Jeffrey HOLMES, Veronika KRAUSAS, Naomi SEKIYA
FOOD: New Music for Guitar Duo
© 2005 holmes, krausas, sekiya
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Avant-garde music for two acoustic guitars
tracks
- 1 Naomi Sekiya - Suite for Two Guitars - Reflection
- 2 Naomi Sekiya - Suite for Two Guitars - Tug of War
- 3 Naomi Sekiya - Suite for Two Guitars - Variations
- 4 Naomi Sekiya - Suite for Two Guitars - Rupture
- 5 Veronika Krausas - 5 intermezzi for 2 guitars - intermezzo no. 1
- 6 Veronika Krausas - 5 intermezzi for 2 guitars - intermezzo no. 2
- 7 Veronika Krausas - 5 intermezzi for 2 guitars - intermezzo no. 3
- 8 Veronika Krausas - 5 intermezzi for 2 guitars - intermezzo no. 4
- 9 Veronika Krausas - 5 intermezzi for 2 guitars - intermezzo no. 5
- 10 Jeffrey Holmes - Five Microtonal Studies - Battuto, Misterioso,
- 11 Jeffrey Holmes - Five Microtonal Studies - Canto Sospeso
- 12 Jeffrey Holmes - Five Microtonal Studies - Apnea
- 13 Jeffrey Holmes - Five Microtonal Studies - Perdere Controllo
- 14 Jeffrey Holmes - Five Microtonal Studies - Tranquillo, Lacrimoso
- 15 Jeffrey Holmes - May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way... part 1
- 16 Jeffrey Holmes - May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way... part 2
- 17 Jeffrey Holmes - May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way... part 3
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COMPOSER BIOS
JEFFREY HOLMES
Jeffrey Holmes's music has been described by the Los Angeles Times as "captivating...the haunting and slightly disorienting sound disrupts and engages the open ear."
Holmes was born in Los Angeles, California. He received his BM degree from the San Francisco Conservatory where he studied composition, performance and improvisation with Dusan Bogdanovic. After private composition studies with Ian Krouse, he earned his MM and DMA degrees (with distinction for achievement in composition) at the University of Southern California, where he studied with Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke and Fredrick Lesemann. His music has been performed in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and at festivals in Prague, Czech. Republic, at "Microfest 2003" in Venice, CA., and at the Composer's Forum of the East in Bennington, Vermont, and has been conducted by Tamar Diesendruck, Eric Forrester and Donald Crockett. Currently, he is lecturing in music theory at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
VERONIKA KRAUSAS
Veronika Krausas's works have been described as possessing an "organic, lyrical sense of storytelling [which is] supported by a rigid formal elegance, [that] give her audiences a sense that nature's frozen objects are springing to life." (Globe & Mail, Canada) She was born in Australia and raised in Canada. She has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her works have been performed in Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany (at the Darmstadt New Music Festival), the Netherlands and Romania. She has received commissions and grants from the Canada Council, Interdisciplinary Grants from the University of Southern California Arts Initiative Fund, and the American Composers Forum. The Vancouver Symphony will give the North American premiere of Spirals in 2005. She is currently on faculty at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
NAOMI SEKIYA
Naomi Sekiya was born and raised in Japan. She has already won several international competitions including the Witold Lutoslawski International Competition for Composers, an Ojai Music Festival Award, and the Dimitris Mitropoulos International Composition Competition. Her orchestra works include Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra (2003, premiered by the Berkeley Symphony and Duo Astor, Kent Nagano, conductor), Undulation (2002, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Olari Elts, conductor), Sinfonia delle Ombre (2001, Warsaw Philharmonic), Deluge (2000, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor), Blue Echoes (1999, Orchestra of Colouras, Athens), and Dance in the Wilderness (1997, revised in 2002, Orchestra della Toscana, Italy).
Ms. Sekiya holds Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California Los Angeles, and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Southern California. Her works have been published by Berben.
THE DUO
The Duo is one of the most cutting edge guitar ensembles today. William Kanengiser of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet considers them "the future of classical guitar." Eric Valliere, musical critic of Andante calls them "exceptional guitarists [whose] performances were spectacular for their ensemble precision and sensitivity." The Duo is Eric Benzant-Feldra and Michael Philip Kudirka. They first crossed paths while attending the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Since their graduation they have gravitated towards a contemporary repertoire ranging through Joaquin Rodrigo's early musical cubism, Dusan Bogdanovic's most current developing bi-modality to James Tenney's formalistic microtonality.
They have performed extensively on the West Coast through Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Pasadena, and Los Angeles, as well as Chicago, Illinois and Osaka, Japan. In 1999 they won the American String Teachers' Association Guitar Competition in California. They received first prize at the 10th Annual Portland Guitar Competition which resulted in two invitations as featured performers to two subsequent festivals. In 2003 they premiered The Banana Dance for two guitars and orchestra by Portland-based composer Bryan Johanson which was written specifically for them. Composer and guitarist Johanson says "they are thrilling." He describes their performances as possessing "equal parts passion and understanding the music of the past and present. In the next generation of young guitarists, they stand out as artists with a bright, secure future."
PROGRAM NOTES:
FOOD: New Music for Guitar Duo
The guitar, capable of exceptionally diverse modes of expression, has been featured in a wide variety of musical styles and contexts that has been rivaled only by the piano and voice. For the last century, the guitar has been the quintessential instrument of the folk, jazz, and rock idioms that characterize the overwhelming majority of popular music in contemporary culture. Only recently, however, have the unique qualities of the instrument impacted the imagination of the modern classical composer.
The increasing presence of the classical guitar in the 20th century is primarily the result of the tireless efforts of Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia (1893-1987). At the turn of the century, the guitar was not generally considered an instrument of high art. "When I was young I wanted to play the guitar," Segovia recalls, "but I was told it wasn't respectable." The young virtuoso sought to elevate the role of the guitar to a concert instrument, capable of the highest artistic expression, a status reserved at that time for the piano or the violin.
For such a transformation to occur with any instrument, two things are necessary: virtuoso performers capable of demonstrating the potential of the instrument, and prominent composers willing to write for it. In the following decades, many established composers responded to Segovia's talent and contributed significant works to the repertoire of the modern guitar. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Joaquín Rodrigo, Hector Villa-Lobos, Darius Milhaud, and Alberto Ginastera wrote inspired guitar works that continue to grace the stage. While each of these composers did much to expose the technical and musical potential of the instrument, all of their guitar works are flavored with a Spanish tinge that reflects the cultural roots of the instrument. Thus, in a sense, it was the traditional folk style of the guitar that was enjoying a new, elevated status among the artistic elite, and the instrument itself followed only by association.
Another contributing factor to the changing role of the guitar is found in the lesser-known works of avant-garde composers. Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern of the Second Viennese School, as well as avant-gardists following the Second World War-Pierre Boulez and Ernst Krenek-recognized the guitar not just as an exotic folk instrument, but also as a unique sound source that could be added to the rich palette of the modern composer. These composers called for the sonority of the guitar mainly in a chamber ensemble of mixed instruments; rarely did even the avant-garde composers explore the guitar as an exclusive sound source, independent of its Spanish heritage.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, composers have worked closely with virtuoso performers to produce works that have enhanced the repertoire for the modern classical guitarist. Some notable collaborations include: Julian Bream with both Benjamin Britten (Nocturnal after John Dowland, 1964), and Hans Werner Henze (Royal Winter Music, 1976), Eliot Fisk with Luciano Berio (Sequenza XI, 1988), and David Starobin with both Elliot Carter (Changes, 1983) and George Crumb (Quest, 1994). These collaborations have been vital in creating a new tradition of modern guitar music.
The present recording, which features works resulting from close collaborative efforts between performer and composer, contributes to this new tradition. The guitar duo of Michael Kudirka and Eric Benzant-Feldra have worked extensively with composers Naomi Sekiya, Veronika Krausas, Jeffrey Holmes, and many others, to advocate and promote a constantly growing repertoire for their instrument. And because Kudirka and Benzant-Feldra are sympathetic to avant-garde styles, the innovative repertoire that they have cultivated has enriched the world of sound that is unique to the guitar. Written expressly for the Duo, the pieces offered here by Sekiya, Krausas, and Holmes are inseparable from the instrument that they showcase. The works on this recording, in other words, were written specifically for the guitar-the pieces would lose their essential characteristics if they were to be transcribed for another instrument.
Sekiya, Suite for two guitars (2004)
A carefully constructed cyclic work, the four movements of the suite bear close relations. The suite begins with "Reflection," a contemplative piece of modern organum. Devoid of a regular pulse or meter, the symmetrical modal pitch collections achieve a floating quality. The passages of organum alternate with Stockhausen-like flourishes that evoke the sound of a tape played fast forward.
A motoric rhythm is predominant in the second movement, "Tug of War." The guitars exchange lines in what the composer aptly calls an "aggressive dialogue." What begins as a controlled additive process in a minimalist fashion becomes an explosive futuristic machine. Although there is much pitch repetition, the many disjunctive outbursts prohibit any sense of stasis. The collective pitches of these outbursts assertively converge in the climax of this movement.
Movement Three ("Variations") is a set of variations based on a phantom theme, which, according to the composer, is never revealed. The movement is in five distinct sections. The first segment recalls the non-metric organum of the first movement. The second part is comprised of dual layers of rhythmic motion: one guitarist maintains the non-metric meditative quality, while the other is more active. The brief third variation, comprised entirely of harmonics, is marked by a quiet pointillistic texture. In stark contrast is the valiant fourth variation, the climax of the movement, which features a medium-scale rhythmic acceleration. The final variation dissolves into Webernian fragments.
The closing movement, "Rupture," is a kaleidoscopic compendium of the previous movements, which bursts with synergistic energy. Noteworthy is a series of three prominent glissandi that appear throughout the middle of the movement, sounding as if the musical fabric is being ripped asunder.
Krausas, Five Intermezzi for two guitars (2003-4)
The Five Intermezzi by Krausas are quiet, introspective studies, each of which examines a specific timbral effect. In these aphoristic tableaux, Krausas is concerned with the innate sound possibilities of the guitar in a non-traditional idiomatic way.
The first and fifth intermezzi, designed to frame the group, are similar in their meditation on half-step sonorities, harmonics, and exaggerated vibrato.
Printed on the score of the second intermezzo is an epigram drawn from a short story by writer Andre Alexis: "There's a restlessness that sometimes pushes me out. I don't know where it comes from or what purpose it serves, but it's there behind most of the things I do." In this piece, the players operate entirely between the rosetta (the design around the sound hole) and the bridge: strings are stopped and strummed on the end of the strings opposite to the fingerboard. Each guitarist simultaneously executes two distinct ideas: one is a rhythmic ostinato featuring a limited pitch collection in shifting meters and accents-representing the "restlessness" to which Alexis refers-and the other is a slower-moving progression of harmonics. Krausas notates the motoric figure in a resourceful manner, similar to the concept of tablature, the traditional music notation of guitarists. Instead of notating pitches on a staff, tablature indicates where the performer is to place his or her fingers on the fingerboard in order to produce the desired pitch(es).
The characteristic sounds of Intermezzo no. 3 are produced by two unconventional means. First, the players must sharply depress a left-hand finger without plucking the string with the right hand (a technique called "hammer on"). Also, Krausas requires the performers to pluck on the player's left side of the stopped string, over the fingerboard-that is, on the "wrong" side, producing a different tuning and timbral quality.
Intermezzo no. 4 also exhibits an innovative technique on the guitar, whereby cumulative glissandi produce an echo effect, similar to the ethereal sound of a decaying tape loop. This effect is coupled with a chant-like melody in the lower register.
Holmes, Five Microtonal Studies (2002)
The guitar, along with other string instruments, is well-suited to variable tuning (known as scordatura). In Holmes's Five Microtonal Studies for two guitars, one guitar is tuned approximately one-sixth of a tone lower than the other. "The important concept," explains the composer, "is the exploration of new colors . . . that are the product of intonations derived from the natural vibrations of strings."
The first study, "Battuto, misterioso, battuto e misterioso," is organized as the title suggests: aggressive, percussive strikes first alternate with and then are combined with calmer, mysterious passages. The entire study is structured on a gradual chromatic ascent of harmonics.
"Canto sospeso" is a "suspended song" with an arch-shaped intensity of tempo, dynamics, and range. The song, played by one guitar, is accompanied by a pentatonic ostinato in the other.
Study no. 3, "Apnea" (literally, "without breath", is an indication to hold your breath under water), features canonic counterpoint between the two parts. The second guitar follows the first at the notated unison, although the sounding result is one of innumerable shades of color on account of the altered tuning.
The fourth study is titled "Perdere controllo" ("to lose control"), and consists of a steady stream of eighth-notes featuring percussive tapping on the guitar (tambora and golpe), which are periodically interrupted by forceful, flamenco-style strumming (rasgueado).
"Tranquillo, lacrimoso, e violento" ("calm, sad, and violent") is the final study of the set, and consists of a separate musical disposition for each sentiment in the title. The calm sections, in a slow tempo, feature a languid chromatic line in one guitar accompanied by arpeggiated figures in the other. The sad sections, taken in a slightly faster tempo (9 beats per minute faster than the calm sections), are characterized by trills with pointed articulations. The violent sections, slightly faster still (9 beats per minute faster than the sad sections), are marked by loud dynamics, but the basic pitch materials are economically derived from a single source and all the sections become integrated.
Holmes, "May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way . . . " (2004)
As in the Microtonal Studies, Holmes calls for alternate tuning in the guitars: one is tuned approximately a sixth of a tone lower, and the other is tuned approximately a third of a tone lower. The resonance resulting from the altered tuning is particularly luminous in the context of the equal-tempered instruments. The large single-movement work features three distinct thematic ideas that are variously presented either in isolation, succession, or combination. The three ideas include: a series of harmonics, devoid of a regular pulse; a steady, disjunct melodic line; and a percussive torrent of repeated staccato notes. The composer refers to the work as "a large, constantly changing and varied, landscape of sound."
It was exactly Segovia's vision that the modern repertoire for classical guitar would evolve beyond transcriptions, and the present recording is clear evidence that his vision was realized with extraordinary zeal. These new works exhibit the idiomatic features of an instrument whose timbral possibilities are still being discovered. Holmes, Krausas, and Sekiya have provided a rich, sonorous cuisine that is here properly served up by Kudirka and Benzant-Feldra. Feast your ears on quality Food!
Eric Smigel
Assistant Professor of Musicology
Utah State University