The Carolina Summer Music Festival presents this concert as part of an international celebration throughout 2011 of Steve Reich’s 75th birthday.

The Program

“Different Trains” for string quartet and tape

Different Trains has 3 movements and was written in 1988. It won a Grammy Award in 1990 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

The three movements are titled:

     America-Before the War (movement 1)

     Europe-During the War (movement 2)

     After the War (movement 3)

Prior to Different Trains, Steve Reich’s earlier work often utilized tape, looped and played back at different speeds. Different Trains is a bit different in that it uses recorded speech for a source for the melodies.

“Vermont Counterpoint” for flute and tape

Composer’s Notes:
Vermont Counterpoint (1982) was commissioned by flutist Ransom Wilson and is dedicated to Betty Freeman. It is scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos and one solo part all pre-record on tape, plus a live solo part. The live soloist plays alto flute, flute and piccolo and participates in the ongoing counterpoint as well as more extended melodies. The piece could be performed by eleven flutists but is intend primarily as a solo with tape. The duration is approximately ten minutes. In that comparatively short time four sections in four different keys, with the third in a slower tempo, are presented. The compositional techniques used are primarily building up canons between short repeating melodic patterns by substituting notes for rests and then playing melodies that result from their combination. These resulting melodies or melodic patterns then become the basis for the following section as the other surrounding parts in the contrapuntal web fade out. Though the techniques used include several that I discovered as early as 1967 the relatively fast rate of change (there are rarely more than three repeats of any bar), metric modulation into and out of a slower tempo, and relatively rapid changes of key may well create a more concentrated and concise impression.

The Artists

Elizabeth Ransom, flute

Elizabeth Holler Ransom, flutist, is known to audiences in the southeastern United States as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra player, and she has also performed on several occasions in Europe. She can be heard performing in the Winston-Salem Symphony, the Carolina Chamber Symphony Players, the Ransom-Pecoraro Duo (flute and guitar), The Chamber Music Society of Wilmington (North Carolina), and the American Music Festival. Ms. Ransom currently serves on the music faculty of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and she has taught flute at Davidson College, Lenoir-Rhyne College, and the New England Music Camp.

Ms. Ransom currently teaches courses in music career development and musical outreach at the North Carolina School of the Arts and is a member of the Network of Music Career Development Officers. The courses help to prepare undergraduate and graduate music students for the many facets of a career in music, including performance, teaching, community and educational outreach, grant writing and entrepreneurial project management. Ms. Ransom is recognized as a successful presenter of educational and community outreach programs, having served as education director for the Winston-Salem Symphony and the Carolina Chamber Symphony Players. She has been awarded numerous arts-in-education grants and has designed and presented outreach programs not only for orchestras but as a chamber musician and soloist. She has also been a member of the Winston-Salem Symphony’s Bolton Woodwind Quintet which received national and international acclaim for its innovative arts-in-education programs.

Ms. Ransom grew up in Bristol, Tennessee, and studied with Philip Dunigan at the North Carolina School of the Arts, with the late Severino Gazzelloni in Siena, Italy, and as a Fulbright scholar with Ingrid Koch at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, Germany. She received an Emerging Artist grant from The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and has won several concerto competitions.

Jacqui Carrasco, violin

Jacqui Carrasco has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico and Russia, including solo appearances at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and at the Library of Congress and chamber music concerts with the Cassatt String Quartet. Since moving to North Carolina in 1999, Ms. Carrasco has been featured in solo and chamber music performances at Duke University; the UNC campuses in Chapel Hill, Greensboro, and Wilmington; Music at Blowing Rock; the Foothills Chamber Music Festival; Chamber Music at St. Peter’s in Charlotte, and with the Salisbury Symphony. She joined the Carolina Piano Trio in 2005.

From 1992-2002, Ms. Carrasco was the violinist of the acclaimed contemporary music ensemble Cygnus and also appeared regularly with New York-based new music groups such as the S.E.M. Ensemble, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Ensemble, Newband and Musicians Accord. Ms. Carrasco has toured extensively with the Mark Morris Dance Group and been a frequent guest at the June in Buffalo Festival at SUNY Buffalo. She has recorded contemporary chamber music for the Nonesuch, Koch, Mode, CRI and Braxton House record labels.

As a noted performer of Argentine tango music, Ms. Carrasco has appeared with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in concert and on television, as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with the New York Buenos Aires Connection at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing. She has also been active as a jazz violinist, and her versatile skills have been featured in commercial, film and theater music, as well as on her CD Since We Met with the Jazz Strings Project. Ms. Carrasco received her B.A., magna cum laude, from UCLA, and her M.M. and D.M.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook, where she studied with Joyce Robbins. Having previously taught at Princeton University, she is now an Associate Professor of Music at Wake Forest University.

Marjorie Bagley, violin

Violinist Marjorie Bagley made her Lincoln Center concerto debut in 1997 with the Little Orchestra Society after beginning her performing career at the age of nine in her home state of North Carolina with the Asheville, Winston-Salem, and North Carolina Symphonies. Having graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in the first class of Pinchas Zukerman, she is active as a recitalist, chamber musician, and teacher. Marjorie has also performed as soloist with the Utah Symphony, Idaho Falls Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, the University of Michigan Symphony, and the Washington Square Music Series. As first violinist and founding member of the Arcata String Quartet, Marjorie performed in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, London’s Wigmore Hall, and across Western Europe and the United States. She is also an active proponent for new music and has premiered works by Paul Chihara, David Noon, Nils Vigeland, and Judith Shatin. Through her travels to music festivals, Marjorie has had the opportunity to play with some of the great artists of our time including Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, members of the Guarneri, Emerson, American, Tokyo, and Borromeo String Quartets. Ms. Bagley can be heard on recordings for the VOX, New World and Summit labels, and a recording of music for violin and percussion on the Equilibrium label featuring a concerto by Lou Harrison. Marjorie is the Co-Director of the Juniper Chamber Music Festival in Logan, Utah, which is becoming one of the most elite chamber music festivals in the nation. Ms. Bagley has been on the faculty of Ohio University, Utah State University, and the International Music Academy in Pilsen, Ms. Bagley has also taught at the Brevard Music Center, the Perlman Music Program, the Kinhaven Music School, and the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Program.

Scott Rawls, viola

Scott Rawls has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. Chamber music endeavors include performances with the Diaz Trio, Kandinsky Trio and Ciompi Quartet as well as with members of the Cleveland, Audubon and Cassatt String Quartets

Alexander Ezerman, cello

Alexander Ezerman comes from a family where the cello runs four generations deep, including two former associate principals of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A prize winner in national and international competition, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States, Canada, Europe and South America. He is newly appointed to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as Associate Professor of Violoncello. His previous position was at Texas Tech University, where he was a founding member of the Botticelli String Quartet. He also regularly performs with his wife, violinist Stephanie Ezerman, as the Ezerman Duo. An active advocate and performer of new music, he has been involved in numerous premiers, and has performed all twelve of the “Sacher” pieces for solo cello in a single recital. His most recent premiere, Ignis Fatuus for solo cello, by composer Teresa LeVelle, has been recorded on the Innova Label. During the summer, he is on the faculty of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington Vermont. He has previously been on the faculties of the Brevard Music Center and the Killington Music Festival. Ezerman holds a BM degree from Oberlin College Conservatory and a Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His primary mentors include Timothy Eddy, Norman Fischer, David Wells and his grandmother Elsa Hilger.
 

For more info on Steve Reich visit http://www.stevereich.com/