The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center
presents

UNITIES: MUSIC OF PRIDE AND CELEBRATION

ANTHONY de MARE, piano


Works by:
Frederic Rzewski
Lou Harrison
Joseph Hallman
Rodney Sharman
Fred Hersch
Leonard Bernstein
Jerome Kitzke

Thursday – June 22nd, 2006 - 6:30 PM
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center
Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
(or 111 Amsterdam Avenue at 65th Street)
Admission is free and first come, first served


“… a performance which conceals its skill, its virtuosity and its brilliance in service of a very genuine dedication to an expressive task … the overall impact was original, genuine and refreshing.”
The Sydney Morning Herald


The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts presents pianist Anthony de Mare performing UNITIES: Music of Pride and Celebration, a program exploring diverse social, political and intimate perspectives that have inspired gay musicians and writers across the generations. The program includes works by gay American composers Lou Harrison, Leonard Bernstein and Fred Hersch in addition to a world premiere by the young Philadelphia composer Joseph Hallman entitled Aphorisms (written especially for this occasion) featuring texts by Garcia Lorca, and a short polyrhythmic tribute entitled "I wish Ligeti was my boyfriend ...". Included also is a work by Canadian composer Rodney Sharman entitled The Garden, a gay parable of love and sex with original text by playwright Peter Eliot Weiss. Works by two important American heterosexual composers who continue to support civil rights for everyone are featured as well -- Jerome Kitzke's moving Sunflower Sutra (based on Allen Ginsberg's poem), and excerpts from Frederic Rzewski's timeless political masterpiece The People United Will Never Be Defeated.

Post-Concert “Talk-Back” immediately following with Anthony de Mare,
Frederic Rzewski, Rodney Sharman, Jerome Kitzke and Joseph Hallman
Moderated by Joseph Dalton

Presented as part of the Art & Activism: Contemporary LGBT Art and Protest series.
Sponsored by Adam R. Rose and Peter R. McQuillan.
Co-sponsored by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center.

Prokofiev and Brahms, Feb. 3, 2006, The Globe and Mail
An eloquent tribute to the power of words
ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto on Thursday

There's not much that can be said in words that is quite as wondrous as their ability to preserve the thoughts of the living and the dead. A few lines by Galileo about the power of alphabets spoke to Rodney Sharman so powerfully that he set them to music, in his 1999 piece, Letters for the Future.

The work, which opened the TSO's concert on Thursday, managed in a mere quarter-hour to make palpable the mystery of language. The music for string orchestra, harps and percussion unfolded from a single opening triad, as the Victoria Scholars Men's Choral Ensemble intoned Galileo's text in a way that evoked religious music in general and Renaissance music in particular without directly poaching from either.

The piece might as easily be called Notes for the Future, since musical notation is just as retentive as text, and a scale is as pregnantly simple as an alphabet. Sharman made the point by exploiting the fertility of that opening triad, and by bringing the harmonic series (the basis of all scales) into hearing in a repeated sequence of ghostly, whistling passes on the double basses. He made the string ensemble (reinforced with percussion and two harps) sound like a fresh organism, arranging his apparently simple material so as to extract maximal colour variety from the strings. A series of tutti chords near the end sounded, unforgettably, like a grand silvery organ.

Letters for the Future was written while Sharman was composer-in-residence of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, though its most ardent advocate is Hans Graf, the German-born conductor who ended his tenure as the Calgary Philharmonic's music director in 2003. Graf, who is now with the Houston Symphony, led a beautifully detailed performance that reminded me how persuasive a good new orchestral score can be when the conductor really takes it seriously. The Victoria Scholars' rendition of the homophonic vocal part was clear and eloquently direct.

TSO principal clarinetist Joaquin Valdepenas appeared for a finely coloured performance of Brahms's Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor, in the orchestral arrangement by Luciano Berio. Like some other arrangements by important composers, Berio's feels like a full collaboration, in which his thoughts about sonority and texture merge with those of Brahms. I was particularly struck by his emphasis on Brahms's muscular bass lines, which moved through 15 cellos and basses as well as trombone and contrabassoon. Berio's deployment of woodwinds converted the sonata's interplay between keyboard and soloist into a more familial affair, and the variety of textures in the strings made it clear that more instruments meant, for him, more possibilities of tone and attack.

Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 flashed by in a brawny, high-contrast performance that left many of the work's deeper insights unexpressed. As in the Sonata, Graf seemed most comfortable when pursuing the music's forward momentum, least so when a more expansive or reflective approach was needed. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had found such poetry in Sharman's piece. The orchestra showed its mettle very persuasively.

Mozart Noon and Night

Rodney Sharman will be presenting two concert/lectures on Mozart's work at CBC Radio, Studio 1, 700 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, producd by West Coast Performance. Events are at 2 PM and 5 PM, Friday, January 27, 2006, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Admission is free.

mozartica intima is a closer look at Mozart's lyric, sacred and smutty work for voices, including the sublime. "Ave Verum Corpus" and notorious "Lick My Arse" performed by the voices of musica intima. Rodney Sharman has translated the most wordy of the smutty canons, "O, du eselhafter Martin!" (Oh! You're such a jackass, Martin!), written to "encourage" WA's lazy student, Jakob Martin.

Papa Don't Teach: Leopold vs. Wolfgang examines the development of Mozart's orchestral style with commentary and musical examples. Dr. Sharman has made a new edition of the first movement of "Symphony #1", restoring all the antiphony, canonic writing and richness of the inner parts written by 8 year-old WA and "corrected" by Leopold. Music removed in the manuscript by Leopold's pen has been restored. Indications such as "with the 2nd violins" for the 1st violins, "with the basses" for the violas have made the music more simple than intended - the tendency for "too many notes" evident even at age of eight. The manuscript is very touching, the sight of so much playful invention crossed out.

This programme is indebted to Hans Graf, the former director of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, who encouraged me to look at the facsimile of the 1st Symphony and whose insights into Mozart's life and work led me to create this lecture/concert.

Spectrum 4 now available

Spectrum 4, an international collection of 66 minatures for piano solo, compiled by Thalia Myers, is now available through the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music. Spectrum 4 is a stimulating collection of specially commissioned miniatures by 66 contemporary composers. The pieces range in difficulty from grade 1 to 4, and include works by Simon Bainbridge, Gerald Barry, Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Finnissy, Michael Zev Gordon, Roger Redgate, Poul Ruders, Aulis Sallinen, David Sawer, Rodney Sharman, Karen Tanaka and Param Vir. The collection is recorded on a 2 CD set on USK recordings performed by Thalia Myers, USK 1227CDD
www.abrsmpublishing.com

Sharman in the UK March, 2005

Rodney Sharman will be giving talks on his recent music at the University of Birmingham (Mar 2-3), The Royal College of Music (Mar 9) and the University of London (Mar 10). Dr. Sharman will be also be giving private composition lessons at the University of Birmingham.

Sharman's Scarlattiana on TSO's Northern Ontario Tour

Rodney Sharman's Scarlattiana will be performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alain Trudel in all concerts on the TSO's Northern Ontario tour, September, 2005. Details of concert times and venues will be posted soon.

Rodney Sharman is guest of the Amsterdam and Royal Hague Conservatories (Netherlands)

Vancouver composer Rodney Sharman is guest of the Amsterdam and Royal Hague Conservatories (Netherlands) in late November, 2004. Sharman gives lectures on his work to the Hague music composition class and leads workshops for young composers at the Amsterdam Conservatory as part of the Nieuw Ensemble's outreach program for young composers. Eight young composers write works especially for the Nieuw Ensemble and have opportunites throughout 2004-05 to hear and refine their work in progress. The special focus of this year's workshop is composition and rhythm.

This is something of a sentimental journey for Dr. Sharman, who participated as young composer in the Nieuw Ensemble's first ever workshop in 1983-84. The work Sharman composed during the workshop, "Erstarrung", went on to win First Prize in the 1984 CBC Young Composers Competition and to be performed more than fifty times in Canada, the US and Europe. "Erstarrung" is available on Centrediscs WEST LIGHT, performed by the Vancouver New Music Society Ensemble conducted by Owen Underhill.