​LINEAGE & HERITAGE II
​Who are the role models of Classical music? We can all rattle off Mozart and Beethoven. Some folks even talk about learning music through the Bs (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms…). But where is the heritage of composers of color and female composers? You don’t come across Chevalier de Saint-Georges or Florence Price in any survey course on music history, but these men and women DID exist, and their works deserve to be heard. Continuing our series on the lineage and heritage of composers of color and female composers, UPNYC will present referential works by living composers Jennifer Jolley and Evan Williams, and an early masterpiece by late 19th/early 20th century composer S. Coleridge Taylor. 

Jolley’s piece Spielzeug Straßenbahn is a reimagined Brandenburg Concerto (after the series of so-named works by J.S. Bach), built on the sound of Chicago’s trains. Williams’s work, too, features harpsichord and leans on inspirations ranging from a Lutheran chorale tune to Nina Simone. We are joined for both works by international soloists Daniel Walden.

Please take a moment to check out our video series COMPOSER SHORTS with Evan Williams, and on S. Coleridge Taylor. Christ & St. Stephen’s Church is an intimate space perfect for this music, but also very likely to sell out--so please purchase your tickets early to avoid missing this once-in-a-lifetime program. 

This concert is underwritten in part by Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs.​

FEATURING

Daniel Walden, ​​harpsichord
Jennifer Jolley, composer
Evan Williams, ​composer

Lineage & Heritage II

6 October 2017 | 8 PM
Christ and St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
120 W. 69th Street, New York, NY 10023
​
Jennifer Jolley: Spielzeug Straßenbahn (NYC Premiere)
     Hajnal Pivnick, solo violin
     Brandon George, solo flute
     Daniel Walden, harpsichord
S. Coleridge Taylor: Nonet in f minor, Op. 2 
​Evan Williams: Dead White Man Music (UPNYC Commission, World Premiere)
     Daniel Walden, harpsichord


Tickets $20/12 in advance, $25/20 at the door

---

Lineage & Heritage II

Who are the role models of Classical music? We can all rattle off Mozart and Beethoven. Some folks even talk about learning music through the Bs (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms…). But where is the heritage of composers of color and female composers? You don’t come across Chevalier de Saint-Georges or Florence Price in any survey course on music history, but these men and women DID exist, and their works deserve to be heard. Continuing our series on the lineage and heritage of composers of color and female composers, UPNYC will present referential works by living composers Jennifer Jolley and Evan Williams, and an early masterpiece by late 19th/early 20th century composer S. Coleridge Taylor.

Jolley’s piece Spielzeug Straßenbahn is a reimagined Brandenburg Concerto (after the series of so-named works by J.S. Bach), built on the sound of Chicago’s trains. Williams’s work, too, features harpsichord and leans on inspirations ranging from a Lutheran chorale tune to Nina Simone. We are joined for both works by international soloists Daniel Walden.

Please take a moment to check out our video series COMPOSER SHORTS with Evan Williams, and on S. Coleridge Taylor. Christ & St. Stephen’s Church is an intimate space perfect for this music, but also very likely to sell out--so please purchase your tickets early to avoid missing this once-in-a-lifetime program.

This concert is underwritten in part by Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs.

| Tickets |

---

Daniel Walden
​​harpsichord

Praised for his “extreme virtuosity” (Alex Ross, New Yorker) and “effortless elegance” (NewMusicBox), Daniel Walden has been featured in the United States, Europe, and Latin America in recital programs that span the fullest range of the keyboard repertory.  He is committed to experimentation and research aimed at blurring the boundaries between historical and contemporary music, composition and improvisation, and foreign and familiar sounds in compelling new ways.  
Daniel is currently a Leonore Annenberg Fund for the Performing Arts Young Artist Fellow, and has recently released his first CD, featuring Tristan Perich’s Dual Synthesis for harpsichord and electronics.  This album was named “one of the most outstanding recordings of new music in this century” by New York Classical Review, and was selected by the Mahan Esfahani of the New York Times as one of the "Five Harpsichord Works You Need to Know."  Daniel is a founding member of ensemble Oerknal!, a new music collective based in The Netherlands, which has been featured at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw and The Hague’s Korzo Theater, as well as in residencies including Gaudeamus Muzieweek in Utrecht and the Delian Academy for New Music in Mykonos, Greece.  Earlier this year, Daniel’s recording of Chris Mercer’s Octoid with Fonema Consort was released on the Chicago-based label Parlour Tapes+ on their audio/visual record, Fifth Tableau.
As a soloist, Daniel has worked closely with composers including Julio Estrada, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, and Rand Steiger, and has presented premieres of over one hundred works including commissions by Reiko Füting and Lewis Nielson.  He has performed at the Bang on A Can Summer Music Festival, Harvard’s Memorial Hall, and NYC’s The Kitchen as part of Carnegie Hall’s American Mavericks Festival, and is also a member of the new collective initiative “Music in Familiar Spaces” dedicated to performing outside of established venues as a means of increasing both urban and rural accessibility to concerts.  He is currently in the second year of a multi-year project focused on developing the contemporary solo repertory of the harpsichord through investigation of historical techniques of tuning and temperament.  This project involves the creation of a microtonal harpsichord based on sixteenth-century models that will be featured in performances and recordings juxtaposing newly commissioned works with early modern compositions.
A recent graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, Daniel studied piano with Peter Takács and harpsichord with Webb Wiggins after completing private studies with Ann Schein and Sharon Mann.  While at Oberlin, he was Cleveland Orchestra Artist-in-Residence Fellow in 20th and 21st Century Music with Pierre-Laurent Aimard.  His performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra as winner of the annual concerto competition was featured in the Young Artists Showcase on New York’s WQXR, where it was lauded as “brilliant.”  He is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Theory at Harvard University, after receiving an MPhil in Music Studies with distinction at University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and Derek Cornwell Scholar in Instrumental Performance.  He has published on topics ranging from ancient music to Schoenberg’s typewriter, and is completing his dissertation Building A Just Society: Enharmonic Instruments, Transnational Politics, and Musical Discipline in Europe and Asia.
Learn More About Daniel.

---

Evan Williams
​composer

The music of Evan Williams draws from a wide range of influences, both musical and cultural. His work reflects inspirations from the Baroque, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Minimalism, contemporary popular music, and everything in between. Williams’ music has been performed across the country and internationally in Canada, Italy, and Switzerland. His work has been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, the Verb Ballets, and at festivals such as Fresh Inc, N_SEME, SEAMUS, Studio 300, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, and the Midwest Composers Symposium. He has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Lawrence University Symphony Orchestra, the V3NTO Brass Trio, the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Patchwork Duo, and a consortium led by Andy Hall for his baritone saxophone concerto Wild Velvet. He has also received readings by the JACK Quartet, Oasis Saxophone Quartet, and Toledo Symphony Orchestra, among others. His work can be found on recordings by The Namaste Ensemble's "No Borders Quartet" and Levels.
 
Williams is also an aspiring conductor, and has trained at the Bard Conductors Institute and the Band Conducting and Pedagogy Clinic at the University of Michigan. He has conducted concerts with the Lawrence University Symphonic Band, numerous chamber ensembles, at the 2012 New Music Festival at BGSU, with Café MoMus (CCM’s contemporary chamber ensemble), and with members of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
 
He has received awards and recognition from the National Federation of Music Clubs, ASCAP, Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and other honors. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Williams completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition, with a cognate in Orchestral Conducting, at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. There, he studied with Michael Fiday, Mara Helmuth, and Douglas Knehans, and served as a teaching assistant in electronic music. He holds a Master's degree from Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH), and a Bachelor's from the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI). His other primary teachers have been Asha Srinivasan, Joanne Metcalf, Christopher Dietz, Mikel Kuehn, and Marilyn Shrude. He has also received instruction in festivals, masterclasses, and lessons from composers Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, David Maslanka, Libby Larson, Evan Chambers, Stacy Garrop, Dan Visconti, and others. In the Fall of 2017, he begins an appointment as a Lecturer in Music at Lawrence University. He also serves on the faculty of the Walden School’s Young Musicians Program, and previously served as the Composer Fellow at Bennington College.

Learn More About Evan.

Jennifer Jolley
composer

Composer Jennifer Jolley’s diverse catalog includes choral, orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber, and electronic works. She has been commissioned by ensembles and institutions across the United States, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas at Austin, Bowling Green State University, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, The Canales Project, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and the University of Cincinnati, among others. She is Assistant Professor of Music at Ohio Wesleyan University.
 
In recent years, Jennifer has been increasingly drawn toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her 2015 collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, sets to music statements made by the Russian punk-rock band Pussy Riot as they stood trial in Moscow for “hooliganism” and “religious hatred.” Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble has performed the piece widely and will release a recording in Spring 2018. Jennifer’s 2017 piece The Eyes of the World Are Upon You, commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, reflects on the first-ever campus shooting in America, which took place at UT-Austin in 1966.  
 
Jennifer’s blog—on which she has catalogued more than 100 rejection letters from competitions, festivals, and prizes—is widely read and admired by professional musicians. She is particularly passionate about this project as a composition teacher, and enjoys removing the taboo around “failure” for her students. In addition to her professorship at Ohio Wesleyan, she is a member of the composition faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp. 
 
Jennifer deeply values the relationship that is created between composers and the communities with whom they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at Brevard College, University of Toledo, and the Vermont Symphony, and will be in-residence at the Alba Music Festival in Italy in 2018.  
 
Jennifer Jolley has been a finalist for the American Prize (Choral Division) and the Symphony Number One Call for Scores. She holds degrees from the University of Southern California and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where her principal teachers included Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Michael Fiday, Joel Hoffman, and Douglas Knehans.
 
Jennifer’s works are distributed through ADJ*ective New Music.

Learn More About Jennifer

---

---