For an especially immersive program at the McNay Art Museum, Agarita will perform throughout the museum among the galleries, providing the unique opportunity to understand the art collections in a new way. Visual themes will be paired organically with musical selections, offering an eye- and ear-opening experience.
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FEATURING
Ye Jin Min is a third-year Violin Fellow at the New World Symphony and a doctor of musical arts candidate at Yale School of Music. Born and raised in South Korea, she completed her undergraduate studies in Australia at the Sydney Conservatorium under Professor Goetz Richter and a master’s degree at Yale University with Professor Syoko Aki, where she received the Yale Alumni award. She also spent a year in Germany, receiving tutelage from Professor Ulf Hoelscher.
Ye Jin has performed extensively as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. She has performed in the U.S., Germany, Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Thailand and South Korea. Most recently, she was a fellow for Davos Music Festival 2022, Sarasota Music Festival 2022 and Bowdoin International Music Festival 2021. While in Australia, she was a member of the Sydney Symphony‘s Sinfonia Orchestra. She also was a first prize winner of the Kendall National Violin Competition and Animato International Violin Competition.
Ye Jin is passionate about performing contemporary and 20-century music and music by underrepresented composers. Her doctoral thesis is about Australian violinist Alma Moodie and music dedicated to her, including the works of Max Reger, Ernst Krenek and Eduard Erdmann. She participated in various concerts and projects, including a concert with Caroline Shaw and Gabriele Kahane, recording music of Ulysses Kay and Louise Farrenc for New Muses Project and also has her own project ‘Re:present.’ Ye Jin occasionally composes as well, and most recently she premiered her Hymn for Violin and Cello in St. Theodul Kirche during Davos Music Festival 2022.
PROGRAM NOTES
Spanish-born cellist and composer Andrea Casarrubios is a well-known performer who has recently gained acclaim for her compositions. Seven for solo cello is perhaps her most significant work to date, and the context for the work is especially meaningful. Casarrubios writes:
Commissioned by Astral Artists and Thomas Mesa for his project Songs of Isolation, Seven is a tribute to the essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to those who lost lives and are still suffering from the crisis. The piece ends with seven bell-like sounds, alluding to New York's daily 7 PM tribute during the lockdown—the moment when New Yorkers clapped from their windows, connecting with each other and expressing appreciation for those on the front lines.
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw understands how to play with sound and its infinite textures. As a member of the Grammy-winning, contemporary vocal group Roomful of Teeth, she often draws on the unique, raw capabilities of the human voice. When turning to instruments, she mines their intrinsic timbrel powers for expression: from violent pizzicato (plucking) effects to resonant, bowed chords, the work makes acoustic itself the subject. Limestone and Felt explores texture and space through sound, and the echoing, hard surfaces of the Mays Gallery are companions to this work’s musical materials.
Ishi’s Song by American composer Martin Bresnick opens with a transcription of a melody by Ishi (the last native speaker of the Yahi-Yana language, of the Yahi Indians), singing what he called The Maidu Doctors Song. Bresnick takes this simple melodic fragment and repeats, extends, and enriches it to mesmerizing effect. Although there are moments of hope and passion in this work, there is ultimately a darker, reflective nostalgia that captures the disintegration of Ishi’s tribe and his native language.
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt believes that "the instant and eternity are struggling within us.” We hear this struggle in Fratres, a work that begins with frenetic arpeggiations from the violin that yields to a chorale-like melody introduced by the piano. Pärt is fascinated by chant music, and in minimalist, Tintinnabuli-style works like Fratres, Für Alina, and Spiegel im Spiegel, Pärt frames incredibly simple, chant-like melody with glacially slow harmonic motion and straightforward form. Somehow, the result is mystical and elusive. The music is so intentionally basic that it feels fundamental, like some inevitable, universal truth.
Gabriela Ortiz is a Latin Grammy nominated composer and one of the foremost composers in Mexico today. Her Estudio no. 3, from her larger set of Estudios entre preludios, shows the incredible fire she can generate within a limited, fixed structure. From a small, rumbling gesture at the bottom of the piano she generates a formidable étude that displays a wide range of dynamic and expressive contrasts. While the rhythmic feel of the music changes from a virtuosic, diabolic pulse to a Latin groove, the motor of the piece never stops.
Missy Mazzoli is one of today’s leading composers, with works performed internationally. She is the recipient of a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, a Fulbright Grant to The Netherlands, four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, and many others. Living in New York, she teaches at Mannes College. About Lies You Can Believe In, Mazzoli writes:
The “lies” in the title are not untruths, and instead refer to the old-fashioned word for an improvised and embellished story. This type of lie is not malicious; the process of invention and the telling of the tale are ultimately more important than the truth behind the account. In this piece I created my own “lie,” an invented and embellished urban folk music. The strings tell an improvisatory tale, touching upon the violence, energy, mania and rare moments of calm one finds in a city. This piece is inspired as much by modern gypsy music, punk, and electronica as it is by traditional Bulgarian and Romanian folk music.
Caroline Shaw’s personal and approachable compositional style is grounded in a deep understanding of musical form, texture, balance, and timbre. As a singer and violinist herself, Shaw has a fundamental understanding of how chamber music feels for the performers, and how to write in a way that invites good musical conversation. Root is the final movement of her four-movement suite The Evergreen, which features Moss, Stem, Water and Root. Root begins is the most grounded (literally and musically) of the suite, beginning with a rocking pattern in the cello (and then passed to the viola) that persists through most of the movement, above which the other instruments either support or offer countermelody and varied textures. New, winding growth can be heard as the music develops, and the music ends with promising hope and a look upward, having evolved above ground.