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Connecting Artists - New LINKS program enables UNCSA to further its reach
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Published: January 10, 2010
UNC School of the Arts is a hotbed of creativity, and it's trying to become a less isolated one.
The latest effort comes in the form of $70,000, which the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts has earmarked for the LINKS Commissioning Awards in Music. LINKS uses new compositions to connect UNCSA's instructors with other artists nationwide and to have this music performed nationally.
Local listeners can hear LINKS music in concerts Tuesday and Saturday in Watson Hall at UNCSA, including String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere by Lawrence Dillon, UNCSA's composer-in-residence. This piece was commissioned by the famed Daedalus String Quartet, which will perform it Saturday.
"We were trying to make sure that the national arts landscape was aware of (UNCSA's) incredible artistic resources and, at the same time, encouraging the faculty … to be thinking about getting their work noted elsewhere," said Margaret Mertz, the executive director of the institute, which funds projects involving UNCSA faculty.
Dillon pointed to another benefit of LINKS.
"I can write a piece for someone on the faculty any time," he said. "We do that all the time. What was little bit more difficult was for someone on the faculty to go to a composer from somewhere else and say, ‘Would you write a piece for me?'"
That's because the latter scenario entails paying the composer. Dillon usually charges UNCSA instructors nothing to write pieces that they'll perform in Watson Hall, calling that part of his duties of the job.
The LINKS initiative, which started a couple of years ago, has resulted in the commissioning of five pieces. Two of them were performed last year. One was Wave Hill, which Kevin Lawrence, a violinist who teaches at UNCSA, commissioned from Laura Kaminsky, the dean of the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, State University of New York.
The other, Deliriade for Flute and Saxophone Quartet, was composed by Mark Engebretson for Tadeu Coelho, a flute instructor at UNCSA, and the Prism Saxophone Quartet, of which Taimur Sullivan, also a UNCSA instructor, is a member. Engebretson teaches composition at UNC Greensboro.
On Tuesday, the CanAm Piano Duo will team up with two percussionists to perform This is
the World by David Maslanka, a free-lance composer who lives in Missoula, Mont. One of the duo's pianists is Karen Beres, a keyboard instructor at UNCSA. The other is Christopher Hahn.
World's instrumentation recalls that in two pieces by as many famed composers, Bela Bartok and George Crumb.
"I deliberately avoided refreshing myself on either piece," Maslanka said by e-mail. "Both composers are favorites of mine, and I did not want to be pulled into their worlds. I do think that This is the World has found its own voice."
Maslanka, in program notes, described a piece in multiple sections with an "overall feeling of … quiet awe at the nature of our world, both the planet on which we live, and the amazing web of life that it supports -- not only that but its place, and our place in the universal web of life, the jeweled ‘net of Indra.'"
On Saturday, the Daedalus String Quartet will present the local premiere of Dillon's Fourth String Quartet, the latest addition to a projected six-quartet set called the "Invisible Cities String Quartet Cycle." The fourth quartet is scheduled to be performed in several other places, including New York and Philadelphia, and a recording of the piece is planned as well.
The fourth quartet bears influences of contemporary popular music. It's like the cycle's other quartets, each of which explores a different traditional form, in this case the rondo. Dillon seemed confident that the Daedalus players were up to the task at hand.
"They give you everything you ask of them, with just this outstanding clarity of intensity," he said. "They're just at the top of their game. They're a young group, but they've still accomplished an amazing amount already. They're a lot of high-profile composers eager to write for them."
Sadly, the LINKS initiative will end on May 21 when Ransom Wilson leads the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra in Native Tongues, a concerto for beatbox flute and orchestra that Wilson and beatbox flutist Greg Pattillo commissioned from Randall Woolf. (Beatbox is a playing style that results in generating what has been described as "one rhythm with your fingers and another rhythm with your articulation.")
"I hope they'll revive (LINKS)," Dillon said. "I think it's a wonderful function for them to perform, to be invested in creation of new work."
kkeuffel@wsjournal.com
727-7337
The CanAm Piano Duo will perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Watson Hall, UNCSA; the Daedalus String Quartet will perform there at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $12, $10 for seniors and students. 721-1945.
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