PROGRAM
Toshi Ichiyanagi - Perspectives (1986)
for violin
Diderik Wagenaar - La Caccia (1996)
for trombone
Dorothy Rudd Moore - Moods (1969/2020)
for viola and cello
Paula Matthusen - forgiveness anthems (2010)
for flute and fixed media
Joanna Ward - I AM HOPING I DON'T MISS YOU (2020)
tutti
Mendi + Keith Obadike - Selections from Big House/Disclosure (2007)
tutti

On Friday, May 12, 2023, EO presents Perspectives and Disclosures, a concert organized by the group’s Curator and trombonist Chris McIntyre. The program reaches across stylistic, generational, and demographic difference to create a connective space for listening within the lovely acoustic of historic Speyer Hall at University Settlement House. The evening includes forthright, “composerly” works for solo and duo strings, respectively, by two important, recently passed contemporary music elders: Japanese avant-garde icon Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Perspectives (1986) for violin (Pala Garcia) and African-American composer and organizer Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Moods (1969/2020) for viola (Kal Sugatski) and cello (John Popham). The concert also features solo works by electro-acoustic composer-performer Paula Matthusen and beloved Dutch composer and educator Diderik Wagenaar. Matthusen’s forgiveness anthems (2010) for solo flute and fixed media, performed (and originally premiered) by EO flutist Margaret Lancaster, uses instrumental idiomatics and an ever-evolving electronic score to abstractly consider “...the many ways in which we ask for tiny, often inconsequential pardons throughout the day - from after accidentally running into someone on the sidewalk to asking a stranger for directions.” In the words of the composer, Wagenaar’s La Caccia (1996) is “...a ‘hunting call music’, not for a corno da caccia but a trombone… making such a noise that the lovely birds will escape before the guns of the hunters will be in operation.” Trombonist Chris McIntyre gives the US premiere performance. Finally, all five EO instrumentalists collaboratively interpret two divergently inspired graphic scores (see excerpts below.) I AM HOPING I DON'T MISS YOU (2020) by Joanna Ward, a rising, inventive compositional voice from the UK, is a pandemic era creation inspired by a poem by Ward’s sister. The visual language employed in the graphic scores of interdisciplinary artists Mendi and Keith Odabike’s Big House/Disclosure (2007) is “...inspired by Nigerian nsibidi writing, European music notation, and architectural drawings.” The scores were a core, activating aspect of the Obadike’s 2006 Northwestern University installation commission which was featured during a 2007 conference on slavery and the visual imagination.

PERSONNEL
Pala Garcia - violin
Kal Sugatski - viola
Margaret Lancaster - flute
Chris McIntyre - trombone, synth
John Popham - cello

A selection from Mendi+Keith Odabike’s
Big House/Disclosure (2007)

Excerpt from Joanna Ward’s I AM HOPING I DON'T MISS YOU (2020)