Live Performance by the University of Chicago New Music Ensemble; Barbara Schubert, conductor
Emma Hospelhorn, flute(s)
Zachary Goode, clarinet(s)
Myra Hinrichs, violin
Chris Wild, cello
John Corkill, percussion
Daniel Pesca, piano

February 4, 2018
Fulton Recital Hall

Program Note:
Into the empty sky encompasses many of the themes and ideas that are important to my work as a composer: stillness, vanishing, epiphanies, momentary flickers of warmth or intensity, and different modes of singing. The piece is cast in three large sections, each beginning with a cold, brittle texture in the upper register. From this common starting point, the three sections proceed to trace different paths in their unfolding. The first features a long, winding melody in the alto flute and clarinet with interjections from the marimba. The second is more rhythmically active, with an obsessive insistence on short, uneven descents. The third stretches these descending gestures into expansive phrases of strained lyricism, with a melody divided between all the members of the ensemble. Over the course of the piece, an oscillating two-note motive rises from the middle register to join the repeated icy refrain in the upper register.

Into the empty sky (2017)

The primary inspiration for this work is the ancient Japanese art of dry landscape gardens, or karesansui. I find that the static energy implied by the relationship of stones to one another in these Zen gardens can be related to disparate musical objects. As the stones each possess a beauty of edges and lines, they in turn have evoked various rhythms, harmonies, and timbres in this piece for double woodwind quintet. I was particularly intrigued by the numerical rhythm of the garden of Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. Based on the series 7-5-3, the garden’s composition reflects the propitious nature of uneven numbers in Eastern numerology. The number 5 is accorded special significance due its being situated in the middle of the first nine numbers. As such it is the symbol of the center. With the piece’s proportions and rhythms derived from the uneven number series, the layout of the fifteen rocks of the Ryoanji garden permeates its formal structure on several levels. Rock Garden draws on other influences, including the play The Rock Garden by Sam Shepard and the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. It was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center and premiered on July 9, 2022, in Studio E of the Linde Center for Music and Learning. It was made possible in part with the support of The Hermitage Artist Retreat. Rock Garden is dedicated with gratitude to Stephen Jaffe.

Performance by Tanglewood Music Center 2022 Fellows:
Flute 1 - Seungmin Oh
Flute 2/Piccolo - Dominique Kim
Oboe I - Andrew Port
Oboe 2/English Horn - Elias Medina
Clarinet 1 - Hyunwoo Chun
Clarinet 2/Bass Clarinet - Phoebe Kuan
Bassoon 1 - A.J. Neubert
Bassoon 2/Contrabassoon - Thalia Navas
Horn 1 - Nathan Cloeter
Horn 2 - John Michael Flavetta
Conducted by Rita Castro Blanco

Rock Garden

commissioned and premiered by Wolftone
William Overcash, violin  |  Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon

with thanks to generous support from the Sviatoslav Richter Fund for New Music

from the silhouette quarry

The Chicago Tribune has praised the music of David “Clay” Mettens (b.1990) as “a thing of remarkable beauty,” displaying a “sensitive ear for instrumental color.” His recent work seeks to distill the strange and sublime from the familiar. He reflects upon the experience of wonder in music that ranges from rich and sonorous to bright and crystalline, seeking expressive immediacy in lucid forms and dramatic shapes.

His work has been recognized with a 2020 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Ithaca College’s 2018 Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize, first prize in the 2018 Salvatore Martirano Composition Competition, a 2016 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the 2015 SCI/ASCAP graduate student commission. He received a commission from the American Opera Initiative for a one-act opera, which was premiered in December 2015 by the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. His orchestra piece “Sleeping I am carried…” was selected for the 24th Annual Underwood New Music Readings with the American Composers Orchestra and the 2015 [‘tactus] Young Composers Forum with the Brussels Philharmonic. Subsequently, the Brussels Philharmonic, led by Stéphane Denève, performed the piece in December 2016. The piece was also the winner of Eastman’s 2014 Wayne Brewster Barlow Composition Prize, and received a premiere with the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra in October 2014. Other orchestral performances include Chicago Civic Orchestra, L’orchestre philharmonique de Radio France at ManiFeste 2018, and with the Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra as part of the Grafenegg Festival’s Ink Still Wet workshop in 2017 and 2018.

Additionally, his works have been performed by Grossman Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, Yarn/Wire, the New York Vituoso Singers, soprano Tony Arnold and the soundSCAPE Festival Sinfonietta, on the Contempo Series at the University of Chicago, by Ensemble Dal Niente at the 2017 SCI National Conference, and the Civitas Ensemble on Chicago’s inaugural Ear Taxi Festival. Saxophonists Chien-Kwan Lin, Timothy McAllister, and Otis Murphy performed his trio Everything that rises at the American Saxophone Academy Faculty Recital in July 2016. At Eastman, his works were featured on OSSIA, Composers’ Forum, Graduate Composers’ Sinfonietta, and Computer Music Center concerts.

His music appears on recordings by the Grossman Ensemble (Fountain of Time, 2020), Fuego Quartet (Migration, 2019), Lotus (Rogue Lotus, 2018), and American Wild Ensemble (Music in the American Wild, 2018).

He is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at the University of Chicago, studying with Anthony Cheung, Sam Pluta, and Augusta Read Thomas. He earned his masters degree at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied composition with David Liptak, Robert Morris, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and computer music with Allan Schindler. A native of Covington, KY, he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina with a degree in music composition and a clarinet performance certificate. He was a recipient of the McNair Scholarship, the top award USC gives to out-of-state students, and the 2013 Arthur M. Fraser Award from the School of Music. There, his composition teachers were John Fitz Rogers and Fang Man.

He has presented his research on the music of Thomas Adès at the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition 30thAnniversary Conference hosted by the University of Louisville and the first annual THEMUS graduate-student music theory and musicology conference at Temple University. In 2012, he was awarded a USC Magellan Scholar Grant for a research project involving pipe organs, spectral music, and computer music under the guidance of faculty mentor Reginald Bain.

Contact Information:
E-mail - mettensmusic[at]gmail.com
Phone - (859) 912-2676

Into the empty sky (2017)

David Clay Mettens

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