In their first immersive collaboration with the Witte Museum, Agarita performs a program inspired by the Witte’s special exhibit Surviving Space: Astronauts & Asteroids at 6pm after a set of individual performances throughout the museum at 5pm.
Program
Tina Davison | Blue Curve of the Earth
Brad Baillott | Rendezvous-5
L.W. Beethoven | String Quartet op.130 | Cavatina
C. Saint-Saëns | The Swan
Fazil Say | Space Jump for Piano Trio
Aaron Jay Kernis | Musica Celestis
Featuring
Aimee Lopez, Violin
A native of the Washington DC area, violinist Aimee Lopez officially became a Texan when she joined the San Antonio Symphony in 2008 after completing a coveted four year fellowship with The New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. She is also a violinist with The Colorado Music Festival Orchestra in Boulder, Colorado. She has performed on stages throughout Europe, performing a month-long residency of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at L'Opera Comique in Paris and The Alhambra in Spain. Aimee has given solo recitals and collaborated on chamber concerts in Washington DC, Baltimore, Houston, Boulder and Santa Cruz. Aimee has a passion for nurturing young minds and hearts through music. She directs a busy private violin studio where she actively develops the talents of young people on a weekly basis. Prior to her engagement in San Antonio, she earned degrees from The Peabody Institute and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music where she studied under Elisabeth Adkins, Violaine Melancon, Shirley Givens, and Kathleen Winkler. Aimee lives in San Antonio with her husband, Dave, stepson, David and the newest addition to the family: two year old son, Gus.
Josh Bryant, Saxophone
Joshua Bryant is a saxophonist based in San Antonio, Texas, where he formerly served as Adjunct Professor of Saxophone at Trinity University and San Antonio College. As a performer, Joshua shares his passion for the tenor saxophone by engaging audiences around the world and advancing the repertoire of his instrument through commissions and his own transcriptions, showcasing the vast capabilities of the tenor voice. Outside of his performances in central Texas, his most recent performances include a residency at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, China, and a national recital tour with organist Samuel Gaskin, featuring performances at both the 2020 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference and the 2020 American Guild of Organists Dallas Conference. Joshua holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma and Duquesne University, where he studied with internationally renowned tenor saxophonist James Houlik.
Although Joshua’s new career is in IT, he is always looking for opportunities to performand collaborate with other artists. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking with his fiancée, birdwatching, and learning the art of the Chinese board game, “Go”.
Florian Love, Narrator
Florian is an active music educator and performer in the San Antonio area. He completed his Bachelor's of Music Education with a distinction in violin performance from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is currently pursuing his Masters in Violin Performance Pedagogy. Florian is currently the orchestra director at Vale Middle School in Northside ISD. He currently performs with Symphony Viva and in a variety of freelance gigs in the San Antonio area. Florian enjoys performing, teaching, composing, and arranging music from diverse styles and genres ranging from traditional to experimental.
PROGRAM NOTES
Each of the two volumes of J.S. Bach’s monumental Well-Tempered Clavier features 24 Preludes and Fugues, one for every possible key. This is an eclectic set of pieces in different moods, rich with stylistic variety and musical references. The Preludes are a beautiful demonstration of emotional range, from placid and reflective to dramatic and stormy. The Fugues exemplify Bach’s mastery of composition: not only are these 3-voice and 4-voice textures organically crafted and flow naturally, but they also offer incredible musical expression and have their own narrative. Full of hope, grand shapes and energizing counterpoint, the Prelude and Fugue in C Major from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered is worthy enough to have been added to the Voyager probes, currently the furthest human-made object from Earth. The Voyager probes are time capsules of sorts for extraterrestrials to find. As President Jimmy Carter offered about Voyager 1: “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”
Born in Stockholm, Sweden but raised in Oneonta, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, American composer Tina Davidson has had over a 40-year career commissioning acclaimed ensembles, orchestras, and soloists. Her violin and piano work Blue Curve of the Earth was part of a commissioning project by violinist Hilary Hahn, and has received warm reviews for its gripping and inventive opening, potent storytelling and sense of dialogue between the instruments, and relatable harmonic language. During Davidson’s stay as artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation, she experienced aspects of the vivid natural world that inspired Blue Curve of the Earth:
“Wyoming, that November, was turbulent, the weather twisting and turning on itself, before settling into snow. As I wrote, I was aware of all the different blues of the landscape; blue-blue, grey-blue, mountain-blue, water-blue, and the constant motion of the world. I had a sense of creating a blue line of string sound, that curled in and out, and up along the curve of the earth, the beautiful curve we call home.”
On January 28, 1986, the Challenger Space Shuttle disintegrated above the Atlantic Ocean about one minute after blast-off, tragically killing all seven crew members. One of those crew members was Ron McNair, an accomplished jazz saxophonist and the second African-American to travel to space. McNair intended to perform a saxophone solo, composed by Jean Michel Jarre for his album Rendez-Vous, on board his 1986 Challenger journey. Composer and bassoonist Brad Balliett, moved by McNair’s story, decided to compose a chamber work entitled Fantasy on Rendezvous 5, which he arranged tonight for Agarita and saxophone. Balliett’s powerful work fills out Jarre’s melody with bold accompaniments, soaring countermelodies, and a driving pulse, giving a sense of adventure and exploration on a universal scale.
Of Beethoven’s 16 epic and masterful quartets, his String Quartet no. 13 in B-flat Major, op. 130 is lauded as one of Beethoven’s finest works of art, and ends the album of music present on the Voyager probes that have reached interstellar space. The final “Grosse Fuge” or “Grand Fugue” movement often gets the most attention from scholars and musicians as being a bit controversial: after a negative premiere and his publisher’s insistence, Beethoven replaced the movement with something more palatable. Today, that movement has been restored by many in performance and hailed as genius. But just before the torrent that is the finale, the Cavatina movement, performed tonight, is an oasis. Utterly serene and eternally patient, the movement offers a gorgeous melody that even Beethoven himself reflected upon with admiration: “Never has my own music made such an impression me. (…) I composed this cavatina truly in the tears of melancholy.”
Camille Saint-Saëns’ musical zoo The Carnival of the Animals features musical representations of many different animals, from swift, chirping birds to pompous elephants and even animals as quirky and disturbing as “Pianists” (Movement 11). The most famous from the set is the animal on the program tonight, The Swan. The movement features a long, soaring melody above a placid accompaniment. Smooth, uninterrupted, and with a glorious arc. Tonight, however, might not be quite as seamless as usual. Performed by all four members of Agarita (two on cello, two on piano), this unnecessarily difficult arrangement is meant to represent an important theme from the space-themed exhibition: teamwork.
Fazil Say is a Turkish composer and pianist whose complex and poignant music often incorporates folk melodies and styles from Turkey and neighboring countries. Say was a child prodigy, demonstrating an advanced level of musicianship and composition from a very early age. With his work Space Jump, Say musically illustrates the feat of extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from the stratosphere back down to earth. Each phase of the jump is depicted, from the anxiety as a spectator of Baumgartner taking off in the space shuttle and gazing upon Planet Earth from a distance, to falling at an incredibly high speed and eventually, with a sense of victory and relief, landing safely. This intense work is divided into three movements or emotional environments, but they are connected seamlessly.
Aaron Jay Kernis is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer on the faculty of the Yale School of Music. Drawing from traditional tonal harmony and the history of the Western canon, Kernis’ complex and carefully formed music is accessible for its neo-romantic sensibilities, and relatable musical characters. Musica Celestis the second movement of his String Quartet written in 1990. About this particular movement, the composer himself writes: “Musica Celestis is inspired by the medieval conception of that phrase which refers to the singing of the angels in heaven in praise of God without end. ‘The office of singing pleases God if it is performed with an attentive mind, when in this way we imitate the choirs of angels who are said to sing the Lord’s praises without ceasing.’ (Aurelian of Réöme, translated by Barbara Newman) I don’t particularly believe in angels, but found this to be a potent image that has been reinforced by listening to a good deal of medieval music, especially the soaring work of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). This movement follows a simple, spacious melody and harmonic pattern through a number of variations (like a passacaglia) and modulations, and is framed by an introduction and coda.”