American Music Festival Staff:Hubert Howe, ACA PresidentJasna Radonjic, ACA Executive Director, Festival ProducerIdith Meshulam, Festival Artistic AdvisorJeffery Wildey, Administrative AssistantRichard Szpigiel, Lighting Director

The American Composers Alliance (ACA) serves the contemporary musiccommunity as a music publisher, concert presenter, and advocate for composers.Founded in 1937 by Aaron Copland to protect the rights of its members and topromote the use and understanding of their music, it is the oldest nationalorganization of its kind. It offers emerging and established composers a network ofconnections and a supportive community. We are here to promote, protect,preserve, present and publish the concert music of American Composers.ACA recently incorporated as a 501 c3 organization and is now a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation in the State of New York.Your tax deductible contribution will help the following funds:-Festival Fund to provide the highest level performances-Library Fund to digitize 10,000 musical manuscripts only available through ACA-Custodial Fund to promote, perform and keep the music of deceased membersalive-Mentoring Program to help very young composers learn about the profession ofcomposing-General Operations to make it all happen

For more information about the ACA please visit www.composers.com.

Contributions of any size are greatly appreciated. Please send your tax-deductiblecontribution to:American Composers Alliance648 Broadway, Room 803New York, NY 10012

American Composers Alliance PresentsFriday, June 22, 8:00 p.m.

Piano PianoTenri Cultural Institute of New York

Idith Meshulam, pianoEric Huebner, piano

AARON COPLAND Danzon Cubano

ELIZABETH BELL Duovarios for Two Pianos

ELLIOTT SCHWARTZ Test Drive for piano duet †Idith Meshulam, pianoElliott Schwartz, piano

CHRISTOPHER AUERBACH-BROWN Introspections # 3,4 *

JOHN CAGE Experiences

KARIM AL-ZAND Pattern Preludes †

ROB REDEI Capriccio *

ROBERT HELPS Eventually the Carousel Begins

* world premiere† New York premiere

This festival was made possible through generous funds from the LMCC’s Fund forCreative Communities/NYSCA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University,Save the Music, Inc., The City University Research Foundation, an AnonymousDonor, and many individual donors. Thank you!

IDITH MESHULAM started performing at an early age with the Tel Aviv Chamber Orchestra, theKibbutzim Orchestra, and gave solo recitals throughout the country. She received her bachelor’sdegree from Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv, and her masters from USF, where she had the pleasure tobe mentored by Robert Helps. Ms. Meshulam received her Ph.D. from New York University, whereshe had taught for ten years, and researched the unpublished piano music of Stefan Wolpe for herdoctoral dissertation.

In 2002, Ms. Meshulam, along with Gunther Schuller, recorded the 32 piano pieces of the unknownGreek composer Nikos Skalkottas, and celebrated a centennial for his music at Bard College. Ms.Meshulam organized, and participated in the memorial concert for Robert Helps at cooper union. Atthat year she established a group, ensemble Pi, which is performing mostly living composers andconcerts for children. In the last five years, she has taken an active role in the programming andperformance of American Composers Alliance festival.

Pianist ERIC HUEBNER has drawn world-wide acclaim for his performances of new andtraditional music. At the age of 17, he appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in soloperformances at the LA Music Center and Hollywood Bowl. More recently, Mr. Huebner was guestorchestral pianist with the New York Philharmonic for performances of Ives' Fourth Symphony andStravinsky's Petroushka. In Carnegie's Zankel Hall, he performed Ligeti's Piano Concerto and at arecent gala celebration at Alice Tully Hall, Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques, both with DavidRobertson conducting. A member of the award-winning ensemble Antares since 2001, he receivedhis Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School where he was a student of JeromeLowenthal.

As soloist and chamber musician Mr. Huebner has performed throughout the United States,Germany, Japan and Brazil. He has appeared with nearly all of New York City’s new musicensembles, including Speculum Musicae, Ensemble Sospeso, ISCM Chamber Players, WashingtonSquare Chamber Players, Continuum, New York New Music Ensemble, and the ColumbiaSinfonietta. Additionally, Mr. Huebner has performed numerous times at the Museum of ModernArt’s Summergarden Series and at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt,Carnegie Hall’s Meet the Composer, at June in Buffalo , the University of Utah’s visiting composerseries and on Sunday’s Live at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater.

Mr. Huebner appeared twice as soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra and Symphony. His performanceshave been nationally televised on PBS and broadcast over KMOZ, Los Angeles and the BBC. He hasrecorded for the Col Legno, Centaur, Bridge, Albany and Innova labels. Upcoming CD releasesinclude solo piano music of Daniel Rothman (Albany) and Roger Reynolds (Mode).

which later became the middle movement of his Symphony No. 1, won a Fromm Foundation awardand was premièred by Leopold Stokowski and the Symphony of the Air (formerly the NBCSymphony) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His Piano Concerto No. 1 wascommissioned by the Thorne Music Fund and first performed by the composer with the ManhattanConservatory orchestra. His Piano Concerto No. 2 was commissioned through the Ford Foundationby Richard Goode and performed by him with the Oakland (CA) Symphony.

Robert Helps served as professor of piano at the New England Conservatory, the San FranciscoConservatory, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley,and the Manhattan School of Music. He was artist-in-residence (pianist) at the University ofCalifornia-Davis in 1973. He was recorded extensively as pianist, composer, and pianist/composer onsuch labels as Victor, Columbia, Composers Recordings Inc., Deutsche Grammophon, New World,Desto, Son Nova, and GM Recordings. Many of his compositions, including his Symphony No. 1(Naumburg Award) and Gossamer Noons for voice and orchestra, are recorded. He was very activeas a solo and chamber music pianist throughout the United States. His major teachers were AbbyWhiteside for piano, and Roger Sessions for composition, and he toured extensively with suchinternationally famous performers as Bethany Beardslee, Isidore Cohen, Rudolf Kolisch, PhyllisCurtin, soprano, and Aaron Copland, and for many years performed solo and chamber works, manyof them world premières, for internationally known chamber music and contemporary musicorganizations in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Minneapolis, andelsewhere. His later concerts included memorial solo recitals of the music of renowned Americancomposer Roger Sessions at both Harvard and Princeton Universities, an all-Ravel recital at Harvard,and a solo recital in Town Hall, NY.

His final compositions include Eventually the Carousel Begins, for two pianos, A Mixture of Timefor guitar and piano, which had its première in San Francisco in June 1990 by Adam Holzman andthe composer, The Altered Landscape (1992) for organ solo and Shall We Dance (1994) for pianosolo, Piano Trio No. 2, and a piano quartet commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. Hedied in 2001.

Performer Biographies

Program Notes

Danzon Cubano consists of three Latin-American selections: "El Salon Mexico", "Danzon Cubano",and "Three Latin-American Sketches". Aaron Copland was widely-traveled, especially in theAmericas, and in his travels he carried with him a healthy musical curiosity. The result was that hewas virtually steeped in the folk tunes and dance rhythms of all the cultures he visited, and was thusable to incorporate them into his own music. The works here are prime examples. Each is brimmingwith distinctive rhythm and "folkiness". I found the "Danzon Cubano" the most interesting of theseworks, because it conveys a waltz-like elegance that one doesn’t normally expect when one thinks ofCuba. All three works are highly rhythmic, with marked shifts in tempo and meter that can trip up theunwary orchestral musician or conductor, but fortunately Copland is more than up to the task. Theperformances here, by the New Philharmonia Orchestra, are first-rate in their precision. Experiencedmusicians know that a rhythmic passage, played with great precision at a slower tempo, actuallysounds faster than the same passage played at a faster tempo but with less precision. [??????]

Aaron Copland was born on 14 November, 1900 in Brooklyn, New York; the son of Russian Jewishimmigrants. His birth at the start of the new century proved most auspicious, for he was destined tobecome the first truly great American composer of classical music of the new century. Copland beganmusic lessons at the age of 17 with eminent teacher and composer Rubin Goldmark. During the early1920s, he studied in France under the legendary teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger. It was forBoulanger's first American appearance that Copland composed his Symphony for Organ andOrchestra

With a thorough background of academic musical training behind him, Copland began composing inquite technically advanced styles, influenced by such European contemporaries as Igor Stravinskyand Arnold Schoenberg. He then turned to his own land for inspirations: to pioneering life in theAppalachian Mountains and the Wild West, to jazz, and the music of African-Americans. Hesuccessfully combined these influential sources with his own highly professional skills to producemusic that was beautifully polished but that clearly resonated with an American voice. Copland'smusic is as vast and magnificent as the land that inspired it.

In addition to his composing skills, Copland was also a brilliant pianist- he recorded his own pianoconcerto - and a gifted conductor. Later in life he toured extensively, his programs by no means beingconfined to his own music. In 1937, he founded the American Composer's Alliance in order to protectthe rights and to promote the music of American composers.

Copland joined the staff of Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, Massachusetts, in 1940, where hesubsequently taught for 25 years. Just a few years later his ballet, Appalachian Spring, won a PulitzerPrize.

Aaron Copland died on 2 December, 1990, a few weeks after his 90th birthday.

Elizabeth Bell on Duovarios for Two Pianos: When I was asked to write a piece for two pianos, myfirst reaction was puzzlement over how to write an interesting piece for two instruments as completeand full-bodied as the piano. I decided to write two different parts that would sometimescomplement each other, sometimes seem to struggle against each other, but which would, in the end,

‘Pattern’ pieces abound in the piano literature, pieces constrained by a single idea (usually a rhythmicor textural ostinato) through which a composer expresses a narrowly focused thought. Patterning isespecially well-suited to preludes, which are by convention short, concise and introductory. Most ofthe patterns in these six preludes are immediately identifiable: a repeated-note motive in no. 2;asynchronous cascades between the hands in no. 4; and a gesture bouncing between interlockedhands in no. 6. In addition, three of the pieces give a nod to other famous preludes in the pianorepertoire. No. 1 is a gloss on what is likely the most famous prelude ever written. Within an innocentarpeggio, Bach skillfully intertwines several rhythmic patterns, something exploited in myparaphrase. No. 3 takes its cue from Chopin’s Op. 28/4, which every student of harmony knows (andwhich a professor of mine once called the epitome of “creeping chromaticism”). No. 5 was written asa retirement gift for my high school music teacher, whose lessons were inspirational preludes to myown study of music. In mood and phrasing it echoes some well-known Debussy preludes. PatternPreludes was written for Calogero Di Liberto, who gave the work its premiere on October 5, 2005 inHouston, TX.

The music of composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely”(Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scoresfor dance and pieces for young audiences. Many of his works explore connections between music andother arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th century graphic art, fables of theworld, folksong and jazz. Al-Zand’s music has enjoyed success in the US, Canada and abroad and heis the recipient of several national awards, including the Sackler Composition Prize, the ArtSongPrize and the Louisville Orchestra Competition Prize. He holds degrees from Harvard and McGillUniversities and is currently a faculty member at the Shepherd School of Music (Rice University) inHouston. Al-Zand is also a founding member and vice-president of Musiqa, Houston’s premierecontemporary music group. More information on Karim Al-Zand can be found on his website:www.alzand.com.

Rob Redei was born in Budapest in 1975. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in music andmedieval literature from the University of Pennsylvania. His composition, "Phantasma," fororchestra was the recipient of a Masterworks Prize and will be released on ERM Media'sMasterworks of the New Era series in June. The Scherzo from his string quartet was recentlypremiered by the CSO String Quartet in Chicago.

"Sesheta" for two pianos and percussion was a finalist for the 2007 Robert Helps Prize andperformed by the USF Percussion Ensemble in April, 2007. Rob is the choral director at BerkeleyPreparatory School in Tampa, Florida, and is currnetly pursuing his Master of Music in Compositiondegree at the University of South Florida.

Robert Helps was Professor of Music at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and the SanFrancisco Conservatory of Music. He was a recipient of awards in composition from the NationalEndowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Ford, and many other foundations, and of a 1976Academy Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His orchestral piece Adagio for Orchestra,

add up to more than any single piano part could encompass.

As the title suggests, Duovarios is, loosely, two sets of variations for duo-pianists. The theme ofPiano II, which enters first, is a set of five “tetrads”, arranged in a palindrome: 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 -- andeach “1” begins a new series. This pattern continues rigorously throughout the 13-minute piece,usually at a speed of about one chord per measure. Of course the pattern is only the rack on whichthe variations are hung. . . . Piano I has a 12-tone row as its “theme”, and it is variation form only inthe sense that all 12-tone music is. However, several motifs derived from the row are repeatedfrequently thoughout the piece, and suggest sonata or rondo form more than variation.

“Duovarios” was written for David Bradshaw and Cosmo Buono, who premiered it in Alice TullyHall, NYC, in January 1988. It can be heard on N/S R 1029, Elizabeth Bell “Snows of Yesteryear”,performed by Loretta Goldberg and Jennifer Rinehart.

Elizabeth Bell was born in 1928 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She graduated from Wellesley College andThe Juilliard School; married and raised three children; was divorced and later remarried; and now, in2007, lives in Westchester County with her husband and their Siamese cat.

Her music, for voice, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra, has been performedworld-wide. She has three all-Bell recordings: MMC CD#2082, N/S R #1029, and N/S R #1042.She had two all-Bell 75th Birthday year concerts given in her honor: NYC 10/12/03, and Yerevan,Armenia, 4/28/04. She has received a number of grants and awards, including Grand Prize in 1996 inthe Utah Composers’ Guild Competition for her large chamber ensemble composition “Spectra”. Sheserved as music critic for the Ithaca (NY) Journal for five years; she was one of the founders andofficers of New York Women Composers, Inc.; and she served for five years on the Board ofGovernors of American Composers Alliance. She is also a member of SCI, IAWM, AMC, and otherprofessional organizations.

“Elizabeth Bell . . . is a composer not as well known as she deserves. . . . While the overriding stylefor this music tends to be a sort of Bergian romanticism, there’s a strong personality that assertsitself in every piece. Conservative but never timid, would be my capsule description.” – Fanfare

The piano duet Test Drive was composed in 2005, to celebrate the purchase of a Steinway grandpiano for the recently opened Freeport (ME) Performing Arts Center. Accordingly, the work hasbeen designed to explore all the timbral possibilities of the instrument – from clusters and trills, tolyric arioso lines, to inside-the-piano sonorities. Extremes of register are prominent (for example,the piece begins and ends with the highest and lowest possible notes), and quotations from thekeyboard literature occur frequently. One quote which has been hinted at throughout, but appearsfully-formed only near the work’s end, is relatively unfamiliar; it is the official State of Maine song,composed in the 1920s by a resident of Freeport!

Elliott Schwartz has taught at Bowdoin College since 1964, and is presently Robert K. BeckwithProfessor of music Emeritus. He has also held visiting residencies at the University of California(Santa Barbara and San Diego), Ohio State University, the London College of Music, CambridgeUniversity (UK) and Trinity College of Music (UK). Performances of Schwartz’s music include the

Minnesota Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Tanglewood, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), and De Ijsbreker (Amsterdam). He hasappeared as visiting composer-lecturer (often speaking on the subject of American music) atuniversities and conservatories in Paris, Strasbourg, Tokyo, Weimar, Mannheim, Rotterdam,Copenhagen, London, and Reykjavik. Extended residencies include the Harvard Band and OxfordUniversity. In 2006, his 70th birthday was celebrated with concerts at the University of Minnesota,the Library of Congress, and the Royal Academy of Music (London). A number of his works arerecorded on the New World, CRI, Albany, Capstone and Innova labels.

Christopher Auerbach-Brown on Introspections # 3, 4: These pieces were written during a difficultperiod, when the stresses of life were taking almost all of my energy away from composing. Theonly pieces I could manage during this time were these short, quiet meditations. I did not have thechutzpah needed to write virtuostic compositions, and so composing music that was somehowopposed to these ideas was a necessity.

However, in taking this idea to heart, I found myself becoming deeply influenced by working on asimple, poetic level of self-expression. This change in attitude and values has become a spark thathas helped me think about music differently. Sometimes just the smallest shift in thought can opendoors and break down assumptions, and these pieces have helped me to hear and conceive of musicin new and exciting ways. The works focus on subtle manipulations in timbre and touch to evoke anairy, reflective atmosphere, as if the sound of the piano was resonating and breathing with life.

Introspection #3 was written for Jane Shim, a high school student studying piano at the ClevelandMusic School Settlement. Introspection #4 is a gentle waltz; sometimes the triple meter is obvious,and sometimes it disappears into the background.

“This is a composer to watch; he might just shake things up with a musical trainwreck.”New Music Connoisseur

Christopher Auerbach-Brown (b. 1970) Mr. Auerbach-Brown received his BM in Composition fromIthaca College where his major teachers were Dana Wilson and Gregory Woodward. He went on tocomplete his MM in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with DonaldErb. Mr. Auerbach-Brown was awarded an ASCAP Young Composers’ Award in 1996 for, a grant fromMeet the Composer and a Charles Ives Scholarship given by the American Academy of Arts andLetters to “composition students of great promise.” Mr. Auerbach-Brown was a co-founder andconductor for “Composers in the Shape of a Pear,” a Cleveland-based contemporary music groupwhose mission was to expose new music to audiences outside of the traditional academicenvironments. The “Pear” presented concerts several times a year at the Cleveland Museum of Art,and other local venues included the Beck Center for Performing Arts and the Cleveland MusicSchool Settlement. The Pear has also collaborated with such local notables as the Cavani StringQuartet, who gave the world premiere of Mr. Auerbach-Brown’s String Quartet at Weill Recital Hallin December of 1997.Mr. Auerbach-Brown is a member of the Cleveland Composers’ Guild and theAmerican Composers’ Alliance. His most recent commission is from the Cleveland Institute of Art, a

percussion work composed for their commencement ceremony in May 2005. He is also acontributing editor to the New Music Connoisseur.

Experiences I for two pianos is dated 1945-48. It was first performed for the Merce Cunninghamdance by Cage with Maro Ajemian at the Hunter College Playhouse. It uses modal melodic line, andis based on the rhythmic structure of Cunningham’s dance.

John Cage was born in Los Angeles, 5 September 1912, and died in New York, 12 August 1992. Heleft Pomona College early to travel in Europe (1930-31), then studied with Cowell in New York(1933-4) and Schönberg in Los Angeles (1934): his first published compositions, in a rigorous atonalsystem of his own, date from this period. In 1937 he moved to Seattle to work as a danceaccompanist, and there in 1938 he founded a percussion orchestra; his music now concerned withfilling units of time with ostinatos (First Construction (in Metal), 1939). He also began to useelectronic devices (variable-speed turntables in lmaginary Landscape no.1, 1939) and invented the'prepared piano', placing diverse objects between the strings of a grand piano in order to create aneffective percussion orchestra under the control of two hands. He moved to San Francisco in 1939, toChicago in 1941 and back to New York in 1942, all the time writing music for dance companies(notably for Merce Cunningham), nearly always for prepared piano or percussion ensemble. Therewere also major concert works for the new instrument: A Book of Music (1944) and Three Dances(1945) for two prepared pianos, and the Sonatas and Interludes (1948) for one.

During this period Cage became interested in Eastern philosophies, especially in Zen, from which hegained a treasuring of non-intention. Working to remove creative choice from composition, he usedcoin tosses to determine events (Music of Changes for piano, 1951), wrote for 12 radios (ImaginaryLandscape no.4, also 1951) and introduced other indeterminate techniques. His 4'33" (1952) has nosound added to that of the environment in which it is performed; the Concert for Piano and Orchestra(1958) is an encyclopedia of indeterminate notations. Yet other works show his growing interest inthe theatre of musical performance (Water Music, 1952, for pianist with a variety of non-standardequipment) and in electronics (Imaginary Landscape no.5 for randomly mixed recordings, 1952;Cartridge Music for small sounds amplified in live performance, 1960), culminating in various large-scale events staged as jamborees of haphazardness (HPSCHD for harpsichords, tapes etc, 1969). Thelater output is various, including indeterminate works, others fully notated within a very limited rangeof material, and pieces for natural resources (plants, shells). Cage also appeared widely in Europe andthe USA as a lecturer and performer, having an enormous influence on younger musicians and artists;he wrote several books.

Pattern Preludes1. Moderato; smoothly (after Bach)2. As quickly as possible, chirring3. Slowly; delicate thrumming (after Chopin)4. Very swiftly; restless, agitated5. Slowly; lyrically (after Debussy) 6. Quickly; vibrant, full of life