Bravo! School of Music has larger than life night in New York
The late violin virtuoso Isaac Stern once said that the large auditorium in New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall is itself an instrument. "It takes what you do and makes it larger than life."
Carnegie Hall, considered by many to be the premier classical music performance space in the United States since its opening in 1891, was the renowned setting for a special concert by the University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony on March 8. The performance was both a celebration of the School of Music’s 75th anniversary as well as an opportunity to announce the winner of the prestigious 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.
Music school dean Christopher Doane said the school is "celebrating our history and our commitment to excellence in creativity, scholarship, artistry and performance."
That artistry was on display at Carnegie as the school’s Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony performed a diverse selection of pieces composed by past Grawemeyer award winners.
"One of the great things was that many of the Grawemeyer composers were in the audience to listen to us play—which was a little scary, too," says UofL student flutist Katie Fondrisi, who admits she was awed by the acoustics, by the detail she could hear in the playing of her surrounding classmates.
"Everybody had been practicing so hard and so long for this, and we came to Carnegie and pulled it off; we all felt really great about it."
Music critic Harry Saltzman, writing in the New York Concert Review, confessed some doubt before the performance. He described the program as difficult and wondered "whether the student ensembles were up to the task."
It turns out they were, according to Saltzman.
"Both ensembles and their respective conductors performed magnificently!" he wrote. "One could not have asked for more committed and technically assured playing and conducting."
Music professor Frederick Speck, who conducted the Wind Symphony, says he was proud of the students’ musicianship.
"They earned the praise that they received from the critics and the composers and everyone else."
21st Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition
One of the highlights of the evening was the awarding of the 2007 Grawemeyer music prize to American composer Sebastian Currier for his chamber music piece Static.
The name of the six-movement piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano reflects "different meanings of the word ‘static,’ which can be a state of quiet balance or the erratic noise between radio stations," says Marc Satterwhite, a UofL music professor who directs the music award.
"This emotionally complex work explores a huge range of instrumental color within a fairly small ensemble," Satterwhite adds.
Currier, who teaches at Columbia University in New York City, studied at the Manhattan and Julliard schools of music. His winning work was commissioned by Copland House of Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., for its resident ensemble. Meet the Composer, a national organization supporting new works by composers, funded the piece.
The Grawemeyer Foundation at UofL annually awards $1 million—$200,000 each—for outstanding works in music composition, education, ideas improving world order, religion and psychology. The Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion is given by the university and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Celebrated composer and past Grawemeyer-winner Karel Husa, whose new work Cheetah premiered during the Carnegie event, praised the School of Music in a letter to Doane in the days after the concert.
"It certainly showed the immense talent of your faculty artists, as well as students in your school," Husa wrote. "It was not only the ability, but also the devotion to new music. And it was in perfect accord with the ideas of Mr. Grawemeyer.
"Only very few institutions in this country could come as close to such an impressive offering."
