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April 11, 2006
NEW JERSEY PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE TO PERFORM MUSIC BY WOURINEN, REICH, ON APRIL 17 AT WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY
The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, in residence at William Paterson University in Wayne, will perform works by Charles Wuorinen and Steve Reich, two of the America’s leading contemporary composers, during a New Music Series concert on campus on Monday, April 17, 2006. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Shea Center on campus. Admission is free.
The ensemble will perform Wuorinen’s Percussion Symphony (1976), a work written especially for the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble and dedicated to Raymond Des Roches, the founder of the ensemble and a retired professor of music at William Paterson. Wuorinen is expected to attend the concert. Also on the program will be “Six Marimbas” by Steve Reich.
The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, directed by Peter Jarvis, was founded in 1968 by former William Paterson University music professor Raymond DesRoches, who co-directed the group with Jarvis and Gary Van Dyke until 2004. The highly acclaimed ensemble is made up of professionals and students from William Paterson University, where it has been in residence since 1972. Because of an ongoing commitment to the proliferation of percussion repertoire, numerous pieces have been written for, premiered by and recorded by the ensemble. The ensemble has appeared in the United States and Europe as guests of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Composers Guild of New Jersey, the San Francisco Symphony, the Gaudeamus Foundation, Radio Denmark, and countless others. The group can be heard on Nonesuch, Composer's Recording Inc., Music and Arts, Koch International, Desoto, New World, NAXOS, the Composers Guild of New Jersey and Capstone recording labels.
Wuorinen is one of the world's leading composers. His many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. His compositions encompass every form and medium, including works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists, ballet, and stage. Wuorinen, who has has written more than 200 compositions to date, was the first composer commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi (Movers and Shakers) and by Michael Tilson Thomas's New World Symphony (Bamboula Beach), and his works have been recorded on nearly a dozen labels. An eloquent writer and speaker, Wuorinen has lectured at universities throughout the United States and abroad, and has served on the faculties of Columbia, Princeton, and Yale universities, the University of Iowa, University of California-San Diego, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Rutgers University. He has also been active as a pianist and a distinguished conductor of his own works as well as other twentieth century repertoire. In 1962, he co-founded the Group for Contemporary Music, one of America's most prestigious ensembles dedicated to performance of new chamber music. In addition to cultivating a new generation of performers, commissioning and premiering hundreds of new works, the Group has been a model for many similar organizations which have appeared in the United States since its founding. Wuorinen is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reich has been called one of the most original musical thinkers in contemporary music. He has embraced not only aspects of Western classical music, but the structures, harmonies, and rhythms of non-Western and American vernacular music, particularly jazz. In 1966, he founded his own ensemble of three musicians, which rapidly grew to 18 members and sometimes more. Since 1971, Steve Reich and Musicians have frequently toured the world, performing to sold-out houses at venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall and the Bottom Line Cabaret. He has received numerous honors, including a two Grammy Awards for best contemporary composition, the Schuman Prize from Columbia University, the Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College, the Regent’s Lectureship at the University of California at Berkeley, and was named Composer of the Year by Musical America magazine. He has been commissioned by numerous orchestras and ensembles, and his works have been performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, among others. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and named a Commandeur of the French Order of Arts and Letters.
For additional information on the concert, call the Shea Center Box Office at 973-720-2371.
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www.wpunj.edu
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