UNCG Faculty Recital 1.27.25
I started the process of planning this recital the same way I often do: I had a couple of pieces that I knew I wanted to play for the first time. In this case, I was part of the commissioning consortium for Chronicle by Alex Shapiro, so I wanted to plan the recital around that piece. I also knew I wanted to play Luna by Aliyah Danielle. This piece was written for horn, tuba, and electronics, and Aliyah was kind enough to make a trombone/euphonium and tuba version for me. I played that version last summer, but I have yet to perform the original horn and tuba version. And finally, I also knew that I wanted to play Inferno by Jose Flores, because he is a composer whose music I enjoy, but I have yet to play any of his works in recital.
From these three pieces, a theme began to emerge for this recital. This doesn’t always happen for me, since I usually plan my recitals around music that I feel will create contrast for the listener. But in this case, the centerpieces of the recital all contain lyrical, beautiful melodies that are emotional for me in some way. This music is not lyrical all the time, but the melodies are what I connect with most, both as a performer and as a listener.
I decided to embrace this theme and choose some additional music that would fit within it. I started by adding a collaboration with UNCG composition professor and electric bassist Alejandro Rutty. The music we will perform contains very different moods, but all three pieces are tied together by the ethereal sound and harmonies of the bass.
The final piece I decided to add to this program is Lamento by Sofia Gubaidulina. Composed in 1977, it is by far the oldest piece on this recital. Lamento has its own poignant, spiritual melodies, filtered through Gubaidulina’s compositional style. As you will read, Lamento was also a musical inspiration for Flores’ Inferno, so it is a fitting addition to this recital.
My hope is that you will be able to “zone out” while listening to this music. Close your eyes, read the notes about each piece, or view the associated visuals. Let your mind wander.
“Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time” is a quote by Jean-Michel Basquiat
Thank you for spending this time with me and with this music.
Inferno by Jose Flores
"Inferno" for Tuba and Piano portrays fear, one of the six basic elements of the human condition. Influenced by Sofia Gubaidulina's "Lamento" and Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet, this piece features "free" sections, long piano pedal sustains, jarring entrances, irregular gestures, and dissonant harmonies.
Many musical ideas were inspired by Gustave Dore's illustrations for Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" such as the inversion of a melody resembling the punishment of reverse baptism. In the Eighth circle, sinners are turned upside down in holes and baptized by fire instead of water. The Tuba and Piano are very much equal partners, often times reacting to each other. The picture that should be painted is witnessing true horror for the first time, something beyond what we could ever comprehend right now.
—Jose Flores
Limbus
Chaos
Sacrifice
Chronicle by Alex Shapiro
Our lives are ongoing collections of emotions. Some remain close to the surface as years pass, obvious and, for better and sometimes for worse, easy to trace. Other parts of our personal history fade to nearly imperceptible ghosts of memories. Shards of past events arise at unexpected moments; if we squint, their reflection catches the light. If we dare, we look closer.
A piece of music is the same as one's lifetime: as it moves forward, it carries the forensic evidence of its origins. CHRONICLE revisits its initial lyrical statements in unexpected ways. We cannot change our history, but we can alter our perception of it.
—Alex Shapiro
The visuals found in the video below are all photos taken by Alex in and around her home on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington.
Lamento by Sofia Gubaidulina
"The art of music is capable of touching and approaching mysteries and laws existing in the cosmos and in the world.”
—Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubadulina's career path has had its ups and downs. She grew up poor in the rural Tatar region of the Soviet Union, where "it was as if there was no map for a child's development," she said in a 1990 documentary. She explains in that BBC program that she spent a lot of her childhood sitting in a bare yard looking up to the sky to feed her imagination, adding, "I began to live up there."
She was able to study composition in Moscow, where she played some of her unconventional music for the revered composer Dmitri Shostakovich. He encouraged her by suggesting that she continue down her "incorrect path" — in other words, don't compromise. That path led to music awards, but also official blacklisting by the Soviet Composers' Union, which denounced her music as "noisy mud." In 1973, a person believed to be a KGB operative tried to strangle Gubaidulina in the elevator of her apartment building. She scared him off by asking him why he was taking so long to kill her. The composer arrived at a fierce faith in God, something you can hear in the fierceness of her music.
—Tom Huizenga
Lamento was composed in 1977 as a study piece for a music anthology published in Moscow. For years Gubaidulina regarded this composition as just a study, she did not want it performed in concert. Over the next decade, more and more tubists fell in love with the work. As a result she decided to release it for concert performance in 1991. With its many rubato moments, Lamento demands a great deal of musical maturity. Unlike most of her works, this piece does not have an extra-musical dimension and could be considered absolute music.
“For me, music is everything that produces sound. From the original moment when the world was created, everything began to make sounds: the sky, the stars and planets, plants and birds, animals and humans. And all that is music. All human activity, all relationships between people likewise make sounds, as do all outward phenomena and all people's inner psychological conditions. They all make sounds which need converting into music. A sound wants to assume a concrete form, and this form is embodied by all works of art created by Man. Architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, prose – all this makes up the musical wealth of our human history, and all of it is music.”
—Sofia Gubaidulina
Embrace, Meditation, and Monologue by Alejandro Rutty
The most personal and idiosyncratic elements of an artist's style are not necessarily found in their stated aesthetic positions but rather in a set of seemingly minor unconscious preferences. These preferences emerge most effectively out of the composer's own performance rather than by being explained to others via notation and rehearsal, precisely because those preferences exist below the level of awareness.
Embrace, Meditation and Monologue are part of the Why Bass? project, in which (in search of those unconscious preferences) I compose and perform music for extended-range electric bass as solo instrument or in combination with (often) other bass instruments.
Embrace, recorded on the album Why Bass?, uses a melody I composed for a string quartet recorded on the album Less (Your Questions Online) featuring some of the different instruments that electric basses carry within themselves. Instead, in Meditation, recorded for the upcoming EP Why Bass? II, a simple melody and accompaniment integrate just as one. Monologue uses melodies from I Remember It Differently, for horn ensemble, distilled for bass in a "whistle-along-just-the-facts" fashion.
The beauty of this project is that it lets me play these same pieces in combination with other musicians with very little re-arranging. Playing with the remarkable Stephanie Ycaza is so gratifying that surely the audience will enjoy being a part of the experience. In the end, music is not just about sound, but also about people.
—Alejandro Rutty
About the composer / Why Bass?
Luna by Aliyah Danielle
Luna was commissioned by Deanna Swoboda and John Ericson for ‘Identity: A Recording of New Works for tuba with piano, horn, electronic accompaniment, and tuba euphonium quartet.’
About the Performers
Stephanie Ycaza is the Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. She previously held the position of Instructor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of Northern Iowa, and has also served on the music faculties of Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia State University, Longwood University, the University of Richmond, and Shenandoah University. Stephanie is active as a masterclass teacher and as a clinician for middle and high school bands.
Stephanie is a founding member of Calypsus Brass, a brass quintet dedicated to performing new works and providing high-quality recordings for composers. Calypsus is committed to promoting the works of composers from historically marginalized groups, and serves as an Ensemble-in-Residence for Rising Tide Music Press. Stephanie is Principal Tuba of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, and has also performed with the Virginia Symphony, the Williamsburg Symphony, the Capital Wind Symphony, and the Virginia Grand Military band. She has also contributed to recording projects at Spacebomb Records in Richmond, VA. Stephanie’s recent solo performances have focused on music for tuba with electronic accompaniment, music by women composers, and her own transcriptions and arrangements for low brass. She has appeared as a soloist at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference, the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest Regional ITEA Conferences, the Army Band Tuba-Euphonium Workshop, and the International Women's Brass Conference. Stephanie also writes and gives presentations on the topic of mindfulness in the practice and performance of music.
Stephanie holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Shenandoah University, a Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. She studied with Dr. Ross Walter, Toby Hanks, Mike Roylance, Andrew Hitz, and Michael Bunn. Stephanie is a Miraphone tuba artist.
Ināra Zandmane is one of the leading collaborative pianists of North Carolina. She has performed with such artists as Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Augustin Hadelich, Ray Chen, Sergei Antonov, Yura Lee, Martin Storey, Paul Coletti, Ian Clarke, and Branford Marsalis, in addition to regularly performing with Blue Mountain Ensemble and in duos with saxophonist Susan Fancher and violinist Fabián López. In 2008, Ināra teamed up with Latvian violinist Vineta Sareika on a tour leading them to Boston, Cleveland, and Toronto, before culminating in an invitation-only performance at the Kennedy Center arranged by the Latvian Embassy in the United States. In 2012, Ināra stepped in on a short notice to perform with violinist Ray Chen at the Aspen Music Festival, followed by a recital in Lima, Peru. In 2014, she was invited to the International Saxophone Symposium and Competition in Columbus, Georgia to present a recital with Vincent David.
Ms. Zandmane is frequently invited to serve as an official accompanist at national conferences and competitions, among them the North American Saxophone Alliance conference and MTNA National competition since 2005. She is the accompanist in residence for the South Eastern Piano Festival that takes place in Columbia, SC every June. Ināra Zandmane is the staff accompanist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she performs with students and faculty more than fifty different programs per year.
Ināra Zandmane’s solo recordings include the piano works by Maurice Ravel, recorded together with her husband Vincent van Gelder, and the complete piano sonatas by Alexander Scriabin. Ināra Zandmane has collaborated with leading Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, giving Latvian premieres of his piano works The Spring Music and Landscapes of the Burnt-out Earth and recording the latter one on the Conifer Classics label. She also can be heard in various chamber music collaborations on Navona Records and Centaur Records.
Composer and bassist Alejandro Rutty is best-known for his distinctive mix of South American styles, lyrical melodies, meticulous rhythmic detail, and exotic textures. His recent output includes solos, duos, trios and quartets for extended-range electric bass, which he performs by himself or with other bassists.
Rutty’s compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, National Symphony Orchestra of Brazil, Montevideo Philharmonic, Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra and numerous chamber ensembles. Recordings of his music have been released by Navona, Capstone, Albany, Arizona University Recordings, and other labels.
Alejandro Rutty is Professor of Music Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Dr. Abigail Pack, Professor of Horn at UNCG and a native of Roanoke, Virginia, received her training from East Carolina University (BMA), University of Iowa (MM), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (DMA) where she was a Bolz Teaching Fellow. Before assuming her current position at UNCG she was horn faculty at James Madison University from 2001 to 2008. She has also been on faculty at Knox College in Galesburg, Il, Western State College in Gunnison, CO and in the Gunnison Watershed School District. An avid symphony player Dr. Pack has held positions with the Barton Symphony Orchestra, Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Green-Bay Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and currently has a position with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest Chamber Orchestra, the Greensboro Opera, Amici Musicorum (chamber orchestra), and the Opera Roanoke Orchestra. Other orchestral subbing engagements include the Greensboro Symphony, Winston Salem Symphony, and the Charlotte Symphony. Other venues have included performances with the Western Piedmont Wind Symphony, North Carolina Brass Band, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Western Slope Brass Band, and Massanutten Brass Band. Performance and presentation highlights include the National Flute Association (Washington DC with the Montpelier Winds), the International Horn Symposium (University of Cape Town, South Africa, Ithaca, NY, Montreal, Canada), the International Midwest Band and Orchestra Conference (Chicago 2009, 2022), International Double Reed Society (Athens, GA), Western International Band Clinic (2022), the American Band College (2017, 2021, 2024) and The Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts (Washington). She is a founding member of System 5 Brass Quintet and CORalina Horn Quartet and can be heard on the Centaur label.