Upcoming Events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Oran Etkin, clarinet

"Reimagining Benny Goodman"

Presented in honor of 

In Celebration of Paul Mellon

May 8, Sunday, 3:00 and 4:15

West Building, West Garden Court

Ariel Quartet, with Alon Goldstein, piano 

Music by Brahms and Mozart. Made

possible by the Gottesman Fund

in memory of Milton M. Gottesman

May 15, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Aphrodite Mitsopoulou, pianist

Music by Chopin, Liszt, Konstantinidis,

and Skalkottas. Cosponsored by the

Embassy of Greece for the European

Month of Culture

May 19, Thursday, 12:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Jenny Scheinman's 

Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait

Original score accompanying

a documentary

May 22, Sunday, 4:30 

East Building Auditorium

Winners of the 2016 Joseph and Goldie

Feder Memorial String Competition

and Misbin Family Memorial Chamber

Music Competition

Presented in cooperation with

Washington Performing Arts

June 5, Sunday, 2:00 and 4:00

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed. 

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the 

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2076 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cover William H. Johnson, Blind Singer (detail),

c. 1940, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr

Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation

74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

MAY 1, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

PostClassical Ensemble 

Angel Gil-Ordonez, music director

Min Xiao-fen, pipa, ruan, voice

David Taylor, bass trombone

Daniel Schnyder, saxophone

Matt Herskowitz, piano

Part One: Trans-Atlantic

Daniel Schnyder (b. 1961)

Alodin: Tales from Another Time (2002)

Schnyder

Worlds Beyond (1999)

Schnyder

Blues for Schubert (1999)

Schnyder/Kurt Weill (1900-1950)

Zuhaelter Ballade from Threepenny Opera

Schnyder/George Gershwin (1898-1937)

The Half of It Deary Blues

Schnyder

Trio for soprano saxophone, bass trombone, and piano (1996)

2 • National Gallery of Art

Schnyder/Robert Stolz (1880-1975)

Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt

Schnyder/George Gershwin 

Let Them Eat Cake

Schnyder/Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Around the World (Seid umschlungen, Millionen)* (2006)

Intermission

Part Two: Trans-Pacific

Min Xiao-fen/Thelonious Monk (1917-1982)

Misterioso

Schnyder

Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra** (2016)

*American premiere

**World premiere performance, and co-commissioned by

PostClassical Ensemble and the Pacific Symphony
The Musicians

PostClassical Ensemble, called "one of the country's most innovative music groups"

(Philip Kennicott) and "wildly ambitious" (Anne Midgette), was founded in 2003 by Angel 

Gil-Ordonez and Joseph Horowitz as an experimental orchestral laboratory. PostClassical 

Ensemble programming is thematic and cross-disciplinary, typically incorporating art, 

film, dance, or theater, exploring unfamiliar works and composers, or recontextualizing

standard repertoire. The topic of music and film has long been a PostClassical Ensemble

specialty. With the National Gallery of Art Film Division, PostClassical Ensemble has

produced a festival of films scored by Shostakovich (with the participation of Tony Palmer

and Solomon Volkov), a full day of "Stravinsky on Film" (including the American premiere

of Richard Leacock's A Stravinsky Portrait), and many other such events.

Daniel Schnyder and David Taylor are both artists long associated with PostClassical

Ensemble. Schnyder was born in Zurich in 1961 and now lives in Harlem (Manhattan). He

grew up "in a family that listened to only classical music." He also acquired a passion for

jazz. His vast catalog of compositions includes commissions from New York's Orpheus

Chamber Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin

Philharmonic, Vienna's Tonkunster Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin (for

which he was composer-in-residence), Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra, and the Bern Opera.

His Charlie Parker opera, Yardbird, was premiered by Opera Philadelphia last season; this

summer, it is presented by the Lincoln Center Festival at the Apollo Theatre. A saxophonist,

Schnyder tours with a trio that includes David Taylor and Matt Herskowitz; their repertoire

includes Bach, Wagner, Gershwin, and Ellington.

Min Xiao-fen has expanded her instrument's possibilities as an element in contemporary composition, exploring extended techniques for free improvisation and full-on

noise. On her latest solo set, Mao, Monk and Me, she investigates deep and unexpected

connections between the jazz standards of Thelonious Monk and Chinese music. In 2013- 

2014, she blended the work of Buck Clayton, a leading member of Count Basie's Old

Testament orchestra, and Li Jinhui, the father of Chinese popular music; the result was

her composition From Harlem to Shanghai and Back, performed by her Blue Pipa Trio. Born

in Nanjing, Xiao-fen learned to play the pipa from her father, a respected professor and

pipa master. At the age seventeen, she was selected by the Nanjing Traditional Music

Orchestra and spent over ten years as its principal pipa soloist. She moved to the United

States in 1992. Her previous appearances with PostClassical Ensemble have included a

world premiere of Zhou Long's Abschied, in 2007. Xiao-fen has also performed as a soloist

with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New Haven

Symphony, Amiens Chamber Orchestra (France), and Nieuw Ensemble (Holland).

4 • National Gallery of Art

While studying at Juilliard, David Taylor was a member of Leopold Stokowski's 

American Symphony, and occasionally played with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre

Boulez. Shortly after, he joined the Thad Jones Jazz band. Taylor recorded with Duke Ellington

and with the Rolling Stones. He has since been closely associated with the Chamber Music

Society of Lincoln Center, the Gil Evans Big Band, and the Charles Mingus Big Band. Taylor

has performed chamber music with Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, and Itzhak Perlman. Alan 

Hovhaness, Charles Wuorinen, George Perle, and Frederic Rzewski —important composers 

from all points of the compass—have all composed for him. Daniel Schnyder's Boss Trombone

Concerto —composed for Taylor and performed by PostClassical Ensemble in 2010 —is today

the most performed concerto for that instrument.

Matt Herskowitz's newest release, for Justin Time Records, is Matt Herskowitz

Upstairs, a solo outing ranging from Gershwin to Schumann, to Dave Brubeck and originals

by Herskowitz, including Bella's Lament and Bach a la Jazz, his arrangement of Bach's

Prelude in C Minor, which Herskowitz previously recorded for EMI's Grammy-nominated

soundtrack to The Triplets of Belleville. In naming the release "Solo Album of the Year,” Le

Devoir declared: "Herskowitz deploys his art with a rare passion, but without ever sacrificing

musicality. Exceptional technique, precise sense of nuance, Herskowitz here brilliantly fuses

his mastery of jazz and classical." Downbeat magazine praised Upstairs in its Editor's Picks:

"Throughout these eight tracks, [Herskowitz] displays touch, power, artistry and chops 

along with a firm grasp of the daring needed for a great performance."

Netanel Draiblate, concertmaster

Simon Gollo, violin

Philippe Chao, viola

Ben Capps, cello

Brent Edmondson, bass

Adria Foster, flute

Fatma Daglar, oboe

Joseph di Luccio, English horn

David Jones, clarinet

Noah Getz, bass clarinet

Sue Heineman, bassoon

Sam Blair, contrabassoon

Dan Wions, horn

Woodrow English, trumpet

Terry Bingham, trumpet

Lee Rogers, trombone

Bill Richards, percussion

John Spirtas, percussion

Audrey Andrist, piano

74th Season * 5
Program Notes

The term "classical music," as used in the United States to distinguish concert music and

opera from popular and vernacular genres, originated in the mid-nineteenth century with

such writers as Boston's John Sullivan Dwight, editor of Dwight's Journal of Music. Dwight's

definition was value-laden— "classical music" designated the supreme stratum of musical 

expression. Dwight called Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" —the century's most

popular American composition —a "melodic itch."

This understanding of "classical music" is impossible today. It penalizes non-Western

music. And it penalizes the signature creative achievement of American music of the midtwentieth century: jazz. Today's musical landscape, which I call "PostClassical," is wide, varied,

and level; it does not rank one form of musical experience over another. In the concert hall,

a lot of the most significant activity now occurs when different types of music interact. 

PostClassical Ensemble's current American Music season presents music by Lou Harrison 

(who absorbed Javanese gamelan) —and also Daniel Schnyder, born in Switzerland in 1961

and now a resident of Harlem in New York City. The Schnyder music we hear today, moreover,

celebrates Kurt Weill and George Gershwin —also uncategorizable.

Such between-the-cracks composers used to be viewed with suspicion in American

classical music circles. Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was initially patronized as a dilettante

stab. During his lifetime, Duke Ellingon was denied the Pulitzer Prize because his music

lacked a "classical" pedigree. But those days are done.

Daniel Schnyder, being European-born, came to American music without the prejudices once afflicting American classical musicians. His formal training in Zurich, in

flute and composition, was rigorously "classical." But he equally absorbed the influence

of jazz. He says:

There's a big change happening right now, a change leading back to

where classical music began. Bach and Mozart were improvisers.

If you wanted to get a job as a chamber musician in the eighteenth

century, you had to improvise — otherwise, no job. So your creative

potential was tested. Nowadays in classical music, people don't even

improvise their cadenzas anymore. We have now a separation between

the performer and the composer; musicians reproduce music. I don't 

want to put that down, it creates fantastic results. But the value of trying

to combine these separate worlds that belong together — it's enormous.

For one thing, it increases the power to reach an audience —a kind of

power we've lost to popular music and to sports. Look at someone like

Mick Jagger or Michael Jackson — his music, his band, his sound had

a combined power that absorbed and fascinated audiences because it

emanated from one individual. I think we are going back to a time when

music was something holistic.

A lot of the music I compose adapts the compositions of great artists of

the past, trying to find ways to express myself through their music. This is

nothing new. Schoenberg did it, Busoni did it, lots of important composers did it. But for many decades, this practice of adaptation and transcription was put down. When Stokowski transcribed Bach, it was denounced

almost as a crime. Now, however, transcriptions are coming back.

National Gallery of Art

My training as a composer was traditional, and included the contrapuntal

practices of Renaissance composers. And my own music incorporates

canons, canons in inversion, proportional canons. This aspect of composition—counterpoint—was central to the composer's art for a long time.

Schubert was still studying counterpoint when he was already an accomplished great composer. In my opinion, today's concert music is often

more about colors, rhythms, effects —there's a certain lack of contrapuntal

interest. I also value enormously ethnomusicology. It's something I got

involved in because of an opportunity to work with musicians in Lebanon

and Jordan. I go to the source — African musicians, Chinese musicians.

It's much easier than going to a library and looking for the right books.

Of the Schnyder works we hear this afternoon, the Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra

was co-commissioned by PostClassical Ensemble and California's Pacific Symphony as

a concerto vehicle for the remarkable pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-fen. Schnyder's 1999 Bass

Trombone Concerto, for David Taylor, demonstrates an exceptional capacity to compose

for an instrumentalist with specific gifts. Xiao-fen deserves such a vehicle. Hence the 

commission. Schnyder writes:

The concerto is in three continuous movements. The main first movement theme, played initially by the orchestra alone, has an exotic quality;

you hear quarter tones and extended harmonies that do not have roots

in Western music. At the same time, the thematic material develops in

dramatic Western fashion, leading (after the entrance of the pipa) to 

a second, more meditative ideal. Here the pipa plays a singing, serpentine melody over an ever-changing 7/4 pattern. This leads to a feeling

of suspense. The music hovers. Next, the percussion and pipa discuss

the first theme, trying to find their way back to the movement's initial 

ideas. Finally we return to the main theme and explore it with soloist

and orchestra playing together.

The first movement is followed by a cadenza, a transition that restores

a calmer atmosphere, with different meters superimposed. The center

of gravity is again not defined and we experience a feeling of suspense.

After this section, we connect musically to the first half of today's program.

There follows a homage to George Gershwin. American musical inventions, the new aesthetics of the twentieth century, can be heard mixed

with exotic pipa colors.

The concerto's finale is dominated by the idea of combining rhythmic 

subdivisions in three and in two. The resulting rhythms have an African

quality. This movement has a rondo character and incorporates a homage

to Kurt Weill. Toward the end material from the first movement is superimposed, creating a polyrhythmic texture that intensifies and returns to

the concerto's initial ideas.

Program notes by Joseph Horowitz

74th Season • 7