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performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

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the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

www.nga.gov

Concerts are made possible in part through the generosity of donors

to the National Gallery ofArt through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development

office at (202) 842-6450 or circle@nga.gov for more information.

The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,925th Concert

Avalon String Quartet

with

Winston Choi, pianist

Third and final concert with composer-in-residence Jeffrey Mumford

February 17, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Music by Jeffrey Mumford (b. 1955)

inforests ofevaporating dawns (1996)

a celebration ofElliott (2006)

Washington, DC, Premiere Performance

for Elliott (1983-1984)

INTERMISSION

a landscape ofinterior resonances (2001)

1. Molto sonoro e luminoso

11. Lontano quasi una eco

in. Esplosivo e quasi eccessivo

toward the deepening stillness beyond visible light (2004) 

For piano and string quartet

Washington, DC, Premiere Performance

The Musicians

AVALON STRING QUARTET

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “an ensemble that invites you—ears,

mind, and spirit—into its music,” the Avalon String Quartet has established

itself as one ofthe country’s leading chamber music ensembles. In the 

2011-2012 season, the quartet performed the complete Beethoven string

quartet cycle at the Art Institute ofChicago in historic Fullerton Hall. Other

major venues in which the ensemble has recently performed include Alice

Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, and the 92nd St. Y

in New York; the Herculessaal in Munich; the Isabella Stewart Gardner

Museum in Boston; the Library ofCongress in Washington, dc; and Wigmore Hall in London. The quartet captured the top prize at the ard Competition in Munich (2000) as well as the First Prize at the Concert Artists

Guild Competition in New York (1999).

Installed as quartet-in-residence at the Northern Illinois University

School of Music in DeKalb, the Avalon Quartet performs annual concert 

series in Chicago and DeKalb. This follows previous residencies at the 

Juilliard School of Music and Indiana University, South Bend. Additional

teaching activities have included the Interlochen Advanced Quartet Program, 

Madeline Island Music Camp, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, and

Britten-Pears School in England.

The Avalon Quartet’s debut CD, Dawn to Dusk, was honored with the

2002 Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Award for best chamber

music recording. In 2010 the quartet released a CD of contemporary

American works on the Albany label to critical acclaim. The Quartet’s live

performances and conversations are frequently featured on Chicago’s

wfmt-fm, including a recent nationally syndicated live broadcast of

Exploring Music with Bill MacGlaughlin. The members ofthe Avalon string

quartet are violinists Blaise Magniere and Marie Wang, violist Anthony 

Devroye, and cellist Cheng-Hou Lee. They appear at the National Gallery by

arrangement with John Gingrich Management, Inc., www.gingarts.com.

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WINSTON CHOI

Winner ofthe 2002 Orleans Concours International and a laureate ofthe 

2003 Honens International Piano Competition, Canadian pianist Winston 

Choi maintains an active international performing schedule. In demand

as a concerto soloist, he has appeared with the cbc Radio Orchestra, Calgary

Philharmonic Orchestra, Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, Kalistos Chamber

Orchestra, l’Orchestre National de Lille, l’Orchestre Symphonique d’Orleans, 

la Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Colombia, and the Victoria (British

Columbia) Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Choi has recently appeared in recital at the National Arts Center of

Canada, the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, New York’s Carnegie-Weill

Recital Hall and Merkin Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Kravis

Center in Florida, and the “Cicle Grans Solistes” in Spain. Choi performs

extensively in France, having played venues such as the Paris’ Salle Cortot,

Lille’s Festival Rencontre Robert Casadesus and the Strasbourg Festival.

An accomplished chamber musician, he tours regularly with his wife,

MingHuan Xu, as Duo Diorama.

As a dedicated champion of contemporary music, Choi has premiered

and commissioned more than 100 works. The first pianist to perform Pierre

Boulez’s last version of Incises in North America, he also played the South

American premiere of Luciano Berio’s Sonata per Pianoforte Solo. He also

regularly appears in concert at ircam, (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Europe’s most renowned institution for contemporary music. Composers with whom Choi has collaborated include William

Bolcom, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Bright Sheng, Christian Wolff,

Chen Yi and John Zorn. A core member ofthe new music ensemble Brave

New Works, Choi has taught at Bowling Green State University and the 

Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He is currently assistant professor 

of piano and head ofthe piano department at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

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Born in Washington, DC, composer Jeffrey Mumford brings to his threeweek residency at the National Gallery ofArt a deep love for the Gallery,

which he frequented with his family in his formative years. He also brings 

the fruits of a flourishing career as composer and teacher at the Washington 

Conservatory of Music, Bowling Green State University, the Oberlin College

Conservatory of Music, and Lorain County Community College in Lorain,

Ohio, where he is a distinguished professor.

Among the numerous fellowships, grants, awards, and commissions

Mumford has received are those awarded by the Aaron Copland School of

Music at Queens College, Alice M. Ditson Fund ofColumbia University,

American Academy ofArts and Letters, American Society ofComposers, 

Authors, and Publishers (ascap), Guggenheim Foundation, National Black

Arts Festival, National Endowment for the Arts, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Ohio Arts Council, and the University of California. His

works have been performed in prestigious venues worldwide by the Atlanta,

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit and National symphony orchestras as well as

the American Composers’ Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Saint Paul

Chamber Orchestra. His chamber works have been performed by the 

Borromeo, Corigliano, and Pacifica string quartets as well as the core and 

Empyrean ensembles, Imani Winds, and Los Angeles Philharmonic New

Music Ensemble, among others.

Recently selected for a residency with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony

Orchestra, Mumford has also completed residencies at the Alba, Italy, Music

Festival and the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum ofthe 

East in Bennington, Vermont, to which he has been invited to return in 2013.

Following this residency at the National Gallery, Mumford will travel to

Cincinnati where some ofthe works heard here will be performed by the 

Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra.

JEFFREY MUMFORD

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Five of Mumford’s recent chamber works were issued on the Albany 

Records label, and Capstone Records has released Telling Tales, a recording

project sponsored by the Cleveland Composers Guild. Jeffrey Mumford’s

music is published by Theodore Presser Company and Quicklight Music, 

and he is represented by Carlson & Carlson Arts Contractors.

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Program Notes

Tonight's program is the third and last ofthree concerts to have been presented during a three-week residency at the National Gallery ofArt by composer

Jeffrey Mumford. Sponsored jointly by the Gallery’s music department and its

equal employment opportunity department, the residency is both part ofthe

Gallery’s observation ofAfrican American History Month and a new phase of

the institution’s long-standing relationship with composers. The Gallery’s first 

head ofmusic programs, Richard Bales, was appointed in 1943, shortly after 

he had composed and successfully submitted a musical score for the first

informational film the Gallery produced, titled Your National Gallery. Bales’

successor, George Manos, also a composer, continued the practice oforganizing and presenting on an annual basis an American Music Festival devoted 

exclusively to music by American composers. By the time he retired in 2004,

Manos had brought the number ofsuch festivals up to sixty-one, making it the

longest-running festival ofits kind in the world.

The current head ofmusic at the Gallery, Stephen Ackert, has encouraged a number of composers to write new music for world premiere performance in Gallery concerts. Highlights include Allen Fletcher’s Woman with

a Balance for violin and piano (inspired by the eponymous painting by

Johannes Vermeer); Jessica Krash’s Be Seeing You, inspired by paintings by

women, and John Musto’s Later the Same Evening, an opera inspired by five

paintings by Edward Hopper.

Jeffrey Mumford has taken a place in this tradition by providing for his

residency newly revised works for world premiere performance in Washington— tango variations for the opening concert on February 3, 2013, and

eight aspects ofappreciation 11 for last Sunday's concert. In addition to choosing the content ofthis and the previous two concerts at the Gallery, he will

present a “Works in Progress” lecture in the East Building Small Auditorium

on Tuesday, February 19, at 12:10 and 1:10 pm. He also provided the program

notes that follow:

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“inforests ofevaporating dawns was written for the Maia Quartet and is

dedicated to my daughter Blythe. The work explores various aspects of

sound decay within the context oflayered motives. Throughout the piece,

as melodic lines weave their way throughout the work’s ongoing developmental fabric, instruments are often paired to reinforce timbres and elaborate on specific materials. Overall, however, there is a diffusion ofmotives

and melodic elements to create a transparent texture, much in the same 

way that one experiences morning sunlight filtering through a forest of

tall trees. As the light does this, one encounters its many degrees of bright

presence, from that which is barely noticeable, to that which is very intense,

but which has nonetheless proceeded through a process of decay by the 

time it reaches the eye.

“a celebration ofElliott was commissioned by the Philadelphia-based 

Network for New Music as part of a series titled Ten for Carter, which 

celebrated Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday in 2008. The work takes as its

departure the opening minor seventh motive fromfor Elliott, an earlier solo

piano piece ofmine celebrating that great composer’s seventy-fifth birthday.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to have known Carter for many years

since being a student of his during the early 1980s. His recent passing is

a great loss to humanity, but the legacy of his singular vision lives on.

“a landscape ofinterior resonances was commissioned jointly by the 

Phillips Collection, the Miller Theatre in New York, and the Schubert Club

in Saint Paul. The work, cast in three movements, is a celebration ofthe 

piano’s sonority as a resonating chamber. Within this chamber are many

layers oflinear and vertical activity involving materials that most often

interact to support and reinforce one another, but on occasion, comment

upon and interrupt one another. The first movement lays out the primary

harmonic and motivic material that focuses on A. The second movement

is an echo and a reverberation ofthe first, and the third is a catharsis and

summation of elements ofboth ofthe previous two movements.

"toward the deepening stillness beyond visible light was commissioned by a

consortium ofpresenters consisting ofthe Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Chamber Music

Columbus, Ohio; Omus Hirshbein for the Pacifica Quartet; and pianist Amy

Dissanayake. The title suggests layers and intensities oflate afternoon and

evening light as experienced through gradually receding clouds. Thus, in

terms ofits developmental scenario, the piece concerns itselfwith how these 

layers ofshifting space (strings) interact with a more stable and resonant

sound world (piano). Often the piano and strings reinforce one another but

increasingly the piano establishes a personality ofits own which eventually

dissipates into the distance.”

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Concerts in February and March at the National Gallery ofArt

Poulenc Trio

Music by Duke Ellington and other composers 

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 24, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Vienna Piano Trio

Music by Beethoven, Haydn, and Saint-Saens

March 3, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Hermitage Cats: A Musical

Music by Chris Brubeck

March 10, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Inscape Chamber Orchestra

Richard Scerbo, conductor

Music by Debussy, Delage, Hindemith, and Ravel

March 17, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Paul Posnak, pianist

Music by Gershwin and other composers

March 20, 2013

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

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