Ensemble X opens season with celebration of Cornell composers

The Cornell Department of Music has been a leader in training American composers of contemporary classical music for 60 years.

Ensemble X, Ithaca's acclaimed new-music band, will open its 2000-01 concert season with a retrospective of music by some of Cornell's most successful alumni composers tonight, Oct. 26, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. The ensemble, founded in 1997 and directed by Cornell music Professor Steven Stucky, includes faculty performers from both Ithaca College and Cornell. The concert is free and open to the public.

Several generations of Cornell composers will be represented on the program, displaying the wide range of styles and tastes fostered at Cornell over the years. New York-based Steve Reich, who graduated in philosophy in 1957 but also worked extensively with late Professor William Austin, his musical mentor, is known as one of the world's foremost living composers. Combining influences from medieval music to Stravinsky to jazz to West African drumming to traditional Hebrew cantillation, Reich has produced a highly original but highly accessible musical language. Ensemble X will perform his 1994 composition Proverb, a haunting work for five voices, two vibraphones and synthesizers set to text by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (the subject of Reich's undergraduate thesis at Cornell).

Equally celebrated is composer Christopher Rouse. Since earning his Cornell degree in 1977, Rouse has gone on to teach at the Eastman and Juilliard schools of music, to serve as composer-in-residence of the Indianapolis and Baltimore symphonies and to win the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in music (Cornell's second, after Karel Husa won 20 years earlier). Ensemble X will perform his 1996 composition Compline, commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

While composer Paul Chihara has earned his biggest following as a film and television composer, he also has had a major career in the concert hall. His classic work Branches, for two bassoons and percussionist, dates from 1966, the year after he finished on East Hill.

Seattle-based guitar virtuoso Michael Nicolella will perform with Ensemble X tonight.

From the younger generation come John Fitz Rogers and Anna Weesner, both of them mid-1990s graduates building promising careers. Weesner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, will hear the world premiere of her trio Dance of Light and Stone. Rogers teaches at the University of South Carolina. His 1997 composition for solo guitar, Push, is an exhilarating assault in the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. The brilliant young Seattle-based guitar virtuoso Michael Nicolella will perform the Rogers work, and the concert also will feature an accomplished young Ithaca pianist, Lisa Leong.

Chihara, Rogers, Rouse and Weesner will join Stucky on stage at 7:15 p.m. for a preconcert discussion of their music.

Many of the same Cornell composers will join a symposium Saturday morning, Oct. 28, on the changing face of modern music over the past 40 years at Cornell and across the country. The 9 a.m. session will include Stucky, Rogers and Chihara, along with Professor Emeritus Robert Palmer and 1986 graduate Andrew Waggoner, faculty member at Syracuse University. The 10:15 a.m. session will add Weesner, Rouse, Professor Emeritus Karel Husa and current Professor Roberto Sierra. Both sessions will be held in B-21 Lincoln Hall and are open to the public.