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 of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

63rd American Music Festival

Presented in honor of Looking In: Robert Frank's “The Americans”

March 4,11,18, and 25, 2009

Wednesdays, 12:10 pm

March 29, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

Admissionfree
Robert Frank, Political Rally—Chicago, 1956, gelatin silver print

© Robert Frank, from The Americans

In 1944 the National Gallery of Art launched its first American Music

Festival under the direction ofthe Gallery’s original music director, Richard

Bales, who had been inspired by similar festivals at the Eastman School of

Music. Bales, and his successor, George Manos, continued the festival on an

annual basis until 2004. As the Eastman festivals and others like it were

discontinued, the Gallery’s program became the longest-running American

music festival, a record that it continues to hold.

Under the direction of Stephen Aclcert, the Gallery’s current head of

music programs, the festival is held concurrent with major exhibitions

ofAmerican art, in this case Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans,”

which is currendy on view in the West Building through April 6, 2009. The

musicians participating in the 63rd American Music Festival have built their

programs around music that was written during the 1940s and 1950s, the

period that is represented by most ofthe photographs in the exhibition.

In honor ofthe festival, the Gallery and the National Museum ofWomen

in the Arts commissioned a new work by composer Jessica Krash. Be Seeing

You is inspired by selected images ofwomen in the collections ofboth

institutions. The work receives its world premiere at the National Museum

ofWomen in the Arts on March 11, 2009, and will be heard at the National

Gallery on March 18.

The 63rd American Music Festival is unique in that its first concert

features the works of David Amram, a composer who collaborated with

Robert Frank in the 1950s. The two men were part of a team that conceived

and created the Beat Generation film Pull My Daisy, which was revived at

the Gallery in February 2009, shortly after the exhibition opened.

3
National Gallery ofArt 

2,710th Concert

March 4, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

David Amram, composer and pianist

Noah Getz, alto saxophone

Steve Brinegar, French horn

Benjamin Greanya, bassoon

Pepe Gonzalez, bass

David McDonald, drums

Andrew Earle Simpson, piano

Program performed without intermission

Music by David Amram

Triofor Tenor Sax, Horn, and Bassoon (1958)

Finalefrom “Ode to Lord Buckley:”

A Concertofor Alto Saxophone and Orchestra (1981)

Prologue and Scherzofor Unaccompanied Alto Saxophone (1996)

Theme and Variations on “Amazing Grace”for Unaccompanied Irish

Double D Whistle

Reading from Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac

Pull My Daisy

4

The Musicians

DAVID AMRAM

David Amram has composed more than one hundred orchestral and chamber music works and written many scores for Broadway and Hollywood, 

including the classic scores for the films Splendor in The Grass and The

Manchurian Candidate. His works also include the groundbreaking Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient (1997) and music for the 1959 documentary

Pull My Daisy, directed by Robert Frank and Albert Leslie and narrated by

novelist Jack Kerouac. Amram is the author ofthree books: Vibrations,

an autobiography; Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, a memoir; and Upbeat:

Nine Lives ofa Musical Cat, scheduled for publication later this year by

Paradigm Publishers.

A pioneer player ofjazz French horn, Amram is also a virtuoso on the

piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens offolkloric

instruments from twenty-five countries. His humorous and inventive improvisational recitations are favorites with his audiences, as are his narratives which

he delivers in five languages. He has collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel

Hampton, Dustin Hoffman, Langston Hughes, Elia Kazan, E.G. Marshall,

Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Willie Nelson, Odetta, and

Tito Puente.

Amram has been appointed to many prestigious residencies in his

career, beginning in 1966 when he was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to be

New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence. Most recently, he was

the composer-in-residence for the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Amram’s concert music is published by C.F. Peters Corporation (b.m.i.). He

appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with Ed Keane Associates of

Winthrop, Massachusetts. More information about the composer is available 

at www.davidamram.com.

5
NOAH GETZ

Saxophonist Noah Getz previously collaborated with David Amram at the

Harold Clurman Concert Series at American University. He has presented solo

recitals at the Dame Myra Hess Series, The Phillips Collection, the Music at

Our Saviour’s Atonement Concert Series Saxophone Summit, and the World

Saxophone Congress xm. He performed the debut of Fernando Benadon’s

Hidden Charges with the Empyrean Ensemble and was selected by Pulitzer

Prize-winning composer Henry Brant to perform his Concertofor Alto Saxophone and Orchestra for the first time in fifty years. Getz is the saxophonist in

the Levine Jazz Quintet, which has performed at Blues Alley, Meyerhoff

Concert Hall in Baltimore, the Swiss Embassy, and the Washington Convention Center. He is a musician-in-residence at American University in Washington, dc, and an artist-in-residence for the David Oppenheim Residency

Program at the Stella Adler School in New York City.

STEVEN BRINEGAR

French horn player Steven Brinegar is a former member ofthe Monumental

Brass Quintet and the United States Naval Academy Band. He has appeared

with the Annapolis and New Mexico Symphony Orchestras, the Honolulu

Symphony and Ballet Orchestra, and I Musici Americani in Sulmona, Italy.

He is woodwind chair and jazz studies cochair at the Levine School of Music

in Washington, DC.

BENJAMIN GREANYA

Bassoonist Benjamin Greanya plays regularly with several orchestras in the

Washington area, including the Annapolis Symphony, the Baltimore Opera

Company, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, and the National

Symphony Orchestra. He has also recently performed with the Concert

Artists of Baltimore, the Fessenden Ensemble, and the Verge Ensemble of

the Contemporary Music Forum. He has attended the Kent, Blossom, and

Aspen music festivals, and was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and

National Repertory Orchestra.

6

PEPE GONZALEZ

Bassist Pepe Gonzalez has thirty years’ experience as a proponent ofAfroCaribbean idioms on his instrument while maintaining a career in classical

music as well. He has performed and recorded with many ofthe top national

and international icons in the jazz world and has been heard at jazz festivals

in the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and the United States.

DAVID MCDONALD

Since 2006 percussionist David McDonald has been a member ofthe

Airmen of Note, the jazz ensemble ofThe United States Air Force Band in

Washington, DC. Originally from Decatur, Illinois, McDonald has performed

with the Civic Orchestra ofChicago, Concertante di Chicago, the Illinois

Philharmonic, the Kenosha (Wisconsin) Symphony, and the New World 

Symphony. Jazz ensembles with which he has performed include the Alan 

Baylock Jazz Orchestra, Capitol Bones, the Chicago Metropolitan Jazz

Orchestra, and Rob Parton’s Jazz Tech Big Band.

ANDREW EARLE SIMPSON

Pianist Andrew Earle Simpson has performed music for film presentations

at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland; 

the Library of Congress; the National Gallery; the National Museum of

Women in the Arts; and the New York Public Library (as part ofthe “Meet

the Music Makers” series). In October 2008 he made his Italian debut at

the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. He is an associate professor

and chair ofthe division oftheory and composition at the Benjamin T.

Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America.

7
Program Notes

About this program, composer David Amram writes: “Today I salute the

National Gallery exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ as

well as Frank and Jack Kerouac, with whom I collaborated in the 1950s.

The concert celebrates spontaneity and formality, the guiding aesthetics of

Frank’s work as well as Kerouac’s and mine.

“In celebrating the everyday experiences which we often overlook,

Kerouac told me in 1957, Took at the diamonds in the sidewalk.’ Frank told

me that the film we did together, Pull My Daisy, was important because ‘it

captured a moment in time.’ That’s what I hope my classical compositions

do, and they all come from my own real life experiences and are inspired by

my improvisations which I refine and reshape in my formal compositions, 

where every note and nuance is painstakingly written down for others to

play, but where I try to capture the spirit of naturalness ofmusic created at

the moment.

“I began working with Jack Kerouac in 1956, and he often visited me

while I was composing the Triofor Tenor Sax, Horn, and Bassoon, which 

I wrote in the summer before we filmed Pull My Daisy. For the film, I

augmented the chamber orchestration by adding a viola to the saxophone,

horn, and bassoon as well as bass, drums, and piano.

“Composed to celebrate the legacy of Lord Buckley, a contemporary and

kindred spirit of Kerouac, with whom I collaborated from the mid-1950s

until his death in i960, the Finalefrom ‘Ode to Lord Buckley:’ A Concertofor

Alto Saxophone and Orchestra was dedicated to the birth ofmy second daughter,

Adira Amram. It uses Middle Eastern roots as well as the Sephardic hymn

Fin Adir.

“Prologue and Scherzo for Unaccompanied Alto Saxophone celebrates the 

saxophone as its role as a solo instrument has expanded to define the 

language ofjazz while maintaining its European origins. It is dedicated to

Charlie Parker who I met in 1951-1952 in Washington, DC, and who jammed

with me in my basement apartment at 1815 16th Street, nw. The second

movement is dedicated to Kerouac.

“‘Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac' recounts the talk that artist Franz

Kline gave to Kerouac, Frank, and the cast of Pull my Daisy following the

premiere screening ofthe film in 1959. N oah Getz joins me in performing

the title song I composed for Frank’s film, with lyrics by Kerouac, Allen

Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady.”

9
National Gallery ofArt

2,712th Concert

March 11, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Peter Vinograde, pianist

Program performed without intermission

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)

Evocations: Four Chantsfor Piano (1943-1956)

Largo

Andante con fantasia

Moderato appassionato

Adagio sostenuto

)ere Hutcheson (b. 1938)

Electrons (1965)

J=63

J =80

J =88

J = 76

J =60

J\=io4

Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994)

Prelude, Ostinato, and Fugue (i960)

10

John Corigliano (b. 1938)

Etude Fantasy (1976)

For the Left Hand Alone

Legato

Fifths to Thirds

Ornaments

Melody

Kenneth Laufer 

Pete’s Passacaglia (1995)
The Musician

Pianist Peter Vinograde has developed a reputation as an outstanding interpreter ofthe music ofJohann Sebastian Bach and that oftwentieth- and twentyfirst-century composers. His distinguished career began with winning the first

prize in the 1971 Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition, held here

in Washington, followed by his New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall and

a National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored Lincoln Center recital at Alice

Tully Hall. He has three previous recitals at the National Gallery to his credit,

and has appeared at the Bard, Bargemusic, Caramoor, and WolfTrap Festivals.

He annually tours Canada, the United States, and Asia, where his most recent

appearances have included three tours in China. There, he performed in solo

recital, with the Macao Orchestra, and with flautist Lydia Yang to promote their

new cd.

World premiere performances have included Nicolas Flagello’s

Concerto #3 (1962) with Nicholas Palmer and the Owensboro (Kentucky)

Symphony Orchestra and Mark Zuckerman’s On the Edges (1996) in Taiwan.

He has been featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today and

cbc-tv’s The Journal. His CDs include releases on the Albany, cbc, Linfair 

(Decca) and Phoenix labels. Vinograde’s current activities include summer

residencies at the Amati and Manchester Music Festivals and teaching at

the Manhattan School of Music and Lehman College (CUNY).

12

Program Notes

Carl (Charles Sprague) Ruggles was born in East Marion, Massachusetts,

on March 11,1876. Trained as a violinist, he also studied theory and composition in Boston with JosefClaus and John Knowles Paine. His plans to

study composition with Antonin Dvorak in Prague were cancelled when

the intended financial sponsor died. In 1907 Ruggles moved to Winona,

Minnesota, where he founded, and for a decade conducted the Winona

Symphony Orchestra. He also gave music lessons, composed, and began

painting during this time. Ruggles moved to New York City in 1917 and,

supported by teaching and private patronage, became associated with Henry

Cowell (1897-1965), Charles Ives (1874-1954), Charles Seeger (1886-1979),

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1965), and Edgar Varese (1883-1965). Most of

Ruggles’ major works were begun and first performed during his years in

New York (1917—1937).

After teaching composition at the University of Miami from 1938-1947,

Ruggles settled in a converted schoolhouse in Vermont, where he had been

spending his summers since the 1920s. His musical activities during this

time consisted mostly ofruthless and painstaking revision ofhis earlier works. 

He started few new projects, but the only one he completed is the short hymn

tune Exaltation, written in 1958 as a memorial to his wife. He turned mostly to

his painting, which grew increasingly abstract during the Vermont years of his

life. He died in Bennington, Vermont, on October 24,1971.

Jere Hutcheson has received composition fellowships from the Berkshire

Music Center at Tanglewood, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Vermont

Composers Conference, and he has been awarded grants from the National 

Endowment for the Arts, the Michigan Council for the Arts, and the Martha

Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music. In 1976 the National Music Teachers 

Association honored him with the citation Distinguished Composer ofthe 

Year. His works have been performed in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, and

the United States.

13
Hutcheson writes: “I composed Electrons in 1965, following a year in

which I devoted much attention to the works of Anton Webern. I recall that

my conservative piano teacher would not allow me to bring the Webern

Piano Variations, op. 27, to my lessons. He turned red in the face and said

that I was not to spend my time on such music. Of course, this did not

dampen my interest in Webern’s music.

“Webern’s influence on me was rather general, or spiritual, rather than

technical. Electrons does not explore serialism, but it does reveal an affinity

for the elements ofinterval, short motives, atonality, disjunct melodic 

motion, pointillism, and irregular phrase structure. The piano is a very

versatile instrument, and I strive in all my writing to explore its potential for

rich textures, violent contrasts, and an athletic approach for the performer.”

Nicolas Flagello was one ofthe last composers to develop a distinctive

mode of expression based wholly on the principles and techniques of

European late-Romanticism. Born in New York City in 1928, Flagello grew

up in a highly musical family with deep roots in Old-World traditions. While

still a youth, he began a long and intensive apprenticeship with the Italian 

composer Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966). In 1955 Flagello won a Fulbright 

Fellowship to study in Rome. He composed at a prodigious rate, producing

an impressive body of work. In 1985 a deteriorating illness brought his 

musical career to a premature end. He died in 1994 at age sixty-six.

Flagello’s Prelude, Ostinato, and Fugue is the first purely instrumental

work to reflect his mature compositional voice. While revealing his profound reverence for traditional musical forms, it also displays a harsher, 

more angular, less symmetrical language than one finds in his earlier works.

The Prelude begins with a restless, searching quality, before building quickly

to a massive climax and then subsiding. The Ostinato consists of a set of

variations over an ascending minor scale, which functions as a basso ostinato,

appearing in several different keys. Beginning with a melancholy lyricism, it

14

too builds to a tempestuous climax. The Fugue is a propulsive piece that 

makes enormous demands on the virtuosity ofthe performer. A three-voice

exposition is followed by several developmental episodes, which culminate

in a chordal augmentation ofthe subject, markedfuriosamente, that leads to

a hair-raising coda.

John Corigliano composed his Etude Fantasy in 1976, at the end ofhis 

first stylistic period, which reflects his indebtedness to Samuel Barber,

Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, and William Schuman. True to its name, the 

Etude Fantasy tests the pianist’s proficiency, both as a virtuoso player and as

an interpreter. A tone row and a melodic idea are introduced in the first

etude and developed in a free, episodic manner through the rest ofthe work.

The first six notes ofthe work introduce the tone row, which is followed,

after a short virtuoso figuration, by the cool, reserved main melodic idea.

Both the row and the idea rely on the interval of a second, which is also

developed throughout the work. The first etude challenges the pianist to

produce a tonal texture that sounds as iftwo hands are playing at all times, 

even though the right hand does not enter until the last few measures, when 

it provides a quiet chromatic scale over the gently pulsing left-hand accompaniment. The Legato etude features a subdued melodic line that unfolds 

while the two hands play the full keyboard, crossing each other frequently.

The title ofthe next etude, Fifths to Thirds, refers to an intervallic contraction 

from a fifth to a third, which permeates the etude as it meanwhile presents

a good-natured scherzo with an ebullient melody. Ornaments also has the

nature of a scherzo, but now demonic, as it indulges in trills, grace notes,

tremolos, glissandos, and roulades, pausing only to restate the tone row with

some fresh ornaments. An interlude, which serves to provide the tonal and 

emotional climax ofthe work, leads into the fifth etude (Melody), a study in 

extracting a melodic line from what appears at first glance to be pure filigree.

Material from the first and second etudes is developed in a desolate, brooding atmosphere. The work ends with a statement of the tone row in reverse,

accompanying a quiet two-note ostinato.

15
Kenneth Laufer is a composer, pianist, lyricist, and humorist who

attended the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the Eastman and

Juilliard Schools of Music. His “jassical” music is a unique blend of classical

and jazz styles. Gunther Schuller arranged and recorded his Twelve-Tone

Rag with the New England Ragtime Ensemble. The Gregg Smith Singers

premiered Laufer’s IfMusic be the Love ofFood, and his Scars and Scrapes

Forever! is a bestseller among flautists. Laufer is currently finishing a set of

Protest Songs for voice and piano, suggesting that the classical music world

does have at least one composer on the radical left!

Laufer has this to say about Pete’s Passacaglia: “[It] is based on a repeated

ten-note melody, heard alone at the beginning in the bass. Typical of a passacaglia, subsequent musical events occur in increasing complexity over this

melody, which later appears in higher voices as well. The work contains some

freer sections where the melody is presented in camouflage or is hidden

altogether. Chief among these is a central two-part invention, followed by a

return to the relative simplicity ofthe opening. Quotes from Nola by Felix

Arndt, Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner, and Dixie can be heard. After

a tango variation, the music rapidly builds to a tremendous climax and presto

finale, over a rapid version ofthe melody in the bass. Pete’s Passacaglia is the

first of Laufer’s many piano compositions which he finds too difficult to play

in public himself. Fortunately, it is dedicated to and played by virtuoso pianist

Peter Vinograde.”

Program notes on Corigliano by Stephen Ackert.

All other notes by Peter Vinograde.

16

National Gallery ofArt

2,714th Concert

March 18, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm, West Building Lecture Hall

Jessica Krash, composer and pianist

with the National Gallery String Quartet

Claudia ChudacofF and Teri Lazar, violins

Osman Kivrak, viola

Diana Fish, cello

Program performed without intermission

John Cage (1912-1992)

In a Landscape (1948)

Jessica Krash (b. 1959)

Be Seeing You (2008)

1. Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Amedee, 1918 (nga)

2. Jane Fortescue Seymour, Self-portrait at Seventeen (nmwa)

3. Giotto, Madonna and Child, 1320-1330 (nga)

4. Miriam Schapiro, Goncharova (from the series Delauney,

Goncharova, Popova, and Me), 1992 (nmwa)

5. Lotte Laserstein, Morning Toilette, 1930 (nmwa)

6. Dorris Lee, Cherries in the Sun (Siesta), 1941 (nmwa)

7. Henri Matisse, Lorette with Turban, Yellow Jacket, 1917 (nga)

8. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de Bend, 1474-1478 (nga)

9. Alex Katz, The Green Cap, 1985 (nga)

10. Max Ernst, Capricorn, 1948, cast 1975 (nga)

11. Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, 1937 (nmwa)

12. Helen Turner, On My Porch (nmwa)

13. Suzanne Valadon, The Abandoned Doll, 1921 (nmwa)

14. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing, 1765 (nga)

Chia Patino (b. 1967)

Wild Swans (2005)

7
The Musicians

JESSICA KRASH

Jessica Krash’s work as a composer and pianist has been presented in both

traditional and experimental settings, including concerts on the bank ofthe 

Chesapeake & Ohio Canal (in a thunderstorm) and at the Joyce SoHo in

New York City; the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the National Gallery of Art; the 

Old Opera House in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; The Phillips Collection;

the Strathmore Center for the Arts; and the Terrace Theater ofthe John F.

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2005 the Washington Post

selected her CD for solo piano as one ofthe year’s most interesting recordings. She has directed several organizations, including Chamber Music

Weekend at the Levine School of Music, the Washington chapter ofthe 

American Composers Forum, and, for the past twenty years, a chamber

music seminar for amateur musicians. She has taught at George Mason 

University, the Levine School of Music, and the University of Maryland, and

is currently on the faculty ofthe George Washington University, where she 

develops and teaches new courses on “dangerous music,” contemporary

music, and chamber music, in addition to the survey ofmusic history 

course. She has given a series oflectures at the Kennedy Center and the 

Library ofCongress, and will lecture on art song next year at the National

Institutes of Health.

Krash graduated with high honors from Harvard College, earned a

masters degree in piano from the Juilliard School of Music, and a doctorate 

in composition from the University of Maryland. She also studied at the 

Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, doing research in the philosophical 

and cognitive issues underlying musical understanding. Born in Washington, dc, Krash continues to find it a stimulating place in which to live, work,

and think.

18

NATIONAL GALLERY STRING QUARTET

The National Gallery String Quartet has performed regularly at the Gallery

since its debut in 1995. In addition to standard quartet repertoire, the 

group presents rarely heard masterpieces of chamber music. With perfectly

matched skills, the first and second violinists are able to change places, a

practice that is rare among string quartets. The quartet’s current collaboration with Jessica Krash, taking place at both the National Gallery and the 

National Museum ofWomen in the Arts, honors both Looking In: Robert

Frank’s “The Americans” and Women’s History Month. It continues a series

ofrecent collaborations with other musicians that has included pianists

Miceal O’Rourke and Menahem Pressler.

CLAUDIA CHUDACOFF

Violinist Claudia Chudacoff appears frequently as soloist and chamber

musician in the Washington and Baltimore area. In addition to her position 

as the newly-appointed concertmaster ofthe United States Marine Band’s

White House Chamber Orchestra, Chudacoffis the concertmaster ofthe 

Alexandria Symphony Orchestra and the National Gallery Orchestra. A

member ofboth the Sunrise Quartet and the National Gallery String Quartet, she has performed regularly in numerous venues and concert series in

Washington, DC, including the Contemporary Music Forum, the Embassy

Series, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and National Musical Arts. She

is featured on an Albany Records cd of chamber music by Erich Korngold,

and was recently seen in a broadcast for West Virginia Public Television

with the Sunrise Quartet.

l9
TERI LAZAR

Violinist Teri Lazar has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the

United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She is the concertmaster ofthe

Virginia Chamber Orchestra and performs with the Richmond Chamber

Players and in Currents, a chamber music series also based in Richmond. She

earned a doctor ofmusic degree from The Catholic University ofAmerica and

teaches violin at American University, where she is a musician-in-residence.

Lazar has recorded chamber music for the Albany, Centaur, Klavier, and North/

South Consonance labels and has been heard on npr’s Performance Today.

OSMAN KIVRAK

Violist Osman Kivrak is a winner ofthe National Scholarship Competition

in Turkey and the Baltimore Chamber Music Awards. He has performed at 

the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and has toured Italy and

other parts of Europe as a chamber musician. He performs with the Richmond Chamber Players and in Currents, and teaches at American University as a musician in residence. A graduate ofThe Catholic University of

America, where he earned a doctor ofmusic degree, Kivrak is a composer as

well as a performer. His compositions were recently recognized with awards

from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Maryland-National Capital

Parks and Planning Commission.

DIANA FISH

Cellist Diana Fish came to Washington, DC, in 1994 to become a member

ofthe Marine Chamber Orchestra of “The President’s Own” United States

Marine Band, in which she currently serves as assistant principal cellist. She

graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Orlando

Cole, and continued her work at the graduate level at Indiana University, where

she studied with Janos Starker. She has appeared as soloist with the Marine

Chamber Orchestra in Victor Herbert’s Cello Concerto in E Minor. A charter

member ofthe Sunrise Quartet and the National Gallery String Quartet, Fish 

has been performing with both ensembles for the past fourteen years.

20

Program Notes

Noting the context ofthis American Music Festival honoring an exhibition of

works by a photographer who flourished in the middle ofthe twentieth century,

Jessica Krash has chosen to open this recital with a work by John Cage, who also

came into prominence at mid-century, and whose relationship to the visual arts 

was complex and profound. Cage joined the faculty ofBlack Mountain College

in 1948, where he taught and became involved in several multimedia projects,

which included dancers and choreographer Merce Cunningham as well as

visual artists Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn. In a Landscape, written for

piano or harp, was composed for danseuse Louise Lippold, wife ofthe sculptor

Richard Lippold, also a Black Mountain College faculty member. Considered by

many to be Cage’s most accessible work, In a Landscape is based on his ideas

of “structural rhythm.” A compelling facet ofthe piece is that all ofthe notes are

contained within two octaves, with a different key represented by the notes in

each octave.

About her new work, Be Seeing You, which was commissioned by the

National Gallery and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Jessica 

Krash writes: “[It] explores fourteen ways of being, inspired by fourteen

paintings ofwomen from the National Gallery ofArt and the National

Museum ofWomen in the Arts. I arranged the paintings (and one sculpture)

into a sequence that seemed musical, so the listener takes a path through

changes of purview and momentum. Moving through a song cycle can be 

like moving through rooms in a museum. I chose paintings that contained

intriguing mixtures: mothers who look both peaceful and worried, young

women both glamorous and awkward, a middle-aged woman who looks 

feisty yet tired. In this piece, the paintings and music are counterpoint to

each other. Each says something that the other doesn’t, and they illuminate

each other. I enjoyed imagining who these women were when they weren’t

sitting for a portrait: while Fragonard might see a woman on a swing as

delicious fluff, I like to think she’s also worried about the global economy. 

Ernst’s tall, thin, fishy mother-and-wife might be a glamorous pop diva.

Modigliani’s Madame Amadee might appear hardened, but her daydreams

21
are soft. While we look at these women and their worlds, many ofthem

appear to be looking back at us. Who do they see? To me, these paintings are

important Washington women, and I hope my music brings them and us

into new dialogue with each other.”

Born in Quito, Ecuador, composer Chia Patino is also a freelance opera 

stage director whose work is seen throughout the world. She attended

the University of Louisville, where she studied piano with Doris Keyes

and composition with Claude Baker. Her string quartet, Wild Swans, was

inspired by the eponymous poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from her

collection Second April (1921).

Wild Swans

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.

And what did I see I had not seen before?

One question less or a question more; 

nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,

house without air, I leave you and lock your door.

Wild swans, come over the town, come over

the town again, trailing your legs and crying.

22

National Gallery of Art

2,716th Concert

March 25, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

New York Chamber Soloists

Jennifer Grim, flute

Melvin Kaplan, oboe

Allan Blustine, clarinet

Andrew Schwartz, bassoon

Scott Thornburg, trumpet

Program performed without intermission

Quartet in C Majorfor Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, and Bassoon (1941)

Allegro moderato

Andante

Allegro vivace e leggermente

Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)

Parable xivfor Unaccompanied Trumpet, op. 127 (1973)

Walter Piston (1894-1976)

Three piecesfor Flute, Clarinet, and Bassoon (1926)

Allegro scherzando

Lento

Allegro-moderato
Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961)

Duofor oboe and clarinet

From Duosfor Three Woodwinds (1943)

Moderato; poco piu mosso

Andante affettuoso

Thema e variazioni

Mel Powell (1923-1998)

Divertimentofor Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Trumpet (1956)

Animato

Con tenerezza

Scherzando

Allegro comodo

24

The Musicians

Acclaimed as an outstanding ensemble of distinguished virtuosi, performing

widely diverse repertoire in creatively programmed concerts, the New York

Chamber Soloists have maintained a unique niche in the chamber music

world for over forty years. This twelve-member ensemble ofstrings, winds,

and keyboard can increase to as many as twenty with the addition of guest

artists, giving it the flexibility to offer many works that are seldom heard due

to the unusual instrumental combinations for which they were written. The

Chamber Soloists have appeared frequently in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum ofArt and Lincoln Center; in Washington at the Library

ofCongress, the Kennedy Center, and the National Gallery; and at major

universities across the country from Boston to Berkeley. The ensemble has

added substantially to the catalogue oftwentieth-century chamber works,

with the more than twenty-five compositions written for them by such

significant composers as Mario Davidovsky, Ezra Laderman, Mel Powell,

and Gunther Schuller.

JENNIFER GRIM

Jennifer Grim has been hailed by the New York Times as “a deft, smooth flute 

soloist.” She has performed across the United States as an active solo and

chamber musician ofboth the classic literature and contemporary music. In

addition to her work with the New York Chamber Soloists, she is a member

ofthe Proteus Ensemble and Zephyros Winds. As a soloist, she has performed

at the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the

Vermont Mozart Festival. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

MELVIN KAPLAN

Melvin Kaplan, founder, artistic director, and oboist ofthe New York Chamber

Soloists, has been for more than forty years one ofAmerica’s most influential

forces in chamber music, both as a renowned performer and as manager,

teacher, lecturer and writer. As a soloist, he has premiered works by Hugh

23
Aitken, Jean Francaix, Ezra Laderman, Mel Powell, Gunther Schuller, Ralph 

Vaughan Williams, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. On the faculty ofthe Juilliard 

School for thirty years, Kaplan was also featured regularly as a lecturer and

performer at the Metropolitan Museum ofArt.

ALIEN BLUSTEIN

Allen Blustein is one of New York’s busiest and most versatile clarinetists.

He has performed with a broad spectrum ofmusical organizations, including

the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,

the New York Philharmonic, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a

member ofthe Columbia University faculty, director of Speculum Musicae,

and a member ofthe North Country Chamber Players in New Hampshire.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Andrew Schwartz has a wide-ranging career as a bassoonist that has included

frequent appearances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and jazz recordings with Wynton Marsalis. He has also appeared with the Orchestra of Saint 

Luke’s, the Orpheus Ensemble, and the New York Chamber Symphony as well

as with many ofthe finest period-instrument ensembles, such as Boston’s

Handel and Haydn Society, San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque, and

Vienna’s Wiener Akademie.

SCOTT THORNBURG

Trumpeter Scott Thornburg has performed as a soloist and chamber musician

with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Musica Sacra, the New York City

Symphony (as principal trumpet), the Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Stamford

Symphony Orchestra, and the Summerfare Opera Festival Orchestra at the

State University of New York, Purchase. As principal trumpet with the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, he has performed at the Caramoor Festival, and has toured

Europe, South America, and the United States with the Orpheus Chamber

Orchestra. A member ofthe New York Trumpet Ensemble, he has also

performed with the Canadian Brass, the New York Brass, and Parnassus.

26

Program Notes

Responding to an invitation from the National Gallery music department

to create a musical program in honor of an exhibition ofphotographs by

Robert Frank, the New York Chamber Soloists turned to works in their

repertoire by five composers who flourished during the period represented

by the years when most ofthe photographs in the exhibition were taken

(1946-1958). All five composers continued to write music throughout the

1960s and 1970s, and, in some cases, they collaborated with members of

the New York Chamber Soloists.

Composer, author, and music critic Arthur Berger received his first

formal instruction in composition at New York University in the early 1930s,

at which time Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, and Edgar Varese were recognized at the new avant-garde. Berger joined the Young Composers Group,

which had been founded by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). He studied in

Paris with Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) and Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).

While in Paris, Berger’s interest in Stravinsky’s music was heightened, and

influenced the development of his own style. He is almost invariably categorized as a Stravinskian neoclassicist with regard to his music ofthe period

1940-1957. During the early 1950s, Berger’s harmonic idiom was essentially

diatonic, but because he often displaced the elements of chords, exploding

them by means offragmentation, vertical octave spacings, or delayed 

progression, his music hardly seems diatonic.

Vincent Persichetti was, along with William Schuman (1910-1992) and

Walter Piston, one ofthe foremost representatives ofwhat has become known

as the American academic school of composition. His compositional language

is a panorama oftwentieth century techniques, moving fluently among tonality,

atonality, polytonality, and modality. He studied and later taught at the Combs 

College of Music, the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, and the Curtis

Institute of Music, where his conducting teacher was Fritz Reiner. He produced

numerous compositions in the 1940s and 1950s, including six symphonies,

three orchestral tone poems, three string quartets, ten works for solo piano, 

and ten serenades for ten different instrumental combinations.

27
If one were to assign a generic name to Persichetti’s Parable xiv, it 

would probably be “rhapsody.” It consists often sections that are clearly

delineated by changes in tempo but irregular in length. One oftwenty-five

such parables that Persichetti wrote for solo instruments, it was written

in consultation with and first performed by trumpeter Kevin Cobb, who 

was at the time a student at the Curtis Institute.

Walter Piston was a leader among those mid-twentieth century American

composers who opted to explore traditional musical forms and language. He

studied composition at Harvard and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Paul

Dukas (1865-1935). Piston returned to the United States in 1926 and joined

the faculty of Harvard College, where he taught until i960. He reached the 

peak ofhis compositional output in the 1940s and 1950s, during which period

he composed six ofhis seven symphonies. His works have been performed in

many American Music Festivals at the National Gallery, including the first one,

in 1944, at which his Piano Trio no. 1 (1935) was performed by The National Trio.

Wallingford Riegger grew up in Indianapolis and New York City. He

studied the cello at the Institute of Musical Art and the Berliner Hochschule

fur Musik. His career took an unusual turn in 1914, when he went to Germany to be the resident conductor of orchestras in Wurzburg and Konigsberg. He was able to retain the positions in spite ofthe political situation,

until United States entry into World War 1 forced him to return to these

shores, where he found work as a teacher at Drake University, the Institute

of Musical Art, and Ithaca College. One of his pupils was Henry Brant, who 

played a role in the career ofsaxophonist Noah Getz (See the notes for the

first concert in this festival). In 1936 Riegger received a commission from

Martha Graham to compose music for her ballet Chronicle. By the 1940s, he

had established a reputation as one ofthe most articulate exponents of

avant-garde modernism. Major works from that period include his Concerto

for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, Musicfor Brass Choir, Piano Quintet, String

28

Quartet no 2, Symphony no.j, and Woodwind Quintet. His Third Symphony

was widely performed by Leopold Stokowski and others in Europe, where

Riegger was one of very few American composers to be taken seriously.

In spite ofpolitical harassment—he was summoned to testify before the

House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957 on suspicion ofCommunist sympathies—he continued to receive commissions, honors, and

awards on a regular basis until his death in 1961.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, pianist, and arranger Mel Powell made

his mark in the 1940s as a player, composer, and arranger ofjazz. He joined

Benny Goodman’s band at age nineteen, and his military service included a

tour and recording session with Glen Miller’s Air Force Band. In the mid1940s, Powell also recorded with The Jazz Club American Hot Band in Paris,

an ensemble that included Ray McKinley and Django Reinhardt. After his

discharge in 1945, Powell went to Los Angeles, where he worked with studios

and recorded with Jazz at the Philharmonic. In the early 1950s, Powell decided

to study composition with Paul Hindemith, and he abandoned film and

studio work. He became heavily involved in serial and electronic music, and

eventually taught composition at Queens College and Yale University from

the mid-1950s to the end ofthe 1960s.

29
National Gallery ofArt 

2,717th Concert

March 29, 2009

Sunday, 6:30 pm, West Building Lecture Hall

Alan Mandel, pianist

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869)

Bamboula, Danse des negres (1848)

The Dying Poet (1863)

L’Union (1852)

Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991)

Sonata No. 1 (“American”) (1944)

Fast, with Fiery Energy 

Moderately Slow, with Great Dignity

Lusty and (oyous

Alan Mandel (b. 1935)

Steps to Mount Olympus (2006)

Maestoso

Andante con moto

Misurato; con eleganza

Andante espressivo

Allegrissimo; energico

INTERMISSION

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Piano Sonata No. 2 (“Concord, Mass., 1840-1860”) (1916, revised 1947)

Emerson

Hawthorne

The Alcotts 

Thoreau

3°

The Musician

A pianist who has undertaken more than fifty international concert tours in

fifty-one countries, Alan Mandel has been acclaimed for his interpretations

of European and American contemporary and romantic music. He has been

applauded by audiences and critics as the first pianist ofstature to combine in

his concert programs both classical and ragtime music. Two ofhis recordings,

The Complete Piano Works ofCharles Ives and Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Forty

Worksfor Piano, received critical acclaim. The Ives recording was called

“historic” by the New York Times. Mandel has composed more than 130 songs

as well as many choral and chamber works and solo piano compositions. His

vocal and piano works have been performed in France, Italy, Romania, Taiwan,

and Yugoslavia, and his Symphony was performed in Austria by the Salzburg

Symphony Orchestra. He is a professor ofmusic and chairman ofthe piano

department at American University in Washington, DC.

Alan Mandel is proud and honored to be performing this concert in

honor ofthe centenary of his father-in-law, Elie Siegmeister.

31
Program Notes

Bamboula, Danse des negres is catalogued as Gottschalk’s opus 13 and is one of

his earliest works. Even as a teenager, he was already developing a fine sense

for the traditional American rhythms and melodies that were to be his preoccupation for more than two decades. Bamboula reflects the music and

dancing that were prevalent in Congo Square, a slave market in New Orleans.

The piece gained great popularity during Gottschalk’s lifetime, obliging him

to include it in more than 1200 ofhis concerts.

The Last Hope is another piece that Gottschalk played almost daily by

popular demand. As he noted in his journal in December 1862: “At every

concert a small scribbled note requests me to play Last Hope. The other day

I received one composed as follows: ‘Would Mr. G. kindly please thirty-six

young girls by playing The Last Hope, which they all play?”’ The piece found

its way into a number of Protestant American hymnals and was frequendy

quoted by the organists and pianists who accompanied silent films in the

first three decades ofthe twentieth century.

UUnion, Gottschalk’s opus 48, utilizes patriotic airs in the context of

a virtuoso concert piece. The Star-Spangled Banner; Columbia, Gem ofthe

Ocean; and Yankee Doodle are quoted, and the last two are combined in

counterpoint at the climactic ending of the work. Lincoln reportedly heard

and liked this work, and Gottschalk was invited to play it at one ofthe many

memorial services that took place after Lincoln’s death.

This concert marks the centenary ofthe composer, educator, and author

Elie Siegmeister, who was born January 15,1909. Following in the footsteps

ofGottschalk, Ives, and George Gershwin (1898-1937), Siegmeister unites in

his music distincdy American elements—particularly jazz, blues, and folk

motifs—with classical European forms. In his “American” Sonata, an example

ofthe tonal music ofhis early years, he derives almost every motiffrom American folk and popular materials. The first movement (Fast, with Fiery Energy)

transforms jazz rhythms into a breezy, spunky piece in sonata form. The

second movement (Moderately Slow, with Great Dignity) starts with an African

32

American protest song, Sistem and Brethren, from a collection that Siegmeister

compiled and published in the 1930s. The second theme ofthis movement

is derived from a gospel song, Boundfor the Promised Land. The third and

last movement (Lusty andJoyous) features boogie-woogie motifs and a lyrical

second theme that suggests a cowboy song. Its soft, dreamlike conclusion

calls to mind the open-hearted peace ofthe Western landscape.

In 2005 the William and Adeline Croft Memorial Fund at the Library of

Congress commissioned Alan Mandel’s Steps to Mount Olympus. It received

its world premiere performance in November 2005 in the Library’s Coolidge 

Auditorium, and the original manuscript is in the Library’s permanent

collection. The work presents a contrasting spectrum ofstyles and emotions.

Cross-rhythms, syncopations, and off-beat accents are presented in close

juxtaposition and in various combinations throughout its five movements.

Charles Ives’ Second Piano Sonata is judged by many students ofAmerican

music to be the most deeply and essentially American ofany work in the piano

repertoire. It was inspired by the transcendentalist movement that flourished

in Concord, Massachusetts between 1840 and i860. As the movement names

suggest, the sonata represents Ives’ response to the writings ofRalph Waldo

Emerson (1801-1882), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Abigail (1840-1879) 

and Louisa May (1832-1888) Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).

The first movement (Emerson) is perhaps the most profound and

wide-ranging ofthe four. Ives wrote of his awe of Emerson in his Essays

Before a Sonata (1920): “[He] peers into the mysteries oflife... a seer, painting his discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie at hand.”

The second movement (Hawthorne) is plagued by wild imaginary devils,

portrayed by ragtime syncopation that unfolds with ceaseless energy. Quoting

again from Ives’ Essays: “[Hawthorne’s writings are] about the ghost ofman

who never lived or about something that never will happen, or something else 

that is not.” In the famous “blues section” ofthis movement, Ives calls for the

use ofa strip ofboard 14 3A inches long and heavy enough to press down the

piano keys with its own weight. The keys thus depressed generate clusters of

overtones that eerily reflect the tone clusters produced by the player.

33
The third movement (The Alcotts) provides welcome reliefin its accessibility, sensitivity, and simplicity. Ofthis movement, Ives writes: “[It is] an

attempt to catch something ofthat common sentiment... a strength ofhope

that never gives way to despair, a conviction in the power ofthe common

soul, which, when all is said and done, may be as typical as any theme of

Concord and its transcendentalists.”

The final movement, (Thoreau) is characterized by great freedom within a

harmonically impressionistic framework. Inspired by the peace and contemplativeness ofThoreau’s Walden, Ives uses muted, introspective motifs. The

dynamic range lies mostly between pianississimo and mezzo-piano, with many

inflections. A stately bitonal refrain, heard over an ostinato bass, is interwoven

throughout the music. Toward the end ofthe movement, Ives provides two

versions, one ofwhich allows the pianist to finish the work alone, and the other

ofwhich calls for the melody to be played on a flute. In his Essays, Ives writes 

ofthe day’s end at Walden Pond: “It [is] darker.. .the poet’s flute is heard over

the pond and Walden hears the swan song ofthat ‘day’ and faintly echoes....

Is it a transcendental tune ofConcord?’’

Program notes by Alan Mandel

34

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery String Quartet and Poulenc Trio

With Jonathan Palevsky, narrator

“Great Britons in Music”

Music by Bridge, Britten, and Jacob

April 5, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court