"This was shrewd composing, the genuine article. Onto the "season's best list" it goes...
Richard Buell of the Boston Globe
"Schwendinger’s music was clear, delightful, and descriptive, almost an opera without words"
Elisa Birdseye of the Boston Musical Intelligencer
"You know you have talent to burn.. this is ballsy, confident music making in both writing and execution and proves that serious contemporary music does not have to dumb down to be immediately accessible and emotional. Highly recommended."
Barnaby Rayfield, Fanfare
“There are no ostentatious displays indicating Schwendinger is the first composer to be awarded the American Academy of Berlin Prize, or that she is a 2007 Copland Award-winner, or that she has enjoyed repeated residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies and one at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy. But there is a small cactus.”
David Medaris 11/27/2008, ISTHMUS
PRESS/ REVIEWS
Classical Playlist: Puccini, Messiaen, Schubert and More
by THE NEW YORK TIMES SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 12:26 PM
‘HIGH WIRE ACTS: CHAMBER MUSIC BY LAURA ELISE SCHWENDINGER’ Brightmusic; Chicago Chamber Musicians; Duo 46; Christina Jennings, flutist; Greg Sauer, cellist; Katie Wolfe, violinist (Centaur) The chamber works grouped together on this captivating disc show off Laura Elise Schwendinger’s acute ear for unusual textures. In these works, scored for solo violin; nonet; violin and guitar; or a quintet of flute, piano and strings, she sketches musical short stories of somnambulant fragility and purpose. The color palette she draws from these modest forces is varied and expressive — and brilliantly rendered by a fine roster of performers. (Fonseca-Wollheim)
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/classical-playlist-puccini-messiaen-schubert-and-more/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
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THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday Arts Page, OCTOBER 5, 2014
by Corinaa da Fonesca-Womlheim
BENNINGTON, Vt. — On a cool, rainy summer afternoon, the Jennings Music Building of Bennington College was abuzz with the sound of dozens of chamber groups. It was the final session of the four-week amateur Chamber Music Conference held annually here, and familiar snippets of Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn filtered out of every available room and mixed into a cheerful cacophony.
Nearby, the Deane Carriage Barn was filled with a jazzy, mischievous-sounding tangle of syncopated notes and jagged tumbling cascades. A quintet of clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano was in the midst of rehearsing a work that was as yet unfamiliar to anyone — except its composer, Laura Elise Schwendinger. Facing the musicians with the score open on her lap, she interrupted them frequently to advise and correct. During a break, the violinist David Knapp said: “Usually you play music by composers who are dead, so you’re always guessing at what they want. It’s nice to be able to interact directly.” As for the unfamiliar musical language, the clarinetist Jeannine Webber said, “You take it apart, and you learn to embrace the dissonance rather than strain against it.” The remark earned her an emphatic hug from the composer.
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Fanfare May/June 2014, LEHMAN
"--I consider Schwendinger’s concertos the work of a significant contemporary composer getting a muchdeserved (if long delayed) “break-out” recording.
And what a recording it is! Truly it would be hard to overpraise the soloists for their superlative performances; cellist Matt
Haimovitz is almost superhuman. They, and the excellent orchestras and conductors, along with Albany’s vivid and detailed sonics,
together offer an ideal presentation of these very demanding works. Anyone who cares about the music of our time should hear them
and judge Schwendinger’s accomplishment for himself."
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Gapplegate Classical-Modern, Grego Applegate Edwards
Music Review
A new voice in modern music can be an exciting thing, if the person has something to offer. That is the case with Laura Elise Schwendinger. Her recent album of chamber music, High Wire Acts (Centaur 3098), gives us a distinctive musical personality...Laura Elise Schwendinger brings us a cornucopia of musical riches on this program. Any connoisseur of modern chamber
music would do well to hear it.
BRYANT PARK and Chamber Music America present the Lincoln Trio in ARC OF FIRE
http://www.bryantpark.org/plan-your-visit/newmusic.html
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WFMT Radio Chicago, Premiere of Chamber Music America Commission ARC OF FIRE by the LINCOLN TRIO
______________________________________________________________________The Boston Musical Intellingencer, Dawn Upshaw at Longy, as part of her Bard series Words and Music
April 20, 2013, Janine Wané
http://classical-scene.com/2013/04/20/upshaw-2/
With her colleague Kayo Iwama on piano, Upshaw began with a playful and beautiful setting by Laura Schwendinger of the e.e. cummings poem, “in just-spring,”
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REVIEWS for Schwendinger:
3 WORKS FOR SOLO INSTRUMENTS AND ORCHESTRA
In the March/April issue of Fanfare:
Feature Article by Barnaby Rayfield
http://www.fanfaremag.com/content/view/51018/
Art Lange's review in Fanfare
Lynn Rene Bayley's review in Fanfare
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REVIEWS for Schwendinger: HIGH WIRE ACTS on Centaur
In the Sept./Oct. issue of Fanfare:
http://www.fanfaremag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52440
Barnaby Rayfield
http://www.fanfaremag.com/content/view/52439/
Laura Elise Schwendinger's High Wire Acts by Robert Schulslaper
Colin Clarke review in Fanfare
From Colin Clarke’s upcoming review in Fanfare
I like Barnaby Rayfield's description of Laura Elise Schwendinger's music, in his feature article in Fanfare 36:4 as “not girly music”. I would go further and add an emphatic this is “so not girly music”. Punchy, imaginative, subtle, stirring, evocative … all these terms apply. She studied with John Adams, which doesn't seem to have harmed her much. Schwendinger's music is worth more than anything Adams has churned out so far…The 2002 piece High Wire Act was inspired by the circus figures of Alexander Calder. There are five movements. The first, also called “High Wire Act”, is remarkably effective given the careful depictions given by the composer about what the music actually represents—not only the artists themselves but also (in the high string harmonics) the sounds of the trapeze apparatus itself. The performance itself is acrobatic indeed, and beautifully managed. It stands on its own perfectly without a priori knowledge of the program. The frozen second movement (“The Rope Walker”), finds stasis perhaps representing the hesitancy of the walker. The writing for the instruments is expert. The third movement, “The Aerialist” is a love song for flute and viola, here played by a real life husband and wife (the two, love song and marriage, aren't exclusive in America yet, are they?). A shimmering trapped bird features next, fighting for its freedom: wonderfully written, wonderfully played.
From Barnaby Rayfield’s upcoming review in Fanfare
I recently interviewed Laura Elise Schwendinger back in 36.4, where I encountered her intricate but ultimately accessible style for the first time. Then promoting her disc of concertos, this welcome second album of her work gathers up a selection of her chamber pieces, all written in the last ten years, except her violin sonata from 1992. Just as I admired her love of orchestral color back then, it is her unusual pairing of instruments that intrigues; flute and cello, violin and guitar. Poise, structure, lyricism. This new disc echoes the fine qualities of her 3 Works for Solo Instruments and orchestra…
Nonet is riot of colorful trills, with Schwendinger's demonstrating a wonderful ear for clarity of texture and balance. The second movement (suitably tagged Tenderly) is an assured and poised work of beauty and color that really ought to be better known.
From Art Lange’s review in Fanfare
The album takes its name from the five-movement High Wire Act (2005), for flute, violin viola, cello, and piano. Each movement essays a different rhythmic effect—buoyant contrasts, overlapping and drifting voices, ostinatos, soaring birdsong over animated strings, and the like—and although the composer has attached to them titles meant to suggest circus acrobatics, it’s just as easy to think of them as evocations of Nature, especially as the melodic contours, emphasis on the flute, and the tension between Impressionist and Expressionist perspectives here were, to my mind, reminiscent of the Nature-inspired music of Toru Takemitsu. On the other hand, Schwendinger acknowledges the influence of Bach and Stravinsky on the Nonet (2003), and beyond the vibrant rhythms of the opening and closing movements, there is more than a trace of Stravinsky’s harmonic tang and, specifically, paraphrases from and allusions to Le Sacre du Printemps woven through the hypnotic slow inner movement.
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Review in Records International
http://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=01O079
"The cello concerto is a work of great drama, with a bold and intense, frequently ostinato-propelled first movement, a rhapsodic slow movement pitting the passionate solo line against highly original color-textures in the orchestra, a scherzo in which scraps of material seem to be thrown around the orchestra, and an active, propulsive finale, incorporating a virtuosic bell-accompanied cadenza. The vocabulary is a highly chromatic take on tonality, harmonically lush and richly textured. The violin concerto explores the contrast between tough, bravura material, bold and extrovert and full of harsh, stabbing accents, and soaring lyricism in clear, translucent textures. As in the cello concerto, the soloist has a near-constant flow of expressively and technically demanding musical argument. Waking Dream is a single-movement poem full of shimmering, iridescent impressionistic textures and a sensuously meandering, ornamented singing line for the solo flute. Madison Sinfonietta; Nicole Paiement.”
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Press continues for SOUNDING BECKET, at classic Stage Company in New York
Directed by award wining director Joy Zinoman and performed by the Cygnus Ensemble
Time Out New York says "Laura Schwendinger’s piece for Footfalls is particularly effective, featuring stretches in which the musicians play their instruments so lightly, it could just be the autumn wind blowing through their strings. Beckett’s works demand postviewing brooding, and these haunting soundscapes offer a an appropriately moody place to drift.—Jenna Scherer
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/sounding-beckett-classic-stage-company-september-23-2012
info on Sounding Beckett
Read additional reviews for Laura's work at http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/lschwendinge/web/SoundingBeckettreviews.html
"In a talkback after Sunday's performance, Schwendinger underscored that the pieces we heard were meant as musical responses to the plays: not necessarily programmatic outlines or storytelling. Thus, her piece responded to the strong emotions churning under the surface of Footfalls with sustained passages of controlled, but angst-imbued dissonance. After seeing actor Holly Twyford's simmering performance in the play, one could readily understand Schwendinger's poignant, elegantly crafted response."
More info at http://soundingbeckett.com/artists/laura-schwendinger
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Music Review
Forces of Nature and Ecstasy
Julian Wachner’s Trinity Choir at Zankel Hall
Steve Smith, NY Times June 3, 2012
All those qualities were tested immediately in the first work on the program, “Six Choral Settings” by Laura Elise Schwendinger, which knit poetry concerned with life and love into dense polyphonic webs. Ms. Schwendinger’s coolly beguiling tone seemed at odds with some of the more heated sentiments in the texts she chose, particularly the headier ecstasies in three selections from the Song of Solomon.
Her abstraction was best suited to more cosmic mysteries pondered by Milton, Kuki and Rumi; in the two last songs Ms. Schwendinger added brooding asides for the cellist Matt Haimovitz, a guest soloist.
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CD Review by William Zagorski, in Issue 35:3 (Jan/Feb 2012) of Fanfare Magazine
“C’e la Luna Questa Sera? (Is There a Moon Tonight?) is tellingly dedicated to the memory of Donald Martino, a composer whose work I very much admire. Composed in 1998 for violin, cello, and percussion, it was transcribed for the Lincoln Trio in 2006, and presents an almost tangible bit of scene painting inspired by moonlight reflected on the surface of Lake Como. It opens with an almost Webernesque gesture, and as the music develops, languorously despite moments of quickness, it evokes a sense of primordially serene mystery and infinite beauty within the tiny bounds of its five and a half minutes.”
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Notable Women named January Critics Choice for Naxos
http://www.naxos.com/feature/Critics_Choice_January_2012.asp
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Notable Women also names one of "hidden gems" by the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/dec/18/hidden-gems-classical-2011-maddocks
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Notable Women on best of 2011 Audiophile Audition’s Best of the Year Discs for 2011;
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Cedille’s Notable Women CD release with the Lincoln Trio, featuring works by Tower, Thomas, Garrop, Higdon, Auerbach and Schwendinger
reviewed in Gramophone:
http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/345/365/29940/2/14?dps=on
AND
Judith Sherman, was just nominated for a Grammy for Classical Producer of the year for her work on Notable Women,:
- Notable Women - Trios By Today's Female Composers (Lincoln Trio)
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CEDILLE RELEASES "Notable Women" with THE LINCOLN TRIO
Featuring C’e la Luna Questa Sera? and works by Auerbach, Garrop, Higdon, Thomas and Tower.
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Alex Ross’s popular music blog “The Rest is Noise” features Notable Women on his latest playlist
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/09/nightafternight-playlist-for-summers-end.html
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Just in: At Poisson Rouge, Oct. 26th http://lepoissonrouge.com/events/view/2704
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In the Audiophile Audition
http://audaud.com/2011/09/%E2%80%98notable-women-%E2%80%93-trios-by-todays-female-composers%E2%80%99-lincoln-trio-cedille/
C’e la Luna Questa Sera? (“Is There a Moon Tonight?”) by Wisconsin-based Laura Elise Schwendinger is written in one continuous movement and is strangely, eerily beautiful. Inspired by the sights and feelings of the moon over Italy’s Lake Cuomo, this is an ethereal, almost impressionistic beauty of a piece. With well-placed tremolos and high unison string melodies against a piano that whispers, shimmers and even ‘threatens’ at some points, the work seems to ask and answer the question posed by its title. I liked this piece a great deal!
-Daniel Coombs
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Review in Willmette Life, Chicago Sun-Times
Lincoln Trio mines riches of modern women composers, by DOROTHY ANDRIES Classical Music Critic
"Schwendinger finds moonlight serene, ethereal and otherworldly. She charges the violin with creating the light, the piano with evoking the rippling waters of Lake Como and the cello suggesting the water’s depth".
Lincoln Trio serves up bracing music by women composers, Mon Nov 15, 2010, by Wynne Delacom
Women composers have integrated themselves thoroughly into the classical music scene in recent decades. But it was still exciting to hear an afternoon of bracing, highly varied music written by some of contemporary music’s most talented composers—male or female...There was dissonance aplenty, even in the dreamy, meditative sections of Schwendinger’s C’e la Luna Questa Sera? and the movement titled Pale Yellow of Higdon’s Piano Trio. But none of the composers seemed interested in dissonance for its own sake.
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
BMV's Gathering of Friends, Elisa Birdseye, Monday May 9, 2011
Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman, Director
The title of the program derived from the world premier centerpiece of the evening, Laura Elise SchwendingerÕs Mise-en-scene (2011). But it also provided a context for the other pieces on the program. Schwendinger explained before the performance that mise-en-scene refers to all the elements (lighting, sound, props, stagecraft, etc) which create the feel and image seen in either a theater piece or a film. Her work, in nine short, continuously played movements, described a story, and even without program notes, it would have been possible to imagine what was going on onstage. She described her music as Òzany,Ó but perhaps another term would be ÒlooneyÓ in the sense of the fiendishly difficult and evocative music by Carl Stallings that underpinned the familiar Looney Tunes cartoons. SchwendingerÕs music was clear, delightful, and descriptive, almost an opera without words.
http://classical-scene.com/2011/05/09/boston-musica-
v
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Music in Review American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie's ZANKEL Hall, by VIVIEN SCHWEITZER, March 7, 2011
In Laura SchwendingerÕs ÒShadings,Ó richly scored shimmering music ebbed and swirled in tandem with a series of enigmatic photographs projected above the orchestra. The photographs were taken in Japan by the composerÕs cousin Leni Schwendinger, who also designed evocative lighting to complement the images.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/arts/music/american-composers-orchestra-review.html
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Civic Center Blog, San Francisco
Riding the Elevator into the Sky, Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The ninth season of Blueprint, a "new music project," opened Saturday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, with its artistic director Nicole Paiement (below) conducting. I went to the concert with some trepidation, because brand-new, modernist "classical" music is something of a crapshoot. Some concerts are excitingly revelatory, others are excruciatingly boring, while most are somewhere in between. The happy news is that Saturday's concert was on the exciting and revelatory side of the spectrum. This was due primarily to a hugely ambitious, 40-minute violin concerto called Chiaroscuro Azzurro by Laura Schwendinger (above), which is the work of a brilliant composer coming into her own. It's also very difficult music, densely packed with ideas going in all directions, but the lyricism of the solo violin writing keeps one focused. The fiddling by Wei He (above), by the way, was beautiful and heroic.here are three expansive movements in a traditional fast-slow-fast progression, and though it's just about impossible to absorb on first listening, the concerto passes my personal new music test, which is "Do I want to hear it again?" Ms. Paiement has just recorded the piece with an ensemble on the East Coast, and you can hear bits of Ms. Schwendinger's music on her website, including excerpts from this concerto.
http://sfciviccenter.blogspot.com/2010/10/riding-elevator-into-sky.html
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Dallas Morning News, October 20, 2010
Mexican-born Laura Elise Schwendinger, with a Berkeley doctorate, is a composition professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her 2005 quintet High Wire Act was inspired by Alexander Calder's little wire sculptures of circus performers. The five movements perform their own daredeviltry of skitters, gleaming hesitations and long-strung lines. Schleuning and Markina joined flutist Helen Blackburn, violist Barbara Sudweeks and cellist Kari Nostbakken in another exhilarating performance.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-voices_1012gd.State.Edition1.1461e96.html
-By SCOTT CANTRELL
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Bringing Garden Sounds Indoors, by Allan Kozinn
Laura Elise SchwendingerÕs ÒSong for AndrewÓ (2008) pays tribute to her teacher Andrew Imbrie, who died in 2007, by wrapping a theme from his ÒPilgrimageÓ (1983) in her own harmonization and gradually taking it into her own rhythmic and harmonic world. The piece is darkly attractive, artful and moving, and the ensemble, a piano quartet, played with the warmth and soulfulness it demanded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/arts/music/27garden.html
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New York Times, April 6, 2010
Music Surely Soothes; Can It Also Heal?
Laura Schwendinger’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” inspired by the famous Bosch triptych of that name, was a suspenseful tangle of bristling lines and eerie dissonances with passsages of melancholy respite.
-Steve Smith
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/arts/music/07edge.html
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Madison Magazine; Celebrating Chopin, March 10, 2010
by Katie Vaughn
Taylor considered limiting the concert to works only by Chopin but decided to offer contrast. He’s featuring pieces that came before and after: Beethoven’s “Variations, Op. 34” and “Van Gogh Nocturnes” by Laura Schwendinger, an associate professor of composition at UW.
http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Blogs/Liberal-Arts/March-2010/Celebrating-Chopin
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Chicago Tribune; Contempo invites audience to hear the art, see the music, November 16, 2009
By John Von Rhein
Schwendinger’s 2005 “High Wire Act” achieved more by attempting less. Inspired by the wire circus figures of sculptor Alexander
Calder, the four character portraits, with their high twitterings, undulating arpeggios and rippling figurations, evinced an acute sonic
imagination and sure command of craft. The piece was beautifully played by eighth blackbird.
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New York Times, March 20, 2009
Composers of One Sex but Numerous Styles
In Laura SchwendingerÕs ÒAir and Buenos Aires,Ó an opening movement built of arching, angular lines and lovely textures gives way to a harmonically dense movement with tango rhythms deep in its DNA.
-Allan Kozinn
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/arts/music/20wome.html?partner=rss&emc=rss___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Laura was profiled in the ISTHMUS, Composer at Work, UW's Laura Schwendinger Strikes a Chord
The Schwendinger Sound; In a second page, her works are discussed further with links to sound files.
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The Washington Post, Monday, December 15, 2008
Left Bank Concert Society Evokes the Spirit of Schoenberg
Most intriguing, Laura Elise Schwendinger's 2005 piece, "High Wire Act," seemed to leave Schoenberg out of the equation entirely. Her harmonically free-ranging, tintinnabulary scoring -- with its canny use of violin harmonics and flute phrases played directly into the open piano, to suggest aerialists in flight -- evokes Stravinsky's early ballets. The work gives a vivid sense of what modern music might have sounded like if the spiky, polytonal version of impressionism Stravinsky developed in those works -- rather than Schoenberg's 12-tone method -- had become the template of choice for modern composers to embrace or reject.
-- Joe Banno
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121402193.html
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New York Times, March 29, 2008
"Ms. Schwendinger's works lives in (at least) two worlds. The violin line, played with equal measures of energy and velvety richnes by Jennifer Koh, is sometimes assertive and sometimes rhythmically sharp edged, but those moments almost always resolve into a sweetly singing line. The grittier orchestral writing offsets that sweetness without overwhelming it. This seems a work likely to blossom with repeated listening."
-Allan Kozinn
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/music/31pock.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
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Miller Theatre at Columbia University concludes its 2005-06 season with the launch of a major new 3-year commissioning project...
By Allan Kozinn; Published: September 9, 2007
"POCKET CONCERTOS In the final installment of the Miller TheaterÕs program of newly commissioned concertos, Jennifer Koh plays Laura Elise SchwendingerÕs Violin Concerto and Christopher Taylor is the soloist in ÒThe Starry Night,Ó a piano concerto by Ichizo Okashiro. Closing the series, the idiosyncratic John Zorn has written a concerto for singer and amplified ensemble and has undoubtedly come up with the title of the year: Ò27 Acts of Unspeakable Depravity in the Abominable Life and Times of Gilles de Rais.Ó March 27. Miller Theater. Carver & Marcus Rojas)"
-from Just in Time for Timeless Melodies - New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/arts/music/09classicallistweb....
Miller Theater, March 27, 2008: Laura Elise Schwendinger: Chiaroscuro Azzurro with Jennifer Koh, violin and the International Contemporary Ensemble.
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-from Classical Domain, George Steel Interview at: http://classicaldomain.com/steel.htmlSteel interview, Classical Domain
CD: Some of them have been performed here before, are any of them out of the blue?
GS: I think we have done music by all of them. The big surprise for New York audiences will be someone like Ichizo Okashiro's Piano Concerto. I'm absolutely crazy about his music. Ichizo's sister, Chitose Okashiro, is a wonderful pianist and she sent me a CD of her playing a great combination of Scriabin, Takemitsu, Debussy, Messiaen Ñ and last a little encore of a work by her brother. I played the disk and I loved it. I called her up and told her, ÒYou can play a recital, you're terrific, but you have to play this piece on the CD and something else by your brother.Ò So she played two pieces by her brother, and I loved the second piece. I asked her to send me everything he had, this all takes place over many years, I looked over all his piano music. I asked him if there was anything larger he like to write, and he said yes. So we made him part of the project. It's a delicious piece. There's also a woman named Laura Schwendinger in the last year of the project. We have had some of her piano music here, but never a bigger piece, she's an amazing composer.
POCKET CONCERTOS: YEAR TWO 2006-2007 inlcuded Sebastian Currier: Piano Concerto (soloist Emma Tahmizian) Huang Ruo: Cello Concerto (soloist Jian Wang) Charles Wuorinen: Violin Concerto (soloist Jennifer Koh) Anthony Davis: Clarinet Concerto (soloist J. D. Paran)
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PERFORMING ARTS Tuesday, April 24, 2007; C08 Contemporary Music Forum, The Washington Post
"Different but no less engaging was Laura Schwendinger's "High Wire Act," a charming work inspired by Alexander Calder's circus figures". -- Stephen Brookes
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from Brian Dickie's Life as General Director of Chicago Opera Theater, April 21, 2006
Some serious music
Our friend Andreas Waldburg-Wolfegg runs a wonderful little concert series - Lake Shore Chamber Music. This evening he put on a splendid and important recital. Music of the New Century: American Music for the Flute The wonderful Catherine Ramirez - an astonishing artist, and Kuang-Hao Huang played. And the program included the first performance of a new work commissioned by Andreas from Daniel Kellogg (left) called Into Utter Forever. Daniel was there and introduced the piece with charming modesty. We also had Toru Takemitsu's Voice and a remarkable piece by Laura Elise Schwendinger called Rapture - an excellent and appropriate title. The world needs more of this kind of event - absolutely top class music making pushing the boundaries. Bravo! By the way Kuang-Hao Huang is joining the piano faculty at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts in September - an excellent acquisition indeed. We have a final run through of Abduction tomorrow afternoon before starting rehearsals in the Harris on Monday.
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Sting
Gives a Private Lesson at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Sting stands in at the University of Illinois at Chicago
and proceeds to rock the house. That is how it all went down on Monday
April 18th when Dr. Laura Schwendinger stepped down during her advanced
music composition class and let rock legend, Sting and three of his
band members Stand-In. Sting held his bass throughout the class,
and spontaneously performed during a well spoken lecture on the topics of
music and success. He played "Message in a Bottle", a little
Johann Sebastian Bach, and concluded by inviting the students to grab
their instruments and play along during "Every Breath You Take."
Dr. Schwendinger's class now joins the ranks of the very few who have ever
played along with Sting in a venue containing only 40 people.
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UIC
News Release
British rock star Sting surprised students when he visited
their music composition class at the University of Illinois at Chicago on
April18. MTV filmed the class for an episode of its "Stand-In"
series, which will air on the college network channel mtvU on Monday,
April 25. "We're particularly pleased to have Sting visit UIC
because his background mirrors that of many of our students," said
Michael Anderson, chair of performing arts at UIC. "He came from humble
beginnings, got his start in teaching, yet had the tenacity to make a
career in the volatile world of professional arts. Seeing him teach
demonstrates the link between classroom learning and professional
reality." Sting's entrance drew a loud round of applause and cheers.
He opened with an hour-long discussion of the art of songwriting, then he
and his band played '80s hits, new ballads and a country-western song about
divorce. "Besides performing beautifully, he was an articulate and
impressive educator," said Laura Schwendinger, UIC associate professor
of composition, who ordinarily teaches the class. Sting concluded by
advising the class to approach music as a form of self-therapy and "a
never-ending journey, like yoga." He urged them to study Bach's
complex time signatures and Stravinsky's revolutionary music and to
explore songwriting as storytelling. "Music has a narrative, a
kind of architectural integrity," he said. "If it's not structured
well, the story doesn't come through." Sting ended the class by
jamming with students on "Every Breath You Take." mtvU's
"Stand In" brings famous musicians, humanitarians and other
celebrities into college classrooms, always as a surprise to the
students. After it airs, the April 25 episode will be posted at www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/stand_in/ UIC
ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is
Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and
staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of
the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty,
students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and
government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in
metropolitan areas around the world.
Artists
Find Inspiration at a Creative Community in the New England Woods
By
Keming Kuo
Peterborough,
New Hampshire 1/10/05
Excerpt
from Voice of America piece on MacDowell with Laura
With fresh snow at the MacDowell Colony, the artists at
the New Hampshire retreat have caught sight of a moose in the forest scattering
the wild turkeys that usually feed on the grounds. But the writers and
composers are not in the New England woods for bird watching. For nearly a
century, artists have come here to create. It is where American composer Aaron
Copland wrote Appalachian Spring. Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson have
been here, and American writers Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather and James Baldwin.
Today, artists from across the country and around the world compete to stay at
MacDowell -- with this year's international residents hailing from such
far-flung countries as China, Albania and Cameroon.... That has been the case
for Laura Schwendinger, a composer who teaches at the Universities of Wisconsin
and Illinois. She says she sometimes feels the influence of the composers who
worked in the studio-cottage she now occupies. "Aaron Copland has composed
on these pianos...Leonard Bernstein was [in my studio] in 1971...all sorts of
incredible composers," she marvels. "You're not only part of a
continuum, but you feel like you're working in the same environs that they
worked in. That gives you such a boost. It makes you feel a part of this huge
creative flow." Nothing is allowed to disturb that creative flow, not even
meals. Lunch is delivered to each studio and left on the doorstep. But
breakfast and dinner are eaten in a common dining hall, where the residents
have lively debates about their work and about art in general. "We've had
a lot of discussions this residency with artists about 20th century
music," notes Professor Schwendinger. "I won't mention her name, but
a very fine sculptress here asked, not quite as tersely as I'm stating it, 'Why
do 20th century composers like writing such ugly music?' It was fantastic in a
way, because it opened up dialogue that you don't have with people in the real
world." Along with the work, the discussions and the lasting friendships
that are formed, the tranquil setting of the MacDowell Colony allows for
another important creative process: napping. "The naps are really famous
here," notes Laura Schwendinger. "Everyone has a bed in their studio,
and napping is a wonderful treat. In that nap, you re-energize. You wake up and
something new appears in your head."
MUSIC
REVIEW, By Mark Kanny Pittsburgh-Tribune
Creative
program enriches New Music Ensemble concert, Monday, August 4, 2003
"The absence of any visual entertainment for Laura
Elise Schwendinger's "Buenos Aires" focused attention on the musical
excellence of her hard-driving quartet for flute, bass clarinet, violin and
cello. She creates fresh and compelling lines that are brought together to a
powerful climax. It was superbly performed by Lindsay Goodman, Schempf, Ines
Voglar and Omsky. "
MUSIC
REVIEW By Richard Buell, 5/6/2003
Boston Globe
Dinosaur
Annex with Scott
Wheeler Conductor.First and second Church, Boston
Laura Elise Schwendinger's "Magic Carpet
Music" like the composer's other music we've heard, rejoices in edge and
has a force that has its way even if the section titles promise something
softly atmopheric- as here, with "Arabesque", "Air" and
"Buenos Aires". Here is a a composer who has distinct voice. It made
for an enlivening evening, not soothing, end to a more than usually enlivening
evening"
Collage New Music, David Hoose, music director, Paine Hall, Harvard University
MUSIC
REVIEW By Richard Buell 2/25/2003
Boston Globe
''Chewy,'' it says in your reviewer's notes on Laura Elise
Schwendinger's ''Fable'' (1994). This composer certainly had a knack of making
you wonder what was lurking round the corner for her spirited little band of
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. Movement No. 1 began
questioningly with a breathy tremolando for clarinet and ended, as if in
answer, with a quiet, almost feathery drum roll. In between, a long-lined
near-melodiousness runs up against violent disturbances in which agitated,
high-pitched twitterings seem bent on sucking all the oxygen (and middle and
low frequencies) from the air. Movement No. 2 was night music, lighted by
phosphorescent swirls and arabesques. The finale was nasty from the start
(wittily so, with registral extremes glowering at each other something awful) -
and it kept up its punchy, irascible tone until it was quite through with us,
thank you. This was shrewd composing, the genuine article. Onto the ''season's
best'' list it goes.
Arditti
quartet softens its edges
MUSIC
REVIEW By
Richard Buell, Globe Correspondent, 1/27/2003
Oddly enough, it was the newest piece on the program, the
String Quartet (2001) by Laura Elise Schwendinger commissioned by the Harvard
Musical Association, that proved the most conservative. The movement titles Ð ÒWith
intensity,'' ''Molto espressivo, dancelike,'' ''Maestoso,'' were one sign of
that conservatism. There was also the way that out of an abstract, ''modern''
sort of play with sound material, an unmistakable lyric intensity would want to
emerge - and would actually do so. A fine piece all in all, if perhaps a bit
extended, and it's worthy of the Arditti's attention.
More
can be heard from Schwendinger, who is a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe
Institute, on Collage New Music's concert on Feb. 23.
Arditti
Quartet,
Kresge Auditorium, Jan. 24, 8 p.m.
World
Premiere Highlight of Quartet Concert
Arditti
Quartet Presents Well-Rehearsed But Unmoving Program of 20th-Century Works By Jacqueline O'Connor
Over the past few decades, some of the worlds renowned
quartets have performed at Kresge Auditorium as part of the MIT Guest Artist
Series. On Friday, England's Arditti Quartet stopped by for a program of four
contemporary works, which included a world premiere by Laura Elise
Schwendinger. The quartet, founded in 1974 by first violinist Irvine Arditti,
also performed string quartets by Bela Bartok, Jonathan Harvey, and Gyorgy
Ligeti.
Despite the tremendous difficulty of the
program, this well-seasoned group completed the concert with near-perfect technique.
Hardly a note was out of place, even in the midst of extreme dissonance, and
every effect the instruments could produce was presented clearly.
Next on the program was the highlight of the
evening, the world premiere of Laura Elise Schwendinger's String Quartet.
Schwendinger, an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Illinois in
Chicago, wrote the quartet on commission from The Harvard Musical Association
of Boston, which co-sponsored this concert with the MIT Guest Artist Series.
The piece itself was impressive and appeared very aware of its audience.
The first movement, influenced by Bartok, followed many of
his patterns of composition. Though the opening was tonally stressful, the
piece was full of movement as it reached false climaxes, only to continue
climbing. Intermingling graceful melodies with the complex rhythms and discord,
Schwendinger provides a sort of relief from the intenseness of the rest of the
movement. The second movement, Molto espressivo, dancelike, opened with a suspenseful
cushion of tremolos on which the cello and viola melodies rested. The dance
part of the movement was felt in the short melodies though many pauses
interrupted the flow. The last movement of Schwendinger's quartet mimicked its
inspiration, the music of Maurice Ravel, with its intricate orchestration for
only four instruments. A perfect balance was struck between the first violins
melodies and the countermelodies that supported it. The Arditti Quartet's
performance was well-received, especially by the composer herself, present in
the audience.
January
25, 2003 Saturday, ARTS & LIFE
MUSIC
REVIEW; Quartet recital transcends boundaries By KEITH POWERS, Boston Herald
Arditti
String Quartet, Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge, last night
They've been new so long it starts to look like
old. The Arditti String Quartet, the foremost European purveyors of
contemporary composition in this generation, performed a rare Boston-area
recital last evening in Kresge Auditorium at MIT. Founded in 1974 by first
violinist Irvine Arditti, the foursome occupies the front ranks of new music
specialists, with over 100 commissions to brag about. Arditti makes the
continent's equivalent of America's Kronos Quartet, each now in its fourth
decade. Last night's concert was a joint presentation by MIT and the Harvard
Musical Association, which commissioned one of the works on the program, Laura
Elise Schwendinger's string quartet. Arditti performed quartets by Bartok, Jonathan
Harvey and Ligeti as well. Her Bartok movement made the players spend too much
time in first position. But the second movement marked important textural
ground, with sparse, tense and spirited writing. The finale broke at the end
like surf hitting the sand, positively infectious.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Freitag,
24. January 2003, Berliner Morganpost
Spectrum
Concerts feiern Jubilum
Leises Flirren. Zupfen und Zirpenin hchster Lage.
Verstreute Gerusche der Nacht finden sich zu einer Melodie zusammen. Robert
Helps ldt mit seinem Nocturne auf eine Klangexpedition durch die Dunkelheit
ein. Das feinsinnige Werk von 1960 stand am Beginn des Jubilumsabends der
Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Fr den amerikanischen Komponisten haben sich die
Berliner von Anbeginn eingesetzt.
Seit 15 Jahren engagieren sich der Cellist Frank
Dodge und seine Mitspieler fr den Brckenschlag zwischen Europa und den USA. Wir
sind dankbar, dass Sie uns etwas von der Kultur Amerikas herberbringen. Das ist
eine Sprache, die wir besonders gern und gut hren, erklrte Richard von
Weizscker, Ehrenmitglied des Spectrum-Frderkreises, in seiner Ansprache.
Ein typisches Spectrum-Programm gab es zum Fest.
Es verband die amerikanische Moderne mit europischer Romantik und Neoromantik.
Die groe Zahl von neun Musikern und eine eigens fr das Konzert geschriebene
Urauffhrung fielen aus dem Rahmen.
Die amerikanische Komponistin Laura
Schwendinger, die als Professorin in Chicago wirkt und vor drei Jahren
Stipendiatin der American Academy in Berlin war, erntete mit ihrem Quintett
"Celestial City" viel Zustimmung im Kammermusiksaal der Philharmonie.
Das Werk ist den Opfern des 11. September 2001 gewidmet. Es verbreitet nicht
nur Klagen, sondern auch Zuversicht und Gemeinschaftsgefhl. Fnf Musiker,
besessen von demselben melodischen Gedanken, finden nach und nach zueinander.
Herausragend auch, mit welcher Sensibilitt sich
Janine Jansen (Geige), Ron Schaaper (Horn) und Daniel Blumenthal (Klavier) mit
ihren ungleichen Instrumenten in Brahms' Horntrio aufeinander einstellten. Mit
klangschtigem Schwung strzten sich die Musiker schlielich in Ernst von Dohnnyis
Sextett von 1935. mig
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Horn
sucht Halali, Der Taggespiegel, 1/24/03
KLASSIK
Dissonanzen kommen wieder in Mode.
Glcklicherweise ist das anlsslich des Jubilumskonzerts von Spectrum Concerts,
jenem Ensemble, das seit nun 15 Jahren deutschamerikanische Musikfreundschaft
manifest macht, nicht politisch gemeint. In Laura Schwendingers im Kammermusiksaal der
Philharmonie uraufgefhrter "Celestial City", einem den Opfern des 11.
September gewidmeten Werk, wird jedenfalls deutlich, dass Dissonanzen gefragt
sind, wenn Unbehagen und die Klage um Geschehenes zumAusdruck kommen sollen.
Und vor der fast trostlosen Grundierung des Stcks wirken sie besonders
impressiv. Kein Wunder, dass nach einem solchen Stck Johannes Brahms Horntrio
eigentlich ein von erwrmendem Es-Dur-Wohlklang durchdrungenes Werk nicht so
einfach auf Genuss gespielt werden kann. Verhalten klingt der Beginn des Trios,
bedrckt der Mittelteil des Scherzos, dster der klagende dritte Satz, und auch
im con brio des vierten will das Horn nicht allzu plakativ zum Halali blasen.
Plakativ wird es dann nach der Pause, als Ernst von Dohnanyis Sextett op. 347
auf dem Programm steht ein Stck, das alle Register der Collage, der
berzeichneten Kontraste und der ppigen Diktion zieht, ohne dabei jedoch, wie es
fr hnliche Werke etwa von Dmitrij Schostakowitsch charakteristisch ist,
ironisch zu werden. Dennoch fr das Ensemble Gelegenheit genug, der
Muisizierfreude freien Lauf zu lassen. Und der Applaus gilt wohl auch der
Tatsache, dass ein Werk, dessen Schluss mit stilistischen Elementen sowohl von
Wagner als auch von Gershwin durchsetzt ist, nicht das schlechteste Statement
auch gegen politische Dissonanzen ist. Christian Ksser
MUSIC
REVIEW
January
21, 2002 Plain Dealer ,ARTS & LIFE; Pg. C9
Upshaw
enchants recital audience by Wilma Salisbury, Plain Dealer Music Critic
American soprano Dawn Upshaw has it all: lovely
voice, refined musicianship, command of languages, charming stage presence. In
her delightful recital Saturday night at Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall, she excelled
as a joyous interpreter of German lieder, Hungarian folksong, contemporary
American music, Russian characterization and cabaret comedy. With master
pianist Gilbert Kalish as her sensitive accompanist, she communicated the
meaning of every word and nuance. At one point, she took an extended pause
between numbers because of excessive coughing by members of the large audience.
Generally, however, she kept the listeners spellbound.
In the first half of the concert, spoken program
notes were unnecessary. After intermission, each group of songs was introduced
with background information about the composers and the music. The first
fascinating set was selected because the composers, born between 1956 and 1962,
are contemporaries of the 41-year-old singer. One of them, James Aikman, was
present to hear Upshaw's exquisite interpretation of his song, "Spring Is
Purple Jewelry." The other composers - Laura Elise Schwendinger, Michael Torke, Andy
Vores, Osvaldo Golijov and former Clevelander James Primosch - contributed
pieces that were well-suited to Upshaw's light voice and clear diction.
Especially captivating was Schwendinger's playful take on e.e. cummings' poem,
"In Just-Spring."
In comparison to these brief compositions, Ruth
Crawford Seeger's songs on texts by Carl Sandburg sounded strong, spare and
dramatic. The final selections from "The Nursery" by Moussorgsky
showcased Upshaw's skills as a singing actress in the dual roles of a
precocious Russian child and his long-suffering nanny. In the final number, she
rode an imaginary hobby horse and gracefully galloped around the piano.
Although she had been singing for nearly two
hours, Upshaw responded graciously to the audience's plea for an encore. Her
parting gesture, an adorable interpretation of William Bolcom's cabaret song,
"Amour," provided the perfect ending to an evening of vocal
enchantment.
CONCERT
REVIEW
October
7, 1999 Plain Dealer
SOPRANO
DAWN UPSHAW SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS
By
DONALD ROSENBERG; PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC
Never
was a singer so aptly named. Dawn Upshaw has a knack for sounding fresh,
invigorating and intensely musical whenever she opens her mouth. She does so in
a vast repertoire ranging from concert and opera to Broadway, which can't be
said for many artists of her classical persuasion. Upshaw was in resplendent
form Tuesday at Oberlin College's Finney Chapel for a recital with pianist
Gilbert Kalish. Typically, the soprano's program was an eclectic array of
songs, including 19th- and 20th-century literature by renowned and emerging
composers, as well as a few Great-White-Way goodies by Vernon Duke and Leonard
Bernstein. To all of these works, Upshaw brought an unerring sense of style and
a voice that drew the listener directly into the particular dramatic world. Her
soprano isn't a large instrument, but it is so perfectly placed, gleaming in
timbre and true in intonation that it projects with utter directness. With
Kalish providing collaborations of atmospheric magic, Upshaw gave blissful and
poignant evocations of the music's generous romanticism. She suggested humor
with graceful nuances, passion with tonal radiance.
Along
with her championing of the old, Upshaw attends to the new. She began the
second half with songs by six living composers who either have written on
commission from her or tickled her artistic fancy. They are composers worthy of
the attention, especially James Primosch (whose "Cinder" is a
haunting essay about destiny based on a poem by Susan Stewart), Laura Elise
Schwendinger ("in Just-spring," a childlike delectable set to verses
by e.e. cummings) and John Musto (the noble "Litany," with text by
Langston Hughes).
October
21, 1997, Tuesday, Final Edition
PERFORMING
ARTS
Contemporary
Music Forum In Works by Women by Cecelia H. Porter
Only
in this century have the publication and performance of music by female
composers begun to approach those of men. One of the foremost institutions in
Washington involved in this phenomenon is the Contemporary Music Forum, which,
together with the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the International
Alliance for Women in Music, sponsored a concert Sunday by female composers at
the museum. And what an intriguing event it was. Laura Schwendinger's clearly structured
"Rumor" (for flute and cello) revels in sinewy counterpoint as the
instruments alternately vie and entwine in heated discourse.
January
23, 2002 Wednesday , ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT,CONCERT REVIEW
DAWN
UPSHAW'S STORYTELLING CAPTIVATES by ROBERT CROAN, POST-GAZETTE SENIOR EDITOR
Classically
trained American singers are usually trained to sing in German, Italian and
French, as well as their native English, of course. In recital at Squirrel
Hill's Jewish Community Center last evening, soprano Dawn Upshaw included no
Italian or French, although she has excelled in that repertory both in opera
and concert. She made up for the omission by including songs in Hungarian
(Bartok's Folksong Settings), Russian (Mussorgsky's "The Nursery")
and Portugese (a lullaby by the South American Osvaldo Golijov). All this in
addition to four German Lieder each by Schumann and Mahler, and a lengthy
segment of Americana. Upshaw is no ordinary singer, and her appearance on the Y
Music Society series -- now taken over by the Pittsburgh Symphony -- was something
very special. She is best-known in opera, and she brought an operatic sense of
drama, captivating her audience by telling a story quite vividly in each of 29
songs plus two encores.
The
totality of her performance, in which she was strongly supported by pianist
Gilbert Kalish, was an unforgettable experience, moments lingering in the mind
long after the recital had ended. This is what singing is all about. This
singer is, indeed, a great boon to American song composers. She showcased seven
of her own generation -- she was born in 1960 -- among which James Aiken's
"Spring is purple jewelry" was warmly moving, Laura Elise
Schwendinger's version of an e.e. cummings poem delightful for its pointed wit,
Michael Torke's setting of lines from Proverbs most ambitious in its scope. She
followed with three songs from the 1920s by Ruth Crawford Seeger, stepmother of
folk singer Pete Seeger.
The
Washington Post
November
1, 1999, Monday, Final Edition STYLE
Dawn
Upshaw Lets The Sun Shine In; Recital Showcases Young Songwriters by Philip Kennicott,
Washington Post Staff Writer
The music world loves Dawn Upshaw, the American soprano
who sang an exquisite recital Friday evening at George Mason University's
Center for the Arts. Yet perhaps because she is young and pleasant-mannered,
and because she sings from a very centered, very sensible and very sincere
inner musical core, she never quite gets the final benediction she deserves.
She is, of course, the greatest American vocal recitalist working today and one
of the very best opera singers of our time. Hearing her exposed voice produces
tunnel vision in the listener, banishing the distractions of the audience, the
concert hall and the nagging little thoughts one carries there unwillingly. She
is also one of the most versatile of singers, moving effortlessly from Broadway
to the concert hall without being arch in the former or vulgar in the latter.
Upshaw transcends merely beautiful singing with a voice that is capable of the
musically inflected speech of a folk singer. This tendency is most pronounced
in her lower range, where one hears a hint of all the cigarettes and booze that
she probably never consumed.
Upshaw's programming is exceptionally
imaginative, especially her now-standard inclusion of a substantial number of
contemporary songs written for, or discovered by, her. On Friday night she sang
works by Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Torke, James Primosch, Laura Elise
Schwendinger and others--all of them born within six years of Upshaw's own
birth in 1960. The six songs, though written in styles ranging from the exotic
to contemporary American postminimalism, work together as a cycle, with moments
of humor and reflection well balanced.
April
28, 1997, Monday
MUSIC
REVIEW
Dawn
Upshaw's Adventures With Today's Songs by ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Most artists who achieve success with mainstream
classical-music audiences are reluctant to jeopardize it by taking risks with
repertory. Such thinking is nonsense to the soprano Dawn Upshaw. When the
opportunity came for her recital debut at Carnegie Hall, she thought of
presenting a program of contemporary American music. Her confidence that less
adventurous listeners would follow her lead was borne out on Friday night when
an enthusiastic audience filled the hall for her program.
She began with seven songs by American composers
all born within five years of 1960, the year of her own birth. It says
something about the timidity of the classical-music field that Ms. Upshaw's
natural curiosity about the music of her contemporaries is considered
principled advocacy worthy of note.
Some of the songs, like Kenneth Frazelle's
restless "Sunday at McDonald's," with a text by A. R. Ammons, were
written for her. Others, like Laura Elise Schwendinger's fanciful setting of E.
E. Cummings's "In Just-Spring," with its wonderfully fidgety
accompaniment, were sent to her unsolicited. Songs by James Aikman, Michael
Torke, James Primosch, John Musto and Larry Alan Smith made strong first
impressions. Ms. Upshaw's singing was alert and plaintively beautiful. The
pianist Gilbert Kalish, her frequent accompanist, played with incisiveness and
character.
The
Washington Post
January
23, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition
For
Fleisher, Matters Are Well in Hand by Joan Reinthaler
Leon Fleisher has been associated with the
Theater Chamber Players since their beginning, as a founder, conductor and
music director, but his appearances with them as a pianist in a pair of weekend
concerts -- Saturday's at the Kennedy Center and Sunday's at Bradley Hills
Presbyterian Church in Bethesda -- were a step toward the reemergence of a
major artist. On Sunday, runs negotiated with authority in the joyful finale of
the Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, Op. 25, signaled that Fleisher's right hand
is recovering from the nerve damage that had forced a 30-year interruption in
his piano career. But the quiet, beautifully phrased and pedaled chords with
which he opened the Schumann song cycle "Frauenliebe und Leben"
signaled the return of a rare musical talent.
The program opened with Laura Elise
Schwendinger's Lament for String Trio, a poignant short piece in which each
instrument has an opportunity to express its own sorrow. The ensemble did so
convincingly.
Bay
Area Composers' Symposium,Classical Pitch to Sound Out Talent,Young musicians
hear their workby ROBERT COMMANDAY, CHRONICLE MUSIC CRITIC
JANUARY
24, 1993, SUNDAY, SUNDAY EDITION
LEAVE it to a young American conductor to come
up with a fresh idea in the symphonic scene. Last weekend, Gary Sheldon
conducted his Marin Symphony in a public reading of six new works. The young
composers had a chance to hear how their pieces actually sound before they
submit them for concert performances. As about 200 members of the orchestra's
audience listened to the composers describe their pieces, to Sheldon's
instructions to the orchestra, and then to the readings, this audience became
part of the process.
Laura Schwendinger, another doctoral
candidate in composition at UC Berkeley, offered a very intense, dark work,
''Night Dances,'' music of considerable power.
February
10, 1998, Tuesday, STYLE
The
Washington Post
Chamber
Players, Striking a Balance by Charles McCardell
Like skilled playwrights, the Theater Chamber
Players know that well-placed levity can function not as a distraction but as a
means for intensifying the seriousness of what precedes it. The group's
Saturday night concert at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater contained mostly
vocal music from the 19th and 20th centuries, heavy in content and dark in
mood. Yet with just two bits of absurdity from composer Ernst Toch at the end,
the emotional scales almost balanced. These Toch nuggets were necessary,
arriving after a lineup that included two melancholy Brahms pieces. The Sonata
in E Minor for Cello and Piano found cellist Evelyn Elsing taking the lead role
in grand fashion, with unabashed passion and a large tone to match. Leon
Fleisher, tentative at first, warmed to the task in the minuet movement and
fugue finale. His keyboard efforts assumed a far more sinister character in
support of baritone John Shirley-Quirk in the "Vier ernst Gesaenge."
Theirs was a splendid partnership; Shirley-Quirk's majestic phrasing of the
biblical texts and Fleisher's commanding touch earned a standing ovation.
Mezzo-soprano Patricia Green and violinist Sally
McLain teamed up for Boris Blacher's "Francesca da Rimini," in which
the spirit of this murder victim speaks to Dante about her desperate love for
the also-slain Paolo. Green conveyed the heroine's anguish and pathos with
conviction, while McLain added jittery colorations as though depicting the
winds of Hades. Green had a more difficult assignment in the world premiere of
Laura Schwendinger's "Songs of Heaven and Earth," based on four works
by Chinese poet Ts'ai Yen. The pitches assigned made for great leaps in
register and dynamics. Green did well recounting the poet's tragic life story,
and the septet behind her exuberantly took to the challenges involved.
Schwendinger's score has an impressive luster and transparency, even when the
textures become thick. .
Radcliffe
Quarterly - Spring 2003
Quick
Study
Laura
Elise Schwendinger RI '0
Laura Elise Schwendinger RI '03, a composer and
an assistant professor of composition at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
is creating an orchestral work in one movement for her fellowship project. Her
recent works include commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Fromm
Music Foundation at Harvard, and her music has been performed around the globe.
Schwendinger has received the American Academy in Berlin Prize fellowship and a
Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well
as other fellowships throughout the United States and in Italy. She earned her
doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.
What is the most challenging aspect of being a
Radcliffe Institute fellow? Leaving my office in June!
Which trait do you most admire in yourself? My
enthusiasm and love of all things beautiful.
What is your most treasured possession?
Chloe, my seventeen-year-old cat.
Predict the
next major event in your field.
I would like to see an unparalleled upsurge of
interest in art music. Who is your muse?
Euterpe, of course, the Greek goddess of music
and lyric poetry.
What do you consider your greatest success? Dawn
Upshaw's performance of my song in Just--spring on tour and around the globe.
Which literary character do you most admire?
Elizabeth from Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. Tell us your favorite memory.
Watching the sun set over San Francisco Bay with
my family.
Who are your heroes? My parents, my husband, and
former President Jimmy Carter. If you could dine with any two composers, who
would they be?
Igor Stravinsky and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Describe yourself in six words or less. At all
times creative. Where in the world would you like to spend a month?
That's easy. The Rockefeller Conference Center
in Bellagio, Italy.
Whose tunes do you enjoy? Johann Sebastian Bach
and Cole Porter.
What is your fantasy career? To be a composer.
If your life became a motion picture, who should
portray you? I'm told I resemble Debra Winger, but I'd prefer Isabella
Rossellini.
Why does your work matter? I hope and believe
that my music conveys something true about life, human emotion, and the
mysterious and beautiful world of sound.