Monday, April 13, 2015 at 8 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall
NEW YORK –– The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, led by director Daniel Druckman, presents “The Alchemy of Sound: George Crumb at 85” on Monday, April 13, 2015 at 8 p.m. in Alice Tully Hall. The program features George Crumb’s The River of Life: Songs of Joy and Sorrow (American Songbook I) (2003) and The Winds of Destiny: Songs of Strife, Love, Mystery and Exultation (American Songbook IV) (2004). Guest artists joining the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble are soprano Tiffany Townsend and mezzo-soprano Caitlin Redding, both from Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, and Juilliard pianist Han Chen. Free tickets are available at the Juilliard Box Office or the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. For more information, go to events.juilliard.edu.
Composer George Crumb (b. 1929) is the winner of Grammy and Pulitzer Prizes and continues to compose new scores. He retired in 1997 from his teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania after more than 30 years of service. His music is published by C.F. Peters, and an ongoing series of “Complete Crumb” recordings, supervised by the composer, is being issued on Bridge Records. Mr. Crumb makes his home in Pennsylvania.
Juilliard Percussion Ensemble members are: Ethan Ahmad, Jake Darnell, Joe Desotelle, Andrew Funcheon, Antonio Guarino, Taylor Hampton, Sae Hashimoto, Brandon Ilaw, Hanna Kim, Gregory LaRosa, Christian Lundqvist, Joshua Vonderheide, and David Yoon.
About the Program
In 2001, Ann Crumb asked her father to compose new settings of Appalachian folk songs that would be appropriate for concert performance. George Crumb ended up writing sevenAmerican Songbooks. They were dedicated: “To my wife Elizabeth who taught me many beautiful old songs and to my daughter Ann who inspired the American Songbook cycles.”
Each songbook is scored for one or two singers, with amplified piano and percussion quartet, plus conductor. Percussion instruments of all kinds are used in the pieces, and each percussionist must manage at least two dozen different instruments.
About Daniel Druckman
Percussionist Daniel Druckman is active as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and recording artist, concertizing throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composer’s Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic’s Horizons concerts, the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music series, and in recital in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo. He has been a member of the New York Philharmonic since 1991, where he serves as associate principal percussion, and has made numerous guest appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the American Brass Quintet, the Group for Contemporary Music, Orpheus, and Steve Reich and Musicians. Mr. Druckman has also participated in chamber music festivals at Santa Fe, Ravinia, Saratoga, Caramoor, Bridgehampton, Tanglewood and Aspen.
An integral part of New York’s new music community, both as soloist and as a member of the New York New Music Ensemble and Speculum Musicae, Mr. Druckman has premiered works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Oliver Knussen, Poul Ruders, Joseph Schwantner, Ralph Shapey and Charles Wuorinen, among many others. Recent appearances include collaborations with Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with Leif Ove Andsnes at Zankel Hall, with Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie Hall, and solo concerts at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre and Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Solo recordings include Elliott Carter’s Eight Pieces for Four Timpani on Bridge records, David Felder’s In Between on EMF, Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the Nature of Water on Naxos, and Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto on New World. Mr. Druckman is a faculty member of The Juilliard School, where he serves as chair of the percussion department and director of the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble.
Daniel Druckman was born and raised in New York City. The son of composer Jacob Druckman, he had invaluable exposure to music and musicians at an early age. He attended The Juilliard School where he was awarded the Morris A. Goldenberg Memorial Scholarship and the Saul Goodman Scholarship, receiving both the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music in 1980. Additional studies were undertaken at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he was awarded the Henry Cabot Award for outstanding instrumentalist.
Tiffany Townsend, a soprano from Jackson, Mississippi is a second-year Master of Music degree student at Juilliard, studying with Marlena Malas. She has participated in master classes with Susannah Phillips, Clifton Ware, Kevin Langan, and James Conlon. Ms. Townsend received her Bachelor of Arts from Millsaps College where she studied with James C. Martin. She has performed Lucy Lockit in Benjamin Britten’s version of The Beggar’s Opera and scenes from Mozart’s Così fan tutte as Fiordiligi with the Millsaps Lyric Performance Practicum. At Juilliard, she has performed scenes from L’amico Fritz by Mascagni, performed in aria concerts, and covered the role of Dorothée in Cendrillon by Massenet.
Maryland native Caitlin Redding, mezzo soprano, is a Master of Music candidate at Juilliard, studying with Edith Bers. Ms. Redding holds dual undergraduate degrees in music and Italian literature from the University of Maryland, where she studied with Delores Ziegler and Dominic Cossa. Recent roles include Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), Dryad/Composer cover (Ariadne auf Naxos), Cis Woodger (Albert Herring), and Dritter Knabe (Die Zauberflöte). She has performed as a concert and oratorio soloist, both in the United States and abroad, with conductors Helmuth Rilling, Matthew Halls, and Dr. Kenneth Slowik. This summer she will join the Crested Butte Opera Studio as Sorceress/Second Woman in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
About Han Chen
Pianist Han Chen has appeared with world-renowned orchestras, including the China Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (led by Vladimir Ashkenazy), Macao Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, and Xiamen National Orchestra. Mr. Chen has also won numerous prizes in prestigious competitions. As an advocate of modern music, Mr. Chen actively performs both 20th-century classics and works by emerging composers. For the past two seasons, Mr. Chen has been a member of Juilliard’s AXIOM, performing pieces by John Adams, Pierre Boulez, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. He has also collaborated with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, performing Philip Glass’s solo piano pieces with the company on its tour to Aspen, Dallas, and Kansas City. A graduate of the middle school of Shanghai Conservatory under Christopher Zhong and Kuan-wen Wang, Mr. Chen is in his last year of the accelerated B.M./M.M. program at Juilliard where he studies with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky. He also studies composition with Philip Lasser.
About the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble
The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble was founded in the late 1960s by Saul Goodman. It has also been led by Roland Kohloff, and by its current music director, Daniel Druckman. In addition to its yearly series at Alice Tully Hall and the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, the ensemble has concertized throughout the New York area. Recent guest appearances include the Danish Wave festival at Merkin Hall, the New Works/October series at Miller Theatre, Cutting Edge series at Greenwich House and several appearances at Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives series, curated by Maurizio Pollini and Leif Ove Andsnes. In 2001, it collaborated with Juilliard’s Music Technology Center (now the Center for Innovation in the Arts) to present an evening of interactive music, and is often featured on the school’s annual FOCUS festival. In the fall of 2005, the ensemble collaborated with Juilliard’s Dance Division in the world premiere of an evening-length work choreographed by Elliot Feld, set to Steve Reich’s Drumming, which inaugurated Juilliard’s centennial year celebration. In 2007, they joined forces with the Percussion Ensemble of Manhattan School of Music to present several performances of Charles Wuorinen’s seminal Percussion Symphony.
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