The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

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

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry ofthe 

East Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

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 circk@nga.gov for more information.

COVER: Paul Stevenson Oles, Sketch ofthe East Building Exterior,

1971, National Gallery ofArt Archives, Gift of I. M. Pei and Partners

The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,923rd Concert

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

Steve Antosca, artistic director

Angel Gil-Ordonez, guest conductor

First ofthree concerts with

composer-in-residence Jeffrey Mumford

February 3, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

“Multiple Voices”

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Intermezzo no. 2 in A Major, op. 118 (1893)

Elliott Carter (1908-2012)

String Trio** (2011)

Jeffrey Mumford (b. 1955)

Tango variations'''''' (1984, rev. 2001)

Original version for piano solo

Tango variations* (2001, rev. 2012)

Revised by the composer for chamber ensemble

in soft echoes... a world awaits** (2008)

1. Sonoro ed etereo

11. Capriccioso

hi. Maestoso

iv. Urgente

v. Etereo e molto lontano

vi. Molto appassionato

vii. Capricciosso

viii. Dolcissimo

ix. Molto espressivo

x. Capriccioso

xi. Sonoro

xii. Sonoro e cantabile

xiii. Capriccioso

xiv. Insistente

xv. Capriccioso

Courtney Bryan (b. 1982)

Etude 1 e[ 11 (2003-2004)

Jeffrey Mumford

an expanding distance ofmultiple voices (2005)

1. Estatico e molto appassionato

11. Sparso ed espansivo

hi. Molto delicatissimo ed etereo possibile

iv. Molto appassionato

v. Maestoso

*World Premiere Performance

"'Washington Premiere Performance
The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE

Formed in 2010 to present new music in the vibrant architectural environments ofthe National Gallery ofArt, the Gallery’s resident New Music 

Ensemble has presented critically-acclaimed concerts that feature strategic

placement ofmusicians throughout the spaces and utilize computercontrolled transformations and spatialization ofsound. The group’s 2011

tribute to the Gallery’s seventieth anniversary, staged in the West Building

Rotunda, was hailed by the Washington Post as “a spectacular, wonderfully

provocative” concert, which transformed the Rotunda into “an immense

temple ofsound, presenting a program oftheatrical new works that married

humans with computers, and ancient myths with contemporary aesthetics.”

On June 2, 2013, the ensemble will be joined by the Washington-area

harp and saxophone duo Pictures on Silence in a program of chamber and

video works, including the premiere of Steve Antosca’s my end is my beginning, commissioned by Chamber Music America for the event. In November

the ensemble will premiere Antosca’s habitat, a major work for percussion,

video, and computers.

Members ofthe National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble performing in tonight’s concert are violinist Lina Bahn and flutist Lisa Celia. They

are joined by the following guest musicians:

Courtney Orlando, violinist

Kathleen Murdock, violist

Tobias Werner, cellist

Shawn Alger, double bassist

Noah Getz, saxophonist

Jacqueline Pollauf, harpist

John Kilkenny, marimbist

Lura Johnson, pianist

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A former associate conductor ofthe National Symphony Orchestra of Spain,

Angel Gil-Ordonez has conducted numerous orchestras in symphonic music,

opera, and ballet throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin America. 

Orchestras he has guest conducted include the American Composers, Bellas

Artes National Theater, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Hartford Symphony, National 

Gallery ofArt, and Pacific Symphony orchestras as well as the Munich Philharmonic, Opera Colorado, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and Solistes de Berne.

An American citizen since 2009, Madrid-born Gil-Ordonez worked closely

with Sergiu Celibidache in Germany and studied with Pierre Boulez and

Iannis Xenakis in France. Currently the music director ofthe Post-Classical

Ensemble in Washington, DC, he also serves as guest conductor and advisor 

for education and programming for Trinitate Philharmonia, a program in

Leon, Mexico, modeled on Venezuela’s El Sistema. He was recently appointed

principal guest conductor ofNew York’s Perspectives Ensemble and music

director ofthe Georgetown University Orchestra.

JEFFREY MUMFORD

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 visiting 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 of Composers and

Publishers, Guggenheim Foundation, National Black Arts Festival, National

Endowment for the Arts, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Ohio Arts 

Council, and the University ofCalifornia. His works have been performed in

prestigious venues worldwide by the Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit

ANGEL GIL-ORDONEZ

5
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.

Following this residency, Mumford will travel to Blue Ash, Ohio, and Paris,

France, where some ofthe works heard this evening will be performed by

the Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra and the Contemporary

Music Forum, respectively. Five ofhis 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. 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 later this year. Jeffrey

Mumford’s music is published by Theodore Presser Company and Quicklight

Music, and he is represented by Carlson & Carlson Arts Contractors.

6

Program Notes

Tonight’s program, “Multiple Voices,” presents music that has played a role in

forming the mature compositional style of composer Jeffrey Mumford and

one piece ofmusic written by his former pupil Courtney Bryan. Sponsored

jointly by the Gallery’s music and equal employment opportunity departments,

the residency is both part ofthe Gallery’s observation ofAfrican American

History Month and a new phase ofthe 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 the Gallery’s

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 in the permanent collections ofthe National Gallery and the National

Museum ofWomen in the Arts; and John Musto’s Later the Same Evening,

an opera inspired by five paintings by Edward Hopper.

Johannes Brahms' music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques ofthe baroque and classical periods, but his innovative

approaches to form, harmony, and melody led the advance ofmusical

romanticism to its flowering in the late nineteenth century. About Brahms’

Intermezzo no. 2 in A Major, Jeffrey Mumford writes: “From the first time I

heard this particular intermezzo (not sure how old I was but thinking it was

7
in high school), I was quite amazed and taken by its simple beauty, intimacy,

and poignancy. Something about it was truly special among the works of

his I knew at the time—an autumnal quality of course (as is the case with

much of his work-almost universally felt) but something more—a wash of

emotion [that is] deep, complex, and above all, profound.”

Twice winner ofthe Pulitzer Prize and the first composer to receive the 

United States National Medal of Arts, Elliott Carter produced some 130

works, more than forty ofthem in the first decade ofthe twenty-first century,

when he was in his nineties. Writing about his String Trio—composed in

2011, when he was 103 —Carter said: “In planning to compose this string

trio, I realized that the viola had a more somber sound than the more 

brilliant violin and cello.... I determined nevertheless to give the viola its

own voice and let it be the most prominent member ofthe ensemble. The

work is dedicated to Rolf Schulte, Richard O’Neill, and Fred Sherry.”

In an article in Fanfare magazine about Jeffrey Mumford’s compositions, 

Robert Carl wrote,“Mumford studied with Elliott Carter, and this composer

shines through as the strongest influence, not a bad thing at all. Like Carter,

Mumford specializes in bright, resonant, but non-tonal sonorities; simultaneous layering of activity, from slow and spacious to regular violent outbreaks; fluid rhythmic passages which speed and slow like the passage of

weather fronts. But this music is not a knockoff ofthe elder composer.

Mumford strikes me as having a gentler vision than Carter, and one that

allows for more sustained lyric and thematic materials.”

Mumford originally composed tango variations in 1984 as a work for

solo piano. During its three-and-a-half-minute length, the work reveals its

tango rhythm gradually. The rhythm appears in the context ofshifting layers

of developmental activity, in much the same manner that pockets oflight 

appear amid evolving clouds. The composer revised tango variations for harp

in 2001, and revised it once again for harp and chamber ensemble in 2012.

This version receives its world premiere in tonight’s concert.

About in soft echoes... a world awaits, Mumford writes: “[The work] was

commissioned by the Fortnightly Musical Club ofCleveland and was written

for members ofthe Cleveland Orchestra. Cast in fifteen short movements,

it explores many timbral and articulative aspects ofthe violin, viola, and

cello. Interspersed as part ofthe work’s ongoing development are recurring

and unfolding pizzicato movements marked Capriccioso. The title suggests 

the image of a world that results from the resonance ofthe reflected light 

within clouds.”

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Courtney Bryan is a prolific composer whose output includes solo works, music for jazz quartet and jazz

orchestra, and film scores, as well as collaborations with dancers, visual

artists, writers, and actors. Organist and director ofthe Institute of Sacred

Music at Bethany Baptist Church of Newark, New Jersey, she performs

regularly in New Jersey and New York. Recent appearances include a solo

recital as part ofthe Saint Paul’s Chapel Concert Series, a collaborative

project at Harlem Stage, and concerts at New York City’s Jazz Gallery and

The Stone. A featured speaker at a recent convention ofthe Institute for

Research in African American Studies (iraas) at Columbia University,

Bryan was also featured in the university’s Institute for Religion, Culture, 

and Public Life radio documentary, “The Harlem Renaissance: Music,

Religion, and the Politics of Race.” Holder of academic degrees from the 

Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Rutgers University, and Columbia 

University, Bryan is pursuing a doctorate in music composition at Columbia.

Etude 1 e[ 11 represents the first two parts of a four-part set of piano

etudes composed while Bryan was a student ofJeffrey Mumford at the 

Oberlin Conservatory. The respective etudes are subtitled “Unity Amongst

Youth ofthe Diaspora” and “Secondline for Black Love.”

Mumford’s an expanding distance ofmultiple voices, from which the title

oftonight’s program is drawn, is a set ofvariations for solo violin that was

commissioned by a Washington, DC-based consortium consisting of Philip

Berlin, Otho Eskin, Pamela Johnson, and Kathryn Judd. The composer writes,

“The work is a musical salute to Lina Bahn for her commitment to the music

9
ofour time, both in a solo capacity and as a member ofthe Corigliano String

Quartet. Cast in five movements, it displays many changes ofmood, tempo

and timbre. As is the case in my work for solo viola wending, much ofthe

harmonic material is based on the letters ofits dedicatee’s name (in this case

linA BAHn). [B is the equivalent in German musical spelling ofthe note B-flat,

while H is the equivalent ofB-natural. The first four movements] are played

together without pause. The title suggests a layered space, suspended and vast,

in which many sources and gradations oflight radiate from the continually

shifting pockets ofits interior.”

Notes on Brahms based on materials provided by Jeffrey Mumford and Steve

Antosca. Excerptsfrom Elliott Carter’s bio reprinted by kind permission ofBoosey

Hawkes. Notes on Courtney Bryan and Jeffrey Mumford based on materials

provided by the composers.

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Concerts in February at the National Gallery ofArt

Avalon String Quartet

With Winston Choi, pianist

Music by Jeffrey Mumford, composer-in-residence

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 10, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players

With Miranda Cuckson, violinist, and Julia Bruskin, cellist

Music by Jeffrey Mumford, composer-in-residence

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 17, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

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