The Mizzou New Music Ensemble will open their 2012-13 season with a concert at 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 15 in Whitmore Recital Hall, 135 Fine Arts Building on the University of Missouri campus. Admission is free for Mizzou students, $5 suggested donation for the general public.
For the season opener, the Ensemble (pictured) will perform five recent pieces by composers associated with the University, along with two parts of Daniel Kellogg’s extended work Divinum Mysterium. Kellogg, an associate professor of music at the University of Colorado, will be one of the guest composers for the 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival.
Penrose Staircase, written in 2012 by Mizzou sophomore percussion major Matthew Stiens, is a soundscape of a mathematically inspired drawing by M.C. Escher.
Source and Refraction was composed in 2004 by Patrick David Clark, who graduated from Mizzou in May, 2012 with a master’s degree in conducting. It’s described as “a thoughtful, soft piece for piano, cello, violin, and guitar, wherein the piano is the source. The other instruments color, or refract the piano’s melody.” For this piece, the Ensemble will be augmented by guest musician Paulo Oliveira on guitar.
Bhairava, a 2012 composition by Justin Alexander Pounds, explores the Eastern sounds of India through a modern lens. Pounds is a senior studying composition at Mizzou.
Dan Cox’s I’m back at my cliff, also written in 2012, is a musical depiction of the Native American tradition of a “vision quest.” Cox graduated from Mizzou in May, 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in music.
pendulum and present was composed by Michael Ward, a senior pursuing a degree in vocal performance at Mizzou. The 2012 work is “a study on time featuring rigid and mechanical rhythmic motives.”
The concert will conclude with the prelude and first movement of Daniel Kellogg’s Divinum Mysterium. Commissioned in 2000 by the chamber ensemble eighth blackbird, the five-movement work is based on the 13th century chant melody “Divinum Mysterium.” With Patrick David Clark conducting, the Ensemble will play different parts of the work at each of their concerts this year in preparation for a full performance during the 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival.
The six-member Mizzou New Music Ensemble is made up of University of Missouri graduate students and recent alumni under the direction of Stefan Freund, a cellist, composer and associate professor. They serve as the repertory group for the Mizzou New Music Initiative, an array of programs intended to position the University of Missouri School of Music as a leading center in the areas of composition and new music.
The Ensemble’s members for the 2012-13 season are Rachel AuBuchon, piano; Stephanie Berg, clarinets; Mary Jamerson, flutes; Katherine Jones, violin; Ian McClaflin, percussion; and Matthew Pierce, cello. As the repertory group for the Initiative, they work with faculty, students and visiting composers, and give public performances on campus and in the community.