Central Michigan University Symphonic Wind Ensemble
Chris Chapman, Conductor

Program Note
If you walk across the Georgia Rail pedestrian overpass at the Edgewood/Candler Park MARTA station at sunset, you will be graced by one of Atlanta’s more arresting vistas. The setting star colors the sky in rich hues reminiscent of a Rothko painting. Against this matte, downtown’s distant skyscrapers rise serenely; sparks of dying light glint off the well-polished rails below. In my year teaching away from home at Georgia State University, I often took in that view on my way home. The moment unfolded for at a particular nexus of complexity in my life: exhausted, alone in a new city with few friends, away from my spouse, elated about finally working in my field, in love with the vibrancy of the city all around me, lost, found, anxious, ecstatic, here, away, grounded, in mid air… I didn’t set out to write about any of this. But when I was done, and bewildered by what this storm of a composition process had created, I became aware that the memory that most fit the music I had written was the one of stopping on that overpass and looking out over the end of the day as I made my way home, wherever I thought that might be.

This movement is part of a larger work meditating on public transit train stations that have been important in my life. The other movements will be titled:

Place St.-Henri (Montreal metro)
30th Street Station (Philadelphia SEPTA)
Hikifune (Tokyo’s Tôbu)

Station To Station: 1. Edgewood/Candler Park

The Neolithic-era Newgrange passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland, was intricately designed containing an inner chamber that illuminates annually with the light of the rising sun on the winter solstice. Etchings of triskelions adorn the kerbstones outside the tomb and the walls of the triple-spiral inner chamber itself.
Triskelion was composed as my Master’s thesis for DePaul University’s Ensemble 20+ over the course of a spiritually challenging year.
—- HAB

World Premiere, 2.3.2022, DePaul University, Gannon Concert Hall

DePaul University's Ensemble 20+
Conductor: Michael Lewanski
Fl/A Fl/B Fl: Max Mika
Ob/E Hn: Kyungyeon Hong
Cl/B Cl: Max Reese
Bsn: Peter Houdalis
Hn: Sarah Bryant
Tpt: Rhys Edwards
Tbn: Ryan Christianson
Perc I: Sam Johnson-Vrooman
Perc II: Lain Skow
Vln I: Ben Kronk
Vln II: Laura Duggan
Vla: Michelle Manson
VC: Chad Polk
DB: Nate Beaver

2.3.22 Ensemble 20+

Triskelion (2020-21) World Premiere, Ensemble 20+

Alex Temple, Microphages (1999/2019)

1. Mirror
2. Rider
3. Steam
4. Coiled
5. Tantrum
6. Stomp
7. Madrigal
8. Twelve
9. Rasch
10. Monody
11. Iron
12. Slam
13. Eyeroll
14. White

Daniel Baer, piano
Live at Elastic Arts, 9.19.21

More info:
https://alextemplemusic.com/2019/05/microphages/

Microphages

Composed for the Central Michigan University New Music Ensemble, both movements are typical of my current compositional output. Harmonies are based on the repetition of a simple interval pattern and long lyrical melodies weave their way through these chaconnes. The rhythms and colors are rather plain, unadorned, and far from ornate. The directness and simplicity in the music is by design.

Two Slow Movements - II

Two Slow Movements - I

Chicago Composers Orchestra
Allen Tinkham, conductor
St. James Cathedral
Chicago, IL
April 29, 2023

If you’re wondering what electroclash artist Casey Spooner could possibly have to do with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and his song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn, then compare some of the text of “Das Himmlische Leben”, one of the Wunderhorn songs:

"We revel in heavenly pleasures,
So we shun all that is earthly,
No worldly turmoil
Is heard in Heaven,
Everyone lives in sweetest peace;
We lead an angelic existence,
And yet we are perfectly happy,
We dance and leap,
We skip and sing,
Saint Peter in Heaven looks on…” (trans. Richard Stokes)

…to some of “Butterscotch Goddam”, a 2018 song by Fischerspooner (Casey Spooner’s old band):

“I jump off the mountain, I hang off the cliff 
Listen to you shower sing love scene shift 
Light it up with your weedy spliff 
Lovers tiff, dance around, plead the fifth 
Kiss me…” 
“I brought you sake and plums from Kyoto 
Gift shop stickers from the Bishōnen show… 
And that is just one idea of heaven…”

I find “Butterscotch Goddam” difficult to describe as anything other than an alternate queer universe - the near-nonsense lyrics, the dystopian erotic imagery and sexuality of the music video. And I’m reasonably sure St. Peter and the other saints in the Wunderhorn text - St. Cecilia, St. Martha, St. Ursula - wouldn’t exactly be the biggest fans of Fischerspooner’s work, of disco or electroclash music. But both of these texts are making the same fundamental promise: an escape to paradise.

I know I’m not only speaking for myself when I say that LGBTQ people, no matter what their sexuality or gender identity, struggle to feel safe in the world today. This fear comes from atrocities past and present, such as the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL in 2016 and the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting in 2022, or arson attacks on New Orleans gay bars in the early 1970s. But it also comes from ongoing threats, like the escalating right wing moral panic surrounding transgender people today, and over four decades of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. One idea of heaven is an attempt to create a joyous inward retreat from a disjunct, nightmarish reality of violence, hatred and chaos, one where music and imagery as incompatible as “Das Himmlische Leben” and “Butterscotch Goddam” can coexist as they provide the escapes they both promise.

one idea of heaven (2023)

Variations 5, 8, and 9 on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe.

Koeun Grace Lee, Piano

Three Wolpe Variations

Chamber Symphony, recorded by EQ Ensemble at Futura Studios in Boston, MA.

Chamber Symphony - I. moderate, anxiously

Cyclotron (2017) by David Biedenbender

Performed by Kevin Sedatole and the Michigan State University Wind Symphony, Wharton Center for the Performing Arts

Program Note:

Cyclotron was commissioned by Kevin Sedatole and the Michigan State University Wind Symphony. A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator in which charged particles accelerate outwards from the center along a spiral path, using a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying (radio frequency) electric field. Cyclotrons serve many purposes, including to create high-energy beams for nuclear physics experiments and in particle therapy to treat cancer. Nuclear physics research began at Michigan State University in 1958, and the National Superconducting Laboratory (NSCL) is one of the world’s flagship nuclear science research facilities. Hundreds of researchers come to MSU each year to take advantage of the NSCL facilities and explore the inner workings of atoms and their role in the universe.

In this piece I use the cyclotron as a launching point for my creative process. I imagined a fictional and playful sonification of the cyclotron and of what happens to particles when they are smashed together at nearly half the speed of light. These violent nuclear collisions tend to cause strange things to happen, and, among other things, at MSU’s cyclotron, the experimental observations of these collisions have led to the discovery of completely new types of nuclei (isotopes). In fact, the infinitesimally small particles that make up atoms generally behave in bizarre—though not totally unexpected—ways (thanks to quantum physics) when compared to our understanding of the visible world. Among many peculiar subatomic phenomena, light particles called photons can behave both like particles and waves and particles can simultaneously be in two different places at once!

The music develops out of a small collection of motifs and gestures, which are layered and transformed over time to try to portray things like time dilation (accelerated particles experience slower time) through acceleration/deceleration and expansion/contraction, particle versus wave-like motion, cyclical and spiraling motion, the Doppler effect to convey speed and direction, and mechanical, machine-like sounds. It is my hope that, in some small way, this music captures the strange and mysterious beauty of the sub-atomic world and that it honors the work and research of the scientists at MSU and their extraordinary machine.

Cyclotron

Alarm Will Sound performing Schism. Alan Pierson, conductor. 

http://www.alarmwillsound.com

Schism

for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, and cello

Grit

Praised as “rich with vivid imagery” and “highly detailed and multi-layered” (New Music Box), Evan Ware’s music is one of angular, bristling energy that ranges from clamorous sublimity to reverent tenderness. Through his works, he grapples with many uncompromising challenges in 21st century life, from childhood trauma and recovery, neurodivergence, and social isolation, to our critically overburdened abilities to focus. Each piece, therefore, is an invitation for composer, performer, and audience to find each other, to make community, and—amid our struggles—to feel and think deeply together.

Evan’s music has been performed in the United States, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and in Canada, as well as on CBC Radio 2, Michigan Radio, and WCMU. He has been privileged to work with pianist Nadia Shpachenko, singer Amy Petrongelli, the ÆPEX Sinfonietta, Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montéal, the Arraymusic Ensemble, the University of Michigan Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet, and the symphonic wind ensembles of Central Michigan University and Cal Poly Pomona. Evan’s music has been supported by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the City of Ottawa, among others. Evan also maintains an active career as a scholar of popular and multimedia music. He is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Cal Poly Pomona.

Station To Station: 1. Edgewood/Candler Park

Evan Ware

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