The following preview has been provided by Mallarmé Chamber Players.
UNC-G music student Trevor Bumgarner is the 2013 winner of the Mallarmé Chamber Players Edging the Cut composition contest. In addition to a $500 prize, the 6-minute composition will be performed by Mallarmé on their upcoming concert on April 21, 2013. The contest was opened to all students enrolled in a North Carolina college or university to compose a work, no more than 10 minutes in length, with specific parameters of instrumentation. Mallarmé is passionate about commissioning new music, developing community partnerships and providing educational opportunities, and this project ties in well with organizational priorities.
Bumgarner’s work As It Exists, for four bassoons, will be on the concert program How Low Can You Go? featuring music for solo and multiple bassoons. The concert will be held at Casbah in Durham on Sunday, April 21, 2013, at 7:30 PM. Performers include bassoonists Rachael Elliott (Duke), Michael Harley (University of South Carolina), Peter Kolkay (Vanderbilt), Saxton Rose (UNC School for the Arts) and Michael Burns (UNC-G). The first four of these performers also comprise the Carolina-based bassoon collective Dark in the Song, which was founded three years ago and is dedicated to the performance of new music for bassoon ensemble.
Mr. Bumgarner tells us, “The Edging the Cut competition was a perfect opportunity incorporating three things dear to me: composition, bassoons, and North Carolina. I am honored to have my composition selected by the Mallarmé Chamber Players. A performance by several of the top musicians in a young composer’s home state is a wonderfully significant opportunity.”
“Dark in the Song has premiered over a dozen new works by student and professional composers, and we are thrilled to premiere Trevor Bumgarner’s new quartet at our April 21st concert at Casbah. Trevor is a bassoonist, composer and a senior at UNC-Greensboro who has written a dramatic and varied new piece for bassoon quartet,” says Rachael Elliott, an adjudicator of the contest as well as a bassoonist performing on April 21st.
In addition to As It Exists, the performance will feature works for solo and multiple bassoons, including arrangements of music from Monteverdi to Moondog, as well as contemporary works written for bassoon, including a work for bassoon and electronics, called Swamp Song, written by Trevor Bumgarner’s bassoon instructor Michael Burns.
For the final segment of the concert, bassoon-playing members of the community are invited onstage to participate in a “bassoon band” performing en masse with the professionals. In advance of the performance, any and all bassoonists are welcome and encouraged to attend a “bassoon band camp” held by Duke University bassoon instructor Rachael Elliott at the Mary Duke Biddle Music building on Duke’s East Campus. Band camp dates and other information about joining the bassoon band can be found on Mallarmé’s website, www.mallarmemusic.org, or by calling 919/560-2788.
PROGRAM
How Low Can You Go?
Selections from Orfeo – Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)/arr. Iskra
So That’s a Bassoon!
Volumen (1986) – Patrice Fouillaud (b. 1948)
Hopi (1985/1994) – Philippe Hersant (b. 1948)
Black (2008) – Marc Mellits (b.1966)
Operatic Interlude
Arias from The Barber of Seville – Giaochino Rossini (1792-1868)/arr. Gebauer
Trio, Op. 17 No. 2 – François-Henri-Joseph Castil Blaze (1784-1857)
Meet the Composers
Swamp Song (1987) – Michael Burns (b. 1963)
As It Exists (2013) – Trevor Bumgarner (b. 1991)
Come Closer (2011) – John Fitz Rogers (b. 1963)
Iftira (2012) – Felipe Perez-Santiago (b. 1973)
The Whole Is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts
Hodie Christus natus est – Jacob Handl (1550-1591)
March of a Marionette – Charles Gounod (1818-1893)/arr. Lotzenhiser
Bells Are Ringing (1971) – Moondog (1916-1999)
ABOUT TREVOR BUMGARNER: Trevor Bumgarner is a composer and bassoonist from Newton, North Carolina. He received the “Emerging Composer Mention” twice from the Tribeca New Music Young Composers Contest for his saxophone quartet LED (2012) and Sonata for Bassoon and Piano (2011). Both compositions were selected for the 2012 Society of Composers Student National Conference. In 2012, Trevor was selected to attend and write a string quartet for the HighSCORE Music Festival in Pavia, Italy, led by Christopher Theofanidis, Dmitri Tymoczko, Amy Beth Kirsten and Irvine Arditti. He recently received an Undergraduate Research Grant from UNC-Greensboro and has an upcoming commission from the North Carolina Brass Trio. As a bassoonist, Bumgarner enjoys performing an extensive range of repertoire from Vivaldi to Stockhausen. Trevor Bumgarner attends the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, studying composition with Alejandro Rutty and Mark Engebretson and bassoon with Michael Burns.
ABOUT THE MALLARMÉ CHAMBER PLAYERS: The Mallarmé Chamber Players are a flexible ensemble of professional musicians based in Durham, North Carolina, whose mission is to enrich the lives of their community through outstanding chamber music. The ensemble distinguishes itself by its innovative educational programs, its commitment to creative collaboration with other organizations, its creation of significant new work and its dedication to serve a diverse population.
Mallarmé annually presents a series of five concerts that features great, diverse, and multidisciplinary chamber music. Mallarmé performs everything from Bach with period instruments to brand new works. In this past year alone, Mallarmé has presented two world premières by composers Gwyneth Walker and Gabriela Lena Frank. In 2010, Mallarmé released a CD on Albany/Videmus records of chamber music by African American composers to great acclaim.
Mallarmé is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization. The 2012-13 concert season is made possible in part by grants from the Durham Arts Council’s Annual Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.
