76TH SEASON OF CONCERTS

OCTOBER 22, 2017 / NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
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Program

Voices of the Ocean 

Lina Bahn, violin

Matt Haimovitz, cello

Artichoke Dance Company

Lynn Neuman, choreographer and costumes 

Aidan Feldman, dancer

Maya Orchin, dancer 

Melissa Tuckey, poet

OCTOBER 22, 2017 / 3:30

WEST BUILDING, WEST GARDEN COURT

Adam Borecki (b. 1990)

Proteus: I. Proteus, Old Man of the Sea

(A reimagining of Vivaldi’s Double Concerto, RV 544)

Jordan Nelson (b. 1984)

Vox Submersi (A reimagining of George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

Prelude, Suite no.1 in G Major, BWV 1007, for solo cello

Philip Glass (b. 1937)

Duo

Melissa Tuckey (b. 1966)

Poems: “After the Rain” and “Requiem”

Adam Borecki

Proteus: II. The World Turned Upside Down

Daniel Wohl (b. 1980)

Disappearance: for violin and electronics

Steve Antosca (b. 1955)

the Sound ~ sea beyond the stars

Adam Borecki

Proteus: III. Protean

Artichoke Dance Company, Photo by Stephen Delas Heras
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The Performers

LINA BAHN 

Lina Bahn is a violinist with a keen interest in collaborative and innovative repertoire. 

She was a member of the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, and was the executive 

director and violinist with the VERGE Ensemble in Washington, DC. Currently, Bahn 

is a member of the Interference Collective at the American University Museum and a 

founding member of MoVE, a violin quartet dedicated to social change. In June 2016, 

Naxos released her solo album, Mean Fiddle Summer. Bahn has performed at Carnegie 

Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, and The Stone. As a guest with the Takács 

Quartet, she performed at the Concertgebouw, Strathmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, 

and Queen Elizabeth Hall. A committed educator, Bahn has taught master classes 

throughout the world, including at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore, 

the Sydney Conservatory, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Royal Conservatory 

of Music in Toronto. From 2008 to 2014, she served on the faculty at the University 

of Colorado, Boulder, and she currently teaches at the Thornton School of Music at 

the University of Southern California. 

MATT HAIMOVITZ

Renowned as a musical pioneer, cellist Matt Haimovitz has inspired classical music 

lovers and countless new listeners by bringing his artistry to concert halls and clubs, 

outdoor festivals and intimate coffeehouses—any place where passionate music 

can be heard. He brings a fresh ear to familiar repertoire, champions new music, 

and initiates groundbreaking collaborations. Besides his relentless touring schedule 

and dedication to creating innovative recording projects, Haimovitz mentors an 

award-winning studio of young cellists at McGill University’s Schulich School of 

Music. Haimovitz made his debut in 1984, at the age of thirteen, as soloist with 

Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. He made his Carnegie Hall debut when 

he substituted for his teacher, the legendary Leonard Rose, in Schubert’s String 

Quintet in C, alongside Isaac Stern, Shlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zukerman, and Mstislav 

Rostropovich. Born in Israel, Haimovitz has been honored with the Avery Fisher 

Career Grant (1986), the Grand Prix du Disque (1991), and the Diapason d’Or 

(1991). He is the first cellist ever to receive the prestigious Premio Internazionale 

“Accademia Musicale Chigiana” (1999). Haimovitz studied at the Collegiate School 

and the Juilliard School in New York, and in 1996, received a bachelor of arts, magna 

cum laude, from Harvard University. 

ARTICHOKE DANCE COMPANY 

Known for humorous theatrical athleticism, Artichoke Dance Company confronts 

contemporary social issues with intellect and wit, forwards thinking collaborations, and 

initiates integrative community programs. It engages audiences locally and globally 

by creating movements that merge arts and environmental activism. The company’s 

collaborative work with scientists, architects, visual artists, composers, musicians, 

designers, and filmmakers has resulted in groundbreaking, layered works that lace 

environmental awareness with dancing poetry. Artichoke Dance is committed to 

upcycling materials headed to landfills for their productions. Water, a fundamental 

element of life, is a main focus of the company. For their work at the National Gallery 

of Art, the dancers embody energetic qualities of water and its life-giving force. 

Continuing the company’s tradition of working with recycled materials, the dance 

features costumes created from plastic bags. 

LYNN NEUMAN

As artistic and executive director of Artichoke Dance Company, Lynn Neuman’s 

choreography has been presented across the United States and in Canada, Australia, 

and Korea. Her site-specific work has engaged thousands in the area of arts and 

environmental activism. She is sought after for her workshops and lectures in sustainability and for engaging communities. In addition to dance, Neuman works in theater, 

opera, and film, and is a coproducer of Culture Club, performance events that bring 

together artists of diverse backgrounds to create cultural bridges. She serves as 

committee chair of 350Brooklyn Partnership and also as a member of the leadership 

committee for GetOrganizedBK. She is a coordinator for the American Littoral 

Society Coastal Clean Up.

AIDAN FELDMAN

Computer programmer by day, dancer by night, Aidan Feldman has been working 

with Artichoke Dance since 2010, as well as with Chavasse Dance and Performance, 

DanceTactics Performance Group, and the Barkin/Selissen Project. He gives talks 

and organizes meetups around New York City about learning to code and teaches 

programming at New York University. When not dancing or nerding, Feldman can 

be found whizzing around the streets of New York on his bicycle.

MAYA ORCHIN

Dancer Maya Orchin began working with Artichoke Dance in 2012 and has also 

performed with Luis Lara Malvacías, Maurice Fraga, Kristin Swiat, and Danielle 

Russo. Her choreography has been presented at Quartiers Danses in Montreal and by 

Die Elektroschuhe at Dock 11 in Berlin. It has been shown in New York at the 92nd 

Street Y, DUMBO Dance Festival, and the Red Lotus Room. Most recently she has 

performed in the European tour of Room 29 with Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales.
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Poet and Composers

MELISSA TUCKEY

Poet Melissa Tuckey is the author of Tenuous Chapel, which won the ABZ First Book 

Prize, selected by Charles Simic (2013). Her poems have appeared in numerous 

journals, including the Beloit Poetry Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Phoebe, Poetry 

International, and Poet Lore. Tuckey has received support from the Fine Arts Work 

Center, the Ohio Arts Council, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. 

She is a cofounder of Split This Rock, a national poetry organization dedicated to 

socially engaged poetry. She currently lives in Ithaca, New York.

ADAM BORECKI

Composer and guitarist Adam Borecki is based in Los Angeles and teaches at Chapman 

University. His compositions range from string quartets to electro-swing EDM (electronic dance music). He specializes in music with unique compositional techniques 

to create an engaging concert experience. In his music, Borecki seeks to compose 

with a balance of theoretical processes and intuitive musicality. His works frequently 

utilize electronics, and his music is stylistically diverse, drawing from a wide array of 

influences. His awards include the Gluck Foundation Fellowship (University of Southern California), second place in the Boston GuitarFest Composition Competition, 

and a commission for the Third Angle New Music Ensemble in Portland, Oregon. 

JORDAN NELSON

Jordan Nelson is a composer of instrumental, vocal, electronic, and electro-acoustic 

music. His compositions have been performed by Contemporaneous, Yale Schola 

Cantorum, and the Thornton Chamber Singers. Nelson’s recent projects have 

included music for soprano and string quartet (Tender Buttons) and a commissioned 

work for the Los Angeles piano duo HOCKET (Slow the Light). Nelson earned his 

master’s degree in composition from the University of Southern California Thornton 

School of Music in 2009, and his bacherlor’s degree in music from Yale University 

in 2006. His primary composition teachers have included Donald Crockett, Stephen 

Hartke, Frank Ticheli, and Kathryn Alexander. Nelson currently teaches at the 

Colburn Conservatory, Los Angeles. 

PHILIP GLASS

Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and 

intellectual life of his times. Glass was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He 

studied at the University of Chicago and the Julliard School, and in Aspen with Darius 

Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern 

music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia 

Boulanger and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. 

He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble—seven 

musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds that were amplified and fed 

through a mixer.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a 

composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based 

on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant, melodic fragments that wove in and 

out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort 

of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, and develops.

There has been nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past twenty-five 

years, Glass has composed more than twenty operas, eight symphonies, two piano 

concertos, additional concertos for violin, timpani, saxophone quartet, and orchestra, 

soundtracks to films, string quartets, and a growing body of work for solo piano 

and organ. 

DANIEL WOHL

Born and raised in Paris, and currently living in Los Angeles, Daniel Wohl has been 

called one of his generation’s “imaginative, skillful creators” (New York Times), making 

work that is “provocative and surprising” (NPR) and “beautiful...original” (Pitchfork). 

His music blends electronics with acoustic instrumentation and has been performed 

at Carnegie Hall, MoMa PS1, and with the San Francisco Symphony. Current projects include new pieces for the Calder Quartet and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 

In January 2016, Wohl’s latest album was released on New Amsterdam Records. 

Commissioned by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Indianapolis 

Museum of Art, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series, and the 

Baryshnikov Arts Center, the music was deemed “aggressive and gorgeous” by NPR, 

with an electroacoustic blend that was “expertly handled” (Pitchfork).

STEVE ANTOSCA

The music of American composer Steve Antosca focuses on the blending of instruments with computers for audio processing and spatialization. The Washington Post

has described his work as “spectacular, wonderfully provocative” and “a shimmering, 

multilayered sea of sound, surging with power under a surface of delicate detail—a 

fascinating dance between the human players and their electronic ghosts.” Antosca 

has received awards and commissions from the American Composers Forum, the 

Kennedy Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2010 to 2015, 

Antosca was artistic director of the National Gallery of Art’s New Music Ensemble. 

In 2015, he was appointed curator for New Music-in-Residence at the American 

University Museum.
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Program Notes

 “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.”—Benjamin Franklin

Water, water, water. It’s the sustenance of life. Oceans make up 96.5 percent of all the 

water on earth, and an estimated 50–80 percent of all life on earth is found under the 

ocean’s surface. The program today is a musical response to the staggering statistics 

and the reality of human impact on our oceans. Through this musical lens, we hope 

that you will rediscover and reimagine the beauty of our Earth’s greatest resource.*

• 1.4 billion pounds of trash per year enter the ocean and more 

than 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris are in the ocean.

• By 2050, our oceans will hold more plastic than fish.

• Plastic is the number one source of pollution in the ocean. 

It does not degrade; it breaks down into progressively smaller 

pieces but never disappears.

• 150 million tons of plastic are made each year for singleuse items such as grocery bags, sandwich bags, and water 

bottles, and more than 8 million tons are dumped in our 

oceans every year.

• The process of producing bottled water requires around 

6 times as much water per bottle as there is in the container, 

and 14 percent of all litter comes from beverage containers.

• Over 1 million seabirds, 300,000 dolphins and porpoises, 

and 100,000 other sea mammals are killed in the ocean by 

pollution each year. 

• The North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California (an island 

of garbage twice the size of Texas) is the largest oceanic 

garbage site in the world.

*Sources for the bulleted list include: marinebio.org, noaa.gov, nationalgeographic.com, 

plasticoceans.org, conserve-energy-future.com, usatoday.com.

PROTEUS: I. PROTEUS, OLD MAN OF THE SEA

(A REIMAGINING OF ANTONIO VIVALDI’S DOUBLE CONCERTO, RV 544)

Last year, Lina Bahn contacted me with a unique challenge: She and Matt Haimovitz 

were designing a program of music for violin, cello, and electronics. My task was 

essentially to reorchestrate Vivaldi’s Double Concerto, reinterpreting the accompaniment by replacing the orchestra with electronics. Vivaldi’s Double Concerto in 

F Major, RV 544 was published with the subtitle: Il Proteo ò sia il mondo al rovescio 

(Proteus, or the World Turned Upside-Down). I used that as inspiration and added 

subtitles of my own to each of the three movements. Movement one, which I call 

Proteus, Old Man of the Sea, uses water sounds as source material. Proteus is a Greek 

god of rivers and oceans. The electronic accompaniment submerges Vivaldi’s string 

orchestra in an aural bath of streams, lakes, and oceans. Movement two, dubbed 

The World Turned Upside Down, is created using only recordings of improvisations by 

Matt Haimovitz and Lina Bahn. In RV 544, Vivaldi writes invertible music for the 

soloists: the violinist and cellist could swap parts, playing an octave lower or higher 

as needed. In the electronics, I interpreted “Upside Down” horizontally, rather 

than vertically. The sounds produced are often created by reversing and altering 

the timing of the original recording. The subtitle I gave movement three is Protean, 

adj.—tending or able to change frequently, versatile (paraphrased from the Oxford 

English Dictionary). This adjective is derived from “Proteus,” referring to the 

volatile, changing nature of the Greek god. The electronic accompaniment interprets 

this as constantly changing the listening location: you’ll experience Vivaldi’s Allegro 

played on a vinyl record, in a concert hall, in a noisy arena, and jamming in a practice 

room. Program note by Adam Borecki

VOX SUBMERI

(A REIMAGINING OF GEORGE CRUMB’S VOX BALAENAE) 

Vox Submersi (Submerged Voice) is a piece for violin, cello, and electronics, based on 

George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale). Vox Submersi imagines that a flood 

destroyed the original piece, and that the music of Crumb’s work only exists now 

underwater, floating like detritus on the ocean currents. As if in a submarine, the violin 

and the cello lead us on an exploration of the wreckage. All of the electronic sounds in 

Vox Submersi come from manipulations and recreations of Crumb’s original work.

As the environmental movement took hold in the late 1960s and early 1970s, 

and “Save the Whales” became more than just a bumper sticker, Crumb’s groundbreaking Vox Balaenae provided a distinct musical voice to this cause while creating a 

richly vivid landscape (or seascape) of sound and texture. Crumb puts the contemporary relationship between man and whale on a much broader scale, painting a picture 

that encapsulates the vast spans of history that predate man’s interaction with the sea 

and its marine life before introducing the inevitable conflict. This chronological 
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musical journey touches upon elements of science, history, religion, and existential 

philosophy, as well as various moral and ethical questions. The players each wear 

black half-masks throughout the performance of the work. In Crumb’s own words, 

“By effacing a sense of human projection, [the masks] will symbolize the powerful, 

impersonal faces of nature,” while the oft-used blue lighting enhances the figurative 

immersion into the sea. Although inspired by recordings of humpback whale song, 

Crumb bypasses the use of tape and instead calls upon the three musicians to produce 

sounds naturally aided by amplification and extended technique, allowing for a 

remarkable range in dynamics, color, and emotion. Program note by Jordan Nelson

POEMS

After the Rain

A windblown hemlock

slows you to consider 

your own feet

How you stood upright

in a world soon to be leveled

Lawn chairs thrown

by an angry wind

Weather set loose

Night-house unmoored 

from the dreaming world

everything unlatched 

Requiem

Unable to sleep 

the blankets wrapped in waves, waves

as tall as dreams, 

the dream world trying to make sense 

of the waking— 

Strange dream of flooded rivers,

entire cities underwater. Look how the dead float,

hair blossoming on the surface, 

and the daily hustle into streets filled with water, 

going to get bread,

going to get gasoline, and the dogs

tied to lampposts, and the elders, 

in chest-high water, waiting for rescue. And always

the water rising, and we never know

who it will take next—except that some houses 

are more sturdy than others,

and some rescues come quicker, or not at all.

Remember when our beds were filled

with oil—the sea was whispering from an open door

as that viscous dark came spilling

up and out and into every crevice of our dreams

how many days it gushed, all over our newspapers,

into our laundry and hair, how it covered our hands

and it wouldn’t wash out? We couldn’t sleep at night.

And the President ate shrimp and said none of this, 

though tragic, should interrupt our dinner. 

We who crawled once to these shores, having risen 

from single cells on the ocean floor, 

now standing in the midst of an invented world.

Each morning, we step into our clothes, 

light the stove for breakfast, and those of us 

with privilege, we gas up and go. 

We who once had no claws, no hands,

no way of grasping what we desired. 

And the waters keep seeping back in.
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Look how carefully zookeepers pack up 

those dolphins, airlifting them to safety,

massages to ease the stress.

After the flooding

the houses so weak they are crumbling,

and before the flooding also. 

Elsewhere drought brings flame.

Fires consuming the west coast 

of our country. Easy breathing only when 

the wind is blowing the other direction

firefighters fighting to protect

the houses as animals come screaming

from the flames. Give them water, 

foresters beg, let them recover.

A friend wants to know how to teach a writing 

workshop about trees when all the trees 

are burning, smoke so thick

she cannot be outdoors.

Another hides in his closet, trying to read Rumi

as the hurricane approaches.

Still another has tattooed “resist” on her arm.

Give me a dog who isn’t drowning,

A tree not in flames. 

A flag that is not betrayal.

Teach me how to build an ark big enough 

for everyone who needs rescue. 

DISAPPEARANCE

Disappearance: for violin and electronics examines the process of memory and recall 

through a principal, recurring theme that is transformed each time it returns. The 

piece opens with the theme in its simplest iteration and reappears in increasingly 

modified and mutated forms—a similar but new configuration of notes—after being 

confronted by a series of contrasting musical sections. The piece augments the natural 

process of memory distortion by allowing the melody to be influenced and transformed by its surrounding circumstances each time it is recalled; just as our ears are 

naturally inclined to hear the recurring theme differently after each interpolation, 

so does the piece reinterpret the melody line, literally “remembering” it differently. 

Disappearance is a meditation on impermanence, recognizing that the melody will 

necessarily be transformed into something else just by existing in two different places 

in time. Program note by Daniel Wohl

the Sound ~ sea beyond the stars

As a young man in my twenties I spent many years in Alaska paddling the water 

ways of the Prince William Sound, “the Sound” as it was known. Its immensity, 

its near prehistoric vistas, natural abundance, and immeasurable richness in every 

manner, humbled the senses and charged the human spirit. Whether paddling the 

ocean alongside orcas or discovering the ancient, sun-bleached remains of a washedup orca skeleton, from primordial ocean depths to the heavens ignited by Northern 

lights whose fires danced in the night skies, the Sound gave bountifully from 

all winds of the compass rose. The Sound contains its own vocabulary of nature’s 

voices. Bald eagles screech while performing a pirouette through the sky; antiphonal 

night songs of humpback whales drift across calm waters. I often ask my companions: “Will you recognize the Prince William Sound when you hear it?”—the Sound 

~ sea beyond the stars is a personal reflection. Program note by Steve Antosca
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Upcoming Events of the SeventySixth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, all programs 

take place in the West Building, 

West Garden Court. —

Pomerium

Celebrating Bosch to Bloemaert: Early 

Netherlandish Drawings from the Museum 

Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

October 29, 3:30 —

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Octets by Jean Françaix 

and Franz Schubert

November 5, 3:30 —

The Crossing

With members of ICE

Music by Ted Hearne, David Lang, 

and Caroline Shaw

November 12, 3:30 —

Mantra Percussion

Michael Gordon, Timber

Celebrating Jackson Pollock’s Mural

November 19, 3:30 —

LACE (Living Art Collective Ensemble)

Salon-style concerts with music by 

Boccherini, Brillon, and Mozart

Celebrating Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures

November 24–25, 2:00 & 4:00

West Building, East Garden Court

New York Opera Society

The Three Lives of Rosina Almaviva

Celebrating Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures

November 26, 3:30 —

Inna Faliks and Daniel Schlosberg 

Gustav Mahler, Symphony no. 6, 

arranged for piano, four-hands, 

by Alexander von Zemlinsky

December 3, 3:30 —

Caroling in the Rotunda

December 9, 10, 16 & 17, 1:30 & 2:30 —

The Swiss-American Musical Society

Igor Stravinsky, The Soldier’s Tale

Christophe Sturzenegger,

The Snow Queen

Christophe Sturzenegger, conductor

Robert Baker, narrator

December 10, 3:30 —

Turtle Island Quartet

With special guest Liz Carroll

Winter’s Eve

December 17, 4:00 —

Eclipse Chamber Orchestra

Traditional Viennese

New Year Concert

January 5, 2018, 3:00

East Building Auditorium —

Harlem Symphony Orchestra

Music by Jessie Montgomery, 

James Lee III, and Mozart

January 7, 3:30

Mary Heilman, Melody, 1998, National Gallery 

of Art, Washington, Gift of Kathan Brown
nga.gov/music

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.

The department of music produced 

these program notes. Copyright © 2017 

Board of Trustees, National Gallery of 

Art, Washington

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.