Kaamos

Grey Fireworks, for violin and piano (2022)

Duo Concertante (after Helen Frankenthaler)

First performance on the 1st of September 2022 at Lukaskirche Kirchensaal, Luzern, Switzerland by Samuel Nebyu (violin) and Charles Abramovic (piano) as a part of the Summer Festival of Lucerne Festival 2022

Grey Fireworks is a work that is a response to a painting of the same name by the American abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. The composition, like the painting, moves quickly through various moods, colors, and gestures. The immense motion, choice of colors, and seemingly improvisational burst of bright hues of the painting enabled the composition’s structure and capricious quality that certain gestures have in the work. Grey Fireworks was commissioned by the I & I Foundation for
Samuel Nebyu (violin) and Charles Abramovic (piano) as part of the Summer Festival of Lucerne Festival 2022.

Grey Fireworks, for violin and piano (2022) | Samuel Nebyu (violin)

Year of Composition: 2012
Nick Diodore, Cello and Chester Englander, Cimbalom live in Cleveland, OH
No Exit Ensemble concert, 2019
Commissioned by Andre Emelianoff
Saint Elizabeth Bells is a duet for cello and cimbalom honouring the memory of Sándor András Agócs (1932-2011)
About the piece:
Saint Elizabeth Bells takes its inspiration from bell sounds of the Saint Elizabeth Cathedral in central Budapest. The cathedral is named after Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a Catholic saint who served the sick. The piece was written in memory of my father, Sándor Agócs (1932-2011). He spent his final days over Easter in Saint Elizabeth Hospital, which stands next to the cathedral. His room faced the cathedral, and through the open windows he would have heard, in semi-consciousness, the tolling bells drifting and resonating. Every phrase of the work’s nine-minute trajectory comes out of the natural intervals of the bell sounds as I mis-remember (and imagine) them, with the purest version—and the part that I composed first—heard near the end. The piece is not mournful, but has a light, evanescent, delicate quality. Inhabiting a meditative space populated with memories just out of reach, the work is a dialogue of colours in which time is suspended. Saint Elizabeth Bells was commissioned by the New York-based cellist André Emelianoff, who encouraged me to explore my Hungarian roots by writing a piece that included the cimbalom, the concert hammered dulcimer, in its scoring. Those roots originate with my father, who came from a family of watermelon farmers—the first of his family to be educated—and who fled the county as a political refugee after the 1956 uprising. The work was premiered by Paul Katz and Nicholas Tolle on the New England Conservatory’s First Monday series in 2013, and is about ten minutes in duration.

-	Kati Agócs

http://www.katiagocs.com

Saint Elizabeth Bells (Violoncello and Cimbalom)

For Orchestra (2222/221/2Perc/Pn/Hp/Strings)
Year of Composition: 2008
Score available at:
http://www.katiagocs.com

Requiem Fragments (Orchestra)

For Ten Musicians: Three Female Singers, Three Percussionists, Piano, Harp, Violin, and Cello 
From the album: 'The Debrecen Passion'
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Sonja Tengblad, Margot Rood, and Katherine Growdon, vocal soloists
Year of Composition: 2011
Commissioned by Meet the Composer for Metropolis Ensemble, New York
Score available at:
https://www.tfront.com/p-474121-vessel-for-ten-musicians-2011.aspx#474121

A recording of Vessel is featured on "The Debrecen Passion", an album released on the BMOP/Sound Label in January 2016.

Vessel's three female voices each embody different sides of a lover addressing her beloved. The result is a polytextual motet -- in the spirit of Renaissance macaronic motets that used simultaneous settings of texts in multiple languages, often to mask hidden meanings. Each voice sings a distinct text in a distinct language, and each text is a different manifestation of the idea of a Vessel.  Let us imagine that the beloved is from another culture; in an attempt to forge a rapprochement, one adopts the beloved’s language, or learns to speak in his tongue. The three poems in Hebrew, English, and Latin each complement each other and enlarge each other’s resonances. The setting of each text has its own rhythmic metabolism and intervallic palette. In the well-known Cummings text ‘i carry your heart(i carry it in)’ the poet becomes a physical vessel; the Jehuda Halevi text functions as a vessel itself, rhapsodically enticing the beloved into a garden, and culminating in a Song of Songs quote (‘my beloved is mine, and I am his’). The Latin text, a fragment from a Catullus poem, boasts about the speed and reliability of a sea vessel - a boat which can be viewed as a symbol of love and prowess as it carries the man back from faraway foreign lands.  

-Kati Agócs

Vessel (Ten Musicians)

Milton Babbitt / Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998)
Conor Hanick, piano solo / Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor / The Juilliard Orchestra
Recorded Live, Alice Tully Hall / January 2016

Milton Babbitt / Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998)

“Still Here” explores the idea of trespassing from the perspective of emotionally abusive relationships where there’s an intrusion of personal space and a boundary violation within a complex loving relationship. It considers contradictory feelings of loss, love, frustration, desperation, guilt and codependency and the role of trauma in people’s lives. - AN

Still Here - Angélica Negrón

The interview was conducted in Helen Frankenthaler's East 83rd Street studio in New York City on November 27, 1988. In the interview, Susan Stamberg describes the final painting scene in the film "Toward a New Climate" by Perry Miller Adato, and describes Frankenthaler's studio. Frankenthaler discusses visiting the Museum of Modern Art as a young person, a photo of Claude Monet in his studio working on his Water Lilies series, making paintings in private, Jackson Pollock's influence on developing her soak-stain technique, and the first painting she sold.

©1988 National Public Radio, Inc. News report titled “Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler” was originally broadcast on NPR’s Weekend Edition on November 27, 1988, and is used with the permission of NPR. Any unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, "Sphinx," 1976, acrylic on canvas, 105 x 114 inches. © 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

@NPR #WeekendEdition #nprweekend
#SusanStamberg #artistinterview #helenfrankenthaler #helenfrankenthalerfoundation #TowardANewClimate @themuseumofmodernart #colorfieldpainting #abstractexpressionist

Helen Frankenthaler interviewed by Susan Stamberg for NPR’s Weekend Edition on November 27, 1988

Live recording of Katherine Balch's 'Trio' from Bearthoven: New Works 2019 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.

Katherine Balch - Trio

Pink Bird Figure II, 1961
Helen Frankenthaler
Oil on canvas
90 × 93 3/4 in. (228.6 × 238.1 cm)
© 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

ALICE WALTON: Another great American woman artist, slightly younger than Joan Mitchell is Helen Frankenthaler. And we actually have five fabulous Frankenthalers. They date from the mid-50s.

We have the beautiful Pink Bird [Figure II]. Frankenthaler developed a new painting technique that had never really been done in Europe or America, and it's called staining. Most artists prime their canvas and Frankenthaler did not prime her canvas. She would then thin her paints with turpentine and stain, not paint the canvas, which was an entirely new technique. Several of her cohorts such as Morris Louis, who you'll see in our galleries, also adopted this technique. But she was the one that really invented it. We worked for several years actually, with the Gagosian Gallery and the Frankenthaler estate to get a group of five paintings so that we have a great early abstract, you'll see in the contemporary galleries, a little tougher. And then these beautiful stained canvases that come later.

Pink Bird Figure II, Helen Frankenthaler - Staining

Tyson Gholston Davis (b.2000) is an American composer studying at The Juilliard School where is a recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship. Davis began composing at the age of eight years old and entered the University North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) as a high school freshman, studying with Lawrence Dillon. In the summer of 2019, Davis worked with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) and Antonio Pappano to premiere his work, Delicate Tension, a piece that was commissioned by the American Embassy in Berlin for the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The work was performed in Berlin, Edinburgh, and Hamburg. 

Since then, Davis has been a leading desired composer to be performed and commissioned by leading ensembles. He has been the recipient of more than 22 commissions by organizations such as; The Juilliard String Quartet, the Albany Symphony, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, WQXR (New York Public Radio), New York New Music Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, and various other groups and soloist. 

His recently finished work, Amorphous Figures (String Quartet No. 2) was commissioned by Da Camera Society of Houston, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Chamber Music Cincinnati for the Juilliard String Quartet. The work will be premiered in April of 2023. Currently, Davis is backed up with commissions until mid-2024 with works for soprano saxophone and piano (for Robert Young), wind quintet (for Zephyros winds), solo piano (Jonathan Biss), and several others. 

Tyson’s favorite classical composers include Beethoven, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, Unsuk Chin, and Jacob Druckman. He also loves the pop music of Marvin Gaye, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, and many others. He lives in Washington Heights, NYC, and enjoys frequent walks in Fort Tryon Park.

Grey Fireworks, for violin and piano (2022) | Samuel Nebyu (violin)

Tyson Gholston Davis

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