Artist description A group of composers who present concerts of their music three times a year. THE METAL CONCERT NACUSA COMPOSERS and THE MENLO BRASS QUINTET Saturday, October 27, 2001, 8pm The Valley Presbyterian Church, 945 Portola Road, Portola Valley, CA Program Herb Gellis MOJAVE for Brass Quintet I. Intrada IV. Allegretto Gioioso "Condor Soaring" Christopher Ballard BRASS QUINTET III. Presto I'lana S. Cotton SPEED TRAP BLUES 1. Fast curves 2. Slow crusin' 3. Roadrunner Warner Jepson EIGHT TRIFLES for Brass Quintet Gov't Guys Not Much Doin' Truckle Boogie John Beeman ESCAPADE for Brass Quintet intermission Nancy Bloomer Deussen TRIBUTE TO THE ANCIENTS Rosemary Barrett Byers IT'S ABOUT TIME! 1. Downtime 2. Time and Again 3. Stop Time 4. Maytime Time's Up! (coda) Brian Holmes TALES OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION featuring John May, baritone vocalist, narrator, and gong slides by Brian Holmes Sondra Clark TWO FOR FIVE for Brass Quintet 1. Allegretto 2. 3+3+4 You are invited to stay after the concert and speak with the composers. The National Association of Composers USA (NACUSA) is a non-profit organization whose goal is to foster the composition and performance of new music. Founded in 1932 and now with branches in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, NACUSA continues to be an active and most vital outlet for composers throughout the country. Inquires regarding membership may be addressed to Michael Kimbell, (650) 359-7693, michael@kimbellmusic.com. General inquires may be directed to Nancy Bloomer Deussen, (650) 858-0172. NACUSA San Francisco is a non-profit organization in need of support. Tax-deductible contributions may be sent to: THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COMPOSERS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter 3065 Greer Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 Acknowledgements The Members of NACUSA San Francisco would like to recognize with heartfelt thanks the following contributors to the 1999-2000 concert season: Dr. Mark Alburger Ms. Annette Axtmann Ms. Mary A. Beeman Ms. Rosemary Barrett Byers Ms. Ilse Calabi Ms. Patti Noel Deuter Ms. Aileen Lee Mr. Mano Murthy NEW MUSIC Publications and Recordings Ms. Jeana Ogren Mr. Robert and Ms. Carla Schenk Mr. and Mrs. Michael Scofield Music Library, University of California at Berkeley Ms. Emily I. Ward This concert is presented by the National Association of Composers, USA, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Committee for tonight's concert: Concert Production: Owen Lee Publicity: John Beeman, Carolyn Hawley, Marilyn Hudson Program: Mark Alburger, NEW MUSIC Publications Programming: John Beeman, Nancy Bloomer Deussen, Diana Tucker CHRISTOPHER BALLARD graduated from the University of California, San Diego, in 1990 with a B.A. in Music. He is currently a student of fellow NACUSA composer I'lana Cotton. JOHN BEEMAN studied composition with Peter Fricker and later with William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master's degree. His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table was produced on National Public Radio. Orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, Prometheus Symphony, and Santa Rosa Symphony. Desert Sketches, a chamber work, was released in 1996 on the Classic Sketches CD by the Violeto Trio. The composer's second opera, Law Offices, premiered in San Francisco in 1996 and was performed again in 1998 at the San Mateo County Courthouse through a grant from Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. Mr. Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers' Symposium and the Bard Composer-Conductor Program. Recently, he received an individual artist grant from The Peninsula Community Foundation for his opera, The Answering Machine (libretto by Carla Brooke) which had its premiere on May 13, 2000 at The Palo Alto Art Center. His Concerto For Electric Guitar And Orchestra was premiered by the Peninsula Symphony on Jan. 19, 2001 with Paul Dresher on electric guitar. ESCAPADE is defined by the Standard College Dictionary as "a brief piece of reckless behavior or prankish disregard of convention; fling; spree." It was with this spirit of escaping from constraint that the idea for the piece was developed. Escapade is in three sections. The first is fast with a soaring melody set against a rock-like accompaniment. Harmonies are mostly open using fourths, fifths, sevenths and ninths. This fast theme slips into a slow, bluesy section which begins with muted trombone followed by soli in the trumpets. The texture then thickens and the tempo accelerates as the first theme returns followed by a flashy coda to end the quintet. The composer intends to write two more movements to complete the quintet. ROSEMARY BARRETT BYERS has enjoyed a varied career as pianist, conductor, theatrical director, teacher, composer, and arranger. Since completing a master's degree in piano performance at Indiana University, she has taught piano, music history, and musical theater at various colleges and universities in the Southeast and Midwest, conducted much of the major choral-orchestral literature, and has directed numerous "Broadway" musicals and musical revues from dinner theater to the concert stage. Ms. Byers has published piano teaching compositions with Myklas Music Press, Lee Roberts, Hal Leonard, and Carl Fischer. Her Rhapsody for Piano won first place in the advanced division of the 2000 MTAC Composers Today State Contest, and her Animal Crackers, a suite of poems and pieces for elementary piano students, won first place in the Teaching Piece division. Four original children's musicals have been produced by theater companies and show choirs in Tennessee and Kentucky. SONDRA CLARK is a graduate of the Juilliard School (B.M.), San Jose State U (M.A.), and Stanford University (Ph.D.) A long-time Bay area music critic and member of the music faculty at San Jose State University, Dr. Clark has won over forty awards for her compositions since she began composing ten years ago. Her Three Scenes from New Orleans was published in 1998 by Kjos Music and six more of her works will be published in 2002 by Hal Leonard Corp. Dr. Clark's Requiem for Lost Children, written for the San Jose Symphonic Choir and Orchestra and the Cantabile Children's Chorus, has been performed three times to packed houses and critical acclaim since its premiere in 1996. Clark has been the only composer chosen to be featured by the award-winning Grand Piano Show in an hour-long program, The Wonderful Piano Music of Sondra Clark, which is being aired on cable television in 450 cities throughout the country. The first movement of TWO FOR FIVE was written especially for the Menlo Brass Quintet and seeks to celebrate each of the instruments with solos in a gentle, Poulenc-type humor. The second movement is also humorous, but in a more joyous mood. This music, written in a meter of 3 + 3 + 4, was a winner in the 1999 California Composers Today contest and has seen performances in various incarnations: as a mixed ensemble, as a duet for piano, as a harpsichord solo (available on CD by Elaine Funaro) and as a choral work! I'LANA COTTON is a composer, improviser and pianist who has written extensively for acoustic chamber ensembles, choral groups and electronic instruments. Her work has been performed throughout the US and has won several awards, most recently from the California-based Peninsula Community Foundation, the Ernest Bloch Festival Composers' Symposium in Newport, Oregon, Britten-on-the-Bay and the Chicago Chamber Music Collective. She is an active member of the National Association of Composers/USA (NACUSA), the American Composers Forum (ACF), and the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM). She has also collaborated with other musicians and artists in visual and theatrical media, and has created several commissions for choreographers and poets. She holds an M.A. in composition from the University of California at Los Angeles, with undergraduate music study at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Other studies include north Indian classical vocal technique with Faquir Pran Nath, and Javanese gamelan with Max Harrell. She is currently on the music faculty of the College of San Mateo, and is the author of Music of the Moment: A Graded Approach to the Art of Keyboard Improvisation, available from New Music Publications. NANCY BLOOMER DEUSSEN is well known throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as a composer, performer, arts organizer and music educator. She is a leader in the growing movement for more melodic, tonally-oriented contemporary music, and is co-founder of the SF Bay Chapter of the National Association of Composers, USA. Her works have been performed throughout the US and Canada and she has received numerous commissions both locally and nationally from such performers and ensembles as The Oakland Chamber Orchestra, The Walnut Street Chamber Ensemble, The Baton Rouge Concert Band, The Bresquan Trio, The Santa Clara Chorale, The Women's Caucus in the Arts, OPUS 90 Chamber Ensemble, clarinetist Richard Nunemaker, the Tanana High School Band, the Gabrieli Brass, Soundmoves, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, flutist Angela Koregelos, the Semper Virens environmental group, The Sandusky Music Festival, Jim and Pat Watt, and Mu Phi Epsilon. Some recent performances of her works for the 1999-2000 season include Woodwind Quintet by the Stanford Woodwind Quintet and The World is a Butterfly's Wing (song cycle) at the Derriere Guard Festival in San Francisco. HERB GELLIS MOJAVE is a four-movement tone poem for brass quintet, thematically based on several impressions of scenes and events in a desert canyon in the Mojave Desert area. This is a tonal work using distinctive melodies and rhythms to paint the sound impressions, and is approximately 10 minutes long. The short first movement Intrada depicts the entrance to the desert canyon as might be seen from the valley floor. Somewhat imposing and majestic, with a tendency towards fanfare, the canyon walls vault ever upward. The second movement Desert Canyon is slow and yearning with angular melody. It finds us within the canyon looking out on distant vistas, craggy wonders, lonely, vast, and ultimately of stark beauty. Before the sun gets too high and the temperature rises, we take a light-hearted early morning march. This short third movement Scherzo entitled Morning March, is in 12/8, and its main theme is taken from a phrase first encountered in the Intrada. The previous three movements are all grounded in the key of F, or its Jekyll and Hyde partner D minor, borrowing freely from F minor. The fourth movement Allegretto Gioioso entitled Condor Soaring takes us from the third movement ending in D minor, to take wing into the key of D major. Here we have spotted a lone Condor soaring above. This movement is a celebration of free spirit and joy. During the past year, BRIAN HOLMES's choral pieces have won four contests, while another received an honorable mention. One of these, Jolly Jankin, was heard at last fall's NACUSA concert. William Thorpe has published three choral pieces, and Thompson Edition has published a vocal piece for tenor, violin, horn, and piano. Thorpe has two additional chorus pieces in press, including Let Evening Come, also heard in last fall's concert. Roger Dean has two more in press, and Thompson Edition will publish Three Hunting Songs for soprano and horn quartet. In addition, Holmes received the ASCAP Standard Award. Holmes is composer in residence of the Cantabile Children's chorus, which has commissioned and premiered two pieces during the last year. TALES OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION is very loosely based on events that occurred in China during the 1960's and 70's. The illustrations are by Justin Novak, a New York City artist. The illustrations and poem have been published in TUBA Journal, and in San Jose Studies. The poem has had three or four additional publications. Tales premiered in 1980, and it was recorded in 1985 by the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Quintet on Crystal Records. Tales also exists a version for narrator and tuba duo, and another for narrator, solo tuba, and concert Band. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, WARNER JEPSON has been composing in San Francisco for theatre (A.C.T.), film (The Bed), dance (San Francisco Ballet's Totentanz], museum and gallery openings (music made on the then-new Buchla synthesizer), video (composer-in- residence at KQED's National Center for Experiments in TV, 5 programs for PBS, and an NEA Grant). His first works as well as more recent ones were musicals (San Francisco's Burning ran six months; The Money Tree played in Chicago in '97).

Music Style Classical

Artist History NACUSA, which was founded in 1933, is one of the oldest organizations devoted to the promotion and performance of music by Americans. Many of the most distinguished composers of the 20th Century have been NACUSA members. NACUSA sponsors several concerts each year which feature music by its 600 members. NACUSA, which has chapters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baton Rouge, Philadelphia, and Virginia, is the successor to the National Association of Composers and Conductors.

Group Members Kathy Nitz, soprano Kristina Robertson-Woo, soprano Frank Farris, tenor Diana Tucker, flute, sax Dahna Rudin, cello Suzanne Warren, piano Jeana Ogren, piano Carolyn Hawley, piano

Location Palo Alto, CA - USA

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