as a contrast to the horror and chaos of
World War I; he dedicated each movement of Le tombeau de Couperin
to one of his friends who had been killed in the war.
The virtuoso concluding piece of the work, the Toccata, is dedicated to
Joseph de Marliane, the husband of the outstanding French pianist
Marguerite Long. She made for the enormous success at the première of
Le tombeau de Couperin on 11 April 1919; the piece had to be repeated
immediately.
Guest Artist Series
presents
Calefax Reed Quintet
Wednesday, November 7, 2001
5:30 pm
Organ Recital Hall, School of Music
Program
Children’s Corner Claude Debussy
Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (1862-1918)
Jimbo’s lullaby arr. Raaf Hekkema
Serenade of the doll
The snow is dancing
The little shepherd
Golliwogg’s Cakewalk
Le rappel des oiseaux Jean-Philippe Rameau
from Pièces de clavecin (1724) (1683-1764)
Allemande arr. Raaf Hekkema
Courante
Gigue en Rondeau I & II
Le rappel des oiseaux
La villageoise
Rigaudon I & II
Musette en rondeau
Tambourin
intermission
Se Galaas Johannes Cuvelier
(fl. 1372-1387)
Can vei la lauzeta mover (1998) Ron Ford
(b. 1951)
Le tombeau de Couperin Maurice Ravel
Prélude (1875 - 1937)
Fugue arr. Raaf Hekkema
Forlane
Rigaudon
Minuet
Toccata
* * * * * * * * * *
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should please see one of the ushers in the lobby.
