Carrie Koffman - Carillon Sky

Pink Ink Series: Celebrating Women Composers When I was a student, I studied only one work for my instrument composed by a woman. Until I began thinking about this recording project, the works I had performed that were written by women could still be counted on one hand. I hadn't noticed this when I was a student, but as my career developed, I realized that the lack of music by women mattered to me. The reasons for that scarcity may be complex, but my response was simple. I wanted the music I played to reflect the creativity of people of both genders. So, I began an inquiry into repertoire that both existed and that might exist. Besides discovering and commissioning music for the saxophone, some of the music on this CD was developed from music originally intended for other instruments. I believe the results to be idiomatic for the saxophone, and feel incredibly fortunate to have premiered these versions by Anisimova, Auerbach, McTee and Thomas. The quality of this repertoire is inspiring. The women who created it are inspiring. I have a great deal of gratitude for the women who have written music for my instrument, and for the musicians who have brought it to life with me. My intention has been to raise awareness of what women have contributed, and are contributing in the areas of composition and saxophone performance. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Carrie Koffman teaches on the faculty at The Hartt School at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Prior to this, she held positions as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Penn State University, at the University of New Mexico, and taught at Boston University. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and in Thailand, China and Argentina. Koffman holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's degree from the University of North Texas. Koffman is also a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher and teaches Yoga for Performers. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ About this Music: GLINT Roshanne Etezady's music has been described in Fanfare magazine as "fresh, effusive, and immediately likeable," and she has been hailed by the Detroit Free Press as "a promising and confident composer." Her works have been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, eighth blackbird, Music at the Anthology, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet. Etezady's music has earned recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Korean Society of 21st Century Music, the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP. Etezady writes, "When I think of the word 'glint,' I think of something small, hard, and shiny, like broken glass on asphalt, or a diamond catching sunlight. It seemed like the perfect title for this piece, which is a fiendishly difficult showpiece for clarinet and alto saxophone. Both players are called upon to play virtuosic passages within and well above the 'normal' registers of their instruments, and intertwine timbres so that at times, individual voices are indistinguishable. Glint was commissioned by Robert Spring and Timothy McAllister." CARILLON SKY Augusta Read Thomas's impressive body of works embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry. Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her profession. Later, as an influential teacher at Eastman, Northwestern and Tanglewood, chairperson of the American Music Center, and the Chicago Symphony's longest-serving resident composer, she has become one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music. Thomas writes, "The title Carillon Sky refers to a fantasized image that stimulated me to compose this music - that of a sky full of very soft tinkling and flickering bells, as well as very clamorous pealing, ringing, resonant bells, through which one floats. As if a cathedral's bell tower becomes a metaphor for nature's ever changing landscape and the soloist is a distinctive bird soaring, interacting, circling and swirling in the resonance. The idea was to try to compose a mini concert, but one that is in fact a 'whole piece'...This is like a miniature etching. The solo part is marked with this performance indication: 'Passionate and rubato; like a jazz improvisation. Accentuate the variety of characters.' Nine bars before the end of the work, there is an option for the soloist to compose and play a short (30 second) cadenza in the style and language of the composition...Great care was given to the selection of pitches and to the creation of the harmonic fields in this work...While the music was very carefully made, and is highly nuanced, and is a 'serious' piece of music, it should sound free, spontaneous, resonant, jazzy, playful and alive." TIMEPIECE Hailed by critics as a composer whose music reflects a 'charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America,' Cindy McTee "brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice." McTee's awards include: the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award; a Music Alive Award from Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras; two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Fulbright Fellowship; and a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she retired from the University of North Texas as Regents Professor Emeritus. McTee writes, "Much of my recent thinking about music is informed by the writings of Carl G. Jung who, in the words of Anthony Storr, 'felt that the whole energy of mental functioning' sprang from the tension between the oppositions of conscious and unconscious, of thought and feeling, of mind and body, of objectivity and subjectivity. So too have the integration and reconciliation of opposing elements become important aspects of my work. The frequent use of circular patterns, or ostinatos, offers both the possibility of suspended time and the opportunity for continuous forward movement. Carefully controlled pitch systems and thematic manipulations provide a measure of objectivity and reason, while kinetic rhythmic structures inspire bodily motion. Discipline yields to improvisation, and perhaps most importantly, humor takes it's place comfortably along side the grave and earnest." With McTee's permission, Kathryn Swanson-Ellis recast the original orchestral version of Timepiece into a score for electronics and solo saxophone. Swanson-Ellis is a member of the new music ensemble the Hartford Sound Alliance, and a faculty member at The Hartt School and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. She has a strong background in music for theater and film having worked in both media as a composer, conductor, orchestrator, programmer, and technical assistant. "SONG AND DANCE" Shulamit Ran, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in composition, has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including first prize in the Kennedy Center-Friedheim Awards competition for orchestral music, and fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., and the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress. She served as Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and since 1973 has taught at the University of Chicago, where she is currently the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor. "Song and Dance" began it's life as a nascent melody in the late eighties, as a three note motivic cell used in Ran's works East Wind, String Quartet No. 2, and Mirage. She writes, "Almost twenty years later, the vocal fragment finally evolved into the 'song' of this work, played here by the soprano saxophone. But it seems that the song, all these years, had been waiting for it's counterpart, a dance. Singing and dancing, two of humankind'