The Mizzou New Music Ensemble (pictured) will present the second concert of their 2012-13 season at 7:30 p.m., Monday, December 3 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.
The program will include two pieces written by Mizzou students; a performance incorporating several works by famed composer John Cage; and the second installment in the Ensemble’s ongoing examination of Daniel Kellogg’s extended work Divinum Mysterium.
Synergetic Waveforms, written this year by University of Missouri freshman composition student Shaun Gladney, explores the collaborative nature of music performance and features sections written for body percussion.
Robert Strobel’s Three Recollections, also written in 2012, is a multi-movement work, inspired by Plato’s Phaed, which explores philosophies about life after death. Strobel currently is pursuing an M.M. in composition at Mizzou.
The Cage performance is based on Seven, which was composed in 1988 as one of the “Numbers” pieces and has a score that provides performers with notes and a range of times in which to perform them. This version of Seven also will incorporate various 60-second texts written by Cage – known collectively and colloquially as the “indeterminacy stories” – and selections from Song Books, a series of songs and theatrical happenings first conceived in 1970.
The prelude and second movement of Daniel Kellogg’s Divinum Mysterium will complete the program. Commissioned in 2000 by the chamber ensemble eighth blackbird, the five-movement work is based on the 13th century chant melody “Divinum Mysterium.” The second movement, The Spirit of God Moved Upon the Face of the Waters, features the alto flute in a mysterious, primal style of composition.
With Patrick David Clark directing, the Ensemble is playing 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. Kellogg, an associate professor of music at the University of Colorado, will be one of the guest composers for the Festival.
The 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. The Ensemble’s members for the 2012-13 season are Rachel AuBuchon, piano; Stephanie Berg, clarinets; Mary Jamerson, flute; Katherine Jones, violin; Ian McClaflin, percussion; and Matthew Pierce, cello.
For this concert, the Ensemble will augmented for Seven by cellist Grant Bradshaw. In addition, the performance of the Cage selections will include musicians from MU’s Creative Improvisation Ensemble, including faculty members Neil Minturn and Arthur White and students Alexandra Signor, Nathan Smith, Sam Copeland, and David Witter, who also will conduct the CIE members.