Elizabeth Ogonek, Jesse Jones Named to Composition Faculty at �鶹��Ƶ</h1> <article> <h1>Elizabeth Ogonek, Jesse Jones Named to Composition Faculty at �鶹��Ƶ</h1> <p>eburnett — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:01:50 +0000</p> <span>Elizabeth Ogonek, Jesse Jones Named to Composition Faculty at �鶹��Ƶ</span> <span><span>eburnett</span></span> <span><time datetime="2016-11-07T13:01:50-05:00" title="Monday, November 7, 2016 - 13:01">Mon, 11/07/2016 - 13:01</time> </span> <div class="text-content field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Composers Jesse Jones and <a href="https://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/departments/composition/faculty_detail.dot?id=85d8f593-8d33-4478-97c0-69220bd98e04">Elizabeth Ogonek</a> have been appointed to the �鶹��Ƶ Conservatory faculty as assistant professors of composition. They join Grammy-winning Professor of Composition <a href="https://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/departments/composition/faculty_detail.dot?id=42961ce2-dbe8-4d99-80a3-7c79ca42a01c">Stephen Hartke</a>, who serves as chair of the department.</p> <p>Though both have been extensively lauded for their work, Jones and Ogonek boast very different musical paths, which converged over the past year at �鶹��Ƶ.</p> <p>“Elizabeth and Jesse offer two of the most distinctive and individual compositional voices of their generation,” says Hartke, who was appointed to the conservatory faculty in 2015 after a long career at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. “Both of them bring their own broadly based perspectives on the many paths that our students find themselves exploring.”</p> <p>Familiar to many on the �鶹��Ƶ campus, Ogonek has served as a visiting member of the conservatory faculty for 2015-16. Often inspired by text, she frequently collaborates with emerging writers, including Sophia Veltfort, Ghazal Mosadeq, and Jonathan Dubow.</p> <p>Recent commissions for Ogonek have included works for the London Symphony Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for which she is the Mead Composer in Residence. Ogonek has previously composed works for Ensemble 360, the Flux Quartet, the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and the Brillaner Duo.</p> <p>Ogonek earned a DMus from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a master of music at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, and a bachelor of music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. A former Marshall Scholar, she has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Royal Philharmonic Society, among other accolades.</p> <p>“To say that I'm brimming with excitement at the thought of staying at �鶹��Ƶ is the greatest understatement of the year,” says Ogonek. “I’m grateful to have found an incredible home with my colleagues in the composition department, the contemporary music division, and the conservatory at large. The enthusiasm and curiosity that I encounter with my students every day is absolutely thrilling. It is with great eagerness that I look forward to the wonderful years ahead!”</p> <p>A seasoned composer, conductor, and mandolinist, Jesse Jones has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Elliott Carter Rome Prize in Composition from the American Academy in Rome, and commissions from the Juilliard String Quartet, Tanglewood, Barlow, and others. His music has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.</p> <p>In January 2016, Jones’ piece <i>One Bright Morning</i> was given its North American premiere by the �鶹��Ƶ Contemporary Music Ensemble in a performance at Roosevelt University in Chicago, part of �鶹��Ƶ Conservatory’s <a href="http://oberlin.edu/chicago2016/">150th anniversary tour</a>. In late 2015, Jones visited the �鶹��Ƶ campus for a preview performance of his work.</p> <p>“When I first visited �鶹��Ƶ, I was bowled over by the immense skill, artistry, and enthusiasm of both the students and faculty,” he says. “I was equally astounded by the artistic depth and craft of �鶹��Ƶ’s composition students, whom I had the pleasure of teaching during that visit. Each composer possessed finely developed skills and a passion for musical expression that I had not previously witnessed in undergraduates. I understood then that �鶹��Ƶ is a very special place, where true artistic exchange between teacher and student can take place. I am thrilled to teach and create in such a vibrant and supportive environment.”</p> <p>Jones earned a DMA in music composition at Cornell University, a master’s degree in composition at the University of Oregon, and a bachelor’s degree at Eastern Oregon University. He previously served as assistant professor of composition and theory at the University of South Carolina.</p> <p>“We are very much a performance-based composition department: Actually hearing your music played—and played well, thanks to the wonderful instrumentalists we have here—is central to the training we offer,” says Hartke, whose composition <i>Meanwhile</i>, commissioned by the �鶹��Ƶ-founded ensemble eighth blackbird, won a Grammy Award in 2013. “Elizabeth’s work with the Chicago Symphony and Jesse’s crossover work as a professional mandolinist are just two of the many extra dimensions that they bring to our program at �鶹��Ƶ.”</p></div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-type field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item">News Releases</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden field__item"><time datetime="2016-03-09T12:00:00Z">Wed, 03/09/2016 - 12:00</time> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Erich Burnett</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2356">Conservatory</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-programs field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?program=33331">Composition</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-departments field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/conservatory/divisions/contemporary-music" hreflang="und">Contemporary Music</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pin-school-page field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">Off</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-photo-gallery-top field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">false</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-media field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item"> </div> </article> <article> <h1>�鶹��Ƶ CME to Premiere Aaron Helgeson's Snow Requiem March 6</h1> <p>eburnett — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:03:18 +0000</p> <span>�鶹��Ƶ CME to Premiere Aaron Helgeson's Snow Requiem March 6</span> <span><span>eburnett</span></span> <span><time datetime="2016-11-07T13:03:18-05:00" title="Monday, November 7, 2016 - 13:03">Mon, 11/07/2016 - 13:03</time> </span> <div class="text-content field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><i>This article was written by Mike Telin ’84 for <a href="http://clevelandclassical.com/oberlin-contemporary-music-ensemble-to-premiere-helgesons-snow-requiem/">clevelandclassical.com</a>. It is republished here with their permission.</i></p> <p>In his book <i>The Children’s Blizzard</i>, author David Laskin chronicles the events of January 12, 1888. That morning the temperatures in the upper Midwest were unseasonably warm—so warm in fact that children walked to school without coats, hats, or gloves. That afternoon, one of the deadliest winter storms in U.S. history left thousands stranded as they attempted to make their way home. By the next morning, the storm had claimed more than 500 casualties, many of them schoolchildren.</p> <p>This horrifying day in history is the inspiration behind composer Aaron Helgeson’s latest work. On <a href="https://calendar.oberlin.edu/event/contemporary_music_ensemble_timothy_weiss_conductor_2183#.VPS3o-tSwhE">Friday, March 6, at 8 p.m.</a> in the �鶹��Ƶ Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, and on Saturday, March 7, at 2 p.m. in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Timothy Weiss will lead the �鶹��Ƶ Contemporary Music Ensemble in world-premiere performances of Helgeson’s <i>Snow Requiem</i> for solo violin, solo soprano, 16-voice choir, strings, percussion, and harp. The program also includes Sofia Gubaidulina’s <i>Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings</i>, featuring Ben Roidl-Ward as soloist, and Jonathan Harvey’s <i>Wheel of Emptiness</i>.</p> <p>During a conversation in his studio, Helgeson, who is a visiting assistant professor of composition at �鶹��Ƶ as well as a 2005 graduate of the college and conservatory, said that the gestation of the work was quite long. “It started when I was finishing my doctoral dissertation in 2012. I felt I had mastered my toolbox in terms of composing, and I began to think about developing a project that would allow me to apply those tools to subject matter that might be of interest to people outside of the new music community. At the time, I was reading a lot of creative non-fiction, a genre that is an interest of mine, when I came across David Laskin’s book, <i>The Children’s Blizzard</i>.</p> <p>Although <i>Snow Requiem</i> is not a programmatic work, Helgeson said that Laskin’s detailed writing about the event did have a direct effect on his piece. “It was a blizzard that saw wind speeds of up to 80 mph, single-day temperature drops of as much as 55 degrees fahrenheit, and snow drifts of 10-20 feet, all over the course of 8 hours.</p> <p>“At the time, all of the weather forecasting was done via the Military Signal Corps, and a lot of enterprises had paid them off in order to get weather information early. Among those enterprises were the railroads, and because they had received advance notice of the storm, they shut down early, which meant that many people could not get out of the region. Most of the people in the area were Norwegian, German, and Ukrainian homesteaders, and Laskin talks about the folk music and the hymns that were sung. He also recreates the storm and the experience of the children of the people in the region. There is a particularly gruesome chapter about a group of boys who were stuck in the storm for hours, and their experiences during the different stages of hypothermia.”</p> <p>While spending a few months teaching in Washington, D.C., Helgeson spent time at the National Archives researching weather data and the homesteaders, a topic that was of personal interest to him. “My great-great-grandfather came from Oslo during the Homestead Act and settled in that region, so there is a personal aspect for me. I wanted to create a project that I could really sink my teeth into, and this seemed to provide me with what I was looking for.</p> <p>“Its musical unfolding is structured from temperature and wind readings taken during the storm from the weather station in Huron, South Dakota, and bookended by my own transcription of two Norwegian folk songs from the Homestead-era immigrant communities in the affected areas.”</p> <p>A Norwegian folk song serves as the work’s structural base and comes from the tradition of tralling, a form of nonsense-syllable singing that is particularly prevalent in children’s music. The second folk song is a Hardanger fiddle tune that he transcribed for solo violin. The Hardanger fiddle is a violin-like instrument with sympathetic strings inside its body that resonate the notes of the bowed strings. Helgeson said it was difficult to capture the Hardanger sound in the transcription because a violin is a very different instrument, so he had to get a little creative.</p> <p>“I listened to a lot of folk tunes, but I wanted to find something that captured the quality of the story. I also wanted a tune that would not be too difficult to learn linguistically if I wanted it to be performed outside of Norway. I also needed a song that I could fragment, and then harmonize in many different ways, and I thought this tralling song had a lot of possibilities. The first movement is just this folk song. And that structure is repeated during the seven movements. But as the piece progresses, the orchestra enters into the structure, and plays along with the melody and then starts to obscure it. That’s why I say it’s a collage of different sonic elements and not a program piece.”</p> <p>In his informative composer’s notes about <i>Snow Requiem</i>, Helgeson writes: “Ultimately, this music is and isn’t a requiem. It shares similarities with previous attempts at the form (Machaut, Mozart, Brahms, Ligeti) while bearing no relation to the Catholic Mass. It has no words, yet it has a text. It is no epitaph. Rather, it’s a collage of sonic elements in proximity to the storm and those who suffered through it: the folk songs of May Hunt that kept her schoolchildren’s spirits up while they waited out the night underneath a frozen haystack they had burrowed into with their bare hands; the hypothermia-induced aural hallucinations of Peter Graber that gradually subsided as the temperature of his prairie-trapped body fell below 87 degrees; the wordless hymns of Etta Shattuck that lulled her to sleep on her deathbed weeks after being trapped in the blizzard; the deafening roar of the wind and snow as it rolled across the plains, and the even more deafening quiet that surrounded it.”</p> <p>As an undergraduate at �鶹��Ƶ, Helgeson also earned a BA in theater. Does his theatrical experience inform his musical compositions? “People used to say, ‘You do theater and you write music, so you must write musicals.’ At first it wasn’t easy to reconcile the two. But as I’ve learned more about myself as a composer I’ve discovered that, yes, actually, the theater really has influenced a lot of what I do musically, even though it might not be obvious on the surface. If you think of the sounds as characters you can say, 'OK, what can they do in terms of their relationships to one another: this one starts a phrase, This one continues it, and this one stops it. And they’re not arbitrary—they’re based on who this character is.'”</p> <p>He also admits that he is, and always has been, interested in sound. “I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, and when we’d go camping I just loved sitting and listening to every little sound and imagining what it would be like to add this or that little sound to it. I think listening is a big part of what I do as a composer, which is one of the reasons why I really wanted to incorporate transcriptions into this piece. It affords me the opportunity to really listen to something that I’m not a native in. So this was one way of getting to know music that I have connections to but that I am not as familiar with.”</p> <p><i>Snow Requiem</i> represents the culmination of many things in Helgeson’s personal and musical life. “The more I learn about Norway, the more I feel like I need to go there. I haven’t made my pilgrimage yet, so this is maybe a way of doing that. Spending time at the Archives was great, and of course they have all sorts of immigration records, so I did find out a lot of information about my family.”</p> <p><i>This article was originally published February 24, 2015.</i></p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-type field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item">News Releases</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-date field--type-datetime field--label-hidden field__item"><time datetime="2015-03-02T12:00:00Z">Mon, 03/02/2015 - 12:00</time> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-author field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Conservatory Communications Staff</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2370">Ensembles & Orchestras</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2356">Conservatory</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?tag=2974">Conservatory Alumni</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-programs field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news?program=33331">Composition</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-departments field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/conservatory/divisions/contemporary-music" hreflang="und">Contemporary Music</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-pin-school-page field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">Off</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-photo-gallery-top field--type-boolean field--label-hidden field__item">false</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-image-credit field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item">Josie Davis '14</div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-media field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item"> </div> </article> </main></body></html>