Program Note:
Quote from, “Maya Badian, Her Life and Her Music: A Privilege to Soar” by Popovici, Fred, published by Pro Ars Publications, Ottawa, Canada, 2010: "The French violin virtuoso Jean-Jacques Kantorow (1945-) commissioned Maya Badian to compose a violin concerto, taking in consideration his virtuosity. In immediately accepting this commission to compose a 20th-century concerto for violin, Badian considered that it would be joining a huge and well-known body of existing repertoire.
The VIOLIN CONCERTO by Maya Badian is cast in a three-movement form:

I.- Prelude; II.- Fugue and Choral; III.- Sonata -, blending unusual fantasia-like cadenzas with a fugue, and ending with a contemporary sonata finale. The result is a virtuoso concerto for the solo violinist with fascinating orchestral components.
I.- PRELUDE, the first movement, is introduced by a solo cadenza, ad libitum, unusually coupled with timpani, and continues with a dialogue between alto-saxophone and the solo violin. This dialogue is a reflection of the introduction and is based on a free retrograde inversion of the thematic material in the cadenza. It is orchestrated with a parallel dialogue/trialogue between three orchestral groups - the strings, the brass, and the woodwinds. The strings enter first, followed by the brass and finally the woodwinds. The central portion of this opening movement is based on the idea of mixing polyphony with heterophony. As it develops, thematic material recalling the initial cadenza is used in the polyphonic texture. A closing cadenza, mirroring the opening cadenza, features again the solo instrument but this time accompanied by a snare-drum instead of the timpani.

Violin Concerto: I. Prelude by Maya Badian

Marimba & Vibraphone Concerto: III. Prepetuum Mobile by Maya Badian

Marimba & Vibraphone Concerto: II. Aria by Maya Badian

Marimba & Vibraphone Concerto: I. Preludio by Maya Badian

Carl Maria Von Weber - Clarinet Concerto No.2 in E Flat Major (ouverture)

Sample libraries used:  Cinematic Studio Strings, VSL - Synchron Woodwinds, Orchestral Tools - Berlin Brass, Modern Scoring Brass

VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT COMPOSITIONS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM4Raf6kMbyqg6L9eYgzzKQ

Carl Maria Von Weber - Clarinet Concerto No.2 In E Flat Major (ouverture)

This is the Asian premiere of Geoffrey Gordon's Fumée for Bb clarinet and chamber orchestra, with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, conductor Christoph Poppen and soloist Horácio Ferreira, from HK City Hall Concert Hall, Hong Kong, 29 June 2024.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Immersed in the magical cultural milieu of Belle Époque Paris at the end of the 19th century, the precocious talent of young composer Reynaldo Hahn (August 9, 1874 – January 28, 1947) emerged, and from an early age, Hahn astounded and delighted his audiences with settings of some of the most beautiful and enduring poems of contemporary writers, including Hugo, Verlaine, Mallarmé. It is said that Verlaine "wept to hear Hahn's songs" and Mallarmé wrote: "Le pleur qui chante au langage du poète, Reynaldo Hahn, tendrement le dégage comme en l'allée un jet d'eau." (“The cry that sings to the language of the poet, Reynaldo Hahn, tenderly releases it like a jet of water in the alley.”)

Inspired by and in recognition of Hahn’s legacy, composer Geoffrey Gordon re-imagines, through his own distinct and intensely expressive musical language, the beguiling atmosphere, adventurous harmonic progressions and profound beauty of Hahn’s exquisite and contemplative chanson, “Fumée” (“Smoke”) – first published by Paris Heugel (1896) - in the form of an alluring and intense new concerto for Bb clarinet and chamber orchestra. Echoing and amplifying Hahn’s setting of the text by Jean Moréas, the concerto idiomatically addresses the poet’s message of a life that goes from ashes to ashes, envying the freedom and transience of smoke which has no past, no responsibility, and is without the hardships of life....vanishing into the ether.

GORDON - Fumée For Bb Clarinet And Chamber Orchestra

Concerto for Clarinet: I

Clarinet Concerto, Mov. I

"Good composers borrow... great composers steal.."
So what do you call a composer who steals
from himself?

My Clarinet Conceerto is based on fragments from
Ukraine Epilog which is based on Ukraine
Symphony (No. 28), and Spring Thing 
with Clarinet... It is the fourth in the Ukraine series.

The main melody of this movement is a variation in
augmentation of the first five notes of The Hills Are
Alive with The Sound of Music. (Rogers & Hammerstein) (1959).
The profound joy of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 enlivens the work.
Exuberance is gleaned from the clarinet solo in Shostakovich's
Festive Overture. There are microscopic quotes and/or paraphrases
from Copland's Clarinet Concerto, Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata and
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

The game of telephone continues, happily.

***
Instrumentation

Solo Clarinet in Bb

Flutes 1, 2
Oboes, 1, 2
Bassoons, 1, 2

French Horns 1, 2
Trumpets 1, 2
B. Trombone
Tuba

Timpani
Percusssion (Sn. Dr, B. Dr.)

Drum Set (with 5 Toms)

Strings 

7 minutes 22 seconds 
***
KL 2/11/25 

Photo Credit:
Hilmi Işılak: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-playing-a-wind-instrument-on-a-sidewalk-13640962/

Clarinet Concerto Mov. I

This tour-de-force for solo B-flat clarinet & wind ensemble gives the opportunity to bring in a powerhouse guest artist to perform with your young band. Filled with a variety of moods, from driving to lyrical to playful to romantic, "Twitch" keeps you on your toes!

Twitch (Solo Clarinet & Band Gr. 4) - Nathan Daugtrey

Fables (2021-2024) 
for 
Clarinet Solo and Chamber Ensemble of Seven Players

I. the Acacia
II. the Pine and the Dragonfly
III. the Moon Ronde
IV. the Dark Doves
V. the Wisteria

Program notes: 
I have a deep fascination with fables from various cultures. The shared themes and similarities in these stories hint at a long history of collective human experience, and possibly at shared fears, fantasies, and dreams rooted in our psyche. I’m particularly intrigued by how these stories often contain contradictions in their messages, reflecting like a mirror to the tangled nature of how we live together.
In Fables, I tried to create sonic fables. By that, I mean each movement’s title and the way the clarinet weaves through the ensemble are meant to stir questions in the listener’s mind. For instance, “Why is this movement called Wisteria?” I hope that the titles and the music will stir an imaginary fable in the listener’s mind, a vague sensation of an ancient story. Not a tale you’ve heard before, but one that’s been sleeping somewhere inside you. A feeling of storytelling, of little fables from a forgotten past that haven’t yet been written, a faint memory, a shared dream, a fable that hasn’t been told yet, but still somehow feels familiar.

Composed for Daniel Boeke and Ensemble Oerknal


Fables (2021-2024)-Ashkan Behzadi

Dr. Maya Badian is a Contemporary Classical Music Canadian Composer of Romanian Origin. 
Maya Badian has more than 100 published original compositions including symphonies, orchestral music, concertos, cantatas, chamber music, music for multimedia, and musicology and pedagogy works. All her works are published and internationally distributed by Lucian Badian Editions. Her musical output is part of the collections of international libraries, such as Library and Archives Canada, The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Bibliothèque Božidar Kantušer, Paris, France, and of many music libraries across Canada, the USA, Europe, Australia, Japan, and National Library of New Zealand. 
”Maya Badian is an important composer, if it does not use some of the extreme devices discovered by earlier 20th century composers, Badian’s music does reflect the accumulated wisdom of a century of experiment and invention.” – The Ottawa Citizen
Dr. Maya Badian have her life and achievements reflected in an international biography work: The Life and The Music of Maya Badian, A Privilege to Soar by Fred Popovici, Pro ARS Publications, Ottawa, 2010.
“An internationally acclaimed composer” – as described in Orchestral Works CD Review, Winnipeg Sun, 1999.
Dr. Badian is a member of the Canadian Music Center, Canadian League of Composers, Association of Canadian Women Composers, Ottawa New Music Creators, Romanian Union of Composers and Musicologists, Union of Composers and Musicologists of Moldova.

US/UK composer Geoffrey Gordon’s contributions to the contemporary music repertoire have been and continue to be exceptional.  Intense and luxuriant harmony, passionate melody and superb handling of instrumentation and sonic textures define his music.  His works include orchestral, chamber and vocal works, recognised and performed by the world's top musicians and ensembles.  His music has been called "darkly seductive" (The New York Times), "complex, richly-satisfying " (BBC Music Magazine), “stunning” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “iridescent and glowing” (Chicago Tribune), “taut and exhilarating” (Classical Ear), “haunting” (Strings Magazine), "gripping" (Bachtrack), "fierce and uncompromising" (MusicWeb International) and “magnificent” (Fanfare).  The Philharmonia identifies “his infectious style" and “an ear for melody”; the New York Times his “zest for sonic experimentation”.  

Recently and upcoming, the BBC Philharmonic will premiere Mr. Gordon's new bassoon concerto, Anima Mia, during the 2022-23 concert season; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta will premiere a jointly commissioned chamber concerto for Bb clarinet and ensemble, Fumee; and the Antwerp Symphony will premiere Mr. Gordon's Mad Song, which they commissioned for soloist Dimitri Mestdag. 

In 2018, the Philharmonia gave the premiere of Geoffrey’s Gordon’s bass clarinet concerto “Prometheus” after the treatment by Franz Kafka, at the RFH, with US and Nordic premieres following in 2019 with the Minnesota Orchestra and Malmo Symphony.   His superb setting of Keats' “Ode to a Nightingale” for choir and cello premiered in May 2018 in Copenhagen by Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir and a new CD of three of his major cello works, Cello Libris,  was released on the BIS label in early 2020, featuring the Copenhagen Philharmonic under Lan Shui.  His song cycles, “Peter Quince at the Clavier” and “Sonnets from Neruda” premiered in March 2018 at the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna, and in October 2017 the Munich Philharmonic under James Gaffigan premiered his trumpet concerto, "CHASE," after the sculptures of Giacometti.  His cello sonata “FATHOMS” premiered at Carnegie Hall in  December 2015  and his “Winterleben” for horn, mezzo and piano (commissioned for Los Angeles Philharmonic principal horn, Andrew Bain), premiered in August 2015 as part of the 47th International Horn Symposium in Los Angeles.  Honoured by a number of residencies internationally, he has twice served as composer-in-residence at the Aaron Copland House and is winner of 2017 Mario Merz Prize for Music Composition. In 2018, he was commissioned by the Curie Institute in Paris, part of the Muse-IC project. A new chamber work, featuring musicians from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, premiered at the  Salle Cortot Theatre in Paris in March, 2019. 

Future performances and commissions include new works for the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Brussels Philharmonic and many others.

Find more links to Geoffrey Gordon's music, as well as bio and reviews etc. at www.geoffreygordoncomposer.com

NEW CD, Cello Libris, out on BIS Records!  
Find it here:
https://bis.se/performers/moldrup-toke/cello-libris-works-by-geoffrey-gordon

for more information please visit: 
https://ashkanbehzadi.com

Contact: 
behzadi.ashkan@gmail.com

Ashkan Behzadi, a recipient of 2025 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize and a 2021–2022 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, is an Iranian-Canadian composer based in New York. He earned his DMA in composition at Columbia University, where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Georg Friedrich Haas. Prior to this, he graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s degree in composition and music theory, studying composition with Chris Paul Harman and Brian Cherney. Ashkan also holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Tehran University, where, at the same time, he took composition and music theory lessons with Alireza Mashayekhi.
Ashkan’s music has been commissioned and performed by various international performers and ensembles, including Ensemble Recherche, TAK Ensemble, Oerknal Ensemble, Ensemble Mosaik, Yarn/Wire, JACK Quartet, Grossman Ensemble, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Alternance, Ensemble UnitedBerlin, Exaudi, Ekmeles, Wet Ink, Talea Ensemble, and le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM). 
His work has also been recognized with awards, artist residencies, and participation in festivals such as the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Sommer Second Prize, the Prix de Composition at Fontainebleau, the MacDowell Fellowship, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Divertimento Ensemble Composers Meeting, the Dialoge Festival at Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, the Manifeste Festival at IRCAM, and the CIRMMT New Music Series.
For the 2019–2020 academic year, Ashkan Behzadi joined the Department of Music at the University of Chicago as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Center for Contemporary Composition. Since september 2023, he teaches at the Manhattan School of Music as a faculty member in Music Composition.
The issue of genre identity or genre-blurring, along with the dialectical relationship between modernist lyric poetry and contemporary music, has formed the core of Ashkan’s aesthetic concerns in recent years. Structurally, his music demonstrates a great attention to detail, conveying a miniaturist and gentle lyrical landscape. By employing techniques of allusion and pastiche as the foundation of his craft, his music ultimately seeks to invoke the collective memory of folklore music.

I’m Rafael Hernandez, a composer, teacher, and self-proclaimed nerd with a passion for creativity and education. Thanks for listening!

Kenneth Lieberson is a composer of symphonies, concertos, ballets, cantatas, tone poems, opera, chamber music, songs. His music has been heard on National Public Radio, at The Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, Queens College, NYU, Stony Brook, CAMI Hall, Merkin Hall and at high and middle schools. His B. M. and M. M. are from Juilliard. He also earned an M.B.A. at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Mr. Lieberson has also written two novellas, dozens of short stories and hundreds of poems.  He illustrated some of these.

New tracks tagged #Clarinet Concerto